Yuval Abraham
speaker
37 appearances
4 recordings
4 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Yuval Abraham’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
We made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together our voices are stronger.
The atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people which must end, the Israeli hostages brutally taken in the crime of October 7th which must be freed. When I look at Basel, I see my brother, but we are unequal. We live in a regime where I am free under civilian law, and Bassel is under military laws that destroy his life and he cannot control.
There is a different path, a political solution, without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people. And I have to say, as I am here, the foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path.
We made this film, Palestinians and Israelis, because together our voices are stronger. We see each other. The atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people, which must end. The Israeli hostages brutally taken in the crime of October 7th, which must be freed.
I hate being with Basil on the field because I'm much slower than him. So he always runs. I'm behind him. I also, I smoke more, so I'm less in shape.
I actually came to this through journalism or to be, to even go even a step backwards. In a way, I came to this through the Arabic language, I think, because when I was younger, I studied Arabic. I grew up, you know, in quite a mainstream Israeli town, not meeting Palestinians, not knowing a lot about what is happening in the West Bank.
And after I began studying Arabic, it really changed my life. It changed me politically, but I think also emotionally. My grandfather, who is a Jewish person born in Jerusalem and his family is originally from Yemen, he spoke fluent Palestinian Arabic. But then, you know, after this family connection, I began also meeting Palestinians. First, Palestinians were citizens of Israel.
And gradually, I began going more and more into the West Bank. And I think the knowledge of Arabic and Hebrew is sort of what's made me a journalist.
Wherever you look in the West Bank and also inside Israel, for example, in the Negev, you see Palestinian houses being bulldozed. You see Palestinian villages where they have no connection to water or electricity, and they are unable to obtain a permit. The Israeli military declines.
It's almost 99% of Palestinian requests for building permits, according to data that the military has supplied to organizations like Bimkom and others, Israeli human rights organizations that are researching this issue. And when I looked in the Israeli media or I began talking to Israeli friends from where I grew up or my family, the response I always got was, well, they're building illegally.
This is a legal issue. They did not obtain a permit and it's illegal. But when I began researching and looking at documents and looking at statistics, you very quickly realize that it's a political issue, that there is a systematic effort to prevent this acquisition of building permits. I think for me, what was most interesting important and shocking when I first met Basil.
This is like the first day that we met. I remember there was a house demolition happening in Basil's village and we ran to it. I remember like the soldiers threw stun grenades and they kicked this person out of his house and destroyed the house. And there was so much violence there at that moment.
I remember like the children looking at it and the family then not sure what to do and where will they go and where will they sleep. And I felt it's very wrong, you know, that this is happening. And I felt a certain responsibility, I guess, to communicate that first and first most to Israelis. So I began writing mainly in Hebrew.
And something about that experience really drew me back to come back to Masafariyata and to basically witness this happening over and over again.
I can tell you what I know for sure, that films have effects on individuals and they change the hearts of individuals. And the only reason why I know this for a fact is because it happens to me. Like when I was younger, I remember I watched a documentary called Five Broken Cameras, which was also nominated for an Oscar and was created by an Israeli-Palestinian team.
And it really, really touched me. And it really made me question some of the beliefs I grew up with.
I grew up 25 minutes away from Basel's village near the Be'er Sheva area, which is in the south of Israel. And I mean, I lived my life and, you know, you don't know or you don't see, or maybe you see, but you kind of tune out of the realities happening in the West Bank and what Basel's community has been going through. I would always hear about Palestinian teenagers in the West Bank
throwing stones at Israeli soldiers or at Israeli settlers. And when you don't know anything about the context, when you imagine that they're just living normal lives like your lives, the explanation that you put on these acts of violence is always going to be they're doing that because they hate us, because they are evil.
No, look, I do believe that, and I'm not the only Israeli, Israelis talk about this all the time, that part of the conditions which allowed for October 7th was an Israeli right-wing policy for decades that's set to empower Hamas in Gaza, weaken more moderate Palestinians, keep a separation between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to prevent a Palestinian state.
I do believe that people retain moral agency. So I think... Horrible war crimes were committed on October 7th. Three people that I knew were killed on October 7th. Even people who are oppressed still have moral agency. And kidnapping children or massacring civilians is wrong. And the people who are committing that have... a moral responsibility.
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