Omar Suleiman
speaker
1,922 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2023
last heard Feb 2024
Omar Suleiman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And so, yes, this is very much so connected to the broader issue of Palestinian existence. If you realize here, we are erased in peace and we are erased in war. In peace, it's the Abraham Accords. Agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors, which is supposedly to solve the Palestinian problem. The Palestinians are absent from their own fate, from discussions about their own fate.
In war, it's the Israel-Hamas war. It's Israel and Gaza. Where are the Palestinian people, the millions of Palestinian people that have either been removed from their land or are being tormented on their land? Where are they in this discussion?
I think deeply frustrated. a great sense of anger, sadness. Every single Palestinian right now knows someone that's been killed. Every single Palestinian is a part of a story of displacement or destruction. Every single Palestinian has a relative that's either missing a limb or a loved one. Every single Palestinian in the world is traumatized by this.
And in some ways being outside of Palestine, being away from it all hurts even more because you see your people being killed and starved and brutalized and slaughtered, and you can't do anything about it. And the people around you are justifying that slaughter. If you turn on a TV or if you open a mainstream news site, these sites are justifying your slaughter.
And people are being killed over there because they look like me. Because they're Palestinian like I'm Palestinian. And so we're watching this in diaspora with agony. We can't go. We can't. we can't heal our loved ones we can't comfort the people that are there i recently spoke to a doctor who's lost 75 relatives 75 relatives in gaza and he's a medical doctor and all he wants to do
is get in there and just use his medical expertise to help his people, and he can't. And so we're watching it from afar, but our hearts are there. They are in the buildings that are being destroyed. They're in the hospitals that are being bombed. They are there, and they are with the people.
Yeah, it's really hard. I mean, when any group of people are killed, my instinct and I think a lot of people is to go there to help, whether it's a natural disaster or especially after an incident of terror, wherever it is, right? It's rush there and do the best that you can to help people get through it. So it's been,
extremely hard to watch this from afar and feel like I can't do anything about it. And so that's why instead I think that most of us are driven to continue to be the voice of the voiceless. You know, I always say that if they've made them faceless, they can't make us voiceless. They have reduced our casualties in Palestine to a number. The number of is hundreds a day, over 30,000 people.
We're averaging 10,000 people a month. The fact that they've been turned into faceless numbers with no stories, with no humanity, makes it that much more important for us to tell their stories here And to remind the world that you've lost your humanity if you can watch this unfold and not even have the decency to call for a ceasefire. I mean, that's where we've reached.
That's how low it is right now. Calling for a ceasefire has now become radical. So we have to remind the world that if you're okay with the demolition of... an entire town or a city or whatever it is that you want to call Gaza, because it wasn't always the Gaza Strip. But if you're okay with this and you're okay with this casualty count every single day, It's not just them who are being killed.
It's your hearts that are dying. And I think that when I look back to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and I mentioned this, he wrote about Vietnam. He said that if America was to succumb to its spiritual death, the autopsy would read Vietnam. I would say that it would read Gaza now.
If Wael al-Dahdouh wasn't Palestinian, he'd be on the cover of Time magazine right now. He would be the most celebrated journalist in the world. Wael al-Dahdouh is from Gaza. He has been in Israeli prisons. He has been under Israeli airstrikes. He has seen the worst of the occupation before he's seen the worst of the genocide. while on TV, I mean, and this is insane when you think about it.
We have over a hundred journalists now, right? That's more than any conflict in history that have been killed. And there is sufficient evidence by international watchdogs that this is intentional, that journalists have been killed intentionally. But then their families, while it was reporting on TV, when an airstrike hits his wife, two kids, and a grandchild.
He goes to the scene and he said this, you know, you never expect as a journalist to be the subject of the story. Suddenly the camera's on him, mourning over his dead wife and kids and grandkid. And he's saying, he even says in Arabic, he says, they're taking it out on our children. They're taking it out on our children.
You know, I've heard this from multiple people that have had relatives targeted that I wish it was me instead. He gets back on camera the same day because he feels a responsibility to continue to cover the lives of the people of Gaza.
He understands that his story, as devastating as it is, is not unique in regards to the people of Gaza, that there are many people whose families have been killed in airstrikes. All two million people have been traumatized in some way. And so he gets back on camera, tells the story again. And then he is targeted himself. His arm struck. His cameraman, Samer Abu Daqa, dies in front of him.
He bleeds out. Wa'al watches him bleed out for hours. And while any aid workers try to reach them, in the building that they were in, snipers would shoot all of those that were rushing to Samar. So he watches his cameraman and one of his best friends bleed out to death. Wilde goes to the hospital, his arm is wrapped up, gets treatment. He's back on camera the next day. A few weeks later,
Another child is killed again with his friend in a car. So this was a targeted airstrike. His son is driving and his son and his best friend are hit in an airstrike. What leads the funeral prayer is back on camera again and speaks with such dignity, with such compassion. You know, one of the things that always gets to me as a Palestinian, right?
And as a Muslim too, is that we are portrayed to be these beasts and savages. Tell me a man that would be put through what was put through and still stand on that pulpit and in front of the world with such dignity, with such grace, continues to tell the story. Wael has become a hero to many of us, and he would be a hero in a world that wasn't anti-Palestinian.
And unfortunately, Wael has not only lost his family, he's not only lost much of his own existence, but Wael is part of the greater story of erasure. So even though he's telling the story of the people of Gaza, and he is the story of the people of Gaza, Most people will never learn about Walid Dahdewa.
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