Ahmed Fouad Al Khatib (9:00)

Thank you so much for having me.

Mike Pesca (9:01)

Tell me, tell my audience because I know some of this about your life story as a Gazan and how this war is having, even at this moment, a horrifying impact on you and your family.

Ahmed Fouad Al Khatib (9:15)

Well, I left the Gaza strip as a 15 year old teenager to be an exchange student in the United States for a year long program. It was a post 911 initiative to build cultural bridges between our two countries or our two regions of the world. Upon completing that high school exchange program, I attempted to return to Gaza in the summer of 2006. Hamas had already taken over the coastal enclave following the 2006 Parliamentary and Municipal elections that took place in both Gaza and in the west bank, as well as the mini brewing civil war, if you will, between itself and the Palestinian Authority. And then there was Hamas carried out an abduction of Gilad Shalit, a young Israeli soldier on the Israeli side of the Gaza border and that resulted in a mini war that got the borders closed between Gaza and Egypt, which is where I was. That's how Palestinians in Gaza and the majority of cases travel in and out of the Strip. You have to cross land crossing there. And so after months of being stuck in Egypt, I was able to return to the United States thanks to the support of human rights and peace activists who allowed me the opportunity to pursue my last year of high school and begin the process of political asylum due to generalized and in specific threats against my life. I interviewed for asylum, ironically on June 14, 2007, which is the very day that Hamas violently and finally took over the entirety of of the Gaza Strip.

Mike Pesca (11:07)

If you went back to Gaza, let's not say now that's somewhat ridiculous, but. And we could get into what a piece or a post war period might look like. Would you, and you've been detained and denied admission into Israel, but would you have significant fears for your life because you're here advocating for a two state solution?

Ahmed Fouad Al Khatib (11:25)

I would have concerns less so because of my advocacy for the two state solution and more because I have kind of been extraordinarily and ruthlessly against the armed resistance narrative and Hamas. And October 7th, as something that has been entirely unhelpful to the just and urgent aspirations of the Palestinian people. I have been what some would label a contrarian when it comes to the pro Palestine narrative. And I've actually been very critical of a lot of both Gaza based actions by Hamas and others, as well as diaspora based forms of activism and advocacy. So my concerns would be that there I have called Hamas a legitimate terrorist organization, not organic and a representation of organic resistance to occupation.

Mike Pesca (12:24)

The word legitimate there in that phrase means bonafide.

Ahmed Fouad Al Khatib (12:27)

Bonaf. Precisely. And that the word Hamas. And I remember this very vividly. I remember the linguistic manipulation of the language, the word muqam, the word resistance, and how Hamas never referred to themselves as Hamas, but they usurped the word resistance, which to the Palestinian people meant it was a spectrum, it was a rainbow, it meant a lot of different things. It meant persevering on what remains of our land. It meant maintaining our olive trees. My, my, my grandmother, my grandparents who were, you know, expelled in 1948, they had these, these trees, these fig trees, these guava trees, these olive trees that were literally over six, like, like 50 years old and 60 years old in the Gaza Strip. And this war, this, since October 7th, this, this disaster has uprooted all of that qualitatively and numer and quantitatively. What has befallen the Palestinian people since October 7th is actually a magnet, an order of magnitude worse than what happened in 1948. So when you are the weaker party in a conflict in a situation like what we have in, in, in, in Israel and Palestine, and certainly like what we have in Gaza, the onus is on you to be careful and effective because you know that you have the most far right government in Israel's history that is eager to basically use any miss of your mistakes to, to, to, to undermine your national project. So that's where I hold Hamas ultimately responsible for the death and destruction that has befallen my family and my people.

Mike Pesca (14:22)

And on the idea of words and the usurpation of the resistance movement. Maybe people don't know this. Hamas is an acronym like NATO is an acronym and the M is. What is it? You say it mukama and that means resistance. So they became resistance. It was good branding. They are excellent at communicating and they're pretty ruthless too. And when you control all means of communication, maybe it's easier to get your message across. So that is a very interesting point. And just to bring it up to more recent events and tragedies, you've had over 30 members of your family, including very close uncle, killed in this war.

Ahmed Fouad Al Khatib (14:59)

Yes, my 12 year old niece Farah, who is survived by her twin sister Mara, who didn't know for three days that her sister had lost her life. My uncle Riyadh, my dad's youngest brother, whom I grew up with and who was a, who worked in Israel, who spoke perfect Hebrew. We lived in a family building made up of four floors that had over 35 people at its peak living in it. On my mom's side of the family we lost in that, that, the building that, that was struck on April on. Sorry on December 14, 2023, we lost all of my aunts and uncles on my mom's side and Zainab, Uncle Abdullah and Hind, Uncle Hassan, my cousins Yahya, my cousin Zosama and, and, and, and over 14 children who were under the age of nine, babies three and four months old, shredded to bits and pieces. Folks who were over in their 60s and 70s and, and, and that unfortunately, you know, they like thousands, tens of thousands of Palestinians are paying the ultimate price price for a sin that they did not commit and a war that they did not start and are helpless and powerless to stop.

Mike Pesca (16:18)

How do you apportion blame for those deaths?

Ahmed Fouad Al Khatib (16:21)

Well, at the end of the day, the Israeli military dropped those bombs, plain and simple. However, what I have regular so, so that like those were Israeli bombs dropped by Israeli airplanes. And I have said as much publicly and I have said that I like repeatedly have asked the IDF and the second case in particular in which 29 folks were killed. These cases received high profile attention and we reach out to the IDF and with coordinates, with times, with locations and never really got any answers. However, I absolutely am of the belief that had Hamas simply kept its soldiers at home on October 7, my family, like tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians would still be alive. Two million Palestinians in Gaza would still be in their home. Hamas served our people on a silver platter to the most far right government in Israel's history. And now Hamas is acting as if it has no ability, no influence, no capability to stop the war. And so in effect, I have no control over the Israeli government and their actions and what they do. But what I do have control over is to speak out against the very party that claims to represent the Palestinian people, to hold their interests at heart, to have governed them with an iron fist for almost two decades. The very party that has tortured Gazans over the years, including right now, is executing anybody who protested against it or speaks out against its rule. And so that to me is part of why I can't speak to the Israeli government without blaming the very terror, ISIS like organization that Islamized Palestinian society, that usurped our ability to have democratic governance, that ruined the very worthwhile and urgent and just aspirations of the Palestinian people for freedom, dignity, independence, self determination, statehood, liberation, and destroyed that. And now our people are vulnerable to displacement, to forced displacement under the guise of voluntary migration. And so that's why I'm very vehemently against the Islamist terror group.

Mike Pesca (18:56)

Do you think serving up your family on a silver platter was an act of horribly callous indifference or do you think it's more of a tactical act that fits in with Hamas's specific aims?

Ahmed Fouad Al Khatib (19:09)

Well, I think the two things can be true at once. On the one hand, I mean I genuinely believe that Hamas are fools and are not very well known for strategic foresight and, and, and, and, and I mean some people really like to assign brilliance to Hamas and they've been, I think they've stumbled into success on October 7th with a very negligent, with a very under prepared, with a, like, I mean, with under prepared Israeli military high command, a busy Israel that had internal dissent around Netanyahu and the judicial overhaul and the protests and the moving of a lot of divisions out of Gaza into the West Bank. I genuinely believe that Hamas stumbled into this success due to negligence and a failure of imagination. However, I also think that Hamas very deliberately, as Sinwar has stated during the war and multiple verified intercepts, conflict confirmed, these are consistent statements that tell you this is part of the literature, part of the group's ethos, part of the group's vision is they, they look at the death of my family and all the children and all the tens of thousands of Gazans as quote, necessary sacrifices that are going to gin up, you know, all this empathy and sympathy for the Palestinian cause. They genuinely thought that college protesters, massive demonstrations in Western capitals, that the outrage over the death and destruction in the Gaza Strip is somehow going to single handedly Stop the war and save their rule. And when I.

Mike Pesca (21:00)

But they also thought that Hezbollah and other like minded militias would join in with their cause right afterwards. And that didn't happen. They thought a lot.

Ahmed Fouad Al Khatib (21:07)

Precisely. Precisely. But, but, but I can't. The unfortunate sad reality is when I share that, when I speak about that so many people attack me and vilify me and say, you're just repeating Israeli propaganda. I mean, but it is absolutely the fact that Hamas relies on the maiming and killing of Palestinians to undermine and delegitimize the Israeli war effort. And like, like the, the, the, the, as evidenced by those statements and as evidenced by the fact that the group could care, like they're hiding among the civilians, they're hiding in their tunnels. They have left our people defenseless. They have had.

Mike Pesca (21:58)

Yeah, I don't think they've invited many civilians in the tunnels, which is what they spent the vast majority of funds on.

Ahmed Fouad Al Khatib (22:03)

Precisely. And so, so to me, this is, what's so heartbreaking is that there has been a failure to both hold space for multiple things at once. Yes. Speak out against the atrocities and the potential. And the, I think the real war crimes that are taking place in Gaza at the hands of the IDF and some of the, you know, the clear and indefensible act that are so visibly just inconsistent with the IDF's own stated policy of mitigating risk to uninvolved civilians and innocent civilians do that while also having immense contempt for the very terror, ISIS like organization that started this war.

Mike Pesca (22:56)

Yeah, I see what you're saying, which is, tell me if I'm getting it right, that everything you laid out, Haniya Sinwar, they knew this would happen. They wanted this to happen. But it is also the case that Israel can go too far. They probably knew that Israel would go, quote, unquote, too far. Do you think it's possible that Israel has committed war crimes in this war?

Ahmed Fouad Al Khatib (23:19)

Yes, absolutely. I think there were atrocities and war crimes committed for which I hope there is accountability in the same way that I hope there is absolutely accountability for Hamas and the terrorists in Gaza, not just for what they did on October 7th. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's, this is a missing piece that no one talks about and I insist on making this front and center. I want accountability for Hamas and PIJ and other terrorists for using civilian infrastructure to carry. And, and that is well documented and well understood whereby in effect, they are using civilians as human shields, stealing humanitarian aid. Again, well documented. Torturing and abusing Palestinians in Gaza suspected of being collaborators and conduct, carrying out summary executions, killing and torturing Palestinians who tried to protest in recent weeks. And those are people, some of them I know personally and I've been talking to personally on the ground and been supporting them who are saying we want an end to the war, we want an end to Hamas. And Hamas has been brutally repressing them and killing them left and right. I want Hamas to be held accountable for that as well. Crimes against Palestinians as well as crimes on October 7th.

Mike Pesca (24:47)

And we'll be back with more Ahmed Foud Al Khatib in a minute. Hablas Espanol Spoich.

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Mike Pesca (25:30)

We're back with Ahmed Fawd Al Khatib, who runs and founded Realign for Palestine. Is your primary audience the kind of person who might be a Palestinian or is aligned and very aggrieved by the Palestinian cause, but doesn't but uses rhetoric that is often incendiary or adheres to or espouses some sort of principles that will never get us closer to a piece? Is that your main audience? Who you're mainly your target? Obviously you're talking to anyone who will listen, but is that who you're really mostly trying to convince?

Ahmed Fouad Al Khatib (26:08)

It's a really interesting question that is constantly evolving for a couple of reasons. My in an ideal world, I mean, and this is part of what I'm trying to do with Realign for Palestine and the team and the Palestinian voices.

Mike Pesca (26:26)

Yeah, that's the question. Who are you asking to Realign is essentially the question.

Ahmed Fouad Al Khatib (26:29)

So in an ideal world, I want the Palestinian, American, Palestinian diaspora, Muslims and Arabs to be the target audience of this message. And the interesting dynamic at play here is that I have a lot of folks who are watching, who are listening. Many are often privately messaging me and reaching out and saying thank God you're saying what we know is true. But we struggle saying in public or we struggle articulating in public because of the difficult dynamics in our community, or if someone, you know, if I had a penny for every time someone said, thank God someone else is saying it, and that it doesn't have to be me. The challenge is, as is the case with a lot of communities around a lot of social and political issues, but especially so with the Israel and Palestine issue within the Palestinian, Arab and or Muslim communities, and those are three separate communities. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes they're stacked, and sometimes they're entirely separate. I can have like 90% agreement with someone on a variety of issues, but this little margin of disagreement around Hamas, around Israel's right to exist and safe to live in safety and security, they may disagree with some of these points or the fact that I personally believe a lot of these encampments and a lot of these forms of unhelpful college activism have become really toxic to the discourse. And then all of that 90% agreement is thrown to the trash, and then I become a Zionist spy, Mossad, unfortunately, that is the state of play within the highly emotionally charged community in the diaspora. And so what then ends up happening is a lot of the folks that do engage with and listen to the message are often not of Palestinian or Arab or Muslim background, generally speaking, but especially there is an immense interest in what I have to say within different facets of the Jewish Israeli communities across the who, both of whom are not monolithic. They want to live in peace with Palestinians. They want to feel like it's possible to have a real shot at coexistence.

Mike Pesca (29:13)

I noticed a couple of times in the interview you likened Hamas to isis, and it's an apt comparison in that they are both particularly vicious in the world of the vicious, and they used brutality to achieve surprising battlefield gains. So it's a good analogy, but it's part of the reason that you're saying that, because A, even in America, you still do not get the cheering on of isis. ISIS has a toxic brand in the west in the way that Hamas apparently doesn't, but also that B, ISIS was opposed by the vast majority of the Muslim world and the Arab world. And if we, if we're successful in really tying those two as being very similar, maybe there's some hope for the Arab world to turn against the goals of Hamas and the tactics of Hamas.

Ahmed Fouad Al Khatib (30:07)

Well, that's a really. I love your. Your attention to detail. I will tell you that from the beginning, I have very, very specifically struggled with this issue. On the one hand, early on, the cerebral analytic part of my brain was worried that to claim Hamas is ISIS was going to have grave policy implications and a misunderstanding of how Hamas operates and how to misunderstand how Hamas has a nationalistic component to it. And, and, and that it's better to view them as an extremist Muslim Brotherhood organization. It's not, that is not better understood by connecting it to ISIS. On the other hand, from like 10 years ago, in speaking with conversation and speaking with folks in Gaza, people in Gaza, I mean, it has been well established. Hamas is very much so a mini isis. And in Arabic, we, the friends that I would speak to, they would use like a, almost like, like a little words that, like local words that describe little children. They're like, they're little. They're like little, tiny, little isis, like just little, little piggy kind of like little, little isis. And they draw from the same like core, core ideology of Sayyid Qutb and Hassan Al Banna that gave rise to the Muslim Brotherhood, that gave rise to Al Qaeda, that gave rise to the jihadi ideology that sought to transcend national borders. And as time went on, I mean, Hamas uses jihadi ideology. Hamas has always been jihadi. Hamas is the ruthlessness, has always been very, very aligned with isis. As time went on and I saw what has become a severe degradation in the pro Palestine discourse in which support for Hamas has become very mainstream, very, very mainstream. And I do not say this as a form of hyperbole, just that, just as I'm not suggesting that all pro Palestine folks are pro Hamas, that is not the case. But I challenge anybody who is anti Hamas but is pro Palestine to go in a big pro Palestine space and speak out against Hamas and tell me what happens to you. I'm right here. I will platform you. I will pay for your medical care. I will do anything you need. Because unfortunately, support for Hamas is now mainstream and I would argue the majority of a lot of the discourse, not insofar as to say I love Hamas per se, but to immediately deflect to, well, what about Israel? They have a right to resist international law, etc. So by now calling them Hamas, like I have been gradually linking them to isis, because they absolutely are from an ideology and a strategy point of view. And we're coming up on two years into this, I am hoping that this begins to create that point of reference and comparison. But, but, but, but, but, but I, at this point, I don't feel that there is the, the concern for the policy misjudgment because it's very clear that Hamas has got to go. Even though we know they're not going to fully disappear as an ideology, but that's irrelevant at this point. What Hamas has been doing in Gaza is very ISIS like and it's time we stop dancing around the topic. It's time we shake some sense into the pro Palestine community and say you are literally destroying the long lasting Palestinian cause by tying it to an ISIS, a mini Palestinian ISIS.

Mike Pesca (34:41)

My last question is, is it possible for a 10 year old Gazan to turn into Ahmed? Because I think about the elements of your biography and just talking to you and this isn't only the fault of Hamas or Israel. You left Gaza because There was a US sponsored program after 911 to try to make some inroads into the Muslim slash Arab world. You got asylum here in the United States. You were exposed to from your father and you know, I don't know all of your media consumption but different arguments, different ethical orientations. So that is my question, you know, is it hopeless for the next Ahmad to exist?

Ahmed Fouad Al Khatib (35:26)

Oh, completely the opposite brother, completely the opposite. And I am not like selling you a bridge or a bill of goods. There are thousands of Ahmad's out there that may not speak English as well, that they may not be as outspoken. And it is my goal with realigned for Palestine. It is my intention, my, my desire, my aspiration to equip folks with the, with the courage, the vision, the idea, the desire to be a part of something much better for their own future. Much different than the waste of lives and resources in a vicious cycle of Jihadi terrorism that leads nowhere, that gets us killed, gets more of our lands taken over or squandered without with nothing to show for it. On the other hand, I think unfortunately like there's been an overstating in the idea of like. Like people are a product of their environment. And if they've been living under Hamas for 18 years, yes, there will be some adjustment, especially after this war, some period of adjustment in which folks emerge out of that. However, public opinion, public attitude is elastic. It is not rigid. It changes. People go through transformation. People go through different stages in life that enable them to really have journeys, have moments of transformation. I've helped young men and men and women in Gaza learn English, get out of Gaza during the war, access scholarships, access just to just talk to them about what do you need to minimize the chances of you being denied a student visa in the United States or you being denied exit out of Gaza through the Ramon airport. So I am full of hope and optimism. I would not be throwing myself into the ring and putting myself out there if I didn't. If I felt that this was truly and entirely hopeless.

Mike Pesca (37:45)

Ahmed Fouad Al Khatib runs the realign for Palestine Project with the Atlantic Council. Thank you so much.

Ahmed Fouad Al Khatib (37:53)

Thank you for having me.

Mike Pesca (38:00)

And that's it for the show. Cory War is the producer and Michelle's the cbso. And Leo and Astrid and Kathleen, the whole gang. We'll talk to you Monday.