A Traitor or a Hero My Double Identity

[Music]

i’m a

terrorist and i am a traitor

my name is yusuf haddad i’m an israeli

arab

i was born in haifa a diverse place

where you see

christian muslim and jews regularly

interact on the street

at history my family moved to nazareth

the largest arab city

in israel i grew up as a

arab christian minority surrounded

by a majority muslim community in a

majority jewish state

not complicated at all right but because

i

was a kid who loved to play football or

as american called soccer

i built deep friendships with people

with different lifestyles and

experiences

than my own throughout childhood

now fast forward to age 18

in israel all 18 years old are drafted

into the israeli defense force but

to a number of factors arab israelis are

exempted

from monetary service spring of 2002

i see my friends you know speaking what

unit they want to serve in

anxiously awaiting the next right of

passage in our country

so i start thinking why wouldn’t

i as a citizen just like my jewish

friends

serve my country after all it’s not the

jdf

jewish defense force it’s the idf

israeli defense for israeli so

i enlist not only do i enlist

by unless the kulani combat unit

i lost a few of my armed friends over

the decision

but despite the controversy i knew that

i’m

pretty sure doing the right thing until

few weeks before my service began i

switched on the tv

and saw images that made my heart sink

blood covered the floor shattered

glasses and pieces of building

everywhere

medic and police frantically moving from

place to place

the maximum restaurant in haifa a symbol

of co-existence

a place where you will see christians

muslims and jews working together

have been suicide bombed by a

palestinian terrorist

killing 21 innocent people among them

christians muslims and jews

my shock and anger ultimately turned

into a solemn confirmation that my

imminent service to my country isn’t for

a particular government

but for the people israelis

i have to be honest that when terrorist

attacks us it doesn’t attack only jews

they attack all israelis

whatever doubt previously remained

rapidly

disappeared as i understood the

importance of my service

in the idf fast forward

two and a half years july 2006

few months before my scheduled release

the second lebanon war broke out

i was called to go into lebanon and

fight against the terrorist organization

hezbollah

on the 10th of august 2006

we were carrying out a rescue mission

uh in binge bill lebanon i was walking

back to the shelter

exhausted sweaty after we finished our

mission

when suddenly everything went completely

black

i feel my body flying through the air

while the metallic taste of blood fills

my mouth

i can’t hear anything for several

seconds until i found myself lying

on the floor i knew immediately i’ve

been hit

i can’t see anything but my first panic

thought was what i’m going to tell my

mom

how i’m going to explain to her what

happened to me i roll over

i hear my commander hitting the helmet

of our team mythic

who is frozen from the shock i look over

my body

only to realize that my foot was cut off

i start screaming in the middle of the

rebel in the chaos

my fellow soldiers put me in a stretcher

the next thing that i know i was in a

narrow hallway

spitting out blood waiting for

evacuation

i overhear the doctor in our unit either

come and evacuate him now

and he’ll be survive or come in a few

hours

and take the body a comment that i

wasn’t even capable of comprehending at

that moment due to the shock

suddenly the soldiers lift up the

stretcher and start carrying me

with every single step they take sending

shooting pains

through my body we arrived to the

helicopter for evacuation

and within half an hour i’m back home

and back to israel i woke up few days

later in the hospital with a long road

to recovery

in somewhat of a miracle the doctor

managed to reattach

my foot yet i lost

seven friends and three commanders

including my commander roy klein who was

killed when he jumped on a grenade

to save his own crew through this trauma

i understood what it means to be an

israeli i

an arab was a soldier over

jewish soldiers i was a commander

over jewish soldiers in the idf and i

fought side by side with arab and jews

against terrorists who sought to kill us

both

we fought against terrorism that doesn’t

discriminate by faith

i began to see that the conflict that we

hear about

when we think of arab and jews isn’t

really about arab and jews

i spent a year in rehabilitation

recovered physically worked and traveled

several years after the incident i found

myself

in a comfortable high-paying job as a

ceo of a marketing research company

able to run and play football again

i’m building a successful career only to

realize

that i wasn’t really satisfied

i saw that despite the fact that

israelis are in the fight

against extremism together there is a

lot of

there is a lot of things that they are

not

in touch together i had to do something

about it

so i quit my job

and i founded the organization together

vouch for each other

and began sharing my story with a goal

in mind

to bridge the gaps in our society

as i toured campuses and spoke abroad at

home

i began to receive hostility and threat

messages

i hope you die may god curse you you

traitor

and more abroad

i’m attacked because i am an israeli

at home i’m attacked by the extremist

jewish community

because i’m an arab while from the arab

extremes community

i’m attacked because i’m a proud israeli

my very existence chips away at the

fragile basis in which extremists

base their hate

myself and those like me make it

problematic

for extremists to continue their agenda

for example i gave a talk at harvard

university

i asked the event organizer not to

mention the fact that i’m an arab

i began to share my story only to be

interrupted by a member of the audience

when he told me ha of course this is

exactly what i expect from any israeli

jew to say

my response was my name is yusuf haddad

and i’m an israeli arab from nazareth

exactly that’s the silence that was

there

in israel i was approached by a young

man

who unashamedly called me and he said

all arabs are terrorists not only that

he added then

a good arab is a dead arab i asked him a

very simple question

how many arab friends do you have his

answer unsurprisingly was zero

i finished my speech he came up to me

and he said i’m sorry

he hugged me and then he said more i

guess

i spoke out of ignorance but the

ignorance isn’t just coming from one

side

in another event an arab

kid approached me and said angrily

you are a traitor all jewish are racist

they don’t want us here i asked him the

very same question

how many jewish friends do you have

the answer was also zero

after my talk i approached him and

asked him what he thought he admitted

that there were many things

that discussed that he had no idea about

and accepted my invitation

to come to an event of our organization

going back to the second lebanon war i

was also attacked for saving in the idf

in my lecture when one student

told me again angrily how can you fight

other arabs you are an arab

i told him that

the other arab hezbollah

that i fight they killed 44 israeli

civilians

almost half of whom were arab muslims

i told him that we are not fighting

other arabs

we are fighting those who want to kill

you and i

alike he had to rethink his stance

defying stereotypes and changing

someone’s worldview

doesn’t have to happen in lectures or in

speeches

in 2018 i launched a social media

platform

and began sharing of israelis that defy

stereotypes

now of course i immediately got hateful

comments and threats

but i also got thousands of messages of

support

and messages from israelis who actually

change their perspective

i tell the stories actually to to

demonstrate how can we actually defy

stereotypes and how can we actually

change

someone’s opinion um

you know what started as a just a few

voices has now become a platform of over

50 000 followers

hundreds of volunteers

and for every new person there is

a network of support behind them

you know i demonstrate this

i i say this to all of the

all of our followers that eventually

um that you know bigotry

uh racism and hate all of them they are

universal teams

but there is a way

to break down even the most ingrained

forms of bigotry you know

we can see that eventually in many

many many countries such as the united

states

that started from uh you know the racial

tension

the slavery jim crow to today’s uh

racial tension we have the others like

in south africa

such as uh you know may not have

legalized apartheid anymore

but the racial tension and the uh you

know and and the hate still deeply

embedded

in their culture in many arab countries

you have violence almost

expected in against the lgbt community

and in china

muslims face tremendous persecution and

and

and even more and you know what

i believe that we still can change that

we still can change that because as i

said there is ways

to just you know make it happen

i want to go back to you and tell you

something about the person who called me

a terrorist

and the person who called me a traitor

well today both of them

are volunteers in our organization but

here’s the best part

they request to work together

in our events if we can bridge the gaps

between arab and jews in

israel you too can bridge the gaps

in your community

you