In this episode of Church on the Block, Pastor Phil and Pastah J sit with Rami Nashashibi to explore the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a Palestinian perspective. Rami shares personal accounts of the occupation's impact on Palestinian lives, including his own experience with Israeli soldiers in Birzeit. The discussion addresses the historical roots of the conflict, the daily oppression faced by Palestinians, and the role of American support. Emphasizing the need for empathy and dialogue, Rami calls for peacemaking and understanding, citing Matthew 5:9 to encourage a humanitarian approach to the crisis.
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[00:00:02] Radio
[00:00:32] channel, Holy Culture Radio, Sears XM 140, 9 a.m. Central, 10 a.m. Eastern, but that
[00:00:40] time don't really count because it's really about the Central time, about the Midwest.
[00:00:43] What's going on everybody?
[00:00:45] We are excited to be with you again today.
[00:00:48] I hope you are with us man, Pastor Jay's in the building.
[00:00:51] What's up Pastor Jay?
[00:00:52] What's up everybody good to see you all man, we here.
[00:00:54] Yeah, yeah, you know they've been absent for a minute.
[00:00:56] I haven't had to go solo-dolo, but that's a whole other conversation.
[00:01:00] I didn't think that much vacation time.
[00:01:07] But man, we back in the studio with our great friend, man, Rami from inner city
[00:01:11] Muslim Action Network.
[00:01:12] Man Rami, thank you for being here man.
[00:01:15] As a brother, as a friend, man.
[00:01:18] Yeah, yeah.
[00:01:19] And Rami's an artist man.
[00:01:21] Rami got some great music and got some stuff coming out probably too.
[00:01:27] Artists don't ever really say what they stuff is.
[00:01:29] I wasn't working on stuff.
[00:01:30] I was working on stuff man.
[00:01:33] But man, we really want to talk with you as a friend, as a brother and to educate
[00:01:39] people listening on Cheer 6M about Palestinian, Israel, Hamas conflict.
[00:01:48] Folks see it in one way, folks see it in another way.
[00:01:51] Folks hear news clips, news bites.
[00:01:56] I know folks got other things.
[00:01:58] Also we got a campaign coming up with a particular person running that nobody
[00:02:02] really wants to see it.
[00:02:03] Right.
[00:02:04] Right.
[00:02:04] You know?
[00:02:05] And so but yet we believe, you know, as Dr.
[00:02:10] King said, you know injustice anyway, you know?
[00:02:14] Yeah.
[00:02:15] And so the reality of what's happening, it affects all of us, right?
[00:02:19] And though we may not be in tune with it as much every day, our friends
[00:02:25] like yourself are affected by it in a deeper way.
[00:02:27] Right.
[00:02:28] So we don't want to ignore it and we want to be able to find out how we can
[00:02:33] support and how we can be involved as well.
[00:02:34] So Rami's been school us up on how what we need to learn
[00:02:41] and know from the history and what what's going on, how we can be involved.
[00:02:46] Yeah.
[00:02:47] Yeah.
[00:02:48] First of all, peace and blessings.
[00:02:50] Bismillah.
[00:02:51] I'm in the name of God, most gracious, most merciful.
[00:02:54] I say, I'm my Lake home to all of you all listening.
[00:02:58] But man, first let me say what an honor it is to be here, man.
[00:03:01] You know, really, for real.
[00:03:03] That's why I wanted to be in person.
[00:03:04] I know.
[00:03:06] Like, you know, we got up at the God hour as we do.
[00:03:11] And, you know, I love this.
[00:03:13] I love this moment in the day this early morning.
[00:03:16] And there's a spiritual depth and breath.
[00:03:18] And I love being in conversation and in the presence of people that
[00:03:23] just love people, love God, love people, love, love, love the sacred.
[00:03:27] And you've been living that life.
[00:03:30] So I just want to, you know, first, this is such an honor to be with you.
[00:03:35] And, and, and, you know, you and O.G., but you have that young spirit
[00:03:39] and you've always animated so much of everything that you've touched.
[00:03:42] So so it's it's so when you that's why I like, man, I don't want to do this
[00:03:46] Zoom. I want to be with you in person and be in the firehouse.
[00:03:51] Let me say this as a brother whose entire life, entire adult life
[00:03:57] has been indebted to the larger black American experience struggle movement.
[00:04:02] But it's always also always been grounded and proud of who I am as a Palestinian.
[00:04:09] I've always been informed by those threads.
[00:04:11] Right. My mother was among the first Palestinian families
[00:04:16] as a refugee on the south side of Chicago.
[00:04:19] My grandfather's house, first house right there on 65th and Lomans.
[00:04:22] She graduated Marquette Park, you know.
[00:04:26] And then, you know, met my father, who the Jerusalem family went back
[00:04:31] and I was born over there, but I jumped around the world until I came back
[00:04:34] to Chicago, been organizing on the south side now for three decades.
[00:04:38] But I'm always as a Palestinian, you never lose sight of your connection
[00:04:43] to that struggle and to the struggle of people across the globe.
[00:04:48] There is a reason why there is absolutely no other community on the face
[00:04:53] of the earth that has been more aligned and connected
[00:04:55] to the policy in front of the black folks.
[00:04:57] Right. Right. Right.
[00:04:58] From Cherry Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Stoic Carmichael, Malcolm,
[00:05:04] Michelle Alexander, Tadahasi Coates, anyone with any sense of consciousness.
[00:05:10] Right. Because it's not that.
[00:05:13] You know, look, I've got a PhD from one of the finest universities in the world
[00:05:19] in one of the most competitive departments in the world.
[00:05:22] Right. University of Chicago Sociology.
[00:05:25] Now, I did not come and get organized to go get a PhD,
[00:05:29] but I was organizing and said, now I want to I want to better
[00:05:33] understand this and did one of the only dissertations on the Black
[00:05:38] Peace Stone Nation and hip hop and global consciousness.
[00:05:42] And I said, I wanted nothing to do with criminological stuff because I care less.
[00:05:47] I want to better understand the spiritual, cultural, global development
[00:05:51] and consciousness of these brothers on the south side that have been
[00:05:54] failed by every institution in the world, but still had the mindfulness
[00:05:59] to connect themselves like people 75 years earlier, like people, you know,
[00:06:06] coming out of that Garveyite tradition to think outside of the nation state.
[00:06:09] Yeah. Yeah. And to think about how we connected to the globe.
[00:06:12] So we are all indebted to the Black American struggle because in it
[00:06:17] is the ability to think outside the doctrine of the nation state
[00:06:21] to connect ourselves to people across the globe,
[00:06:24] to correct the people who are suffering across the globe.
[00:06:27] And unlike the pain and suffering right now in the Congo, in Tigray,
[00:06:32] Ethiopia, we need to be connected to it all.
[00:06:35] But the situation in Israel and Palestine, everybody knows.
[00:06:40] Number one is unique in so many ways.
[00:06:43] First of all, we fork out billions of dollars
[00:06:48] every year to support Israel unconditionally.
[00:06:53] And now even in the midst of this, they want $14 billion more.
[00:07:02] And unlike any other country in the globe,
[00:07:08] whether you're the son of a Holocaust survivor like Bernie Sanders,
[00:07:14] a black man from the west side of Chicago,
[00:07:18] our Palestinian brought up on the south side of Chicago.
[00:07:21] There is one country in the world that you dare to criticize.
[00:07:27] And you do so at potentially the cost of everything.
[00:07:35] That is the unspoken reality that everybody knows in this country.
[00:07:39] And we need to be honest about it.
[00:07:41] And my brothers and sisters of the Jewish tradition
[00:07:43] that come from a tradition of speaking truth to power.
[00:07:46] Understand this more than anyone else because they even speak out.
[00:07:51] And get confronted as being called self-hating Jews.
[00:07:55] I will talk about even Jewish folks whose families perish in the Holocaust.
[00:08:01] You're going to tell Bernie Sanders that he doesn't have a love
[00:08:04] for the Jewish tradition and the Jewish experience
[00:08:08] because he dares to critique the zealot military response
[00:08:16] that's annihilating a group of people.
[00:08:18] Now, let's be real clear.
[00:08:20] I was in Israel, Palestine on October 7th
[00:08:24] because I was leading with Pastor Otis Mons.
[00:08:27] The first delegation called Black Jerusalem.
[00:08:30] That's right.
[00:08:31] For two weeks we went and sped and connected
[00:08:34] and looked at Jerusalem in a sacred tradition really through
[00:08:38] an Afro-centric black lens that allowed us to connect
[00:08:43] to the African Palestinians, to our Hebrew brothers in Damona,
[00:08:47] to the Ethiopian communities, Christians and to reframe that region
[00:08:52] not as the Middle East because Middle East of what?
[00:08:58] A cartographer's office in London during the height of empire.
[00:09:03] Why is it Palestine, North East Africa?
[00:09:08] Why is it Middle East?
[00:09:09] And that's not just semantics.
[00:09:12] That's not an incidental question because that's the question
[00:09:15] of colonial legacy.
[00:09:18] Wow.
[00:09:18] It is only the Middle East because it was owned by the colonial
[00:09:22] empire of Britain and the Europeans.
[00:09:26] And that's where our story about understanding the Palestinian
[00:09:29] Israeli conflict as it exists now should probably begin.
[00:09:33] First of all, let's put to bed certain myths.
[00:09:39] One, the idea that this is somehow a religious conflict
[00:09:43] between Muslims and Jews.
[00:09:45] And unfortunately, even at the highest level in Obama's office
[00:09:48] and I know those folks in the White House and I'll be like,
[00:09:51] why are you perpetuating this lie?
[00:09:54] I have cousins that are married to Jewish folks.
[00:09:57] We grew up if you look and write, look at memoirs of Palestinians
[00:10:01] in the 1920s, 1930s.
[00:10:03] It's never been picture perfect.
[00:10:05] But let me tell you before 1890, over 100 years ago
[00:10:10] in what's now Israel, Palestine as it was called then,
[00:10:14] even on the maps of Europeans.
[00:10:17] The Jewish population was around, you know, there was around
[00:10:22] five to 10,000 at most up against 500,000,
[00:10:26] six, 700,000 Muslims and Christians.
[00:10:30] We're talking about the sacred ancient land, my grandfather,
[00:10:33] by the way, who on my mother's side came from the village of
[00:10:36] Inker, which is the village of John the Baptist.
[00:10:39] You go to Bethlehem, we go to, we understand these are the ancient
[00:10:42] sacred places.
[00:10:43] Yeah.
[00:10:45] Zionism as a movement emerges, remember,
[00:10:51] out of European real trauma and pain.
[00:10:55] And we look as human beings, we could identify and understand
[00:10:59] and sit with and appreciate the pain of the Pope,
[00:11:02] Rome's pains even way before the Holocaust,
[00:11:06] right, that the Jewish community across Europe was suffering.
[00:11:10] And but now the European Jewish leaders at the time
[00:11:14] who were making kind of the clarity of the movement of Zionism
[00:11:18] to find a Jewish homeland, they were doing so
[00:11:22] that nobody should dispute the fact that it was a colonial project.
[00:11:26] Of course, it was a colonial project.
[00:11:27] That was the colonial, that was the that was the air in which
[00:11:31] everyone was breathing.
[00:11:32] It was European empire.
[00:11:33] These were brothers coming out of Europe.
[00:11:35] And they were these were Jewish Europeans like the Herzl and
[00:11:38] Jabotinsky that were talking to the to their their their fellow
[00:11:42] Europeans, say, look, I know you all don't want Jews here.
[00:11:46] But we look and we don't want to be here either.
[00:11:48] We want to find a place.
[00:11:49] So let's find a place.
[00:11:52] How about Uganda?
[00:11:54] Let's consider Uganda because it's under European Jewish control.
[00:11:57] It was under European British control.
[00:12:00] Now, you know who objected to the Uganda, not not the early
[00:12:04] Zionist thinkers, they were they're about to consider Uganda
[00:12:07] as a real option.
[00:12:08] Go look this up. This is not made up.
[00:12:10] This is a historical fact.
[00:12:11] It was to think about the colonial arrogance.
[00:12:14] It was the other white colonists that weren't you going to say,
[00:12:17] Oh, we still we got this.
[00:12:20] Oh, wow.
[00:12:22] We already laid the claim to this joint.
[00:12:25] Wow. Wow.
[00:12:28] That's now he is right.
[00:12:30] Right. Now, was was there and has there always been a sacred
[00:12:36] ancient connection to the land of Jewish tradition to doubtedly?
[00:12:41] No one is doubting that.
[00:12:45] But no one gets to make categorical claims to that tradition.
[00:12:50] Moses is mentioned 126 times in the Quran.
[00:12:54] You're going to say most is more sacred to us than you.
[00:12:56] No, no, Musa, we name our kids Musa.
[00:12:58] You know how many times the Prophet Muhammad is mentioned in the Quran?
[00:13:01] Handful.
[00:13:03] Really?
[00:13:04] Less than one hand.
[00:13:06] In other words, the stories of Musa and Bani Israel, the children of Israel,
[00:13:11] they're just as much part of the Muslim tradition as Christian Jewish tradition.
[00:13:15] Yeah.
[00:13:15] Yeah.
[00:13:15] We got stories about Moses Galore.
[00:13:20] So that ancient sacred human.
[00:13:22] It's a sacred human tradition.
[00:13:24] True.
[00:13:25] That animates the story of the rabbi, you know, troublemaker.
[00:13:29] That comes, you know, then years after Moses,
[00:13:34] Issa, Jesus, but we'll also name our children after.
[00:13:39] And listen, you will you will write in their memoirs in the 1920s and 1930s
[00:13:44] written by Palestinians is one name was of Joe.
[00:13:46] How do you probably the most famous memoirs of that time?
[00:13:49] Play.
[00:13:49] Oh, the brother used to be partying at night playing.
[00:13:52] Oh, by the day they were praying, they're fasting.
[00:13:55] He's an Orthodox Christian that memorized the Quran.
[00:13:57] And he's like, and yesterday we went to the Purim Festival for our Jewish
[00:14:01] brothers and sisters today we're going to eat the tomorrow's Easter.
[00:14:05] That was the vibe.
[00:14:09] I love that.
[00:14:10] And that is often the vibe.
[00:14:12] That doesn't mean that one little moment's conflict, but that was the vibe.
[00:14:15] But what began to distinguish it?
[00:14:17] European colonialists, the early Zionist movement had to appeal
[00:14:21] to the thought process of these European landlords who were
[00:14:26] who were animated by the idea that they were God's caretakers on earth
[00:14:31] to help civilize the barbarians and savages across the non-western European.
[00:14:36] That was animated.
[00:14:37] That was colonialism.
[00:14:39] As you don't know, colonialism, they controlled 85 percent of the world.
[00:14:43] These colonial powers animated, rut your Kipling white man, burden
[00:14:47] white and it's the same language that animated the way
[00:14:50] the United States start taking over places like Cuba, Philippa,
[00:14:53] not just the same language, same pose.
[00:14:55] If you go to 1898, 1998 in US Congress, Rudyard Kipling's white man's
[00:15:02] burden is being recited in the halls of Congress as part of the justification
[00:15:06] for why the United States needs to take Guam, Philippines, Cuba.
[00:15:12] So let's not get it twisted.
[00:15:15] It's so embarrassing.
[00:15:16] And we got to understand this.
[00:15:18] It didn't come out of nowhere.
[00:15:19] I mean, Hitler didn't start thinking about a master race out of nowhere.
[00:15:23] Hitler in Mein Kampf is citing Madison Grant, an American writer who wrote
[00:15:27] passing of the Great Race in 1915.
[00:15:30] These were not these were not peripheral texts that are being cited by the,
[00:15:35] you know, the the the the the the the Rockefellers and the parties
[00:15:39] and they were part of even early American philanthropy.
[00:15:41] Yeah.
[00:15:43] So nobody's hands to clean up in this joint.
[00:15:45] And so we got to understand this.
[00:15:47] And so when the when the early Zionists, when they were coming to Palestine,
[00:15:51] they were very different from the early Jews that had still stayed around.
[00:15:55] These were European Jews that were coming using the theme of colonialism.
[00:15:59] They were saying to the British colonial masters, listen, man, give us this joint
[00:16:04] because you know what we're going to be?
[00:16:06] We're going to be an island of civility.
[00:16:11] Like, yes, we're Jewish, but we're still very European.
[00:16:15] And you're going to be able to see us will be an island in civility
[00:16:18] in a sea of barbarity.
[00:16:22] Man, right?
[00:16:24] Come on, we can make a deal here, right?
[00:16:27] We can make a deal.
[00:16:28] Right. These Arabs will eventually they got a whole bunch of places we can put them.
[00:16:34] Wow. Let us, you know, slowly come in.
[00:16:37] So you start seeing a migration that starts to flow.
[00:16:41] First World Post World War One.
[00:16:44] Those numbers begin to increase.
[00:16:46] Now begin to be seen on, you know, 20s and 30s, a more larger number
[00:16:51] until the war of 1948, which again, then, you know, half of the Palestinians,
[00:16:56] they lose all of their land.
[00:16:57] And of course they didn't like the UN deal because it meant like,
[00:17:00] you've got to give up every half of what you have.
[00:17:02] My grandfather, seven hundred thousand liked them.
[00:17:05] But that was the same year Israel was born.
[00:17:06] And it's the same year that seven hundred thousand Palestinians become refugees.
[00:17:10] Many of them brutally killed, murdered, displaced, lose 500 villages.
[00:17:15] People like my mother's grandfather, my mother's father, who's still alive.
[00:17:18] Ninety six, ninety seven could tell you.
[00:17:20] Now he didn't have to use the one I wrote about in the USA Today article.
[00:17:23] He'll tell you my grandfather had anything against Jewish people.
[00:17:27] In 1946 in the same village, there were Polish refugees that were Jewish.
[00:17:32] They they were taken care of.
[00:17:33] They were feeding and they were chilling with my grandfather.
[00:17:36] Like we like them.
[00:17:37] They were they were good for us. We don't believe that.
[00:17:39] So this idea that somehow Palestinians dislike, hate, want to kill Jews is
[00:17:45] is so baked into this idea that we're savages.
[00:17:49] Right? It's that old colonial motif.
[00:17:53] Now what happened because I want to like fast forward
[00:17:56] because of people trying to say, well, what's happening now?
[00:17:58] Listen, was October 7th barbaric and horrendous?
[00:18:02] Absolutely. Absolutely.
[00:18:05] Even if one woman was assaulted,
[00:18:08] that's that's that is in our faith traditions,
[00:18:12] that's a thing that we will condemn no matter what.
[00:18:17] Yeah. And it's not you can establish that.
[00:18:21] But what most Americans have absolutely
[00:18:24] know and you might especially have this conversation with my Jewish brother,
[00:18:27] the sisters all time, you have no idea about the reality of life of occupation.
[00:18:32] The day to day humility, the day to day oppression,
[00:18:36] young kids that are being hauled out of their houses at 13 or 14,
[00:18:39] putting in administrative detentions, having their bones broken,
[00:18:42] like literally by the Israeli occupation forces across the West Bank,
[00:18:46] Jerusalem every single day, that reality of military occupation.
[00:18:51] Because remember, there are several major wars,
[00:18:53] but in 1967, essentially the Six Day War, as it's called,
[00:18:57] Israel occupies and takes it all. Right?
[00:19:00] And then the West Bank and Gaza become occupied territories
[00:19:05] and life under those.
[00:19:07] That means and most of us in again,
[00:19:09] you know, we're just talking about the play here on the West Side of Chicago.
[00:19:12] There have been moments in black American life more than anything
[00:19:16] and other, you know, other minorities have had to confront this,
[00:19:20] but nothing like the black American experience where you have seen troops in the street.
[00:19:23] Right? But it is nothing like the day to day reality
[00:19:28] of growing up with tanks and oozing some machine guns every single day.
[00:19:33] I was a 10 year old coming to visit my family.
[00:19:35] I'm taking a side.
[00:19:37] I got an American passport saying I'm all good.
[00:19:39] I'm at the border, taking with my brother at seven,
[00:19:42] put aside in a room stripped down to our underwear. Right?
[00:19:46] That day to day stuff and oozing some machine guns in your face.
[00:19:50] The day to day kind of peace going through just to visit your family.
[00:19:55] You have to go through like 50 different, you know, multiple checkpoints.
[00:19:59] What could be a 30 minute drive ends up being like a, you know,
[00:20:02] three, four hour drive? In other words, the life of occupation
[00:20:08] and the type of resentment.
[00:20:09] Why? Why are we occupied?
[00:20:12] The six day war created this level of need to control.
[00:20:17] I mean, the context of it being.
[00:20:20] Because Israel takes over the rest of the entire West Bank.
[00:20:23] And remember, by this point, now you start having a thread
[00:20:27] of a extreme religious Zionism that is animated by the same type of
[00:20:34] manifest destiny type of you think about the early settlers in America.
[00:20:39] Some were just this is business, right?
[00:20:42] Right. Others were animated by, but remember, there was the dual
[00:20:46] configuration of science and religion that created the evil of white supremacy
[00:20:51] in America. They genuinely believe that this was God's work.
[00:20:55] That's right.
[00:20:57] Generally believe that's still here animating, right?
[00:21:01] Saving. Look, the colonial motif and theme
[00:21:05] and it's present in Hollywood's present movies.
[00:21:07] You can see it in depiction.
[00:21:08] Yeah.
[00:21:09] Non-Western European people, including black folks, typically get depicted
[00:21:15] in two ways.
[00:21:16] Either we're going to have to, you know, you're either the victim
[00:21:22] or you're a villain.
[00:21:24] Either you're a victim to poor young black kid brought up in the midst
[00:21:29] of a blah, blah, blah. All you want to do.
[00:21:33] And so that gives you that gives you two options.
[00:21:37] If you're the non white, if you're the white folks, whoever the
[00:21:41] the European forces, I either got to liberate you or liquidate you.
[00:21:47] It's either liberation, liquidation, whatever, right?
[00:21:50] Victim villains. So so so right.
[00:21:53] So you start coming through the West Bank and Gaza now.
[00:21:56] Remember, the religious Zionism starts then infusing another narrative
[00:22:01] to say this was ours.
[00:22:03] This was promised to us.
[00:22:06] All of it.
[00:22:07] I don't care that you've been here for 700 years, 800 years,
[00:22:11] Palestinian family living in blah, blah, blah.
[00:22:14] Yeah. I just I can't.
[00:22:17] Yeah, I don't care if I just came from Brooklyn, Queens.
[00:22:21] I own this. Get out.
[00:22:24] Get out just from the religious Zionism.
[00:22:28] Yeah, I got that.
[00:22:29] And sometimes argument is that simple.
[00:22:31] That simple.
[00:22:32] This is us.
[00:22:33] It's it's it's only to God gave it to us.
[00:22:36] You want to dispute that?
[00:22:41] So it is that type now that that needs to be called out.
[00:22:45] And you're beginning to see like, you know, these settlers,
[00:22:47] they they're being in this administration, this Israeli regime
[00:22:52] on October 6th, even fast majorities of Israel
[00:22:56] saw as the worst form of its extreme representation of right wing
[00:23:02] militant militant ideas since the formation of Israel 1948.
[00:23:08] You had you have ministers of defense that are handing out
[00:23:11] Oozze some machine guns.
[00:23:12] You want to talk about all of it is like it's stand and carry on steroids.
[00:23:17] Wow. Wow.
[00:23:20] That, of course, no.
[00:23:21] I was thinking like, you know how me even before when I got there
[00:23:24] with the delegation, my cousin said my colleague's son was just shot
[00:23:28] and killed at this train station.
[00:23:30] They haven't recovered his body.
[00:23:31] And all they had to do was say we thought he had a potential knife.
[00:23:35] What a knife, a knife, potentially, potentially.
[00:23:39] We saw what looked like the body will lay there.
[00:23:42] And anyone could up up there, Oozze some machine gun because
[00:23:47] because and you'll see if you go there is very common for Israeli
[00:23:51] civilians to walk around with those some she does.
[00:23:53] She and I do these. Oh, yes.
[00:23:56] Yes. Oh, yes.
[00:23:58] Oh, yes. And the minister is handing them out to settlers.
[00:24:02] Come on. Oh, yeah.
[00:24:04] Get here. A case. Right.
[00:24:07] And you went. Yeah.
[00:24:09] Yeah. The thing that took me out when I whenever I go is
[00:24:13] it's not just the the the the easy view of the militarism,
[00:24:21] but it's the youthful age of the young people walking around.
[00:24:26] Because remember, all of us are served in military 1819.
[00:24:29] You talk about Israelis that then and then again, they infuse it in them.
[00:24:34] And I've had to confront this.
[00:24:36] I mean, I remember I was staying there once at three o'clock in the morning.
[00:24:40] They were raiding the entire village.
[00:24:41] I'm here and sirens out.
[00:24:43] They're pulling all the power and I'm like, oh, man,
[00:24:46] I'm just down here. I'm I know it's, you know, finally they get to my door
[00:24:49] and I've knocked out because they've been dragging out everyone else.
[00:24:53] And they get to my door.
[00:24:55] This is an ability called that is outside of a mullah.
[00:24:57] And it's like seven, eight soldiers and the young and their kids.
[00:25:03] Yes. And they got there.
[00:25:04] They got the machines right.
[00:25:06] They got the they got the AKs right up in my face.
[00:25:09] And they're like, get everyone out.
[00:25:11] And they're talking to me in Arabic.
[00:25:13] I'm like, there's nobody in here. There's nobody in there.
[00:25:15] Like, get out.
[00:25:16] Like, I promise you there's nobody in here.
[00:25:18] Nobody in here.
[00:25:20] You walk in and they walk in and sit down.
[00:25:22] We had this conversation with their commander, my thing.
[00:25:24] And I'm the American there.
[00:25:26] I'm there on a U.S. State Department grant and all this type of stuff.
[00:25:29] Try it like so.
[00:25:30] I'm just your study language, bro.
[00:25:31] And I got I'm reading all of this.
[00:25:34] But listen, one of the things that need to be clearly articulated
[00:25:38] when you go there and you cannot go there and not see it unless you are.
[00:25:43] And this is what I think is a tragedy.
[00:25:45] I want to call this out before I say this.
[00:25:47] I'm going to let me say a little bit more about October 7th,
[00:25:49] because that's what's on people's mind again.
[00:25:53] Every criminal, even even with those years of oppression,
[00:25:58] and this was the deadliest year
[00:25:59] even before October 7th on record for Palestinians in many years,
[00:26:03] we're talking about settlers that were burning down all of trees.
[00:26:06] Palestinians rely on their harvest.
[00:26:08] We're all of annual harvest every year.
[00:26:12] We're talking about all of trees ago time of Jesus.
[00:26:15] They're being uprooted.
[00:26:16] The family's homes are being destroyed.
[00:26:18] They're terrorizing the Palestinian villages.
[00:26:20] Right. All of this is happening day in, day out.
[00:26:24] Settlers are incurring closer and closer in Jerusalem.
[00:26:27] You know, while we were there, we saw it right into this narrow
[00:26:30] Palestinian streets, soldiers with every settler.
[00:26:32] There's like one settler, 20 soldiers come.
[00:26:35] So they know what they're doing.
[00:26:37] They know what they're doing because the settler comes and provokes.
[00:26:40] And the minute there's a Palestinian response,
[00:26:43] there's bodies on the ground and it's not going to be theirs. Right.
[00:26:47] And so again, that's happening.
[00:26:49] That's that's pulsating.
[00:26:51] So this is the day in, day out life.
[00:26:54] Now, out of all the West Bank,
[00:26:56] God has always been the hood of the hood of the hood of the hood.
[00:27:00] Why? Because all of these are refugees upon refugees.
[00:27:04] They're living in Chicago.
[00:27:06] The comparison is Gaza Strip is 25 miles.
[00:27:08] I always say, look, it's Lake Shore Drive from like Rogers Park
[00:27:12] all the way to South Shore, right? That length.
[00:27:15] And it's from the lake to probably like Cicero.
[00:27:17] That's the Gaza Strip.
[00:27:19] OK. Wow.
[00:27:20] Two million people there, most densely concentrated
[00:27:24] place on the face of the earth,
[00:27:26] been under complete siege, has had five invasions upon invasions.
[00:27:30] Right. You talk about children that have been
[00:27:33] that the trauma is unimaginable even by October 6th.
[00:27:39] October 7th happens.
[00:27:42] The details of everything we're still beginning to find out who did what.
[00:27:46] What I mean, we know trauma and terror happened that day
[00:27:49] undoubtedly and we can tell.
[00:27:51] Afterwards, though, what has happened?
[00:27:56] We're now talking about a death toll of 30,000.
[00:27:58] We're probably talking about an injury list of 80,000.
[00:28:01] We're talking about the Gaza Strip that has completely been decimated.
[00:28:05] Infrastructure, families, lives, hospitals, universities, churches.
[00:28:10] I was in the White House disputing right this.
[00:28:14] And I was close to Biden like this.
[00:28:15] I was challenging this man.
[00:28:17] You were relying on right wing Israeli intelligence
[00:28:20] to begin to defend and justify the annihilation
[00:28:25] of innocent people and infrastructure.
[00:28:28] My Mr. President.
[00:28:31] Well, there's tunnels everywhere.
[00:28:33] But you're the number one, you're not
[00:28:35] substance that's not a substantive forensic claim
[00:28:40] for being able to then to decimate a hospital with babies in ICU and NICU units.
[00:28:46] The day I was talking to the president the day before
[00:28:49] the fourth oldest church on earth was bombed
[00:28:53] with people in Gaza
[00:28:56] with people huddling and dying in there.
[00:28:58] I was like, I asked him about that church specifically.
[00:29:01] Where's the mass tunnels under that?
[00:29:05] And just to begin to fully understand
[00:29:09] how much we have dehumanized the Palestinian people
[00:29:14] here in Chicago, if they were to discover
[00:29:18] if if God forbid in a, you know, some group of Norwegian mafia
[00:29:25] emerge in Chicago and carry it out at deadly assault
[00:29:29] on innocence and then claimed and then, in fact,
[00:29:34] maybe even had a network of underground
[00:29:36] kind of subterranean tunnels across the city,
[00:29:39] some of which may have been even under Northwestern or Rush.
[00:29:44] Do you think we would entertain going after that?
[00:29:48] Right.
[00:29:50] By bombing the hospitals.
[00:29:52] Right. Exactly.
[00:29:53] Right. With people in there.
[00:29:55] Right.
[00:29:56] We have blown up dozens of hospitals, schools and I say we
[00:30:02] we because make no
[00:30:06] there is no doubt about it.
[00:30:08] Those are this is a joint Israeli-American operation.
[00:30:12] Is our money is our bombs.
[00:30:15] Is our dollars is our green light
[00:30:18] that we gave Netanyahu on October 8th
[00:30:21] when he said it was 1619, 169 11th.
[00:30:24] That was his signal.
[00:30:26] And when President Biden repeated that line
[00:30:30] for the world in Israel, that was an invitation.
[00:30:33] 169 11th. OK, we saw what you all did in Afghanistan and Iraq
[00:30:38] get out of the way. You better not say anything.
[00:30:40] And that's when Netanyahu was now like now, you know,
[00:30:42] Biden and Blinken are saying, look, you're going a little too far.
[00:30:46] What do you use it?
[00:30:47] You're going over the top and what the gangster Netanyahu
[00:30:49] got to give him credit. He's a gangster.
[00:30:52] He said, look, we told you on October 8th, right?
[00:30:55] This was 1619 11th.
[00:30:57] And that was our language to say, you better not say anything.
[00:31:01] And we better still get that 60 billion dollars.
[00:31:03] Right, right, right, right, right.
[00:31:05] Who talks like that? Gangsters.
[00:31:08] Cips and gangsters that have something on you.
[00:31:11] Right. I got something on you.
[00:31:12] Yeah, that's what I'm about to say.
[00:31:14] Got something on you.
[00:31:15] That's something on you. Something on you.
[00:31:16] And let's talk about that.
[00:31:19] My brothers and sisters in the Jewish community here in Chicago,
[00:31:21] I love them and I work with them and I've been alive with them.
[00:31:24] I've been mentored by them.
[00:31:25] People like Rabbi Marx, God bless his soul, was the person that I take very seriously.
[00:31:29] You know, I always say he's the greatest civil rights rabbi you never heard of.
[00:31:32] You march with King here in Chicago.
[00:31:34] We talk about Rabbi Hesha all time.
[00:31:36] We should talk about people like Rabbi Marx.
[00:31:38] He marched with King and Mark that part.
[00:31:39] He confronted the even he for me modeled the spiritual lesson
[00:31:45] that all religious communities should think about where it says
[00:31:48] come on me know that this in the current one,
[00:31:50] I love and first come what's translate be people of justice,
[00:31:53] even if it means standing against yourself.
[00:31:55] That's what I'm saying.
[00:31:57] So what the rabbi Marx was doing even after like when you said
[00:32:01] when we celebrate Rabbi Marx from March, we're King.
[00:32:03] He's like, no, you know, really, that wasn't the thing he was most proud of
[00:32:06] the things that Rabbi Marx was most proud of is the work
[00:32:09] that he did like on confronting contract sales.
[00:32:11] Right. That was, you know, right?
[00:32:14] But and the idea that and and challenging brothers and sisters
[00:32:18] in his own community that were complicit in that.
[00:32:21] Yeah, yeah, not just blockbusting, but depriving as we know
[00:32:25] billions of dollars of wealth in the black community.
[00:32:28] Right. So so just like he was the book family.
[00:32:31] The whole movement.
[00:32:33] Yeah. Yeah.
[00:32:34] So point being the Jewish American tradition is one that I have had.
[00:32:39] I look, I'm very explicit with my when I speak in synagogues
[00:32:42] and others and when I speak with my brother and sister from the Jewish community
[00:32:45] as a kid, unfortunately, the only thing I knew of the Jewish experience
[00:32:49] was Israeli military occupation.
[00:32:51] I conflated to so you asked me as a 12 year old what I thought about Jews.
[00:32:54] I would have been you say, I hate Jews.
[00:32:56] No, I was afraid of them.
[00:32:58] Right. Truth be told.
[00:33:00] But it wasn't until I started organizing in Chicago and started
[00:33:03] meeting the likes of Jane Ramsey and the tradition of Jewish Council
[00:33:06] urban affairs that Jewish folks embedded in the tradition
[00:33:09] and start having a better understanding of the tradition,
[00:33:11] meeting Jewish scholars that were seeped in understanding and real
[00:33:15] committed to critical race, you know, not just every but liberation
[00:33:20] right for all of our communities.
[00:33:22] So that I'm grateful that exists in Chicago,
[00:33:25] but it also exists alongside another thread that we got to be honest about.
[00:33:28] And that is some of our brothers and sisters feel
[00:33:32] that you must support Israel right or wrong no matter what.
[00:33:38] No matter what.
[00:33:39] And to criticize Israel is a existential threat for Jewish communities everywhere.
[00:33:48] And they have, unfortunately, leverage resources behind those type of arguments
[00:33:53] to take people like my dear Stephanie Coleman, I all the woman.
[00:33:57] Yeah, there's not there's not a Jewish family in the sixteenth war that I know,
[00:34:01] other than one African American Jewish family that I'm proud to know and stand with.
[00:34:06] But very few.
[00:34:08] Yeah, why is she being brought to Israel by the Jewish Federation?
[00:34:12] Let's be honest.
[00:34:14] Let's be clear.
[00:34:16] Let's not mince words.
[00:34:18] These trips that have been underwritten.
[00:34:23] Who doesn't want to go to the Holy Land?
[00:34:25] Who does not want to go see that?
[00:34:27] But oftentimes these are trips that are often very intentionally curated
[00:34:32] to give its visitors a hyper specific focus on Israel's narrative
[00:34:38] through the lens of a government that does not want to come to terms with its
[00:34:43] original sin.
[00:34:45] It's like coming to the United States and not
[00:34:47] confronting like what the great white evangelical writer talks about.
[00:34:51] Jim Wallace, America's original.
[00:34:53] Men is a lot that Rummy is breaking down.
[00:34:55] I love Rummy.
[00:34:57] Rummy is a good friend, great soldier in this work, man.
[00:35:01] And he is true to this life, true to bringing hope, peace.
[00:35:06] Man, you know, you got a genius award.
[00:35:09] You got a MacArthur Fellowship and the man is not getting these gifts because
[00:35:14] he ain't saying nothing or doing nothing.
[00:35:17] As an American Palestinian in his history,
[00:35:21] we got to understand as much as we can both sides.
[00:35:25] But at the same time,
[00:35:27] there are people dying, right?
[00:35:29] There are people who are affected by
[00:35:33] a corrupt terrorist group Hamas,
[00:35:38] which is evil and how they've corrupted the Gaza area
[00:35:46] in Palestine to come in politically
[00:35:51] to how they've come in to kill and have a have a in their own statements
[00:35:59] to kill every Jews is it sounds like psychopathic.
[00:36:05] Like it sounds like it's like a non human talking.
[00:36:08] We want to eliminate every Jewish person.
[00:36:10] It sounds like, you know, like like Germany.
[00:36:13] And I get the fact of what we understand of
[00:36:17] folks being, you know, occupied, right?
[00:36:21] Nobody wants that even if even a friend of mine, you and I know
[00:36:25] tall six, eight guy lawyer, a crucible brother was talking about how
[00:36:30] he went with his family.
[00:36:31] This is before COVID and everything
[00:36:34] to Israel, to Palestine, to Gaza and was
[00:36:38] in the streets there and as the Israeli soldiers were coming through,
[00:36:42] everybody went back against the wall.
[00:36:44] Like this was this was peacetime or no war time.
[00:36:47] But he's saying that like he felt that as an American, like, wow,
[00:36:51] this is a lot of fear around this, right?
[00:36:54] And I mean, we are listening, hearing, watching the news
[00:36:59] and not getting all the stories from our own news, even about our own stuff
[00:37:03] in America, let alone about stuff overseas.
[00:37:07] But the bottom line is
[00:37:10] folks who have come over to Israel to harm them from perhaps a perspective
[00:37:15] that we don't want to occupy it and y'all controlling us too much
[00:37:20] to what we understand and see how war is happening with with Israelis.
[00:37:27] And and the media that we're getting from that gives the gives an understanding
[00:37:33] and an oppression as genocide, right?
[00:37:35] And that's been the conversation that people have had.
[00:37:39] I mean, it's horrible either way.
[00:37:42] War is horrible.
[00:37:43] We've never had a war on American soil.
[00:37:45] I mean, civil civil war, you know, amongst us like us.
[00:37:50] But we've not had 9 11 was probably one of the closest things to it, right?
[00:37:54] Folks coming over.
[00:37:55] I don't think of another.
[00:37:56] I can't think of another one, but
[00:37:59] we don't know what it's like to be in a place and you're in your own crib.
[00:38:04] And you get a phone call from
[00:38:08] and one of the things that Rami had talked about,
[00:38:10] you get a phone call saying you've got like 90 seconds or something
[00:38:14] to leave this house because we're going to blow this house up.
[00:38:17] You know, you don't you don't know what that's like.
[00:38:19] I'm here on my street, East Garfield.
[00:38:21] Somebody call and tell me what are you talking about?
[00:38:22] I'm going to come outside.
[00:38:24] Who's over here?
[00:38:24] Hold on. Let me correct you on one part.
[00:38:28] While me and you may not know what it's like,
[00:38:30] we can't say black people don't know what that's like.
[00:38:34] Because when we look at the Oklahoma
[00:38:37] massacre and all of the other racial stuff, stuff like that has happened.
[00:38:41] So, right, right.
[00:38:44] You're absolutely right.
[00:38:45] It's in our history in that context.
[00:38:48] But
[00:38:51] and that's another level of wartime, if you will, right?
[00:38:55] And white racist folks coming over saying,
[00:38:58] y'all make it too much money over this way.
[00:39:00] And how dare y'all think y'all can be better than us in this context?
[00:39:05] You know, the
[00:39:09] the fact that that's
[00:39:14] happening now.
[00:39:15] So, so I say all that because the humanity piece of it, right?
[00:39:20] I mean, they talk about the humanitarian aid.
[00:39:21] I'm talking about the humanitarian.
[00:39:23] Let's stop all this altogether.
[00:39:26] It just seems like, you know, we talk about this at different times,
[00:39:29] like a bridge has walked on on both sides, right?
[00:39:32] And there's got to be got to be a level of courage, man,
[00:39:37] where somebody says from the Palestinian side,
[00:39:39] we've taken a lot of hits.
[00:39:41] We've taken
[00:39:44] this complexity of what we feel politically has happened.
[00:39:48] We feel what's happened with Hamas.
[00:39:51] I mean, and how we've been, you know,
[00:39:55] corrupted by this system.
[00:39:57] We voted them in, but it may backfire
[00:40:01] all the particular things that we are understanding the history.
[00:40:04] Now, now folks are trying to understand the history after being so upset about all
[00:40:08] that they see this going on.
[00:40:10] But somebody has to take the reins on both sides.
[00:40:14] I think
[00:40:16] Israel and and folks in the Muslim community,
[00:40:22] Palestinians and Arabs to say enough is enough
[00:40:26] and find a way to bring in a much more
[00:40:32] stronger, consistent, powerful way than maybe
[00:40:35] the history has has done before.
[00:40:37] I mean, this is just this is my American view on the outside.
[00:40:40] Right?
[00:40:42] I mean, I did have a chance to go to Israel
[00:40:45] when a solidarity tour with Shalom and
[00:40:47] Rabbi Steve with a couple of the African-American leaders and see
[00:40:52] a whole side of Israel from
[00:40:56] of course, my Israeli friends that I now have met
[00:41:02] and our Jewish friends who came from the States
[00:41:06] and here all the horrific things that happened on October the 7th.
[00:41:12] And yet at the same time, how long are we going to
[00:41:16] going to just go on?
[00:41:20] Right? Because in all reality, though it's
[00:41:23] you know, a fortunate fling plane ride,
[00:41:26] it's still a lot that American soil can be affected by.
[00:41:29] I mean, we've got Jewish folk and Muslim folks getting attacked in the US
[00:41:34] because of everything that's happening overseas.
[00:41:37] Right?
[00:41:38] Most got metal detectors and synagogues.
[00:41:40] They got wands at at Moss.
[00:41:43] I got somebody coming some mosque and ran up in the air and hit a button.
[00:41:47] You heard about that like some some crazy stuff that's happening.
[00:41:49] So if that's happening on this scale,
[00:41:53] I would I could only imagine folks who hit America because of what America
[00:41:58] what they see America doing in this war and their perspective on that
[00:42:03] and their Palestinian and their families have gotten hurt.
[00:42:06] There can be a whole nother war on our streets just because of
[00:42:11] that position of itself, you know?
[00:42:14] Yeah.
[00:42:15] Man.
[00:42:17] So the biggest part that I see in all of this, as you said, it's a humanitarian issue.
[00:42:23] What we do know, right?
[00:42:25] Because I've had people, I got friends who are strictly on the
[00:42:31] the the the Jew side and, you know, I've met Rami.
[00:42:36] Rami's a good dude and, you know, I started following a lot of Palestinian
[00:42:40] people to see a different perspective besides the one that the media will pay for me.
[00:42:46] And so what I'm seeing is what I do know is
[00:42:52] the Gaza Strip has majority kids there, young people.
[00:42:57] And so with every bomb or every bullet that flies, how many young people
[00:43:05] and innocent people are going to die?
[00:43:08] I get you want to get rid of
[00:43:10] Hamas, I can understand that.
[00:43:13] But the way that it's being done, all it's going to do is create more Hamas.
[00:43:19] If you were to come to my house and blow my house up with my family in it,
[00:43:24] I'm going to be angry and I'm going to want revenge.
[00:43:28] Yeah, yeah.
[00:43:29] I mean, when we when I was there, the
[00:43:33] it was a great quote.
[00:43:35] I can't remember it now.
[00:43:36] Maybe when we talk about the next show, I can.
[00:43:38] It was about some like the war
[00:43:43] that got started will never end.
[00:43:45] There was some quote creatively said by Israelis.
[00:43:49] Like we recognize that they recognize that that
[00:43:53] iteration that has been instilled and the fact that it can contention,
[00:44:01] contentionally and intentionally grow up more terrorist.
[00:44:06] You go from Hamas to somebody like no, we're not like Hamas.
[00:44:09] We like this group because they just burst their own thing like gangs,
[00:44:13] gangs and went from Vice Lord to Danny mob, right?
[00:44:15] And they changed change a whole another deal.
[00:44:17] And so they they they recognize that that piece.
[00:44:21] But in some regards, they're they're feeling like
[00:44:24] we want to live as a free nation and country.
[00:44:28] And yet we continually are getting attacked.
[00:44:31] Now, we met with some soldiers while we were there and 20 something year old
[00:44:35] cats man and they were talking about as they were.
[00:44:39] And I mentioned them being 20 something year olds, not that they haven't
[00:44:42] grown up in this culture and haven't been seeing their share of certain things.
[00:44:45] But you think of 20 year olds here, you know, there's a sense of
[00:44:50] I just want to kick it. I just want to live life.
[00:44:52] And I got to do a year of service and I ain't trying to jump into something
[00:44:59] and be causing more problems.
[00:45:01] I'm doing this year of service.
[00:45:02] I'm getting a little money from it.
[00:45:04] I get a lot of money.
[00:45:05] But after this, I'm able to do the rest of my life.
[00:45:07] They try to live and do stuff like this.
[00:45:09] So their agenda is not like, oh, man, I'm going to be a Rambo type dude
[00:45:13] with Hamas. I'm trying to come in.
[00:45:15] They try to protect their nation.
[00:45:17] So I say that in leading into this conversation, these brothers went in Hamas
[00:45:21] and they're saying Hamas is they went in terms of they went to Gaza.
[00:45:25] They're seeing
[00:45:28] Hamas on one hand is they're trying to keep them away and the Palestinian
[00:45:31] civilians on the other end and trying to save the civilians.
[00:45:34] And the civilians are crying like, where were you?
[00:45:38] They're asking the Israelis, why did it take you so long
[00:45:42] basically to save us from our own people?
[00:45:44] But these terrorists, Hamas, their Arab Muslims,
[00:45:49] save it. This is what the soldiers who were 20 something.
[00:45:51] They're just trying to get out of here.
[00:45:52] And then they took these families and brought them into a safe place.
[00:45:55] So there is
[00:45:58] there is in that conversation with them is that they couldn't believe
[00:46:01] that Hamas was shooting and killing their own people in light of
[00:46:07] their own declaration of war against Israel.
[00:46:09] You know, and so the
[00:46:11] the humanitarian, so I don't know how you
[00:46:14] how you talk to a terrorist group that has an agenda
[00:46:20] that this one group of people, these other human beings can't live
[00:46:23] without that one group of people saying, we got to live.
[00:46:27] We got families here, which we're trying to live.
[00:46:30] And yet at the same time own what has happened in
[00:46:36] whether it's the occupation, how the occupation was and say, hey,
[00:46:39] we know our sufferers both at what level of ownership will somebody take them?
[00:46:43] OK, thank you for owning that.
[00:46:46] What can we do about it?
[00:46:47] What can we do about it now to move forward and maybe bring some some healing?
[00:46:51] That's what I'm talking about.
[00:46:52] Like somebody's got to say
[00:46:54] like the work we do with gangs and a different thing on the block.
[00:46:57] One of y'all got to say, look, we're going to take this lick
[00:46:59] of so many people who got shot by these different by these different crews.
[00:47:03] We're going to say we stop it.
[00:47:04] Y'all got to say the same thing.
[00:47:06] Somebody's got to take the hit of what it might mean to get
[00:47:09] crazy pushback with it.
[00:47:11] And I'm not saying that either group hasn't had that.
[00:47:13] They probably have had that in their history.
[00:47:15] Again, we don't know the history in depth because we're not living on there.
[00:47:20] We don't even know world history.
[00:47:22] We ain't talking about the Congo, stuff that's going on in the Congo,
[00:47:25] stuff that's going on Haiti and all the things that are going on in America.
[00:47:29] And step in and now those spaces try to bring some some support.
[00:47:32] You know, we believe as African Americans because of the color they scan.
[00:47:36] Like, OK, that ain't important to you because that's not a value to you.
[00:47:39] So
[00:47:41] but it's just as horrible in millions of people are dying.
[00:47:45] Right. And so
[00:47:47] but that doesn't seem to be on the news.
[00:47:48] And then America ain't the people
[00:47:50] the country enough self to have a level of integrity about its wars and be like,
[00:47:54] you know what, we've been very good.
[00:47:56] We ain't killed no innocent people in the wars we've had and terrorist.
[00:48:01] We become terrorists to other people.
[00:48:03] Right. And so it becomes.
[00:48:06] You know, that that that level of deludedness of it.
[00:48:11] But I just I just know that,
[00:48:14] you know, you almost have to go there and meet the different groups and talk to
[00:48:18] different folks, but everybody has a grasp of history and how that history is effective.
[00:48:24] Yeah, you know, the one thing I just I want to challenge people
[00:48:28] who want to pick a side.
[00:48:31] There's two sides.
[00:48:33] You either on the Palestinian side or you're on the
[00:48:38] the Jewish folks side, but there's another side, the side in the middle.
[00:48:43] And that's the side that cares about the lives of all the innocent people,
[00:48:47] including the hostages, right?
[00:48:48] And so what comes to me is Matthew five.
[00:48:54] Was it the beat attitudes?
[00:48:59] Yeah, bless it.
[00:48:59] Other peacemakers, what is the Matthew?
[00:49:03] Where is it?
[00:49:04] Matthew five nine says, bless it out of the peace makers,
[00:49:07] but they will be called the children of God.
[00:49:09] So I challenge you to go read Matthew five, start at the top.
[00:49:13] But then eleven, eleven goals to stay blessed are you when people are sought
[00:49:19] to persecute you, falsely say all types of evil things against you because
[00:49:23] of me, rejoice and be glad because greatest reward in heaven for the same way
[00:49:30] they will persecute the prophet who were before your prophets before you.
[00:49:35] Yeah, you got to have some leaders
[00:49:39] and some people who want to sit in the middle to say, let's keep peace.
[00:49:44] Yeah, yeah.
[00:49:45] And that's a bold thing to do.
[00:49:46] It's a bold thing to do.
[00:49:47] Yeah, we've got more to come next week, man, church in the block.
[00:49:50] Real talk about hip hop, the church in the streets, man.
[00:49:52] We try to keep it real with this whole, you know, Palestinian, Israel, Gaza,
[00:49:57] Israel tension is happening and how it affects us.
[00:50:01] And what can we do as believers, the followers of Christ, man,
[00:50:04] to be advocates, to be that bridge in that space?