Every day the Palestinian civilian death toll is rising dramatically as Israel continues with its genocidal bombing and ground invasion of Gaza, and as settler and military violence towards Palestinians in the West Bank intensifies. “It’s a closure, it’s a curfew, in many places in the West Bank,” Issa Amro says. “It’s not normal life these days. Soldiers are everywhere, settlers are everywhere, people are afraid to leave their homes, they don’t go to work, they don’t go to school, they don’t go to universities.” After losing touch with Issa during the day because he was escaping from settlers who were chasing him in Hebron, we managed to reconnect over the phone and record a nine minute conversation about the hell working people in Palestine are going through right now and what their fellow workers in the US and Canada can do to stop the slaughter. Issa Amro is a Palestinian human rights defender living in Hebron, in the Occupied West Bank. He is the co-founder and former coordinator of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements. Days prior to this recording, Issa was evicted from his home in Hebron and tortured by Israeli troops.

A note about the audio: After hours of silence and failed phone calls, Issa contacted Max to inform him that he was temporarily safe and had 10 minutes to speak over the phone. Dropping everything he was doing, Max quickly opened his computer, began a QuickTime recording, and called Issa on speakerphone. We apologize for the sub-par audio quality.

Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Additional links/information:

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Transcript

Maximillian Alvarez:

This is Maximillian Alvarez, editor-in-chief of The Real News Network, host of the podcast Working People. I’m sitting here in Baltimore on Thursday, Nov. 2. It’s about 2:13 PM and I’m currently waiting to see if I can get on the phone with Issa Amro, a Palestinian man and human rights activist living in Hebron in the occupied West Bank. I don’t know if we’ll be able to connect with Issa, but I’m sitting here waiting and hoping, and hopefully the next thing you hear is our conversation.

Issa Amro:

Hi.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Hi, Issa?

Issa Amro:

Yes, it’s Issa.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Hi. Thank you so much. I’m so sorry to bother you at this time. I know you only have 10 minutes, so I am recording and I’ll let you go in 10 minutes from now.

Issa Amro:

Okay, good. Thank you.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Can you just start by introducing yourself, tell people who you are, where you are, and what is happening around you right now?

Issa Amro:

I’m a Palestinian human rights defender from the city of Hebron in the West Bank, and I’m Issa Amro. I am an activist organizing non-violent activities [for] 20 years. Now, I am in my friend’s house because the Israeli military evicted me from my house on Oct. 20, and I was attacked and beaten and tortured on Oct. 7 by Israeli soldiers and Israeli settlers in armed uniforms.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Did you say you were abducted and tortured?

Issa Amro:

Yes, to Oct. 7, Israeli settlers in army uniforms and Israeli soldiers kidnapped me from my house, the yard, and they handcuffed me, blindfolded my eyes, tied my mouth, and beat me, beat me, beat me, and I was put in very bad condition, spitting on me, taking selfies with me, celebrating, beating me up, and cursing and insulting me all for 10 hours. And that was so painful, to be tied with plastic cuffs for 10 hours continuously. Until now, I have back problems and back pain, and I have hand issues. I’m suffering from that. I’m not able to move my fingers well and I don’t feel well after the blood was not reaching my fingers for 10 hours. That was Oct. 7. Then settlers and soldiers attacked my house many times, raided my house, damaged my yard at the time, and then they evicted me by force from my house.

Maximillian Alvarez:

My God, I’m so incredibly sorry this is happening, Issa. I can’t imagine how you’re feeling right now, and we are sending all of our love and solidarity to you and to everyone over there in Palestine. We are going to do everything we can to stop this. Can you just tell people here in the United States and Canada about what has been going on in the West Bank? What has been going on in Gaza since Oct. 7, since you were kidnapped?

Issa Amro:

I can say that it’s not only me. Many, many, many Palestinians were beaten, attacked, killed in the last four weeks. Around 130 Palestinians were killed and in West Bank by the Israeli military and Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Hundreds of Palestinians being tortured, beaten, and there is a TikTok challenge between Israeli soldiers who beats up Palestinians more. And settlers attacked Palestinian communities, around 20 communities, left their communities. So, many, many families left their houses, their villages. It’s a closure, it’s a curfew in many places in the West Bank. So it’s not normal life these days. Soldiers are everywhere, settlers are everywhere. People are afraid to leave their homes. They don’t go to work, they don’t go to school, they don’t go to universities. People protesting in the street, angry about what’s going on in Gaza. So it’s not a normal life, or even we don’t have the basic of a life in the West Bank now.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Can you say more about that? Because on our show, we talked to workers around the United States, people who go to work for a living, and they’re listening to this right now. Can you talk about life for working Palestinians under Israeli occupation before Oct. 7?

Issa Amro:

Yeah, Palestinian workers, they are really used for cheap labor. They are dehumanized. If anybody says anything politically that Israeli military disagree with, they don’t give them work permits. They barely earn a living. They have to go to the checkpoint, go to work around 3:00 AM to reach their work at 7:00 AM. Imagine that you wake up in very early morning to go to work. It’s not a life for the workers. Cheap labor without rights, without dignity, without being able to even confront or challenge the Israeli military or the Israeli apartheid system. Because it’s the conditions of the Palestinian workers. The Israeli workers, they have different conditions with welfare, with insurance, with very good salaries. It’s the opposite of Palestinian workers.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And Issa, I know I only have you for another two minutes, so I just wanted to ask, if you could talk directly to workers here in the United States, what would you tell them to do? What do you want to say to them before we let you go?

Issa Amro:

I tell the American people that Palestinians, they love you. They respect you. They use you as an idol for freedom and justice and equality. They want them to see us as human beings who deserve freedom, justice, and equality, not animals who are seeking shelter and food. I want the American workers to be united to make the occupation costly, make the Israeli apartheid costly.

As Martin Luther King said, I have a dream. We, the Palestinians, we have dreams to be free, and that will not happen without American support to us as Palestinians, especially the American workers, to pressure the American administration to stop its blind support to Israel. Israel is using their tax money to embolden the occupation and make our life harder and harder. So the American administration is really participating in making our lives harder, instead of making it easier. So the workers can change that, they can be creative to make it costly with concrete, non-violent actions from them to their government and to anybody who is trying to offend other people. Thank you very much.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Issa, thank you. Please stay safe.

Issa Amro:

Okay. Thank you.

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Maximillian Alvarez is an Izzy-Award-winning journalist and the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Executive Director of The Real News Network. He is the founder and host of Working People, "a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today," which he started after his family lost their home and life savings during the Financial Crash of 2008 and the ensuing Great Recession. Alvarez is the author of The Work of Living: Working People Talk About Their Lives and the Year the World Broke, a collection of interviews with US workers recorded during Year One of of the Covid-19 pandemic. His forthcoming book—tentatively titled “American Sacrifice: Working People Fight for The Lives (and Our Future) in America’s ‘Sacrifice Zones’”—is under contract with Haymarket Books. From April 2022 to March 2024, Alvarez hosted and produced The Art of Class War series on Breaking Points. From September 2016 to January 2019, he was a regular contributor and then a columnist for The Baffler magazine. Prior to joining TRNN, Alvarez was an Associate Editor at the Chronicle Review at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Prior to that, he was a graduate student-worker and rank-and-file member of the Graduate Employees’ Organization (AFT Local 3550) at the University of Michigan, where he earned a dual-PhD in History and Comparative Literature, taught undergraduates, and published academic articles in Media Theory and La Deleuziana: An Online Journal of Philosophy. Prior to that, he worked a litany of low-wage jobs in different restaurants, warehouses, factories, retail stores, etc. Alvarez’s writing has been featured in outlets like The Nation, Poynter, In These Times, Boston Review, The Baffler, Current Affairs, Dissent, Protean Magazine, The New Republic, Truthout, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. As an analyst and commentator, he has appeared on programs like PBS NewsHour, Breaking Points, Democracy Now!, The Laura Flanders Show, NPR’s 1A, The Hill’s Rising, This Is Hell!, Krystal Kyle & Friends, The Michael Brooks Show, The Jacobin Show, CounterPunch Radio, Citations Needed, Bad Faith with Briahna Joy Gray, Know Your Enemy, Srsly Wrong, Left Anchor, Revolutionary Left Radio, The End of Sport Podcast, Pod Damn America, The David Pakman Show, The Megyn Kelly Show, The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent, The Zero Hour with RJ Eskow, The David Feldman Show, and The Marianne Williamson Podcast.