On The Ground In Gaza: Service as Solidarity

Breht O'Shea: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. Today's episode is very special. It's very emotional. It's very intense. We have on the show Willie Masai, a local medical worker here in Omaha who has recently traveled to Gaza to be of assistance, to be a global medical volunteer on the ground in Gaza to do whatever he can to help the Palestinian people in their time of great suffering. And he just got back into the States a week or so ago. And through a mutual friend who is a lead organizer of the Jewish Voices for Peace chapter here in eastern Nebraska, and through our friends at Nebraskans for Palestine, were able to connect us up so that Willie could come on Rev Left and talk about his time in Gaza and spread the message. um of of the palestinian people who when he was on the ground he promised he would take their stories um back to the united states and get it out to as many people as possible and so here on rev left we're trying to facilitate that this one is is deeply like i said in the beginning incredibly emotional some at some parts hard to listen to um you know but it's it's a real life on the ground look at what's going on in gaza as of again a week or so ago so this is one of the one of the most intense episodes i've ever recorded if not the most intense and i really hope that that you listen to it and importantly share it because these perspectives and and this sort of understanding it needs to catch fire more people need to hear this stuff we need to keep fighting with every fiber of our being for the Palestinian people in amplifying their struggle, affirming their humanity, and fighting by any and every means necessary against the brutal Zionist, colonial, apartheid, genocidal entity and its number one backer and facilitator, the United States Empire. Justice in this world will be impossible until those two entities are finally dismantled in their entirety. So we send our heart and our love and our solidarity to the Palestinian people. And I also wanted to use this intro as an opportunity to plug two GoFundMes for Palestinians on the ground in Gaza that have been personally vetted and verified from a very close friend and comrade of mine who has dedicated years of her life as a really principled and dedicated organizer on multiple fronts. She is Jewish herself and is throwing herself into the pro-Palestinian movement and has for a very long time. And she directly and personally has validated the two GoFundMes for these people in Gaza that I'm going to link to in the show notes. So if you have any disposable income whatsoever, if you listen to this episode and you are moved to do something about it, there's a million things we can do. Everybody can do something, right? Nobody has to do everything, but everybody can do something. And if one of those things happens to be you have some disposable income, an immediate and direct response to this episode and to the stories you're going to hear could be going directly to support these GoFundMe's. And the Rev Left audience is amazing. In its capacity and willingness to help people in need. You've shown that time and time and time and time again. I am always blown away by the depth of generosity in this audience. And... I'm beyond grateful to have the sort of audience that we do. It's the most meaningful thing in my life, aside from my family itself, to have this community of deep-hearted, intelligent, curious, generous, loving human beings count themselves among the people who listen to and support our humble little show here. So if you are so inclined and you have the disposable income, I will link to the two GoFundMes in the show notes and know from, it's my word from the bottom of my heart, knowing the people and the organizer involved, these are 100% valid and verified GoFundMes and the money goes directly to Palestinians in Gaza. And it can make all the difference for these families to have something. as their entire worlds are attempted to be destroyed by Israel and the United States of America. So without further ado, here is my deep, wide-ranging, and powerfully moving conversation with Willie Massey. And I hope you all enjoy it, and I hope you share it.

Willie Masai: This is Willie Masai. I am here from Omaha. I just came back from Gaza for a medical mission work.

Breht O'Shea: Welcome, Willie. It's an honor and a pleasure to have you on the show. A mutual friend of ours who is a local organizer, Daniel, who's been on the show in the past, has introduced us. And this is a wonderful... I jumped at the opportunity to be able to talk to somebody, not only who... has been on the ground in Gaza, but who has the huge heart to want to go sacrifice your time and even your safety to help other people. So before we get into it, I just want to give you a huge salute from the bottom of my heart for your work. And the rest of this conversation is going to be exploring that work and what you saw on the ground in Gaza.

Willie Masai: Thank you, Brett. I appreciate the opportunity to come in and talk and amplify the voices of the Palestinian people.

Breht O'Shea: Absolutely. And you said before we started recording that was a promise you made to the Palestinians while you were there, that you would come home and try to spread the word as much as you could.

Willie Masai: Correct. Every Palestinian people I've met there and talked to them, they asked me, said, all I want is to live in peace, to raise my family, to protect my children. But we are getting killed by Israelis. And a child asked me, what have I done? I just want to be a child and play and go to school. My school is destroyed by Israelis. And I didn't really have an answer. All I said, I will keep speaking. As long as I have breath in me, I will talk about Palestine and I will speak. get any opportunity back home in the US to amplify your voices. I'm just one voice, but I know that there will be opportunities to find other avenues to amplify your voices.

Breht O'Shea: And hopefully we can we can help play a small role in getting that getting that out for sure. And what makes this interview even more unique is this is in studio. So most of our interviews just for pure practical reasons, we're in the middle of Omaha, Nebraska. So most of our guests are not here. And so most of our interviews are done via Zoom. But this is more intimate because we are person to person. And that's very nice, especially for an episode on this very serious topic.

Willie Masai: Correct. Thank you.

Breht O'Shea: So let's go ahead and get into it. And I guess a way to start is just kind of letting listeners know who you are and a bit about your medical and even perhaps political background. And then we'll get into, you know, you actually traveling to Gaza. But just some background on yourself.

Willie Masai: Yes. As I said, my name is Willie Masai and I am from here in Omaha. I have been in healthcare for about almost eight years now. I am a critical care nurse, predominantly working in the ICU. I have some pediatric background in pediatric nursing, as well as in the operating room. I've done that. And I trained in the emergency medicine as well. But I have been working predominantly here in Omaha. I have done some traveling as a nurse. And I have been to Gaza before this genocide started. And predominantly, I worked at the European Gaza Hospital in Gaza. And Gaza, as well as Shifa Hospital, that is now completely destroyed.

Breht O'Shea: All right. So you went to Gaza even prior to the current situation since October 7th. What was the reason that you went to Gaza in the past?

Willie Masai: So the first time I went to Gaza, it was this local physician and some other people from around the country had organized a trip to go to do a pediatric surgery. So, you know, a lot of children have been maimed. or injured by Israeli aggression over the years. And so we went there to help with pediatric surgeries. So yeah, that was mainly why we were there. And it was very rewarding to be in Gaza and the West Bank, and especially in Ramallah, that's where we worked.

Breht O'Shea: Doing pediatric medical care to young people. Correct, yes. And that's even before the current events. You can only imagine how much worse it's gotten. I mean, everybody listening to this show is clearly aware of what's been happening. But this most recent time, especially, you know, it's never a safe time necessarily to go to Gaza. It's an open-air prison. It's an apartheid system. Israel is a fascist country conducting a long genocide on the Palestinian people. But specifically since October 7th, it's become much more dangerous. So my question to you is, how did you find yourself in a position to travel to Gaza post-October 7th? What is the organization you work with and what was your personal motivation for going, especially considering the safety issues that would certainly be a part of this?

Willie Masai: So I had a big connection prior to October 7th, as I said, to Gaza. And I knew friends that were suffering and some of them I lost friends in since October 7th. So for me, going to Gaza was not easy. a question of if it was when. Since October 7, I tried to go in, and it's very difficult to go to Gaza at this point, but finally, nine months later, I was able to go with Rahma Worldwide, which is R-A-H-M-A Worldwide. It's an organization that sends health care providers nurses and doctors to gaza but also they do a lot of other humanitarian work like donating equipment and medical supplies food water shelter so i went with them and it was very difficult to be in gaza um very dangerous but i wasn't really afraid of that because The Palestinian people have been killed, maimed, bombed by the Israelis for the last 11 months. And I thought, what is my safety? Why does it matter when we have little children being brutally murdered every single day? They are not safe. Displaced people being slaughtered daily. What is my safety? I could die here in Omaha. I could be hit by a car. To me, safety became a very loose word, for me at least, because I just wanted to be there so at least I can see some of my friends. I can help a child in Gaza. So it was very dangerous, but I know we are humans. You and I are called to, you're doing it in journalism. I have some skills in healthcare and you're amplifying their voices now. So without your work, without my work, we cannot liberate Palestine. So we have to work it together. Our safety will be at risk in some way or another.

Breht O'Shea: Absolutely. Well, that's absolutely noble. Before we move on about your time on the ground in Gaza, I'm just curious to know a little bit more about you personally, which is what was your original motivation for getting into medicine in the first place, aside from the politics and aside from Gaza?

Willie Masai: I was born in Africa, and I moved here about 20 years ago. And I remember growing up as a child, you know, I had malaria many times a year, waterborne diseases, because when I was grazing my livestock out in the wild, there's no water. You drink water that the animals are drinking. It's green sometimes with algae. You know, I remember those, but I don't want to paint Africa as if it's like, you know, There's a lot of good things, but also a lot of difficult life situations that I experienced. And I remember people dying of diarrhea and malnutrition growing up. So I thought, what can I do as a person to help alleviate this pain and suffering? And then I entered healthcare. I thought... As a nurse, I'm also going into nurse practitioner school right now. As a nurse and a healthcare provider, I am able to help here in the U.S., help my life a little better, as well as help people back at home and around the world. So my... work mission, my life became, uh, you know, medical mission works and to start, uh, from, from the personal experience is very personal for me because I lived it. It's a lived experience. Um, so for me and for us to see somebody suffering because of malnutrition, because of, um, diarrhea, because of, um, You know, being killed by bombs by, you know, to me, that is it's a no brainer. We have to go and help.

Breht O'Shea: Absolutely. Yeah, I find that very noble and I think people like that are the cutting edge of human ethical development where you can see total strangers suffering and just be moved so deeply. Your heart breaks so easily in the face of other people's suffering and to dedicate your life to trying to alleviate that suffering I think is one of the highest callings a human being can possibly pursue. But going now to the situation in Gaza, through the organization that you mentioned, you were able to get into that conflict zone, which is one way to describe it. How was your trip into Gaza? And then what surprised you most about it when you finally arrived?

Willie Masai: I will start with what surprised me the most. You know, Brett, we have seen the destruction on social media. We have seen decapitated children after Israeli bombings. But what surprised me the most was the level of destruction in Gaza. There is no Gaza. It's flat. It has been flattened by the Israeli forces. Every building, every bridge, every water system, everything is rubble. That's number one. Number two, to see the children on social media with missing limbs and heads after they have been bombed by the Israeli airstrikes is one thing. But seeing it in person, holding a child... One child is too many when I arrived that I'm trying to put their brain back into their skull. One is too many. I was heartbroken because this little girl, her name was Seba. I was my first child. She was only two. She came in bleeding heavily, but I saw in her head this brain matter is out. I'm trying to put it back in and stop the bleeding. But it was a very difficult fight for her life. And what I'm thinking in my mind was, I'm sorry, I paid for these bombs. And... This is after an Israeli had struck a residential building and tent area. There is no comparison of what seeing it on social media and what is happening in person. And I'm pushing her brains back in. I'm praying for her. And all of a sudden, I realized that I paid for this. We paid for it. So that was a very, very difficult day. And I thought she would be the only one. And the last one, as I said, one is too many. But unfortunately, only in Gaza, that kids coming to the emergency room with missing limbs and their brain matters out or with gunshot wounds to the chest or to the head, One is too many, but there was a lot, hundreds after that.

Breht O'Shea: Where on the Gaza Strip did you operate? And can you tell us a little bit more about what your day-to-day life looked like when you were in Gaza and your work?

Willie Masai: Yes. So can I backtrack a little bit of one of your previous questions, how I got there? It was very difficult to go in, as I said. And we had to be vetted and screened by the Israeli forces. And finally, they tell you to leave the U.S. on a Sunday night so that you'll be in Gaza by Tuesday. It's a 15-hour flight to Amman in Jordan. And so they make it very difficult for you to go. And Israelis don't care. The Israeli government don't care. So you get to Amman. Then from Amman... It's not guaranteed until the next morning to go to Gaza. So then you cross into Gaza. And once you arrive there, you'll be surprised of what happened. And so the day-to-day is very difficult to, you know, like here when I go to work, it's 6 a.m., 6 p.m. It's pretty set every day. But in Gaza, it's not like that. It's very difficult to travel. you're always working 24-7 working you may go to your to a little corner to take a nap but that's really about it because you are work every time the Israelis strike a building, a tent, every time there's bombing, you just go. So many times when you think that you're going to take a little nap into your room, well, sleeping outside in a hospital, but you hear bombing at 2 a.m., 3 a.m., You run to the ER. Usually you hear a big explosion. You know within half an hour, 15 minutes, there's an influx of hundreds of people coming into the emergency room that have been injured. So it's never predictable. You're always working.

Breht O'Shea: How do you travel from Jordan, I assume through parts of quote-unquote Israel, into the Gaza Strip? How is that journey itself? How is that conducted? Who's making sure that you're getting through? Because I'm sure there's this chaos around that border between Gaza and the rest of quote-unquote Israel.

Willie Masai: Yeah. So once you leave Amman, you go to King Hussein Bridge on the Jordanian side. So that's where they screen you, your bags. And then once you're done from Jordanian side, you go to the Israeli side of King Hussein Bridge. That's where they will literally look at every equipment you brought in. They will search all your bags, the Israelis will. And they set in equipments that you are not allowed to bring. Like, why are you bringing two bottles of Tylenol? Why are you bringing these few gases? Why are you bringing like a stylet for intubation of a patient? Why are you bringing this? They don't allow a lot of things. So some people were not allowed to bring a simple medication because a doctor asked you in Gaza, say, hey, my mom has cancer. Can you grab this medication? It happened to me. I wasn't allowed to go in with it. I bought some chemotherapy medication in Jordan. But they said this is not required. The Israeli military told me at the Karim Abu Salem, at King Hussein Bridge. So I had to leave some of that stuff back. Then you go through most of... You go for about three, four hours through the occupied territories in Palestine, in the West Bank. And then you go into... You arrive at... Karim Abu Salim crossing. In Karim Abu Salim crossing, that's when you go into Gaza. That's when you see the destruction. That's my first time to see head on, face to face with an active duty Israeli forces. It wasn't pretty.

Breht O'Shea: Yeah. How was your interaction with the active forces?

Willie Masai: So while we're waiting to go into Gaza, we are sitting in our bus. They just appeared in the middle of nowhere in their Humvees, in our armored vehicles with big guns mounted on top of them. And they're just aiming at our bus. I'm sitting right in front by the driver. And you can see he's zooming his scope. I'm thinking... Why is it only four of us, three doctors and one nurse that are going in? We're not a threat. We have been vetted. But why are you zooming at me? It's the most surreal feeling.

Breht O'Shea: Because they know who you are.

Willie Masai: They do.

Breht O'Shea: And they're trying to intimidate you. I mean, why do you need, yeah.

Willie Masai: Yes, why do you need to go in? But when I was crossing the Karim Abu Salem crossing, it's like three football fields from one gate to the other side of the gate to go into Gaza. And these cameras everywhere within the crossing. It's hot. I'm pushing two big bags with medical supplies and my backpack with only my clothing inside. And the food, they only allow us, I think, four kilograms of food to take in for ourselves because they know food in Gaza.

Breht O'Shea: Yeah.

Willie Masai: And you can hear them. They will tell me, stop, move, stop, move, stop, move. I'm thinking. And then when they say stop, I heard them laughing over the speakers. We got some mean words, really inappropriate words. We got him. And then they're laughing, giggling. And you can hear them. And move, stop, move. I finally said to myself, I'm not going to stop. I know they have guns everywhere. They have the AI guns, you know, zooming around and following you.

Breht O'Shea: Like drone drones? Yes.

Willie Masai: And they have quadcopters. Those are the most deadly ones. That's why you see a lot of headless children, headless people coming into the hospital because they have been struck by a quadcopter. So I just decided to keep walking and I crossed the other side of, um, of, of the, of the crossing and then got into our bus. And when we went to, to, so we started at NASA hospital in the South. That's where we started working first. And then, uh, four of us, we were allowed to go to the North. Now the North is 80% displaced. Only 20% of people in the North are left there. Um, Israeli, so the 20% is only 40,000 people left in the north out of a million something before.

Breht O'Shea: And they're living amongst largely rubble?

Willie Masai: Rubble. It's rubble. It's literally nothing is left in Gaza. People are living in destroyed buildings and destroyed schools. These are displaced people, poor people who have nothing.

Breht O'Shea: Mm-hmm.

Willie Masai: Earth has turned inside out. What Israel has done in Gaza will haunt humanity forever. They have made Gaza, Israel has made Gaza an inhabitable for Palestinians because everything is inside out. It's dust and rubble. And on our way north, I saw on the side of the road, Between the Mediterranean Sea and the little, not road, actually a little pavement is all dust, all sand, a pelvic bone. It looked like a child. I think they tried to clean up the humanitarian pathway, but they still left some human remains. And the devastation is something that you cannot imagine. Gaza is uninhabitable.

Breht O'Shea: And that's, of course, a conscious strategic goal of Israel to make it uninhabitable. And even if Israel were to pull out of Gaza completely tomorrow, it would take a generation at least to rebuild it to anything like a functioning society.

Willie Masai: Yeah, it is. You look at the destruction of hospitals, of schools. Yeah, I was going to ask about that. You look at the whole society's infrastructure. You know, previous year when I went to Gaza, going through to the north through the Roshed Highway, It was beautiful both sides. Even though it was a landlocked, it was even though Gaza was, you know, nobody goes in, nobody gets out, nothing goes in, nothing gets out. But still people were able to to leave with, you know, to survive with whatever they have. So there was nice little tiny grocery stores on the side of the road, nice hotels, restaurants. It was catastrophic before, but now everything is gone because to me is what is the military strategic value to destroy every little building in Gaza? What is the point? So it is ethnic cleansing 101 so that nothing remains in Gaza.

Breht O'Shea: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I remember after October 7th and the horrors of what Israel was doing had already started. But, you know, on YouTube, the Internet, there's all these opportunities for you to see even like on the ground in Gaza before October 7th. And, you know, it's obviously a very poor place, a very, you know, purposely underdeveloped place. but also the perseverance of the Palestinian people brought genuine beauty to Gaza. There are elements of the Gaza Strip that were beautiful, and that's 100% because of the Palestinian people taking care of what little they do have. And to see that absolutely obliterated for this maniacal, fascist, settler-colonial project of domination and ethnic supremacy, it is just so grotesque. And the fact that you and I go to work every day, you know, I have three kids, I make money to try to provide for my family and I have to pay taxes. Those taxes don't give me and my family health care or, you know, affordable education or affordable housing or any of the social investments that our society needs. It goes to send money to Israel so they can drop bombs on babies by the hundreds of billions of dollars. And how that does not make every single human being with a heart in this country, you know, rabidly angry is just beyond me. The fact that people just like, you know, maybe don't know about it. Maybe they just say, oh, I've heard about that. They've been fighting forever and to shrug their shoulders. The inhumanity, it never ceases to really disturb me.

Willie Masai: Yes, yes, yes. To piggyback on what you just said, Brett, when that child asked me, what have I done? You know, her name is Hadil. What have I done? What's my fault? Why is America sending weapons to kill me?

Speaker 4: Hmm.

Willie Masai: They know. They know what I would do. I was afraid at first to introduce myself as American because I'm thinking, they know I'm paying for their bombs. We are paying for it. You are taxes. You go to work. You know. Instead of that money coming back to the country and helping our own people with homelessness, education, health care is bankrupt here. But we are subsidizing and paying the Israelis health care, housing. We are paying them to kill Palestinian people. We're helping them to... to occupy and colonize Palestine. Where is our moral standing? What happened to us as a people? And people in our country who do not know yet what's going on, I'm asking them, we're asking them, please wake up. Wake up. We are guilty of this. After World War II, we said never again. And never again means never again for everyone. Justice is for all. Selective morality is not morality. Selective justice is not justice. I want our taxes, you want our taxes, or we all want our taxes to do good for humanity, for our families, for our communities, for our homelessness, homeless population. For our education. Why is our money, our politicians in Washington, sending our money to go kill children?

Breht O'Shea: It's a world historic crime and we're in the fog of the moment and people are ignorant or they focus on their own lives or they don't care. They've picked one of these two disgusting political parties to be their team. You know, Kamala Harris and the Dems or Trump and the Republicans. But in the cold, sober light of historical retrospect, it'll be very clear what has happened here. And it will be very clear who the evildoers are. And it's on par with the crimes of Nazi Germany. It's that same sort of indiscriminate, ethno-supremacist, genocidal, maniacal mass murder campaign. That really defined the Nazi regime. And at least in that case, for all the faults of America back then still, at least they had the ability to see good and evil clear enough to fight the Nazis to some extent. And then here, you know, insofar as that analogy holds up, you're on the side. Of the genocide heirs, of the Nazis, of the people conducting this mass murder campaign. And more than that, you're facilitating it because without the U.S.'s support, you pull away that money, you pull away those weapons, you pull away that political cover, and Israel collapses tomorrow. So the U.S. is uniquely responsible for what's going on here. Now, speaking of that, in the mainstream Western press, the narrative that is allowed is exclusively the narrative of Israel and takes for granted the Zionist perspective. Palestinian humanity and suffering is an afterthought, if even that. I don't know how much media you've been able to engage with, but if you have been able to, I was hoping you could talk about the difference between how this genocide is portrayed in Western media And how it's actually playing out in Palestine. I know we've touched on a little bit of this, but maybe you have some more thoughts on this front.

Willie Masai: Yes. The Western media, especially, I mean, the mainstream media here is complicit directly to the killings and this genocide of the Palestinian people. Because they lie. They don't tell the truth. You know, journalism is to tell the truth, the whole truth. And the truth will set you free. But the mainstream media has always been playing the Zionist propaganda. I hate to quote the worst of humans in our history. Hitler said that, again, I hate quoting, but he said, if you tell a lie over and over and over again, people will believe it. I think even Henry Chimler said it too. And this is what the Western mainstream media is doing, continuing to demonize the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people are not humans. Their deaths is an afterthought. For example, last week, the New York Times after the hostages, the Israeli hostages that were in Gaza that were killed, they painted this, they had a biography of each one of those people, hostages that were killed. Rightfully so, fine. But they had talked about their dreams, their hopes, their families, the things they wanted to do. But And they said one thing, that they were horribly murdered. But the Palestinian people just died.

Breht O'Shea: Right, right. Passively.

Willie Masai: Passively. They just died. They don't talk about the fact that Israel is directly responsible for this genocide, directly responsible for the massacre and slaughter of the Palestinian people. No. This summer, when Israeli forces went to rescue the three hostages, 120 to 270 Palestinians were murdered. Nobody in the Western mainstream media talked about the morality of killing 200 Palestinian people, 120 to 270 Palestinian people, to rescue three people. All right. I'm not saying these three people don't deserve to leave. They do. But nobody questioned the morality of those killings. So how come in the Western media, Palestinians just die? Who killed them? They don't say it. How did I don't say it? But when it comes to Israelis, they were horribly murdered. But we know The bias of this Western media, someday, they're going to be charged.

Breht O'Shea: Absolutely.

Willie Masai: I hope they are going to be charged in the world court. Because they are directly complicit and responsible for the deaths and the killings of the Palestinian people, for the genocide, for colonial... colonialism in Palestine, for apartheid in Palestine. They are all responsible. You cannot whitewash genocide. Why is Israeli killing less significant? Palestinians just die. They don't exist. They are not people.

Breht O'Shea: Absolutely. And in a just world, the politicians that are responsible for this would be tried for their crimes against humanity and sentenced accordingly. And these institutions like these corporate media institutions that have by any stretch of the imagination actively helped facilitate this genocide, lied about it, provided cover for it, humanized the aggressors and dehumanized the victims. Yes. Exactly. but should be given to the Palestinian people as just, I mean, not even that it would even come close to adequately dealing with the suffering that they've imposed. But that's step one in a just world. And I hope that happens in our lifetime. I want to see that justice because I do not want to see these people grow old, comfortable, pass away in their sleep with all this blood on their hands. And only two generations later is there some sort of attempt to, you know,

Willie Masai: To wrestle with this evil. With this evil. And Brett, you really mentioned a good point there. If you've noticed since this genocide started in Gaza, the independent media, you know. Local journalists, the actual journalists who are actually on the ground, who are actually amplifying the voices of the people, of the oppressed. More and more people, I have seen a move, a shift in our country. People are moving away from watching or paying attention to mainstream media. People are looking into the media, the sources of information that are actually telling the truth.

Breht O'Shea: Yes.

Willie Masai: Gazans that are on the ground, journalists with a camera, a cell phone camera, you know, a journalist in America who who don't have this big corporate money, you know, who are actually doing something from their own homes or from their, you know, from their own little, you know, ways that they have money. Absolutely. That the independent media, these are the people and the voice of the voiceless. And they are the hope of the hopeless. They are the strength of the oppressed. This is what's happening. And the corporate media is going to go down. I hope so.

Breht O'Shea: It's inevitable. And unfortunately, that transition is slow. It doesn't happen as fast as it should. But that transition is occurring. And another big transition that's occurring that this horrific nightmare is accelerating is, I think, ultimately the reputational and then the material decline of the U.S. empire. As such, this empire that presents itself as, you know, the international rules based order. We're here to defend democracy around the world. We're here to defend freedom. And nobody believes that except the most brainwashed Westerners. The rest of the world sees exactly what's happening. And that reputational destruction is necessary to precede the material destruction of the US empire, just as the reputation of the corporate media has to be thoroughly destroyed before it can absolutely be materially destroyed. But I did want to mention, you were saying earlier about how the hostages were given in the New York Times, this analysis that took into consideration their humanity, their subjectivity, their dreaming, right? And the calculus of three Israeli hostages are worth 100 or 200 innocent Palestinians. This is another way which the corporate media pushes the Zionist perspective because the Zionist idea is literally that Israeli Jews are superior human beings to Palestinian Arabs. Pure and simple. And so one of their lives is worth an infinite amount of Palestinian lives. And when the U.S. media does things like deeply humanize three hostages, which you said is totally fine. Innocent people, I mean, they're all innocent. Our point is they're equal. They should be equal. But when you over, you know, or you deeply humanize only those people and you deeply dehumanize all the rest, you are facilitating that genocidal Zionist narrative that says these people, because of who they are, because of their skin color, their ethnicity and their religion are inherently superior to these other people, you know. And that's that's the logic of genocide. That's the logic of Nazism. That's the logic of fascism.

Willie Masai: Correct. Absolutely.

Breht O'Shea: Now, one thing I do want to talk about is talking about Palestinian humanity, and you've been alluding to this, but I was hoping you could tell us a little bit more about the Palestinian people you met, not only the victims of Israeli genocide, but the people helping alongside of you, and what you've learned about the Palestinian people, their culture, and their humanity in your time on the ground in Gaza.

Willie Masai: Oh, man, I wish we can write a book, my friend here. So I have an example where, you know, there is no food, no water in Gaza, no medicine. So on a third of week or so in Gaza, the World Health Organization, somehow they were able to bring eggs to the north. Usually there's nothing there. And so these healthcare workers, these nurses and doctors were given eggs, 12 eggs each person. But the next morning, this doctor comes back to work from his tent. The tent is about maybe 10 minutes away from the hospital. He comes, he brings shakshuka, eggs. It's like really good Palestinian breakfast made of eggs. I am thinking, brother, your children have not had eggs in 10 months. And he's like, no, no, no, brother. My wife wants you to eat. No, no, we are okay. I said, no, no, no. I feel guilty to eat it. He's like, you have to eat. In my culture, you eat. Of course, with the guilt in my heart, I ate the shakshuka. I ate the eggs they just received from WHO. And I'm thinking... what kind of generosity is this? Palestinian people are the most beautiful, generous, faith-filled, humble people and strong people you will ever meet. They will give you their bread before they eat it, even though you know they are hungry. I can buy cartons of eggs today Before I went to Gaza, I don't need eggs. But they wanted to feed me. So how do you explain that generosity, that kindness? In those conditions too. In those conditions. They literally have everything destroyed completely by the Israelis. Everything is gone. They have no eggs. There's no meat. They have not seen meat in months. No protein. And yet they are saying, you have to eat. And another thing is that from my colleagues in Gaza, it is the hope you see it in their voice. Even when they are being bombed. by Israeli forces. They are being maimed. Palestinians are being killed. They have lost everything. But the only thing they have is they say this, Alhamdulillah, this is my home. They will kill me here. But someday, I will be free. You know what, Brett, my friend? You cannot bomb that out of them. You can bomb, Israeli can bomb everything they want. Unfortunately, that is what they are doing. It's evil. It's horrible. They are bombing everything, Israelis. But they will not bomb that hope in the lives of the Palestinian people, in the hearts of the Palestinian people. No amount of missiles the U.S. will give. No amount of money our government will give to Israelis to diminish, to kill, and to maim the Palestinian people and to occupy them, to expand this genocide, to expand colonialism and apartheid. No amount of money and weapons that our government will give will diminish and kill the hopes and aspirations of the Palestinian people for their freedom, for basically just wanting to raise their families just like you and me. That's really it. The Israelis will not diminish that. Just like the Nazis went down, that empire fell, the empire of Zionism will fall. Right will always prevail. Justice will always prevail. They will only delay it. And that is what Palestinian people have. You feel it. You feel it in the air. You feel it in their voices. They have the love for life. Palestinians have love for life. They have love for humanity. That's why they say, we know the world has forgotten us. Over and over and over again, we know the world has forgotten us. But we know there are some people out there speaking for us. They deeply appreciate it. They say, thank you. Alhamdulillah, Inshallah, those people, Inshallah, like they keep saying, Inshallah, Palestinians say, God willing, that all those people that are speaking for us will come to Gaza and see us. We'll cook for them.

Breht O'Shea: It's beautiful. I mean, you can't have a heart and not get emotional hearing that stuff, the generosity. Generosity in times of abundance is one thing, but generosity in the face of starvation, of the worst sorts of scarcity you can imagine, is a whole other thing. And that's one thing, as you were saying eloquently. Tyrants and empires and dictators and brutal rulers throughout history, they can take away everything, but they can't bomb or shoot or beat out the dignity and the love inside of a human heart. And the Palestinian people's dignity, you know, their refusal to bow down, their refusal to accept oppression. And they represent, I think, the best of humanity.

Willie Masai: You nailed it right there because what I keep telling people here in the U.S. and even in Gaza, I kept telling the Palestinian people, I'm sorry that we paid for the bombs to kill you. You are an orphan because we paid for your family, your mom and dad, brothers and sisters being killed. The stories are endless. But I tell them that you teach us to be human.

Breht O'Shea: Yes.

Willie Masai: You are the light in the darkness of brutality of Israelis and Jews. And this genocide and the massacre of your family and people. But what I am taking from this, and I want to tell people everywhere I go, is that thank you for teaching us what it means to be human. The Palestinian people are telling us, look, look deep down in your heart and find the humanity that you have. Remove the dirt of hatred. Remove this toxic, vile, and genocidal spirit of the Zionist, of Zionist empire. Find in yourself the humanity that connects us, the brotherhood, the sisterhood, the brotherhood, The personhood, the generosity and the love we have for people, look deep down in your heart and find that. When you find that, then go fight for justice, for peace, for everyone. Fight for myself. Fight for me as a Palestinian child and a Palestinian father and a Palestinian mother and brother and sister. That's what they're teaching us. Be human.

Breht O'Shea: Yes, and that is ultimately the way that we're going to purge the earth of these fascistic, ethno-supremacist ideas and movements and nation states, is when we can connect to that part of our hearts and our humanity that is beyond borders, is beyond race, is beyond religion, that I can see in the suffering of an innocent Palestinian myself. Not to say that I have experienced anything that they've experienced, but it's on that raw level of human connection to see a father holding his – brutalized child and to be deeply moved to see myself and my own suffering in that i think that is something that we all need to cultivate and it's not cultivated by you know just endlessly scrolling on your phone and and the empty spectacle of modern society and go out and consume and the new iphones out and the new marvel movies out those are shallow those keep you on the surface of life But to find your heart, to fight for justice, to seek the deepest truths about humanity on our brief time here on this planet, that's what a well-lived life should be focused on. And the Palestinian people, they don't want to have to show us that. They would like a world when they live in peace and they aren't in the headlines. I'm sure they would all take that. But the conditions have been imposed on them and they have no choice but to be that lighthouse of humanity in a dark, dark time and an uncertain time.

Willie Masai: You bring something really important there, Brett. I just want to highlight something there. You know, it was at two in the morning. northern Gaza I heard this big explosion the whole hospital shook hospital is not even functioning as a hospital it's it's most of it is destroyed and I and half an hour later I just run down into the emergency room, got ready. I knew that, you know, we all knew that there's going to be casualties coming in any time now. And I remember this child that came through with a shrapnel injury on his head. He was six years old. And... And his name was Ahmed. And I look at him. And next to him, the next bay, the trauma bay, is his father. His father's legs are missing. And the father is looking at us, trying to save his child. The father, even though he was so much in pain, while the other physicians are trying to amputate the leg that is hanging by a thread because nothing is left, he did not flinch. I don't think they even gave him any anesthesia because there was none. He's just staring at his child. My left hand is holding the brain of this child. I didn't even have gloves. Trying to stop the bleed. I had a gauze in my hand and it was saturated. And the most difficult thing was This child looked up and kind of like stared at my eyes, our eyes met. And I thought, oh, there's hope. Maybe, maybe we'll pull this through. Please, buddy, please fight for it. We're here for you. Please fight. And I think that was his goodbye. I know that was his goodbye. That look was saying goodbye. I am going to rest from this pain. The difficult part came after that. Looking at the father that's looking at us trying to save his son, only six years old. I think he realized from my look that it's over. I looked, he looked, our eyes met again, and he just closed his eyes and cried. I will never forget that. I will never forget that. Our government paid for those bombs. Israeli forces, they did that.

Breht O'Shea: Hmm.

Willie Masai: And from human to human, father to father, looking at that father, can't even tell him that his son is dead. He just knew it from how I looked at it. I was so angry. I was so angry and I'm still very angry. I walked away. I didn't want to see that father again because I don't know what to say to him. No parent, no parent should ever, ever go through that. As a father, he didn't care what was happening to him. He was bleeding everywhere. But she just kept looking at his little son. That maybe, maybe buddy, please keep fighting. Maybe there's hope. But there was not.

Breht O'Shea: Unfathomable. And I mean, just like you're saying he's getting his legs amputated, but his singular focus is so fixated on, on his son that he doesn't even feel his own pain. I can't imagine, you know, then you just, I mean, how do you, how do you even continue about your life after something like that? Like, you know, usually like here in, in our society at the moment, it's stable enough that if you or I were to deal with such horrific things, trauma that we would have access to hopefully if i mean you know there's money is always an issue but you would hopefully have access to therapy to mental health counseling to family and friends to be there to support you um and then they they're robbed of all that so you you face that trauma and then you just walk back into the rubble you know yes and uh very good point but there um

Willie Masai: My hope is this, that part of me wants to meet that father again if he makes it. But I'm afraid he might not because there is no antibiotics in Gaza. There is literally no medicine, no sterile equipment to clean wounds. Infection rates is everywhere because after Israeli destroyed everything, the whole of Gaza is raw sewer.

Breht O'Shea: Hmm.

Willie Masai: Like now we have polio. We have hepatitis A. Everybody is already, people, children and people are already malnutritioned. But now here they have, you know, diarrhea because of the diseases spreading. Because out there, Israel had bombed every social infrastructure. And sewer is everywhere, and people are sick and dying of other diseases besides being bombed. So that's ethnic cleansing. They are really doing it as we're watching. They're bombing, and then they're making sure they die of other diseases. Israelis making sure of that. So if that father, I hope he won't get an infection because his wounds were so severe. He was getting blood transfusion and I think we had very limited amount of blood at that time. And so if I ever meet him, I don't think we'll have words. I'll just give him a hug. Because it was like human to human, father to father. We just, we had that connection. And I don't know what happened to his wife. I don't know what happened to his other kids. Nobody knows because in the middle of all the chaos, when Israeli strikes within, because usually strike within a short distance of a hospital. The people who are farther away will never make it. Within a show, it's chaos. It's total chaos. So the family is probably there. Maybe everybody is there. Only, you know, only we do not know if we ever meet again.

Breht O'Shea: Yeah, I mean, it really is on par with the great crimes of even the last century, I think. You have the acute crime of brutalizing people, murdering people, and then the generational trauma that is facilitated through the destruction of infrastructure, which leads to diseases, the trauma that gets passed down. I mean, how many generations is that going to take to wash out if it ever does? You can think about after the Vietnam War and the use of Agent Orange. The babies for generations continue to have these horrific malformations and deformations from the poison that the U.S. just layered over the entire country after Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the radiation poisoning. These are the crimes against humanity that need to stop, that need to be stopped, that humanity needs to outgrow this phase and that will only happen with the destruction of these empires. That where you have a country as rich and as powerful as the United States and instead of using that wealth and that power to do anything like good in the world, they use it to brutalize people. that they don't agree with politically or whose allies don't agree with them. And that is profound evil. And so I could never understand somebody being, you know, as somebody born and raised, how could you be a patriot? How could you fly the American flag happily when you know the blood that it's drenched in?

Willie Masai: When we, in our country, when we say Israelis are only ally democracy in the middle, I, okay. This is a lie. They're brainwashing the American people. What do you mean it's a democracy, though? What is democracy? Can we... Israel is occupying Palestine. Israel is killing Palestinians. It's brutally annihilating the people. How is that a democracy? It's a colony. They're colonizers. How can we call colonizers a democracy?

Breht O'Shea: Right.

Willie Masai: Please. It's disgusting. They need to stop lying to us. And American people need to wake up and say, no, you cannot occupy a people. You cannot colonize a people. You cannot blockade the whole of Gaza and limit their freedoms. and everything else and say that is a democracy. What is a democracy? It just doesn't make sense. It's a lie.

Breht O'Shea: Absolutely. It's anti-democracy. It's a fascist apartheid ethnostate where you get certain rights based on your ethnicity and your religion and where you live on a map and your relationship to the colonizer dynamic. It's anti-democracy. I don't even think we have democracy here, but certainly a fascist settler colonial apartheid state in the Levant is not anything like a democracy. That's this Orwellian world we live in where You know, Israel is the democracy. The IDF is the most moral army in the world. Like anybody with a shred of knowledge in their head has to be offended by that, by that language. And then the United States pretending like, yeah, you know, like in our constitution, every human being has unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as America and its allies destroy life, liberty and the very possibility of the pursuit of happiness for countless people around the world.

Willie Masai: But I saw most of the patients came to us were children or women in our emergency room. They had gunshot wounds to the head, to the chest, and to the lower extremities. So they meant to maim them or kill them and just murder them right off the bat. How can we call or how can they call themselves the most Israelis? How can Israelis call themselves the most moral army when they're shooting children in the head? Civilians, displaced civilians. And I have video of a gentleman that was shot in the back. The exit wound was in his neck. And they shot his knees. They shot his knees. How can you just shoot people like that and you call yourself a moral army? The American Turkish protester that was killed this week. Yes. A girl.

Breht O'Shea: I forget her name.

Willie Masai: Yes. She's just protesting. You get killed because you're protesting. Journalists being killed. targeted targeted killing and you say this is moral what is morality I said at the beginning of our interview brother is that selective morality is not morality and as far as humanity is concerned there is no morality in Israel that is left it's immoral to its core to its foundation

Breht O'Shea: I do want to ask about we talked about the state of the hospitals. And, of course, almost all of them have been bombed, even the ones that have elements like maybe a wing that is still functioning. The rest of the hospital is destroyed. Can you talk about your experience of the state of the hospitals? We know the equipment is not getting in. We know there's no anesthesia, you know, antibiotics, sterile equipment. How are you doing anything medically in Gaza right now?

Willie Masai: It's a horrific situation because after Israeli destruction of hospitals, like, for example, at Indonesian hospital, many times we ran out of oxygen. because Israel had bombed the central oxygen supply of the hospital. So every patient has a little tank by their bed, an oxygen tank. So when we ran out of electricity, when electricity goes off, when... Because then when electricity goes off, the ventilated patients cannot get oxygen. So you start bagging them. Ambulation bags are not even available. I took five of them. The doctors there were so happy. It's like you've given them life. Of course you've given life in some extent. But I've never seen people so happy because you give them an ambulation bag to ambulate patients that, you know, to keep them breathing until the electricity comes back or until there's no gas left. If there's gas, maybe the backup generators will kick in. And then oxygen comes back in through the little tanks that we have. And so it was very difficult to work in Gaza because of the lack of supplies. No soap. No soap. When with all these diseases spreading, water was scarce. It was not even almost non-existent. You have water a little bit coming through. Water, of course, is contaminated in tap water, but then the next day is none or the next hour is no water. They will deliver water with these big carts. that they're poured in the buckets in the ER so you can wash your hands. Most of it, I can only wash my hands when I'm, you know, many times my clothes, my scrubs are completely saturated with blood. So you cannot wash, I had sanitized, hand sanitizer. You cannot wash blood with hand sanitizer. You just rinse your hands off with the little water you have and then sanitize your hands. Many times, even your underwear is soaked with blood. Jesus Christ. And so because of the lack of supplies, and one of the children that came through that, I'm holding his neck because he got injured by an Israeli shrapnel. I'm holding, trying to stop the bleed, massive, massive bleed. And there were so many people. We didn't have sutures.

Breht O'Shea: Yeah.

Willie Masai: The ER physician is running around looking for sutures. To come suture this kid, there was none. And child, the little gauze I had in my hand was saturated. And the child dies because there was no suture. You can suture them. And the physician is just looking. I can never forget the look out of that physician. He was defeated. He was defeated. We were all defeated. You say, here I work in the U.S. I have everything I need at my disposal and extra. I was thinking, this physician couldn't even suture a child to stop the bleed. And the child died. Because the Israelis just killed him. How can I ever be the same man again? How can we as humans be the same again? Whether you are listening to this or whether you saw it, it doesn't matter. How can we explain that to our children, to the generations to come? Brett, I don't know how we can face our children with that information and from what we see. I don't know.

Breht O'Shea: It's impossible. And I mean, just to take it all in is impossible. It's too much for a single human heart to be able to withstand it, it feels like. And this is a personal question. And if you don't want to answer it, you certainly don't have to. But I'm sure as a medical worker of any sort, there's a certain professionalism with regards to the horrors that you see on a daily basis. So you're working here in Omaha, you have a gunshot victim or whatever, you deal with terrible things. There's a certain baseline sort of, I don't know how you would say it, but a baseline understanding of the work that you're in and a sort of desensitization to, you know, if I were to walk into an ICU right now. and see somebody deeply hurt it would be effective to me i'm not used to it i don't have the training for it i've never been around it it would be startling to me um so health care workers have that but then you get put in a situation in gaza where like you were saying you don't even have the basic tools you need and you know if you were in any hospital even a rural undersupplied hospital in the u.s you could be able to find sutures or oxygen or you know antibiotics or at least clean your hands you would have everything you need to at least do your job So you're in a terrible war zone. You're trying your best to save life after life after life. You're not giving even the baseline adequacy of the tools that you need. And you're seeing the worst of humanity in the form of what Israel is doing to these people. How do you cope with it mentally and emotionally? Do you have your own trauma you have to work through? How do you know when too much is too much? How much can one person take?

Willie Masai: Very good question. Yeah. I feel dead inside really after seeing that. My soul is dead. My spirit is dead. I... And I don't know if I've even to a point where I can... I know what trauma is in my mind. I know what it is. But I don't know if I've even really thought about it. Because I'm still in shock that the world is actually... Yes. Yes. You see a lot of suffering and pain when you work in healthcare. But nothing can prepare you to what the Israeli armed forces are doing in Gaza. It's the worst form of humanity and brutality. So... And, of course, it's not about me. It's about these children and civilians in Gaza and Palestinian people in Gaza have been living this in the last 11 weeks. I can't even imagine. I was just there for a short period of time. I can't even imagine living that for 11 months, for almost a year now. The trauma they are going through, it's horrific. I was there for a few weeks. I feel the dead man walking. I can't sleep. Can't eat. You know? My brain is not working. I feel numb. I feel disoriented most of the time. I feel like I'm living in a world that is so blindfolded that we are walking like we're dead walking, dead people walking. I feel like I am thrown into an ocean and I cannot swim and somebody has tied my hands and my feet and they are yelling at me, why can't you swim? That's what the Palestinian people are going through. We tie their hands and their feet and throw them into the middle of the Pacific, of the Atlantic. And we are blaming them. Why can't they swim? And they have been living it for 11 months. I was only there with them for a few weeks. So... The death of humanity results into the death of morality and that human spirit of justice and peace and freedom and love and kindness that we are supposed to share with other people is directly related to the death of the human spirit in each one of us who have worked or have seen what is happening to the Palestinian people. I feel dead. I'm done. But it's not about me. It's the children and the Palestinian people who have seen it, experienced it, lived it for 76 years.

Breht O'Shea: And I totally understand your urge to say it's not about me and it's admirable and that self-sacrificing nature is certainly something that is noble. But at the end of the day, we are all human and their trauma is certainly deeply real. But I truly hope that you can hopefully find some peace and maybe that peace can only come when the Palestinian people themselves are liberated from this madness.

Willie Masai: As the Palestinian people say, Inshallah. Yes. Inshallah. When they are free, when Palestine is free, humanity will be free itself from this genocidal, ethnostate, brutal, terrorist, terrorism of Israeli government.

Breht O'Shea: Yes.

Willie Masai: That is when I think that you and I and the rest of humanity who have the fiber of moral clarity about what is right or what is wrong, that's when we can really truly be able to deal with our trauma. But as long as the genocide is happening, we're going to be traumatized because Israel is not going to stop.

Breht O'Shea: Absolutely.

Willie Masai: But we're going to stop them because we're going to talk.

Breht O'Shea: Absolutely. I do believe humanity ultimately will win. It'll never wash away the blood and the hurt and the trauma and the pain and the suffering of all the people that are destroyed along the way, all the Palestinian lives that are destroyed along the way. But as you were saying earlier, evil can't last forever. It eventually... comes up against the brick wall of human resistance. And wherever there is oppression, domination, brutalization, there is at the same time human beings rallying together to fight back. And that's one of the most beautiful aspects of our nature as human beings is that we do not accept the boot on our neck. You can keep it there for a time, but eventually it will get knocked off. And that's why no fascist state has ever stuck around for hundreds of years, because the more you try to impose on people, the more you invite that resistance. And I truly, speaking for myself, I believe that the Palestinian people should be able to resist by any means necessary, any means necessary, their Israeli oppressors. And I am unapologetically opposed. and unblinkingly on the side of the Palestinian resistance in all of its forms. Now, this has been a very emotional conversation, and I deeply appreciate not only your time with us here today, but you putting yourself in a position to go help other human beings, even though that comes at a mental, spiritual, and emotional cost to yourself. But as you said, it's not about you. It's about the people in Palestine. And there's almost nothing else a human being could do that would be as meaningful as sacrificing their own well-being to help other human beings who are suffering, complete strangers who are suffering. Before we wrap this up, though, I want to give you a chance to get anything else that you wanted to say off your chest, just kind of give you free reign to make any point you want to make, tell any story you want to tell, or say anything else you want to say before we end this conversation.

Willie Masai: Thank you, Brett. Thank you for this opportunity to talk about this very pressing issue of our time, the issue that affects humanity in every shape and form. What I want to really finish up with is it's my promise that I give to the people of Gaza that These two shall end. These two shall end. That may not be a consolation because you are being bound by Israel, because you're being killed and maimed. Your family is being brutally wiped out by Israeli forces. But we will keep speaking. One of the parents, this mom, she told me this. She has young kids. Her husband was murdered. She was in ICU, but thankfully she survived. At some point, I thought she was not going to leave. Because the situation was really bad. She was multiple, multiple severe and complex injuries. And she says, I am leaving the hospital, but I think my time in this world has come to an end. I survived this first Israeli strike, but I don't know if I will survive another one. And she said, please, when I'm dead, because my husband is dead, everyone is, my whole family is dead. Please, please come back to Gaza and look for my children. And please wipe away the tears from their hearts when you see them. Please wipe away the tears from their hearts when you see them. I cried like a child. I think that was the first time I cried. I usually don't cry. With the little hope I had, I said, I said, ma'am, you're going to leave. I have hope. Let's keep fighting together. You are not alone in this. I know you are going home into a tent. Not home, a tent. And sleeping outside. I know you have no food, no water, no shelter, nothing. But the human spirit will prevail against the evil of Zionism. I know it will. And I will come back, hopefully. Inshallah, I will come back to Gaza someday. And we'll eat together. We'll sit together. We'll have a celebration of life. I said, please don't give up. That is what we're going to keep searching for meaning in this life even when we are faced with the atrocities of Israeli forces murdering and killing innocent Palestinians for 76 years. All they want is to live in peace at their homes and with their families. So I told her that, don't give up. I was able to, she finally was able to get, I gave her my number. We're not supposed to give our numbers, but I did. I don't care what anybody said, you know, Israelis, don't give up on numbers. It's illegal. Yeah. it's not legal to me it's my it's my choice and i she finally texted yesterday she says we're still here we're alive and she's not even asking about she's not even so she's just asking how's your how are you doing are you okay wow you know did you eat did you go to work how is work You're asking me all these questions that, to me, I'm worried about. I didn't hear from you since I came back a week ago. I'm just worried that you are alive. I'm not sure if you're alive. But here you are asking how I'm doing. Did I cook for myself? Did I eat? Did I go to work? How was work? How was your friends? Did you give them a hug from us? Yes, I did. So my work, all I want to ask people out there, if you're listening to this, and when you listen to this, wherever you are, whoever you are, please, Please amplify the voices of the oppressed, of the Palestinian people. This mother that gave up, that asked me to wipe the tears from the hearts of our children when she's dead because she said Israelis will kill her. And please fight for justice. Please speak up. Participate in Nebraskans for Palestine. We have an organization, we have a great organization that brings peace. We promote peace and love and coexistence, freedom for Palestine. JVP, Jewish Voices for Peace. These are the Jewish people who actually, they mean nothing exactly what they mean when they said, never again. The Jewish people, the Jewish voices for peace, these are the light of the world in times of darkness. Why? Because they know what it means to be marginalized. They know what it means to be massacred. They know what it means to go through a genocide. They know what it means to be slaughtered by an oppressor. Because the Nazis wiped away over 6 million people of their ancestors. It was only a few years ago. So the JVP that is here today, they probably have grandparents, aunts and uncles who are still alive today that survived the Nazis. Genocide, not the Holocaust. I was a teacher before I became a nurse. One of the classes I taught was the study of the Holocaust and genocide and ethics. So I combined the study of Holocaust and genocide that have happened since World War II with ethics, morality, what is right. We said no... More. This should happen again. This should never happen again. But since then, we had the Rwandan genocide. We have the Sudan going on right now. The Pol Pot in Cambodia. We had so many. How and when can humanity learn? JVP is the sound of reason and sound of justice that is holding people accountable the zionist regime is telling them that you cannot keep doing this killing the palestinian people in our name yes not in our name not in the jewish people's names not the whole of israel is evil the zionists are the evil They are doing this in the name of the safety of the Jewish people. No, they are endangering the safety of the Jewish people. JVP in America is the voice of the Palestinian people and the voice of the voiceless. And the Nebraskans for Palestine, Nebraskans for Peace Palestinian Rights Task Force, please get engaged with them. We try to shed the light of what this brutal Zionist regime is doing so that someday we can all be free and be happy and enjoy the freedom and justice for all.

Breht O'Shea: Amen, my friend. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for your work in the organizations. I'll link to those in the show notes, but even if obviously most of the people listening will not be local to Omaha, try to get involved in whatever ways you can. Everybody has a role to play. You might not be a medical volunteer, you might not have a podcast or a YouTube channel, but you have friends and family, you have a community, and you can get activated anytime. In that context and do everything you can to to validate the humanity of Palestinians and throw in your lot with a fight against genocide, apartheid, racism, the mass murder of innocent human beings. And so I wish I wish, you know, the Palestinians knew how many people here in the belly of the beast hate our government, hate what it's doing and facilitating in Palestine and our whole hearts. are with the Palestinian people and their liberation. So this is a very moving episode for me, and I know your experiences were incredibly moving for you. I wish you the absolute best, and you are welcome back on RevLeft anytime for any reason. Thanks, brother. Appreciate it very much.

Speaker 4: I go to sleep every night feeling traumatized. They say occupation trying to hide that it's a genocide. I just wish a kid could grow up to see his mama. I wish that I could do something about bombs dropped on Gaza. Hurts so bad to know. Where do my tax dollars go? Murdered in cold blood. Poor young I don't even know if I could handle this pain Every day's a murder, kids get put in the grave Shot for his race, the place he was born

Breht O'Shea: We'll be right back. Outro Music

Speaker 4: He was there his whole life, now everything is gone. He don't got no show to cry on, not even moms. They done made him homeless, now he got no one. Family deceased by explosions. Mentally he's gotten all he sees of those moments. All he can do is pray, pray. through this pain.