WEBVTT
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I promised I'm not going to do this
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and I'm not going to cry so much
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but it's so hard.
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[Noam sobbing]
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I can't believe that I have to go back home.
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Who gets a chance to come to the US to work on a comedy show
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and then gets booked by the Kennedy Center.
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And at the same time,
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a global health crisis
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[laughing]
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happens
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[siren wails]
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So this white man here,
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is John Harvard
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and this shoe might be the dirtiest
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and most unsanitary corner of the United States.
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Why? Everyone come here, they touch it.
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They rub.
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They're like, oh, I want my kids to go to Harvard.
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[laughing]
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You don't want your kids to go to Harvard.
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It's just like a name.
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They can go to any other university and it will be fine.
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Okay. I got it out of my system,
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Everyone running around with their books,
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going to their classes.
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And I'm going to write comedy.
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When I tell people, yeah, I'm writing comedy at Harvard
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they're like, what?
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And then I have to explain, but I was at the UN,
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I was trying to make peace in and I couldn't do it.
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So now I'm doing it through comedy.
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[upbeat music]
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[speaking in foreign language]
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I went to sleep anonymous, I woke up the next day.
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My phone was exploding all over the Arab media,
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Zionist proposes marriage to Mohammed Bin been Salman.
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[upbeat music]
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First Jewish comedian ever come to the stage
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here at the 1001 laugh comedy festival.
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So please help me welcome to the stage Noam Shuster.
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Good evening, everyone.
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It's your lucky night, the Mossad is here to record you.
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Just kidding.
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My name is Noam, white liberals can't pronounce my name,
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So they call me Chomsky.
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My last name is Schuster.
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So I have a name of a Jewish European professor from MIT
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in a body of a Persian wonder woman.
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My parents are considered traitors.
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They're left-wing liberals.
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So they raised me in a mixed community where Jews
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and Palestinians live together.
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My best friend Ranin, she's the Palestinian.
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She looks like Gigi Hadid,
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i look like Ahmed in hijab next to her.
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[crowd laughing]
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When we cross checkpoints the soldiers,
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they stopped our car,
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they hit on her and they look at me and they're like,
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give me my ID please.
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[crowd laughing]
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I found letters that my father received to the military
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detention when he refused to serve
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in their occupied Palestinian territories.
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I brought it with me here because I have this feeling like
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it's going to make it into my shell.
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And these are like the first memories I have from my dad.
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Just me and my mom,
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kind of alone in the house and my father in prison.
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And I remember asking all the time questions like,
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where is dad, where is dad.
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This is the first uprising. This is the first Intifada.
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It was a very different outlook on
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those that are questioning the system.
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And that was a point where we could still turn things back.
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Today, It's much, much, much harder.
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So I'm making, basically I think
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what I've been eating my whole life,
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Persian Jews call it Gondi.
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This is the food that my grandma and now my mom,
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like we had this pretty much every week, all the time.
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I'm adding a few more healthy things to it.
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Don't tell my ancestors I'm changing the recipe.
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The first show I ever had was in English.
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And that show was so incredible and amazing.
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And people were listening to me in such a different way than
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I was used to.
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I love performing in Hebrew also,
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but there's something about Israeli audiences
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that sometimes I feel very anxious about.
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And in a way, saying it out loud,
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kind of breaks my heart because from the beginning,
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I kind of know that I'm not going to have a lot of space
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among my own community, or even in Hebrew.
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Like it's going to be limited because of who I am,
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because of my messages.
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Maybe I'm wrong, but I hope I'm wrong.
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But this is the kind of feeling that I have.
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So we have a couple of building blocks
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of your show, right?
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So one big building block is like who your parents are.
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And then the next building block Neveh Shalom, right.
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And then like, then you have a series of
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little vignettes that's with Neveh Shalom.
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And then eventually through this, I went to the UN.
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I was advocating to work more and more
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with those sections of society that are usually
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not spoken to that are like
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spoilers of future peace agreements.
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So there was a pushback
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From who?
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From the UN.
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Yeah.
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They didn't want to fund it, they didn't want
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to be part of it.
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It was too risky for them.
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And I told them, so who's who needs
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to work with those extreme Israelis?
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Who? The Palestinians that's their responsibility?
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And it ruptured my belief that there was
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like a traditional avenue to do peace work through.
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And it led me to start making jokes on Arabic TV about MBS.
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Like, and now here I am, you know, what I mean?
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Like this rupture led you to that.
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Yeah.
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Getting ready to perform for the Harvard Hillel chapter.
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American Jews.
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It's my biggest responsibility to speak to my people.
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They're coming from a place where I believe they
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have more to learn, they can do better,
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they need to be part of the change.
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Palestinians know the things that I'm saying.
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They don't come from an ignorant perspective.
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The oppressed doesn't come from an ignorant perspective.
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Never.
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I'm not telling them anything new,
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but the Jewish audiences where we have to work.
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Hello.
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[crowd babbles]
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I have the diverse audiences following me everywhere.
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I have already an Iranian here.
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Any Palestinians showed up tonight? Security.[laughing]
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You're like 70 minutes, not 70 years, relax
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[crowd laughing]
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So my parents, when I was seven years old,
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they decided to raise me in the only
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coexistence community in Israel.
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And two years ago, a big fire broke.
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And so a lot of security forces and firefighters,
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which I liked, rushed to the community.
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And they tried to evacuate all the Jews
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and all the Arabs from their houses.
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But my Palestinian neighbors,
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no one moved from their houses.
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And the firefighters was like,
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"You have to evacuate your homes immediately".
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And Yusef is, "I am not leaving my house".
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And the firefighters go,
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"Yusef you will be able to come back."
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And Yusef is like, "That's what you're told back in 48,
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I'm not leaving my house." [laughing]
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It was a good show, considering everything.
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I was surprised that they actually let you in because
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they would never like bring activists from
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Jewish voice for peace. Right?
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But they did bring you,
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even though your views are more progressive than
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a lot of people I know.
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And still, it's interesting.
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She got an invitation because she's an artist, because she's
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doing something that sucks.
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More approachable to them.
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Well that's what radical about using cultural work.
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You know, she gets to use comedy
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and art to get in the door when you
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wouldn't otherwise be able to get in the door.
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What she did yesterday,
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it wasn't a part of her evolving career as a comedian.
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It was just straightforward activism.
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What you did yesterday, cultural activism.
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I'm gonna go to New York
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to perform at the famous 30 Rock.
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It's my first time doing comedy in LA.
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Hollywood improv, laugh factory.
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Sound check at the Kennedy Center.
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Good luck. Mom I love you.
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Another one. [laughing]
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Palestinians in the audience were like,
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Noam we can't believe that we're here
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to see an Israeli comedian.
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And I was like, oh my God.
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[upbeat music]
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The world health organization officially
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declared it a pandemic
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New cases are surfacing in new places every day
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with at least 98 countries and territories
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now reporting infections.
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Carnegie, The Sale and the Mattress closed.
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I think Rave will be closed by the end of the day too.
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My inbox is a festival of cancellations
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and I have no idea what to do at Harvard,
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in an empty campus with like no one around,
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literally no one is around.
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I think I've come to terms that I should leave
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Cambridge and go home.
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[somber music]
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This is it.
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My empty room.
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Everything is packed.
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[train honks]
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[speaking in foreign language]
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I feel like God is looking at me and telling me,
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"Oh Noam, you thought you were going to be
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a big shot in America this year.
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Come, come.
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I'm taking you back home. I have other plans for you."
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[speaking in foreign language]
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Hello. This is Anna Frank from my shelter
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[speaking in foreign language]
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[birds chirping]
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I wonder how Palestinians survived all these years.
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Enclosures and restrictions of movements.
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This is pretty hard.
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[speaking in foreign language]
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I am in one of the only places where people are gathering,
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hugging, meeting each other
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and have no restrictions inside the hotel.
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[energetic music]
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That's my Stand Up song.
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I'm in a lobby right now of microcosm of everything.
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We have all the ages, all the genders,
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all the religious spectrum, everything, everything.
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[crowd murmurs]
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So what's happening here is the Jews are shocked
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and surprised by the Arabs.
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And they're asking me if I'm Arab
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because I'm singing and speaking
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in Arabic with like Palestinians.
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And they are so confused
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and there's asking very,like,
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basic, preliminary questions to the Arabs.
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And she was saying,
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"In what other case scenario would we
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be able to sit with Arabs and meet them?"
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We're all here under very unique circumstances
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and we're getting the same food.
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We're getting the same treatment.
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And the toxic identity issues and hatred
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and stuff that I'm used to seeing outside.
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And that exists outside.
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It's just absent here.
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In an utopian future of a one-state solution.
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That is not an apartheid state that doesn't separate us.
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And doesn't divide us into hierarchies.
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This is the closest I've seen.
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I don't want to sound like a cliche because obviously,
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you know, the inequality and everything still exists,
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but I cannot find it here.
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And I don't want to be looking under the ground to find it.
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[speaking in foreign language]
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Anger and grief on the streets of
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occupied East Jerusalem as Iyad Halak
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was buried late on Sunday night.
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32 year old Iyad Halak was chased and killed
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in occupied East Jerusalem.
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Iyad who was autistic,
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was walking to a special needs school
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near the Al-Aqsa mosque compound when
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he was confronted by Israeli security forces.
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[speaking in foreign language]
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Benjamin Netanyahu is promising to carry out
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the annexation of illegal Israeli settlements,
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as well as large parts of the Jordan barrier.
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Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
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has ramped up surveillance with virtually no oversite.
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There's also been a lag of some weeks between
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testing facilities being set up in Jewish areas
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and in Palestinian ones.
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Speaking up here is scarier
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because there is a bigger price to pay
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But I'm not going to shrink myself.
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00:23:13.489 --> 00:23:17.406 line:15%
[speaking in foreign language]
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[somber music]