A Different Conversation: A Turning Point in my Understanding of the Palestinian Struggle

A Conversation with my Father

Introduction

I was 19 years old when I met my first Israeli. I was sat down at the Foxwood Theatre in New York City waiting for Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark to start. It was my first trip to the city. The man sitting next to me was tall and broad-shouldered. His accent was thick, but his demeanor warm. We struck up a conversation.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“Canada,” I replied.

We exchanged pleasantries about Canada, and then I asked, “What about you?”

“Israel,” he said.

I immediately felt my heart quicken — I remember thinking, What is happening to me? It struck me that I had never met an Israeli in my life, yet so much of my identity, my beliefs, and my family’s history has been shaped by their existence. I come from a Druze Lebanese family, my parents survived a 15-year Lebanese Civil War, where the plight of the Palestinians was the center piece of our country’s division.

The man began describing Israel — with rolling hills, large cities, great nightlife, and the Mediterranean’s sublime waters — a beautiful place. I told him I’d seen the same sea from Lebanon, my homeland, where I’d spent summers with my family. “It is beautiful,” I agreed.

Then, a pause.

“Oh,” he said. After that, we both turned forward, silent, avoiding each other’s gaze for the rest of the show.

I grew up in a pro-Palestinian home. It was in my dad’s nature to speak politics — he loved it, and he dignified my brother, sister, and I with rich exchanges of knowledge from as early as eight years old. I remember when we immigrated to the U.S. and my dad spoke to us about the Palestinian Struggle. It was a conversation that continued when we moved to Edmonton, then to small country farming town in the province of Alberta — Oyen — and almost literally right up until he died in 2021.

He was a taxi driver in the U.S. then he and my mom ran a restaurant in Canada. By the end of life, he had returned to Uber driving after they sold the restaurant. He was a voracious reader, a powerful orator, and even a poet and singer in his younger days. He valued education and encouraged his children to pursue higher education, which we all did; My brother — a Civil Engineering degree, my sister — Accounting and Marketing degree, and I studied Education and later a Masters in Theatre.

My dad had a tremendous sense of integrity, he spoke like a professor, and he commanded a room with gentility and firmness. I think he would have been a great artist. He was a kind but firm father who had a short temper that seemed to lengthen as he aged. I role model so much of my self respect, integrity, and commitment to knowledge and justice off of him. I’m deliberately belaboring these point because I’m going to share something difficult about my dad.

My father was also unconsciously anti-Semitic.

A Contradiction of Values

We spent years, all our years together, speaking about Israel and Palestine. And perhaps it was my upbringing in a culturally diverse place like Canada, but there was always a hiatus between us that couldn’t be bridged. This gap was his refusal to acknowledge Jewish people’s historical ties to the land between the river and the sea. He was staunchly pro-Palestinian and a pan-Arabist.

Throughout our talks, I’d interrogate his views, and while I’m a strong advocate for Palestinians, I’m less aligned with pan-Arabism, as I see the region of my world made up of many groups, Arabs being one of them, a majority group for sure. But it’s very hard to challenge the spine of someone you love and hold in such high regard, especially harder after they’ve died.

But I come to the knowledge I come to today precisely because of the person my father taught me to be:

Truth first.

Justice first.

Integrity first.

To be clear, my dad wasn’t anti-Semitic in the “Hitler-Nazi” kind of way, he was more polite about it. He wasn’t the kind of man to harbor overt malice. For as long as I remember, he always made a point of saying, “It’s not the Jewish people I’m against, it’s Israel.”

Then he would talk at length about Israeli apartheid, Israeli colonial expansion, and Israeli violence and repression of Palestinians, and after all that, he would slip up and say something like “well that’s the Jews for you.” So was he against Jewish people after all?

I contested him a lot growing up — I often asked, “What would their goal be?”

“To take over the entire Arab world,” he’d reply.

I was always leery, I pushed back, but he’d never relent. It was frustrating, why couldn’t he shake the narrative out of him? How can we have a sensible conversation about this where we don’t have to oversimplify the “enemy.” I can still demand accountability from Israel and the Zionist project without resorting to a simplification. I remember thinking people can’t just be evil like a cartoon character, there must be a reason they’re behaving in this way. I wanted to understand why the violence against the Palestinians was taking place. Why did the Israeli’s hate them (and in some broader sense, us, as Arabs) so much? Understanding, it seems to me, is the only path toward meaningful transformation.

What I realize is that, for my father, his life was so profoundly and unalterably changed by the Lebanese Civil War, and his stakes were much more material than mine. He once told me about standing face to face with an Israeli tank in the mountains of Lebanon, rifle in hand. He spoke of the betrayal of Arab politicians against “their own,” when Egypt made a peace deal with Israel, and when Christian militia forces in Lebanon allowed Israeli’s to enter and commit the atrocities against the civilians in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut (the Vietnam of Israeli conscience as Amos Oz puts it).

My dad lived with the Israeli conflict in a way I only read about in books. His pain was far more cellular than mine. How could I ever convince him to negotiate with his enemy? Or even more, to see their humanity?

I’m going to unpack this contradiction of knowledges throughout this essay. I won’t get it all right, but I think there’s something worth saying. First, I hope other Arabs listen to this and we wrestle with ourselves and our beliefs. Second, I hope Zionists and Israeli’s hear this and wrestle with their beliefs. And last, I also hope Leftists, who have been so galvanized by Israel’s response to the Hamas attacks, really sit with this. Again — I might not get it all right — I’m still learning and I’m subject to change in the coming months or years. But we have to have this conversation, openly, in good faith, and with courage.

Cycles of Violence, Cycles of Grief

As we know, on October 7, 2023, Hamas and other militants broke through the border wall of Gaza and committed a defiant killing of 1200 Israelis, most of whom were civilians. Their effort was to shock and terrify Israel, to unsettle the people of the land that they and their grandparents were expelled from. But probably — and more realistically and emotionally logical — they were violently responding to the years of violent repression by the state of Israel over the Gaza Strip. In some sense, they were using the same tactic Israel has been using for decades — we will unsettle your people, cause constant anxiety, forever, until we get our political needs met.

Israel’s response was unlike anything I could have imagined.The anger I’ve experienced over the past year, ignited by Israel’s asymmetrical response, is unlike anything I’ve felt before. It’s a rage born of sadness, of injustice, and so much pain. It has the potential to breed irrationality and a desire for vengeance — qualities I don’t ever wish to live in. Then the anti-Arab/Palestinian dehumanizing political and media campaigns of the Western world that followed simply added fuel to this hellscape.

I saw Israeli soldiers justifying the bombing of schools and hospitals by pretending to interpret Arabic words on a calendar, falsely claiming they represented “Hamas operatives’ shifts.” Yet, right before my eyes, it was clear they were simply pointing to Arabic words that stated the days of the week — “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…” I watched young Israeli soldiers dress in Palestinian women’s lingerie, howl and jeer in celebration as they launched missiles onto civilians, I watched propagandists create false 3D renderings of militant bases beneath hospitals to justify bombing, I saw carpet bombing of makeshift refugee camps again and again, I saw Israeli citizens stop humanitarian aid from entering the besieged strip, tear open bags of food so as to not make it to the those in need, I heard Israeli politicians demand the eradication of the Palestinians, likening them to “human animals,” I saw lies and slander and distortion of truth, I saw the sanitization of Israeli war crimes on our legacy media channels in Canada and the U.S, doctor’s describing how they had never seen so many children shot in the head by snipers, I saw how Gaza became a hotbed of child amputees, I saw how entire family lines were eradicated, and so much more seared into my mind. Zionists justified all of this simply saying, “that’s war, unfortunately.”

I think of my father a lot these days. I wonder what he would be thinking. I can imagine he would feel, on the one hand, a deep resolve “I was right — you see how megalomaniacal this occupation is?” He might say. Then, I think he would probably double down and, perhaps even, deepen his antisemitism.

Sometimes, he would talk about Jewish conspiracy theories, without too much weight but certainly with a curiosity. For example, this is embarrassing but ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ a hoax book used to fan the flames of antisemitism in Europe, was a point of curiosity. But my dad never leaned into these conspiracies with too much fervor, for despite his pain, I think he was reasonable enough to ultimately refute outlandish conspiracies.

I worry that he would lean into these conspiracies to make sense of the atrocities Israel is committing with full impunity, for it’s very hard to understand how Israel is doing what it’s doing without ascribing something inherently “evil” to them. To us, Palestinians aren’t numbers, Arabs aren’t subhuman, when we hear them scream in pain, their words feel like our grandparents, cousins, fathers, mothers, and children. The kind of trauma we experience can distort truth — not to justify the conspiracies against Jewish people — but I’m trying to understand their root, and more importantly, to unroot them.

Undoubtedly, Israelis feel the same pain when their own are murdered. Undoubtedly, this confirms their conspiratorial racism against Palestinians and Arabs. Undoubtedly, this justifies their blind rage. There is no room for empathy in this calculus. Irrationality and vengeance are terrible qualities to live in — and it feels like Israeli society is just as subject to the gravity of these affects as any of us. Again, understanding is the only pathway to meaningful transformation.

When my dad and I spoke about legitimate land claims, he would say, “it doesn’t matter who was there first, since they’d left for 2500 years. You can’t simply displace the people presently living there.”

While he’s right in some ways, you can’t simply cast aside the people living there for 2500 years, I think most Jewish people would say, “We didn’t leave, we were displaced and exiled.” The Arab/Jewish contradiction of an inciting incident undergirds so much of this problem.

The immense irony of it all is that the Jews who did stay on the land, throughout two millennia, became Christians, and later became Muslims — the diasporic Jews who have returned in the new state of Israel after 1948, are fighting their own selves. It’s a tragedy of immeasurable proportions.

I’m thinking through Arab antisemitism as I understood it through my dad in essay. But my father is a mirror to Israel society today. Within Israeli society, there is just as much anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hatred and racism. While some Palestinian (and Arabs) are teaching their children that Jews are the “devil” or “Jews wants to take over the world,” Israelis are also teaching their children that there is no other possible solution to these ‘uncivilized animals’ other than weeding them out entirely. They’re teaching their children that Islam is a stain to humanity that would take the world back to the barbaric Middle Ages — a simpler story to engage with than the complexity of Muslim society that makes up 2 billion people in the world. They teach their children that Palestinians are a made-up group of people who’s only appetite for war is inspired by their deep hatred to Jews. They often cite that one million Germans had to die in WWII at the hands of the Allies in order to end antisemitism in Germany. I can’t parse out how these are factually incoherent and dangerous suppositions in this essay — but the point is they are just as conspiratorial as the beliefs some Arabs hold about Jews.

This is now used as a justification for the annihilation of the Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli society has become so deeply racist, that the previous assaults on Gaza in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021, were described as simply “mowing the lawn.” Throughout the Israeli Knesset (their parliament) slander, racism, and vilification of Palestinians is openly rampant. The concerted effort to plant the seeds of antagonism in the children of Israel is best demonstrated by the fact that most young Israeli’s are politically right wing, militant, and advocate for a permanent Jewish character of the land. In fact, most left leaning, progressive Israelis are over the age of 50. The misinformation is rooted in who believes the land is rightfully theirs and from this lack of communication between Israelis and Palestinians, so much pain is borne. This pain distorts truth, distorts justice, and distorts integrity. And the more painful this all becomes, the more distorted it will be.

What’s My Hesitation?

Over the past year, I have written several articles about Israel’s assault on Gaza, and I haven’t released a single one. I’ve been unsure, but I haven’t entirely been sure of what I’m unsure about. I’ve spent a lot of this past year listening to experts speak on the subject, at great lengths, and I’ve read numerous books and articles on the topic, I’ve organized with coalitions made up of Arab, Palestinian, Jewish, and Israeli artists. There is an overwhelm of opinions, views, facts, and narratives threading through this story — it’s hard to know where to begin. Most recently, I wrote an article about anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab censorship in Canadian theatre. I haven’t released it yet, I’m just unsure.The Netanyahu government and Israeli society has weaponized and diluted accusations of antisemitism beyond recognition. But I’m not so much afraid of being misconstrued as an anti-Semite. However, I am afraid of being genuinely unconsciously anti-Semitic.

So perhaps that’s been my hesitation.

My father’s antisemitism feels like it is borne out of his feelings of humiliation, subjugation, and injustice at the hands of the Israelis. It doesn’t justify it, but it can explain it, and again, understanding something is the greatest power we have to transform it.

Perhaps Israeli anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab hatred is born from their own feelings of humiliation, subjugation, and injustice at the hands of Palestinians and Arabs. 50 years ago, the symmetry of power was different — although Israel always enjoyed the support of American and Western Imperial superpower, the Arab states felt they could fight against an encroaching and displacing colonial force; that’s why they tried in 1948, 1967, and 1973. Now, not so much.

It doesn’t feel wrong to say we need to stop killing children in Gaza, we need to stop funding the war, we need to call for a permanent ceasefire, we need to listen to, acknowledge, and response to the needs of Palestinians. It doesn’t feel inaccurate to describe Gaza as an open-air prison, or a ghetto, it doesn’t feel inaccurate to say that Israel has played with Gaza like a board game over the past 20 years, at times regulating the food into the strip with punishing accuracy so as to stay just a hair above the level of starvation. It doesn’t feel wrong to say Palestinians are being censored in the west. It doesn’t feel inaccurate to recognize that Western media has made a concerted effort to sanitize and veneer the genocide, and that it’s only because of social media that people are witnessing the brutal actions of Israel. It doesn’t feel wrong to describe what’s happening as a genocide, as concluded by the United Nations and Amnesty International in detailed reports both released near the end of 2024. It doesn’t feel difficult to say killing innocent civilians is a war crime best described as collective punishment; it doesn’t feel wrong to say the Dahiya Doctrine is akin to institutionalized terrorism. I could keep going. So where is my hesitation?

An Unlikely Meeting

One night recently, I was at a club where I really hit it off with a guy — stay with me, I realize this is a bit of a redirect. We were flirting and kissing and getting to know one another in the very vapid and superficial ways you do at a club. Then we decided to exchange Instagram’s and I saw the Israeli flag at the top of his profile, and he caught the Palestinian flag at the top of mine.

Meeting this man was some sort of providence. I felt like I was in New York again, at 19-years-old, meeting an Israeli for the first time. While I’ve met many Jews and Israelis since then, I’d never had this much of an interaction with someone who was so deeply Zionist.

As we went our separate ways he said to me, “change the flag in your bio,” half joking, half serious.

“Change yours,” I replied.

He said, “I would never,” then after a small pause, he said, “I could see myself adding yours to mine one day.”

We went our separate ways, but I was uncomfortable with our exchange — a part of me felt like I betrayed my own people. I explored his Instagram with a strange fascination — he had all the accoutrements of a Zionist from ‘bring the hostages home’ posts to various pro-Israeli rallies, marches, and information campaigns. He’s the kind of account that I wouldn’t even give a second glance to, the kind that I would write off as brainwashed and, in the extreme sense — a deluded, insane person. Not at all the person I was talking to at the club.

A couple weeks later, I unexpectedly ran into him again at the same club. We laughed, maybe at the absurdity of the situation, and I felt that perhaps we both knew now we were sworn enemies, we both absolutely despised each other’s politics, and surely, we both felt absolutely convicted in our own way. Unlike the last time, we started speaking about Gaza. It was polite at first, I’m not overly confrontational and he wasn’t either. And, truthfully, and embarrassingly, sexual attraction does a lot to soften a conversation, even with your sworn enemy — so I recognized this contributed to my ability to listen. But I did listen.

And we spoke, and eventually, things did get heated. As the decadence of the club moved all around us, we were caught in an intense conversation for nearly an hour. It particularly got tense when he said, his tone sharp, “well, where would you have us go?”

“Leave,” I said, “I don’t know.” I wanted to say back to New York, back to Poland, back to Toronto. But I could sense I had struck a nerve with him.

His face hardened. “That’s disgusting.”

It struck me in that moment how painful Jewish displacement was — how activating my statement could be.

Yet, at another point in the conversation, he asserted “A million Germans had to die in order to end antisemitism in Germany.” As if to imply, Gazans simply have to die for us to usher in a better future.

I started at him, horrified, “That’s terrible to say.” I don’t think he really saw each Palestinian life taken in the same way I did. I thought of Hind, the toddler — a four-year-old girl — in the car, calling for paramedics to come get her while surrounded by her recently murdered family. She was later murdered along with the medics who came for her shortly after the call. Was she part of the million who needed to die to eradicate antisemitism from the land? I wonder if he had a specific story of violent Jewish displacement that played in his mind as I off-handedly told him that Israeli Jews should “leave”?

I haven’t seen him since then, but something shifted in me because of those two meetings. I read back on my article about censorship in Canadian theatre and, while I stand behind so much of what I said, I can’t help but feel uncomfortable about my analysis of Israelis and Zionism. Zionists are a caricature in my mind, not real people.

In much the same way, I know that Arabs and Palestinians are caricatures in the minds of many Zionists, not real people. But there’s something very important here: an asymmetry of power. I’m not advocating for a both sides argument — the asymmetry of power here matters a lot — Zionists in Israel hold tremendously more power than the Palestinians. Israel, generally, is a political superpower in the region, so even against other Arab nations, it stands distinguished mainly due to the Western and U.S. military and political backing. This asymmetry in power leads many on the Left to say, “it’s not the time to humanize, this is a political struggle — don’t be sentimental.”

But I don’t know if I’m speaking about an abstract Zionist and Israeli when I say the things I’m saying in this essay. I think I have a lot more in common with the average citizen who is simply looking to go to a music festival or go to school or eat at a restaurant than I’d like to admit, even if that person is culturally and politically Zionist within their home. Our needs and fears are similar, our hopes are the same, and we inevitably both want peace. The lack of conversation breeds hostility and misrepresentation between one another. I’m not talking about “let’s listen to Netanyahu's concerns,” he’s a psychopathic war criminal.

I’m talking about the Zionist supermarket clerk in Toronto, the Israeli fundraiser at the local synagogue, the Jewish Zionist theatre artist. I say this because I believe in galvanizing the will of the people, a true democratic impetus. These would not be easy conversations, but if we only subscribe to principles and ideologies which segregate us, we have no chance at distilling our shared will together. Again — we have more in common with one another than with any of our leaders.

And I get the seduction of avoiding conversation with them, it makes it so much easier to paint an enemy in my mind than to engage with the fears, needs, desires, and the humanity of the other. I know, on the Left, we are allergic to giving space to those we see as asymmetrical in power — there is no conversation to be had with those who have all the power over us — only resistance.

But I have to confess, I’m not sure anymore.

What’s the end game here?

In some ways, sure, I don’t disagree — Israel holds much more power and thus should deal with much more accountability. But something is different here. I think if the Palestinians had the same power and position, I worry they would be doing the same to the Israelis. Did some of my father’s values not flirt with the worries that Jews and Zionists express? I don’t believe in justice without truth and integrity. It’s simply not possible — if we ignore the truth, if we misalign with our integrity, we will have no justice — all we’re left with is a game of power and domination.

I don’t want to be a part of that.

What is my Advocacy Anyway?

When I advocate for the reformation or abolition of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state, I absolutely don’t mean the eradication or displacement of Jews in Israel or elsewhere. And I certainly don’t mean replace Israel with an Islamic state of any kind. Are there not alternatives? Like a genuine republic which welcomes everyone ancestral to that land with the right of return — Jewish and Palestinian, even if you’ve been gone for 2000 years? I can envision a governance that is genuinely democratic, a constitution that upholds the right of any religion, and a political and cultural system that integrates all citizens form the river to the sea as free members of the society.

But I’m an artist, I’m given permission to fantasize possible futures. Perhaps a Gazan who’s only ever known violent occupation at the hands of Israelis, who’s had their entire family wiped out through a series of carpet bombings over 20 years, might righteously find what I’m proposing extremely offensive and disregarding of years of pain. Perhaps an Israeli Jew who lost her daughter in the Hamas assault could never conceive of a shared state with the Palestinians.

This awful, messy, cantankerous situation is a consequence of the short-sighted post colonial planning and politicking of the British. There is no easy answer. But what I am learning, because of this openness to conversation, is that Jews have a rightful claim to the land. I already know that Palestinians have a rightful claim to the land. Both deserve recognition and sovereignty. But a Jewish ethno-state is no answer to a land that is full of Muslim, Christian, and diverse peoples — all ancestral to that land.

Since meeting this Israeli guy at the club, I’ve read and listened to more Jewish history than I’d ever done in my life. It was hard enough to learn Arab history on its own and the richness of Palestinian history. But I realized I couldn’t even describe the simplest summary of how Jews conceptualized themselves. To be totally honest, and this is somewhat embarrassing, but I felt an intense cognitive dissonance when I engaged with Jewish history because I had some notions that these were falsely built to justify the colonization of Palestine.

Today, I can recognize that, on the one hand, Israel is behaving like a colonial state, by enacting imperialist policies over land and people — but they aren’t a colonial state like the United States or Canada. They are more like Iran colonizing the Kurdish people: both have ancestry in the region, but one is asserting a certain character to the country that doesn’t include the other. Jewish people are native to the land alongside Palestinians. Strangely, this could best be described as a civil war between cousins.

I’m trying to be courageous. I think what I’ve written here will upset Israeli, Zionist, and Jewish people anyway, although I’m trying to exercise a break from the old cassettes playing in my head about who they are. But also, I think it might upset my Arab kin, who understandably feel a painful injustice at the hands of Israelis (and the U.S.) today. But I return to my dad teaching me that truth, justice, and integrity must come first — so that’s what I’m attempting here.

My hope is that in my willingness to look and listen, perhaps I can usher in a transformation within myself and within the other; perhaps Zionists and Israelis will be open and willing to look and listen back. I’m looking for those allies, as there are already many Israeli Jews and Jews all over the world who are in transformative conversation with Palestinian and Arab allies.

But more importantly, I hope that by looking and listening inwardly, I’m able to reconstitute myself, because I have been truly dissolved by the grief of this past year. I know, some people say this is naïve, or worse, contributes to the oppression of an oppressed people. But things are so rarely black and white, and this one is particularly not so black and white. Pain distorts truth, justice, and integrity.

I’ve been having meeting with some theatre companies (the domain of my profession life), about Palestinian/Arab censorship, behind closed doors. What I keep asking for is a public conversation. I can’t stop Netanyahu today, I can’t reverse the rampant racism in Israeli society, I can’t force the media in Canada and the Western world to stop promoting Islamophobic rhetoric. I certainly can’t alone, and I can’t in one swoop. But what I can do, and what I am doing, is speaking with people, advocating for Palestinian voices and Arab voices to be heard in my professional domains, and I hope I’m challenging the hegemonic conception of Arabs within the Canadian imagination through my playwriting and creative work.

I’m learning a lot — I’m learning that yes, pain distorts truth, justice, and integrity. But sublimely, paradoxically, it can also provide revelation; pain can clarify truth, justice, and integrity if we choose to listen to it, instead of externalizing it. I am sitting in so much pain these days and the world feels so bleak. We can’t stay in this pit forever. We must outgrow it, we have to become something else, which means shedding off an old husk that believed it was all it was.

A Different Conversation

In my dad’s last few weeks of life, we spoke about Palestine one night. I remember so vividly the moment when I asked him, “What if they’re just as scared as we are, just as angry as we are, just as righteous as we are. If we recognize that, do you think we could all live across that land, in our plurality?”

I thought he would, like clockwork, say “there will be no peace as long as Israel exists.”

But this time he said, “Maybe you’re right…maybe you’re right.” Perhaps he was an old dying man comforting his son in that moment. Or perhaps, he too reached the end of it all and found that none of us make it out of this intact — the endless cycles of revenge and violence and grief doesn’t need to be the psychological imprint we live with. All we know we have is some 80 years together and that’s it.

Maybe I’m right, dad, maybe we can hold the image in our minds where Palestinians and Israelis are free to travel to Beirut for the weekend and we can visit Jerusalem in exchange.

That possibility seems so far from reality right now.

But everything started with those conversations at eight years old with my dad — I’m certain Zionists have had a similar trajectory. Maybe we all start with a conversation: with a characterization of what’s possible in the mind first, then it becomes a meeting, at a Broadway show in New York with a type of person you’ve never met but you find yourself having a somatic reaction to their presence simply by the stories you tell yourself about them. Those reactions lead to beliefs that you reproduce, and those beliefs create isolation and division where we never have the chance to confront our own limitations, where we never have the chance to speak to one another again. Then maybe one day you find yourself with political and military impunity and suddenly, the unthinkable is happening.

We’re at this place — the unthinkable.

Why don’t we try a different conversation to begin with?