Sophia Khalifa, an engineer, working on AI at Amazon AWS, has a story we need to hear. Sophia is a muslim Bedouin Arab, born and raised in Israel. In Sophia’s culture and community, girls traditionally do not receive an education, but Israeli policies mandating schooling for all children, changed her entire life. Sophia graduated from Tel Aviv University with a BS in Electrical Engineering, moved to the US, worked as an engineer for Intel, received her MBA from Stanford, and started working at Amazon leading trust and safety for generative AI. SInce October 7, Sophia’s life changed again when she added activism to areas where she excels.
Sophia says, “ if Israel was not established, I probably would be, illiterate, married to my cousin and herding sheep, somewhere in Galilee. Because that was generation after generation. That’s the culture that we had but Israel actually up leveled the field for the Arabs. And if you look at the number of like 20% of the population of citizens and the population in Israel are Arabs. Most of them are Muslims. And in universities today, the percent of Arabs pursuing bachelor degree is 20%, same as their percent of the population.”
As a muslim Arab who grew up in Israel straddling two cultures, Sophia speaks from first hand experience about the cultural divisions in Israel. In our conversation, Sophia dispels the damaging lies against Israel as an apartheid state guilty of genocide and oppressing Arabs. Sophia breaks down how each of these lies is absurdly false and how the repulsive jew hatred that is poisoning our society and hijacking the social justice movement should concern all of us. Sophia tells us that the real problem is not Israel vs Hamas, it is the western world vs. radical Islam.
Sophia emphasizes the importance of identifying Islamist antisemitism, and the need for honest conversation about this global threat. Sophia says, “The second part of the medina and the jihad is actually a political movement that has ideology, and all ideologies have some utopia of what the society should be. And according to the islamist utopia is you should have the Sharia law. All should be abiding by the Sharia law. You’re either muslim or you’re an infidel. And if you’re infidel, you don’t deserve to live. So we really need to understand what’s happening here.”
When we talked about those who try to attack Sophia’s honesty because her experience doesn’t match up with the story they believe about Israel, Sophia had wise words, “first they try to spread lies. And then when you’re able to fight against it because you’re sharing the facts, the truth, then they try to discredit you.”
Must Read Quotes from this episode:
“And then I think that as long as you’re using this social justice language, you are kind of like protected, you are righteous, and then that gives you the legitimacy to say anything. But no one comes and tries to question what you’re saying. And what is happening is that we have the, •, islamist, anti Semitism. And I’m not saying Muslim. I’m saying islamist, extreme Islam, antisemitism that is exploiting that language and using that”
“They try to be for the oppressed, for women’s rights, for LGBTQ rights and all that they’re trying to be on the right side of history. So they hear that social justice lingo about like, ah, genocide, colonialism, white supremacy Which is like, if you went to Israel, you would laugh to think that this is like white supremacy. You cannot tell the difference between a Jew and Arab in Israel.”
“But all of a sudden, your teacher, someone that you look up to, come to you and tells you you don’t have a future. I felt like so helpless in those moments. But then luckily, I have this critical thinking that today is missing from our college students and I saw that my experience with the jewish people is different. It’s not what he’s saying. So he probably doesn’t know what he’s talking about, or maybe he knows, but he’s like lying to us. And I just, just ignored it.”
“The hate to the Jews is more important and stronger than the love for their own future.”
“We need to understand that this is the thing that is going to take our liberty, in the name of being liberal or tolerating other people.”
“The problem here, it’s not Israel versus Palestine. It’s really about extreme Islam, who is trying to take power and control all over the world.”
“I stand for my truth, and I don’t care what people think about it.”
(00:00) Sophia is grateful that Israel made education mandatory for all children
(05:55) People are using this word to label Israel as an apartheid state
(08:34) I think that antisemitism is not something that ever disappeared
(17:57) Sophia: Americans have a lack of understanding of fundamentalism
(19:37) Sophia’s growing up in Israel
(25:21) Sophia’s experiences in Israel on 9/11 happened
(29:25) A turning point for Sopha when your friend told you she wanted to a suicide bomber
(57:29) Arab Israelis support of a two state solution
(01:00:37) Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005
(01:03:19) Everyone should be united against Hamas
(01:05:31) First step in solving problem is being explicit about what the problem is
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