of asalamualaikum and welcome to another episode on the tmj podcast, today we have yet another special guest hana. smith is a content creator, activist and writer. her passion for of storytelling has led her all around the world from countries like dr. congo, to ireland, iraq and colombia. today she's a fierce of advocate for collective liberation and is currently writing a book on the origin of harm and how to create lasting positive change. thank you so much, hannah for being with me today. i really appreciate you giving us your time, and i'm really excited to have this conversation with you as someone whose platform has recently... very heavy on

palestine content, and that's kind of the point that i really would like to start this conversation with you about is many western audiences just became introduced to what is really going on in palestine from october 7th, so essentially prior to that, many americans were ignorant to what was actually going on in that region, why do you think that is? i think some people could sort of argue that lot of people in the us, and i can kind of speak specifically about the us as someone who was born and raised here. um, not necessarily on all western audiences, but um, lot of people in the us have a bit of apathy when it comes to global history and kind of a the root causes of these conflicts, and so some could argue that that is why there's a lot of ignorance surrounding the nakba and the decades of oppression and injustice against palestinians, but i don't think that that paints the full story, and and i say that because lot of americans are aware of the founding of israel, they are aware of the... israeli perspective, and so i think

that there has been a very specific and well-backed effort, both by the us government and by the israeli government to influence the public opinions of just regular everyday americans and really make sure that the that there's an abundance of information from the official israeli perspective and that will drown out the information from the palestinian perspective, and so i think maybe the apathy explains a small part, but "i do think that there has been an effort, and especially because of the us support for israel, we don't want to be um, you know, learning about things that are going to make us maybe feel a little bit guilty until it's so in our face, and so i think that's something explains, and i, i think it's interesting that you say that, one of the things that actually, i'm sure you where came out uh throughout the past nine months is, for example, there was a leaked new york times memo, um, explaining that their journalists should avoid using certain words like genocide." or ethnic cleansing, very

deliberate limitation of words that really do paint the reality of what's happening there. when you have a journalistic integrity principle in place for these top shot new news organizations like new york times, it's kind of surprising to see them come out and say, you guys should consciously be avoiding these words when we see essentially those same level of charged words being used for conflicts like ukraine or a conflicts that um it would benefit the us to be painting it in a very specific way. how much do you think that americans really do trust their media when it comes to coverage of international events specifically with palestine? do you think that over the years americans have retained that trust in the media? have they accepted these media narratives that they're being fed or do you think that is kind of shifting? so i definitely think it's shifting and i think this is a really good question, the memo from the new york times was obviously very alarming but not surprising as we saw so much of... are reporting on what's

happening in palestine, being very sanitized, using a lot of passive voice and even just outrate irresponsible, um, so that it's alarming but not surprising considering how they have been, and i know journalists who have freeelance for the new york times and others who feel, they feel censored, and it's um, it's it's very alarming. i think before all of this, i think the far right and the far left had lot of distress in mainstream. media and then i think that they were kind of seen as being on the fringes of being like, we don't trust the media, like they almost seemed like conspiracy theories, but obviously we know like the us coverage of the invasion, the us media coverage of the invasion of iraq was very irresponsible, very one-sided and that came out later, but we haven't really learned from that, and then i think because so many people in the us are on social media, they're on tiktok and they're on instagram, they're opening their phones and they're seeing these horrors. video tap

video tapes of just horrific massacres and children's bodies and then they're going to go on the new york times website or on cnn and they're going to see narrative that is just... completely different from what they're witnessing on their screens and so because of that, this distrust in the media is no longer a fringe concept, it's now become very clear, the media, like lot of mainstream media companies have exposed themselves, they've exposed their double standard, um, and so i think that that is shifting, i think it should continue to shift, that we should continue to question, you had a project that you were involved with called why we fight, and that was really interesting to me, i saw some videos that you made about it, but can you explain a little bit more about what that project was and you did interviews from former combatants in a lot of different areas in ireland, uh, lebanon, iraq, colombia. can you tell us some the major findings that kind of stood out to you when you were talking to these people? yeah, absolutely. thank you for asking that

question. i was inspired to start why we fight uh when i went to dr. congo, and it really helps illuminate that this sort of good guy, bad guy. narrative that lot of western observers were bringing to things was unhelpful and lot of the root causes of why people were joining these armed groups was not being discussed, so i didn't start why we fight in the drc, but that was the inspiration for it, so it's started really in lebanon, there was so much western reporting on lebanon at the time, and i actually went to bayrut to become a freelance journalist, and i was like, i, you know, i feel like there's a lot of people who are reporting on lebanon, but not talking about these even the deep history and some of the reporting was irresponsible and shallow and i was like, you know what, i just want to do what i feel like i can do well, and that's talk to individuals and really talk to people who had fought or are continuing to fight and learn their personal uh reasons and their motivations. so

why we fight started in lebanon and it took me all over the world, i went to northern ireland, i went to iraq, i went to colombia, i went to bosnia and herzegovina, and i really started to... see this the common threads between all of these different stories and why we fight culminated in a gallery experience and lot of people have asked me like can you put this online and when i was conducting these interviews i was not i didn't have the following that i have today and i don't necessarily feel that it would be safe to put some of these interviews online it could put people at risk but it culminated in this gallery experience and the gallery went like this you had the portrait or the photo of the person who fought and then you have their person personal motivation for taking up arms and all identifying information was redacted from that personal narrative and so you had to look these people in the eye and hear their story without knowing if this was from a group you agreed with or didn't agree with and lot of people couldn't tell who who the

people were from or what groups yeah yeah and i and i created this for a audience in the us because i think we have such influence on the rest of the world and our voters have such lack of understanding of why people are taking up arms in these conflicts that the us is directly involved with, and if we could kind of sit back and say, oh, this person started fighting for the same reasons that i mean, i would start fighting too, there was no interview that i did that i couldn't confidently say, i wouldn't do the same thing if i were in their shoes, and i think a lot of people who are viewers in this gallery felt the same, so why we fight was such a journey for me, it was really kind of launched me into this space of underst. standing what the root causes of some of these conflicts and systemic harm depression are and why so many of our efforts to create peace um fail honestly. one of your videos was actually speaking about uh hezbollah in lebanon and you were talking about how you spoke to i think ex-fighter and that was

really interesting for me because obviously you have very black and white narratives that are coming out of the media from here and now you have someone who's saying i went and this person instead of telling their motivations, they went and showed me, how do you think that changed your perspective on just conflict and how people kind of rise up to conflict in different areas? i think it helps me understand that the whole idea of like when we think about groups like hezballah, you could say, do i think that what they do is completely justified, do i fully agree with them? those are not the necessary questions and discussions that we could be. having and i believe that we should be having, it helps me realize that the people who join groups do so for specific reasons, and as long as those reasons exist, people are more than likely going to join those groups, and so whether or not we agree with the groups manifesto doesn't actually matter,

what matters is having even the empathy and the care to say, oh, yeah, i can see why you would do that, and until we are addressing the reasons. you decided to to join this group and for him it was it was numerous things and he fought in 2006 um but it was really like the kana massacre was it was air strikes israely air strikes on. lebanon that killed a lot of civilians, that killed people who were already displaced, and the the idea saying this this group is not going to be allowed in my country, i think that that's something that lot of people can empathize with, and people have such a hard time saying, oh, i can understand this, well also saying like, i don't have to fully agree with everything, and and that's that's the nuance that i think is necessary in in these conversations, and that i learned from that, and i was very honored. to have access to lot these people's stories. i mean, for somebody who fought in hesbollah to trust an american

girl with his story is huge deal, and it's because people realize that that the world didn't know why and they wanted the world to know why, so they were willing to say, okay, i'm going to take a risk and i'm going to talk to this person. moving to the next question, this is kind of the more, i guess the typical, do you support hamos question that uh peers lives to ask his guests, but the reason... uh the hamas topic was important to me is because you have interviewed and spoken to lot of combatants and um many people consider hamas to be the same kind of theme of resistance fighters and people who are essentially fighting for their own people and for the dignity and for the liberation of the palestinians. would you say that for them based on what you've seen, you would say they also qualifies the same kind of trend of um being a natural consequence of the trauma and the decades of aggression that palestinians have been experiencing, and if you were to speak to a combatant from their

side as well, do you think you would receive similar story to the many combatants you've spoken to previously? yeah, i definitely think that, and i tried always to focus on not leaders in armed groups, but just the sort of regular folks who join, and i think if i if i were to speak with someone from hamas and about their personal motivations for taking up arms, i think if i put that their photo in their story alongside all of these others, i don't think people would be able to pick them out. i think people might have in their mind their idea of what um, you know, and i don't use this word, but it's thrown around lot like a terrorist would think and do, and it's just, it's really not helpful, and genuinely don't think people would be able to say, oh, that's hamas versus this is, a group that the us government has supported, i think that the when there is a consistent and continued assault on dignity and on rights, it does create very fertile

soil for recruitment into armed groups and so that it's i don't want to say that it's inevitable because i think it's really important to honor and respect agency of all people and everyone decides what they do, but it's it's highly likely and so the question of supporting or not supporting again is like this is just what's going to happen and it's to want to defend end your people, to want to defend your land, to want to sort of take back what was what was taken from you, i think it's a very natural human response, and yeah, i think if i were to interview someone from hamas and i don't support again, it's not an issue of, i guess personally, like for me, because of my interviews, i've come to believe in non-violence as the most effective way forward, but that is like my personal beliefs, that is my personal, like how i would feel is... moral for me in a situation, but do i have any right to say what someone else should do in their situation? do i have

any right to say, if you've felt if you've dealt with, decades of oppression that you should think a certain way or act a certain way, i don't feel that that is my place to say it, and so i think that the the the understanding of hamas as very kind of natural response to decades of oppression is going to be effective way to view. and see them in a and a more productive way to to create path towards true peace and injustice, and as as you were speaking, i thought about this, but i think it's interesting, you mentioned how when you speak to combatts, you don't specifically identify them, and if you were to show those same words in their stories to an american audience, they there's a chance that they might actually relate to it. do you think you could say the same if you were to interview let's say member of the israeli military and or someone not even military, just average israeli civilian. i think that, and i just actually spoke with an

ex-israeli, soldier a couple days ago, so they what they shared was very enlightening for me as well, of there has been decades and generations of indoctrination into the idea that if you are not consistently fighting an enemy, that you will be eradicated, and that from from their experience and from other experiences that i have heard. is very sort of critical to the israeli establishment, to um israeli society, and so how do you consistently recruit people to to fight in a? press others, i think you have to have some these ingredients, you have to have fear, you have to have a sense of victimization, it's it's going to be very different victimization than i feel like the palestinians have experienced, but it still exists nonetheless, and so i think that there is a space, i don't necessarily think all iof soldiers, i think that there's a lot of people who you would be like, immediately you would spot them for who

they are, whatever, but if you took all the identifying information and you reducted it, i don't, i don't. confidently know that you would be able to to pick them out of the group either, which is unfortunate, and it doesn't, this does not at all justify this, but i think that there's a very specific and concerted effort to make keep the population, the israeli population in a state of victimization and fear so that they can recruit and justify what they're doing. yeah, and and the reason i ask that is because again, when we're talking about, especially with the issue of... and palestine since that's one of the most um, i would say contentious issues in the current global discussion on just the enemy versus the liberator. i think it's really important because essentially it's become a battle of narratives at this point, like when we look at social media, you have interviews coming out from the israeli sides saying, oh we are the victims, we um have been the victims of

terrorism for so long now, we're just trying to have safe space to live, and then you go talk to the palestinian. side and they're saying you know this was our land and essentially it was just taken from us with with just just like that and essentially the whole world conspired and all the super superpowers conspired to make this happen and it's as if we just never existed so i think in in this battle of narratives it's really easy to say um i find that one side what they're saying is right and i think you're right lot of israelis i would actually say um i would say they have been brainwashed into thinking that they really are the victims and a situation where you know we just came from europe, we came and we settled here, we just want to home. i think it's completely natural for any human being to want safe home, but the question comes, under what circumstances have your people settled in a land, who was there before? there are a lot of these questions that unfortunately in the context

were given in the media, they're absent, and i think in the absent of that context, anyone really can be either victim or... or liberator or a terrorist or anything, so you can paint it either way, and i think this this is really important because we've seen this on this side with other, we've seen it with south africa, for example, you've also spoken about south africa very frequently, in 1986, i think it was the reagan administration, they actually condemned mandela's anc uh political group as terrorist. mandela himself was a terror watch list until 2008, and this is a man who now we as americans celebrate every year, we talk about how amazing the you know struggle for resisting apartide in south africa was, whereas if we were to backtrack to those same days, the status quo and the government and everyone with the power in our country was viewing them as terrorists, and now the question becomes, is that going to also become the case in a few years with palestine? what do you think about that? i

think the term terrorist is such a weapon, isn't it? to see to see it being used, it's almost like the word the word communist during the red scare where it was just a way to shut someone down to shut someone up and such an unhelpful term and then also used so unequally because we will use it against groups but we won't use it against governments and some of the greatest acts of terror, mean i was thinking about dresden which was technically an active terror because it was volitionally targeting civilian populations for the intent of. discouraging and creating terror, and so that, i mean, some of the greatest acts of terror were committed by western powers, and then so often it is used as a tool, especially against people of color, to try to silence them, which we saw with nelson mandela. i think when we look back at this time, we, it will be with great shame. i

think even those of us who have been speaking up, there's always going to be this question in the back of our minds. of whether or not we could have done more or could have done better and and so whether resistance fighters in palestine will be seen in the same way as nelsa mandela, i i don't, i don't feel like i can speak on that, i certainly think some of the not some of the people who are really speaking up and leading and and and even those who are speaking up with non-violence who have been, exiled in all of that palestinians over the past few decades, i that there's going to be lot of heroes that arise from all of this and people who maybe the west has seen with disdain and with suspicion, but i don't know and i don't feel like... i can speak to who those heroes will be, right? that's fair, and i kind of want to relate this as well to another point in our conversation, and that is how you have put

together a theory or kind of blueprint, and i think that's also really worth discussing. um, this is a theory for the origins of harm based on obviously your travels to conflict and post-conflict uh territories. what, what exactly does this blueprint encompass? can you tell us a little bit more about that? yeah, of course, thank you for asking. "this blueprint, it kind of started to form while i was in lebanon, and then as i continue to to do these interviews and then also just talk to survivors of conflict, it really started to formulate, and as i was researching so much of the us foreign policy during the cold war that backfired, it was like, okay, what is going on, right? why do so many humanitarian efforts fail, or why are so many, you know, in ineffective in the long run, why is so..." much peace building, just very surface level, and i really was like, what is the what is the common thread of everyone who decides to take up arms, but also people who are passive participants in

harm. i mean, we see the people who are refusing to speak up in in the us government or the people who are refusing to speak up in other governments around the world, like what, what is the thing that causes us to be silent, what's the thing that causes us to be manipulatable or controllable as a population, so that people who want to... to accumulate power and wealth through the violence and oppression of others can do so, and i sat with this idea for such a long time and almost like obsessed over it because i wanted to get to the bottom of it, i was like, we just need like some formula or framework that we can just go off of to say, these are the necessary ingredients to create lasting positive change, and so that's where i came up with the blueprint, and so the blueprint really explores what i call the four forces, the're the four root. causes of harm, so they are the things that cause us to be active or passive participants in harm, so that the four forces are fear, victimization, isolation and ignorance, and if we want to

create lasting positive change, if we want to create better, more beautiful world for everyone, we our solutions and our movements must address the those four forces um with their opposites and we must also build resilience with within our... selves and so so much of this is obviously inspired by my conversations with former combatants of what could have stopped this from happening in the first place and lot of it is is addressing the injustices, lot of it is endress addressing and we brought up um you know in israeli society, the indoctrination and the brainwashing a lot of it is addressing ignorance and in such a way that that really gets to the root of it, it's not just like sitting here with a whiteboard and teaching someone out of ignorance, it's showing someone out of ignorance, it's showing people... "there's a reason why israeli society is so threatened by meetings between israelis and palestinians, because it destroys the israeli narrative that everybody wants to push them into the sea, and so all

so all of this needs the sort of concerted effort to eradicate these forces and when these forces are eradicated we're able to think for ourselves, we're not going to be manipulated by our leaders to partake in violence or for to let violence happen, we're going to speak up when we see something that..." wrong and it's the people that want to, the people who are greedy, the people who want to use these existing forces to accumulate wealth and power, they're they're not going to be very relevant if the forces are not here, that's the tools that they use, and so the blueprint is really exploring what those four roots are and um, you know, what how we can address them within ourselves cuz that's also really important and then within society to create lasting change. one last question to kind of wrap this up is it's more of a personal one. um, i know you have also received comments about you, oh, what is your real agenda with doing all of this, content creation, and speaking about palestine, which

is not the most american issue if you will, and there has also been on other sides with just other american or western content creators that have grown a platform speaking about palestine. one of the questions that is often thrown at them is, what are you really benefiting from this, and is this just a... about putting a platform out there and being that you know white person who is amasting a huge following because this is the hot new topic, how do you respond to some of those comments because i know they do come up frequently. we are seeing horrors happen and i and i think it's like live streamed genocide that has been bolstered and enabled by systems that so many of us have been asleep to that will take a... long time to fully dismantle, and how could we not have agenda to want those systems to be dismantled? how could we not have agenda to want collective liberation? how could we, how

could we sit here? say, oh, i just want to educate. no, i don't just want to educate. i want to inform people, and not only on what's happening right now, but also the us history and involvement in other countries that have created and perpetuated, you know, violence and and conflicts and all over the world, so that people understand that this isn't, this didn't start on october 7th. i'm not just talking about palestine, but i'm talking about the us involvement and us imperialism in the world, and so when people say i have agenda, so lot of people will say, like, you get checks from iran. um and if you could ask them to send my checks that would be great, i've received none, that's a bit of a stretch, i would say, but sure, yeah, it's people, that's one of those, every accusation is a confession type deals, because um, obviously influencers are paid by supporters of israel, and that it's the that happens, but the thing about the funny thing about the truth is you don't have to pay people to tell

the... truth and that's why so many people are speaking up for palestine with no further agenda, with no want to make it career or to make money from it, that's you know that's how we got here, so i do have agenda, i'm not being paid by iran or hamas or whatever, i don't feel like any anybody who's speaking up needs to be paid because we just want to do this because it's right, but i definitely you, i definitely have agenda, i this the world that we live in, but with the international systems that we have that have stood by as for decades as palestinians have been tortured, as children have been tortured, and then with this continued and ongoing genocide, this is not the world that i want to raise my future kids in, and so my agenda is, i want to co-create better world, because i do fully and wholeheartedly believe that our liberation and freedom is tied up

together, i believe that nobody is free. until we're all free. this is forest. in today's show, we'll be looking at how this global war even extends to the annual emmy awards that recognize excellence in television and emerging media. this uh is is something which um which is a feeling and which will will be an indication i think of the uh the general um beginnings of failure of the lobby. bisan oda is a palestinian journalist um who has been covering the war in gaza from the very beginning. she already won p body award in the news category. i don't win many awards

in my own country so i'm a bit shocked. firstly like to thank the iranian people for uh welcoming welcoming me into your beautiful country. i want to tell you uh all people in this room story. tellers, truth tellers, we cannot fake in emotion, we cannot fake the truth, this is for every child, mother and father who are lost by us made weapons and ukma weapons and europeen made weapons in our palestine, the second sub international media festival.

your press tv headlines, the world food program warns more than two million palestinians in gaza are in urgent need of food. terron says it is prepared enhance cooperation with the international atomic energy agency, whose head is expressed willingness to visit iran soon. assyrians, israel's latest deadly attacks, warning regime is escalating the situation, which could have unpredictable repercussions.