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