In this episode, Arab Druze Israeli Mansor Ashkar shares his experience growing up Druze in Israel, and how his upbringing provides a model for peace in the region.
"We are, right now, in the rising of the same anti Semitism that brought the Holocaust. And the Jews have a voice. And this voice is us: the voice of people who believe in peace."
You'll hear:
--How Mansor began creating content that is not getting millions of views online
--Why Mansor is speaking up online, and how he is dealing with discrimination both on social media and in Germany where he resides
--How being kidnapped in Jordan shaped Mansor's identity and beliefs about his home country
--How Mansor's relatives experienced violent persecution and Syria, how they fled and ultimately found a safe haven in Israel
Be sure to follow Mansor:
Youtube channel
Instagram
Linkedin
Tik Tok
And HumanityPOV!
Connect with us on Social:
Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/humanitypov
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Support HumanityPOV by visiting https://tinyurl.com/humanitypovmovement
In this episode, Arab Druze Israeli Mansor Ashkar shares his experience growing up Druze in Israel, and how his upbringing provides a model for peace in the region.
"We are, right now, in the rising of the same anti Semitism that brought the Holocaust. And the Jews have a voice. And this voice is us: the voice of people who believe in peace."
You'll hear:
--How Mansor began creating content that is not getting millions of views online
--Why Mansor is speaking up online, and how he is dealing with discrimination both on social media and in Germany where he resides
--How being kidnapped in Jordan shaped Mansor's identity and beliefs about his home country
--How Mansor's relatives experienced violent persecution and Syria, how they fled and ultimately found a safe haven in Israel
Be sure to follow Mansor:
Youtube channel
Instagram
Linkedin
Tik Tok
And HumanityPOV!
Connect with us on Social:
Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/humanitypov
X: https://twitter.com/humanity_POV
Tik tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@humanity_pov
Support HumanityPOV by visiting https://tinyurl.com/humanitypovmovement
Welcome to the humanity POV podcast. You're going to hear from a diverse array of morally courageous voices who understand that true humanitarianism is not selective. Together, we can amplify these voices for progress and shed light. On solutions to the issues. That affect all of us. Thank you so much for being here now, let's get started.
My name is Dr. Ozzie Jankovic. I'm an educator. And I'll be hosting the first series of episodes.
AZI:Yes. Amazing. It's so nice to meet you. Thank you so much for doing
Mansour:this. Thank you for
AZI:inviting. Yeah, absolutely. I was so excited when I came across your account and I just love the honesty and the bravery and I would love to talk about your story and. You recently posted a video of your mom speaking to you and you had over a million views of that video. Tell us about that video, and, and why is it so
Mansour:significant? Wow. Yeah, that's a good question. That video was very significant for me, because before October 7, I had no plans of being making these videos. That's a part of my life that I thought I left behind. But then October 7 happened, I felt like I had to make a voice. As an Israeli, as an Arab, I felt that my voice is more important now than ever. Due to my work, I, I travel a lot around the world and I made already a few videos and my mom got worried and I was walking in the streets of France and that, bear in mind, that was in the beginning. That was before anti Semitism reached where it is now, or at least that we saw where it is now. And I was walking the street, talking to my mom on the phone and I was speaking Hebrew because sometimes I speak Hebrew, Arabic, we switch, I don't even notice. And I started seeing a lot of people in the market giving me nasty looks. Like listening to me, watching me, and I felt uncomfortable. And I started walking away, and they kept looking at me, and the more I spoke Hebrew, the more I saw people were just opening their eyes. So I told my mom, I said, Yama, can we change to Arabic? I don't feel comfortable speaking Hebrew. And I changed to Arabic and after a few meters people stopped paying attention to me. It wasn't anything that caught their attention or made them give me nasty looks. And that made me, that shocked me and then my mom sent me that video after the conversation where she was genuinely concerned and she told me that she was afraid of what I'm doing. She supported, she loved that I'm speaking up on behalf of Israel, on behalf of the Arabs in Israel. The Druze, but she was very concerned like any, any mom, and she told me please call me once a day just to see that, that you're fine. And that, I had to make a video on the spot about it because that bothered me. I said, why is it that me as an Arab is afraid to speak Hebrew? In Europe, because people might want to do nasty things to me. But I'm okay completely speaking Arabic because no one is gonna come and even throw a word to me because they're very acceptance of Arabic but not of Hebrew. And I said I gotta make a video because that shows you very well the reality we're living in. It shows you who are the people that act, that really need to be worried and who are the people that are trying to harm. You won't see in Europe An Israeli who will walk in the street and will hear someone speaking Arabic and then call his friends and says, Guys, listen, let's catch this guy. You will not see that. Or go around and smack a Muslim religious in the street while they're driving a bike or throw something at him. But you will see a lot of people that if you speak Hebrew, they might come and target you. They might come and hit you, spit on you, bully you. And that is the kind of bullying that I think in the basic level of it is showing us the real picture of who is trying to live peacefully and who is trying to impose himself on others and prevent them from leaving, living peacefully. And so that was a big turning point and the video got highly exposed. And then I realized that there is actually people who are interested in this voice. So I started making more and more videos.
AZI:It's, it's really incredible because so many people could have had that experience speaking Hebrew, switched to Arabic and never looked back and never thought twice about it. But there's something special about you, something special about the way you see the world, perhaps the way you feel about Israel. Why is it that that motivated you? Why didn't you just start speaking Arabic and never look back?
Mansour:That's a good question. I mean, I was worried. I was worried from the ocean of hatred that I'll be facing once I start exposing myself as a voice speaking on behalf of Israel. I was worried of being canceled. I was worried of threats, which I received quite a few. And it made me think, but in that particular moment, I remember that very clearly because I remember when I was watching Schindler's List. When I was a teenager, and I think many of us, when we watched these movies, I thought if I was living during the time of Nazi Germany, I would have definitely fought the Nazis, or at least I would have helped hide the Jews. No one thinks he's a bad guy. But here we are. The Jews need a voice. And I remember really thinking even, because I went to my room and I thought, During the Holocaust, there were people who just lost their entire family, and an old mother or a father, and everyone is dead. And now he's there in these gas chambers, and he's thinking to himself probably, No one would know my voice. No one would ever hear me. And I thought to myself, we are right now in the rising of the same anti Semitism that brought the Holocaust. And the Jews have a voice. And this voice is us. Not only their voice, but the voice of their friends, the voice of people who believe in peace. And I, and I told myself, I will not look at my kid 10 years from now. And he will tell me, father, when, when the times of when Europe and America and everybody were going around and chanting. To hurt the Jews, and that it's okay to rape Jews, and that it's okay to kill the Jews. What did you do? And I said, I'm not going to be silent. My voice needs to go out. And this is literally the time where you show yourself. Are you one of these ones who will fight the Nazis? Will help hide the Jews? Or are you just one of these ones that will just I don't know, it's not really my struggle. So that was one of the main reasons. I realized that what kind of a world are we going to? Are we going to a world that allows? Free hate, that allows hating the Jews, that allows justifying that it's okay to rape Jewish women, to kill their children. Yes, they killed them, they didn't behead them, and all this nonsense that was going on. I Don't want my kid to grow up in this world. And if I don't stand now as a parent, and I start raising my voice, and encourage others to do, then we're just gonna be bystanders, and we're gonna watch how the world is gonna turn into a very dark place.
AZI:Your voice is so needed. I'm listening to you and I have tears in my eyes because after October 7th, I found a lot of people silent, a lot of people I knew that I thought were my friends that I thought I respected. And I thought to myself, if I had been a hostage, they still would have been quiet. Everything changes when you think about that.
Mansour:I think that, yeah, I think October 7 recalibrated the way we see friends. And who is with us and who is just, standing and doesn't want to raise a voice. I also found that, especially in the beginning, My Jewish friends, and I have a lot of Jewish friends, good friends, and I found that what seemed to me like a simple gesture from me, just standing beside them and saying no, it's wrong. They have the right to live, which is obvious, but I found that this was so important for them. I found that a lot of the Jews were, experiencing the same feeling. That probably happened in the Holocaust, that the world knows and no one cares. We're on our own. And it was so important for them to have their friends stand and say, We are with you. We're not condemning you. We're not asking for any, show us, prove it to us. We know that something terrible happened to you and we're going to stand beside you. It just amazed me how important it was to my Jewish friends.
AZI:It's so important. I mean, it's so emotional just listening to you talk about that because it can feel so lonely. So thank you for what you're doing. Tell us Mansor how are you raised? You identify as an Arab Israeli. Tell us about your upbringing, your community, your schooling.
Mansour:All right. So I grew up in a Druze village. And to those who don't know, Druze are one of the minority Arab groups that live in Israel. Druze, Bedouins, there's Christian Arabs, Muslim Arabs, Cherkes, and full on Druze house with the Druze food, with a religious mom. But a very patriotic family, a family that appreciated living in Israel. It started all the way from my grandfather who came from Syria and my grandmother from Lebanon. And they immediately saw how good and kind Israel and the Jews are to Arabs who respect back this country. I remember as a kid growing up, because I moved to a city. At the age of five, I moved to Eilat. And that's where I got introduced to a lot of Jewish friends and Christian friends and Muslim friends. And I remember very fast that Yes, in the beginning, there were a little bit of clutches you have a little bit of accent, I don't know why, but that's normal. Anywhere you go, you'll speak with a Russian accent, with a South African accent, they'll pick on that, but I never felt excluded. I never felt that I'm a second class citizen. I never felt that my sisters were treated differently. My sisters, right now even one of them is, both of them are actually social workers. They can walk in the streets. Of a Jewish city at two in the morning, coming back from the cinema, and no one would bother them, no one would care, no one would tell them how they're dressed, no one would approach them, and Living in a country and the more that I got exposed to the Arab world around us, also later on I found out that I have relatives in Syria, who were being killed by the Syrian regime, or by ISIS, or by Nusra, the rebels, and they had to flee for their life, and I had to help them actually flee to Europe. And, yeah, and speaking with them that was a crazy story, because I didn't know that I have them until my mother told me, and they were my age. married with children, and when they fled to Europe and I took a flight and I met them, and we shared stories. And that just made me realize how lucky I am, as an Israeli, as an Arab, living in Israel compared to where they are. Because where they were living, they were a minority among minorities, and the government wanted them dead. The rebels wanted them dead. ISIS wanted them dead. They were like attacked from every possible direction just because they were not Muslims.
AZI:So your family members, because they're Druze, were persecuted to the point of death?
Mansour:Kidnapped, stabbed, threat of death, had to flee. Definitely.
AZI:It is absolutely devastating. So you said that you feel grateful as an Arab to live in Israel. What is the life like for, for a Druze Arab outside of Israel?
Mansour:Not good. Not good at all. Not only for a Druze Arab, but also for Muslim Arabs. when I finished my mandatory military service, like any Israeli does, I went and I hiked all of Israel. I grabbed the Bible in one hand, the Christian and the Jewish Bible, and the book of history, and I walked all of Israel, and I read the things that happened where it happened, and then I went and I hiked all of Jordan. So I think I'm the first Israeli to actually walk all of Jordan by foot. And that's when I got exposed to the intolerance. Jordan is a great country. But still, it was not a safe place. I got kidnapped there by the Secret Service. You got kidnapped in Jordan? Yeah, I got kidnapped by the Secret Service who were dressed like Al Qaeda or ISIS. They chased me in the desert with machine guns and it was quite scary. And after I realized they're the Secret Service and I, told them I'm not a spy, everything's fine. They took me to an underground military base for six hours. And then when they realize everything is legit, I did have a German girl with me. And they were very nice to her, very nasty to me. But, that's when I realized that, Wow, there's no one here to protect me. There's no one here to stand by my voice. And, and over there, people can disappear. Things can happen to you because of your religion, because of this. And I realized that in Israel, this would have never happened. This cannot happen in Israel because it's a country that is run by law, by democracy. And that made me very much appreciate, but also when I was in university, I had a student, a Muslim friend with me. I studied psychology and the history of religion. So Christianity, Judaism and Islam. And I spent a lifetime studying them. And I had a Muslim friend with me. And in the beginning he was very anti Israel, but as the Arab spring came and he started seeing what's happening and the big, the biggest number of victims. of the Muslim terrorism are actually Muslims. They have killed more Muslims than they killed anyone else. So he was seeing what's happening to his relatives, his family. He came and told me one day, just out of nowhere, he told me, I am so glad that I'm a Muslim living in Israel. I'm in university. I'm getting my university for free because he had a scholarship for minority groups. I am safe to walk in the streets. I am safe to express my opinions and it was really shocking for him. I remember looking at the young man and, and listening to him and that, that actually where I came and I told him that maybe you should do something to feel more Israeli. I told him maybe you should maybe going to the army would be a little bit too much for your family to bear, but join the police, volunteer and something. And he went, he went and he volunteered and became a police officer. A Muslim police officer. And then he came back to me and he told me, You know what? I've never felt so Israeli in my life. That's a guy that was anti Israel. Wow.
AZI:And you
Mansour:inspired that. Yeah. That was He inspired me and I inspired him. But that was one of the big picture of made me feel good and lucky to be an Arab in Israel and not an Arab in any Muslim country around us.
AZI:You're an Arab, you're a Druze, you're Israeli, you did not grow up being taught to hate Jews, is that correct?
Mansour:No. The Druze If you ask me the best example of coexistence in Israel, the Jews are the best testimony of how the Jews would live with other religions if they respect each other. We have all the rights. And all the obligations, all of them, as any citizen in Israel. And in Israel, I grew up in a law abiding and law respecting family. So we never I had a reason or a teaching to hate Israel. We always saw Israel is kind to us. We're kind to Israel back. Israel is us, I never felt I'm a second citizen. It was just, we're part of Israel. But I did get exposed to a lot of things. Hatred in the Arab world because I speak Arabic and a lot of times you'll hear things that Jews won't hear or Christians won't hear because they will speak more freely with each other or with me and then I would always, if I felt safe, will challenge them and, and, or will call them out for this crap that they're talking because if you live in Israel, you respect, it's, it's a democracy like any other democracy. Maybe a little bit more complicated because the region, but abide by the laws. Respect others, you'll be respected. You can practice your religion any way you want as long as you don't try to impose it or harm it. Or harm others.
AZI:That's absolutely incredible. So when was it that you were exposed to the Jew hatred, the antisemitism among
Mansour:Arabic speakers? Among Arabic speakers? During my teenage life when I've met, more and more Arabs in Israel that didn't share these views. But mostly I would say during my Army service and after when I started volunteering with Palestinians and trying to engage with conversations, that's when I started seeing that their hatred is coming from education. It's coming from a young age of indoctrinating them to really believe that they're the victim and to really believe that the Jews want to kill them, want to hate them, and etc. I remember one time, me and my friends helped a Gazan woman that was pregnant and having difficulties with her pregnancy. And we helped her get permits to come into Israel so they will help save her child and the whole hospital procedures. And when she went back, she said something. She said, I was so surprised by how clean Israel was. How happy the Israelis looked like and that no one was trying to harm me and she said all I was been taught That Israel is a wasteland, destroyed. The Hamas has been destroying Israel. Like North Korea they're getting the news very much filtered. And that they're all hating Arabs, and that it's not safe. And that's when I realized how deep that gap between what they perceive and what they're taught all their life to what's the reality actually in Israel. Can you come here and half of the doctors are Arabs, Muslims. The nurses, the pharmacists, I think probably more than half. So there's a lot of happy Arabs living in Israel, and their life quality is much better than what they have in Muslim countries.
AZI:Wow, it's so true. I mean, here we have this curriculum in Gaza, in the Palestinian Authority, in East Jerusalem, that's all being sponsored by the UN. And it's an explicit terror teaching curriculum. Where can we go from here? What, what do you think we should
Mansour:do about that? I have the nice answer and I have the real answer. Which one do you want? We, let's go for real. The real answer is The world would need to radically wake up and take reality as it is. There is a civilization, a group of people, more than millions, who are teaching them to hate the West, to hate anyone that is different, Christian, Jews, or I don't know what, indoctrinating them from a young age. And we gotta accept that this is the reality, and we gotta start calling them out for that, and we gotta start putting the responsibility on the moderate Muslims. To be the one to condemn their own behavior, because what's happening right now Moderate Muslims, which is a big number, but they're voiceless, they will not speak when Al Qaeda attacks, when 9 11 happened, when October 7 happened, when hundreds of thousands of Arab Muslim children are being killed, they will not say a word. But when you find a body, of a Syrian baby who washed to the shores of Europe, I don't know if you remember that picture, that all of them rage. So suddenly the death of children matters only when they can use it against the West. Now this is hypocrisy, this is double standards, and you should not be tolerating that. You should not tell him, okay, you know what, no, you don't accept that. Either you care about the children, or you don't care about the children, because what you're doing is an agenda. And I feel like what's happening now, Radical Islam is not trying to protect itself. Hamas literally live streamed their crime. They didn't try to hide it. And the Muslim world is not condemning it. And the Western world is actually defending it. So you'll have a Hamas guy standing here with the Kafia AK 47 and he's shouting kill America, kill all the Jews, ta ta ta ta ta, and you have a journalist next to him saying, Oh, what he really means is that he is trying to fight the oppression and he's No, that's not what I mean. I want to kill you and kill your family. Oh, what he really means is actually that they want to have peace. We are defending them. They're not trying to defend their ideology. So you should take them for their word, and the Muslim world is being silent, and that is a problem. And I think the West needs, they have to, they have to wake up and say, if you guys want to be with us in the same neighborhood, if you guys want to work with us, if you guys want to live among us, you gotta adjust to our standards of humanitarian life. Our standard of living, our standard of freedom. Respect. Women respect. You know how many non consensual sex is happening in the Muslim world? It's insane. Child marriage, arranged marriage. Women have no rights, almost, basically. They're basically, in many, many Arab countries, this is a standard. The wife Cannot leave the house, cannot uncover herself. She is there to make food, have sex on demand, and bring children and raise them. While the husband can sit with an argila in the street, or I don't know what. This is not standard that will be accepted in any Western countries. I'm sorry. Anywhere. I remember actually, that was a shocking experience, but when I was walking in Jordan, we, we, we got hosted by very nice Bedouin man who welcomed us in his tent and gave us some water and food and he had four wives and there was a curtain and they were looking at us through the hole. And the man went to bring water from the well and the girl that was with me told me if I can go and talk to these girls and I told her no. There's a reason the curtain is there if I'll go and talk to them and the man comes and see them talking to another man that will put me in a very bad place if I'm a Santa culture and also he might. He came back and started yelling at them, he threw a shoe at one of them to go and make us food faster, I don't know what. Anyway, I asked the girl that was with me, very smart girl that knows this this whole region, everything, even though she's European. I said, what do you think about this man? And she said I don't like the way he treated his woman, but I think he's a very respectful, honorable man. I came and I told her, what if I told you that in Germany, there is right now, a new religious group started in Berlin, where a man can marry several women, the wives are sex slaves, they only bring children, they hide, and if you try to criticize him or his god, it's okay for him to behead you. And she said, oh, they'll be arrested immediately. I said I just described to you an average Muslim kind of world. This is the reality there. This
AZI:is the reality. It's so unfathomable. So you have such an incredible story. You were raised. On peace and coexistence, and you went to university and you studied the Jewish Bible, you studied the New Testament, you studied Islam. And you were kidnapped in Jordan. You've been through so much and you're so outspoken. What is your vision?
Mansour:So I was working for the Cruise Line. Funny that you asked. And my dream, my life dream was to be a film director. And the Cruise Line is a great job. And I have two months work and two months vacation there that I can travel the world. But I realized that in these two months vacation, I'm not being able to pursue my dream in making videos and content and following, starting a podcast that I want to start and I want to make a video about my mom, about the life of a Druze woman in a Jewish society. And I realized I gotta take a long break. So I asked my company if that's okay if I could take an unlimited kind of amount break. And that was just a week before October 7th. And I took that break and I challenged myself before I told myself to see if I'm capable of doing this, I'm going to start making one video a day. Let's see if I actually, I understand how difficult that is because I'm not part of a big studio. I'm not getting paid for this. I'm doing this as a self employed. And I started doing one video a day just covering my day and I was capable of doing it. I saw that I can do it. While maintaining my life as a father, my role as a father for my kid spending quality time with my kid, and not having that affect that, but also finding the chunk of time between the kindergarten. Started doing it, and then October 7th started, and that's when I said my voice now is more important than Israeli Arab, so I put this on hold.
AZI:I have to tell you, it's funny. I was with my daughter who's 19 and I told her I was going to be talking to this person from Instagram. And so she says, who? So I opened my answer, but she goes, Oh, he's iconic and she's 19. And she knew who you were. It's special. You have such a huge heart that you're doing this and that you're putting these messages out there. It feels like such a hug as a Jew, as an Israeli, as someone who's felt so powerless, there's so many Jews out there who will speak their minds and people just flip through and call them names. And. Discriminate against them now so whatever I can do to support you. You have my vote. I mean, really
Mansour:follow my YouTube. That's where I want to make my videos that are passionate about I want to make videos for fatherhood about, life adventures, traveling, not necessarily only by the Middle East, but one thing I got to tell you because you mentioned your daughter and first of all, tell her, thank you so much. I feel very honored that you and you. Bye. Listen to my voice. When I started making videos, I told you I was very cautious and worried about exposing myself from the ocean of hate that I'll be facing. I didn't think for a second about the ocean of love that I'll be receiving. And it's an understatement. And it might sound cheesy, but I really mean it. I would have not been able to continue making videos without the support and the love that I was showered by Jews worldwide, Israel lovers worldwide, a lot of New Yorkers, Americans, Canadians, Europeans. I think I was making one video a day for about almost more than 60 days. And every morning, I remember waking up, and I'm here in Germany. It's cold outside, and I'm thinking about I just want to stay in bed. I'm so tired. I don't want to make another video and then I'll go make my coffee and I'll read and I'll read so many beautiful comments of people telling me how important it is for them and how thankful they are and how just randomly coming and telling you just want to tell you that we love what you're doing and we support you and we're very happy that you're voicing and that you're making a difference. Gave me the power and I think not only me, a lot of the people who are speaking out now can tell you the same thing. The amount of love that we received gave us the strength to continue. So whoever is out there, don't hesitate if you see someone that is speaking bravely towards peace. Towards coexistence, justice, throw him a good word because one good word from you is standing against about 10 bad words that he's getting from others and that one good word sometimes can be the little tilt that will give you the power to continue.
AZI:Such an important call to action. So everyone who's listening to this, we are going to follow your YouTube.
Mansour:Yes, there's a link on my Instagram. If you look in the bottom, I created a big tree, not long ago. I was inspired actually by the haters because the haters, that's something very interesting. So many haters would send me stuff and tell me like you Zionist propaganda pig, you work for the Hasbara, you all kind of death threats and I don't know what, and many of them will just tell me how much they're paying you, how much, and I tell them I'm not getting paid. I'm literally doing it because I want to do it. And then I realized it's just so hard for them to understand that an Israeli Arab will actually come and speak because we have good life in Israel and they don't want to put their head. He said, Oh, he must be paid. So with that, I said, you know what? Thanks for the idea. I'm going to open a link here. If anyone want to help follow my YouTube, I don't know what it's right there, but
AZI:so now you're collecting money. You have a PayPal set up, right? Yeah,
Mansour:I have PayPal, and if anyone want to help me buy a falafel to my kid or pay for the studio that I started renting, More than welcome, but even if not continue doing what I'm doing. That's you know, I want to make that's
AZI:awesome it's it's such an honor to speak with you and and I'm excited to share this with the
Mansour:world Thank you so much, but maybe just one question about yourself. Where are
AZI:you? So I'm from San Diego, California, and I grew up in a secular Jewish family. I was the only Jewish kid in my class. And people used to say to me, you don't look Jewish. You're, you have blonde hair, you're tan. You don't look Jewish. You don't seem Jewish. You're not, you're not like Jewish people. So I grew up with antisemitism. I wasn't allowed to go to my next door neighbor's house because they were Jehovah's Witness. I wasn't invited to all kinds of things they had for, kids that were Christian. I couldn't come. And when I was in junior high school, I used to wait in line. We had a lunch line. We'd go up to buy our lunch. And as we would wait in line, there were certain kids that would go up and on the line collecting money, they would want change. And if you didn't give them money, they would say, you're such a heeb, you're such a bagel eater, you're such a kike. And I was Jewish. And it was really rough. I remember one time in 8th grade, I got approached by this kid. His name was Ernie Moreno. I still remember to this day. saying all these slurs to me, happy Hanukkah. And I said, come, come closer, come closer. And everybody's gathered around and he's screaming and I just clocked him as hard as I could.
Mansour:Really?
AZI:Yeah, I did. I mean, and as I got older in university, people are more open minded, but I'll tell you, I got to Israel because I was I was studying for my doctorate in education at the time. I had three kids. I was working in the schools and I did my research in, in the poorest black neighborhoods of Los Angeles. There's a lot of crime and a lot of poverty. We look at the systems and we're not victim blaming, but I got very, very into it. And then 2014 happened, and the three boys were kidnapped, and one of the boys, Naftali Frankel, was American. I posted about it on my Facebook, and that day I realized that I had lost my professors as friends on Facebook. Really? And when I brought it up with one of them, he said oh, it's, it's so nuanced. It's just so nuanced. And I'm, I'm thinking my professor says it's nuanced. My president, Barack Obama would not speak out if I were kidnapped by Hamas terrorists. I'm out of here. And that's it. We packed up our bags and we moved our three kids across the world to live in a kibbutz and and never looked back.
Mansour:Wow. It saddened me to say, but you didn't base your decisions on thin air. If you look at universities now in the U. S. I never thought in my life that I would live to see American white privileged students going around and saying Osama Bin Laden was right, Hitler was right. Going around and calling for intifada do they even know what that means? I never thought in my lifetime that I'll see that level of anti Semitism, of ignorance and of hatred so I guess you already saw it from the beginning when it was starting. Oh
AZI:yeah. I saw it and I also felt it. I was getting my doctorate in education and there's this huge value placed on diversity. I remember we had to go around the room and say what race we were, and I didn't want to say that I was white. I look white, but I'll tell you, my grandparents have been persecuted all over the world and they weren't allowed to, live in certain neighborhoods in America not so long ago. I have a great grandmother who hid her Jewish identity out of fear. Things have just become so extreme and, I've been asking myself, how did it get so bad? And I found this book called the woke army by Asra Nomani but she basically traces back all of the steps to how we got to this situation and essentially how the Muslim brotherhood. has gotten funding. Qatar, Iran, all of these allies, a hundred million people they're funding Al Jazeera news. People think Al Jazeera, AJ plus is this great open minded, cool clip station to watch when you're a kid. No, it's funded by terror. And A terrorist propaganda and they've gotten into the schools in America. They've gotten into the organizations and academia. You can find all kinds of quote unquote peer reviewed studies by these PhD researchers that are about how Zionists are, genocidal we have apartheid and promoters of genocide. It's madness.
Mansour:Did you ever think, you said your grandmother had to hide her Jewish identity. Did you ever think that you will come to a place or a time in your life that, again, Jews will have to hide their identity?
AZI:It's such a good question. I sat with my husband's family, my husband's family. are Holocaust Survivors. My husband lost most of his family in the Holocaust, but he had one great uncle who we were very close with. His name was Leon Weiss and he lived in Los Angeles. He survived Auschwitz very, very young. And he said to us, it can happen again. It will probably happen again in your lifetime. And I so badly didn't want to believe him, but you know what? He was right.
Mansour:Yeah, I'm feeling it here in Europe and I'm living right now in Germany, which is probably the country that is dealing the best. Out of all of Europe, against anti semitism, they're strongly restricting it, they're showing a lot of support towards Israel, they're not letting anyone call extermination or hateful speech like from the river to the sea, and even here, I am worried when I go with my kid if he speaks Hebrew to me. People told me like maybe try not to speak with him in Hebrew too much openly outside and that's a crazy reality to live. Call it as you want to call it. Try to twist it as you want.
AZI:In Germany. I'm so sad when I hear these things. Are you going to stay in Germany?
Mansour:For now I'm traveling between Germany and Israel, but the kindergarten is here and we're trying to start, the beginning of life here. But let's see how things are going. I'll be very having plan B, C, and D. Yeah, I don't know how well is Europe going to wake up before it's too late for them. I probably wouldn't want to be here if they don't wake up. It's not a good place to be. If they wake up, I mean, hopefully they can take some actions to restore the feeling of peace and safety. But it's not here. Right now they're not in a good place. I'll say it that way.
AZI:A lot of people talk about how the situation in Europe has gotten so bad.
Mansour:I'll give you an example. I went to a pro Palestine demonstration here in the city that I am in Germany. And I dressed like an Arab. I put the keffiyeh and I went because I wanted to walk in and actually hear from them. I was not trying to provoke. I was not trying to ask any tricky questions. I literally genuinely wanted to hear what do they think. What's the solution? And many of them told me not to film them, and I respected that. But I just had good conversations. Good. I asked many of them, what do they think the solution should be regarding the Jews? And speaking in Arabic, they came and told me that they should go. They have no place. And I said, what should they say? They said, don't care. They should Disappear from Israel. They have no place there. And then I came and I told them, is there a chance that you can live? I said, no, you can't live with the Jews. They're traitors. They're evil. They're wicked. They will backstab you and all kinds of stuff. And then I came and I asked, like, why are you getting all this information? And they told me TikTok and, and, and. And telegram and what's up, and this guy told me like bizarre stories about a map that they found in the pocket of a dead Jewish soldier that showed how Israel gonna kill all the Muslims and take over Iran and Lebanon, and I said a map? What are we in Dora the Explorer? Who walks with a map? With like points and under a tree? This is where we're gonna attack? I mean, that's how you think the IDF is planning their plans? But they, so they believed it. And that's when I realized that, first of all, there is a group of people here that is rising that hates the Jews so much, that believe any false fabricated story about the Jews, that see that there's no place to live with the Jews, they don't want to accept them, and they're rising, they're getting bigger and bigger, they're making more children than the Europeans, they're not than It's simulating to the European culture at all. They're keeping their Sharia laws, they're keeping their own the stuff that they ran away from, they're bringing it here. And if Europe doesn't wake up, you're going to have more and more of these people. Is that the people that they want to have? When my kid will go backpacking one day and will meet a girl in a hostel, he will not care if she's Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, he won't care. But if your kid will care Anyone, oh, I don't like him because he's Jew, I think he should die because he's a Christian, because that's what they taught him from a young age. Is that the society that you want to build here? And if they don't wake up and realize that the doctrinating for hate is starting from a young age in the Muslim world. I'm sorry to say it, but it is what it is. They need to be held accountable, they need to be Asked to rise the bar to the Western free world standard if they don't want to do that then you know what either you're gonna let them stay in and you know They're gonna take over you're gonna tell them goodbye guys But that's, that's what it means to wake up. And I don't know if Europe is going to wake up in time. I think America is in a better place.
AZI:I so appreciate your perspective.
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