Video with Transcript: Pulitzer Winner Nathan Thrall on Gaza, Israel's "System of Domination" and U.S. Complicity
For our Memorial Day special broadcast, we speak with Jerusalem-based journalist and author Nathan Thrall, who discusses Israel's ceasefire talks with Hamas and Israel's intensified crackdown in the West Bank, and responds to the cancellation of some of his book talks in Germany. Then, we revisit an earlier conversation with Thrall and Abed Salama, the subject of the book for which Thrall just won a Pulitzer Prize. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy focuses on the 2012 death of Salama's son, 5-year-old Milad, who was killed in a fiery bus crash during a school field trip to a theme park. What followed was a desperate daylong search by Salama and his family to locate Milad's body across different cities and hospitals, encountering numerous barriers due to the Israeli occupation system, like different ID cards giving varying levels of access through military checkpoints, and lack of help from any Israeli authorities.
Transcript
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this news is funded by viewers like you please support our work at democracynow.org
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in this special broadcast we spend the hour with the Jerusalem based journalist
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and writer Nathan thr he just won the Pulitzer Prize for his most recent book
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A Day in the Life of Abed Salama anatomy of a Jerusalem tragedy which tells the
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story of Israel's occupation of the West Bank through one family's tragedy the book was published October 3rd last year
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Just 4 days before Israel launched its devastating assault on Gaza following the Hamas attack on October 7th today we
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reair two interviews with Nathan throl one just after he won the Pulitzer Prize
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this month and another interview recorded just after the book was published in October when he joined us
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with Abed Salama the central figure of his book we begin with the interview
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democracy now's nuring sh I did with Nathan on May 9th when he joined us from
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Berlin Germany I began by asking him about the days top story President
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Biden's announcement that the US would halt the shipment of 2,000 pound bombs to Israel you know it's it's too little
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too late um it is a step in the right direction but the Administration has
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said that it has not made a final determination even about these paused uh weapons Biden said something very
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important it's wrong he also said something important uh months ago which
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is that Israel is bombing indiscriminately and it's doing that indiscriminate bombing with us weapons
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so it is very simple for Biden to end this and to have ended this a long time ago and it's not by threatening to pause
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a small portion of the weapons that are coming in very early in this war Israel
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could not continue to conduct without resupply from the United States the
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United States is fully complicit I am a US taxpayer and I am paying to kill
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Palestinian civilians so Nathan if you've just mentioned uh uh you know end ending the
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war and there was a possibility a ceasefire proposal earlier this week was accepted by Hamas uh in a move that was
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uh that surprised many including uh uh Israel uh the ceasefire which was NE negociated put together by uh Egypt and
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Qatar and just days earlier before Hamas accepted the ceasefire on April 29th
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Anthony blinkin secretary of state had said the proposal was quote quite extraordinarily generous on the part of
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Israel and that Hamas was the only obstacle to a ceasefire and Israel has
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now said that the proposal Falls far short of its demands but it's continuing its negotiations in Cairo so if you
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could uh tell us what you think the main points of contention are and how much
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that proposal changed uh from the one that Israel was initially had initially
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approved and this one uh uh that Hamas has agreed to so uh the fundamental
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obstacle in uh all of these uh ceasefire negotiations has been one Central issue
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and that is that Hamas has demanded that the hostage exchange be accompanied by
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an end uh to the war and Israel has refused it says it wants to get the hostages back and to do a prisoner
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exchange with Hamas and then to continue pummeling uh Gaza uh Hamas and any other
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party in its place would be insane to accept such a deal it is the only
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leverage they have and uh they cannot afford to agree to a ceasefire a
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so-called ceasefire uh that has them relinquish the only asset that they have
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that Israel wants without a commitment that this is an end uh to the war and so
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the fundamental issue is that Hamas says that the proposal that was given to it
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does entail an end to the war a full sustainable calm that's guaranteed by
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the United States and other uh mediators and Israel says it rejects that um and
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we have seen seen the text of The Proposal that Hamas has accepted it is very close to what has been reported on
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all of the negotiations over the past week uh and we haven't seen uh the text
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that Israel says uh slightly differs in uh wording can you talk about what's
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going on on the ground in Israel I mean we just reported that last night hostage
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families clashed with police in Tel Aviv two people were arrested uh one sister
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of a hostage was hospitalized uh her mother said end the war with Hamas how
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significant is this movement of Hostage families and all their allies and is that putting pressure on Netanyahu do
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you think he is going to actually engage in this wholesale ground assault on Rafa
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the protests for an a hostage exchange deal are a tremendous uh pressure on the
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government and uh if they uh grow in size they they will make the current
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Coalition and Netanyahu uh sweat uh even more so that they are uh very uh
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significant um but uh you know as we have seen they are not sufficient yet to
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have gotten Israel to agree uh to a ceasefire uh proposal and so far uh
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Biden's limited threat um has not been enough either so Nathan uh just to uh you know
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you have lived in uh Jerusalem in in Israel for for many years over a decade
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we last spoke to you just days before the October 7th attack if you could
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begin by talking about your response uh to hamas's attack and then what's
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unfolded since whether you were surprised by this by either the scale of the Hamas attack and then of course uh
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what Israel has Unleashed on Gaza the the book tour that I was on began you
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know uh several days before October 7th and I was actually in uh the US and on
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Democracy Now with uh the Title Character Abid Salama um and uh he and I
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had returned uh from an event on Friday night and we got the uh news late that
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night as it was early morning uh Saturday morning uh in Israel Palestine
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and we were both uh utterly shocked and we realized that the entire atmosphere
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that would be um first of all the entire atmosphere that his family was is living
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in was about to change radically and his entire Community was uh locked down
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immediately and uh and and that the whole uh region was going to to change
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uh not to mention the fact that there would be much more hostility uh toward
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the message of this book uh and that it would be much more difficult for us to speak and and indeed uh many of our
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events were cancelled after October 7th and Nathan could you situate of course
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you you've just mentioned your book A Day in the Life of Abid Salama anatomy of a Jerusalem tragedy if you could talk
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about that book what prompted it and situated it in the context of of what we've seen in the last several
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months yeah so you know the the Genesis of the book was really a a a place of
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frustration for me in working on Israel Palestine for many years and watching as
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uh a a heightened period of violence like a war in Gaza immediately brings
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Israel Palestine uh into the news it uh mobilizes uh students and it gets the
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attention of the world and uh leaders around the world invariably call for a
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restoration of Comm and what I wanted to write about in this
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book was that so-called calm which is anything but calm for Palestinians it's
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a system of domination that is uh extremely bureaucratic and elaborate and
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has lasted for over half a century and it is not going anywhere and so long as
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we are only seeing Bloodshed periodic Bloodshed and calling for a restoration
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of the so-called calm that existed before that Bloodshed we are doomed to see that Bloodshed repeat and my
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intention was to choose something seemingly commonplace like a bus accident involving a group of
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Palestinian kindergarteners to describe the system of control and how Ordinary
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People Palestinians and Jews living in this area both navigate through the
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system that's controlling them and also Implement uh and create this system uh
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and and so the idea was to bring our attention to this deeply deeply unjust
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system that uh is fully supported by the United States and its Western allies and
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what was happening Nathan in the West Bank uh prior to October 7th and now the
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number of people who've been killed since killed and arrested the Palestinians uh since October 7th prior
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to October 7th we had all already seen a spike in aggressive behavior from the
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Army and uh armed settlers in the West Bank the un uh issued a uh small report
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at the end of September talking about unprecedented levels of forc displacement of Palestinian uh Bin and
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uh it said that roughly uh 1,100 Palestinian B had been displaced
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in the last year and a half um in the period immediately after October 7th
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while all the eyes of the world were on Gaza an even greater number more than
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1,00 in just the weeks after October 7th more than 1200 Palestinian bwin uh were
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displaced uh in the West Bank there has been a surge uh in violence there have
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been hundreds of Palestinians uh who have been uh killed uh huge numbers who
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have been arrested many of them held without uh trial or charge under
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so-called administrative detention which can be held for up to 6 months and then renewed
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indefinitely and in general the cons the restrictions on movement in the West
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Bank are the worst that they have ever been since the occupation began it now
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takes me uh hours to get uh to locations that took me a half hour or 40 minutes
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in the past um all of the uh jobs virtually all of them in the settlements
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and in Israel which so many Palestinian extended families depend on these are
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the higher paying jobs for Palestinians in the West Bank uh those have all but
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disappeared and so Palestinians are strangled uh economically they are
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strangled with in terms of their uh movement I just went a few weeks ago to
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a dinner uh Anar dinner at at Abed Sal's uh home and his brother uh who his
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entire family lives in anata uh his brother lives in rala and he said he had
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not left rala since October 7th because the restrictions on movement and also
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because of the unsafety the the settler attacks and and and all of the violence
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that is happening uh in the West Bank while the world's attention is focused on Gaza and so Nathan explain you've
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said uh why is why are all the discussions about a one state or
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two-state solution as the possible resolution to this why you think uh the
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discussions around a two-state or one state solution are the wrong discussions to be happening you know these uh
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conversations are uh premised on the notion uh that Israel eventually has to
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choose it has to either give the millions of Palestinians living under its control without basic civil
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rights it has to give them either uh citizenship with equality or statehood
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and uh so many people in the Diplomatic Community would like to have as they
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have been having for decades debates about what a two-state outcome should
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look like whether there should be two states or one state or Confederation or what have you and all of that is an
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enormous distraction from the reality on the ground because the fact is of the matter is Israel does not have to choose
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between two states and one state it doesn't have to choose between giving Palestinians sovereignty or citizenship
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it has a third option which is to continue on the path that it's going down the path that it's going down is a
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slow de facto annexation of the West Bank and absorption of the West Bank
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settlements in area CA a takeover of Palestinian land and a uh constriction
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of Palestinians into small uh walled off or fenced off communities like the town
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of anata where my uh book takes place or uh like Gaza and and so rather than
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focusing on the reality which is a movement in the opposite direction of either two states or equality in one
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state but rather a deepening of the system of control that leading human
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rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and the UN Human Rights Council and alhak
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and bet selum have all described as a system of apartheid rather than addressing that system uh Israel would
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very much like for everybody to debate what would be the ideal outcome what is the future Utopia that we would all like
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and let's only address this structural inequality this systematic domination
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once we've all agreed that uh We've we've landed on the right uh perfect uh
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outcome Nathan before we go we were remiss and not congratulating you on the Pulitzer Prize this week for your book
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um when you came here it was thank you very much it was two days uh uh before
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October 7th your book had just come out you had um events up the Wazoo so many
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of them were cancelled and you're in Berlin right now in Germany Germany has been a remarkable scene where you have
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German police arresting Jewish protesters uh saying that they cannot criticize Israel um what has happened
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with your events from Germany to the United States as you rais questions
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about Israel's war on Gaza in Germany I had an event that was to take place on
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Tuesday in Frankfurt that was uh cancell at the very last minute by the union
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International Club in Frankfurt and none of the people who cancelled the event
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had read the book or knew a thing about uh about it and none of them had or
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provided any substantive uh reason for the cancellation and the same thing was
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happening to me in the United States and uh the reason in Germany is everybody is
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afraid of being accused of anti-Semitism and and what they're really being
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accused of is not anti-Semitism but criticism of Israel that is described as
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as anti-Semitism and Israel has spent years Israel and its allies have spent years in the United States and in
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Germany putting forward a definition of anti-semitism that includes criticism of
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Israel entirely legitimate criticism of Israel and trying to get around our
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basic Democratic commitment to free speech by describing uh uh speech that
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is entirely legitimate as anti-semitic and so that's what's happened here and and who of course is the Clos Ally of
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Israel the most pro-israel Force here in Germany it's the far uh right uh party
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as we see elsewhere ethn nationalists love Israel as a model for the kind of
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place they want to become an ethnonational state that will dominate
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over uh uh people who are not like them in this holiday special we spend the rest of the hour speaking with Nathan
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thr and Abed Slama democracy Now is Juan Gonzalez and I spoke to them in early
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October just after the publication of Nathan's remarkable book A Day in the
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Life of Abed Salama anatomy of a Jerusalem tragedy the book looks at the
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devastating reality for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation through the lens of a Palestinian father Abed
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Salama lives in anata a segregated Palestinian neighborhood on the outskirts of Jerusalem that's surrounded
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on three sides by by the 26t high Israeli separation wall many refer to it
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as the apartate wall in February of 2012 tragedy struck abed's family his
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5-year-old son Milad died in a fiery bus crash during a school field trip to a
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theme park abed's quest to find out what happened to his son was immediately
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hindered because he was a Palestinian living on the wrong side of the separation wall he held the wrong ID to
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pass Israeli military checkpoints and didn't have the right papers to enter the city of Jerusalem Nathan thr who
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lives in Jerusalem wrote about this tragedy in a remarkable 2021 essay for
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the New York Review of Books Juan Gonzalez and I spoke to Abed Salama and Nathan thr and aired the interview on
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October 5th that was two days before hamas's October 7th attack on Southern
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Israel and the start of Israel's assault on Gaza Nathan began by discussing why
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he wrote about Abed Salama and the tragedy of his family you know the this
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event is uh every parents's uh worst nightmare
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and uh an an awful awful tragedy under any
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circumstances uh but it was made uh so much worse by the uh unique
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circumstances in which it took place um by the uh fact that the victims were
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Palestinian that it took place uh on a road that is uh controlled
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by Israel patrolled by Israeli police but on the other side of a separation
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wall a 26t high concrete wall that uh separates and
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segregates uh tens of thousands of uh Palestinian from Jerusalem born and
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raised in Jerusalem residents of the same city I live in uh but who are cut
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off from the city that they were born and raised in uh specifically because of
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their uh ethnic identity and uh this these people live
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in the same city as me but they live in entirely different existence and um the
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parents of the the kids on this bus live in a walled ghetto uh encircled
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on uh three sides by this separation wall and a fourth side uh by a different
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wall that runs in the middle of a segregated Road uh famously called the
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apartheid Road um and inside that walled ghetto which sits just underneath the
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manicured grounds of Israel's most prestigious University you can look look
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down on it from Hebrew University down onto this uh ghetto with um uh trash
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being burned in the street because the municipal Services uh are non-existent there with uh no sidewalks uh roads in
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total disrepair when I drive into this uh area uh to visit Abid and other
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families there I have to pull off uh to the side and uh just to let a bus pass
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on the main artery for tens of thousands of people I'm I'm rolling down my window
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and pulling in my side mirror to let um a a uh regular uh bus pass me um and
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this is just the uh everyday reality of all of these people um they uh receive
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virtually no services from the city that they uh pay taxes to and uh
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they are uh forced to um uh prove that
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they have maintained their residency in the right part of this Enclave or else Israel will strip them of their blue ID
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which allows them to travel in and out of Jerusalem and they live in Terror of having this blue ID taken away from them
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um some of the parents uh in this area have green IDs some have blue they're
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all from the same families and uh the outcome for them on this day was uh very
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different there were real consequences to having a different colored permit on that day Abid was one of the parents who
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um wasn't able to go and look for his uh kid in Jerusalem when he was told that
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that's that's where his boy was um and other um other parents uh did there were
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uh bystanders because the Emergency Services came so very late all of the kids had been evacuated uh by
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just ordinary people in private cars uh before the the first uh uh Israeli uh
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emergency service uh provider arrived and and those people themselves drove
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off in all kinds of different directions depending on what kind of color ID they had and whether they could pass through
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a checkpoint and there was total chaos parents didn't know where their own uh children were and and so this uh awful
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event allowed uh me in telling the story to
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describe the uh entire elaborate system
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of segregation and subjugation and aparte in which uh all of these um
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people live Abed I hate to take you back to that day but it is
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the such an important story for people to understand in introduce us to your
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little boy Milad and talk about what happened that
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day hi everyone
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uh my son Milad he was only 5 years
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old uh he was a a cute boy cool boy
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funny boy uh love the life so the day before the accident in
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the night he said father I want to buy some sweets and uh chocolates for the
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for my trip is it is the first trip with the school uh so I took him to grocery
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around supermarket and he buy uh his things and uh the favorite
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chocolate kinder kits and Juice then we go back
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home uh he was very excited to join his friends in the in the journey in the
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trip so we got to sleep earlier uh next day I was planning to go to Jericho with
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uh for a business with my cousin uh the weather in the morning was
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very stormy so I got up I didn't see Milad
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when his mother prepared him and uh put him in the bus to in in the car to the
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school so uh after an hour uh my cousin
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come and uh we took his car in our way to Jericho then I received a a phone
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call from my nephew he asked me if Milad uh in the
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bus Huda School in the bus to the trip I said I told him yes he's there he said
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Uncle he's uh there's an accident in Jabba Road the bus is
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crashed so uh we went we changed our way from
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Jericho to Jabba Road and that Stormy
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Weather when we arrived uh before the
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accident the place of the accident before there was there is a a military
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Israeli military checkpoint they are uh they closed the
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street before and they they didn't allow to us to pass with a car so I jumped out
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of the car and start running to the place of the to the
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accident uh in my way up you know it's raining and Stormy Weather
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uh military Jeep bued on me bu so I start to I wanted to stop
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them to take me with them they they didn't take me so I continue my way to
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the place of the accident running uphead so when I receiv received
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there there was nothing only I saw the pass uh crashed in the side and the big
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trailer on the other side of the street uh so I start uh asking about what
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happened to the kids where are the kids everyone there was many many people
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around uh there was only one fire truck I didn't see
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any uh ambulances at the time uh I saw only civilian
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uh police officer from the PA so so uh the main thing at that time
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I was wanted to know what happened to the kids where are they and start searching and asking where are the where
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where's the where where's the where's the kids so uh somebody told me that they
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took them to some of them took to AA in Kim Hospital in E
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Jerusalem uh others told me there they took uh uh them to uh military
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space uh Israeli military space in in in around and others told me maybe they
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took them to the uh Hospital in
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ramala so I asked uh I met two guys from Janine I I thought I asked him to take
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me to rala hospital I didn't they are strangers I didn't know them they allowed to take me then they took me to
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to the to the hospital when I arrived there it was very crowdy many many
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people there uh the parents of the victims and
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uh police and uh ambulances uh media it was very very crowded and uh I
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start to search in the building of the hospital so I asked uh uh Dr is in the
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in the reception about what what's I'm looking for my son Milad he's he was in
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the accident when she looked to the list she didn't found his name she she told
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me his name is not in the list of the in this bus so I uh I started to search in the
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hospital rooms I didn't meet I didn't found him uh I met other parents who are from
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our neighborhood I know him they find already find their kids they was injured
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and I asked them if they say if they saw my my son or uh their sons know anything
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about Milad uh everybody was busy in his own case so everybody said no we didn't
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uh find him so here I started
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my started to to search where to search I searched again in the same hospital I
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didn't find him then somebody told me maybe he will they took him to Hada in
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Kim Hospital in E Jerusalem I didn't have a permit to pass
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the checkpoints to Jerusalem they didn't allow to us to pass because I
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have a green ID Palestinian ID so I called the cousin of my who have blue ID
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and as asked him to search in had in K after maybe 1 hour two hour he called me
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back he said I search all the hospital there Milad is not there so after uh six
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or seven hours everyone from the parents find his uh son injured or uh
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safe except uh me and seven other six uh
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families so uh doctor from there came to
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me and uh he said
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uh uh you didn't find your son yet
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uh and uh we have to take uh some blood from
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you uh to make DNA test
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I asked him why he said we have uh six bodies for small
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children and uh the body of the teacher
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bur bur so he asked me also to call my wife
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and my uh son Adam to come to the hospital to
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take blood from B for the test DNA test
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uh I called them it took more than an hour to receive to the hospital
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so they took up a blood from us my wife was
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shocked I was uh crying but at the same time I was
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looking at her face and my Adam some
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[Applause] place they was shocked she didn't cry
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until now I think she's still in in shock Nathan th you write about that dangerous
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road that uh Milad would die on you said everyone knew how quickly Israeli forces
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would descend on a West Bank Road the moment the Palestinian kids started throwing stones at Israeli soldiers are
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set yet the soldiers at the checkpoints the troops at Ram base the fire trucks at
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the settlements nearby they had all done nothing letting the bus burn for more than half an hour if you can talk about
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this this architecture of separation of aate that led to the beginning um so
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that what we hear in abed's story is not just an unfortunate bus crash um but so
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much of which could have been prevented yeah you know the the the um
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particular series of events that unfolded that day were uh entirely
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predictable because of the system of segregation and neglect that exists in
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this area and there had been people who had warned of it there had been previous incidents where tragedy had struck on
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the other side of this wall and uh Israeli uh Services were uh greatly
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delayed or even prevented uh from uh coming to the area a and um and so you
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know what the book H is showing is not
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um you know the the passage that you mentioned those were the words of a man who um uh was screaming at Israeli
34:49
soldiers that morning after he had uh almost single-handedly rescued dozens of
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children he entered a burning bus H repeatedly and pulled kids out of this
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bus and saved dozens of them and he was uh in a state of uh of shock at the end
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of this and he was screaming at every uh person but particularly at the Israelis
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but also the Palestinian emergency service uh providers uh at the scene and
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he said those words uh to an Israeli um
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and uh an Israeli soldier and he was then sarily beaten uh for uh uh saying
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saying what he said um and spent several days in the hospital uh afterward um but
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but the uh the the point is not that the
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Israelis who were at the checkpoint just next to the accident and didn't come or at the military base and took uh just
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next to the accident and took forever to come the point isn't that anybody made a deliberate choice to observe a burning
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bus of kindergarteners and do nothing it's that this entire system was set up
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to ensure that there would be a very delayed response that these people live
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in utter uh neglect and nobody cares about them you also uh write in the book
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um about the small Scorch backpacks on the road after the accident um if you
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can talk more about the effect of the system on children which is the power of
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this and let me ask is really your decision to use this example this bus
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crash the horror of the deaths of the children who died in this um fiery
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crash to show us what's happening in Palestine and Israel yeah it was a very uh deliberate
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choice to choose an incident that um uh
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although horrific you know is an incident that takes place the kind of
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thing that takes place all over the world is a is a is a terrible uh uh car accident or a terrible bus crash and uh
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to show what it means for this seemingly ordinary uh event uh to take place in
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this particular place under this uh system um because uh the the the point
37:35
is that the system itself the policies that are in place the wall that
37:40
encircles these communities the desire to demographically engineer Jerusalem so
37:46
that it that it would have the maximum number uh of Jews and the minimum number
37:51
of Palestinians and to keep for Israel the maximum amount of of land and that
37:57
the entire route of this wall the way that it snakes around uh this community
38:03
and encircles it and traps it in this ghetto all of that is dictated by this
38:09
uh racist logic and uh and I didn't want
38:14
to choose to tell a story that would be exceptional lied and that we would look
38:20
at some particular Act of of violence and asked about the you know
38:26
perpetrators and the Vic and why this event took place on this day I wanted to
38:31
show the system that is crushing people every day um and uh it's it's uh brought
38:40
into sharp relief on the worst day of these people's lives but they are suffering all of these uh obstacles and
38:49
and um and all of this uh uh pain from this system uh day in and day out
38:58
Nathan you also describe in your book not only the the total disregard and
39:04
neglect of the of the is Israeli Services uh to the uh to the victims of
39:10
the accident you also talk about a week later a
39:15
left-wing uh television reporter Israeli television reporter did a story not so
39:22
much about the accident itself but how shocked uh he was at the reaction of the
39:28
of uh of residents of Israeli residents around the area the accident that's
39:35
right um uh several weeks after the accident um an Israeli uh journalist a
39:44
TV journalist uh decided to to create a feature about something that had uh
39:50
shocked him to his core which was that uh many many Israelis on the day of the
39:55
accident young ones and particular were uh writing uh uh how uh happy they were
40:04
that these children had died and um they were what what shocked the the
40:10
journalist his name is aric Weiss what what shocked him um the most was that
40:16
people did it without hiding their identity they felt so comfortable um
40:22
writing uh racist posts and celebrating the death of innocent 5y year olds um
40:29
without without masking uh their their true names and um and so he decided to
40:35
write to to create a feature a TV feature about uh these kids but ALS who
40:42
who wrote the post some of them most of them were kids I think uh and uh and and
40:48
really what his aim was was to uh as he says to to show a mirror to his own
40:55
society and to ask how did we get to a point where uh so many young people feel
41:02
that this is acceptable and aren't afraid even of of of uh being caught uh
41:08
expressing these views and uh they go on he finds the many of the people who
41:13
posted on that day and they go on to proudly reiterate uh the kinds of things
41:20
that they had written uh written that morning and you know the accident was now uh just over 10 years ago
41:28
and um we see that the trends that that um this reporter was highlighting have
41:36
only uh uh gotten worse and we see you know senior ministers in the Israeli
41:42
government who are uh openly racist and um and the you know when you poll young
41:49
Israelis you see they have extremely right-wing uh views and and racist views
41:55
so um it was a it was a precient uh report that he made Abed Sal what has
42:02
been the response uh in your community and your family uh to Nathan focusing on this
42:11
tragedy and the loss of Milad uh in his book A Day in the Life of Abed Sal in
42:18
the beginning my family refused and especially my wife she refused to talk about until now she refused to talk
42:25
about this the accident and uh to talk about Milad our son until now
42:33
so I took this responsibility alone and I decided to share our tragedy
42:41
with uh with Nathan
42:46
uh maybe for uh two reasons the first one is because I I I love all the time
42:54
to talk about my son when I took when I remember him and I
43:00
started to speak about what him about what he was doing about his laughing he
43:06
playing his drawing so I love
43:12
that because of this this is the main reason the second
43:17
reason uh Nathan told me I I I will make
43:23
from your case from this accident I will write an article in the beginning he he
43:31
he write it as an article not a book at and uh this will help your uh
43:38
Community Palestinian Community this article will help them to
43:43
show the the the Americans and the people around the
43:49
world uh how is the Israeli government treat you as
43:58
Palestinians so when he write the article and uh I read it and uh we
44:05
receive uh many important comment comments from around the the world
44:12
that's it's is a very strong article uh he said we will I want to
44:18
make it as a book if you didn't didn't mind of course I didn't mind from the
44:26
beginning as I told you I I want I want to spend many times with a person like
44:33
Nathan talking about my son uh when I start to talk with about him I feel that
44:41
his spirit is a behind me around me in this time I feel Milad sitting with us
44:49
here uh so I L that I think uh and I
44:55
hope uh the book make some changes and helped us as Palestinians
45:03
to to live our lives as all the people around the uh around the world this is
45:10
what I hope to everyone every father every who
45:18
responsible uh on his family he wanted only to live in peace and to grow up his
45:25
children in peace and say and safe and uh as Palestinians we we we
45:32
miss this these things I when you go out from your house you or your son go out
45:40
from his house you didn't expect expect him to come back safe
45:46
or this is what happened because of that I I I I'm happy to share my story with
45:53
uh with Nathan I'm here in New York or in America this my first time here so
46:02
the life here is different I can see uh the people here uh running and
46:09
playing walking enjoyed and the kids
46:14
also uh people here taking their dogs
46:20
around in Parks uh we miss these things I want to
46:26
tell you something something I have a dog a bitb dog in in my house I put him
46:33
in the roof you know the bitb is any a strong dog so I'm I'm afraid to take him
46:39
down to walk with him the street because the street is it's crowded and it's a many many people you we are we lived in
46:48
uh 130,000 people lived in a small square like many as Nathan told you it's a
46:56
small place for or 103,000 people live there I can't walk with my dog in the street I afraid uh to
47:05
attack somebody or somebody here or there uh when I saw the people here in
47:12
America walking with their dogs and uh playing with the with their kids outside
47:18
and parking I I actually honestly I feel
47:24
jealous I want this life for my children for my grandchildren also I
47:30
hope if anyone from the American government hear me I hope I I if you
47:40
want we we want only Justice this is what we want as a
47:45
Palestinians in the Palestinian Authority and Nathan let me ask you um
47:53
you first wrote this essay in 2021 that appear appeared in the New York Review of Books uh headlined a day in the life
48:00
of Abed Salama one man's quest to find his son lays be the reality of Palestinian life under Israeli rule the
48:09
article was 50 pages it in itself was a book and then you expanded it to the
48:15
book um the main title the same a day in the life of Abid Sal what did you learn
48:21
as you expanded this investigation and we've turned to you for analysis in jus Jalem what's happening there um what
48:30
surprised you most and What affected you most as you went on this journey with
48:36
abet the book shares just a page or so of text with the article despite uh
48:44
sharing the same title and um the aim of
48:50
the book is entirely different uh than the article the aim of the book is to to
48:57
immerse people uh viscerally in the lives of Palestinians living on the
49:05
other side of this wall and to make them feel and understand what what that life
49:11
is like and one of the the things that struck me uh more than anything as I was
49:17
working on it was how much pain there is
49:23
just beneath the surface in every single Palestinian family and the book is um
49:30
has abid's name in the title but um it tells the story of many different uh
49:37
characters whose lives uh collided on this day and you
49:43
know one of the the themes of the book is the degree to which this oppressive
49:51
system touches the most intimate uh decisions in people lives I tell a story
49:59
of you know of abid's uh early uh romance and his first marriage and at
50:06
one point um he has a job that takes him um into the the center of of Jerusalem
50:14
and he is afraid of losing his access to the city because of his green colored ID
50:21
and he and many other people at that time went and sought out wives who had
50:26
had blue IDs or Israeli citizenship uh they were choosing Marriage
50:32
Partners in order to keep their freedom of movement in order to keep their jobs
50:38
this is the degree to which this huge oppressive system affects Ordinary
50:45
People I tell a story of a of a woman uh a doctor named Huda dhur who happened to
50:54
be on her way to treat uh uh Bin she worked for the UN Agency for uh
51:00
Palestinian refugees and she was on her way with her medical team to go and and
51:06
treat a group of Bin not too far from the sight of the accident and she stumbled on on this uh horrific site and
51:14
she pulled over with her team and and helped to rescue uh children uh from the
51:19
bus and and I tell part of of huda's story and um uh you know Huda had uh a
51:28
boy a teenage boy who quite naturally threw stones at uh occupying forces in
51:38
his town outside his school who are harassing him and other students uh uh
51:43
every day and at 1:30 in the morning uh Israeli Jeeps show up and
51:51
bang on her door and say to to Huda we're here for your son
51:57
Hadi and she can do absolutely nothing she stands there with tears running down
52:04
her face realizing that the jaws of this uh
52:10
state are going to come and snatch her boy and take him away to who knows where
52:16
and she spent uh uh over 10 days looking just to find where what cell he was in
52:24
where he was located um and that feeling of utter
52:31
powerlessness that is one that every Palestinian family feels powerlessness
52:37
to protect your your own children um so so you know the the the theme for me
52:45
what was most striking as I as I talked to these families is how much pain there
52:51
was and and how much um How much the state had crept into
52:58
every single facet uh of their lives.
