In The East Wing

Abdullah Najjar 0:00
Alright, so in this episode of In the East Wing, I am talking to Riley Livermore, a US military veteran who spent approximately 16 years in the Air Force. He recently decided to resign as a result of his opposition to the Biden administration's policy regarding Gaza in this conversation, we delve into a few things pertaining to his personal life, the decision that he made, and his post military life. So without further ado, let's get down to it. All right, I believe we have just started recording. Riley, welcome to In the East Wing. I

Riley Livermore 0:44
appreciate it. Thanks for having me

Abdullah Najjar 0:46
on absolutely so I would love to obviously you. One thing you are known for nowadays is the resignation from the Air Force, I think, a career that spanned for 16 years, if I'm not mistaken, and that's something I think that's the primary topic that we will be discussing together, this decision you made, and what ensued afterward, and perhaps a little bit about the process that you had to go through to make that decision. And this is, I think, what the bulk of our conversation will be, will consist of, but at the same time, I do want to say I'm interested in learning more about the person that made that decision, right? I'm interested in learning more about your little bit about your background, and I guess what I would be interested in maybe tackling with you first is the the early days of your career at the Air Force, as in, you joining the Air Force, and your your your experience in the first couple of years. So maybe you can take us back a little bit to the, the the, I guess the motivation that drove you to join the Air Force, and how those first couple years looked like? Sure,

Riley Livermore 2:09
yeah. So I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, not too far away from Luke Air Force Base. My grand Both my grandfathers served in the military, and my my mom's dad's my grandmother and my mom's side, she, or he, was a fighter pilot in Vietnam, and so grew up next to a fighter Air Force Base, just like jets flying over was super cool. And I liked engineering, and I liked airplanes like, I want to be a fighter pilot in the Air Force, be like my grandfather. And so I was in seventh grade when 911 happened, and so I think I kind of got swept up. I was like, the right, the prime age of I was old enough to get caught, like, the global war on terror. I kind of just, I grew up in a kind of a Christian conservative family, right? So just George W Bush was doing the Lord's work, and some of the stuff kind of kind of fostered a sense of, like service. And so in seventh grade, I was like, I really want to go the Air Force Academy, get my college paid for by the military, and hopefully fly and so that's kind of what kick started my desire, starting in seventh grade, to be in the military, Like in a really meaningful way. And so I 2000 A's when I got accepted to the Air Force Academy, I went there. So for those of you listeners to understand, it's a four year, four year university that is your it's completely paid for by the government, so you get a free education, and when you graduate, you owe time and service, so a minimum. So depending on your job, once you get out of Air Force, can be anywhere from five to 10 years. So from 2008 to 2012 I was a college student at a military university, the Air Force Academy. Studied aeronautical engineering. So my first four years of service, where, as a student is kind of like a similar to ROTC, if you're if you know you're familiar with program, yeah. And then I decided, actually, that I loved flying, but I loved, like, the engineering, the science of flying more, and some like the new technology of flying. So I decided to be an engineer in the Air Force, as opposed to a pilot. So my first couple jobs were kind of engineering, and I got, actually, that's when I started working. Started working on a lot of, like, unmanned or uncrewed aircraft, so drones doing autonomy research, like, kind of the next generation of what that looks like to test. So my first, the first three to four years, when I was out, I was in Ohio, I got a master's degree paid for by the Air Force as well. And then I did some autonomy research. I guess, if you want me to, I can kind of walk through my whole career. If that or do you have more questions from the early days. I want to know

Abdullah Najjar 4:52
we can, we can explore both, if the time, the time permits. But, you know, I think, I think one thing I'd love. To maybe tackle here is, you know, two things you mentioned that kind of stood out to me. Was that you said you grew up in a conservative family, and at the same time, you do remember those days when, you know 911 happened, and there was, I guess, a sort of heightened patriotism, in a way, right? I'm sure that at that time, a lot of Americans truly wanted to defend their countries and serve their country, and want to fight bad guys, and, you know, combat terrorism. And I think that's quite valid. What I'm trying to get at here is, do you think that that level of patriotism that you've had when you were in the seventh grade remained consistent throughout your years of college and afterward. What do you think it kind of dissipated in a way, like, Were you hearing maybe stories that kind of contradicted with the narrative, or were you still sort of hell bent on really wanting to make a change and serve your country and and and create maybe a ripple effect where others would also join, right? So how would you describe those years in terms of your patriotic spirit? Yeah,

Riley Livermore 6:14
it definitely dissipated, I think, throughout the the Air Force Academy is generally, it's kind of like this interesting place where you're in the Air Force, but you're kind of like separated from all the hard things, or it's, there's definitely rose colored glasses, for sure. And I think being out, being active duty, seeing different aspects of the military, you definitely see that you kind of lose. I guess I had this kind of continuing dwindling of, like, my understanding of the goodness of America, right? I think before I joined the military, just the concept, like we are, the city on a hill, right? A lot of the George W Bush type rhetoric of America's goodness, like we are, you know, champing, championing democracy across the globe, fighting, you know, extremism. And then, as I kind of, throughout my career, it became more of a transactional type thing. Of, I'm doing this because it's the Air Force has helped me do what I want. And I'm just, you know, it's a, it's not, it wasn't like, out of a we became less and less of like, oh, this is something that's really, really meaningful. Does that make sense?

Abdullah Najjar 7:24
Yeah, yeah. You felt like it was more like the narrative maybe did not hold water for a long time. It's,

Riley Livermore 7:32
it's more comp, I guess it's just way more complicated. And I think it's presented to be so I think that's the that's, it's, it's, it goes from like, just a simple, like, those brown Muslim dudes over there are all terrorists and are bad, and we're all good to like, oh, wait a minute, we're killing people who they're just like, you and me, you know, like these, there's just like, this is like, oh, wait a minute. There's a lot of like, money and the military industrial complex is a thing, and we're buying, we're paying tax payer dollars for stuff that maybe isn't the best use of it. You know, like, there's just a summit of like, oh, there's a lot of, like, kind of crony capitalism coming on behind the air like, I was very much in the acquisition side of the military. So how the Air Force buys new aircraft? I was responsible for testing a lot of new things. So you see, kind of behind the curtain of buying things from these big military contractors and like, what the velocity brochure says they do versus what they actually can do, and how much money? Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. Some of the stuff that, like, it's much more simple, kind of on the the external of the facade. But then there's a lot when you kind of peek behind the curtain, like, Oh, this is a little bit more messy than and less, maybe justified than I was led to believe. Interesting.

Abdullah Najjar 8:45
You know, there's when you say, when you sense that maybe this is bigger than how it is presented, or maybe it's much more complex. Was it easy to talk about these things with, with people who are like you engaged in a similar path of you know, who are in the Air Force, or maybe were more on the development side, or maybe on the on the, I guess, in the backstage, right? I mean, was that those sentiments or those ideas that you had and how they shifted, I guess over the years, was it easy to have a conversation about these things, or to talk about these matters in the context in which you were in

Riley Livermore 9:34
totally, yeah. I mean, we're speaking somewhat of generalities here, but I think there's a lot of disillusionment within the military. It's fairly I can speak primarily for like, as an officer and my you know, but across the board, I think people, there's the advertising what I'm supposed to do, and there's what I'm actually doing, right, and there's a pretty big disconnect, and a lot of respects, even deployments, right? I have a lot of friends, you know, different deployments, doing what they thought they'd be doing, and what they ended up doing is different. And so I think there's a lot of frustration how bureaucracy and politics get in the way of of what we're supposed we say we're supposed to be doing, right? And again, I'm painting with broad brushstrokes, but it this is something that's not like a there's a lot of people who are pretty salty about it.

Abdullah Najjar 10:14
So you mentioned that. I guess your primary involvement was in research and development, right? How? How would you say that was over the years. Did you ever feel like, oh, I want more exposure to say, the the world out there? Or were you primarily content with that sort of work in the maybe in the backstage, not in the front lines, right? I mean, what was, what was going on in your head during those years, and you know? And then you, obviously, you add to that your ideas about how complex our US and US, military engagement abroad is, right? So when you were you were engaged in research and development, were you ever in a position where you were like, I feel like I might be I really want to experience firsthand what it's like to be deployed and see things with my own eyes and truly make an accurate assessment. Or were you primarily, say, concerned with I just want to keep on doing what I want to do, which is development using technology, working with these, you know, unmanned aerial these planes, or things like that, that sort of, I guess maybe it's more some somewhat complex

Riley Livermore 11:33
well. So the a couple things like about I got married in 2014 so two years after I graduated, got married, and a couple years later, had a kid, first kid. So having a family, I was not necessarily itching to be go to get deployed. So I was more than content to be. I think my skillset, too is such that testing new technology kind of more the R and D, the science and technology field. So I was very content where I was, and I thought that's kind of where I could make the most difference for the Air Force, right,

Abdullah Najjar 12:06
right? And then you have, I read, I read, you had some training in Israel, I think, for two years, right? Yeah.

Riley Livermore 12:15
So, so after so my first three years, I got my masters, I did some research for the Air Force Research Labs, and I applied for an exchange program, and I got picked up to go to Israel for two years. Essentially, like, I call it, it wasn't. It was a postdoc. It wasn't, I didn't have a PhD, but it's kind of that thing. Whereas I was a guest researcher at an Israel University, it's called Technion. It's in Haifa. So I, I didn't it was on the list. There's a number of countries, and Israel was towards the top, because they do some cool stuff in autonomy. It was, I want to go to Spain first, though, and somehow got Israel. And I was like, Oh, this is kind of cool. And so my wife and I got six months of language training. We learned to speak Hebrew at least enough to survive. And then we lived in northern Israel for two years, from 2016 to 2018 2016

Abdullah Najjar 13:07
to 2018 that's Wow.

Riley Livermore 13:09
So I was there during the presidential election, which was very interesting to watch the, you know, the Trump Clinton the whole campaign election. So that was really fascinating. Like, there's just so much stuff. We could probably talk for hours about how Israel, Israel changed me, just the experiences and a bunch of different dimensions. But, yeah, it's a fascinating place to be geopolitically. I mean, we're seeing that now just how much influence Israel has over American domestic politics, right? And I saw I saw I got, that's kind of got the transit first hand, 2016 election. Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem when I was there. The Iran nuclear deal was killed when I was there as well. So there's some pretty significant international political events that, like, centered around Israel while I was, like, right there, which was, which was pretty interesting to observe firsthand.

Abdullah Najjar 14:00
Oh, Gosh, gosh, I bet. I mean, one of the things that, and one of the things that I cannot do at this stage of my life is actually go there, because my passport, it literally says it in my passport, that this document, ie, the passport, will not allow you to go there, but it can allow you to go to any other country. And so I've always, I've always wanted to go there and engage with both Israelis and Palestinians, and just talk to people and hear stories, you know, and have that level of engagement. So when you were there for, you know, two years, how would you characterize your level of exposure to both Israelis and Palestinians? Was it? Was it enough? Did you feel like you may have had maybe, looking back you, you would say, Maybe I should have had more engagements or your your work did not maybe allow that, you know, an extreme level exposure to both Palestinians and. Really

Riley Livermore 15:00
well, it's asymmetric, for sure, right? Like so by definition, just being in Israel, being part of the State Department, I kind of fell into state department when I was there. There's pretty strict guidelines of going into the West Bank, but you're not allowed to get anywhere close to Gaza. When I was there, you had to be even, like, a couple miles away from the border. But to get the West Bank there was, it was very tightly controlled. I think a lot of the kind of Israeli propaganda, the America kind of perpetu, or, I would say, perpetuated, but enforced, right? So, like, Ramallah is dangerous, or, like all these places you're not supposed to go. So I didn't, I never went into like the West Bank proper, which I'm very disappointed I wasn't able to experience. We have some, some close friends who are Palestinian American with family. And I would have loved to like visit, but I unfortunately have a chance now. We had a number of so the the interesting thing that the kind of semantic or linguistic move that Israelis do that Palestinians that live, that have Israeli passports, are not called Palestinians are called Arab so we knew a lot of and, yeah, they don't call them Palestinians. If they are Israeli, they call them Israeli Arabs, right, Christian or Muslim, which is another way of kind of like driving a wedge between the 20% or so Palestinians who live and have Israeli passports and the rest that don't. So we knew a lot of people on Haifa specifically is a very diverse it's probably one of the more diverse cities in Israel. So has a pretty significant Arab Israeli population. So we knew a number, a number of people who were, you know, their their families are indigenous to Palestine, that during 67 you know, I guess 48 and then 67 they just found themselves on the Israeli side of the border. And so they were grandfathered in. And so we got to experience the culture kind of through that way, but it was somewhat, it's just a tricky situation, right? Just because of how dehumanized Palestinians are, the stigma, etc, so there's not necessarily, maybe the embrace that even those families would probably want to do for fear of their own kind of security and status in society. Yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 17:18
you said, and that's some, I don't know how, how deep we can get into this change. You mentioned that you experienced, but you did say that that experience changed you, right? I think, on so many levels, being there for for two years, so I'm sure you've learned a lot, if you've maybe seen a different reality than what you were essentially bombarded with before going right. Maybe seen things that did not live up to expectations. So maybe Is there a particular example or story that you can share that that falls under the category of the things that changed you in a way when you were there.

Riley Livermore 18:10
Yeah, there's a I think I'll start with one, and maybe we can branch into some more. But yeah, I grew up and was a pretty devout Evangelical Christian before going to Israel. And so one of the things that was really interesting moving to Israel is there's not, there's like, churches, right? But they're, generally speaking, kind of like your more mainline, traditional, like, very old school, like, not like, so like, you're the Catholic Church has things there, but it's, it's kind of like these segmented pieces. But there are a lot of Jews, Israeli Jews, that believe in Jesus as like the Messiah, so, but they don't call themselves Christians because they are still Jewish, if that makes sense,

Abdullah Najjar 18:52
Messianic Jews, maybe that's right. Yeah, that's exactly

Riley Livermore 18:55
right. So we were part of a Messianic Jewish congregation while we were there, and it was, it was cool on a number of different levels, like, on a positive side, like, I learned way more about Judaism, right? So the roots of kind of the Christian faith reading, you know, I became fluent in Hebrew. Learn how to read the Tanakh, right? The the Torah, the the Old Testament, right, in and, like, the actual language it was written in, which is really cool just to understand, like, a deeper level of understanding, understanding Jewish rabbinical traditions, like, just the way that the Jews interact with the holy scriptures is actually very different from, like how I was taught as the evangelical and so that was, like, super powerful, but it also Powerful interesting the dynamics of the some of the some of the evangelical kind of, like political kind of tendencies got ported over to a lot of the Messianic Jewish kind of creations as well. So is that that was like a they're very Zionist in nature, which kind of mirrored a lot of, like, Christian nationalism type stuff. And so I was able to see, I think it's always easier to like, critique a culture. From, like, being an outsider, right? Because you can kind of see the stuff that doesn't make sense, yeah. And it just so happened, it coincided with Trump's kind of rise in the Republican Party, and I saw similar tendencies, like from my own faith tradition, as well as, like, people kind of disregarding some of their moral like, the teachings, right, of Jesus in favor of political power, right? And so that was kind of an eye opening thing for me, and kind of my start to, like, unwind and like, rethink some of my own beliefs and how it interacted under, like, a political or social scale of just the hypocrisy I saw within the Zionist Christian circles, or these Jews who were very like, you know, anti Palestinian, even Palestinian Christians right, supposed brothers and sisters in the faith. And then I was able to kind of see much clear. And so there's a lot of, like unraveling of some of my own beliefs, in reexamining, kind of what I thought. If that makes sense, yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 20:58
when you experience this newfound reality, or the reality that already existed before you showed up, I would imagine that it would have been difficult to maybe share some of that. Maybe share your testimony with people of a similar background as with people that have who share similar background, was yours, right? Who grew up in maybe evangelical? Yeah, I mean that because I'm sure even here. I mean, I have conversations with a lot of people who would be, who would characterize themselves as evangelicals. And, you know, I tell them that even even Palestinian Christians, they do, they're not doing so well. And it's hard to imagine how you wouldn't feel some sort of sympathy to your brothers and sisters in faith, the way you put it. And I think a lot of and it's surprising that even a lot of the Evangelicals here don't even know that there are Palestinian Christians, which is another chakra? Yeah? Yeah, yeah.

Riley Livermore 22:05
No. It was very tough. I mean, relationships in my family, fortunately, my wife and I kind of went through a similar process together, which has been really good, and we found new community, and we've kind of grown from that. But there's a lot of close friend relationships and family members that the relationship is very different, or in the case of some friends, like we just, we're not friends anymore, right? And that that was hard, there was a grouping period, for sure. But I also think that was a catalyst for kind of wider right, like, if I had, if I had these assumptions and these thought processes about my faith that were incorrect, I started reexamining other structures, right? And so, like, the military, American military's involvement and our supposed goodness in the world, I think that was kind of the that kind of cracked open the door for like, thinking more about American imperialism, how the American military interacts with the rest of the world, like some of the stories we tell ourselves right within the military, and like what the you know, the perspective is from people who are maybe we have less power.

Abdullah Najjar 23:09
Gosh, there's a there's something you mentioned earlier about how, I think, how Jews view their own scripture, how they view the Tanakh or the Old Testament. And one thing I'd love to point out here is that I'm so interested in learning or reading the Old Testament in Hebrew, I just even the New Testament ancient Greek. I mean, I'd love to just get, you know, I read about, you know, the New Testament scholars and, you know, obviously the years that they have to spend, you know, learning language and understanding language, to read Scripture and its original its original form, or in the original language in which it was written. But I think it's really, it's it's interesting, this thing you mentioned about how you how you found that their approach is sort of different. Do you think maybe that's something we can just for a little bit briefly explore?

Riley Livermore 24:08
Oh, sure. So I think you and I'm a little I'm a little rusty on some of my, some of my references, but the we, we we evangelicals, right? I'll just kind of use the the we print on there, but the Evangelicals the way, it's how did you go to the Scriptures to find out what the answers are to a question? Okay? And I think broadly, the Jewish approach is you go to the Scriptures to find out what questions you need to ask yourself, right? So you don't like the a Scripture doesn't necessarily close an open issue. It tells you what issue you need to focus more on. And I think it's the Talmud, or maybe the Mishna, one of the two, there's a, there's a Jewish rabbinical text, right, where they had a bunch of rabbis. We're talking about, again, all the kosher laws, like, what does it mean to observe the Sabbath? What does it mean to do these things? Is this kosher? Is this not. Yeah. And what they did is they had a bunch of rabbis who disagreed, and they basically published it all as, like, here's a text. These all rabbis disagree, right? They have different interpretations. But the whole point is, like, the search for knowledge is really what we're all about, right? Where I grew up is, like, you know, Matthew, something's, you know, 2417 says this, and therefore that's the answer, right? Like, you know, abortion is illegal because I found some weird proof text, or gays are bad because this, you know, like, I grew up very much. Like the Bible said it this, this line proves it. Boom, move on. Next question. Oh, and so that's that was really, really helpful for me. And, like, I think that's the whole point is, like, the whole point is the Scripture supposed to draw you deeper, right? Like that you can't know God, like, just limitations of the human and so like, this is a way to kind of help you. Like, it's part of, like, the the process of of learning and knowing is very like, has a very like, like, Jewish reference, where I think there's a lot more fear in the evangelical tradition I grew up in, of you gotta have all the right answers. You gotta be able, like, if someone asks you a question, you a question, you gotta know, like, the you know, you know the Bible, where to point to it so you can prove them wrong. And doubt is bad, and all these things. And, like, there's a lot of fear around that, that when I kind of realized the Jewish tradition started asking more questions, and then that's kind of where I was like, okay, the the things I thought it were like the simple answers actually don't, don't work at all.

Abdullah Najjar 26:25
Now you're gonna have to excuse me, if I were to decide to focus on that just a little

Riley Livermore 26:31
bit more super fascinating. Yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 26:34
because I never had so personally, I've never had a lot of engagements with Jewish believers that hold scripture at a very, very high standard, right? I've had engagements with maybe people that would consider themselves secular Jews, but I did have a lot of engagements with people who consider themselves devout Christians who always quote scripture, who would, who have, you know, very, very, I guess, strong beliefs. And they do, you know, Scripture is considered just, yeah, they hold scripture at a very, very high standard. And so whenever I have conversations with a devout Christian, there's always a sense that I feel where their their position or their stance or their brand of Christianity is, is the right brand, and those others, you know the I don't know what, what, what they believe in, right? But with your engagements with with Jewish believers, devout Jews, how would you say they view this, these, these, these different disagreements. Do they have this sort of crack where they're like, Oh, this is our brand. No, the other brand, I don't know if it's actually Jewish or what would, how would you characterize that idea in the Jewish community over there? Yeah,

Riley Livermore 28:11
and I want to, I want to be just my caveat, right? As I kind of some firsthand experience, but I don't necessarily speak to authoritatively, right? Just this is, so this is kind of that with that disclaimer. I mean, there's three kind of, the three different streams, right? Of Judaism, you have your Orthodox, you have your conservative, and you have your reformed, right? So the Orthodox are, generally speaking, the people who like wear the Kipa, so they observe Shabbat, right, the Sabbath, they eat kosher, and they generally wear, like a the kippah or Yamaka or and then the other ultra orthodox are more like the black and white, so that that is a little bit more rigid, right, like, as far as men and women worship separately, the prayers, they tend to be a little bit more like, quote, unquote, by the book. I think there's still a more openness to engaging and arguing about stuff within certain kind of realms. And then the conservative and reformed kind of get more progressively progressive, or liberal, or whatever flavor board you want, where, like, I think reformed versions of Judaism, you can have women, rabbis, etc. And so these seem to be speaking a little bit more open to they're less dogmatic, per se about it says this here. And so there's a little bit of us. I think there's probably some parallels in, you know, if you look at the spectrum of Christianity as well, yeah. And I think what helped me is even, like, in a messianic kind of like a Christian, Jewish context, there were still some of those elements, the Jewish elements of like, questioning things, working with my friends who were not messianic, right? They were just, they were Jewish couple, Orthodox friends, talking with them. There's just more of a curiosity. I think there's, like, a I think there's less fear about what if I'm wrong, right? Like, I think there's just more i. Uh, like, they'll argue and have strong opinions, but I think there's less of a, I gotta have everything figured out otherwise, like my, my eternal salvation is at stake, right? Like, there's a, there's less of this, like, existential angst. Again, I'm kind of painting with a broad brushstroke, but that's kind of a lot of evangelical circles. It's like, you gotta have all the right things. Figure out where all the our beliefs, or like, doubt is a kill. You know, if you doubt, then maybe you don't really believe in Jesus, and then that's how you go to hell, right? There's kind of that, there's like, that heaviness, I think in a lot of evangelical circles, that's not necessarily the I didn't observe that same tendency with my Jewish friends, or even my Jewish messianic friends as much. Wow,

Abdullah Najjar 30:37
that's Whoo. That's interesting. So you, you stayed there for two years, 2016 to 2018 when you finished your trip, where did life take you afterward?

Riley Livermore 30:55
I went back. So I went to a test, a test job in the military. So I moved back to California. Actually, it was doing some work testing. I got a job, a really cool job, actually, testing autonomy in California. Wait, autonomy, you said, yeah. So, like, it's really my first foray into, like, how do we the whole plan of the group I was part of is it was kind of this emerging, it's called the emerging technologies combined test force. But the thought process was, if vendors or people are going to develop autonomous systems, like, we the Air Force, need a way to, like, how do we test this? And how do we kind of wrap our arms around knowing that it's going to be safe to deploy and use? And so my job was like coming up with, kind of the framework and understanding, and we did a lot of testing and small drones to kind of create systems and software to enable this to happen, and

Abdullah Najjar 31:42
as you were pursuing this line of work for during that year, or maybe during those years, how, how would you look back at those days, during that time that you spent in Israel? And, yeah, honestly,

Riley Livermore 32:02
up until October 6, 2023 like I had very, very fond memories of my time in Israel. I, I think I was able to, like, ignore or minimize the suffering of Palestinians. I still have a few dear friends who are Israeli. I, I I thought I saw the benefits of it, and since it helped me kind of in my own spiritual, personal journey, like there's a lot of benefits getting that foreign perspective. I love different cultures, and Israel is kind of unique. And since that, there's people kind of come from all over the world, right? A lot of the Jewish diasporas come back, yeah. So you get to interact with people from all over the globe, both who are Israeli citizens. And I was at university, so I had friends, like, the coolest thing, I mean, I kind of nerd out about some of the State Department, kind of walkie diplomatic stuff. So, like, Israel's just a really interesting place to kind of peek behind the curtain and see kind of mechanics of how this all worked, yeah. But so my lab, right? So half of them were, is Israeli, the other half were kind of foreign nationals like myself, but we I remember one day, we're sitting out talking about politics, and I was talking with a a Russian Jew who was Israeli, Argentinian Jew who is Israeli as well. Wow. Someone from Singapore, someone from Germany, myself and someone from India. And we were chatting about international politics, like the coolest conversation I've ever had, because it's like, you know, Singapore, he's, he was a management speaker, so got some of the Chinese perspective, the Russia perspective, India. Like, we're, it was just like, it was amazing, right? A German, we were talking about World War Two. We're talking about, like, it just that types of experiences like you just didn't get as much, you know, I grew up in Phoenix. So there's a lot of, like, Mexican Spanish culture, but it's pretty bipolar in that sense, right? The kind of but just having a diversity of languages, of food, of experiences, it was amazing, like I it was really, really powerful. And I guess I feel a deep sense of shame now that I really like how rotten, or just how evil kind of Zionism is trying to be like, or how it's perpetuated such an evil in Gaza specifically, but also what's happening in the West Bank, it's kind of that was kind of something that's, I'm still kind of dealing With,

Abdullah Najjar 34:17
yeah, and why? Where would you say, when did you experience that, the straw that broke the camel's back? Or, however, the expression goes,

Riley Livermore 34:31
Oh, sure. I mean, so like, obviously, October 7. I think that Dave's gonna stick with me for 2023 for a while. But I remember getting, hearing the news, checking, shooting bunch of WhatsApp messages to my friends who are still there. And I knew, like, the problem, right is, I knew enough. It just is I don't know. The cognitive dissonance when I was there is, like, I knew Gaza was bad. I would talk my my Israeli friends, like, Hey, this is like. Messed up, especially Gaza. Like, this is an open air prison. But I kind of, like, succumbed a little bit to some of the talking points. Is like, oh, but Hamas, right. Like, what are we supposed to do? Like, we can't, you know, we gotta protect ourselves too. And so I kind of both sized it, but I knew too. Like, there's, you know, there's a saying the Israelis call it mowing the grass. And if you've heard this kind of colloquialism, as far as every couple years you gotta go in there and, you know, mow the grass, right, kill a bunch of Palestinians to put them in, you know, level set. And then they'll come back. They'll keep coming back. And they also knew too, that just in the calculus of retaliation, killing one Israeli equaled, you know, orders of magnitude more of Palestinian lives, whether it's injured or dead. So after October 7, I knew the response was going to be extreme and disproportionate, and even some of the stuff that my Israeli friends were saying back to me really scared me, just the level of dehumanization and I knew there would be the Israeli populace would be full throated in support of what Israel would do. And so it was really that's kind of when I knew was bad. I just didn't. I don't know if anyone thought I did. I wouldn't. I couldn't imagine it. We'd be almost 11 months later and still be going on. I think that's the thing that surprised me the most. Yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 36:20
gosh. I mean, when you when you reach that decision of saying, I want to resign, how did your maybe immediate family or loved ones react to that? What? How did you voice it? How did you express it? Like, can you, can we? Can you maybe walk us through a little bit, through that, that process?

Riley Livermore 36:51
Sure, the So, the challenge in the military, right? The way it works, is you don't, you can't just, like, show up one day and be like, I'm leaving, or give your two weeks notice, or whatever it's there's a whole process of getting out and on the best, if you are really on top of it, everything lines up. It's like a three month process, right? Because there's congressionally mandated training, there's stuff with the Veterans Affairs. There's just out processing and working through all the different checklists to get out. So it's not a is by no means a fast process. And so what happened, kind of my story is I was already pretty disenfranchised with the military, just as far as I still felt, I think on balance, I felt like the military was doing more good than harm, but it was pretty darn close to like a coin flip. And I think after I saw President Biden's kind of the administration's response to Israel, and just like the huggy BB, like, give them whatever they want, unconditional support and and realizing that like systems that I was testing potentially could be going over in the future to perpetuate this, it's like, I can't this. Is this is I can't do this anymore. So that happened in October was when I hit the button to say, like, I want to quit. But I didn't. I didn't tell people I was, we call, maybe cowardice. I didn't tell people right away, like I was resigning because of Israel. I think partly, partly, it probably was like, I knew I still had months to go. I was in a leadership position. I was, like, trying to find the right balance of, like, you know, you know, I don't know. I didn't want to, like, make a big stink and then have to, like, sit there for six months, like, waiting for my coworkers. Does that make sense? Like I wanted, like it was, it was just, it was a kind of internal calculus of like, this is really messed up. I was talking to people I was working with, and I was like, Yeah, this is messed up. And so it's like, okay, well, I guess

Yeah, it was that. And also, I think there's also element two of like, I just kept thinking, like, at every turn, like, this is going to not be a thing anymore, right? Like, I was still going to resign, but I was hoping it would, it was not become a big of a thing as it kept getting. And that's so really the thing where, like, I want to go public, is after a Harrison man, major Harrison man, published his letter, I was like, okay, cool. Because I thought I was, like, the only person who really cared about, not really cared, but like, was willing to resign because of it, and I didn't really know I had an avenue to, like, go public, right, beyond, like, my immediate circle, right? And so that's kind of Harrison kind of let me know, like, Oh, this is something, because I talked to my my leadership, and kind of told him my what I thought. And I uh, but knowing I didn't think about, like, whatever the social media phase or whatever it wasn't kind of in my my conceptual framework, until Harrison did it, and it was like, Oh, I think I want to say something too, and to a broader audience.

Abdullah Najjar 39:56
Yeah. And there was, I. Yeah, there was obviously, I mean, there was a wave, right? I mean, many other individuals decided to come Totally, yeah, yeah,

Riley Livermore 40:07
starting with Josh Paul, and then what, a number of really great people in the State Department. And then other, like, there's, there's, I think, 12 or 13 of us, and there's a couple other Air Force, there's another a couple of Air Force people, to include a couple of people who are trying to do conscientious objectors. So, yeah, I mean, I think, I mean relatively, and this is, I can't remember the exact, but here's five or six administration officials who resigned because of Vietnam during the next years. Yeah, and there's been 13 or 14 so, so we're having like, two or three times what was happening in Vietnam over Gaza. So, there's, there's definitely something, I think it's not necessarily being covered. There's, there's a very noticeable bias towards favoring the the Israeli perspective. But yeah, there's, there's a lot of discontent, I think, within the federal government, over the Biden administration's enabling of genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Abdullah Najjar 41:12
And there was, there was something I read in an article that was, I think, written about your resignation. And I think one of the things you mentioned was the use of, what was it lavender, or, like, yeah, AI systems.

Riley Livermore 41:32
That's right. So the two things, so again, I was just going to come up. I told some people around me, like, I don't, like, what's going on? I'm getting out back in October, and I realized I had some time to work through the process and and I was just going to keep out of that, hoping I didn't think it go this long. And when Harrison's, Harrison's letter came out, and that comes out of pretty closely to 972 and local calls, pretty incredible journalism into these AI targeting systems that Israel's been using and understanding. I think there's just that's when I think it was pretty easy before that to be like, Okay, listen, this is a like, State Department thing primarily, right? We're selling or military contractors or selling weapons. Like, I'm not in any circumstance where I'm, like, directly involved in this. So I was able to, kind of, like, I was able to distance myself a little bit more emotionally. And then when I saw that there's similar technologies that Israel's actually fielding in Palestine and, like, in in Gaza, and very like, kind of dystopian, Black Mirror ways, and that we're like, kind of analogous to stuff that we're working on or trying to test in a much more like, I'll call that responsible way. That's kind of when I was like, Oh, wow, some of the stuff I'm testing could potentially be used to, you know, slaughter innocent people. And that was a definitely like that. That's when it really shook me. And I was like, okay, that gave me the results, like, be, be a lot more public. Yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 43:10
you know what's interesting. I was talking to a friend of mine, I think two days ago, he was, he was in Jordan for the summer. He was going over there to learn Arabic, you know, for an exchange program. And he told me that he had a lot of conversations with Jordanians of Palestinian descent, and he said that all they wanted, at least through these conversations. Based off of these conversations, he said that all they wanted was to have equal rights. They just didn't care who was living next door. They didn't care if it was a Jew, if it was a Christian or Messianic Jew, or whatnot. They just wanted, I guess, the right to return. They wanted to have equal rights. And they just wanted, essentially, just wanted peace, peaceful relations. You know, as long as they have those equal rights with their I guess, Israeli slash Jewish counterparts, they were okay, you know. But rarely would you like that conversation. I mean, people usually don't have that conversation, right? But it's essential. It's essential to talk about how there should at least be equal rights, like, oh, what we want? That's that's the, that's the, that's the foundation just to have equality. Perhaps we can work on the rest, but let's start with that, right? And I don't know if that's something that popped up when pre October 7 during your time and those those two years in Israel, or something that may have popped up after. Word, yeah, I don't know if you've engaged in these conversations before. Well,

Riley Livermore 45:05
yeah, it's hard to, like, go back and, I mean, because I've learned so much even now, right? I think I kind of, I feel like apocalypse, right? We use that, like, very kind of, you know, generally speaking, it's like this, like, in times. But I think the Greek word is basically unveiling, or revealing, that's right. So like, like being in Israel in 2016 the Donald Trump election, the kind of the the evangelical turn towards kind of more authoritarian, fascist Christian nationalism. It was, like, very apocalyptic for me, very revealing to me, like it kind of opened my eyes in a way that hasn't happened. And I think likewise, October 7 has been very apocalyptic, in a sense, both in like the kind of like Hollywood, like, just absolute destruction of Gaza and the sheer horror of the the calamity of it all, but also from a what's always been going on is kind of being brought to the light. And I also think we see there's a lot of like, fascistic authoritarian like Netanyahu in the right wing governments. There's very similar kind of dynamics that we're seeing in a lot of European countries, as well as America. And really, at the core of its fear of the other right I think when I was there, you would have these conversations and try to rationally say, like, oh yes, but like, every time we give the Palestinians some freedom, they turn around and, like, kill us, right? So there's always fear. Is the undercurrent that kind of prevented any kind of, like autonomy, or for like, any real attempt to give people power in kind of more representative way, when you that was the thing it was hard to get. That's like, such a powerful motivator, right? And I think the the Jewish trauma of the Holocaust, it cannot be understood how weaponized that has become by right wing Israelis and Zionist entities like, that's kind of like constantly held up. Of like, what about the Holocaust, right? Like, never again. And instead of, like, a never again, kind of collaborative, like corporately, like no people group should ever be, you know, genocided. We're just viewing exclusively Jews in this, like a lot is his right wing context.

Abdullah Najjar 47:15
And you know, you mentioned the Holocaust. And I want to say also that, well, first off, I mean horrible, horrible piece of history that again should not be never again, right? But there's also, I guess in here, I want to, you know, I want to really understand what goes on in an Israeli Jew, Jew, or maybe Jew, a Jewish mind in general. I really think that there's generational trauma as well. That has been, I guess, is plant, firmly planted in the minds of, I guess, Jewish people in general. And so I think maybe, and that's one way of me maybe doing a, not much of a, you know, good job in trying to understand the Jewish mentality. But maybe there's this idea that anybody who is, anybody that's trying, anybody that's considered a threat, is is maybe trying to inflict upon us another holocaust, or in their genocide. And with you have the generational trauma, and you have the, you know, the memory of the Holocaust. Do you feel so riled up and you, you're like, No, this is not going to happen. And so you maybe would decide to want to quash that threat by any means necessary. And so when you mentioned earlier this, you when you try to two side it, in a way, was that something that maybe you touched on, you know how maybe something you thought about, you know, the generational trauma and how that plays a role in how you deal with people, or maybe the Holocaust, and how that plays a role and how you engage with people, right? You have this built in, maybe this, this frustration with humanity, because they have, for the longest time, were not good to you, right? I don't know. I don't know if I'm actually doing a good job in portraying that, that image, but I don't know if that's something you may have given some thought.

Riley Livermore 49:29
Well, yeah, I think the, I think I bought the premise a little too much of like, the only way for Jews to truly be safe is that there's a ethno nationalist Jewish state, right? I think that's kind of the core premise of Zionism, right? Is for this to never happen again, we need a land that we own and control, that we can ensure that we're always in power, and so that no government can ever come in and start doing, you know, the Holocaust or pogroms or any of these types of things that kind of preceded you. Uh, right? So that's kind of the core argument of Zionism, right? Is we'll find a land for this people, and then they use the kind of the religious and historical Jewish roots to kind of further justify that. And so I think I probably gave more credence to the argument than than it deserves. I think absolutely we can keep people the Jewish existence is not predicated on the state of Israel, right? I think they're striving Jewish communities. We've shown that there's a lot of anti Zionist Jews, right, that that are and so if you kind of buy that premise, though, like, and that's kind of like the core, and it's, it's sold and packaged very convincingly, at least it was. There's like, then it's hard to argue, hard to argue some of these kind of more Israeli or zionist talking points. Sure, it sucks. The Palestinians don't have the same rights, but if we gave them all voting rights, then they would have, they would be disproportionately larger, and they could potentially, like, swing things in such a way that, like we would be, we wouldn't be able to our existence as Jews would would see we'd be back in, you know, Germany, 1930 status. Yeah. And so, I think because, because of that fear, and I think that the fact the matter is true. Like Israel's current state would not exist. The Palestinians had equal rights. But I think that there's something more mutually beneficial could could come out of that. But if you the lack of creativity and the fear kind of makes people automatically transport back to, you know, 1930s 1940s Germany, right? There's people are still alive from the Holocaust. There's, you know, a lot of descendants. There's stories passed down. So there's, there's very like, there's this very visceral remembrance of of the Shoah of the Holocaust in Israel that is very, it's very powerful, right? And I think it's been manipulated and weaponized in ways that have made it such that the Palestinians become the scapegoats, and they essentially are using the same tactics that were used on them towards the Palestinians.

Abdullah Najjar 52:11
Gosh, well, Riley, now that you're out, looking back, I guess was there. Do you think maybe you could have, in any way, shape or form, made a change when you were in the inside? Or do you think it would have been futile, like there wouldn't have been something like,

Riley Livermore 52:33
if I was, if I was staging me? Yeah, yeah. It was honestly becoming untenable for me. I think the dissonance I because I was in a leadership position. I was basically, I mean, without kind of diving into, like, the military leadership structure, I had, like, I supervised 15 to 15 people, military, civilian and contractors. Like I was responsible for multi million dollar budgets, like I I was getting a place of responsibility where I was becoming, I was, like, becoming middle management. I was kind of ownership of Air Force things. And I think staying like you can't really, the way the system set up is like you would just it wasn't. It would have been beneficial, like I would have been sucked back into just kind of following like I was. I would have been forced to a situation where I was going to make decision and staying in there anymore. Staying in there any longer would have just would have been me kind of out listening to my own values. Yeah,

Abdullah Najjar 53:26
and how would what would you say to someone that might have harsh disagreements right now with the Biden administration, and they're still there, they're still on the inside, and they might have these disagreements, but they don't know what to do, how to voice them, or how to maybe express that disagreement. Like, now you that you're in the outside, how would you, um, what would you say to those people? You know, maybe they also have grown frustrated with, how did the it's the situation over there is being handled. Like, what would you say to those people?

Riley Livermore 54:02
Yeah, totally. I think the first thing is, like, a lot of people I know are disappointed, and either from the commitments they have with the military or financial I was fortunate. I'm privileged enough that I was able to get out and find a job that's more aligned with my values. Get medical like, I mean, a lot of people between school loans and medical insurance, right? The military provides previous and medical insurance. There's a lot of things that kind of keep you in where you don't have the financial means or you'd be put in a bad spot. And so I don't think, I think it's, it's, I think the more people that disagree, I think that your voices are heard. I think finding ways and channels of communicating that is super important events within people around you. I think just thinking more broadly of Harrison Mann probably having the courage to say his write his letter, and basically do it in a way that's like, I really struggled with this, and I was hoping I didn't have to do this, but I have to. Do it gave me the courage to speak out. I'm hoping that me doing things like this gives people the courage to speak out, even if they don't come to the point of resigning.

Abdullah Najjar 55:08
Yeah, well, Riley, I really appreciate your time and doing this and having this conversation with me. I really think it's insightful. And I think next time we're going to get into the nitty gritty details of the Old Testament, New Testament, the conversation about that.

Riley Livermore 55:27
I unfortunately, one of the side effects of kind of being disenfranchised with evangelicalism is I haven't I've kind of, it's brought up a lot of I love the Bible, I love Jesus, I love the study of the Scriptures. And I am just so thoroughly frustrated with how it gets weaponized to hurt the people that Jesus kind of claimed, you know, the Jesus of the Bible represented, yeah, so I was, like, really in it for a while. And so I'm a little, I'm not sharp as it could be, but I think it's, I mean, when you read it, it's, it's transformative. And I just get so frustrated with how it gets weaponized and dumbed down and kind of like, you know, it's the the fast food version of the Bible. Really pisses me off.

Abdullah Najjar 56:09
That's, I've never heard that expression before,

Riley Livermore 56:13
cheap. It's like, easy to consume, but it doesn't, it doesn't, it's not, it's not real food, right? Like, that's kind of what I think a lot of like, the consumer Christian culture in America has turned it into, is just you go, you find your answer, and you move on, as opposed to, like, really wrestling the stories. There's symbolism, there's so much beauty and how the texts were compiled and put together. And I think we're focused on, you know, is it, you know? What is it like? Is every little detail happen exactly the way it's written, like there's just, there's a bunch of kind of things, I think are nonsense that you miss the forest for the trees. Of like, how beautiful it is, some of the value there, yeah.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai