Alon and Rafia, thank you so much for sharing this conversation with the world. My father is from Syria. His mother's family name is Koudmani, and father's family name is Raslan. They had to leave suddenly in the 1950s for their safety after the first US-backed regime change. They went to Beirut from there, but then left again in the late 70s/early 80s due to the dangers of looming war and constant provocations from Israel. I'm 42 years old, and have still never been to al Sham even though I have always wanted so badly to go. I wanted to experience the region for the first time with him, so I just kept holding out, waiting... even when family friends would offer to bring me, I'd respectfully decline. But he, just kept saying no, he didn’t want to go, without ever giving a satisfying reason why. Even after my pleas of how I wanted so badly to see where he grew up, and to hear all his different life stories in the places they happened. It was almost uncharacteristic for him to not want to do something he thought would make me so happy, and I couldn't understand what his deal was. Why wouldn't he want to go? Doesn't he miss his homeland?? His brothers go... why not him? Despite being a pretty empathetic kid, I thought he was just being stubborn for no good reason. Growing up in such a stable environment, I truly had no appreciation or concept of the depth of trauma one can develop living through the things he lived through. Then, having to start all over here, to leave behind his culture and the pressure to assimilate in what ended up being a very pro-Zionist part of Connecticut ( he worked in NYC). It wasn’t until my mid to late twenties that I figured out that he just couldn't bring himself to go. That he'd prefer for Syria and Lebanon to live in his memory as it once was, because the reality of what it has become over the decades is just too devastating for him. He can speak more openly about this now in a way that he couldn't 20 years ago. He says, that a tour of his childhood wouldn't include much, because so much of where he grew up has been destroyed. I'm tearing up now, thinking of how much of himself, and how much of his pain he's always felt he had to push down so that he could carry on with life. And although I accepted long ago that I'll never get to go with him, I also still feel grief around it. I never bring it up anymore, out of respect for him. I don’t want to cause him anymore suffering. My heart breaks even more for the people who are still there having to try to navigate and survive the imperial powers always meddling and plotting and making life so incredibly difficult for them. I feel a tremendous amount of gratitude that my family was able to find a safe home elsewhere, and simultaneously a tremendous amount of guilt that we are not there, helping them fight for liberation. It’s even harder to win these struggles when the people with resources keep leaving. We try to tell ourselves in our family that maybe being in the belly of the beast is helpful to the people suffering there, because we can help fight and raise awareness where the decisions are made, but none of what we do ever feels like enough. I know liberation struggles take time, but as Rafia said at some point here, it has been excruciating watching what is happening on our screens from the safety of our homes. I also feel like it is hard to function sometimes, and I feel I am forever changed after what we've witnessed the past 15 months. I also want to say, Alon, that I've been following you ever since I saw your interview with Al Jazeera about a year ago, and I so appreciate your voice. It’s been hard to not develop a total aversion to the Israeli/hebrew language/accent after this accelerated genocide, but people like you and Ilan and Avi and Nurit help remind me that it can also sound like a hug. Our family is very grateful for the work you are all doing. Please keep going ❤
I so relate to what you heard from your father: my parents have articulated the same feelings. To see a place that was alive to you, because you spent your youth there, decimated or just not even there anymore, is excruciatingly painful. I know when my mother went back to Syria in 1995, this was her experience.
@rafiamahli2660 So much pain and heartbreak globally caused by the American empire. Since my teenage years when I started learning the reality of what this country does here and abroad, I've wrestled with feelings that I don't fit here, same as Alon felt about Israel. I dream of the day this country has fully shifted to being a nation amongst nations. How beautiful that will be.
Glad to see arabs working together no matter what religion they have. The European jews have ALWAYS tried to separate arabs by bringing in religion. But religion is something you can change overnight (convert to another religion, etc.) but you can NEVER change being an arab (or whatever race you are). Aside from that, we are all humans no matter what race, color, etc we are. Like all apples are apples no matter what color or taste they have ....
I feel every word that Rafia said. The government doesn’t care about any of us. I have immense guilt to be alive and relatively safe. There’s absolutely nothing about life that I’m enjoying. To witness the murder of healthcare workers on a daily basis is gut wrenching. And, to see the CMA & AMA not condemning the murder of HCW makes me really really sad and disgusted that this is the system that I’m serving in.
This very much touches on my daughter's father's family. He was born in Kilis on the border between Syria and Turkey. Grew up in Gaziantep. He always told me that his grandfather was Syrian and that there wasn't a border in earlier times. We live in Switzerland and have no contact with him anymore. And he didn't have any contact to his Turkish family, so that side of my daughter's family is basically lost, except for a half brother who we keep in touch with. Thank you so much for what you do, Alon. 🙏
Thank you for this! I was raised German, Czech, and European Jewish (Ashkenazi and a little European Sephardic) but I'm actually of Arab Jewish descent. While I was told that I'm adopted as a child, no one ever told me that I'm Arab. I looked it but everyone, Nazis and Jewish Zionists alike, said that it was due to me being Jewish. Since I'm not Jewish by Halacha, my mother not being Jewish, I was exposed to relentless racism. It took me decades to understand this. Wanting to fit in somewhere, I brainwashed myself into Zionism when I was young (which was very easy, Zionism is the default mode where I live). It only led to more abuse. Because to Zionists, being of Arab descent and not Jewish, I'm just an Arab. It doesn't matter how I was raised. The abuse even threatened my life at one point. It also led to mental illness. I was all but literally shooting myself in the knee. I have been slowly recovering for the last eight years. Do you have the possibility to find children who were stolen from their Yemenite/Mizrahi/Palestinian birth parents and raised in Ashkenazi families? Having grown up with my birth mother, I'm not really one of them, although I was raised to make European Jews appear more Semitic and fight against my own people as well. Genetic DNA testing being illegal in Israel and France, I have no way to find out where my birth grandparents were from for the time being (birth father is Israeli). This rankles me a lot. Having experienced a LOT of Jewish/Israeli racism, I have no hope whatsoever for a happy family reunion, but I would like very much to know my other country of origin. All I can tell from my DNA test is that I'm probably not of Iraqi/Iranian or Eastern Sephardic descent. I might be Syrian or Maghrebian Sephardic. I rankles me that I have to use the ugly word "Mizrahi" to describe my origin because I don't have any better option. My upbringing doesn't count. Whenever I tell people how I was raised without mentioning that "actually, I'm of Middle Eastern descent and not Jewish by Halacha", they treat me as if I was an impostor or someone trying really hard to appropriate a culture that isn't mine. That has given me an intense, visceral loathing for everything Ashkenazi and European Sephardic.
Enjoyed listening both of you, it took me back to my childhood growing up in east of turkey and coming to USA when i was 23. I am glad people like you exist in wild wild west.
Dear Rafia. My parents were English ex-RAF and came to Canada in 1954. I was born in 1958. My mum clung on to her Englishness while my dad immersed himself in Canadian culture. We lived in a neighbourhood that had all kinds of European families but, when l was 21 l decided to emmigrate to England and get to know my aunts, uncles & cousins. I lived there for 27 years but, finally returned "home" to Canada in 2007. Although l had a wonderful life and career in England, l don't miss it one bit. I'm wondering if it's the difference between Eastern & Western cultures or, being Canadian and part of a US run NATO?
As an Arab-British myself, your conversion made me weep...even though i live my life the way i want: off grid, growing my food, no money ( not taking part in financing wars by paying taxes), i own nothing valuable apart from my family of animals and books, living in one of the most beautiful places in central Europe in the mountains, i miss being around My people, speaking Arabic, eating our foods, the smells of fresh coffee, my Bedouin grandmother's amazing smell, her cooking, the taste of a freshly picked date( balah), the sugary figs, the spicy freshly pressed olive oil, ahhh, i can go on and on. Also, what has been happening in Gaza is making me questioning everything,...crying daily is not helping but this is what i can do. Please keep speaking up, keep inspiring and educating people. Love❤
This is a powerful moving interview. I agree we’re at that point where no one who is supposed to protect us (our governments??!!) are!! We are the ones we’re waiting for. Thank you!
War is never what we see on television, what we hear from politicians. War has always been and always will be human stories and destinies. Those who have not experienced war in the role of civilians and whose closest relatives have experienced war cannot and will never understand the tragedy of war. That is why Americans are benevolent towards war. It was never conducted on their territory. Thank you for this episode.
Great guest and conversation Alon, but you should have been a little more polite at the end, you cut the conversation abruptly. Anyway it was a very insightful beginning of your new series. I appreciate it ‼️ Thank You ‼️
You are an amazing voice. Thank you. I wish my Palestinian Nakba survivor husband was still alive to listen to, watch you.
That's such a beautiful and generous thing to say. Thank you very much
Amazing Aron. You haven’t forgotten your Arab identity. Wish the Mizrahis in general hold their Arab identity with pride!
your commentaries are always very deeply thought out and well worth listening to. You're doing incredible work.
Thank you!
What a great initiative to speak to each other as Arabs in exile 🎉❤
Watching this in context of what Ritter and other said recently, I'm very happy I did. Thank you, Alon and Rafia.
Amazing! I love these conversations please keep them coming ❤
Thank you! I will
I loved the honesty with which you both expressed your feelings,proving that people of good will have so much in common.
You and your guest are introspective gentle souls. I pray for the world to have this compassion.. thank you for your videos!
Alon and Rafia, thank you so much for sharing this conversation with the world. My father is from Syria. His mother's family name is Koudmani, and father's family name is Raslan. They had to leave suddenly in the 1950s for their safety after the first US-backed regime change. They went to Beirut from there, but then left again in the late 70s/early 80s due to the dangers of looming war and constant provocations from Israel.
I'm 42 years old, and have still never been to al Sham even though I have always wanted so badly to go. I wanted to experience the region for the first time with him, so I just kept holding out, waiting... even when family friends would offer to bring me, I'd respectfully decline. But he, just kept saying no, he didn’t want to go, without ever giving a satisfying reason why. Even after my pleas of how I wanted so badly to see where he grew up, and to hear all his different life stories in the places they happened. It was almost uncharacteristic for him to not want to do something he thought would make me so happy, and I couldn't understand what his deal was. Why wouldn't he want to go? Doesn't he miss his homeland?? His brothers go... why not him?
Despite being a pretty empathetic kid, I thought he was just being stubborn for no good reason. Growing up in such a stable environment, I truly had no appreciation or concept of the depth of trauma one can develop living through the things he lived through. Then, having to start all over here, to leave behind his culture and the pressure to assimilate in what ended up being a very pro-Zionist part of Connecticut ( he worked in NYC). It wasn’t until my mid to late twenties that I figured out that he just couldn't bring himself to go. That he'd prefer for Syria and Lebanon to live in his memory as it once was, because the reality of what it has become over the decades is just too devastating for him. He can speak more openly about this now in a way that he couldn't 20 years ago. He says, that a tour of his childhood wouldn't include much, because so much of where he grew up has been destroyed. I'm tearing up now, thinking of how much of himself, and how much of his pain he's always felt he had to push down so that he could carry on with life. And although I accepted long ago that I'll never get to go with him, I also still feel grief around it. I never bring it up anymore, out of respect for him. I don’t want to cause him anymore suffering.
My heart breaks even more for the people who are still there having to try to navigate and survive the imperial powers always meddling and plotting and making life so incredibly difficult for them. I feel a tremendous amount of gratitude that my family was able to find a safe home elsewhere, and simultaneously a tremendous amount of guilt that we are not there, helping them fight for liberation. It’s even harder to win these struggles when the people with resources keep leaving.
We try to tell ourselves in our family that maybe being in the belly of the beast is helpful to the people suffering there, because we can help fight and raise awareness where the decisions are made, but none of what we do ever feels like enough. I know liberation struggles take time, but as Rafia said at some point here, it has been excruciating watching what is happening on our screens from the safety of our homes. I also feel like it is hard to function sometimes, and I feel I am forever changed after what we've witnessed the past 15 months.
I also want to say, Alon, that I've been following you ever since I saw your interview with Al Jazeera about a year ago, and I so appreciate your voice. It’s been hard to not develop a total aversion to the Israeli/hebrew language/accent after this accelerated genocide, but people like you and Ilan and Avi and Nurit help remind me that it can also sound like a hug. Our family is very grateful for the work you are all doing. Please keep going ❤
I so relate to what you heard from your father: my parents have articulated the same feelings. To see a place that was alive to you, because you spent your youth there, decimated or just not even there anymore, is excruciatingly painful. I know when my mother went back to Syria in 1995, this was her experience.
@rafiamahli2660 So much pain and heartbreak globally caused by the American empire. Since my teenage years when I started learning the reality of what this country does here and abroad, I've wrestled with feelings that I don't fit here, same as Alon felt about Israel. I dream of the day this country has fully shifted to being a nation amongst nations. How beautiful that will be.
Glad to see arabs working together no matter what religion they have. The European jews have ALWAYS tried to separate arabs by bringing in religion. But religion is something you can change overnight (convert to another religion, etc.) but you can NEVER change being an arab (or whatever race you are). Aside from that, we are all humans no matter what race, color, etc we are. Like all apples are apples no matter what color or taste they have ....
I feel every word that Rafia said. The government doesn’t care about any of us. I have immense guilt to be alive and relatively safe. There’s absolutely nothing about life that I’m enjoying. To witness the murder of healthcare workers on a daily basis is gut wrenching. And, to see the CMA & AMA not condemning the murder of HCW makes me really really sad and disgusted that this is the system that I’m serving in.
This very much touches on my daughter's father's family. He was born in Kilis on the border between Syria and Turkey. Grew up in Gaziantep. He always told me that his grandfather was Syrian and that there wasn't a border in earlier times. We live in Switzerland and have no contact with him anymore. And he didn't have any contact to his Turkish family, so that side of my daughter's family is basically lost, except for a half brother who we keep in touch with.
Thank you so much for what you do, Alon.
🙏
Thank you for continuing to speak out. ❤
Thank you for this! I was raised German, Czech, and European Jewish (Ashkenazi and a little European Sephardic) but I'm actually of Arab Jewish descent. While I was told that I'm adopted as a child, no one ever told me that I'm Arab. I looked it but everyone, Nazis and Jewish Zionists alike, said that it was due to me being Jewish. Since I'm not Jewish by Halacha, my mother not being Jewish, I was exposed to relentless racism. It took me decades to understand this. Wanting to fit in somewhere, I brainwashed myself into Zionism when I was young (which was very easy, Zionism is the default mode where I live). It only led to more abuse. Because to Zionists, being of Arab descent and not Jewish, I'm just an Arab. It doesn't matter how I was raised. The abuse even threatened my life at one point. It also led to mental illness. I was all but literally shooting myself in the knee. I have been slowly recovering for the last eight years.
Do you have the possibility to find children who were stolen from their Yemenite/Mizrahi/Palestinian birth parents and raised in Ashkenazi families? Having grown up with my birth mother, I'm not really one of them, although I was raised to make European Jews appear more Semitic and fight against my own people as well.
Genetic DNA testing being illegal in Israel and France, I have no way to find out where my birth grandparents were from for the time being (birth father is Israeli). This rankles me a lot. Having experienced a LOT of Jewish/Israeli racism, I have no hope whatsoever for a happy family reunion, but I would like very much to know my other country of origin. All I can tell from my DNA test is that I'm probably not of Iraqi/Iranian or Eastern Sephardic descent. I might be Syrian or Maghrebian Sephardic. I rankles me that I have to use the ugly word "Mizrahi" to describe my origin because I don't have any better option. My upbringing doesn't count. Whenever I tell people how I was raised without mentioning that "actually, I'm of Middle Eastern descent and not Jewish by Halacha", they treat me as if I was an impostor or someone trying really hard to appropriate a culture that isn't mine. That has given me an intense, visceral loathing for everything Ashkenazi and European Sephardic.
Thanks so much for this- I related so heavily to what Rafia said of her experiences.
Thanks!
Enjoyed listening both of you, it took me back to my childhood growing up in east of turkey and coming to USA when i was 23. I am glad people like you exist in wild wild west.
Its'good to know there are some of us here (: Thanks, Yusuf
Great interview brother
Thanks for this fascinating discussion, exploring the wealth of complex identities
Dear Rafia. My parents were English ex-RAF and came to Canada in 1954. I was born in 1958. My mum clung on to her Englishness while my dad immersed himself in Canadian culture. We lived in a neighbourhood that had all kinds of European families but, when l was 21 l decided to emmigrate to England and get to know my aunts, uncles & cousins. I lived there for 27 years but, finally returned "home" to Canada in 2007. Although l had a wonderful life and career in England, l don't miss it one bit. I'm wondering if it's the difference between Eastern & Western cultures or, being Canadian and part of a US run NATO?
Amazing conversation! Thank you both. I am not an Arab but can totally relate!
As an Arab-British myself, your conversion made me weep...even though i live my life the way i want: off grid, growing my food, no money ( not taking part in financing wars by paying taxes), i own nothing valuable apart from my family of animals and books, living in one of the most beautiful places in central Europe in the mountains, i miss being around My people, speaking Arabic, eating our foods, the smells of fresh coffee, my Bedouin grandmother's amazing smell, her cooking, the taste of a freshly picked date( balah), the sugary figs, the spicy freshly pressed olive oil, ahhh, i can go on and on.
Also, what has been happening in Gaza is making me questioning everything,...crying daily is not helping but this is what i can do.
Please keep speaking up, keep inspiring and educating people.
Love❤
This is a powerful moving interview. I agree we’re at that point where no one who is supposed to protect us (our governments??!!) are!! We are the ones we’re waiting for. Thank you!
Great interview, very enlightening
Thank you very much
Thank you so much, Alon
Turkish/balkan jew here ❤
War is never what we see on television, what we hear from politicians. War has always been and always will be human stories and destinies. Those who have not experienced war in the role of civilians and whose closest relatives have experienced war cannot and will never understand the tragedy of war. That is why Americans are benevolent towards war. It was never conducted on their territory. Thank you for this episode.
This was amazing, thank you both so much. I wonder,
?
The George Floyd protests really freaked out the ruling class.
Great guest and conversation Alon, but you should have been a little more polite at the end, you cut the conversation abruptly. Anyway it was a very insightful beginning of your new series. I appreciate it ‼️ Thank You ‼️
Free Luigi! 💕
Human capital.
Thanks!