Welcome. My name is grant rosen. I am the rabbi of fedex chicago and a member of the chicago chapter of jewish voice for peace. Two of the cosponsors of this evenings program. I would like to first thank and honor our events primary sponsor. As im sure many of you may know , several of the appearances have been canceled recently in the fact that we are here at all this evening is due to the principles and quite frankly, the courage of hrw and our good friends here at chicago temple. Lets show some appreciation to those that made this evening possible. [applause] we are gathering together this evening as we all know as a horrific tragedy continuing to unfold in gaza and israel. Im tempted to say that when this program was first scheduled none of us could have imagined the terrible circumstances thaty we now find ourselves. But im not so sure that that is completely true. Palestinians, their allies and numerous human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch have long been sounding the alarm that israel has been subjecting palestinians for decades to a violent regime of occupation. Leover and over, we have been warned that there could be violence, even cataclysmic violence. Tragically, that moment has now arrived. Over the past month, the horror of this violence has unfolded and many of us have been asking how could it have come to this. While our program this evening does not focus specifically on the terrible ongoing violence in gaza, i submit that the book we are about to discuss and highlight in its way offers us important insight into the current moment. On the surface, you could say that a day in the life is a story of a tragedy that apple falls one Palestinian Family living under israeli occupation. Just one story among so many. As nathans book demonstrate so powerfully as we seek to understand israels oppressive architecture occupation. We must first and foremost leunderstand the impact on every day palestinians. On parents and children. On husbandser and wives, brothes and sisters. On Community Members who live in a system of structural violence every day. An oppressive occupation that supports their attempts to live their lives simply at every turn as we all know, there is a Cottage Industry of books and articles and pieces that analyze israels occupation. In its microcosmic way, i believe this book about this one jerusalem tragedy helps us gain a much deeper and more valuable understanding than most books you will find on this subject. Those of you that have read the book undoubtedly know what i mean. In short order, nathan allows us an intimate perspective into others reality. Ultimately, unbearabled heartbreak. In the end, we walk away with a deep and invaluable understanding. Yes, we begin to understand how it all could have come to this. I have always felt that if we are ever to find our way forward through the tragic injustices that have gripped israel palestine for far too long, it will only happen by summoning up our deepest reservoir empathy for our collective humanity and the current moment when such a goal seems more painfully remote than ever, it will be booked in testimony such as this that will point the way forward for us. All of this to say, i am grateful to nathan for his book, to the sponsors of our program for making tonight possible and to all of you for being here tonight. I have been asked to let you know where the excerpts are. There back here and over there. Hopefully marked by the exit. I have also been asked, our conversation this evening should go without saying will abide by guidelines of civil discourse. We are all here. Not necessarily to completely agree withon one another, but to share with one another and be open too one another in here one another and express ourselves honestly and openly and truly be open to what nathan has to teach us. With no further ado, i will step down. I would like to turn things over to my good friend and colleague. [applause] thank you. Thank you for your exemplary leadership which is always an inspiration to all of us. Thank you all for coming out on a monday night to have this conversation with us. We gather tonighta. As bombs are dropping on gaza. The subject of the book takes us into a conversation about the region, about politics, about what is right and wrong in this moment. It does it in a very special way i will introduce both of my interlocutors here. I want to say as a preface, you know, many of us have been trained and stressed in tears about the situation and palestine and israel since october 7. On College Campuses where many of my colleagues teach it is been very difficult to have conversations. It is been very painful, emotionalea. And it is almost like rational discourse taking a backseat to what is on. I feel like this book offers an opportunity t to wait and, to lockin, to lead with our hearts open our hearts to learning about the experiences of palestinians in occupied palestine. Doing it in a way that invites us into our lives as humanity. I met nathan, actually by reading an article that he wrote that wasas a prelude to the boo. I did not know him. I did not know anyone who knew him. I wrote him an email and he responded. A year or so later when the book came out he asked to moderate this. Turns out we have many friends and comrades and colleagues in common. But that openness i think is reflected without this book is written. I am lookingdu forward t to this conversation. Let me just introduce the two people i will be talking to. Nathan as an author and journalist. Obviously an author in thela day of the life anatomy of the jerusalem tragedy. Also has published in the New York Times magazine, the guardian, the london review of books. Was for a decade they director at the International Crisis group of the arab israeli project. He also taught up our college originally from california. Now living in jerusalem. The second speaker is omar. Omar serves as the israel and palestine director at the Human Rights Watch where he investigates human rights abuses and israel the west bank and gaza. Also had several major reports including in 2021 a report called a threshold which is a 200 page report with graphic illustrations that feel the kind of context and background to the occupation into the situation we see in palestine and gaza right now. So, i want to start with nathan. You have an opportunity to ask questions at the end. I want to start with nathan and just ask you about your choice to write this book. You could have written this story with a number of entry points but you chose this particular family and the story iof a father in the tragedy abt his son and family and then you introduced us to many other issues and challenges and provocations. Why this story and what are the journeys in life are you. Thank you all for coming. This story one of them is more emotional answer which is, you know, i live in jerusalem and my work for the International Crisis group took me to the west bank, you know, nearly every day and as i was driving north from my apartment close to the walls of the old city, i would pass by an enclave that contained within it many residents of jerusalem. The enclave had to made communities in it. Refugee camp and the town. This community, you know, was surrounded by walls on three sides. The tall grayon concrete wallis separation barrier. And on the fourth side was a different kind of wall which was the wall of route 4370, more famously known as the apartheid road. A segregated road with traffic for israelis on one side, traffic for palestinians on the other in a giant wall running through the30 middle of it. You have about 130,000 People Living in this very densely populated enclave. Without a single atm, without lanes in their streets. Without sidewalks. Without playgrounds. To the city of jerusalem and getting services. So much so that people are forced to burn trash in their streets in the middle of the day and night. And, all of this is sitting in plain view just underneath the manicured grounds of the Hebrew University of jerusalem. Israels most prestigious university. From the Hebrew University of jerusalem, you can look down and you can see this enclave and you can the check point through which many parents are forced to send their children to school or go to their job. The other element that the parents in this Community Phase is the shortage of classrooms. At the time of the accident, at the center of the book, they were doing double shifts in the schools just in order to be able to teach the students. So, i would pass by this and hardly paid any mind. I would i dont think i was alone. The whole landscape of this place is everywhere. There is segregation everywhere. It was not something that i had dwelled on. And, after this tragedy occurred where a bus full of kindergartners from this community was struck by a giant semi trailer and the bus flipped over and caught fire, six children died, one teacher. All of this is happening just on the other side of this. Where there are, there is a policy of deliberate neglect. There is a neglect by israel. There is an ability of the Palestinian Authority to enter municipal jerusalem or where the accident took place. That is more than 60 of the west bank. Under full Israeli Security and administration. And, so, the people left to deal with this accident was the palestinians who live in the state of neglect on the other side of the wall and after it took place, i could not stop thinking about the parents and children of teachers who are affected by it. And i started, when i decided to write the book, i decided to reach out to everybody as i possibly could in one way or another connected to the crash from the settler who founded the settlement next to where the accident took place to one of the teachers, a bystander who heroically rescued dozens of children. Some of the social workers at the israeli hospital, and, so, answering the question that i was moved by the story of this accident, how it was emblematic of the total neglect of these hundreds of thousands of people onls the other side of the wall. I should say that also through, to enter these areas, even within municipal jerusalem, the Emergency Services require an escort by the israeli army or security forces. And, so, the fact that the Emergency Services did not arrive for a very long time was not unique to this accident. That is something that is happened many times in this area on the other side of the wall. And i saw in the story, the ability to tell the larger story of israel palestine to the jewish and palestinian characters. But i want to say that there is a different way of answering that question which was i also was driven to tell the story of something that occurs every day all over the world. I really did not want to focus on something that could be exceptional wise. So focus on something that would be the more natural subject for a work of journalism a war in gaza, an invasion of janine. A suicide bombing. What i really wanted was to show people what this system was that these people live under and what it feels like this early to live within that system. And, my frustration for years and working for the International Crisis group and doing the kind of journalism that i was doing was that the whole world would Pay Attention to this issue when there is a war in gaza. When there is a striking violence andd everyone would cal for calm. I wanted to show what that calm looked like. I wanted us to address. Com. To understand that that calm was not actually calm. It was deeply oppressive system that entailed a great deal of violence that induced violence in turn. And i wanted us to Pay Attention to that system so that we are not so we are not more horrified when we see Something Like the war in gaza. That we are also horrified when that war in spirit. Every day violence. I want you and to talk a little bit more about what thati looks like the i dont know how many people here have visited out israel palestine. Visiting occupy palestine. So, you know, i went in 2011 with an injured dennis delegation. On our delegation was a woman who had grown up on an indian shervation here as described it. A woman had grown up in the jim crowth south. What we saw a designated for all of them. Designated for me in terms of the harassment and violence that was prettyer routine and that ae palestinian hosts thought was a pretty routine life under occupation going through checkpoints being harassed just trying to go about your business so, what have we learned in readers following these dilemmas . A dilemma on that tragic day for him as a dad looking for his child. You w know, we get a sense of wt that wall represents. What occupation represents and what that violence is about. You want to describe that a little bit more. Then i want to invite you in. You documented a lot. Tell us more. s called a day in the life. Abed salam what transpires on that day. How he learns of the accident and rushes to the accident site. He has to pass eight checkpoint and tries to flag down Israeli Soldiers who refused to give him a ride up to the bus. How he arrives at the scene of the accident and all of the kids have been removed and he asks this crowd where are the kids . He is told some of them went to jerusalem hospitals. Some of them went to theas military base just a minutes up the road. Some of them went to different hospitals. And he himself have big green west bank id which does not allow him to go to most of the places that were named. He certainly cannot go to the is really military base up the road. He cannot go to hospitals in jerusalemalem or west where most of the kids are located. And we follow him attempting to find his son and sending hisow relatives from the same family of green ideas you have people with a blue jerusalem id that does allow you to enter jerusalem parts of a sense a relative go to the jerusalem hospital look for his son. On by following more than 36 hours of his life, we see this system in which she is entrapped how it works what actually means to be a green blue id holder of the worst day of your life. But what i wanted to say is the deeper theme of the book is theo degree to which the system reaches into the most intimate details of these peoples lives. And so when we learn of his back story we learn at one point he chose a marriage partner based on the color of her id because he was atjo risk of losing his b a higher paying job in jerusalem like other fellow green id holders and he chose a marriage partner just for the chance to himself get a blue id and be able to retain his job and work in jerusalem and provide for his family. There are many other examples in the book of the vast degree of control. Talk about green ids andre blue ids they share. But i want to ask omar the report you have done a number of reports but the report in 2021 is particularly compelling, powerful and relevant now and hear you talk about the level of segregation one of my big periods hearing about the past laws knowing peoples lives are regulated down to the minute details where they can do where they could go, or they could live et cetera. So tell us why its labeled apartheid . On me start by saying what an honor it is to be on. The best thing ive read in soyears highly encourage ive bn to read it. Part of the reason why its so powerful is it is in narrative form lays out the daily reality of palestinians living under israeli rule. People in moments like today think about the hot violence of carnage, slaughter, bloodshed experience. Its ach cold violence of which have been operating for decades is how it speaks too. So let me start with the west bank we put in a little bit of human rights context. The first thing i understand what they west bank a ship to population groups that lived virtually sidebyside. You have excludingas even East Jerusalem. Give nearly half a million jewish Israeli Settlers who are living the settlement settlemenr war crimes. The transfer one civilian population territory by war oroccupied by war. Living sidebyside 2. 5 milliona palestinians. These are two people might live across the streeter as they do n some areas are governed under different bodies of law commits the same offense their trade in different courts they have different Due Process Rights or to be more accurate palestinians do not have different sentences. Jewish israelis are citizens of israel they have the same idea move back and forthan freely. During her brutal military occupation. The green ids which ill explain in a minute they have limited freedom of movement. That effectively rules over their lives. Its not just about dual regime. They live in a reality and for segregation. The settlements which are built on palestinian lands i could not excessive labors bearing special special permits and all of its data for stations different freedoms movement. Jewish israelis can go back and forth to East Jerusalem and israel proper. Palestinians on the other hand need to obtain permits to enter eastst jerusalem and israel proper. Put that in perspective probably most everybody in this room fly to the airport go to jerusalem and the palestinians who might live 3 kilometers away cannot do that. Hundreds of checkpoints largely built between policy and communities that can turn a short commute to work into an hours long ordeal separates thousands of palestinians. Now that they stole the land get for illegal settlement it has reduced palestinians on the west bank has become a bunch of territorial surrounded by the large settlement. Not only that not even the resourcess that are controlled y the Israeli Government. Received by palestinians on a discriminatory basis. Beyond that the palestinians who live there the majority of the west bank is impossible to get a building permit. The west bank under exclusive control issued 100 times more demolition orders than building for palestinian. They have demolished every year hundreds of phones, schools, businesses for lacking that nearly impossible so killing arbitrary arrests. This gathering will be palestinians with a jail sentence. Peopleng is more a 10 without it possible to obtain permits. East jerusalem has many of the samean dynamics. One example if you are a jerusalem id holder that nathan spoke about, even that id you do not have nationality you co