Israel's Bravest Politician: Palestinian Feminist vs Apartheid Parliament

Join Aida Touma-Sliman — Nobel Peace Prize nominee, first Palestinian woman to chair a committee in the Knesset, first woman on the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, founder of Women Against Violence, and outgoing Member of Knesset — for an unflinching reflection on a decade of fighting for Palestinian rights and gender justice from inside Israel's parliament.

Aida shares how a circle of six friends in 1992 Nazareth launched the first Arab feminist organization in Israel to confront honor killings, why she refuses to surrender the word "shahid" (martyr) to those colonizing her language, and what it cost her to name an apartheid regime on the Knesset floor.

She speaks with raw honesty about October 7, the genocide in Gaza, her suspension over al-Shifa, the death threats, and why she has decided the real battle must now be fought from the outside.

Like to read? 👉🏼 Check Out these Blog Posts:

Six Friends in Nazareth: How Aida Touma-Sliman Built an Arab Feminist Movement From a Kitchen Table

Shahid, al-Shifa, and Khalas: Aida Touma-Sliman on the Knesset That Could No Longer Hear Her

🎥 Prefer to watch? See the video version at superhumanizer.com.

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Transcript

INTRO 1: [00:00:00] Welcome to Super Humanizer Podcast, where we promote empathy and understanding in polarizing viewpoints through stories told by people living them.

INTRO 2 & OUTRO: Hey, wonderful Super Humanizer friends. This is Dr. Hani Chaabo. Before we dive into this awesome episode, I wanted to take a moment and be real with you. So much work goes into bringing you these conversations, the research, the preparation, the production. It's a labor of love and it's a lot of real work.

If you found value in these stories, we'd love your support. Join our Patreon for as little as $10 a month. You'll get early access to episodes, extended interviews, and even direct access to Katie and I, or you can send a one time or recurring donation through our PayPal link. Both links are in the show notes below.

You are helping us build a team to produce more content and inspire more humanity. Thank you. Now let's get into it.[00:01:00] 

KATIE BOGEN: Welcome back to Super Humanizer everyone, the podcast where we explore the stories of people who are making our world more caring, more fair, and more human. I am Katie. As always. I'm here with my co-host, Dr. Hani, and today we're talking to someone who has spent her life fighting for justice from the inside, the very institution that she believes embodies oppression.

DR. HANI CHAABO: I'm so honored to introduce Aida Touma-Suleiman , a Palestinian Israeli member of the Knesset Israel's parliament. For the past decade, literally 10 years, she has been one of the most powerful voices for Palestinian rights, women's equality and social justice within the Israeli political system itself. She's a feminist socialist and a tireless advocate who has never been afraid to speak truth to power, even when it comes at a great personal cost and political censorship.

KATIE BOGEN: This journey began in Nazareth where she was born into a Christian Arab family. She became a feminist activist in the early nineties, [00:02:00] founding the organization, women Against Violence to Combat Honor Killings. She was the first woman to serve on the high follow-up committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, and in 2015, she became the first Palestinian woman to chair a committee in the Knesset.

DR. HANI CHAABO: After a decade of fighting from the inside, Aida has recently announced that she will not be running for reelection in her own words. She can no longer serve in a place that embodies oppression, silencing, and violence. This decision comes after years of facing suspensions, death threats, and a political climate that has become increasingly hostile to Arab voices.

KATIE BOGEN: Today we want to talk about her incredible journey from a young activist in Nazareth to a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and a trailblazing politician. We wanna understand what it's like to fight for your people's rights from within the heart of a system that you believe is designed to oppress them, and we want to know why,

after a decade of fighting, you [00:03:00] decided that the real battle must now be fought from the outside.

DR. HANI CHAABO: Aida, your story is full of courage, resilience, and the difficult choices we have to make when fighting for a better world, even through realizing that the system itself may be beyond repair. So thank you so much for being here and with our community.

AIDA: Thank you. Thank you, Katie, and thank you Hani for hosting me. I'm really happy to be with you and looking forward for a real conversation from heart to heart.

DR. HANI CHAABO: Same here. Thank you. Thank you for being with us. It's such an honor. And speaking of heart to heart, we like to start every episode with a game called What Brings You Joy. Would you play it with us

AIDA: Yes, I didn't expect to play, but yes,

DR. HANI CHAABO: before we dive into everything that is the opposite of play? I feel like Aida habibti brings you joy.

AIDA: My grandchildren. I have two very, very [00:04:00] beautiful grandchildren. Twins, a boy and a girl, Adam and Emma, and they are really, really a joy that, never stops to surprise me. Yeah, they are. So, can I ask Katie, Katie, what brings you joy?

KATIE BOGEN: Well, something that's definitely bringing me joy right now is getting to be here with such a feminist trailblazer and someone who's imagined these global pathways to justice. I was raised by a single father and three second wave feminist aunties who really embedded in me a sense of gender justice and it feels like being in the presence of an auntie.

So thank you so much, Aida, for being here. And Hani, my love, what brings you joy?

DR. HANI CHAABO: This connection between us really brings me joy today. Aida, you being here is bringing me the utmost joy. I've watched you in the Knesset just pure heartfulness and humanity. Like [00:05:00] your words are just basic truth. There's nothing more basic, especially when you talk about caring for children and the equality of children and that what you face.

Just for speaking, the truth is absolutely inspiring for us because on some level, we're all facing that same system of oppression, and I do see so many parallels between your heart and Katie's heart, and just you being here among us, sharing who you are with us is bringing me a lot of joy. Back to you, Aida, my dear.

What brings you Joy?

AIDA: Oh, to tell you the truth, Hani, I, in the last two years, it was almost only my grandchildren that brought, a smile on my face. A situation, we couldn't talk about really joy. Every moment was sad. Every moment was, horrifying. Let's put it in this way. And, I almost forgot, how is it to [00:06:00] be full of joy?

Although I've been a person who love the life, love to be, with people. I think the only moments that I felt a little bit of, not joy, but more like, feeling good is when I, meet people and they tell me "Continue because you are our voice that is silenced", especially in the last two years. I mean, that brings tears into my eyes, but also feeling, like kind of saying yes, either you are doing the right thing because when you are, in our situation, you are sometimes asking yourself, am I doing enough?

Is it the right thing to do at this point? But, it's always the normal people. Who give you the feeling [00:07:00] that yes, this is what should be done. Katie, what brings joy beside the fact that we are talking.

KATIE BOGEN: Well, I am experiencing such joy of just getting to be in your presence and I will echo what you said, which is, this is maybe not joy, but something adjacent to joy or with the flavor of joy. My father is the son of a Holocaust survivor and I was raised in an incredibly Zionist Jewish household. And the other night we were at dinner with a friend of his and we were talking about my social media activism and discussions of Palestine, and he said to me in front of this friend.

You were right about Palestine. I've been talking to my father about Palestinian liberation and anti-Zionism and Zionist criticality for 11 years, and I never thought that this man would ever tell me those words. I just didn't expect to [00:08:00] hear it. And I've been working on him and trying to, get him to be a little bit more open-minded about Palestinian liberation since around 2014, and that it was such a shock.

I'm still. Almost not convinced that it happened. Like it feels absolutely surreal. And the possibility that these conversations we have with individual people over a decade of really trying to move the needle that they might actually be working and that the people who were most embedded in Zionism might actually be seeing the violence of that system now brings me, if not joy, satisfaction or a little bit of optimism.

So that's been something in the last few weeks that just floored me and I hope, gives some hope to our listeners as well. And Hani what brings you joy?

DR. HANI CHAABO: I feel like I want to echo that because in my just. Like everyday life. Also, I would say it's been a challenge to remain [00:09:00] anchored in joy. And I've started to see joy also as an act of resistance because when I fill my cup, that's what I bring to others in the movement and all that. And kind of to echo about the community and how that brings us joy, satisfaction, hope, all the things.

I was at a birthday gathering the other day in San Francisco and I'm usually around people who aren't very, like, plugged into the cause, but they care very deeply about it, especially knowing the work of the podcast and just my background and my Palestinian heritage and all that. And recently I met somebody who actually inspired this podcast.

But I had never met her. She was somebody who, when I was feeling everything I was feeling after October 7th and feeling like I have to do something, I have to contribute to humanizing, people, especially the people that are most oppressed in all of this. She's somebody that a friend connected me to who is Jewish, [00:10:00] who basically connected me to another friend that has a podcast.

And I've told this story before, but I had never met this person live until this birthday gathering. And this person is connected to a large group of entrepreneurs and people who are impactful in the tech industry and the finance industry and just a lot of industries here in the US and around the world.

And one of the first things she said to me is like, have you watched Palestine 36? And that to me was huge because I know I have not watched Palestine 36 yet, and I will, but the fact that somebody so far from the cause was able to come to me and say, this is something you have to watch, because that's what she's hearing in her circles, especially among Israeli entrepreneurs and people you would not expect to be promoting this film.

That brought me a lot of joy and also satisfaction to know that work that, you know, of course we're not in the Knesset like Haida, but the parallel work we all do with each [00:11:00] other and how it connects, it can be super impactful and that brings me a lot of joy. Back to you Aida, my dear. What brings you joy?

AIDA: I'm trying to really think, what brings me, joy, you know, a Palestinian Gazan child who is singing or dancing in this horrible situation with the ruins around him or her. It always give me joy and happiness because then I understand again that they can lead a genocide, but they cannot kill the well of life.

I admire the children of Gaza. I don't want to fantasize their, suffering or to make it, you know, look like it's a rosy. I know they are suffering. [00:12:00] I cannot even imagine how much they are suffering, but still the ability to describe what they are going through, the language they are using, the powerful sometimes even look in their eyes.

And yet the ability to dance and to smile shows that it's amazing. It's amazing. It gives me hope. It gives me, also feeling of power that if they are able to do that, for sure, we are in a luxurious situation and we should be doing more.

DR. HANI CHAABO: Beautiful. And one more time, to Katie from you.

KATIE BOGEN: I really feel like that, you know, indomitable human spirit of resilience that they should not have to have is stunning and deeply inspirational. Something that is bringing me joy. I'm entering two [00:13:00] different realms of professional existence at the moment. I'm interviewing for clinical psychology, internship slots, which will be my new, the next.

Level of my training, the next hierarchical level of my training. I am training as a trauma therapist and a PhD in clinical psychology with a real focus on post-traumatic stress disorder treatment. And so the capacity of getting this training for the next year and being able to apply it to the populations who most need those resources and being able to bring justice work that is oriented toward Palestine into a clinical internship setting and into my field is something that I'm optimistic about.

And then in my other professional realm, I have a book coming out in about a month. That means I'll be entering the literary world. And so I'll get to talk about this and how important Palestinian liberation is and how important it is to build Zionist critical and anti-Zionist [00:14:00] Jewish community in psychology as a field.

In literature and in literary spaces and bookseller spaces, and on the internet, which is what I do now, and I'm feeling like I'm entering an era of my life and my, you know, early to mid thirties where the potential impact of the work is, expanding for me. And I know that that is an expansive impact, Aida, that you've had over your career and I'm really eager to learn more about what that process was like for you over the course of this conversation.

So thank you for being a trailblazer. Being on the cusp of, impact feels overwhelming and in many ways, joyful

AIDA: Thank you. Wow. You've managed a lot and you're still young.

KATIE BOGEN: Hani, my love. What is bringing you joy?

DR. HANI CHAABO: Many of you might have, or at least in the US might have been reading about Californians and their recent experience with [00:15:00] a neverlasting, everlasting, sorry, fog. Which is unusual for California. We're usually weather entitled and we have great weather most of the time. But recently there was like a four week bout of fog that stretched from here in the mountains where I'm at in like this Lake Tahoe region all the way down to Sacramento.

And people were in this thick fog for weeks and weeks. And people were complaining about it, of course, because you couldn't see anything. It's, you know, in an urban jungle, it's kind of eerie that like people just pop out of nowhere while you're walking between the buildings. But for me it was an entirely different experience.

'cause I live up in the mountains and the fog kind of goes up and down. So some days I'm right above it, some days I'm in it. And one day I was sitting in a hot tub in my backyard, which is a luxury I have. And just like watching the fog run through and clear out, and to me it was a metaphor [00:16:00] of... For some people we're in the thick of the fog and for some people we have the luxury to be in and out of the fog, and one day the fog is gonna clear to me that reflection just meant a lot about everything we're all going through.

And that brought me also some optimism, I would say, for the future. So thank you so much for that game. It was really lovely to get to know you, Aida, through your joys. And now we'll dive into the meat of the conversation.

KATIE BOGEN: So Aida, long before you were a politician, you were a feminist activist, and in 1992 you founded the organization, women Against Violence, to combat honor killings in Arab communities, a topic that was considered very taboo to discuss at the time. So what drove you as a young woman in your late twenties to take on such a difficult and controversial issue in the first place, and how did that early work fighting for women's rights shape the politician that you would [00:17:00] become later?

AIDA: Before I started the organization, we were a group of women, like sex friends that, we meet and we talk, and we were a generation of, women that is trying to develop our careers, starting families. I was with two children and when we were sitting there, one was lawyer, one was social worker, and we started talking.

And one day our friend who is a lawyer, told us a story about her client, a woman who, went to her because she wanted a divorce. And she said, I've been dealing with her case for seven months and today, just while talking, she just mentioned that he used to abuse her and to be violent physically against her, and she was in a big shock.

Our friend, she said, I've been dealing with [00:18:00] your case for seven months. You didn't think that it's relevant to tell me that he is abusing you, that he used to beat you and then we understood something. All of us were women who are very far from being abused. None of us was abused. I know usually in the west when they used to ask me why you started the organization, the best story to sell for them, oh I suffered from violence.

And then no, I didn't come from that background. And then we started to hear other stories. And for me, the fact that women would live through the violence and will not be able to talk about it or see it as a normal issue, it happens between couples. Drove me crazy. We started talking about that and we understood that we need to do something.

Actually, [00:19:00] we established the organization, women Against Violence before the legislation, the first legislation in Israel ever dealing with the violence. So when we started, it doesn't mean that there wasn't Jewish feminist groups who established already shelters in Israel a few years before us.

But legislation, it wasn't a criminal thing to abuse your spouse. So when we established the organization, I couldn't even, know half of what I know today about, gender-based violence. We didn't call it even gender-based violence. We did not start talking about sexual harassment and sexual abuse in the beginning we were talking about the physical abuse and we were talking about murdering women, or femicide, as we call it, and we learned step by step [00:20:00] by developing ideas and hearing the stories of the women. And we started to understand that there is also economical violence against the women and so on.

How did that contribute to, politics? To my politics? First of all, I was always. Active politically. In the last 10 years, I entered what is called representative politics, meaning, being elected. But that doesn't mean that what I've done in the past is not politics, looking for a social change, trying to change the balance of power and who is taking the decisions and on what basis.

This is politics. This is what I was doing when I was struggling for women's rights or for, Palestinian students, right? As the secretary of the, union of Palestinian students in [00:21:00] Israeli universities. When you challenge the existing situation and you want to change it, of course you start to learn how to tackle the obstacles and.

That you need to create allies with you, and you need to know who are your enemies and how you can find their weak sides that you can really attack. In the beginning, we were incited against inside our society, but by religious and patriarchal powers, especially when we started talking also about advocating to change laws.

I used to say till I think the third year in the Knesset, that I managed to pass laws before I got Knesset more than since I got to Knesset. But after that, I changed the [00:22:00] equation. I managed to legislate more before I got to the Knesset. We initiated the change in the marriage, age law. It was 17 years old and we pushed it to 18 years old, and we did all the advocacy and we did all the work in order to make that change.

And we managed in 1995 the Knesset legislated, what we call, establishing the family courts, which are civil courts dealing with personal status issues. And they, isolated the Palestinian women and men from those courts. We could not approach those courts and we were trapped in the religious court.

So we started a long, long struggle that took six years and we managed to change the law and to open the courts for the [00:23:00] Palestinian, women and men. Then you had to deal with the fact that you are confronting the Knesset in order to make the change. On the other hand, part of the political representatives of the Palestinians inside the Knesset are against you.

They don't want that change. They don't believe in it, and you have to face the fact that they are inciting inside your own society, saying that you want to ruin our traditions, our religion. You are taking the families to civil courts, et cetera. You have to understand, when we are talking about civil courts, it's more sensitive in our situation because usually people trust their state, they relate to the establishment in that state, and they seek.[00:24:00] 

For security, from the establishment because this is what states should do with their citizens, protect them and give them security. In our situation, it's very difficult because people do not trust the establishment. People see that the establishment is the main source of oppression, discrimination, and here comes Aida and this group and asking actually to go to that path.

But this is part of the struggle, how to explain to your people why you are doing this. And that's how I learned to confront and to go out and speak out and to be in media and not to be afraid. Because when you truly believe in what you are doing, it is not a show for me, this is my life. This is what I believe in.

Otherwise I [00:25:00] wouldn't recognize myself. When you believe so much in things, you find a way to protect those values and to try to implement them.

KATIE BOGEN: You have this childhood as well, before you were able to engage in this political organization with this group of six women. As a child, you were a Palestinian citizen of Israel, so this must have contributed to your, justice orientation, your sense of, you know, necessity of speaking out. Can you talk to us a bit about your childhood too, before you even got to this point of organizing?

AIDA: You know, it was a very long way back. My childhood is not like a few years ago. I'm the sixth daughter of a family that have seven daughters.

DR. HANI CHAABO: Wow.

AIDA: I didn't think that I can call myself a feminist or talk about discrimination against [00:26:00] women till I got to the university. Before that, I lived in a family with a father and a mother who supported each one of us, a father who believed that the sky is the limit.

If you work hard, you can reach whatever you want. Who believed in us, who supported us? And who was very liberal in his way of thinking which was strange at that time. My father was coming from a very patriotic approach as a Palestinian, proud of his identity in my family we did not speak about Nakba, although both of my parents lived in Nakba and they were able to tell stories, which happened later when I started asking.

But I say that my father told me about the Holocaust, but did not tell me about Nakba and where he was. And when [00:27:00] later on I asked him, how come you didn't and asked my mom why you never told us that? What happened? And she told me. How would that have been useful to you? I didn't get it in the beginning, but then I understood when I read more about the Holocaust, and if you are dealing with trauma, I'm not comparing, I'm not saying it's each people have their own trauma, collective trauma, and the nakba is a collective trauma.

And my family stayed in the homeland and the state came and with the all the horrific things that they saw, they just wanted to survive. They wanted to stay and they wanted just to be part of the place. And talking about what [00:28:00] happened in Nakba. Maybe in the beginning they felt that it's going maybe to raise kind of hate or anger or that will not help me integrating in the public sphere, but they taught me to love people and to be human. My father was construction worker. He finished high school before Nakba, which means in a German school, he could have been a teacher or something, but because he didn't want to work for the Israeli's establishment, he started working and fall from the third floor while he was working, and he was paralyzed for sometime and my mother had to support the family. And then she started to work as a subcontractor for a [00:29:00] textile factory that used to bring all what they saw during the day to our house at the end of the day, and we used to set the seven of us, my mother, and to clean up and put it in bags, et cetera.

So she had her own business as if with the seven of us. That's how I started to understand that there are people who work hard, but economically they are not gaining a lot. And I started to understand also with what my father used to tell me you have to educate yourself. You have to learn.

Education is the best weapon people can have. They can take your land, they can demolish your house, they can throw you out of your homeland, but they cannot take from you what you learned. You can always start [00:30:00] from the beginning. That's how I understood that nothing comes easy in this life, and you have to struggle and you have to understand that the most precious thing that you can protect in yourself is your dignity. Because the minute you lose it, it's difficult to gain it back. And you have to protect your dignity. You have to stand up and every time you fall you just, you need to stand up again and continue because this is life. So that's how tough love you say, this is what I had in my house with my family.

KATIE BOGEN: What an incredible origin story from your father being this liberal, supportive man, convinced and communicating that his daughters can do anything. The injury you watching, the labor of your mother, this community of [00:31:00] women, this community of women working for the economic and social maintenance of a family system.

It makes perfect sense that you found yourself into, in feminist activism and works to lay the foundation then for a generation of Arab feminists in Israel. And it's really incredible to think about, the morals and ethics that were instilled in you in childhood. Leading you to break down these barriers and challenge these patriarchal norms decades before these conversations became mainstream.

And that foundational work is so vital and so critical to understanding your career, how you ended up where you are now, and helping us too to have a model for harnessing these feelings of injustice that maybe we've observed since childhood or since early life. And being able to apply that motivation to a struggle for greater good.

So I so appreciate you sharing that like early trajectory. That was so beautiful.

AIDA: I would like just only to add, I told you I [00:32:00] only felt that I'm becoming to be a feminist in the university because when I went to the university, I met people, from different backgrounds and I saw other young women like me, and it's not the oppression of the patriarchy that made me feminist, but the fact that there are women who do not know any other option, who did not meet any other option, that what drove me to speak out because I couldn't understand why they are accepting.

And then I started to learn and to talk to them and to understand. Until today, I have to say that my best teacher are the women themselves. Every conversation I have with women or men, usually I try toward the end of the [00:33:00] day to ask myself, what did I learn today? And it's usually that What makes you, look for solutions and try to change the situation.

DR. HANI CHAABO: I love that you clarified more about that because this is exactly why we see you as a super humanizer Aida. You know, not just person who humanizes but can super humanize. Your power didn't just come from recognizing the subjugation. Of the oppression, the patriarchal oppression, but also the power that women can have.

And in how focusing on that power instead is what can trailblaze for a generation of feminists and Arab women. And in 2015, you made history by becoming the first Palestinian woman to chair a committee in The Knesset, the committee on the status of women and gender equality. You were elected unanimously, even by right-wing parties and members of Netanyahu's own Likud party.

It was a major breakthrough for [00:34:00] Arab politicians in general in Israel. What was it like to step into that role, knowing that historical significance, and how did you manage to build bridges and pass legislation like the electronic ankle bracelet law for domestic abusers in such a deeply divided political environment?

AIDA: First of all, I have to say that it's not because only of me, it's a collective work. I got the confidence first of all of my colleagues who were, we were elected for the first time in the joint list, which was a big, huge success of a coalition of all the parties that have presented our community. And I was asked by them to be nominated for such a huge responsibility.

And if we were not such a big faction in the Knesset, we couldn't have had had head chairing a committee. It was a huge [00:35:00] responsibility. It's always a huge responsibility when you are the first. Some people get very happy to be the first. I usually get scared. To be the first, and I had it few times in my life, first to be in the high, follow-up committee, first Arab MK in my party.

These kind of things. For me it's scary because I know that whatever I'm going to do is going to set a role model for others. That's why I feel horrified by the idea, oh my God, what are you going to do? I dunno, I didn't have any role model to follow at that point. Okay. There were other feminist MKs that are leftists that I admire, some of their work that I can follow, but as a chair of a committee that is [00:36:00] responsible not only for the Palestinian women, but for the whole citizens of Israel.

I asked myself just in the beginning, that's what I do usually whenever I'm getting a new position. You'll not be here till the end of your life. This is you have a time limit. What would you Aida like to be remembered when you leave, what kind of fingerprint you want to leave? The other thing is I was always going to those committee meetings, advocating in my previous work.

I asked myself what irritated you the most when you were in those meetings in order to change it? And one of the things that I really hated is that, sorry, Katie, the white [00:37:00] elitistic feminism.

KATIE BOGEN: You do not have to apologize to me, girl.

DR. HANI CHAABO: Not to Katie. Yes. You are speaking her language right now.

AIDA: I'm not saying you're, but you know, you're the only

DR. HANI CHAABO: Yes. Yes.

AIDA: First of all, I want to lead a different feminism, in the Knesset. Feminism who can see everybody and relate to everybody and who understand that we do not want to be like the men. We do not want to have the same equality with men because I think that the whole system should be changed and men in some of their parts of life are also oppressed by creating the manhood that, especially in a state that is very militaristic.

That [00:38:00] is very chauvinist men and women are raised in that. I wanted also to give a space in the committee for ultra-Orthodox religious women. Jewish women because I knew what kind of suffering they are having. And yeah. And actually after a few months I was asked to chair their lobby for political representation and their parties. And I still remember when they came and asked me to do it, I told them, are you sure you want me to be sharing your lobby? A Palestinian leftist feminist woman? This is not for your good sake. And they will attack you for that. And they say to me, we learn through the few months that you are here.

That if you believe in something, you go for it and nobody can stop you. And that's why we want you. [00:39:00] And that really made me first of all say, okay, Aida, you managed in one of the things you wanted to do. I wanted also to challenge not only the patriarchy, but also the militarism and the fact that women are excluded from the understanding of what is security and the fact that security is only taken as a national security.

I brought into the, committee discussions about human security, about poverty, women and poverty. And I still remember one day, you know, I had women in poverty. I had implications of house demolishing on women. I brought things that they never brought to the committee and once I was asked, how come you are dealing with these issues?

I said, every issue is a woman issue. [00:40:00] We are 52% of the society. So everything is important to us. After one year I learned that all my life when I was attacked, I did not run away. I took the issue that I'm attacked at and turn it into a public discussion. Because if you believe that your, what you are believing in is right, you want everybody to hear it.

So I was attacked one year later that Aida is not running. She doesn't care for the women who are in the army and she is not running any discussion about them for a whole year. And of course, you know, Palestinian and leftist and again, you know, so I said, okay, let's talk about it. First of all, the two MKs who attacked me at that point were members also of the [00:41:00] Security and Foreign Relations Committee.

I said, well, if you care so much, first of all, you never asked me to run such a session. Second, you never brought that issue to be discussed in the security committee, which is responsible for the Army. I don't have any authority over the Army why you didn't discuss it there. And third, I've never hide my opinion about participation in the Army.

I do not believe that the Army should be compulsory service, and I don't see, I don't want to run a struggle that women will have enough tools to kill other people or to fight. This is not the kind of equality. And then we started to discuss militarization and we started to discuss, you know, other issues.

So it was challenging to be chairing that committee. [00:42:00] Very challenging, but it was also very powerful. I could legislate, I could, you know, bring the, all the minister and ministers to my committee, question them, push them for changing policies. It was good.

DR. HANI CHAABO: This is the gift of being a politician is finding the common ground. And what struck me even more for you, Ida, is that you know that you're coming into this space as a Palestinian and you have to speak up very loud for your people and the population of Palestinian citizens of Israel. But then you also took that much further and you saw yourself as somebody who represents everyone in Israel, not just Palestinians, which I think is the even more controversial part of you being in, because of course, everybody's gonna expect you to represent Palestinians and Arabs, but not everybody and some people might even fault [00:43:00] you for seeing yourself as representative of everybody in Israel because that's who you are when you come into a political space, you have to find the common ground. Change does not come from being a fueler of conflict. It comes from being a fueler of unity and finding the things that are the common language.

And as you're speaking, I remembered, we interviewed Alon Lee from Standing Together, and he talked about how Rula, who is his colleague in that says she can't approach a black citizen of Israel and talk about Gaza and talk about all these things when they are people who are, let's say houseworkers and people going through their own struggles of being in the lower class of being in the society of Israel.

And so what is the common ground there that can mobilize this black citizen of Israel towards the cause of Palestinians and in that shared suffering? And what you were able to do with women is find that common ground of suffering, whether it was [00:44:00] for Palestinians, but also whether it was for the militarization and all the other topics that bridge the suffering and can get us to fight for it.

So for you, being able to find that common ground on issues of human dignity, even with your political opponents, is such a testament to your skill as a leader. And it shows us that incremental and even breakthrough progress is possible, even in the most impossible of circumstances. So inspiring.

KATIE BOGEN: I think one of the things I found so exciting as well about what you said is people who make political change and social change have this skill recognition of absurdity, of like what is absurd about what we're doing right now? White feminism. Is absurd. Why would we want to undergird the exact systems and processes that are violating us?

Why would we want to replicate them? Why would we want to gain access to those same levers of power? It doesn't make us free. It makes us [00:45:00] perpetrators. Why were the people who were approaching you and saying, oh, you haven't talked about women in the military. You haven't talked about this issue. What's wrong with you for not speaking about this?

You were able to see the absurdity of the question, even the absurdity of what they were asking you to do. It's like, you are not speaking about this. You haven't brought this to me as an invitation. You haven't raised this in your committee. You are heaping onto me a labor that now out of my own sort of passion for human dignity and progress I will take on.

But the absurdity here is not that I haven't done it yet, it's that somehow you're making it my responsibility when you haven't taken that on yourself. I mean, Hani, and I get comments often on social media of, you know, why aren't you talking about X, Y, and Z? And I'll navigate over to those profiles and they're blank and they have nothing to say about X, Y, and Z.

They're not contributing to the conversation on X, Y, and Z. And sometimes we will take the feedback in stride and incorporate it into next episode. [00:46:00] But I think in order to stay in movements for justice, the recognition of the absurd is such a vital skill. And you have this. Awareness of it and this humor for it that I just find so delightful.

So I really enjoyed hearing these stories.

AIDA: There's a difference between those who write to you in the social media and the politicians that I face. Those who are writing to you, maybe they are saying Why you are not talking about this? Because, they want you to be their voices. They want you to raise the issue. And sometimes they are not able to bring it up.

They are not in a position that whatever they will say will influence anybody. But when a politician is trying always to test you, this is what they used to do with me. They are testing this Palestinian woman, to what extent we can [00:47:00] push her in order to adopt our agenda, our terminology. Our way of thinking and because, you know, I came from the very radical grassroots feminist organization into the core of the establishment that is very traditional, that is very heavy, that is also very far from my own community.

So actually it's testing you always trying to push you to have anything or to say anything that they, aha. You see in this, you are either racist or not feminist enough, and you have to understand it was very difficult also because on one hand. Those who I left behind from the [00:48:00] feminist movement and went to the more representative politics, more established politics, are looking at me and asking is Aida really representing us in that place?

Or is she compromising? And those in the establishment and those who are looking at me and saying, are we able, to make some sense into this radical feminist who came suddenly into our castle? So it's to be in that situation that you are tested. And for me, the only thing that I can rely on is my values.

That's how I measure myself always, not how much those are happy with me or those are happy with me. Am I really taking the decision or doing the things as close as possible [00:49:00] to my values and to what I believe in? And if I'm not giving up or compromising something that is in the core of my values, these are the questions that I'm always like, whatever we say till now about Mike Naset experience, this was up till two and a half years ago.

I have a total different experience since seventh October and the war on Gaza, the genocide.

KATIE BOGEN: I so appreciate the therapeutic relevance too of what you've said of maintaining secure in your values, being the pillar when you're pulled between these like phenomenal tensions and these priorities across this spectrum of the thing that is stabilizing being a values orientation. I think a lot of folks who are able to remain in social [00:50:00] justice.

And justice Labor can do that because of that values link. Well, in 2022, you faced a major backlash for a social media post in which you used the word shahid or martyr to describe members of the Dan of Lions militant group. To many Palestinians, this word signifies a noble sacrifice, but to many Israelis, it's a celebration of terrorism.

And you've said that you don't regret the post. Can you help us understand the different meanings of this word and why it was so important for you to use it? Even knowing the controversy it would cause?

AIDA: Do you agree with me that words and language is a political position, is expressing a political position? So this is one of the good examples of what do we mean when we say, language and words are a political position. You choose your terminology [00:51:00] to express what your narrative, to express what you believe.

And you know, everybody is saying, she used the word shahid for the group of the lions. So nobody is telling the real story that those who I wrote about them, that with the word Shahid, were young Palestinian men who were killed in their beds. They were killed by the Israeli army, assassinated. Because they were accused that they relate to this group.

They did not in all what they published say that they committed a crime, but they were part of this military group, and they say that they were planning to attack Israelis and they were attacked while they were sleeping in their beds. I don't have to accept the [00:52:00] explanation that is brought by the occupation about my language.

I know my language better than they are, and the language can be colonized. The language can be transformed in order to change the narrative. Okay. There is the religious way of thinking about it, that Shahid is the one who fought for a good cause. But in the Arabic, in slang, Arabic, everybody who is killed, especially on a background of occupation and war, is called the Shahid.

So they are not going to decide for me, what should I use. Very soon I should use, you know, last week or two weeks ago, Iman Audio was speaking on the podium and he said the West Bank. And they started screaming at [00:53:00] him saying, you are not allowed to say, it's not called the West Bank, It's called Judea and Samaria

When I speak, I give a speech and say, occupation. They start screaming, there is no occupation. This is our homeland. So should I buy this narrative? And start using the terminology that they want me to use. No, you want to talk about Aida using Shahid. Let's talk who I meant when I said shahid. What they were doing, how they were killed.

Once they told me, you know, this politician who is supposed to, you know, left, the Hava galon was shocked of you saying shahid about them. I told them I'm shocked of her shock. Because we used to say assassination. We used to say occupation. We used to say the right of resistance to [00:54:00] those who are under occupation.

They cannot eliminate this terminology. This terminology is an expression of situation that is recognized by the international law that is recognized by the world. And it is my narrative. It is my story. They will never change it. So yeah, that's why I'm saying I don't regret it. It makes some right wingers furious.

Good.

KATIE BOGEN: You have this deep cultural and linguistic divide that exists between Palestinians and Israelis. But I love what you say about the colonization of language of if one of these groups has the power to write over the violent history of the, other than any capitulation to their insistence of like a respectability, politic of language, a cleaning of language, an erasure of language is itself, part of that [00:55:00] violence is itself a tool of an empire that has been inexcusable and your refusal to capitulate to that respectability language is resistance itself. I mean, it's not just about a single word. It's about these two absolutely different ways of seeing the world of assigning language and meaning to what you have seen. Pain and history are embedded in that language and in linguistic choice.

It's the difference between saying Nakba versus Independence Day, like one person's genocide. Cannot be another person's nationalization. And to agree to that kind of framing is an acceptance of continued violence. So, so much can be understood in the history of how everything has unfolded so far of the experiences that you have described.

And that still plays out just by looking at the polar opposite language and these perceptions. And the irony, like, the deep irony and disconnection of daring [00:56:00] to call resistance language violence. When resistance language is only used to highlight the violence that has been done to Palestine, like to dare call language violent when an active genocide is occurring is like sleight of hand.

It's erasure. It's like this magic of attempting to disappear. The horror of what is happening under the guise of, well, you said something that is offensive to me. It's just to put this very eloquently bonkers bananas, that that would be the expectation.

DR. HANI CHAABO: Yeah, and that was the beginning either of a streak or let's say a long handed attack on you and censorship and getting you to, you said they were challenging you and they were really challenging you to also oppress you. And unfortunately, in November, 2023, you were suspended from the Knesset for two months for accusing the Israeli military of war crimes in [00:57:00] Gaza.

And you've said that everything was different for you, even with all these challenges, everything was different for you until October, 2023. And what happened since then, and you've said that the Knesset has become a place of oppression, silencing, and violence. What is it like to be a Palestinian member of a parliament that's overseeing a war on your own people?

What's changed for you? You know, it was already challenging. What's changed now that's made it even more challenging? And how do you cope with the emotional and psychological toll of being punished for speaking out against what you see as injustice?

AIDA: Two days after, I was suspended for two months and they deducted from my salary, which is ridiculous. They think that if they take from my salary, I will stop talking. Two days after that, I was in the first demonstration that we organized against the war on Gaza in Tel Aviv, [00:58:00] and I was the main speaker there.

So that's how I cope with them trying to silence me. I think also part of what changed is the amount of hate. And of racism. It's not that I had an illusion that Israel was a real democracy. Before that, I was very vocal about the discrimination and how the Israel state is becoming an apartheid.

But it was a year that proved to me that this society, the Israeli Jewish Society, have went through a very deep change. That it's not only because of the 7th of October. The 7th of October, we know that horrible things happened and it was a real trauma for all of us. We have to be clear about it. For two days, I was sitting in [00:59:00] my house looking at the news and trying to understand what is going on and how it is happened, and how is it all, what I'm hearing true, because I didn't want also to think about my own people killing children. I didn't wanna know that. I didn't want to believe that there is such a situation. On the other hand, we started also to hear the news coming from Gaza and we understood, I mean, from day one, I understood that it's going to be a very bloody war that is led by, because the language of revenge, the language of anger and fear together was leading the discourse at that point.

But in my worst imagination, I couldn't think about a really, [01:00:00] a genocide and a war that continue for two years. So, I think it all happened not only because of the 7th of October, the Israeli society have been shifting in the last few years, more and more to racism, and it is led, especially in the last four years by groups of Messiah, crazy racist people who believe in the Jewish supremacy who do not see us as a human being. The genocide could happen because the Palestinians were dehumanized over the years, and just to understand that you are coming every day to that place where they take the decisions. And you understand that you are in a historic [01:01:00] moment where also the people who elected you are under a huge danger.

You know, in the beginning of the war, Netanyahu declared that we have four fronts to fight. Okay, toward the end of the war, they became seven by Netanyahu, but four whom he meant by four!? West Bank, Lebanon, Hezbollah, Gaza, and the journal front. We, the Palestinian citizens of Israel, they started distributing weapons to their own people.

More than 250,000 pieces of weapons were distributed to civilians on top of the army, on top of the police. Everybody was threatening. So you understand that you cannot just leave at this point because your community is under danger. But [01:02:00] on the other hand, you are not leaving the only place where you see the horrible atmosphere.

They are trying to silence you and not allow you to say anything and you cannot. I couldn't. I understood that my only role, I'm not able to influence anything. I'm not able to stop the war at this point, but I have to be the voice of the silence. I have to try in any way to bring some sense to the minds of the people and say, this cannot continue. The way, I was terrified by the idea that children were killed on the 7th of October. Don't ask me to be silenced when you are killing Palestinian children. So this is the situation you start to realize that, you say that I manage to create [01:03:00] alliances even with people who are politically away from me. I couldn't talk to anybody. Nobody wanted to talk to us also, and the only thing they wanted to hear from us that we are condemning what happened on the 7th of October, that we feel the pain of the hostages families, which we did. But because we are human, not because someone asked us to do it. And they wanted us also to say, you know, Hamas are terrorists.

Hamas are Nazi. Again, occupying the language. So we had to continue to be there to represent our community and try to protect our community. That's why I told you in the beginning, when people tell me, you know, continue because you are our voice that is silenced because people are terrified. The arrests and [01:04:00] the oppression that they faced in the last two years, they are asking me to use my position to echo their voices and the pain of our own people.

DR. HANI CHAABO: There's nothing more cognitively dissonant than that of you are anchored in your values. You know that there's simplicity in just saying don't kill children no matter what side they're on. You felt the horror for the children killed on October 7th, and of course, the never ending infinite horror that's still continuing today of killing more Palestinian children and the courage it takes for you to stand up and speak your conscience even within the first few days after your censorship.

I can't imagine how much strength you have in your ida. It's like an endless well of strength even when. This stuff could actually drain you completely of your strength. And as you were talking, I wanted to like [01:05:00] share how, even for me before I immigrated to the US I was living in Lebanon and I would see you and I would see Palestinian members of Knesset and it would bring me so much hope. It would. You are our voice. Even when you are the most oppressed and silenced, even in your censorship and what you do with your censorship. You are our voice and you are our courage. And I hope that that continuous for you, every fight for human rights has sacrifices and you just made a huge sacrifice.

AIDA: If I look at one Gazan child or at one woman in the West Bank who is facing the settler, what am I any, what kind of sacrifice I'm doing, what they are suspending me. So what? They are threatening. So what? Really, I feel shy to speak about sacrifice when I look at those at my own people.

KATIE BOGEN: So very mindful [01:06:00] relativity, like the awareness of relativity, what sacrifice means in these different contexts. And so you have announced after a decade in the Knesset that you will not be running for reelection, which is so very unfortunate to lose such a vital voice. I mean a voice that really represents this basic humanity.

But you said, you know, how many seats does compassion have in this Knesset? How many seats do human rights have? No one asks questions like that. I no longer want to play that game. So Halas enough. And what was, I mean, you've talked about the gradual process of seeing this loss of humanity and realizing that the people that you had considered potentially allies or even like fragile allyships.

Were broken. Was there a specific moment that led to this decision of, you know, this is when I am saying enough. And what does it say about this idea of the state of Israel's democracy [01:07:00] when one of its most prominent Arab members concludes that the system is actually beyond repair from the inside?

AIDA: There were different moments, when you don't go to sleep all night watching, the bombings in Gaza or not going to sleep because you know that your grandchildren and your daughter are now when our city Akka is bombed by missiles coming from Lebanon and you understand that the people who are taking the decision and you have to wake up in the morning and to go to see those who are taking the decisions that is endangering your life, your grandchildren's life and your people, and they don't want to understand that.

There is no military action that will solve the problem, and they are still insisting. I mean, [01:08:00] there were moments that, you know, you sit in the plenary. I used to sit in the plenary and just wanted to scream out and to say, listen to what you are saying. This is inhuman. On the day that they wanted to expel my, comrade Ofer Cassif from the Knesset, also because he was against the war and spoke out, we had a discussion in the house committee for a whole day, like we started nine o'clock and we finished at four o'clock.

And through that discussion, they were threatening him and they were looking at me and saying. Wait, wait. Your turn will come. Right after we finish with him. When we finished and I got out of the room, my phone rang and it was my daughter and she said, mom, what are you still doing there? And I thought that she was like, you know, like any daughter who's [01:09:00] asking her mom, why you are not back home yet? And I said, Madam, we just finished our meeting. She said, yes, I was watching. And that's why I am asking you, what are you still doing there? It's beyond your level. This is not you. That was a shocking comment from my daughter because I know they are very proud of my work and my activities. Every day in the last two years to tell you that I was sure that I took the right decision to continue.

Till now, I'm not sure. Every day I asked myself, what am I doing here? Every day I was full of fear of the future by listening to the discourse that was existing there. On the other hand, I said, if I was [01:10:00] a congresswoman who is elected on a personal capacity, I would have resigned. But I was elected in a party list and there is a responsibility to the people who elected me. I don't want anybody to say that I ran away when it became complicated. It's a lot of, you know, thinking with yourself what is the right? But what made me make the decision for sure is the heavy memories and what accumulated in the last two years is not going to allow me to act as if everything is back normal. Nothing is back normal. I'm not able to normalize the situation and go back and start working on everyday issues. I just want [01:11:00] to work to rebuild the security feeling of my own people. I'm not leaving politics. I will go back to do the politics I did before the Knesset. Working with the people and changing things and empowering my, and organizing our community to be able to protect itself and to take a good role in the struggle of liberation of my own people from occupation.

KATIE BOGEN: I mean, it's such a beautiful statement of continued commitment too. I know that your decision has been viewed by some as a blow to this idea of Jewish Arab partnership within the Knesset, and that it reflects, you know, this radicalization and polarization and Israeli politics. But what you're saying is that is not what has occurred for you.

It's not about necessarily this polarization. It's about a sense of my labor and the love work that I do. Do this community oriented work that I do, that I've done for decades is [01:12:00] at this point more effective and more tangible and will help my community more outside of a setting that has abandoned them, that allowed them and facilitated their harm and instrumentalized, I mean, really focused on their harm for two plus years.

I mean, this is a just a horrific thing to have watched over the last two and a half years, or two years and two months, the Israeli Knesset making this degree of violence possible. And I think it's an honorable decision to find an avenue for change- making that no longer legitimizes a body or a process that you have seen is not legitimate.

It has no seats for human rights. It has no seats for the children that have been violated, and it's such a powerful statement about the limits of institutional politics at a time when we need to find new avenues to [01:13:00] fight for change.

AIDA: I did not, and I'm not at a point where I will call for boycotting the Knesset. Maybe there will be a new people who will have the energy still to make the fight without burden of what happened in the last two years and what we faced in the last two years. You know what else? I think that the institutional politics takes a lot of your energy on stupid things. Relating to struggles within. Instead of focusing on the things you want to do, I'm done with, you know, sometimes you reach a point in your life that you know that you still have a limit time where you can give a lot of your energy. So you want to invest it in the proper [01:14:00] way, in the best way, and that's what I learned in the last two years.

I don't want to waste my energy in trying to convince those racists and those who are so much away from me. I want to build power with those who are close to my ideas. Who think like me. And that's when I say that, I mean also the real Jewish people who are committed to the cause, to the human rights values.

And I will work with them as I did in the past. I believe in partnerships, ideological and political partnerships. Not, you know,

KATIE BOGEN: Superficial.

AIDA: yeah. Or pragmatic only. I can cooperate with people away from me politically on a very short term focused issue. But if you [01:15:00] wanna fight for the big fight, you need real partners.

Not people who would cooperate with you, but real partners you can rely on and do it with them.

DR. HANI CHAABO: Yes. So Aida, you've said a little bit about how this fight for you is gonna continue from the outside, especially around this idea of partnership and mobilizing masses through the common vision, the common ground of the bigger picture, not just the smaller things that we get stuck in. So what does that look like for you moving forward?

Where do you see the most hope for change now? Is it in grassroots movement? Is it international pressure? Is it a new generation of activists that you're gonna help build? What is your message to young Palestinians and Israelis who may feel hopeless about the future?

AIDA: I was talking to a group of young women just two days ago, and they were telling me, what do we have here? I [01:16:00] mean, they started talking about immigrating and this is a trend now. We are really in a big problem if our young people want all to immigrate because usually those who immigrate, who have the ability to do it and are able to build a new life outside, meaning mid class educated young people who would see in them the future.

And I was talking to them and I told them, you know what, in 1948, how much 480, villages were ruined totally out of 750,000 Palestinians, we became 150,000. We were under military rule. Those who stayed here were the poor and who did not have means to live. And we managed to build ourself [01:17:00] a very strong society.

We became 1,500,000. We build our villages and towns. We are 40% of the medical care teams in Israel. We are very well educated and we are becoming a very strong community. Why you think that this war has to bring an end of this success story? We are able to do things. We are able to change the situation.

If you say you don't have anything here for you, tell me what you have for you out there. When you are traveling to Europe or you think you won't find racism in Europe, you won't feel excluded in Europe. You'll be an individual without your community, you are [01:18:00] not part of the, maybe I can serve the cause better in Europe- they told me. I told them this is how you convince yourself that you are not abandoning the situation here anyway. I think that I would tell our young people that none of us received anything, you know, prepared. We worked hard to make your future better. This is the story of humanity.

Every generation works hard to make a life of the next generation better. Sometimes we do horrible mistakes when we are trying to do that, but this is the main idea. So don't run away. You will work hard when you will be out there. So it's better maybe to work hard here, to fight back. What I will be doing, I think that [01:19:00] I gained a lot of experience in international advocacy. I believe that I want to work maybe on a deep initiative of Jewish and Palestinians who really believe they can fight together inside Israel but on the other hand, I want to invest all my contacts and knowledge in order to do international advocacy.

Also about the situation inside Israel.

DR. HANI CHAABO: Yeah, mobilize the masses from within and also raise as much awareness as possible from without, because we are seeing that, especially in Israel and Palestine, the international community is instrumental just like it was for South Africa during apartheid, just like it was for Germany during World War II.

There is nothing that top of. As a system of oppression more than mobilizing the masses. And that's something that comes from within and [01:20:00] without. And even though you said that you're leaving the Knesset because of moral exhaustion and disillusionment, it's inspiring to hear that even after a decade of fighting within a broken system, you still have hope and vision for what can be done for this future. Yes. What is it?

AIDA: Determination.

DR. HANI CHAABO: Even better? Mm-hmm.

AIDA: We decide to be hopeful. Otherwise what?

DR. HANI CHAABO: Yes, otherwise, what exactly. And I was thinking of the movie, of the film Palestine 36, how it was about the beginnings of that uprising, of that resistance that stretched into things like the watermelon logo, where art became a form of creative resistance. And here we are, almost a hundred years later, still resistance, still fighting.

Does that mean that we should stop? Or does that mean that the needle moved? It moved somehow. You said that the Palestinian community within Israel [01:21:00] multiplied became in the millions from a hundred thousand because of this continued determination. And we have to continue that no matter what that means.

And I have all the faith either that you're going to build a large movement for equality and justice outside of this formal political system within Israel and around the world.

AIDA: Thank you.

KATIE BOGEN: I absolutely agree. I mean, it's been such an honor to spend time with you today and to learn more about your story and the impact that you've had on Palestinians within Israel on the feminist movement. We are at the end of our questions. And we always end our interviews with what we call a heart share.

So that's a chance for you to share something that is on your heart, something you want our community or our listeners to really sit with. This could be a story, a piece of writing, a piece of advice, a post that you've seen on social media, a message, anything you want people to know that can help them navigate this turbulence.

So what would you like to share with us?[01:22:00] 

AIDA: I mainly would like to address those who are hearing me that one of the things that kept us going on and resisting. In the last two years is to look at the international solidarity movement for liberation for Palestine, for stopping the genocide, et cetera. Don't be loose that the war had stopped, the war still continuing.

And we still need you, we still need you to go on with your struggle to put pressure on the governments and on the administration, American administration, because in my opinion, Trump's plan was more a plan to rescue Netanyahu than to rescue Gaza. And that's because of the international pressure, [01:23:00] the solidarity movement pressure.

So please, please, we need you. At least we need you in order to know that we are not a small minority here. We are a small minority. We need you out there in order to feel again that we are, gaining back our humanity.

KATIE BOGEN: Thank you so much, Aida. Thank you for being here and for sharing that message. And Hani, what is on your heart after this conversation?

DR. HANI CHAABO: I brought a post from Standing Together. 'cause I really feel that, especially Aida with what you're saying is that the Jewish Arab solidarity in this movement is growing exponentially. And for me it's really inspiring, you know, to see in the beginning when I was younger, people like you Aida and the Knesset.

And then today this huge movement of just people, people who recognize the humanity in each other. And this post comes from Angie Matar, who is part of this [01:24:00] organization. And she says, I'm a peace activist. And it's not because I have no doubts about peace, but it's because I still show up even when I do have them.

When I hear about Dr. Alaa Al Najjar, who raised 10 children, only for nine of them to be killed by Israeli forces, the world stops for a second. I feel this suffocating knot in my chest, the anger, the grief, the hopelessness. I want to scream, I want to collapse. But I still show up when an Israeli Jew stops me in the park calling for my people's death in Gaza so he could buy a house in Rafa.

I feel the coldness of his words in my bones, but despite overwhelming rage, I still show up for peace. They call us peace activists weak, naive, but peace activism is the hardest role to fill because we see it all. We see the imbalance, the oppressor, and the oppressed. We see settlements expanding the home, demolitions the war crimes.

Being a peace activist is [01:25:00] feeling that weight, the weight of holding more than one pain, more than one truth. We see the violence and killing of children on both sides of the border, and we refuse to measure pain. We refuse to lose our humanity. We still choose to show up. We acknowledge humanity on both sides.

The crimes done by both. Without pretending that the system is equal, a peace activist feels it all the doubt that creeps in when you wonder if your voice even matters, the anger that burns deep inside when you see the suffering, that won't stop the fear that comes with knowing the consequences of speaking out.

And then there's the exhaustion, the constant, unrelenting exhaustion of fighting day after day against a system that's determined to break you. But despite all that, we show up not because we think peace is easy, but because we know it's the only way forward. Katie, my dear, what's your heart share?

KATIE BOGEN: We've spoken today about your [01:26:00] role as a politician and as an activist, but something we didn't spend as much time on is your skill as an educator and how quickly you can allow people the space to metabolize new wisdom and your insights. And earlier in our conversation, we talked about you being given the responsibility from these colleagues of yours in the Knesset to deal with the military, to talk about women in the military and militarization.

And I said, you know that really they're giving you their job. And I brought up our social media posts and you immediately said to me, in a gentle way, in an honest way, and in a way directing me toward accountability of those people know that you have social power. They know that you have a social outlet.

Maybe they're asking you to be their voice. Maybe they're asking you to be a microphone for something vital. And I immediately had to reorient toward [01:27:00] your wisdom of like, listen, listen new woman to this space. Perhaps you're misinterpreting what it is these people need from you. And in that moment I gained a new interpretation of something that's been bothering me and a new path forward when it happens that will impact how we at Super Humanizer can interact with the folks who are presenting those needs to us.

That will impact how I get to interface with other people in this movement. And your skill as an educator is so strong, and I know that you've made an impact in the Knesset. I know that you have and this outlet now for community work with all of the bonafides and all of the wisdom that you have over your decades of justice work.

If you just did that in a moment of gentle correction, I cannot imagine what you will be able to do in the next path of your life. So I guess my heart [01:28:00] shares thank you for the call in and for the reorientation that was effective. It was beautifully done, and I will be taking it out of this episode.

AIDA: Thank you. I don't know if I did all of that, but, thank you.

KATIE BOGEN: Thank you so much for being with us today, sharing your story with such honesty and courage with our community,

AIDA: Thank you for having me.

DR. HANI CHAABO: Thank you, Aida. It was absolutely an honor to share this precious time with you, with our listeners. We've learned so much and we will continue the fight with you and alongside you. And to our listeners, thank you for joining us for another episode of Super Humanizer. If this conversation moved you, please share it.

It makes a huge difference. And consider learning more about the struggles of the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Until next time, we'll keep working together to make our world more human. So we'll end with our closing prayer. May all beings everywhere thrive in peace and dignity.

KATIE BOGEN: and may we see true peace for all in the Middle East within our lifetime.[01:29:00] 

AIDA: Hopeful.

INTRO 2 & OUTRO: Hey, super Humanizer, it's Katie Bogan here. Before you go, I have a quick ask. If today's conversation moved to you, would you please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Pod chaser? Both links are in the show notes and your reviews really help us to reach more people who need to hear these stories. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with a friend, a loved one, or anyone who you think would benefit from it.

Your reviews and sharing help us inspire more humanity in our world. Thank you for being a friend of Super Humanizer. See you next episode.