The Question of Funding in Palestine
I spoke to Yazan Khalili and Sami Khaldi, Palestinian activists who started a project called The Question of Funding which is an art collective that presented at Documenta 15 this past year. They had a discussion on Outland with Monalisa Gharavi in November about their project as well. During the discussion we spoke about how Israel has forced a reliance on financialization in Palestine, how this has affected the society's older systems of grassroots support, and what types of s...
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Hello, everyone. You're listening to the Blockchain Socialist Podcast. And for today's episode, I have a group of artists here who are working with a project called the question of funding. I'm here with Yazan Khalili and Sami Khalili. So, hey, guys. Would you guys like to introduce yourselves to the audience?
Okay. So I am, my name is Al Khalili. You can call me Yaz. And, I'm, one of the founding members of the question of funding collective. And, I'm an artist and architect, and I would say, cultural producer, if one can use these, definitions. And, yeah, I'm doing my PhD now at University of Amsterdam, researching cultural institutions in Palestine, looking at, the economical changes that, influenced the cultural, and, the cultural production mainly. It's a it's still, still developing as a research. And, yeah. That's, like, kind of the main things I'd like to say.
Sure. We'll get into more we'll get into more in that, in a bit.
So Sami Hely. I am from Jerusalem, and I've been working in, financial consulting and kind of development consulting, for the past, around ten years. My background is in finance and development and economics, but I've always been interested in, like, since 2010, I've been interested in, money, cryptocurrencies, and these kinds of, like, exchange systems. I joined the Question of Funding Collective. Was it two or three years ago? Around the same time, two years ago. And yeah, we've been kind of developing our thinking around them. Mhmm.
So can you guys maybe explain a bit because the the question of funding, I think, is is the name of of the collective, but also it's a reference to a very specific question around funding in relation to Palestine, and its relation to, I guess, being dependent on international funding from, from charities or from, these types of NGOs and kind of like the the problems that are associated with that, I guess. Do you care to explain that a bit a bit more deeply?
Maybe I speak about the the the collective. So, the collective is, was first formed, as as a title of, of, of, communal sessions that we were conducting in, Ramallah, as part of a cultural center, which is called Khalili Subhikini Cultural Center. And we were doing it in collaboration with another institution called, Grassroot Alkuds. The the idea was to to bring, to the to the fore, to the front, in front of everyone, the dilemmas, the financial shifts that were happening in, in our cultural and, societal productions and and, institutions. And to discuss them with the community as part of the bigger question that the people have been asking about, funding and about the economical structures in the community. Meaning that, this collective came out of different meetings as part of cultural institutions. And slowly, slowly, this question, became the the the name of the collective, itself. And we kind of left, these cultural institutions and became more of individuals and began, and and formed this, you know, as individuals who formed this collective, and we took this question to be the title. So we work between the question and the collective. So and this is kind of a confusion that helps us also, like, you know, to to work through confusions allows us to, never have a clear answer of what to define and how to define ourselves. Are we the question or are we the collective? And how the collective and the question relate to each other? But maybe I'll leave to Samuel also to speak more about, the question itself, the question of funding.
Yeah. So just a bit about the collective. I mean, in in my experience, it was kind of like a, you know, a lecture, that posed the question of what it you know, the question of funding. Like, what do we do about this? To me, it intrigued me in terms of, like, kind of was trying to come up with solutions, for this question of funding. I actually didn't go to the first meeting, but, ended up joining later. But it was interesting to kind of I'm not even sure if the intent was to have come up with solutions, but maybe to understand what's going on with everybody wise, you know, especially cultural institutions, why why is the cultural scene changing? And there's a huge issue of, you know, money in the cultural scene and, funding. And a bit about that background. So funding in Palestine is a huge issue. So and that that has, you know, political connotations because, you know, by design, Palestine is not a real country, so, in terms of govern government. So, when there was a peace treaty between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Israel in, '91, and then the the PA, Palestinian Authority, is this new body that controlled part of the land, in historical Palestine. You know, it's a very small segment. So it's really an authority or a government without real powers. And I think by design, they try to keep it from having too much powers. So what that means is that the Palestinian government doesn't have, enough resources to kind of control their fate. So to control the economy, to control the resources. And this is where donor money comes in because in reality, it's a state under occupation. And occupation usually pays for governing the, you know, the occupied. But in our situation, Israel kind of pulled out a bit, let the Palestinian authority kind of govern and pay for its own occupation. So and you don't want any authority like that to have too much power. So what do you do? You remove the resources, and this is where you have European funders, international, agencies funding, you know, the Palestinian people giving money to the PA so that it can survive. It's kind of like, you know, you know, doses of opium so that, you know, people stay, you know, sanitized and and don't rally up because, you know, the situation is horrible and also saves the occupier from paying for an occupation because occupations are usually expensive. So, you know, going back to that, that's the political segment of it. That's why Palestine is uniquely has a lot of usually has a lot of funding. And I'm not trying to say that in a situation as bad as Palestine in terms of, like, oppression and, you know, need for resources, there, you know, there should be funding, international funding as well. That's fine, but not in the scale that exists right now where funding agencies sometimes have even more power than the government itself. So this is this is kind of the sphere where we exist, where everything is reliant on funding in the cultural scene and and, you know, international funding, European times, American, what whatever. But, everything is kind of dictated by it. If you want to do anything, you, you know, apply for a proposal for funding. And we lost that, grassroots structures where, for example, even if it's a football club that was formed by neighborhoods, that didn't really need that much resources. After a while, if they applied for funding, they would get huge amounts of funding from an European agency for development instead of actually raising up the fund fund the the money, the resources from the community. So it become just it became just easier for them, and it kind of lost the soul. People stopped volunteering. And, you know, that was volunteering, and togetherness was a huge aspect because of the first intifada because, you know, in a in a it's kind of a revolution. So people band together and create these amazing structures. And they these structures are starting to dismantle because of funding, because, you know, it's it's not based on people's relation to each other, people's, sorry, supporting each other and being resist resilient. It's rather than it's somewhat institutionalized. It became institutionalized. Institutions apply for funding from external parties, and they have to adjust themselves to fit that external funding. Maybe it's,
it's good to add two things to this. One that, Israel, for example, is the one of the, biggest subsidized countries in the world. It gets much more funding than, the Palestinian Authority. But but, but it's a different kind of fund. You know, when you have a kind of a sovereignty, you can channel the funding differently than when you are a state a country under occupation. That's one thing. The second thing is that, the formation of the Palestinian authority happened at a at a shift in, in international economy, and the, kind of, dominance of the, neoliberal economy, meaning the the financialization of the, of the economy. And what happened with the Palestinian, formation of the Palestinian authority that economy became the way of struggle rather than it is part of a political economy, that brings economy under a kind of a political structure. And that shift that's happening in the world economy became or the finance, became the dominant structures. And they kind of led the way we can imagine independence or we can imagine a state and the role of the state somehow. So this is kind of a time where you can see liberation movements, turning into, neoliberalism or neoliberal structures, and how this is, and and there were, you know, like, through funding, through the donor economy, through being totally dependent on donor economy, they became, one of the most extreme cases of how neoliberalism is adopted and acts within these communities. Like look at South Africa At that time, you talk about the Palestinian Authority. You talk about Lebanon. You can talk about, I don't know, Egypt. Yeah. Like, these kind of shifts that were happening, are not only in Palestine, but they are happening globally within some shifts in some countries, where the end of a certain political apparatus allows an extreme economical shifts in these countries.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that yeah. There there's a lot a lot a lot of thoughts came to my mind when you were when you guys were talking. I feel like that's it almost sounds like as if, in certain ways, the the the Palestinian state was kind of or whatever, you know, kind of the Palestinian authority is almost like, it's like privatized occupation, it sounds like in a certain way, which is a very strange, like, combination of words, I feel like. But, this basically, what that means is it becomes dependent on international funding or basically the goodness of countries' hearts in which while maybe there were some good intentions for some of these countries for doing this, at the same time what it has ended up doing is, I guess, breaking those kind of, those social bonds that existed previously where, the relate like economic relations were based more on these kind of like mutual bonds rather than purely mediated through through money. And this, like, mediation through money has sort of, like, broken down those types of relationships, which, is a big, I guess, ideological, well, it comes from an ideological point of view, from neoliberalism as a way to kind of like fix the problem is kind of like by throwing money at it. It's kind of a huge
part of it. Yeah.
A good example I can think of is like, if let's say, what's changing right now? It hasn't completely changed. But for example, a friend of mine wants to get married, and this transitions to the idea that we have around Umut. And usually, and still predominantly in Palestine, there's the concept of. If you wanna get married, you need you know, weddings are big in Palestine. So a lot of people are coming. You feed them. So you need a lot of money. So one of the ways is to, basically, is for people coming into the wedding to pitch in. You before, because you feed people at a wedding, people used to come in and bring bags of rice so that you can cook cook the rice or bring meat, for example, or bring now money, regular money. But now what's changing is that sometimes people wanna get married, and they don't have enough. You know, they wanna make a huge wedding or something, and they might go to a bank. And what changed is is that, you know, structures are being broken. Instead of going to your brother or your cousin or your neighbor or your community, to help fund you. You're going to a bank, which is somebody that you do not know. If something happens to you, the bank doesn't care. It wants its money back. And it's kind of it's a relation that's I don't know how. Like, it's, you know, it's it's a stranger, that you're dealing with with instead of your community. So and take that on a wider scale for, for funding for anything that you want to do. You're you're going to a financial institution. And access to finance is important on a lot of different levels, but it also breaks down this social bond between people, the social capital. And, you know, Jazan, if you wanna talk actually a bit more about Nkut and the whole, you know, concept of it, which was actually, you know, inspiration for for Deira. Yes.
Yeah. In general, I think, yeah, when we began our, research in the question of funding, we began looking into, two things. First, our question was, what are the existing, socioeconomical structures that exist within the community that we get we we have to learn about and know about, and they're still practiced. So we are not coming with, with any new kind of, you know, idea of, oh, let's let's create a a communal economy or something. No. But it exists, but we wanted to know how does it exist and what what what are the what are the principles it's based on. And the second part was, while researching, also we don't want to only produce knowledge, but we also want to use this knowledge into producing, infrastructures, and for the community to to, to tap on, when needed or, if it makes sense to the community. So the idea is not to also create kind of, forced structures. So we we began looking at, at the different models. We kind of we're interested in in three mainly. One is called, which means dripping. And, and, what's nice about dripping, it's like it's also you can imagine it that it is, you know, like, when you have a a hole in the in the ceiling and then it's dripping, and you think, oh, I'm gonna put this spot under it. And, of course, it's just few drops. And then you wake up in the morning, the pot is full, and, it's like, how come all this, you know, like, this water came out of dripping. And it's, it's something what's amazing about it that it's, it's an example of, how the community supports, it's kind of future reproduction. It happens in weddings. It used to, happen, as Sami said, through bringing gifts, like, you bring rice, some sugar, or salt, or whatever is needed, for the, for the wedding to happen, and that changed to be to bringing money. And it, people depend on it. Like, people know that you if you wanna do a wedding, you people will bring, always come with this kind of small gift. Either they either put it in an envelope and there are different traditions. Either bring the people, put their money in an envelope and, put it in a in a box Or in other in other, villages, they come and put you you bring your money note, and you put it on the clothes of the broom a a groom. Like, you really, like, attach to it. And so, like, you see, like, these grooms just walking with lots of money around. And it's a kind of there are different traditions of it. And, and you do this wedding knowing that people will bring it not because people love you, you know, in a in a, you know, like, in a that and you are sure of that love, but because you you already know that they are indebted to you. There is kind of a move of the debt that comes from one generation to the other or from one part of the society to the other. This kind of movement of a debt of of acknowledging the debt and trusting that we will always pay back the debt makes one always involved in such a process. That you go to every wedding that you are invited to, you, you bring this, in court with you, knowing that when you, your cousin, your brother, your sister, your you know, whoever in the family gets married will be, you will be paid back through that. And this kind of movement of a communal debt always like small amounts. It can be from $10 if you're gonna use of course, we use Israeli sheikens, but, it can be from 1 to $10 or, you know, what whatever you can up to whatever, a $100 or more. So that's one example that we thought it's interesting to look at, as a movement of death through generations, you know, like, the other example we were looking at is, what we call it, the shops notebooks, duster in Dukan. And that happens usually in villages, or in a in a small communities, small kind of, yeah, like small communities, let's say. And it's, it's a notebook that, shop owners have, and you can always come. If you if you if you are from that community or from that village and you know that shop and you are, usual customer to that shop, you can come and say, look. I don't have money this time or, you know, like, I'm and I need to buy with and they write, what you bought on this notebook. It's a kind of, you know, like a debt Yeah. Again, a debt relation. And I personally witnessed once, and it and people protect this notebook. It's important to protect it. No? Right? And I saw once, I I witnessed a case where, a a shop was burned and burned with a, notebook. And I saw people coming to the shop, reminding, you know, like, to say, okay. Look. We have this amount in that you, like, to protect because they know if they don't protect it, no other shop will be will allow it. If you if they don't protect this kind of registrar of, and, of debt because then they depend on it. Because they know that by the end of the month or, you know, in the middle of the month or something that they would don't have enough support, money to buy and they need to, to to to to have food. And then how do you create this kind of social structure of support? So and and and I find that you know, we found it very interesting that there are local registrars. And, of course, these have been challenged by big supermarkets that they don't have such things. That there's no personal and social relations between the person who sells and the person who buys, they are just employees. Whereas in Lebanon, for example, and this is an example I was reading about when the financial crisis began and people could not the the the the inflation was so crazy that only, the people who had these connections with the with the shops managed to buy the get get their stuff. Whereas the people who always bought from supermarkets, they were in crisis because they don't have these because social relation relations don't happen in a day, you know. You just you just you just don't go to a a shop and say, look, I, I've never bought from you here, but I it doesn't work like this. You need trust, and you need kind of discount familiarity and, and experience and this trust is built through time. So so we're looking at this as a as another example. And the third example, we we found it also very, inspiring in many ways, which is the Jamaya, the co ops. But in in in cooperatives, but not cooperative in the institutional per image, but rather Jamayya is usually, it happens between, women in the society, or it it happens between employees, who work in, in certain governmental jobs, mainly because it's also a kind of a small, you know, small communities in the same building, etcetera. Which what happens is that, like, let's say, 10 of them come together and agree that every month, one, each one of them will put, let's say, just a €100, in this spot, and every one of them can take the whole pot that month. So, you come together. It's kind of like collective saving. So and what's what's amazing about this is also it's based on trust, it's based on, on kind of you being indebted to each other because the one who gets the money at the beginning has to keep paying the, the amount they agreed upon every month, although they already got the money. But and they agree who takes the money first depending on need. Some people just want to save so they can get it at the end, But some people need to urgently use it for education of their children or for some expenses that they need immediately so they can take it at the beginning. And this is kind of a debt that has no it doesn't it's not based on on on interest. It's not based on, you know, bank relations. It's only based on trust, on societal kind of relations, it's based on, also on accepting the vulnerability of the community, that the vulnerability within the community is within the system itself. That, it's not based on a kind of, extracting or, like, taking out the vulnerability, and it's a system that has no possibility for failure. No. It it it includes it within it. And then, it creates a a support structure for the bigger community. So we looked at these kind of examples, as, as examples of funding. You know? Like like, these are structures within the community that that we can look at as examples of how the community uses trust, debt, vulnerability, social relations as a way to create an economical structure that allows them, everyone to, to survive and to practice their, economical life within the community. And, and, yes, I don't know where I'm going here, but these are, like,
I think those are those are really interesting I mean, it seems to me that there are ways of creating resilience within a community, that are not like it's not necessarily that they are, removing money in these examples because you can't really do that, but they're finding ways to use money that don't rely on a kind of alienated relationship that you I guess people, especially if they grow up in a very, Western, economy, are probably very used to that they would, you know, they would get money from the bank and then they would have interest to pay. And if you don't pay off your loan, then you're kind of screwed. Yeah. Whereas, I think in the past, I think we kind of well, I mean, just in different types of, before this was really like the what has become essentially hegemonic at this point, in the West. There were like much the the types of relationships we were sort of engaging in that may have even involved the money did not necessarily involve a type of alienated relationship with the person who is giving the loan and the person who is receiving it. So a lot more based on this trust. And this trust, was actually a very, important aspect in being able to create resilient communities and networks. So I think especially with the Nahut example, I think what's really interesting is that the thinking of that you have debts to pay to the next generation essentially, I think is, like, one direction that's going. And then the other direction is sort of, like, a debt in my current community, as well. So, like, what that I think what that means is that it requires it requires more relationships. It requires, like, a wider net compared to what I think is like the the the norm in like neoliberal society where the you're you're almost like, encouraged to go after where the most money already exists. Like to go to go after the big pot rather than sort of, releasing a a white net, I guess. And maybe just to make the connection as well, for perhaps like, it just reminded me of, like, in the American political context of the the difference in how every other political candidate was funded versus how Bernie Sanders was funded, which is through very small donations. It was a very wide net and how successful that was, for for his campaign in general. And, you know, I think there's it's it's not a coincidence that he was a self declared Democratic Socialist and not a liberal or whatever else. So I found those very interesting examples to think about how to create alternatives to kind of like the neoliberal inspired model of looking for money or looking for funding.
To add here, which what you what you are saying is is is very essential here in the sense that while we are looking at money models, like, how money is is a technology that the the community uses. It is a medium of communal relations. But money is a tool of such relations. It's not the aim, itself. No? It's not an act of, you know, finance financialization of communal relations. It is about how do we live and survive within this community in a way that allows us to, you know, to, not to be part of, of money industry in a way. You know, like, if you think of the banks, it's it's it's a factory of money and, but also, it allows to begin it allows people to to, when trust is produced, it also or or or not produced, but when trust exists, it allows a non monetary relations, to happen. Because when trust exists, then you can think then other things happen. Like like like, there is this example of Alauni. Alauni is, how to to to to, Alauni means to to help and to to to support. And it is something that in villages when, there was a construction of a new house or or someone wants to build a fence or something, that they will agree after Friday prayer on that day, they will come and support each other and and the the community will help to build. Right? And and again, this is kind of things that don't happen just because people want to volunteer, but it happens because people know that if they support now, you will get support in the late in the future. This kind of it's it's not thought of course as debt, but as a kind of exchangeable social relations that you support, you are part of the community, the community supports you back in the future. And and these things also, have been totally destroyed, in the last thirty years. I remember I I being an architect, I worked in, in one of these funding agencies because that was also the economy that was available. And maybe it's good that one worked in it at some time because then you understand exactly what what what what is going on. And I remember, this agency, it went, as as the architect in that agency, we went to a school, and we were taking notes of what are the problems in the school. Like, that that needs support to be funded structurally in the building. And they were showing us a hole in a wall and saying, that hole, we need to fix it. So we need funding for it. I was like, but why don't you fix it? Like, why why are you waiting for this American or European agency to come and give you, I don't know, dollars 50 to fix, to buy material? Why, what happened here? Knowing that the school itself was built communally, the whole began. You know, I don't know if twenty, thirty years ago, most of the school was built by the community. So, these kind of, things that happened to the society, making this idea of, you know, like, everything needs to get a donation or, or we need to apply for it or it's waiting for some money to come to support it. It may you know, like, it builds up it build it up a lot of thinking towards how do we approach it and how what what is to be done, and how do we critique this funding and donor economy? How the donor economy is not only, again, cultural, sorry, and a financial thing, but it's it becomes a culture. And, we need to approach donor economy not from a financial point of view, but from political economy. It is an ideology. It is a way that people begin to practice their social life, their relations, their connections, and we need to think through that in however we wanna address it in the now and in the future.
Hi, everyone. If you're enjoying this episode so far, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and join the crypto leftist communities on Discord or Reddit, which you can find links to in the show notes. If you're enjoying the interview or find the content I make important, you can pitch into my efforts starting at $3 a month on patreon.com/theblockchainsocialist to help me out. It really helps since making this stuff isn't free in terms of money or time. As a Patron, you'll get access to bonus content like Q and A episodes you can submit and vote on questions you'd like me to answer, and I'll give my thoughts in twenty-thirty minutes. In the last bonus episode, I reviewed one of Vitalik's latest papers he co authored detailing his vision for decentralized society and use cases for soulbound tokens. Of course, I'll still be making free content like this interview to help spread the message that blockchain doesn't need to be used to further entrench capitalist exploitation if we put our efforts into it. So if that message resonates with you, I hope you'll consider helping out. Yeah. I think that that makes a lot of sense. So maybe, we have mapped out kind of what are the we mapped out how, I guess, Palestine got into this situation. It has a lot to do with the occupation, and sort of, like, the the downstream effects of what that has caused creating basically an entire economy that is very dependent on international funding, which has also created, sort of, has sort of broken a lot of the types of social ties and culture like culture around relationships between people and around their relationship with money and debts and how that's kind of, I guess been forced into any liberal model through this process. But so with the collective, you guys have been working on an interesting project called DATA.
Mhmm.
Would you like to explain maybe how how that works and how, its attempts to think differently about the donor economy using using maybe some of these crypto tools?
So Deira, I mean, to define it narrowly, is a medium of circulating communal economic value. It's a supplementary currency, kind of. It's not really a currency, that generates value through circulating existing resources, and maintains wealth within the community. The crypto element of it is mostly as a tool. So, we we use blockchain technology, because it supplements some of that trust, that, you know and, you know, when you're extending when the system is very small, trust exists, you know, anyways, because, you know, we're targeting, you know, a very small community. But then as that community grows, you kind of supplement that trust and fill in the gaps with also added technologies that help with trust, and blockchain helps with trust. So it's mostly a tool and has nothing to do, I think, with, you know, the mainstream now, cryptocurrencies that rely on speculation or, you know, or the new reserve currency or whatever. It's mostly based on circulating resources within the community so that the community can fund itself. Because, even if there is no money, for example and and this is actually, you know, something that happened in Sardinia, which is one of the projects that we drew, inspiration from Sodex. So and and this is why it's it's usually typical that these systems come up, during areas of crisis. And it's very typical that data came from Palestine, and now. And so Sodex in 2008 when the financial crisis happened, they real the guys at Sodex, realized that, okay, we have the factories the factory stopped working because of the financial crisis because they couldn't get any loans, for example, because, you know, people weren't paying back their loans. So the banks were not giving out loans because they were afraid because some bank in in The US defaulted. So but, factories still had the employees. They still had the materials, but, you know, they couldn't produce. So they came up with a system where, you know, you have the resources available at each, you know, period of the value chain for creating, for example, you know, juice bottles. And you have the oranges, for example, or whatever. You know? And then you have the glass, and then you have you need to connect them so that they're able to go to the supermarket, and then everybody gets paid. You know? But you have to do it outside of money because the money system is now broken. So they had to create these kinds of systems, and we have to create this kind of system for our community also because it has not dissipated yet, and we're not at that stage as like like you mentioned, a lot of, you know, neoliberal economies in in Europe are, but we need to preserve what we have, because resilience is a huge issue for us. And we need to be resilient to stay in this land because everything around us is basically forcing us to to leave. You know? That's, you know, settler colonialism. They're they're trying to get you to not stay in this place. And and in order to stay and to resist, you need to be able to know that I can resist, and I can stay knowing that my children will be okay and will be fed. And in order to do that, you need to rely on the community. And in order for the community to be successful, it needs to to to be able to, spread its resources, and exchange their resources efficiently. So, the crypto element of it is purely technical. It also supplements, you know, gaps in trust. But, DAERA is mostly a system rather than a currency. So it's it's not it's a medium of exchange where you actually, Yasen, if you wanna talk a bit more about how the system works. Sure.
Maybe to say yes, we we keep saying we are not crypto. We are not, a currency, and we are not a coin.
I understand. I understand. I understand the reasoning for wanting to say that. Yeah.
We might have elements of of all of these. But That's not the focus. Yes. That's not the focus, and we try to also not use these terms because we don't because these terms are very, connected to a certain understanding of what the blockchain Loaded. Yeah. It's loaded, and it's, you know, like, it kind of became what what people think of the blockchain. We want to, you know, the the the cryptocurrency is one use of what the blockchain, can give us. The blockchain is not about cryptocurrencies. It's it's about, you know, contracts, and, I forgot the language. Smart contracts. Smart contracts. Yes. And it's about creating, you know, like how to move things and Relations. Relations and how to store the information, etcetera, rather than only that crypto use of it. So we are, we are trying to to use this, technology, as a way to, pract you know, like, a way to, to allow the community and certain economical practice in the community, to to move and to be used and to, and to be circulated in the community. And we are, looking at different things. One of them is that funding, as we know it, begins from the idea of scarcity, that there's no, there's no resources and then, it comes from an kind of an international donor and they throw money and then the funding goes top bottom, not top down. And we're trying to approach it in a different way that actually, we want to approach funding from the point of view of abundance. That there are local resources, an abundance of local resources within the community, And that we can begin creating a kind of a funding through this movement and the and and the circulation of these resources. So from zero, from zero funding, we build up towards, a a a a communal wealth that can be exchanged and stored in the future, like, across across time and place. And the idea is very simple. Like, there are, different resources. There is knowledge. There are skills. There are spaces. There are equipment. There are, social relations. There are so many, assets within the community that can be used when this community needs them. It can be exchanged, and that can be these we can look at them as as an existing wealth. Okay? The problem happens is sometimes that, what happens with the high financialization of the community that these things cannot be exchanged unless, through money. Right. Through, you know, like the problem is money. Like but we don't want to create, financial system. We want to to go back to the idea of money to its basic, use. Money are units that keep the, the track of the of the registry, and that we can, with an expanded community, not only, based on social relations of trust, but, you know, community can be expanded and it can include people that don't know each other. And then these kind of resources can be exchanged, and can be circulated. And what we are trying to do here also, it's not an NFT and that's so we are pushing against it. What has value within the system is not what can be minted is not the asset itself, but rather the act of sharing of that asset. So what you meant is the relation.
Yeah. Like, the the edge rather than the node. Maybe you can think of it.
Yeah. That that you're willing to share it, with the community, whether that's, you know and expecting that you'll get it in return, you know, at some point and measurable, you know, with, you know, something with with with points, basically. But that you're willing to put it, within the circle of community so that other people may use it and that you know that you're also because you also need to, you know, get resources. If you put this knowledge out there, somebody takes it, uses it, and, it could be, you know, b to b. You're going directly to that person. But, you're also getting something in exchange, for it in, you know, other means. You know? I think new was created because people used to trade chicken for fish. And then at some point, you know, one person didn't want fish. They wanted I don't yeah. So you had you had to find so there was a missing link. So so so you had to find another person that wants that. So that and and money made, you know, things very simple, and it used to be something of, you know, inherent values and, you know, based on scarcity like gold and silver. But in reality and using now technology that made it available, so you don't need that coin, and you don't need that, you know, piece of paper with government debt on it to tell you that this this has value. Whatever you have is has inherent value as long as you're willing to share it. And if you're putting it on the system to be shared, then somebody else will share something else, on the system. And then if you want it, you get it. And within the economy, you know, everybody wants a haircut. Everybody wants water. You know? So there's within the economy, there's, you know, the the essentials are there, if you get enough people on board so that there's always you know, you can live your daily life in essence using that circular economy. Maybe the big institutionalized things like gasoline cannot be, but we're not there to kind of replace the, you know, the system. We know we can't. But we're trying to create something that can offer a bit more resilience, a bit more safety that, you know, when there's a crisis happening, that you can still go into, the community to get something. So you're you're going in a sense in the minus, to get your need, and the community knows that you'll be
giving it back at some point in the future. Yeah. And I mean, to say to add to this, like, Daira when joining Daira, you join a communal debt rather than, you know, like, you come you come in accepting that, you will hold part of the communal debt. And that what we will be doing all the time is just a movement and shifting of that debt within the community. You cannot leave the debt unless you leave the community or you live there as a community. But that debt is not, you know, like a debt that has any it's not about legal power and that somehow will come to you. You you you hold it by by by being there. And, and the community then, you can use some of the community resources or you can share your resources with the community. And then this deck begins to move and to change and to move within the within the whole, structure. I wonder because I think a lot of people or some people who may be listening may think,
therefore, like, the it's kind of mediated rather than money. We're mediating through reputation a bit or, like, through, maybe just, like, social standing within within the community, which I imagine in these types of situations plays plays a part, in it, in in some ways.
I think at the beginning, definitely. At the at the stage where it becomes a bit bigger, where people two, you know, two people might not know each other, then you're relying on the trust in who the other people you know within the community. You know that they're not gonna cheat you out of it. You know? Kind of second order reputation. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.
Yes. But it's it's I think it's based on so yes. But that's the whole what Dara is. So Daira is kind of imagine, like, there's in the core of it, it has the blockchain technology, but it's covered, engulfed within, the Daira governance system. Okay? The social relations. So Right. Right. And this social relation is what data is. You know, like so this is what we are trying to program and trying to develop with the community and trying to, to create a user experience of is how do you, mediate social relations through, through these through the app of their app? How do you deal with this disputes? How do you deal with, moments of disagreements? How do you deal with moments? How how do you create a kind of, okay.
Mediation.
Oh, not mediation. It has a word. Arbitration? Arbitration. Yes. How do you create an, arbitration if needed? You know, like, like, let's say I tell you an example happened to me personally. Okay? Mhmm. I had I before I come to Amsterdam, I had a car in Ramallah and they want to sell it. And cars in Palestine are expensive, even if it's it's a it's a small car. So I I wanted to sell my car for €10,000. Anyway, I didn't want to sell it through the bank. Like, I didn't want to sell it to someone, to tell me, you know, like, that we'll take a loan and, you know, makes it, like, I I will get less money and, he will pay or she will pay, more money and the bank will take. I wanted to send it to someone directly. But how to do it? So you you take checks and you do these things and but also I felt like, okay. Can can I actually try this kind of trust relations? So I asked friends and who wants to buy a car? Eventually, someone that I know, friends who a friend that they said they wanted to buy buy the car and they said we're gonna pay you, in installments in six months, they would it will be paid totally. First months came, they paid, second months they came, they they couldn't pay. And they began to saying, sorry. We are having troubles. Eventually, friends came in between and said, okay. Look. We guarantee this, that it will be paid, but he'd, this guy needs, actually more time. And said, okay. I will I will accept this. And when the time came, it was totally paid. You can say, yes, it is reputation because people came and, you know, mediators, that they came in and said, okay. We we we are sure we know this person. Don't worry. We can do it. You know? And we are we we we validate the reasons that this person is saying for why they cannot pay, and we validate the fact that they do have the money, but they cannot and, anyway, like, they gave me assurances. And I thought, yeah, I mean, although it came with some trouble, and, of course, you know, banks promise you a troubleless process if but if as long as you pay. Now that as long as everything everyone is getting paid. But if you wanna engage with social relations, you have to accept that it comes with, you know, frictions and comes with certain kind of, glitches and problems. And and, when when thinking of blockchain, we should not think of a system that is totally based on on trustless, trustlessness. Like, I will send the money and there's that's it. Transaction is done. The smart contract will do it on its own. But how to do it, how to use this kind of trustlessness within a structure of trust? How do you create this kind of, mechanisms, through programming and, through allowing a certain kind of social intervention within the the the app, that allows these frictions to come to the community and be discussed or to be, challenged or to be solved. And and this is kind of what we are trying to do with Dara and to do with the blockchain. So how and, you know, from the our different ex ex experiences, I come from art. Semi comes from economical knowledge and education, other comes from blockchain, you know, other members. How do we push, all our knowledges and our approaches within a kind of a political view of how we think, we can think of economy within the community and and how do we push the technology then? You know, like, how do we push it outside of its comfort zone? And this is kind of what we are trying to do in Daira. Sometimes, and that's a big challenge to us, How do you create a direct experience without the complications if we don't want them and with and and with the involvement and the complications when you need them? So you can have, you you should yeah. Of course, everyone, you know, each one of us want to live a problemless life. No, like we don't want to have problems every time I do and buy something I need to be aware of, like, okay. Maybe I need to do arbitration because I bought this. No. Like, you don't you don't want that. Of course, you want fast easy life. We live in a in a in a fast and, you know, fast economy and fast society. But these, there are multi levels of of engaging. That's one thing. And the second thing, which is important that you engage when you need it. We are all ready to engage with certain issues when there's a need. So while it's based on abundance of resources, it's also based on acceptance of crisis. That the crisis has happened. We need support structures in these moments, and we need and we need structures that don't allow us to fall. And here I can, you know, give examples of, the center that we I was working on, Haliseq, in a cultural center and how the crisis created a community. Not that I'm I'm a I'm a what do you call it? A supporter of crisis. But how do we create structures that, make these crises less heavy on the most vulnerable in the society? This is the challenge always, I think, within these kind of economical structures.
I just wanna say a couple of things. I think what's really interesting about Daira and this this view about, about wealth that I think in the liberal society, I think you you kind of summarize it well on your website. You say money has become the main measure of wealth in any given society and medium of exchange. So, like, I think there there's, like, this creation of, like, a monoculture of of value where it's just about, like, basically the the the size of your bank account or the amount of dollars or financial money that you have and that's sort of, like, your wealth. Yeah. But I think here we're challenging that, and which, you know, what also the fact that this was never the case in, like, human history until, like, quite recently probably as well. But that you can have wealth without money in the sense that you can have all the resources that you need to do things, but the, you know, needing money is sort of like a artificial thing that would that is sort of like imposed top down needing to do. It's just about in order to to it it also, I think, kind of proves that, all value comes from labor. But, like, to make that labor happen, you like, money, I guess, is is one way to to make that happen is to, like, pay and incentivize someone, through money. But also to, like, have the social relationships and the support, in order to, to know that, like, the fact that you're going to commit to labor, that you're doing labor, that you're still other people are gonna commit labor to you as well. They're going to help you out whenever you need it, which is why I think, like, probably in the past, for example, the the hole in the wall or that with the with the school, you know, that it was communally built because I think probably before there was this invasion of, kind of like the donor economy, then you like, people were had more assurances that their community was going to help out. And since that has dropped off and created dependence on international funding, like, now the school is more incentivized to, like, use the hole in the wall perhaps maybe to ask for more funding because that's the only place that they feel, like, they can get support from in in, like, the way that things have been kind of, like, artificially constructed. And so what I like about about about data is that, it is accepting this kind of view and also allowing for medium of exchange with the wealth that maybe you already have, but also that, it is a thinking about because the default cryptocurrency type of system is a very much an alienated one for the most part, where it comes from a particular world view. And here I think where you're it's interesting that you what it means if we want to, unalienate ourselves from our kind of financial relations, it kind of requires this arbitration or this need for arbitration where that is an option because in an unalienated financial relation, like in the example with your car, like maybe your friend of a friend, they may not be able to pay one month and so instead of six months like you originally agreed upon, it's going to take seven or eight months. But because you have the assurances of of friends of your mutual friends and, you know, they can guarantee you then and and they have that support, like, there is this arbitration happening, in in in that context. And that sort of needs to be realized maybe in the in the blockchain world if you're going to use, you know, this technology. And in the technology needs to kind of allow for this arbitration, for this governance, governance of crises, maybe. You can kind of think of it. So if you rather than sort of I think the default being, not necessarily a non governance of crises, but the governance of crises is handled purely through, like, markets. It's purely handled through on on the market and, you know, if you don't pay then maybe, like, you lose a bunch of money, someone is screwed, someone gets, like, trapped in debt, in a bad way, you know, things like this. So I thought that was that was, really interesting.
I think one another feature that it allows you to do is also have kind of a community fund. So with the more exchanges that happen on the system, the system grows naturally. So and there's a surplus. And that surplus is sometimes used by corporations, you know, to pay employees or whatever. But we don't have that. And a good way is that with every transaction, you kind of get the surplus in your in in your account, but in separate kind of points. And they're, you know, they're used for community pots. So, basically, if you want if there's a project that can benefit the whole community, for example, if, your community is within one village and there's a street that needs to be paved so that people can access their land better, you're able to have that, you know, extra points, towards paving the street. You know? And people can, you know, vote on which project that they want to fund so that these projects that are useful for the entire community, can happen, such as, for example, fixing up the school. So it's a way to also get funding when you're and sometimes an institution that might not have direct means of, you know, of funding. Because if the community values it, then it can fund it as well. And if it's something that's beneficial to the community, whether it's a road to actually make things life easier or, for example, a fence to protect from wild boar wars, which is actually a problem here, or whether it's a cultural institution that people think it's important, you know, to help their children, to help the community process things. So, that this, you know, crypto makes it available in a much nicer way. And, that governance mechanism is is trying is is built in so that also there's a community impact. And it's so it acts in essence a form like a government where, basically, the government is supposed to do that, but on a macro level, we can do that.
Right. It's, so, like, one of the kind of my, I guess, thesis, since doing this project is that perhaps, like, the blockchain technology or crypto, whatever you wanna call it, is perhaps a useful tool in situations, especially when both the state and the market are kind of failing to meet people's needs. And I think especially in Palestine where there is not much of a state and the market is just like international funding where we've already discussed other problems with that. Having sort of like the third sector rather than public private, you maybe have like the civil sector or the autonomous sector where people are kind of like, making the decision themselves and sort of putting it within their own hands to manage, you know, the world around them. Yep. And
here, I think in in Daira, but in also in other, social projects and social mediums of exchange, it's trying to defy this idea of independence. Okay? Like, it is trying to create us always a structure of interdependency. And this kind of idea of, like, we are either dependent on the state or independent from international funding. These kind of, I think they, such things do not totally they do not exist as much as what we have is an interdependent structures, on on multilevels. One is, no one economic structure, should be dominant, but we what we need is a kind of a multi structures, in in the society. The second thing is we need to think of funding outside of, of of of money only. Meaning that, when when I worked in cultural center and then, we were speaking about, diversifying our resources, that meant all the time, to get money from different resources. So but to think of what what does it mean to diversify means that you survive on different resources other than money. So money becomes one part of, of income or of a resource, but we need to think of other idea of economy and its change outside of only, get money from the donors, get money from private funders, get money from individuals, you know, like, the the idea is to divide diversify money. But, no, we need to diversify economy itself. And that's, that's crucial in the way that we need to understand why we are doing the things what we that we are doing. Are we doing it because we want to get money or we are doing it because of other things? For to give you the the cultural institution example, It's it's a cultural institution total dependent on, on funding. It was made actually a cultural institution as such to be able to apply for international funds, meaning an NGO. But when financially it could not survive anymore, we approached finance from an economical point of view. The question was, why do we have a cultural center? And the answer is not to apply for funding, but it is actually to produce culture, to to engage with culture, to allow culture to happen, to be an infrastructure for cultural practices. So for a cultural institution to diversify its resources didn't mean that we need to only apply for funding to receive money, to be able to produce cultural activities that that the approach was, would the community be, interested and willing to produce culture within the existing resources of the of the institution, meaning spaces, equipment, support of the employees, etcetera, etcetera. So what happened is that the center began to produce cultural activities with the community without having to have money, as a, as an initiator of such activities because the community wanted a cultural space to produce and to do things. Culture moved regardless of finances. Of course, the center still needed support, which we also began thinking of diversifying the, the financial income from applying for funds or receiving support from individuals and businesses, etcetera. But that was around only 50% of the bigger image or the bigger structure of cultural production. So, yeah, I mean, what I want to say is that we need to think of economy, and economical, when we think of economy, we need to think of what does it mean to diversify and what does it mean to be interdependent.
Diversifying away from money, perhaps, as a strategy. Yeah. One of the things I want to talk to perhaps, before you have to go is you guys presented, data at Documenta, which is a large kind of, art show. I don't know too much about it to be perfectly honest, but I know it's like one that happens every few years in Kassel, Germany, I believe, where a bunch of different artists come together to present their work and there is usually a theme. I think this year it was led by Ruan Grupa, which is an artist collective from Indonesia. But maybe would you like to talk about what happened at Documenta? Because I think there was, perhaps a little bit of controversy, around your project.
Yeah. It's
We don't need to spend too much time on it, of course.
Because it wasn't a little bit of a controversy. It was really a a a big one that Fiasco. Fiasco. And that it somehow still, hovers in the air, on top of this. But just to say that this year's document, and it happens every five years, it was, led by Luangrupa and, and other members of the artistic team. And the idea was, they created the structure, which is called lumbung. And lumbung is an Indonesian practice, that is about storing rice harvest every year in a big village pot or like a rice barn. And, everyone in the community, brings their harvest. They put it there, and then they use, what the whatever they need from it, and then the rest is shared with the community as an income or sold or so it's a kind of a socialist practice in its essence, the the lumbung. And this practice this year, was kind of extended to the the structure of what, a big exhibition can be. So the lumbung was a practice that was introduced to to different, collectives. And so different collectives who also thought through these kind of economical methods and economical practices were invited, and we kind of came together and, began thinking not only of exhibiting our work, but how do we practice the lumbung, this kind of collective parts, this collectivity, as a general exhibition? How do we practice it in making the exhibition, but how do we practice it with the communities we are working with with our ecosystems back home? How do we bring these kind of knowledges that we are practicing back home into, into Kassel? Because this is one of the things that is always problematic in art practices, how how it it's kind of extracts knowledge from one place and, just brings it into into another, to the center, to the, you know, to the hubs, of Europe and, and The US. So, the lumbung was a practice of, how do we do things organically, in in our ecosystems back home, and then how do we translate these? So not to bring them as such, but how do we translate them, to to you to Europe and, to the audiences that are in Kassel. So this is kind of the promise of this document, and which created, I think, an amazing, collective work and collective projects and, and the whole the fact that the artists know each other for two, three years of working together, this never happened in an art exhibition. Usually, artists are mediated, all of them, through the curators. We, we only meet in the opening or when we read our names in the, e flux, journal. You know, like, it's a very Right. Separated structure. But this time, we knew each other and we kind of where everyone was involved in, in each other's work or in deciding who to invite. And, you know, it was a an open structure in many ways. Sadly, this promise of documenta, which was totally fulfilled within the exhibition, was covered by, kind of a hostile smear campaign, that began, in Germany from the moment that document they were invited. And then went through, accusing many of the, artists in document, of antisemitism, because of their work or their critique of the atrocities, by the Israeli state. And, it was a kind of utilized, campaign using, I would say, German guilt as a as a way to, to enforce political agendas by some of the mainstream media. If you want to ask me what is the main lesson, like, the essence of all of this is, really, how do you produce art and culture, in the time of social media? Meaning that the smear campaigns that that happened and the attacks that happened at at us was totally, utilizing, the social sphere, in a very aggressive and very, non logical sense. Like, it's like what you what you call it, like, from pseudo research to pseudo science, going through a kind of, media that is feeding, on, these kind of, fake news, fake information, fake science, fake research to create a hostile and very aggressive sphere that doesn't allow any kind of equal exchange of knowledge to happen.
Right. It wasn't a discussion. It was just sort of like a Serious. A a getting getting berated or something by by, accounts online. Or
Yeah. Yeah. So it's just, like, smear campaigns, and, we were kind of muted through a process of very aggressive, attacks that had no basis, on them, except that it's utilizing, German history in a very, aggressive way against, the Palestinian, on one side, but also against many of the, non European, artists. And and I would say also against, against anyone who does not adopt exactly what European universalism see of what the world is. Like, if you don't adopt what, German elite think the world is, you were attacked, and smeared in this document. Yeah. Yeah. I was very aggressive, which is very scary because as an artist and as a as a public intellectual, being in public, being out there is is, is what you do. You know? Like, you don't do things in secret. But then if the field and the public space becomes so hostile and so scary, it, becomes impossible to, to produce and to and to work, in a critical sense, whether in Palestine or anywhere else. Because this is an example of how official I don't know if I'm gonna call it ministry media, but official media, media that has, offices and and, you know, journalists. And apparatus. The apparatus. Yeah. Begin to to work as a social media trolls. So, a a a a troll page, a blog page throws a very non research yeah. And, you know, like, just, whatever bullshit, you wanna put on your own blog. And then, these media apparatuses use it as a source of knowledge. So the trolls feed the media with their, with their, kind of, the aggressive information. The they give them basis for the nonfactual Right. Information. And then media builds on it a whole campaign, without fact checking or even wanting to fact check. And this is the scary part, I think, for any, future political, movements.
Yeah. I think especially if you're just, if you're part of, like, I mean, a targeted group, if you're Palestinian, if you're, or if you're challenging kind of the elite elite power structures that exist, then, I mean, just the fact that they are kind of at the top, they also have the resources to kind of fund what can seem like grassroots movements or grassroots, you know, like public scrutiny whenever really it's just something where there is no there's very little, if any, civil resistance on, like, Twitter, for example, or on most of these social media platforms. So it's very easy to fund, these types of campaigns for them. So even if you are coming from a place of wanting to start your own more, authentic, grassroots type of movement, the type of pseudo grassroots movement that someone who is elite can sort of kind of pretends to make appear, can happen so fast, and so much quicker, then then, of course, it's kind of like the they have that that, the saying, like, lies are able to to revolve around the earth while, like, truths are still tying their shoes type of thing. I would say this is,
exactly what happened. Like, I think for the first article to come and say what the fuck is going on, it took it, I think, three months while I think hundreds already of these, smear campaign articles already came out because they don't need to do any kind of check-in door.
Yeah. There's, I wish I'm forgetting the term, but there is a term. It's like some it's Brandolini's law, I think, where it is, you know, infinitely it takes infinitely less energy to make bullshits, to make lies, than it does to disprove those lies. So it's always you're always if you're subject to those, it takes too much energy to disprove every single one in a way that then in a network that everybody is going to be able to to understand you. It's it's near impossible to get to that point. Yeah. I think it's
Sorry, sir.
I think it's like creating controversy. Like, even if you investigate or whatever and that you think that person, has no blade, but creating controversy on its own kind of holds a stigma on on that work or that person or the message that you're trying to say so that other people are a lot more cautious of approaching you in the future. Like, for me, watching it from back home, like, from from Jerusalem I mean, here, it's it's very obvious. You know? Like, the situation is very obvious. Like, silencing people is very obvious. The, you know, occupation is very obvious. And I kinda I I sympathize, you know, with, Jasan being in, you know, in Germany and Amsterdam had to go through because for us, at least, you know, it's it's clear, you know, when they're trying to point outside. Exactly. I guess. And there, it's that you have to defend yourself. And, yeah, first, you're confused. Why do you have to defend yourself? And then you you have to defend yourself in a way where you don't look guilty and in a way where you're also professional and in a way that, you know, you cannot, like me, you know, demand you know, for example, we we are very clear on what we think and what our demands for justice are. And there, you have to appease kind of that doesn't understand the full context. You have to appease people that you know, Europeans that don't understand the full extent of everything. You can't tell them, oh, you know, we're here for armed struggle or whatever. You know? If if you are I mean, sometimes some people are, some people aren't. But what I'm saying is, like, yeah, it you have to be super cautious. And then at the end of it, I think what's I think they were successful at doing is creating controversy where, you know, the this person or this group or, you know, becomes if somebody wants to take you on or if you're invited somewhere else, institutions are a lot more cautious and they have to think, do I want this trouble? Is it worth it? And for the brave, maybe it is. But, you know, you can also you know, that it's a way of silencing, that Because
it's literally, it's, illegal. In Germany? Yeah. No. No. No. What happened to us was illegal. Like, Janine, these accusations of antisemitism, like, never went to, to the to the court, for example. More like, it's because if it went to the court, it would have been proven that, it's it's, there's no antisemitism. It is defamation. Defamation. Exactly. It's so there is in a in a way, these were the whole attacks were, based on just creating a massive controversy, an inability to who to address, you know, just like it's a tsunami that is walking and moving. It has no structure. It has no, it has no way to understand it. It has no reason. It's just like, you know, one article after the other creating a public debate pressure on the politicians to take action against something that they don't know what to take. What is what to do with, they just begin a kind of a, kind of investigation that has no basis, that doesn't know where to go. And when it happens in a such a very hostile public sphere, situation that it doesn't allow for any reasonable, opinion to, to come, to come out and say this is wrong. So it became just like, one drags the other. And, what what it creates is a is a question not of do do, do, should I invite this person again? Is it legal to invite this person again or not? But do I want the trouble on inviting this person or not? And that's the scary part of it that it becomes, the the public space itself becomes very hostile and doesn't allow for any opinion that doesn't exactly fit within these, public,
public Public opinion kind of Yes.
So in a way Manufactured opinion. Yes. And and and I I cannot imagine of any place other than, like, territarian regimes. You know, like, where, the the public opinion is totally produced by this kind of hostility against a minority, a group of people, and it utilizes utilizes certain fears, certain mysteries, to to create a space that is totally closed. And this is what's happening here. Like, now bringing the Palestinian resistance against the occupation and connecting it to antisemitism, which is connected to German history, itself, you know, and the German guilt. Putting them together makes it impossible to, or it makes it harder to support a Palestinian or not only a Palestinian, but an international, critique critical critique of, the Zionist apparatus, which is now being totally documented as something that is, you know, apartheid, structure, by Amnesty. So it's just like a weird situation where on one side, it's being totally legally proven to be, apartheid. On the other side, the public opinion is being put against the leaders' legal structures.
And I think if you have trouble, kind of you don't want to talk about the idea. Not even it's not that you you have trouble even proving the idea wrong, for example, of, you know, Palestinians or oppressed, there's occupation needs to go. There's a need for for resistance against the occupation. You do you end up not wanting to talk about the idea at all. You either do character assassinations or you bring, you know, this I mean, it's horrible. I mean, the the shadow of of antisemitism. And I think it's it's a it's a huge problem because, one, it it basically pairs antisemitism with anti Israeli sent sentiment. So if you're anti Israeli government, then that means you're antisemitic. If you say something about something wrong that the Israeli government is doing, then you're antisemitism. This is horrible because it also kind of waters down actual anti Semitism, which exists in Europe. You know? It's not like it doesn't exist. It exists, but it but it kind of it waters it down with association with Israel. And no, absolutely, we absolutely reject the idea that being anti Israeli, anti, you know, Israeli government, anti Israeli policies, anti occupation means antisemitism. This is, you know, this is a huge, like, a huge mistake that, will eventually be paid by, you know, also the the Jewish community that does support Palestinian rights. You know? You're also stifling them as well and doing injustice to the Jewish community by mixing up a rightful cause with an with a not rightful cause of anti antisemitism.
Right. I think it's it's yeah. Of course, it's a very, dangerous conflation because, I mean, you do see this what has happened is actually, I mean, there has been perhaps, you could argue, like an increase in antisemitic attacks where in countries, where the right has increased in popularity and of course the standard, you know, playbook from the right is to choose certain scapegoats. And in other countries, in Israel, maybe the scapegoat you could consider to be Palestinians. In other countries, it is Jewish people. And so by supporting this rise in conservative or right wing, basically fascist politics, then you are, I mean, you're shooting your own people in the foot in other countries and it's extremely dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. I I really want to thank you. I know you have to you have to leave for for a doctor's appointment. But I really want to thank you so much for coming on and and having the bravery to to speak about this and to share your work with data, and the question of funding. I think it's a a really interesting, project that people should look into more. Maybe to just finish it off if you want to share with others where people can keep up with the with the progress of your project.
So we have a website that hopefully will be updated very soon. It's called dayra.net, dayra.net. And we have another website, which is called thequestionoffunding.com. This is also will be updated soon. Whatever you're gonna see now, it's still under construction and, trials. But hopefully, in the coming months, we'll have our first test net for, Dairo, which, we will try to make it open for a bigger audience around the world. But then when we try it, we're gonna try it really, on the ground in, in our community first in Ramallah and slowly slowly see how we're gonna, open, open it up for, global use, or or different localities around the world. So it's not, yeah. That's that's we could take a stellar discussion now.
Sure. Maybe maybe in our next conversation.
Hopefully. And, really thank you so much, Josh, for this. It's been really, a pleasant discussion and, we are happy to because also when we speak about it, we learn, more about what we are doing.
Nice. I think I think you probably taught me a lot more than I thought you, but thank you so much for coming on.