June 16, 2021 • 40 mins
Every ten years or so, Israel and Palestine make it back into the American News cycle. and what becomes abundantly clear is, most people actually knows what they are talking about. Its just like every take on inner city life...y'all weren't there! if you wasn't outside, you should probably, listen more than talk.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Whether it was reports on the news about inner city
gang violence, interactions with the police in people of color,
whether it was rap music telling hood stories and then
people reporting on said rappers talking about hood stories. Industry
plants as in rappers or artists who really ain't lived
(00:23):
at life, but the industry put them in and make
a lot of money. Commentary from the outside, conservative media.
Whatever it was black people standing in front of the
camera's telling us what we should do about our communities,
Latino or Arab or whatever the case may be. People
making these uh drawing these conclusions about what we should
(00:46):
do with inner city life, or even pretending like they
went through it. We have a collective saying about their credibility.
Who wasn't outside politics, right, little politics? Listen, man, if
(01:11):
you wasn't outside this is what we mean when we
were all younger, and I mean, it's just one of
those like old tropes, like you know you had to
go home when the street lights came on, or when
we was all at the kickback, or when there was
some sort of issue and we had to go to
the back alley and square up with somebody, like if
(01:31):
you wasn't there, if you didn't really live through this.
It really shows. It shows in your commentary. It shows
when you clearly don't know what you're talking about, and
it's clear only to us who were outside, not say
all the time that like, I never gang bang the
day in my life, but I had to learn how
to navigate the situations that I was absolutely affiliated. I
(01:54):
came from a part of town, a part of family
that were rather active. I chose hip hop, I chose graffiti.
I was, you know, standing in under under lightpoles at
three four in the morning, battling foods, foods, pulling guns
because they was losing. I was. I was tossing my
bomber jacket on top of barbed wire. You know what
(02:15):
I'm saying, to hop the fence into the l a
river to you know, to clack clack my iron lack.
You know what I'm saying. I was, I was. I
was doing graffiti stuff, you know what I'm saying. I
was running from the po PO. But I just had
a backpack full of spray paint, so I was outside.
You know, There's there are nuances that I understand about
the situation that unless you was really outside with us,
(02:37):
you really you didn't know you had if you had
a great family, that that's great. You know, even if
you grew up in this environment, but you had parents
with the wherewithal to not let you stand on the
street corner with the rest of us, that's great. I've
said it before, like my parents split, my father was around.
You know who was that church? Like I got sit
the church. Now, granted my church was uh them Little
(03:00):
Foods was they was outside too. We just happen to
be at churchill. But there's an authenticity of credibility about
your hot takes because you was really outside. One thing
when Nipsey Hustle passed, one thing that everybody would say
about Nipsey was like, no, Nipsey was really out here.
A lot of times we talk about rappers, at least
(03:22):
when you're inside of the industry, there are those of
us who know for a fact that these fools are
not lying about what they say. That was really them.
And then some of these suits are just entertainment or
they're telling their brothers stories or their cousins stories, but
(03:43):
it's not really them. There's a few dudes that are like, no,
that's that's really him. Nipsey was one of those. Nipsey
was really outside. Those stories are truthful. You run around
any part of South Central in that Crunchhaw disc Drick. No,
that's these stories are not fake. Yeah, why are there
(04:05):
murals everywhere in his honor? It's because he was really
out here. Then there's other artists like say, oh, I
don't know a Takashi six nine, right, that's like, okay, Broyeah.
I mean you snitched on the whole set. I mean
I don't know if you really lived like this. I
(04:25):
know I remember times us looking around at each other like, hey,
do you know this? Niker? I ain't never seen this,
do you? You know at some point when you run
these streets, especially in the music industry, when it's like, yeah,
there should be at least one or two degrees of
separation because we was all outside. That's what I'm trying
to tell you, what was outside? Like I shouldn't know
(04:45):
who this dude is, and well you don't know him.
It's like I would ever die you wasn't outside. You
wasn't outside. I want to talk about Israel and Palestine.
This is probably gonna be one of the most difficult
(05:06):
episodes we record because it's just so thorny and let
me give y'all the truth. I wasn't there me and
you was not there. I would venture to say a
good number of the twitter takes and news feeds you've
been seeing probably conjure up the same feelings to those
in Palestine or Israel, for that matter, the same feelings
(05:30):
that conjured up for me when I saw a report
on another black on black crime, Like y'all was not here.
I don't know if anybody that was born to raise
in America, I don't know if I could take your
take serious unless you one degree separated. I'm like, man,
you wasn't outside. Dog Like part of it becomes real
tricky to me because I know there's so much ancient
(05:51):
history and beef here, But then from the outside looking in,
it just looked like running the Middle colonialism, Like this
is just good old fashioned white ship. But then you're like, wait,
but it feels like it's like it might be different,
and you're like, I don't know if I'm just a
product of the West. I just know we wasn't outside. Now,
(06:11):
judging of the thousands of people listening to this spot,
some of y'all work, some of y'all were there, some
of your daddies. Was there, Some of your mama's was there.
Some of y'all fled this, some of y'all look here,
this is my defense for all of y'all involved. I
get it. We wasn't outside, you know what I'm saying.
So this episode is to help everybody that wasn't there.
(06:33):
So I don't want to nobody to form no conclusions
if you will about some beef ship that go back
to b C. Don't form your opinion based on what
I tell you. Look, I'm just trying to give you
a survey from the outside. So today, how I kind
(06:57):
of want to do this pot is let's get into
the theological history, which is like a whole other layer
that us in America really don't understand how important that
part is. Then we can get into the politics in
the sense of the modern nation state. Like I think
it's hard for Americans to understand that when they see Israel,
(07:20):
we're not talking about your Oh Testament nin Like, we're
only kind of talking about that, you know what I'm saying.
We're talking about a modern nation state, as in a
country that hasn't only existed until like, so, I know
it's hard to get your brain around it, right, we
need to talk about the ethnic identity of the people
(07:41):
were talking about here. And then finally, like how to
really navigate what's going on and how I'm gonna navigate
that is this idea of like if you were outside,
if you was really outside with us, you would understand
these three things. One is that the land location matters. Two,
if you was outside, you understand you really can't bunch down.
(08:01):
And then three, if you was outside, you to understand
that what trauma really due to a brain like if
you was down bad, that you do anything to stay
in power because you refused to be down bad like that. Again,
(08:40):
all right, we're back now. As we get into it,
I want to make sure that I set the tone
real quick because again, like I said, it's gonna get
a real thorny and we're gonna talk about some modern news.
I want to make sure that everybody understands. And I'm
gonna come back to this point a bunch of times
that is Real is a modern nation state. It is
(09:02):
not synonymous with Judaism. Israel is a country just like
every other country. So critiquing the nation, modern nation municipality
of Israel is not tantamount to having some sort of
ethnic slur towards the Jews or Judaism. Those are two
(09:25):
different things in the same way that America isn't Christianity. No,
And and of course in those conversations there are some
Americans that are like, what are you talking about? These
colors don't run. I'm I'm gonna good American christian just
like God made it because God wrote the Bible and
good old fashioned English, you know what I'm saying. And
(09:46):
then there's those that are like, kick rocks man, America,
this is where I live because you know what I'm saying,
Like they don't they be making decisions I do not
approve of. Same season in Israel, the Israeli's have various
a opinions about what their modern nation is doing. Hell
non yah who still can't get a majority. Everybody don't agree,
(10:07):
you know what I'm saying. So we talk about modern
nations here. So it's not the same. Just like Zionism,
it might as well be manifest destiny. It's a political concept,
it's not theological. So it's important to remember that we're
not talking Semites, we're talking countries. So that's what we're
critiquing here is countries. Okay, now, God, I don't even
(10:31):
know where to start because of how like far back
this beef go. One thing to remember again, it's like
this region of land was just as tribal as every
other region of land. Those tribes feuded, fought, you know,
worked over land, conquered each other, and then at some
(10:55):
point in history, a quote unquote empire rose, just like
everywhere else, quote unquote, united the feuding tribes right and
built their sprawling empire. And then empires begin to war
and clash, and swaths of land get conquered all over
the place and then reconquered, and then a new empire rises.
(11:18):
I mean, this is all of our world history books,
which are just like, you know, a journey of conquering lands, right,
But we usually only speak of these places in terms
of like the monarchs of the empires that like continue
to conquer each other, rather than the existing tribal communities
that were forced into homogeney. You're following me. I mean
it's the same in Europe, you know, Danes, Goths, the
(11:40):
roaming Germanic tribes. There are a lot of different things,
and then at some point the invention of the modern
nation state post World War Two, where somebody just drew
a line in the sand and said that, hey, look,
I owned this part, and everybody in this part's under
my control and won't want you to hear you go
because it means you're not a citizen. Like this is
a modern idea. Most of our borders are rather recent
(12:05):
and they don't want to remember a border don't really
occur in nature, Like it's there's no force field at
the forty seven parallel that separates Canada from the United States.
That's it's made up lines. It's the same in Israel
and Palestine, in Lebanon and Jordan's in Syria like these,
(12:25):
it's one place that had a lot of different drives. Listen,
this region of land, I'm talking BC. You have to
remember it's been conquered so many damn time. I mean
back to like the Canaanites, you know, like, are you
listening to me? The Canaanites, then your Bible Times King David,
(12:47):
King of Israel, right then Babylonians, then Assyrians, then the
mal Luke's then you know, then Rome right then the
freaking Turkish Empire, then Britain. Like we're talking like this,
just like this ship is ancient, because like you ever
had an ancient beef, Like, we don't get that we
(13:08):
over here in America, Like oftentimes I try to explain
to people again hood ship to where it's like it's generational.
But what we mean by generational we mean the seventies, nigked,
I'm not talking seventy a d fam When I say
we from here, like I'm from l A. I live
in Boil Heights. Boil Heights is the Chicano community, and
(13:30):
I'm like, hold up, there's a few Shinto and Buddhist
temples around here. Turns out, before it was Chicano, it
was Japanese. Boy, it was Japanese, it was Jewish. I
had no idea. All I knew was that the Chicano
movement low riders held zoot suits. They all come from
Boil Heights. So I'm like, this is a historically Latino community.
(13:52):
It's like, hold on now, because the city has flipped before.
I did not know that. So when you talk to
somebody in this swath out of land that we have
now called either Israel, Palestine, hell, I'm gonna include Jordan's Syria,
this whole plot of land Lebanon. When somebody say my
(14:13):
family is from here. They mean no, literally, this building,
this house, we have never not lived here. I mean
for how long? They're like, I don't think you get it. Forever, nigger.
I'm talking about when Mohammed, when the prophet Mohammed was alive.
This is where we lived. People just keep putting flags
(14:34):
in the sand and redrawing the lines and calling it mine.
In the meantime, like I said, it's people that never left.
They just woke up one morning in another country. We're
not talking about the children of Israel like most people
would a Christian background would think of. This discussion is
about a modern nation state. But diving into your Bible,
(14:57):
your children of Israel remembered during the Babylonia exile, the
Syria exile, and then when you start your New Testament.
According to your Bible, they got scattered. Jews got scattered
across the world. And remember that that means that they
show up in every ethnicity I mean, and experienced a
freakish amount of persecution. Don't You can't nobody lie about that,
(15:19):
like the Jews went through some ship. Okay, this is real.
Now set that aside for a second. Politically, what's happening
in the swath of land from like when the Roman Empire,
as a diss renamed the whole region Palestine. But again,
(15:39):
remember that's just what they called it. The people that
are there just been there. Everybody needed scattered, some people
never left, and then they were conquered by Muslim forces,
conquered by Christian forces, conquered by like It's just it
kept the borders kept getting moved on them. They just
kept getting occupiers. Right, it's trauma up in back home,
(16:01):
just like it's trauma happening in Europe now. Between eight
and nineteen sixty seven, the British Empire had an armatist
over the land over there. Basically they were like, you're
not necessarily and I'm doing this a horrible disservice, Like
I mean again, this is centuries and centuries of history
and beef. At some point the British Empire was like, look, dude,
(16:25):
we're just gonna do an armatist of this on this
you know, chosen day. We're just gonna slide and y'all
can figure out what y'all gonna do. Jewish people get
this idea, who just been through them freaking Holocaust. They're like, listen, doc,
we not want to hear y'all. Clearly, y'all don't want
us here. We don't have a homeland. We need a homeland. Now.
They thought about a spot of Africa, but then they
(16:47):
ended up landing in We're just gonna go back to
the land of our forefathers. But it's people already there
that never left. So they come back and they attempt
to warm a nation again. We're talking a modern nation,
and it's people that's been here the whole time, and
they're like, why do you have any rights to this?
(17:08):
And here's here's what's interesting about it, Like I'm if
you can tell, I'm switching perspectives between the Arab Palestinian
and the European jew. The Arab Palestinian is like, y'all
left Arab and came back white. They like, but you're Russian,
you German, you Austrian? How do you got rights to this?
(17:29):
And they're like, we from here, We're from here, just
like you from here. We got a right to exist, right,
So when you got that trauma sitting in your bones,
you're like, listen, man, nobody's gonna wipe us out again.
Palestine like wait, wait, wait, wait wait, wait, wait, wait wait,
we got the same ship and we never left. Now,
(17:54):
what's recently came into the news was some ground squirmishes,
some bombs being volleyed back and forth, aid execution of
an eviction of people that it's just one of a
continuation of a ton of things that shouldn't be going on.
(18:14):
I mean, some things went down, and there are some
things that went down that like look here, man, I
don't know what to tell you. This is verifiably wrong.
You know, the Alaska mosque being shot up during Ramadan,
bro Like, come on, because like I mean, they state
Holy is to day, Like what is you doing? You know?
(18:35):
And they like hold up, y'all just started the camera
at the end. You know, these foods were stowing rocks
hell right now as I'm recording this, tel Aviv on fire.
I mean, Hermas didn't shot some they didn't shot some
some damn missiles. Harm's out there in the Gaza strip.
I mean, we call them terrorists. But again, when we
weren't outside, the newest squirmish was an actual atrocity. I
(18:58):
did that, and that's that's why I was like, it's
kind of simple. There's no way to kind of cut this.
There's some rules, y'all broke. Okay, this is y'all's holiest
week at this point, man, everybody chill, like fallback, that's
the holiest week. We could start scrapping next week like
Nigga's Ramadan, like you should know better. You know what
I'm saying. It's like in the same way that like, Yo,
you don't pop off during yam Kapoor. You feel me,
(19:21):
like yo, fallback, Like that's y'all's holiest week. We share
an ancestor in Abraham, like, let's okay, everybody chill, but
next week ni gets home, you know what I'm saying,
Like at least like that's a but yo, dog, you're
popping off on Ramadan, like even just in hood rules
like that's a party foul homie, you out of pocket.
(19:43):
So another great graham to follow two is called so
you want to talk about? Right, and they do these
just little info grams about specific things. So why do
this thing? Why are we still talking about this particular
situation now? Is um so something that recently, like in
the news, happened. It was in sex Girard basically in
(20:04):
October and Israeli court ruled that they could forcibly evict
twelve Palestinian families from the East neighborhood Jerusalem called Sex Gerra.
Now why that's so crazy is like, well, East Jerusalem
is supposed to be Palestine. You're telling me that this
is our plays, but yet you still got the rights
(20:25):
to evict us in the same way that like you know,
Palestine ain't got no they don't have any of the
COVID vaccines because because Israel keeping them all but then
saying that they owned state. And then you wonder why
these niggas is always mad at y'all. I'm like, well,
I mean, damn, it's like y'all running around here like
you don't understand. Is that like, yo, that would make
(20:48):
y'all mad too. So this ruling really just it just
put fuel to the fire to a lot of the
issues that was happening between these two nations and people. Right. So, anyway,
as a result of this court ruling, like fifty Palestinians
face the threat of like dispossession. So basically, like we
(21:08):
kicked you out of one place, not a place you've got,
We're kicking you out of this one. And the court's
ruling that like the evicted families got to pay like
twenty thousand dollars in covering their settlers legal expenses. And
a little background about this neighborhood. It's like it's three
thousand Palestinians, all refugees who were ethnically cleansed from their
(21:29):
homes in the other parts of Palestine, which will get
to this, you know, in the Night War. So like
it's so complicated, doc uh. So, there was this agreement
between Jordan's in nineteen fifty six that these families were
promised housing in this land and the families were meant
to receive their ownership titles after three years. But yo,
(21:50):
this never happened because Israel conquered East Jerusalem before this
mug was materialized. So before Israel was Israel, they had
this deal, right, and then obviously Israel ain't honored this
deal because Israel's like, well, y'all don't have anyway getting
ahead of myself. The point is they're kicking people out
(22:12):
of a land that you supposedly said they had freedom
to exist in. And then so it's this double talk,
right this like y'all can be cool, like you know,
it's it's it's deebo it's basically both of our bikes,
but it's just gonna stay at our house. It's it's
like it's confusing, like and at the and the only
conclusion that again I wasn't outside, but the only conclusion
(22:34):
you could draw from looking at it is like y'all
don't want them here. Just like a fifth grader looking
at a political map from nineteen seven to now and
just watching Palestine shrink. It's just at some point you're like, oh,
it's I don't know, man, kind of feel like you
don't want me here. And I know y'all keep saying,
you know, a two state solution. You know what I'm saying.
(22:54):
It's like we're neighbors kind of, but let us just
like running things. But you get everything y'all want. But like, man,
I've been to Bethlehem, I've been to East Jerusalem and
it's like it's crazy. You're you're walking through this land
and then all of a sudden, on this hill you
see this beautiful like housing development and you're like, yo,
who lived there? And they're like, oh, those are Israel
(23:17):
that's the Israeli settlement. And then some would say those
are these verily occupiers. It's like depends on who you ask,
and it's like, well, damn, you gave me this land,
but then you took the best parts. I wasn't there.
What I'm trying to tell you is I just this
is how I look. But God, it's so complicated. So
(24:01):
I think, ultimately the problems clodialist imperialistic actions. But I
can't rewrite history. So you have a birth of this
modern nation state. And this modern nation state was able
to pull on a good amount of money and a
good amount of heartstrings, especially from like Western Christianity. That's like,
for some reason don't know how to read the Book
(24:21):
of Revelation and think that this is prophecy. You know
what I'm saying that Like, Okay, Israel's back where they're
supposed to be. I mean, Jesus gonna come back soon.
They ended up being able to really convolute this idea
of this modern nation with the prophecies of their Old
Testament Bible. Now, far be it from me to be
the one to tell you that A plus B don't equal. See,
(24:43):
because again I wasn't outside, but I've spent some time
in the region, and I gotta tell you, man, Jews
come in all colors Ethiopian. There's something that look very Arab,
and there's something that look white as hell, and it
looked to me like moving around Israel, this just looks
(25:05):
like run of the mill white ship because everybody dark
skinned was in service jobs. Now again that's just my eyes.
I wasn't outside, but I know when I crossed that wall,
like a literal wall, into East Jerusalem, I felt like
I moved from Orange County or Beverly Hills into South
Central and Watts. I was like, I don't know, it
(25:28):
just looks like an apartheide. But listen, listen, listen, listen.
I wasn't outside, So remember that we're talking right now,
not about your theological positions. That's why the Temple Mountain
is so interesting to me, because all of these people
can claim jew Christian Muslim can claim spiritual and theological
(25:48):
ties to this land as like this is rightfully theirs
and the truth is in my mind like they all right.
I just don't know, because again what outside I us? No?
I mean yeah, like according to y'all, y'all share an ancestors.
So I mean I guess ship run too deep because
if somebody draw a border down your neighborhood, which I
(26:10):
have experienced. Somebody draw a border around your neighborhood. All
of a sudden, you go, you if you from a
different district, and this district you in now don't like you.
There's a story about it's on an NPR pod called
consider this story about sugar Hill, which was a black
affluent neighborhood that now the ten Freeway is. They have
knocked down all the houses and built a freeway. So
when that happened, you got your little house and vouchers,
(26:32):
you had to go to a different part of town.
All of a sudden, you're not in a black neighborhood.
You up there with white people calling you nigger every
time you step out the house. It's like, I didn't
ask to be over here. You told me my house
was this. Like right now, it's Palestinians who don't have
a passport into Jerusalem and they like, I can't go
to my grandma's house because she's in Jerusalem. And they're like,
what do you mean you can't go there? Why why
(26:54):
your grandma live over there? There's like because she's always
been over there since ninety a d We then how
comes she can't go to her house because her house
is in Jerusalem, and it's like or houses in Israel.
It's like, how does this? I understand how this work?
You know what I'm saying. So many of people have
tried to solve this, and they've tried to solve it
from outside, the least of which was Bill Clinton and
(27:16):
then Jared mother freakin Kushner, whose idea this whole two
state idea, right, this like two nations with an asterisk
to where it's like your sovereign nation kind of. So
again you have to think of it as like Palestine
was all the area, but all the area before it
was called Palestine was Judea. But it's the same people.
(27:37):
Like again, it's the same humans. And then these new
humans came back from Europe doing this Clarton call for
anybody who got this DNA to come back in here,
while people that's always been here, it's like hold on,
hold on, hold on, hold on, holo, hold on, I
get it. Everybody welcomed like you can't just build a nation,
you know what I'm saying. And they're like no, no no, no, no,
you got that corner. What the hell you mean I
got this corner? You're moving to my house and say
(27:59):
I can only live in the bathroom. What the what
did you talking about? And then they're like, well, we're
talking about it was our house. First, we just got
put out. Now we're coming back for our house. I mean,
didn't you see what happened when we was gone? Like
they try to wipe us out? Bro, Like, didn't you
see that where we're supposed to go? Then they like
ship not here. So it's just look, Nigga, we wasn't there.
(28:21):
Sit runs super deep for these people because it's cultural, ethnic, religious, nationally,
like it's so much like Nigga, you don't get it, doc,
you wasn't there. And what happens when the ship was
this deep is Nigga starts shooting. Niggets just starts shooting
right and pending on when you start turning on the
camera is whose side you end up being on. And
(28:43):
the problem is cameras wasn't invented. Nigga wouldn't have said,
started this thorny because and you can't like there's nowhere
in the world you could part from ten thousand miles away.
What they should do, y'all gonna hold your black on
black crime hot takes to yourself you wasn't here, and
even if you was, I could tell by how you
(29:06):
move and the conclusions you draw whether you was outside
or not. Club politics. Look, I could tell from these
two state solutions that everybody talking about. I'm like, listen,
man clearly needed one of them. Niggas won't that. So
what I'm trying to say is we don't know now
(29:27):
again jail. Politically speaking, you got each Jerusalem, then you
got or the West Bank, then you got Gaza Strip,
and then you used to have the Golon Heights, but
the goalon heights ended up going off to stopped by
beefing over that. So according to Israel, they're like, listen,
it's all good, y'all get this swath and this swath
will take the rest. Cool everybody, cool, Okay, cool. The
(29:51):
problem is in Palestine, they like, but y'all also get
to live in the best parts of the places you
said we had to stay in, So follow me, thinking
like a native reservation, the natives were just here. And
then America goes, well, y'all could get that square of land,
(30:13):
and they're like, all right, I guess, and then they say,
but wait a minute, there's a grassy hill in that
state of Land. That's really nice. We want to build
houses there too, and they're like, well, nigga, then you
don't mean. My only conclusion is you just don't want
us hear at all, because whenever you give us stuff,
you're still move in there. And how is it yours
to give you? Know? How is there is to give
(30:34):
money and guns? Money and guns? So what are your
options if you're trying to stand up to a fucking bully?
Is asymmetrical warfare? Enter Hamas? What do I mean by
asymmetrical warfare? I mean you don't square up with one
of the strongest militaries in the world. No, You're you're
(30:54):
kicking the balls, your your elbow, your bite. Listen, if
God forbid, Robert have it my podcast brother, that's six
foot white boy. That's just that's guns sexual niked it
just loves guns. If he ever had an issue with me,
Do you think I'm a square up with Robert Evans.
I'm not gonna square up with him. I'm cheating. Do
(31:15):
you know what I'm saying? That's asymmetrical. I don't stand
a chance like actually fighting Roberts Yo saying asymmetrical that's
what Hermas is doing. Are they terrorists? Pending on who
you ask. This ain't the tape recorder defending them. I'm
just saying I wasn't outside, and when you're not outside,
you can't really get your brain around it. Look, look,
(31:36):
there's been plenty of crimes that have happened on my watch.
I'm not saying this right. I'm just saying I saw
what happened, and I get it. I get that. I
don't get it, which I really feel like should be
stanti for me. America should be just pro peace like
I just hope you'll need to stop killing each other.
And if somebody at trash, you should be able to
be like niked as trash here Goyo three, if you
(32:00):
were outside, you'd understand. If you was outside, you would
understand that location actually matters. I wondered, you know, I'm
a slave descendant. I understand not having like a homeland
to officially say is mine. I can do as many
DNA tests as I as I want to, but that
transatlantic slave trade just made it impossible for any like
(32:23):
black person. You'd have to drop into a place that
already exists. We tried that with Marcus Garvey's back to Africa.
Movement and the ship just didn't work. It's a bad
situation because eventually the oppressed to become the oppressor. It
just happens like that, Like you can't just drop into
a place, even though even if you can say, well,
(32:43):
I mean I used to be here because somebody'd been
toiling this soil the whole time. This is ship just
don't work, man. But land matters like location matters, because
specifically in this situation, this ship has prophecy to him.
Their identity is honest lead tied to the soil. And
everybody with their neighborhood tattooed on their neck understands it.
(33:05):
Everybody that you know got the city tattooed on them,
understand what that means. The soil not a Native American.
I live right now in the historical tongue of a
tribe land day for thousands of years they made of
this clay, so they tied to that land is a
better parallel than mine is. So the land matters. Our
(33:35):
families have been here when when I when I went
to Palestine, one of our guides was saying he was
a Greek Orthodox Christian Arab is hail like ethnically, he's Arab, right,
But he's like, look, dude, we were probably Muslim at
one point, we were probably Jewish at one point. We
might actually be ethnically historically Israeli, just like everybody else.
(33:58):
But the place was just conchard so much, and sometimes
you just do what you gotta do to make sure
your family don't die. I don't get that. Like that's
when you talk about identity and like connection to the soil.
What he's saying is like, you don't get it. We've
never left. This is who we are. The land matters
now in the hood scenarios, It's like, yeah, like everything
(34:21):
been taken from us, This our little corner of this
little mud pool all we got. I'm anna defend it
with everything I have because this is literally all we have.
I get it. The location. You can't just pack up
and leave. We got too much blood spilled on this.
Say that's why gentrification is so painful for inner city people.
It's like, look, man, this is violent. We didn't died
(34:41):
on these streets. Why everybody's so interested in Compton Because
we died LBC. You know what it stands for Long
Beach Crip, Like our family died out here for y'all
to think it's cool to go visit the LBC. No,
like you wasn't outside, man, the land, the location actually matters,
so hell yeah, I'm gonna fight to the DEA for this.
Both of them believe specifically what I think. It's super
(35:03):
interesting because that brings us to the current moment that like, Yo,
the holiest spot the Dome of the rock Man, like
the holiest spot in the Muslim faith family, or one
of them is like, Israel just shot it up, Like
that's crazy, you know what I'm saying. And it Israel
on the day of celebration was so crazy that it
(35:23):
falls right at the end of Ramadan, their celebration of
them actually for forming a nation. They at the whaling wall,
like praying on Palestinian death, like I just I don't.
But at the same time it's like they like, nigga,
we from here, we got kicked out of everywhere else.
Would you want me to say, if you was outside,
the turf matters, the land matters. Second thing I say
(35:49):
is if you was outside, you understand that you can't
punch down. Okay, you would be lying to yourself if
you were to say that the Holocaust wasn't one of
the worst atrocities of the twentieth century. I mean, come on,
and then you couple that were all the other exiles
and conquering that the Jews endured. But one thing I
(36:12):
know about when you finally get up out of that
is that that trauma really stays in your bone. And
then when you get on top, it's hard to convince
us anybody watching that you still that same person. People
ask me recently what I think about Chance to rapper
and what happened to his star power? To be honest,
I think the answer is nothing happened to his star power.
But part of what was so special about Chance was
(36:34):
he was the people's champ. He was an independent artist,
and that's what we loved about him. He was touring
the world on a mixtape. It was like, Dane, this kid,
just like this is crazy, Like we all like to
see this underdog story. But then the other dog became
a star, got a major deal, and got married, and
it was like, you're not the underdog anymore, Like you
made it. How do I relate to you now? Maybe
(36:55):
you still see yourself as such, but you can't like,
but you can't punch down and I think even if
someone's punching up at you, and even if that punching
up is as crazy as what Hamas did. Literally today,
they lit Tel Aviv on fire with missile. That's I
can't imagine a missile landing in my city. But you
(37:16):
put you down back because you're still the one in power,
like you're the little nation that could. I just don't
believe it. He just can't punch down. That's to me why,
Like you're this is why I talk across and ain't funny,
Like this is not funny, Rush Limbaugh. You weren't funny
because you was punching down. Now you take somebody different,
like like okay, just fothering me check somebody like Larry
(37:37):
the Cable Guy or like a Jeff Foxworthy day. They
from the conservative spaces, but they are punching up like
they're talking about just being poor. They're not punching down.
They're just talking about how it's hard to be down.
And I'm like, see that that's still work. And I
feel like when you outside, you understand that you can't
be a O G like punching down on this because
you're just a little crazy, Like why is you doing
(37:58):
why are you picking on a little me? Boss to
boss like, what did you doing? You can't punch down?
And then lastly, when you down bad, if you was outside,
you understand when you when you were down bad, you
do everything you can to stay in power, to protect
the little bit of semblance of peace you think you got,
even if it means becoming the very thing that had
(38:21):
you down bad. Now listen, listen to me. I wasn't there.
I honestly don't know. I'm just saying this high look
to me, it's hard for me, as a black man
in America to not empathize with the Palestinians because that
just looks familiar to me, where someone else gets to
(38:43):
decide your future. But the difference between who gets to
decide my future and who's deciding there's is them niggas
came from trauma too, So that's where it gets like,
I don't, I don't know what to say. I know
that my default position is to empathize with the oppressed.
(39:04):
I know that oftentimes the message from the margins is
usually the one that carries the most prophetic truth telling.
So I may have a hot take here and there,
but listen to problem you and me wasn't outside. I'm
not telling you this right or wrong. I'm just telling
(39:24):
you it's gang stuff because politics is really just gang
banging in nice suits, y'all. This mug was recorded and
edited by Me Propaganda right here in East low'st Boil Heights,
Los Angeles. Y'all can follow me at prop hip Hop
on all the socials. You can follow the Hood Politics
(39:46):
pod itself at Hood Politics Pod, where we'll be trying
to make takes on stuff that aren't really big enough
for a whole episode, but definitely needs a little bit
of clarity. This mug was scored, edited, mixed, and mastered
by the one and only Headlights. Y'all, go follow my
dog Matt. I was Swelski. I still don't know how
to say his name. I'm glad he changed it to Headlights.
(40:07):
Follow him on his socials at Headlights Underscore music telling
you hear all these new other fly tracks, this food
be making, and the theme music was done by the
one and only Gold Tips Gold Tips d J Shawn
P And y'all remember every time you check in politics, y'all,
that's just gang banging in nice suits. Shouts to I
(40:27):
Heart Media for making this happen
Whether it was reports on the news about inner city
gang violence, interactions with the police in people of color,
whether it was rap music telling hood stories and then
people reporting on said rappers talking about hood stories. Industry
plants as in rappers or artists who really ain't lived
(00:23):
at life, but the industry put them in and make
a lot of money. Commentary from the outside, conservative media.
Whatever it was black people standing in front of the
camera's telling us what we should do about our communities,
Latino or Arab or whatever the case may be. People
making these uh drawing these conclusions about what we should
(00:46):
do with inner city life, or even pretending like they
went through it. We have a collective saying about their credibility.
Who wasn't outside politics, right, little politics? Listen, man, if
(01:11):
you wasn't outside this is what we mean when we
were all younger, and I mean, it's just one of
those like old tropes, like you know you had to
go home when the street lights came on, or when
we was all at the kickback, or when there was
some sort of issue and we had to go to
the back alley and square up with somebody, like if
(01:31):
you wasn't there, if you didn't really live through this.
It really shows. It shows in your commentary. It shows
when you clearly don't know what you're talking about, and
it's clear only to us who were outside, not say
all the time that like, I never gang bang the
day in my life, but I had to learn how
to navigate the situations that I was absolutely affiliated. I
(01:54):
came from a part of town, a part of family
that were rather active. I chose hip hop, I chose graffiti.
I was, you know, standing in under under lightpoles at
three four in the morning, battling foods, foods, pulling guns
because they was losing. I was. I was tossing my
bomber jacket on top of barbed wire. You know what
(02:15):
I'm saying, to hop the fence into the l a
river to you know, to clack clack my iron lack.
You know what I'm saying. I was, I was. I
was doing graffiti stuff, you know what I'm saying. I
was running from the po PO. But I just had
a backpack full of spray paint, so I was outside.
You know, There's there are nuances that I understand about
the situation that unless you was really outside with us,
(02:37):
you really you didn't know you had if you had
a great family, that that's great. You know, even if
you grew up in this environment, but you had parents
with the wherewithal to not let you stand on the
street corner with the rest of us, that's great. I've
said it before, like my parents split, my father was around.
You know who was that church? Like I got sit
the church. Now, granted my church was uh them Little
(03:00):
Foods was they was outside too. We just happen to
be at churchill. But there's an authenticity of credibility about
your hot takes because you was really outside. One thing
when Nipsey Hustle passed, one thing that everybody would say
about Nipsey was like, no, Nipsey was really out here.
A lot of times we talk about rappers, at least
(03:22):
when you're inside of the industry, there are those of
us who know for a fact that these fools are
not lying about what they say. That was really them.
And then some of these suits are just entertainment or
they're telling their brothers stories or their cousins stories, but
(03:43):
it's not really them. There's a few dudes that are like, no,
that's that's really him. Nipsey was one of those. Nipsey
was really outside. Those stories are truthful. You run around
any part of South Central in that Crunchhaw disc Drick. No,
that's these stories are not fake. Yeah, why are there
(04:05):
murals everywhere in his honor? It's because he was really
out here. Then there's other artists like say, oh, I
don't know a Takashi six nine, right, that's like, okay, Broyeah.
I mean you snitched on the whole set. I mean
I don't know if you really lived like this. I
(04:25):
know I remember times us looking around at each other like, hey,
do you know this? Niker? I ain't never seen this,
do you? You know at some point when you run
these streets, especially in the music industry, when it's like, yeah,
there should be at least one or two degrees of
separation because we was all outside. That's what I'm trying
to tell you, what was outside? Like I shouldn't know
(04:45):
who this dude is, and well you don't know him.
It's like I would ever die you wasn't outside. You
wasn't outside. I want to talk about Israel and Palestine.
This is probably gonna be one of the most difficult
(05:06):
episodes we record because it's just so thorny and let
me give y'all the truth. I wasn't there me and
you was not there. I would venture to say a
good number of the twitter takes and news feeds you've
been seeing probably conjure up the same feelings to those
in Palestine or Israel, for that matter, the same feelings
(05:30):
that conjured up for me when I saw a report
on another black on black crime, Like y'all was not here.
I don't know if anybody that was born to raise
in America, I don't know if I could take your
take serious unless you one degree separated. I'm like, man,
you wasn't outside. Dog Like part of it becomes real
tricky to me because I know there's so much ancient
(05:51):
history and beef here, But then from the outside looking in,
it just looked like running the Middle colonialism, Like this
is just good old fashioned white ship. But then you're like, wait,
but it feels like it's like it might be different,
and you're like, I don't know if I'm just a
product of the West. I just know we wasn't outside. Now,
(06:11):
judging of the thousands of people listening to this spot,
some of y'all work, some of y'all were there, some
of your daddies. Was there, Some of your mama's was there.
Some of y'all fled this, some of y'all look here,
this is my defense for all of y'all involved. I
get it. We wasn't outside, you know what I'm saying.
So this episode is to help everybody that wasn't there.
(06:33):
So I don't want to nobody to form no conclusions
if you will about some beef ship that go back
to b C. Don't form your opinion based on what
I tell you. Look, I'm just trying to give you
a survey from the outside. So today, how I kind
(06:57):
of want to do this pot is let's get into
the theological history, which is like a whole other layer
that us in America really don't understand how important that
part is. Then we can get into the politics in
the sense of the modern nation state. Like I think
it's hard for Americans to understand that when they see Israel,
(07:20):
we're not talking about your Oh Testament nin Like, we're
only kind of talking about that, you know what I'm saying.
We're talking about a modern nation state, as in a
country that hasn't only existed until like, so, I know
it's hard to get your brain around it, right, we
need to talk about the ethnic identity of the people
(07:41):
were talking about here. And then finally, like how to
really navigate what's going on and how I'm gonna navigate
that is this idea of like if you were outside,
if you was really outside with us, you would understand
these three things. One is that the land location matters. Two,
if you was outside, you understand you really can't bunch down.
(08:01):
And then three, if you was outside, you to understand
that what trauma really due to a brain like if
you was down bad, that you do anything to stay
in power because you refused to be down bad like that. Again,
(08:40):
all right, we're back now. As we get into it,
I want to make sure that I set the tone
real quick because again, like I said, it's gonna get
a real thorny and we're gonna talk about some modern news.
I want to make sure that everybody understands. And I'm
gonna come back to this point a bunch of times
that is Real is a modern nation state. It is
(09:02):
not synonymous with Judaism. Israel is a country just like
every other country. So critiquing the nation, modern nation municipality
of Israel is not tantamount to having some sort of
ethnic slur towards the Jews or Judaism. Those are two
(09:25):
different things in the same way that America isn't Christianity. No,
And and of course in those conversations there are some
Americans that are like, what are you talking about? These
colors don't run. I'm I'm gonna good American christian just
like God made it because God wrote the Bible and
good old fashioned English, you know what I'm saying. And
(09:46):
then there's those that are like, kick rocks man, America,
this is where I live because you know what I'm saying,
Like they don't they be making decisions I do not
approve of. Same season in Israel, the Israeli's have various
a opinions about what their modern nation is doing. Hell
non yah who still can't get a majority. Everybody don't agree,
(10:07):
you know what I'm saying. So we talk about modern
nations here. So it's not the same. Just like Zionism,
it might as well be manifest destiny. It's a political concept,
it's not theological. So it's important to remember that we're
not talking Semites, we're talking countries. So that's what we're
critiquing here is countries. Okay, now, God, I don't even
(10:31):
know where to start because of how like far back
this beef go. One thing to remember again, it's like
this region of land was just as tribal as every
other region of land. Those tribes feuded, fought, you know,
worked over land, conquered each other, and then at some
(10:55):
point in history, a quote unquote empire rose, just like
everywhere else, quote unquote, united the feuding tribes right and
built their sprawling empire. And then empires begin to war
and clash, and swaths of land get conquered all over
the place and then reconquered, and then a new empire rises.
(11:18):
I mean, this is all of our world history books,
which are just like, you know, a journey of conquering lands, right,
But we usually only speak of these places in terms
of like the monarchs of the empires that like continue
to conquer each other, rather than the existing tribal communities
that were forced into homogeney. You're following me. I mean
it's the same in Europe, you know, Danes, Goths, the
(11:40):
roaming Germanic tribes. There are a lot of different things,
and then at some point the invention of the modern
nation state post World War Two, where somebody just drew
a line in the sand and said that, hey, look,
I owned this part, and everybody in this part's under
my control and won't want you to hear you go
because it means you're not a citizen. Like this is
a modern idea. Most of our borders are rather recent
(12:05):
and they don't want to remember a border don't really
occur in nature, Like it's there's no force field at
the forty seven parallel that separates Canada from the United States.
That's it's made up lines. It's the same in Israel
and Palestine, in Lebanon and Jordan's in Syria like these,
(12:25):
it's one place that had a lot of different drives. Listen,
this region of land, I'm talking BC. You have to
remember it's been conquered so many damn time. I mean
back to like the Canaanites, you know, like, are you
listening to me? The Canaanites, then your Bible Times King David,
(12:47):
King of Israel, right then Babylonians, then Assyrians, then the
mal Luke's then you know, then Rome right then the
freaking Turkish Empire, then Britain. Like we're talking like this,
just like this ship is ancient, because like you ever
had an ancient beef, Like, we don't get that we
(13:08):
over here in America, Like oftentimes I try to explain
to people again hood ship to where it's like it's generational.
But what we mean by generational we mean the seventies, nigked,
I'm not talking seventy a d fam When I say
we from here, like I'm from l A. I live
in Boil Heights. Boil Heights is the Chicano community, and
(13:30):
I'm like, hold up, there's a few Shinto and Buddhist
temples around here. Turns out, before it was Chicano, it
was Japanese. Boy, it was Japanese, it was Jewish. I
had no idea. All I knew was that the Chicano
movement low riders held zoot suits. They all come from
Boil Heights. So I'm like, this is a historically Latino community.
(13:52):
It's like, hold on now, because the city has flipped before.
I did not know that. So when you talk to
somebody in this swath out of land that we have
now called either Israel, Palestine, hell, I'm gonna include Jordan's Syria,
this whole plot of land Lebanon. When somebody say my
(14:13):
family is from here. They mean no, literally, this building,
this house, we have never not lived here. I mean
for how long? They're like, I don't think you get it. Forever, nigger.
I'm talking about when Mohammed, when the prophet Mohammed was alive.
This is where we lived. People just keep putting flags
(14:34):
in the sand and redrawing the lines and calling it mine.
In the meantime, like I said, it's people that never left.
They just woke up one morning in another country. We're
not talking about the children of Israel like most people
would a Christian background would think of. This discussion is
about a modern nation state. But diving into your Bible,
(14:57):
your children of Israel remembered during the Babylonia exile, the
Syria exile, and then when you start your New Testament.
According to your Bible, they got scattered. Jews got scattered
across the world. And remember that that means that they
show up in every ethnicity I mean, and experienced a
freakish amount of persecution. Don't You can't nobody lie about that,
(15:19):
like the Jews went through some ship. Okay, this is real.
Now set that aside for a second. Politically, what's happening
in the swath of land from like when the Roman Empire,
as a diss renamed the whole region Palestine. But again,
(15:39):
remember that's just what they called it. The people that
are there just been there. Everybody needed scattered, some people
never left, and then they were conquered by Muslim forces,
conquered by Christian forces, conquered by like It's just it
kept the borders kept getting moved on them. They just
kept getting occupiers. Right, it's trauma up in back home,
(16:01):
just like it's trauma happening in Europe now. Between eight
and nineteen sixty seven, the British Empire had an armatist
over the land over there. Basically they were like, you're
not necessarily and I'm doing this a horrible disservice, Like
I mean again, this is centuries and centuries of history
and beef. At some point the British Empire was like, look, dude,
(16:25):
we're just gonna do an armatist of this on this
you know, chosen day. We're just gonna slide and y'all
can figure out what y'all gonna do. Jewish people get
this idea, who just been through them freaking Holocaust. They're like, listen, doc,
we not want to hear y'all. Clearly, y'all don't want
us here. We don't have a homeland. We need a homeland. Now.
They thought about a spot of Africa, but then they
(16:47):
ended up landing in We're just gonna go back to
the land of our forefathers. But it's people already there
that never left. So they come back and they attempt
to warm a nation again. We're talking a modern nation,
and it's people that's been here the whole time, and
they're like, why do you have any rights to this?
(17:08):
And here's here's what's interesting about it, Like I'm if
you can tell, I'm switching perspectives between the Arab Palestinian
and the European jew. The Arab Palestinian is like, y'all
left Arab and came back white. They like, but you're Russian,
you German, you Austrian? How do you got rights to this?
(17:29):
And they're like, we from here, We're from here, just
like you from here. We got a right to exist, right,
So when you got that trauma sitting in your bones,
you're like, listen, man, nobody's gonna wipe us out again.
Palestine like wait, wait, wait, wait wait, wait, wait, wait wait,
we got the same ship and we never left. Now,
(17:54):
what's recently came into the news was some ground squirmishes,
some bombs being volleyed back and forth, aid execution of
an eviction of people that it's just one of a
continuation of a ton of things that shouldn't be going on.
(18:14):
I mean, some things went down, and there are some
things that went down that like look here, man, I
don't know what to tell you. This is verifiably wrong.
You know, the Alaska mosque being shot up during Ramadan,
bro Like, come on, because like I mean, they state
Holy is to day, Like what is you doing? You know?
(18:35):
And they like hold up, y'all just started the camera
at the end. You know, these foods were stowing rocks
hell right now as I'm recording this, tel Aviv on fire.
I mean, Hermas didn't shot some they didn't shot some
some damn missiles. Harm's out there in the Gaza strip.
I mean, we call them terrorists. But again, when we
weren't outside, the newest squirmish was an actual atrocity. I
(18:58):
did that, and that's that's why I was like, it's
kind of simple. There's no way to kind of cut this.
There's some rules, y'all broke. Okay, this is y'all's holiest
week at this point, man, everybody chill, like fallback, that's
the holiest week. We could start scrapping next week like
Nigga's Ramadan, like you should know better. You know what
I'm saying. It's like in the same way that like, Yo,
you don't pop off during yam Kapoor. You feel me,
(19:21):
like yo, fallback, Like that's y'all's holiest week. We share
an ancestor in Abraham, like, let's okay, everybody chill, but
next week ni gets home, you know what I'm saying,
Like at least like that's a but yo, dog, you're
popping off on Ramadan, like even just in hood rules
like that's a party foul homie, you out of pocket.
(19:43):
So another great graham to follow two is called so
you want to talk about? Right, and they do these
just little info grams about specific things. So why do
this thing? Why are we still talking about this particular
situation now? Is um so something that recently, like in
the news, happened. It was in sex Girard basically in
(20:04):
October and Israeli court ruled that they could forcibly evict
twelve Palestinian families from the East neighborhood Jerusalem called Sex Gerra.
Now why that's so crazy is like, well, East Jerusalem
is supposed to be Palestine. You're telling me that this
is our plays, but yet you still got the rights
(20:25):
to evict us in the same way that like you know,
Palestine ain't got no they don't have any of the
COVID vaccines because because Israel keeping them all but then
saying that they owned state. And then you wonder why
these niggas is always mad at y'all. I'm like, well,
I mean, damn, it's like y'all running around here like
you don't understand. Is that like, yo, that would make
(20:48):
y'all mad too. So this ruling really just it just
put fuel to the fire to a lot of the
issues that was happening between these two nations and people. Right. So, anyway,
as a result of this court ruling, like fifty Palestinians
face the threat of like dispossession. So basically, like we
(21:08):
kicked you out of one place, not a place you've got,
We're kicking you out of this one. And the court's
ruling that like the evicted families got to pay like
twenty thousand dollars in covering their settlers legal expenses. And
a little background about this neighborhood. It's like it's three
thousand Palestinians, all refugees who were ethnically cleansed from their
(21:29):
homes in the other parts of Palestine, which will get
to this, you know, in the Night War. So like
it's so complicated, doc uh. So, there was this agreement
between Jordan's in nineteen fifty six that these families were
promised housing in this land and the families were meant
to receive their ownership titles after three years. But yo,
(21:50):
this never happened because Israel conquered East Jerusalem before this
mug was materialized. So before Israel was Israel, they had
this deal, right, and then obviously Israel ain't honored this
deal because Israel's like, well, y'all don't have anyway getting
ahead of myself. The point is they're kicking people out
(22:12):
of a land that you supposedly said they had freedom
to exist in. And then so it's this double talk,
right this like y'all can be cool, like you know,
it's it's it's deebo it's basically both of our bikes,
but it's just gonna stay at our house. It's it's
like it's confusing, like and at the and the only
conclusion that again I wasn't outside, but the only conclusion
(22:34):
you could draw from looking at it is like y'all
don't want them here. Just like a fifth grader looking
at a political map from nineteen seven to now and
just watching Palestine shrink. It's just at some point you're like, oh,
it's I don't know, man, kind of feel like you
don't want me here. And I know y'all keep saying,
you know, a two state solution. You know what I'm saying.
(22:54):
It's like we're neighbors kind of, but let us just
like running things. But you get everything y'all want. But like, man,
I've been to Bethlehem, I've been to East Jerusalem and
it's like it's crazy. You're you're walking through this land
and then all of a sudden, on this hill you
see this beautiful like housing development and you're like, yo,
who lived there? And they're like, oh, those are Israel
(23:17):
that's the Israeli settlement. And then some would say those
are these verily occupiers. It's like depends on who you ask,
and it's like, well, damn, you gave me this land,
but then you took the best parts. I wasn't there.
What I'm trying to tell you is I just this
is how I look. But God, it's so complicated. So
(24:01):
I think, ultimately the problems clodialist imperialistic actions. But I
can't rewrite history. So you have a birth of this
modern nation state. And this modern nation state was able
to pull on a good amount of money and a
good amount of heartstrings, especially from like Western Christianity. That's like,
for some reason don't know how to read the Book
(24:21):
of Revelation and think that this is prophecy. You know
what I'm saying that Like, Okay, Israel's back where they're
supposed to be. I mean, Jesus gonna come back soon.
They ended up being able to really convolute this idea
of this modern nation with the prophecies of their Old
Testament Bible. Now, far be it from me to be
the one to tell you that A plus B don't equal. See,
(24:43):
because again I wasn't outside, but I've spent some time
in the region, and I gotta tell you, man, Jews
come in all colors Ethiopian. There's something that look very Arab,
and there's something that look white as hell, and it
looked to me like moving around Israel, this just looks
(25:05):
like run of the mill white ship because everybody dark
skinned was in service jobs. Now again that's just my eyes.
I wasn't outside, but I know when I crossed that wall,
like a literal wall, into East Jerusalem, I felt like
I moved from Orange County or Beverly Hills into South
Central and Watts. I was like, I don't know, it
(25:28):
just looks like an apartheide. But listen, listen, listen, listen.
I wasn't outside, So remember that we're talking right now,
not about your theological positions. That's why the Temple Mountain
is so interesting to me, because all of these people
can claim jew Christian Muslim can claim spiritual and theological
(25:48):
ties to this land as like this is rightfully theirs
and the truth is in my mind like they all right.
I just don't know, because again what outside I us? No?
I mean yeah, like according to y'all, y'all share an ancestors.
So I mean I guess ship run too deep because
if somebody draw a border down your neighborhood, which I
(26:10):
have experienced. Somebody draw a border around your neighborhood. All
of a sudden, you go, you if you from a
different district, and this district you in now don't like you.
There's a story about it's on an NPR pod called
consider this story about sugar Hill, which was a black
affluent neighborhood that now the ten Freeway is. They have
knocked down all the houses and built a freeway. So
when that happened, you got your little house and vouchers,
(26:32):
you had to go to a different part of town.
All of a sudden, you're not in a black neighborhood.
You up there with white people calling you nigger every
time you step out the house. It's like, I didn't
ask to be over here. You told me my house
was this. Like right now, it's Palestinians who don't have
a passport into Jerusalem and they like, I can't go
to my grandma's house because she's in Jerusalem. And they're like,
what do you mean you can't go there? Why why
(26:54):
your grandma live over there? There's like because she's always
been over there since ninety a d We then how
comes she can't go to her house because her house
is in Jerusalem, and it's like or houses in Israel.
It's like, how does this? I understand how this work?
You know what I'm saying. So many of people have
tried to solve this, and they've tried to solve it
from outside, the least of which was Bill Clinton and
(27:16):
then Jared mother freakin Kushner, whose idea this whole two
state idea, right, this like two nations with an asterisk
to where it's like your sovereign nation kind of. So
again you have to think of it as like Palestine
was all the area, but all the area before it
was called Palestine was Judea. But it's the same people.
(27:37):
Like again, it's the same humans. And then these new
humans came back from Europe doing this Clarton call for
anybody who got this DNA to come back in here,
while people that's always been here, it's like hold on,
hold on, hold on, hold on, holo, hold on, I
get it. Everybody welcomed like you can't just build a nation,
you know what I'm saying. And they're like no, no no, no, no,
you got that corner. What the hell you mean I
got this corner? You're moving to my house and say
(27:59):
I can only live in the bathroom. What the what
did you talking about? And then they're like, well, we're
talking about it was our house. First, we just got
put out. Now we're coming back for our house. I mean,
didn't you see what happened when we was gone? Like
they try to wipe us out? Bro, Like, didn't you
see that where we're supposed to go? Then they like
ship not here. So it's just look, Nigga, we wasn't there.
(28:21):
Sit runs super deep for these people because it's cultural, ethnic, religious, nationally,
like it's so much like Nigga, you don't get it, doc,
you wasn't there. And what happens when the ship was
this deep is Nigga starts shooting. Niggets just starts shooting
right and pending on when you start turning on the
camera is whose side you end up being on. And
(28:43):
the problem is cameras wasn't invented. Nigga wouldn't have said,
started this thorny because and you can't like there's nowhere
in the world you could part from ten thousand miles away.
What they should do, y'all gonna hold your black on
black crime hot takes to yourself you wasn't here, and
even if you was, I could tell by how you
(29:06):
move and the conclusions you draw whether you was outside
or not. Club politics. Look, I could tell from these
two state solutions that everybody talking about. I'm like, listen,
man clearly needed one of them. Niggas won't that. So
what I'm trying to say is we don't know now
(29:27):
again jail. Politically speaking, you got each Jerusalem, then you
got or the West Bank, then you got Gaza Strip,
and then you used to have the Golon Heights, but
the goalon heights ended up going off to stopped by
beefing over that. So according to Israel, they're like, listen,
it's all good, y'all get this swath and this swath
will take the rest. Cool everybody, cool, Okay, cool. The
(29:51):
problem is in Palestine, they like, but y'all also get
to live in the best parts of the places you
said we had to stay in, So follow me, thinking
like a native reservation, the natives were just here. And
then America goes, well, y'all could get that square of land,
(30:13):
and they're like, all right, I guess, and then they say,
but wait a minute, there's a grassy hill in that
state of Land. That's really nice. We want to build
houses there too, and they're like, well, nigga, then you
don't mean. My only conclusion is you just don't want
us hear at all, because whenever you give us stuff,
you're still move in there. And how is it yours
to give you? Know? How is there is to give
(30:34):
money and guns? Money and guns? So what are your
options if you're trying to stand up to a fucking bully?
Is asymmetrical warfare? Enter Hamas? What do I mean by
asymmetrical warfare? I mean you don't square up with one
of the strongest militaries in the world. No, You're you're
(30:54):
kicking the balls, your your elbow, your bite. Listen, if
God forbid, Robert have it my podcast brother, that's six
foot white boy. That's just that's guns sexual niked it
just loves guns. If he ever had an issue with me,
Do you think I'm a square up with Robert Evans.
I'm not gonna square up with him. I'm cheating. Do
(31:15):
you know what I'm saying? That's asymmetrical. I don't stand
a chance like actually fighting Roberts Yo saying asymmetrical that's
what Hermas is doing. Are they terrorists? Pending on who
you ask. This ain't the tape recorder defending them. I'm
just saying I wasn't outside, and when you're not outside,
you can't really get your brain around it. Look, look,
(31:36):
there's been plenty of crimes that have happened on my watch.
I'm not saying this right. I'm just saying I saw
what happened, and I get it. I get that. I
don't get it, which I really feel like should be
stanti for me. America should be just pro peace like
I just hope you'll need to stop killing each other.
And if somebody at trash, you should be able to
be like niked as trash here Goyo three, if you
(32:00):
were outside, you'd understand. If you was outside, you would
understand that location actually matters. I wondered, you know, I'm
a slave descendant. I understand not having like a homeland
to officially say is mine. I can do as many
DNA tests as I as I want to, but that
transatlantic slave trade just made it impossible for any like
(32:23):
black person. You'd have to drop into a place that
already exists. We tried that with Marcus Garvey's back to Africa.
Movement and the ship just didn't work. It's a bad
situation because eventually the oppressed to become the oppressor. It
just happens like that, Like you can't just drop into
a place, even though even if you can say, well,
(32:43):
I mean I used to be here because somebody'd been
toiling this soil the whole time. This is ship just
don't work, man. But land matters like location matters, because
specifically in this situation, this ship has prophecy to him.
Their identity is honest lead tied to the soil. And
everybody with their neighborhood tattooed on their neck understands it.
(33:05):
Everybody that you know got the city tattooed on them,
understand what that means. The soil not a Native American.
I live right now in the historical tongue of a
tribe land day for thousands of years they made of
this clay, so they tied to that land is a
better parallel than mine is. So the land matters. Our
(33:35):
families have been here when when I when I went
to Palestine, one of our guides was saying he was
a Greek Orthodox Christian Arab is hail like ethnically, he's Arab, right,
But he's like, look, dude, we were probably Muslim at
one point, we were probably Jewish at one point. We
might actually be ethnically historically Israeli, just like everybody else.
(33:58):
But the place was just conchard so much, and sometimes
you just do what you gotta do to make sure
your family don't die. I don't get that. Like that's
when you talk about identity and like connection to the soil.
What he's saying is like, you don't get it. We've
never left. This is who we are. The land matters
now in the hood scenarios, It's like, yeah, like everything
(34:21):
been taken from us, This our little corner of this
little mud pool all we got. I'm anna defend it
with everything I have because this is literally all we have.
I get it. The location. You can't just pack up
and leave. We got too much blood spilled on this.
Say that's why gentrification is so painful for inner city people.
It's like, look, man, this is violent. We didn't died
(34:41):
on these streets. Why everybody's so interested in Compton Because
we died LBC. You know what it stands for Long
Beach Crip, Like our family died out here for y'all
to think it's cool to go visit the LBC. No,
like you wasn't outside, man, the land, the location actually matters,
so hell yeah, I'm gonna fight to the DEA for this.
Both of them believe specifically what I think. It's super
(35:03):
interesting because that brings us to the current moment that like, Yo,
the holiest spot the Dome of the rock Man, like
the holiest spot in the Muslim faith family, or one
of them is like, Israel just shot it up, Like
that's crazy, you know what I'm saying. And it Israel
on the day of celebration was so crazy that it
(35:23):
falls right at the end of Ramadan, their celebration of
them actually for forming a nation. They at the whaling wall,
like praying on Palestinian death, like I just I don't.
But at the same time it's like they like, nigga,
we from here, we got kicked out of everywhere else.
Would you want me to say, if you was outside,
the turf matters, the land matters. Second thing I say
(35:49):
is if you was outside, you understand that you can't
punch down. Okay, you would be lying to yourself if
you were to say that the Holocaust wasn't one of
the worst atrocities of the twentieth century. I mean, come on,
and then you couple that were all the other exiles
and conquering that the Jews endured. But one thing I
(36:12):
know about when you finally get up out of that
is that that trauma really stays in your bone. And
then when you get on top, it's hard to convince
us anybody watching that you still that same person. People
ask me recently what I think about Chance to rapper
and what happened to his star power? To be honest,
I think the answer is nothing happened to his star power.
But part of what was so special about Chance was
(36:34):
he was the people's champ. He was an independent artist,
and that's what we loved about him. He was touring
the world on a mixtape. It was like, Dane, this kid,
just like this is crazy, Like we all like to
see this underdog story. But then the other dog became
a star, got a major deal, and got married, and
it was like, you're not the underdog anymore, Like you
made it. How do I relate to you now? Maybe
(36:55):
you still see yourself as such, but you can't like,
but you can't punch down and I think even if
someone's punching up at you, and even if that punching
up is as crazy as what Hamas did. Literally today,
they lit Tel Aviv on fire with missile. That's I
can't imagine a missile landing in my city. But you
(37:16):
put you down back because you're still the one in power,
like you're the little nation that could. I just don't
believe it. He just can't punch down. That's to me why,
Like you're this is why I talk across and ain't funny,
Like this is not funny, Rush Limbaugh. You weren't funny
because you was punching down. Now you take somebody different,
like like okay, just fothering me check somebody like Larry
(37:37):
the Cable Guy or like a Jeff Foxworthy day. They
from the conservative spaces, but they are punching up like
they're talking about just being poor. They're not punching down.
They're just talking about how it's hard to be down.
And I'm like, see that that's still work. And I
feel like when you outside, you understand that you can't
be a O G like punching down on this because
you're just a little crazy, Like why is you doing
(37:58):
why are you picking on a little me? Boss to
boss like, what did you doing? You can't punch down?
And then lastly, when you down bad, if you was outside,
you understand when you when you were down bad, you
do everything you can to stay in power, to protect
the little bit of semblance of peace you think you got,
even if it means becoming the very thing that had
(38:21):
you down bad. Now listen, listen to me. I wasn't there.
I honestly don't know. I'm just saying this high look
to me, it's hard for me, as a black man
in America to not empathize with the Palestinians because that
just looks familiar to me, where someone else gets to
(38:43):
decide your future. But the difference between who gets to
decide my future and who's deciding there's is them niggas
came from trauma too, So that's where it gets like,
I don't, I don't know what to say. I know
that my default position is to empathize with the oppressed.
(39:04):
I know that oftentimes the message from the margins is
usually the one that carries the most prophetic truth telling.
So I may have a hot take here and there,
but listen to problem you and me wasn't outside. I'm
not telling you this right or wrong. I'm just telling
(39:24):
you it's gang stuff because politics is really just gang
banging in nice suits, y'all. This mug was recorded and
edited by Me Propaganda right here in East low'st Boil Heights,
Los Angeles. Y'all can follow me at prop hip Hop
on all the socials. You can follow the Hood Politics
(39:46):
pod itself at Hood Politics Pod, where we'll be trying
to make takes on stuff that aren't really big enough
for a whole episode, but definitely needs a little bit
of clarity. This mug was scored, edited, mixed, and mastered
by the one and only Headlights. Y'all, go follow my
dog Matt. I was Swelski. I still don't know how
to say his name. I'm glad he changed it to Headlights.
(40:07):
Follow him on his socials at Headlights Underscore music telling
you hear all these new other fly tracks, this food
be making, and the theme music was done by the
one and only Gold Tips Gold Tips d J Shawn
P And y'all remember every time you check in politics, y'all,
that's just gang banging in nice suits. Shouts to I
(40:27):
Heart Media for making this happen
Host
Prop
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