Israeli-Arab vlogger 'Nas Daily' voices support for two-state solution in new viral video
Nas Daily explains how living in both Palestinian and Israeli environments helps him empathize with both sides.
By BOAZ EDIDINUpdated: OCTOBER 7, 2022 20:26Nuseir Yassin (a.k.a. Nas Daily) presents at the ROI Community annual conference.(photo credit: SNIR KAZIR)
Prominent Arab-Israeli vlogger and YouTuber Nusier Yassin, known online as Nas Daily, released a video earlier this week in which he voiced his support for a two-state solution and empathized with both the Israeli and the Palestinian side of the conflict.
As an Israeli citizen born into a Palestinian family, Yassin feels close enough to both Israel and Palestine to refer to them in the possessive. “[His] Israel” and “[his] Palestine” make the country, in his opinion, “the most controversial place on earth.”
This video took 6 years to make.It's about a cause that's very deep to me and probably to you. It's the story of "My Israel and Palestine" and it's a complicated one.... Thank you to the Nas Daily team for putting hundreds of hours into this video. It was not easy to make. pic.twitter.com/DWXJOVyNLt
In the video he explains how, as a Palestinian, he had a Jewish girl accuse him of being a terrorist, an Israeli soldier scold him, and a few too many Israeli security checkpoints stop him. He also saw his Palestinian friend lose his cousin in an Israeli airstrike.
However, as an Israeli, he continues, he saw Palestinian rockets land in Israel and hid in a bomb shelter with his Israeli friends. In these scenarios, he saw Jews afraid for their lives. He also saw his Israeli friend lose his brother to a Palestinian stabbing.
Yassin’s side-by-side comparison of Israel and Palestine’s situations suggests that “suffering, pain, and anger exist on both sides.”
The BDS movement’s current target is the hugely popular Palestinian Arab-Israeli video blogger Nuseir Yassin, who runs the social media site Nas Daily. (credit: MUSSA QAWASMA/REUTERS)
A desire for coexistence
Since there are good people on both sides, he says, both Israel and Palestine have a right to exist. It should not be a matter of one state or the other; there should be two independent states living side by side. To add pathos to his point, he equates Israel not existing to the death of his family and Palestine not existing to the death of his people.
Yassin’s unique scenario as an Arab-Israeli allowed him to converse with people across all sides and with varying beliefs and helped him see that each side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has respectable claims. Therefore, he bashes extremism, as it all but ignores the rights of the other side.
The video has garnered immense attention, gaining 7,000,000 views in two days and gained Yassin a net 50,000 followers across all social media platforms.
Though Yassin claims to have received copious amounts of support for his video, his message is far from being the consensus. Israeli activists denounce the fact that he did not mention Hamas and the PLO’s calls for Israel’s destruction; on the other side of the aisle, Palestinian activists - most notably verified Twitter creator Omar Baddar –criticize him for not calling Israel an apartheid state.
