Arab Muslim Speaks About Her Life in Israel | More with Marissa Streit

Sophia, I've been looking forward to having this conversation with you, woman to woman, mom to mom. We both live here in the United States. We're lucky we can speak the truth. Um, there's a lot of moral confusion. There's general confusion about what's happening right now in the Middle East. And I think I have a real opportunity to hear firsthand from you. What was it like growing up as a Muslim Arab in Israel? Um, how are you treated? How was your family treated? And your thoughts about what's happening right now. So let's get into this. Let's start with just your background. Tell me a little bit. Where were you born? Where did you grow up and how do you make it here to the United States? Yes. So I was born in Israel. I'm an Arab, uh, Muslim from Israel. I grew up in Haria, which is a Jewish town. Um, my mother was illiterate. She didn't know reading and writing because her parents didn't believe that girls should go to school. But Israel, after it was established, it forced all children to go to school, including, uh, the Bedouin girls. And this is how I got the opportunity to be educated and not, and, um, receive the fate of being on the fields and herding sheep, which was supposed to be my fate, um, which was supposed to be also my mother's fate. I, um, have electrical engineering degree in Tel Aviv university, and I have a master's degree in business administration from Stanford university. I live today in the United States and I have two little boys and I work in tech. Wow. You know, there's a lot of criticism about what Israel is doing right now. Um, I've collected some of them from the internet and frankly, I want to confront you with some of the criticism and I'd like to ask that you be honest and open about it. I think this is a time where honesty is really important. Um, and so if you're okay, I might be a little confrontational, but I, I'd like to bring up some of these issues. Um, first of all, I know that you've been speaking out in favor of Israel and let me just start with one question. Are you connected somehow to the Israeli government? Are you getting paid? Um, are you threatened by the Israeli government to speak in favor of Israel? I just, I want to, I, I really want to know and like, let's just get this. Yeah. Elephant in the room. Yes. I heard this rumor a couple of times. No, I'm not being paid by the Israeli government. I don't know anyone from the Israeli government. No one from the Israeli government contacted me. So absolutely not. I'm just talking from the need to say the truth about Israel. The need to say the truth, full stop. Why? Because I see a lot of misinformation being spread. I see a lot of injustice for the Palestinian people and for the Israeli people, the people who are calling to be the, they're pro Palestine, but actually are spreading the propaganda of the terror organization that is oppressing people of Palestine. They're not doing it for Palestine. And as an Arab Muslim woman from the same land, this is something that is truly painful for me. And I have to speak the truth. If I am the one who lived the truth and lived that reality, then I'm obligated to speak up. You talk about how you lived the reality of growing up in Israel, a Jewish state. Um, there is quite a bit of criticism against Israel calling it apartheid. Um, having Arabs, uh, live in, in Israel, Muslims live in Israel. I know it's just a little over 20% of the population in Israel is Arab and Muslim. And I'd like to hear from you, how were you treated as a Muslim? Were you segregated? I heard, I saw a comment, um, by some commentators that Arabs are expected to live in, in only Arab quarters or in certain areas. Can you provide some truth and clarity on that? That's absolutely wrong and could not be farther from the truth. Israel is not an apartheid state. Israel is a strong, beautiful multi-ethnic democracy that provides its 20% Arab civilians, Arab citizens, which most of them are Muslims, but we also have Christians and Druze full rights just as they give the Jewish people. I as Arab citizen of Israel received full rights. I received education, healthcare. My mom was a single mom. So we depended on, on welfare. This is how I was. I grew up. Um, Arabs, you have Supreme court judges, you have Knesset members, like parliament members, you have ministers. They can achieve like the highest ranks and the, you know, everywhere. We had an Arab Supreme court judge who sent the ex president of the state who is Jewish to jail is, can this happen in an apartheid state? It could not happen that an Arab justice would send a Jewish president to jail. Um, you, you talked about segregation. This is also false. I lived as an Arab in a Jewish town. 40 years ago, my mom moved to a Jewish town. She lived there. This is where I grew up. Arabs can go to Jewish public schools. They can go to Arab schools. They can go to mixed schools. Arabs actually can live almost like everywhere. Um, in Israel it would be open for them. But frankly, I think Jews cannot live everywhere. There are villages of Arabs in Israel. Like Israel has a lot of, they have our villages, they have Jewish towns and they have mixed towns like Akko for example, Haifa is another example. Tel Aviv is multi-ethnic. You have everything and all the kinds. Uh, and if ethnicities in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem is a mixed city. We have Arabs and Jews living side by side. Um, the coexistence is there and you have the Arab villages, which frankly you won't find Jews living there. It's not very welcome. Uh, but you would see a lot of Jewish towns that you have Arabs living there and we see more and more of that. I grew up in Haria. My sister lives now in Harish, which is a Jewish town. Um, you have Arabs in Ramat Gan. You have Arabs in Rishon Lezion. You have them in Netanya, which all these are Jewish towns. What about discrimination? Do you ever feel like the population discriminated against you knowing that you're Arab or Muslim, like treated differently? You would always have this extreme, small minority of people who are blinded by hate or have well-intentioned ignorance and think that all the Arabs want to kill you. And then you would face this, uh, this, I don't know if to call it discrimination because I did not face discrimination. It's the opposite. But you would face some hatred from these kinds of people. I had it in my childhood and my mom really taught us to be very compassionate. Um, to, she would tell us that this person, this kid, his dad is in jail or, or his mom is sick. So, so he's just like, you know, being frustrated and telling you these things. She never let us victimize ourselves. And on the other hand, also, when I, when I went to, to, to, to the village, because I studied in an Arab Arabic school and in the village also there, I faced some hatred because I was this girl who came from the Jewish town. They would call me filthy Jew. So I, I, this hatred and, and, and bias exist in both sides, but this is not the country. The country does not have discrimination. In fact, Israel makes it easier for Arabs to get to university. You know that the SAT score that you need in order to get, let's say for, um, uh, engineering, they make the bar a little bit lower because they see that maybe the percentage of Arab is not 20% of the people who are going to these, um, kind of studies. So they make it easier for them to, to, to help them, to help them. I went to study at Tel Aviv university and the university automatically offered me, um, I think it was, um, 15% extra time in the exams because I'm an Arab. So they want to make it easier for me because they're assuming that I didn't want to study Hebrew in school. And Hebrew is not my first language. Automatically. I got this. When I went to Stanford as an international student, I didn't get this extra time. So Israel is really trying hard and is doing so to bring the Arabs together. And you see a lot of people are protesting against Israel, but you don't see Arab Israelis protesting against Israel in this war. They're actually most of them think that 70% at least openly say that they are supporting Israel in this war against Hamas. So can we different, can we differentiate for a minute? There is the Arab Israelis, people like you and your family that really feel like they're part of the fabric of the Israeli culture. And then there are the Palestinians, those who identify as Palestinians and they live in areas like Gaza possibly or the West bank. Um, for those who are living in Gaza, what are your thoughts about the discrimination against them? A lot of people call Gaza a, an open air prison where the children are poor. The families are poor. Um, they have no opportunities. What is your response to the criticism that Gaza is essentially an open open air prison created by Israel? We need to put the facts right. Israel left Gaza in 2005 meaning in 2005 there was no Jew alive in Gaza. They even took the graves with them. What they left in Gaza was all the greenhouses that the Jewish people used to grow the flowers and other things and export them to Europe. Okay. It was very successful. Um, um, agriculture, right? It was ethnical cleansing of the Jews. If you want thousands of families, forcefully had to being uprooted from Gaza. And it was a test case for self governing Gaza here. Gaza, we left, we give you the keys to the greenhouses. We're leaving everything. You, you, you, you're free. Just, just become, become a state. Be, we were letting you to be. And the sentiment in Israel at the, at, during that time, I remember it because I was 15 back then was a lot of hope that now Gaza is going to become the Singapore of the Middle East. And we were talking about the high rises buildings that you saw that Gaza has. So it's really going to be Singapore. But what we, what actually happened is that Hamas went in the following days, burned all the greenhouses, not giving the Palestinians the opportunity of economic prosperity. And then they got elected a few months later in democratic elections to become the sovereign government of Gaza. And once they got elected, they took the representative of the other party and all the people who supported the other party, which is the Fatah and just threw them from the roof, executed them openly. You can see the pictures. They killed everyone who didn't agree with them. They would blame them that they are spies or traitors. Gaza is getting billions and millions in monetary aid. This money doesn't get to the people. It goes to Hamas to fund its terror against Israeli civilians and Israeli cities. And it goes to the leadership. Look at the leadership. Abu Marzook, Khaled Mashal, Ismail Haniya. All of them are multibillionaires. What did they do? That they are multibillionaires. They took the people's money. They took the cement to build underground tunnels, 300 miles of underground tunnels. Instead of building schools, hospitals, universities, they stole the fuel from people. They're executing gays. You cannot be gay in Gaza. I see a lot of gay people, marching, you know, supporting Hamas. You won't survive one minute there if you go to Gaza. If the Palestinians are suffering so much under Hamas, why aren't they speaking out? Why are they, you know, you see them marching in their own streets, celebrating when Jews are killed. Why aren't they fighting against Hamas, speaking out against Hamas? We saw what Hamas is capable of on October 7th. We saw it very clearly. They would just, will kill you. They have no regard to human life. You will just be killed. That's what they were going to do. To learn about really what Palestinians think, you need to go and interview the Palestinians, the Gazans who run away and are now in Europe. I watched an interview with two of them last week. They don't want Hamas. They condemn Hamas. They're saying that Hamas took everything from the people of Gaza and it must be removed and they cannot wait for Israel to remove it. They want peace. They want education. They want safety. So one of the things that I think is very difficult for outsiders, Americans who are not so embedded in the fight, they look at the number of Palestinians, children, moms, young people who are dying under the current conflict. And they compare the numbers to the number of Jews and Israelis that have died. And the number of Israelis is not nearly the same numbers of Gazans that have died. You hear this term, proportionate response. Shouldn't Israel engage in proportionate response? Why should so many more Palestinians die in this war? In comparison to Israelis. What are your thoughts about that? I mean, I mean, you're a Muslim. These are your people. Yeah. First of all, as, as, as a mother, as, as, as a Muslim woman, this really breaks my heart. The loss of, of every life is so tragic. And I feel terribly for, for, for the kids and women and innocent people who have to pay the price of the atrocities and the terror and the actions of, of, of these people who are, who are hiding behind the population, putting their civilians in the front and hiding behind of them. The argument of proportionate response, this narrative is something that is only feeding and supporting the purposes and the actions of the terror organization. For them, they want to use the argument of proportionate response so they can, when they use the proportionate response and it actually incentivize them to have more of their children, more of their women, and more of their innocent civilians being killed because then they know that the world is going to stop Israel or stop the, the, the other party from, from, you know, fighting the terrorist organization. The terrorist organization can continue to live as long as they kill as many of their people, because then the world is going to stop from fighting them back. Is this the message that we want to send the world? Is this the message that we want to send to the terrorist organization? As many of your people are going to die, you're fine. Because, because we are going to stop the other party from fighting you back. So you're basically saying that as long as we tell them that their numbers being high, the death of the number of dead Palestinians being high, which is clearly what they're after as they use their own people as human shields is like a victory for them in propaganda. And we are incentivizing it by calling for proportionate response. We're basically saying to them, yeah, keep using your kids as human shields. That's how you'll meet. You'll win the, the court of public opinion. Exactly. Exactly. They're using the liberal values that have a high regard in human life to continue with their terrorism and to continue killing people. They just like hijacked this entire thing. And another good example about proportionality. When you look in the second world war, Britain lost substantially less people than Nazi Germany. What would you say that Britain was wrong in fighting the Nazis because the Nazis lost more people? This is just a weak argument. Yeah. I'm not sure there was any war that has ever fought with the idea of proportionate response. I don't think the word proportionate response has ever come about until, until Israel. What war do you engage with when somebody attacks you and say, Oh, I will only proportionate me. I will moderate how my victories, I will not push back as much as I can in order to stop the war. I will just come after as many people as you came after. I, I, I, I'm not sure as you're thinking, as you're talking about this, I'm thinking to myself, has the word proportionate response ever come about until now, until recently? I don't know. I, I, I, I, I never heard of it, but I didn't live through many wars except for the Israeli wars. But we have also to call out, there is ill assumption here that Israel is like going, is, is aiming at a certain number of civilians dead. Israel is not looking for proportion, is not trying to kill quid for quo. They're not trying to say, okay, you killed like 1400. Let me kill 10 X or five X, or it's not Israel's goal. Israel goal is to return the hostages, destroy Hamas so that the people of Israel could live safely. If it means that zero civilians is innocent, civilians is dead on the Palestinian side. Israel would choose that a hundred percent. They're not interested in killing innocent civilians. But wouldn't you say that if you allow Israel to just go in and do whatever they want in Gaza, then are you not allowing Israel to do ethnic cleansing genocide? I mean, these are some of the terms that you hear when people talk about this issue where, you know, giving a, uh, uh, full authority to Israel to just attack the small little space. But it doesn't, it doesn't meet the fact it doesn't meet the reality. The only ethical cleansing that happens in Gaza is the ethical cleansing of the Jews who are uprooted from the Gaza Strip in 2005. They had to leave their homes behind. They have to leave their businesses behind everything. They were forcefully taken from there by the idea of the idea of was fighting the Jews who were living in Gaza and just like pulling them outside of their homes. Yeah, but that was a long time ago ago. But now when Israel is launching rockets into there and you basically bombing hospitals, bombing the streets, I mean, bombing the refugee camps, you see little kids, you know, bombed. First of all, Israel does not bomb hospitals. This is exactly why Hamas has the command center under Al Shifa hospital, which was also confirmed by the U S that this is the case. The command center of this terrorist organization is underneath a hospital. Think about it. Israel asked the people of Gaza to evacuate. Israel opened humanitarian corridors for them to evacuate. It's secured humanitarian corridors for them to evacuate. If that's true, Israel called tens of thousands, made tens of thousands phone calls to Palestinians, to Gazans asking them to leave. And they were crying back to Israel and telling them that Hamas took their car keys. They cannot leave. It's not even he asked the people to stay in the war zone. He appeared in every television. Just, just look for the videos. He told that there is no hijra. There is no leaving. You cannot leave to the South. They took the people car keys. They blocked the roads. They bombed the cars who tried to run away. So who, I just don't understand these, these, these arguments. Yeah. I mean, look, these are not my personal arguments, but I'm repeating some of the things I'm seeing online. But some of the things that people are saying online is that it was Israel who blocked the Palestinians from moving away from where the attacks were going to take place. So they only need to listen to the recordings of the Palestinians who's saying otherwise. They need to look at the videos. They need to look at the videos of them shooting the people from the roofs, people who are holding, you know, the white flag of surrender who just want to move to safety. They had the white flag, you know, to signal to the IDF that we're just civilians. Please let us move. And they didn't know that the terrorist organization, which is supposed to be their government is actually going to kill them. They killed the people who held up the white flags. They did. Sophia, where, where do we go from here? How do we get more people like us, a Jew and a Muslim moms, citizens of the world, maybe how do we get, what is the solution? What is the solution for Israel and the Palestinians and the Gazans? And frankly, college campuses around America where we're seeing more and more hate that is developed over this, this current conflict. First of all, we have to remove Hamas, which is a terror organization for the Palestinian people. Because if you care about the Palestinian people, truly care about them, you wouldn't want them to live under a terror organization that is killing them, that is oppressing them, that is taking all the resources and leaving them with nothing. This is the first thing that we need to do. If you care about Palestinians and also Israel, this is what it needs also to do with regards to the Hamas. So they have to remove them. It's a Nazi organization who wants to inhilate the Jews, the Jews. They talk about this openly and they said that they would repeat the atrocities of October 7th again and again and again. So Israel doesn't have any choice but to stop this. And after this is done, remove this source of evil and hatred towards the two people. I think this is the time for the international community to come together and really give the Palestinian children what they need. Give them the healthcare that they need, give them the education, give them the resources, all the monetary aid that today is going to the Hamas and to the bank accounts of the leadership, the corrupt leadership, the terrorist leadership. Give it to the people. Build their schools, build universities, rebuild the greenhouses. Do you think that Jews living in Europe or in America are at risk? I think there are, there is imminent risk for Jews, Jewish life everywhere. And if there is one thing that I really realized this past month is that Jewish people have to have their own state where they can be safe and can defend themselves because the rise of antisemitism is just shocking. What about Christians or non-Muslim believers? I know that sometimes they're labeled as infidels. Do you have any concern for, I guess, Americans, Europeans who are, who don't hold the Muslim faith? I mean, when you talk about Hamas's ambitions, what are your, what are your thoughts around that? I think that the Christians would be next. The Jews are first in Israel probably, and then elsewhere. And then it will be the Christians next. You saw what ISIS did to the Christian places and where it used to rule, right? It took down places, historical Christian places and just tear them down. I feel like as an Arab, I was very safe in the Jewish state. I knew that I was safe in the Jewish state. I don't think Jews can be safe in an Arab state. And I don't think they can be safe anywhere because you look at the pictures from London, what is happening there. You look at the pictures from last veterans day in New York, when the protester is taking down the American flag on the veterans day. Is this something that is acceptable? They're violating the American values. They violating the liberal values. And I don't think it will stop with the Jews. What's happening in Israel is the war between liberalism and between, and, and, and darkness, liberalism versus dark darkness. And Israel is at the forefront of this war, but we need to make it clear and all the countries and nations who value liberalism, they should stand behind Israel and they should stop whatever is happening in their own countries because they're next. I want to ask you another follow up question to your, um, your concern with this ideology and my concern with what is happening in the West here in the United States. We've seen the protests on campus. Um, we've seen violence in America's streets. What do you think should be done with college students who are engaging in pro Hamas protest? I mean, we will, I'm a huge believer of freedom of speech. Uh, I believe that I will, I may not agree with you on everything, but I'll defend your right to say it. I think it's an important part of what American liberalism and liberty means. Um, and I am struggling with wrapping my head around the idea of allowing students, especially who have come from other countries, um, and can go back to whatever other countries who will protest on our campuses chanting death to Israel, death to America from the river to the sea. Palestine will be free. I struggle with that. I struggle with the idea of freedom of speech and the idea that people come here and destroy what we built here in America and chant favorably for terrorism. And I'm curious, what are your thoughts on that? Given that you have been on Stanford's campus, uh, you have seen what's been going on over there. You lived in Israel, you lived in Arab towns. You're so familiar with this ideology. How should I wrap my head around this? Yes, it should be very clear. Again, as an Arab Muslim woman that I know that the freedom of speech is not something that you can take all this for granted. I support freedom of speech and I'm all behind it, but we need to be clear when the freedom of speech becomes violence speech, when it becomes incitement to terror and violence, when it becomes defamation and spreading lies, this is not acceptable. This is not freedom of speech. This is called for terrorism. This is called for violence. This is called for hate and we should put a very clear line between the two. What do you think should be done to these students? I mean, young people do dumb things. They think dumb things. I mean, what, what do you think should be the consequence for doing that? Like what if they, you know, what if they don't really mean it? What if they just got carried away? I mean, I've just been here. I'm trying to collect my thoughts around some of the things that I've been seeing online where people say they're just young, they're just college students. You know, everybody thinks dumb things when they're in college. I can give them the example of my friend when we, she was 13. She heard my teacher glorifying the Intifada and telling us that if one day we can become a Shaheed and we should take that. He said that enough times that my friend told me one day that she wants to become a suicide bomber. This is how terrorists are being made and they can be made in a very young age, as young as my friend who was 13 and could be even maybe younger than that. If you brainwash the kid from, from a younger age. And some people walk from a reality on the campuses where from a very young age, they taught you to hate Jews, that Jews are responsible for all the atrocities in the world and you need to resist the Jews. And then maybe in their countries, they didn't have Jews, but then they come to Stanford. All the, the, the footage of, of the war is flooding, you know, their, their social media. The news channels are also continuing with this hatred and this biased, you know, narrative. And then people on campus are chanting the same thing that when they were brainwashed, when they were younger, it's the same rhetoric in Tifada from the river to the sea, smash the Jewish state, Matt at Israel, Israel is dead on, on this land. You don't deserve life. And, and, and, and they're pressing as an Arab Muslim who experienced some of this reality. They're pressing all the buttons. People get fired up and it's very soon that just one student will take action. You need only one student to make it like tragic. And I think the university leadership administration should lead by example, just as they expected us to lead. They should stop acting like a VC who cares about the brand, who cares about the LPs, the money that they would raise to the school. And just like, you know, just let's keep everyone happy. They need to start become an education institution. They forgot that they're an education institution as it, and it doesn't make sense when you go and talk to them. And they would tell you that this is hard to influence the behavior of the students. An actual answer that I received. Do you, do you think it's, um, do you think it's an exaggeration when somebody says that being anti-Israel is being an anti-Semite? Can you be anti-Israel, but still say, I have a lot of Jewish friends and I have no problem with Jews. Anti-Israel as, as like, you're maybe criticizing some of the policies of Israel or anti the, the, the idea of Israel, which, which one of them? Anti the existence. Can you, so here, let me rephrase this. Can you chant from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free and still say that you are not an anti-Semite? No, you cannot. This is like a paradox. You cannot. One of the things that, um, a lot of the, um, mechanisms that I saw being used on campus and, you know, student organizations such as the student justice for Palestine, that has nothing to do with justice or standing for the Palestinians. They say like, we're not anti-Semitic. We're anti-Zionist. It's practically like saying, I'm for, I'm not against women, but I don't think women should have rights. What does anti-Zionism mean? What does Zionism mean? Zionism mean that the Jewish people have the right to have a state where they can live safely and free of persecution. This is something that happens to Jews throughout their history from the beginning. And we see it again today. Like we don't need to look back to the past. It's happening now. This is what Zionism means that the Jews can have a place where they are free from persecution and can live safely. How can you not hate Jews? Like if you love Jews, you should want this for them. So saying like, I'm not anti-Semitic, I'm anti-Zionist or I'm not anti-Semitic against Israel or the idea of Israel. It just, it's a paradox. It's ridiculous. I want to ask you one last question, which is basically the same question I asked you at the top of this conversation. Sophia, why are you doing this? You are obviously saying things that are quite controversial. Not very popular, certainly not where you live. You're a Muslim. Why are you risking your life to share what you're sharing? I'd imagine you are risking your life. And so why, why are you doing this? Are you, is somebody paying you? Is somebody pressuring you? I was just, what's in it for you? Yes. I am risking my life. I was targeted by Hamas supporters after one event that I spoke in. I was targeted by the student justice for Palestine at Stanford. I am risking my life, but I cannot stop from speaking the truth. I've been in that reality. I lived through my experiences and I know what is the truth. And when you see all these lies being spread, it's something that I just cannot stop. I don't have the option of not speaking up. I don't feel like I have the option to not stop it. And I don't see here any conflict with the fact that I'm a Muslim because I don't think that anything of this is against Islam. Actually Islam values people who speak up the truth, values justice. And for the Muslim people, which is the majority, if not all the people of Gaza, if you care about the Islam, you should care about the people. And so this is not extending with Israel is not standing against the Islam. Absolutely not. So I don't see here a conflict with me being Muslim. In fact, it only supports the fact that I need to speak up. I think it's hard for people to believe or accept this idea that Israel is defending itself 30 something days later, especially when they see the videos and the images coming out of Gaza. You know, maybe the first six hours, 24 hours, Israel would say, yeah, this is all defense. But 30 something days later, they're still defending themselves and against the tiny little Gaza. Yes. So my answer to this is after nine 11, when the U S was fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda, did you also think about it as an offense on Al Qaeda and Taliban? The only difference between what happened, the atrocity and then, and I hate to do comparisons, right? Because this is an atrocity and the other one is atrocity. But let me tell you the difference between the two. The atrocities that happened on October 7th compared to the size of the population is 17 times of what happened in nine 11. The Taliban or the Hamas in our case is living in on our border. Think about it like the Taliban was living on a state in New Jersey and they're saying openly, they're going to repeat this again and again and again and again. And throughout this entire month, even today, they continue to fire rockets on Israeli cities and civilians. Last week we had over 380 rockets being fired on Israeli cities. Since the beginning of the war, we had 10,000 rockets fired on Israel. Would America accept that? We have 240 hostages held in Gaza. The younger one probably is just a newborn baby because the mom, she was eight months old when, when she got, she was eight, eight months pregnant when she was kidnapped. But otherwise there is another baby who is nine months old and we have elderly who are over 80. They're held hostages in Gaza, innocent civilians. We want them back. And there are over there. There are hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens who are displaced because Hamas ruined their homes or because of Hamas threats to repeat this again and again, they're displaced. They cannot go back to their homes. If this is not defense, I don't know what is, what is defense. We have to remove the Hamas. This is not an option. This is not a privilege. And I want to say another thing for people to understand. Most of the soldiers today in the IDF who are fighting this war are regular civilians. There are teachers, professors, bus drivers, entrepreneurs, engineers who got recruited to the army to be able to defend their families and homes. These are not people who would want to kill civilians. They only want the safety for, for, for their families. And people should remember that. I would also add that a lot of the soldiers are not Jewish. There are many soldiers that are, are Muslim that are serving in the Israeli military, which I'm not sure that many people know this. Yes. Yes. We have some of the great hero stories that we heard from October 7th was when two Arab soldiers were fooled the Hamas terrorists and, uh, made them think that there are one of them and, and were able to kill them before they reach the families, uh, that were staying at, at the army base, because that was a holiday. Some of the families came to visit the, the husbands who were, who were serving. Um, we have thousands of, um, Arab Muslims. We have our Christians. We have thousands of Druze, uh, which is another ethnicity, another religion. There are Arabic people, they have different religion who are serving in the IDF. My father was the first, first colonel, uh, first Bedouin colonel in the IDF. He was the co-founder of the tracker unit. My brother is currently there and my sister, she's, she's an officer in the IDF. So you need to know that, um, it's not a war of Jews against Arabs or Jews against Islam. It's a war of one liberal nation, democratic nation against the terror organization. And I don't know why people are confused. Well, thank you for your courage and your clarity. Um, one of the things that I always say is that I am obsessed with truth and we're living right now in an era where the truth seems to not matter that much to people anymore. And I think that those of us who can bring the truth to the world, um, are living a better life. I rather live a life that is full of meaning and truth. Um, and as I say around here all the time, fighting evil is fun. It's not easy, but it's fun. So really appreciate you coming in and thank you for, for all your, your insight.