In the aftermath of a broken ceasefire, Palestinians in Gaza speak out about the trauma, loss, and fear they live with daily. Families recount the horrors of bombings, life in tents, and the silence of a world that watches but does not act. Through raw testimony and haunting imagery, this short film captures the reality of survival under siege—and the enduring dignity of a people who refuse to be erased.

Producers: Belal Awad, Leo Erhardt
Videographers: Ruwaida Amer, Mahmoud Al Mashharawi
Video Editor: Leo Erhardt

Transcript

MAMDOUH AHMED MORTAJA: 

More than 500 days have passed and this unjust world has watched our bodies being burned alive. 

SUHAILA HAMED SA’AD: 

A girl asleep. In a tent, also. An air strike hit, her brain spilled out—she died on her mattress. What did this girl do? What crime did she commit? 

MUKARAM SA’AD MUSTAFA HLIWA: 

Two billion Muslims. Two billion Muslims are watching us. They could do something, but they do nothing. Where is the Arab world? Where is the Islamic world? Where is the Western world? While we are being killed daily. 

MOHAMED DARWISH MUSTAFA SA’AD: 

Destruction, terror, fear, humiliation. Faith only in God. As for faith in the end of the war—sadly, we’re not hopeful. 

SUHAILA HAMED SA’AD: 

We were in the refugee camp, when we heard gunfire, bombs and the chaos that followed. We didn’t need anyone to tell us, at night, we woke up to gunfire and bombs. There were assassinations, and the whole world turned upside down. My feelings when the ceasefire happened: we were truly pleased, we thought it was over and thought we were going to go back to normal life, like everyone else. Or do we not have the right to live? After that, war returned, worse than before. Now our feelings are different from before. At first, when the ceasefire happened, we were happy and thought we could go back to our lives. But for the war to stop and then return? That’s terrifying and fills us with anxiety. We didn’t expect the war to start again, at all. We couldn’t even believe it when it ended. We were waiting for relief, supplies and aid. We heard the promises on the news, about trucks entering—we didn’t expect the war to return. 

MOHAMED DARWISH MUSTAFA SA’AD: 

For me? Yes, I expected it. I expected it. Because they are treacherous, they don’t want peace. We had almost finished the first stage, but at the beginning of the second phase, they turned everything around. They don’t want it to succeed. They don’t want it to succeed. It’s not possible for the war to end. It’s not possible. 

MAMDOUH AHMED MORTAJA: 

Rings of fire, flying body parts, surprise attacks, abductions—the stuff of nightmares is happening in this war, and now, the resumption of war has renewed our feelings of intense fear. Everyone’s only demand is an end to this war and this curse, so we can have safety,

and tranquility, so we can rest our heads on our pillows and know that we will wake up the next day without drones, bullets, or artillery strikes. 

Interviewer: 

– This is not normal, it’s really loud. 

MOHAMED DARWISH MUSTAFA SA’AD: 

– It’s like this 24/7. 

SUHAILA HAMED SA’AD: 

Of course, Gaza is used to wars, but not like this. It’s not a war; it’s genocide: the child, the young, the girl, the wealthy, the poor—everyone. I’ll tell you a story: Yesterday, a ten-year-old girl was sleeping in her bed when an airstrike hit and killed her. What did this girl do? She was only ten years old. A girl sleeping. Also, in a tent. An air strike hits, her brains spill out. She dies on her mattress. What did she do? What crime did she commit? It’s a scary thing. The person sitting in his tent is scared, the person in his house is scared. We feel complete exhaustion, there is no stability, and we are mentally drained. When we sleep, we don’t expect to wake up. With the jets and the strikes, no one expects to wake up. We are living day to day, when we sleep, we don’t think about waking up. Death has become normal. What can we do? 

MUKARAM SA’AD MUSTAFA HLIWA: 

To me, the war hasn’t stopped. We have been living in destruction since October 7, 2023. I was injured on October 11, 2023, and until now, there’s been complete ongoing destruction in the Gaza Strip. Martyrs, orphans—destruction, destruction, destruction, more than you can imagine. 

MOHAMED DARWISH MUSTAFA SA’AD: 

Unfortunately, we expected the war to end, but it didn’t. They don’t want to end it—they want to end us: completely. We don’t want wars, it’s enough. We’re exhasted. Displacement, displacement, displacement. I lost three homes, and I have lost family as martyrs. We’ve been humiliated as you can see, living in a refugee camp and the situation is miserable. A worn out tent, frankly the situation is not good. 

SUHAILA HAMED SA’AD: 

The children here, when they hear explosions, develop psychological problems. They wet themselves. If a glass falls, they panic—they’re psychologically broken. They’re still children. What do they know? Anything that moves, they think it’s an airstrike or tank fire. They’re living in fear. 

MUKARAM SA’AD MUSTAFA HLIWA:

One of my grandsons has a heart condition, we worry his heart will stop from terror. He screams and cries when he hears a rocket or an airstrike, or the quadcopter fire. The children can’t sleep because of what’s happening here in Gaza. 

MOHAMED DARWISH MUSTAFA SA’AD: 

The kids wet themselves. That’s one thing. The second? The fear and terror—like this child next to you. They are terrified and have no reassurance. The children roam the streets. There are no schools, no education. The Jews demolished the schools, they demolished kindergartens, the hospitals, the dispensaries, and the infrastructure. Buildings, houses: there is nothing left. The children are broken. The children? Childhood is over here. 

SUHAILA HAMED SA’AD: 

The future? It’s black and bleak. We have no future—our future is with God. What future? We live in tents, and they have followed us even here! The tent is everything—the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom, everything. At the same time, the tent is an oven—not a tent. Even here, they won’t let us stay. They won’t leave us alone. The tents, the fear, the airstrikes—everything is crushing us. 

MAMDOUH AHMED MORTAJA: 

More than 500 days have passed, and this unjust world has watched our bodies being burned alive. Today, more than 50,000 human beings killed, burned alive in front of the world, and no one lifts a finger. So it’s normal that we in Gaza feel we face a deaf, blind, unjust world that supports the executioner standing over us, the victims. 

MUKARAM SA’AD MUSTAFA HLIWA: 

After losing my son, after what’s happened to Gaza? No. There is no hope, none at all. Only God stands with us. Hope in any country? There is none. I don’t trust the international community. They haven’t helped us. On the contrary. They sit and discuss as they destroy us. They haven’t found a solution for Gaza. They are destroying us here and in the West Bank. No one has stopped the war. Why? Only God knows. The blame is on them. There is a conspiracy against the people of Gaza. 

MOHAMED DARWISH MUSTAFA SA’AD: 

Doesn’t the international community see the victims every day? Thirty, forty victims a day, while they watch. No. Only God is our hope. No one else. God will deliver us from this war. He who is capable of anything. As for the international community, the Arab world, the Muslim world? There are 56 Arab and Muslim nations, yet they do nothing. Two billion Muslims. Two billion Muslims are watching us. They could act, but they do nothing. Where is the Arab world? Where is the Islamic world? Where is the Western world? We are being killed daily. They could act, but they are complicit—their hearts side with Israel. In the end, we’re battling the U.S. We are not equals. And the entire world supports Israel. We’re

exhausted. We are seeing horrors, tragedies, and no one stands with us. The International Court of Justice ruled for us, but where’s the action? We’re alone. 

Interviewer 

– Do you think you will survive this war? 

SUHAILA HAMED SA’AD: 

– No. Zero chance. I told you: I sleep feeling like I won’t wake up. It’s normal. Thanks be to God. If He wills us to be martyrs, it’s better than this torture. Because, I’m telling you, we are not living—we are dead. These tents are graves above the earth. What’s the difference if we’re buried under it? Nothing. We’re being tortured, watching the explosions, the despair—it’s destroying us mentally and physically. 

MOHAMED DARWISH MUSTAFA SA’AD: 

Honestly, it’s difficult. We’ve faced death repeatedly. May God save us. I don’t expect to survive. I’m not optimistic. Destruction, terror, fear, humiliation. Only faith in God. As for faith in the war ending? Sadly, we’re not hopeful. 

SUHAILA HAMED SA’AD: 

Who can we have faith in? In whom? There’s no one. We’ve lost everything. Everything. Only our breath remains. And we wait, minute by minute, for it to leave us. 

MOHAMED DARWISH MUSTAFA SA’AD: 

Frankly, we are beyond exhausted. We lost our children, homes, livelihoods, work—Gaza has no life left. Life is over. I mean it. I’m 73. I’ve seen many wars, but never like this. This is genocide. 

MUKARAM SA’AD MUSTAFA HLIWA: 

I hope to walk again after my injury. I have a broken hip, I need a replacement. They approved my transfer, but I’m afraid if I leave, I’ll be exiled. They’re saying that those who leave can’t return. But why? I’m leaving for treatment—why exile me? I am from this land. I am Palestinian. I want my country. I want treatment, but I must return. I’m not leaving to emigrate. I don’t want to abandon my country. That’s what I fear.

On October 13, 2023, a group of well-marked journalists transmitting a live feed of an Israeli military outpost from Lebanon came under fire. An Israeli tank shell struck their location, severely injuring AFP photojournalist Christina Assi. In this same attack, Al Jazeera correspondent Carmen Jokhader was severely injured and Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed. Issam Abdallah’s death marked the first of a series of Lebanese journalists killed by Israel. TRNN reports from Lebanon, speaking with journalists who continue to report on Israel’s war crimes even after they have been targeted and injured and their colleagues have been killed.

Producer: Belal Awad, Leo Erhardt
Videographer: Kamal Kanso
Video Editor: Leo Erhardt
Fixer: Bachir Abou Zeid

Transcript

Narrator: On October 13, 2023, a group of well marked journalists transmitting a live feed of an Israeli military outpost from Lebanon came under fire. An Israeli tank shell struck their location, severely injuring AFP photojournalist Christina Assi. 

Her AFP colleague, Dylan Collins, was also present alongside teams from Reuters and Al Jazeera. 

Christina Assi: 

We didn’t understand at first what happened, it’s when I looked at my legs that I knew that they were gone. I started screaming for Dylan. Because I couldn’t find him because of the smoke and the chaos, you don’t understand anything at first. Suddenly you can’t stand, even though you were just standing just now. And you’re thinking about your team too: “Where are they?” So, Dylan runs up to me, and says: “OK, OK, I want to tie a tourniquet.” I’m just screaming, after seeing my legs. So he’s trying to help me and Ilia from Al Jazeera comes too. He says “now you have the tourniquet, stay near the wall.” He wasn’t able to finish his sentence before they hit us the second time. And it hit the Al Jazeera car directly, and here Elie gets injured too, and Dylan disappears and the car next to us starts burning. And I don’t understand that I’m going to burn. It’s all right next to me. I say to myself: “OK, just move away from the fire.” I couldn’t stand so I started shuffling with my body. My vest was a size too big and it was very heavy, the camera was strangling me, and the helmet. I couldn’t get anything off, I just needed to get away. The last thing I remember, we got to the hospital, they opened the door and asked “What’s your name?” I told them my name, and that’s it, nothing after that. Blank. 

Narrator: In this same attack, Al Jazeera correspondent Carmen Jokhader was severely injured and Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed. Issam Abdallah’s death marked the first of a series of Lebanese journalists killed by Israel. 

Christina Assi: 

Issam was one of the first people to support me after I decided I want to be a photojournalist because in Lebanon it’s mostly men in this domain. Issam was one of the first people to support me in this. He used to love to joke, and he loved life. He loved to go out and to eat. He loved to go out and about on his moped and wander and do stuff. 

Narrator: Nour Kilzi is a Legal Researcher from the Lebanese non-profit Legal Agenda. She has been documenting attacks on civilians and journalists in Lebanon since the start of this latest war. 

Nour Kilzi: 

The Israeli aggression on Lebanon was targeting in a clear way, a huge number of civilians, among them journalists who were doing their jobs documenting the crimes that are taking place. The worst attacks, we can say, was the attack that resulted in the martyrdom of Issam Abdallah, the attack on the Al Mayadeen team where Farah Omar and Rabih Me’mari were martyred and the attack in Aalma El Chaeb on a centre of journalists in Hasbaya.

Mohamed Farhat: 

Sadly, there are martyrs among our colleagues who have fallen as a result of this targeting. It’s clear the Israeli enemy is terrified of the word. It is terrified of the voice of the Lebanese people that is exposing its crimes. This is a new view of its crimes. We were sleeping in the journalists house, as you can see. This is the bedroom that I was in when it was targeted. 

Narrator: Mohamed Farhat, is a senior reporter at the independent Lebanese TV channel Al Jadeed. 

Mohamed Farhat: 

You look up and you don’t see the roof, you see the sky. Around you everything is black, dust and everything is smashed. Outside we found the car smashed, the SNG truck was completely overturned, closing off the road. We understood there was an attack. The first thing we thought to do was to shout out to the guys to check who was alive. We didn’t get response from three people. As I told you, we were staying in 8 buildings. We looked and found that one of the buildings had completely disappeared. We know that three guys were staying in this building, the three that were killed. We looked for them and found them dead. The strength of the explosion meant they were thrown far from the house, so it took a long time to find them. That’s how it happened: Israel hit us while we slept. Frankly. Everyone present in that residential area was a journalist. From local channels, Arab channels and international channels too. 

Christina Assi: 

It wasn’t a mistake. It’s possible for one missile to hit you by mistake, but not two missiles. And bullets: a machine gun opening fire, on top. So… it was an intentional targeting and they didn’t stop there. We have seen this is being repeated with many journalist colleagues, here or in Gaza. Yesterday they killed five in Gaza, they targeted them. And the colleagues who they killed in Hasbaya who were asleep: they were asleep! They weren’t even “on the ground”: they were asleep. There’s something unnatural happening, we can expect anything to happen—the crimes—and no one cares. It’s become that if you wear a press vest that’s it, you’ve become a target. Because you have worn this thing that’s supposed to protect you, it’s become the thing that actually puts you in danger. 

Either they [Israel] say yes it was a mistake, because of the fog of war. Or they accuse the journalist of belonging to a political party. They just bring any old reason to excuse their crimes. They can say what they want, but nothing excuses what’s happening. For them this kind of thing is allowed—so: why not? 

Nour Kilzi: 

The number of journalists that have been killed in Gaza is more than the number of journalists killed in any conflict on the planet in the last 30 years. So of course, it’s not by mistake that they’re killing journalists. There is a targeted killing. Of course the goal is the silencing of journalists, the narrative is shifting, disallowing the transmission of pictures of the

crimes that are happening. Especially because the narrative is shifting and people are becoming more aware of what Israel really is, its crimes and its brutality. 

Narrator: 

Ali Shouaib has been covering news in South Lebanon for 32 years. For many people here, he has become a familiar face. His news channel, Al Manar, is widely seen as sympathetic to Hezbollah. 

Ali Shouaib: 

The cameraman with me was sleeping in a different room with journalists from Al Mayadeen. I was sleeping in a room next door. The rocket hit the room they were sleeping in directly. All three of them were killed. The whole compound was damaged. A large number of journalists were injured. The Cairo channel was also present with the cameramen, they also suffered serious injuries. MTV was present, Al Jadeed was present, Al Jazeera was present. Many different journalists were present. 

Narrator: 

Working at Al Manar, makes Ali Shouaib even more of a target, and not only for the Israeli military. 

Ali Shouaib: 

I have covered every war that south Lebanon witnessed. Every single war. Direct threats have been constant via the spokesperson of the Israeli Army and also there were multiple statements quoted in Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz. It got to the point that they were saying “the eyes and tongue of Al Manar,” and they mean by that, Hezbollah. As you can see, I don’t own anything other than a camera, a phone and a mic. These are the weapons that I use. I am a citizen, a civilian and even if I was speaking in the name of the resistance, no one can say that I own any weapons apart from the weapon of the word. The weapon of principle. 

Nour Kilzi: 

There were direct threats from the spokesperson of the Israeli Occupation Army towards media and political personalities, close to or affiliated with Hezbollah. In an attempt to create a narrative in people’s minds that these people, because of their political beliefs or because they have opinions or positions that intersect with Hezbollah, that they are legitimate targets. This is completely contradicted by international law. Civilians—and journalists—do not lose the protection afforded them by international law because they have a political opinion or even if they support one side of the warring parties. 

Ali Shouaib:

Israel is afraid of the truth. It’s afraid of reality. It’s true it’s a channel that opposes [Israel], we speak in the name of the nation. We are an occupied nation, it’s our right to defend ourselves with the word, against what we are being subjected to. 

Narrator: 

Fatima Ftouni, is a journalist working for Al Mayadeen, a Lebanese based pan-Arab news channel. 

Fatima Ftouni: 

I feel I have a responsibility towards my family and my people to document the aggression and crimes of Israel because wherever you step in the South there are crimes and the effects of the aggression. You can hear the sounds of explosions that the Israeli occupation is doing, that you can hear. We hear the sounds of the attacks, without any reaction—this is the natural reaction—we finish. As long as there’s no response to the Israelis, and as long as they are not held to account for these crimes, as long as the international community keeps looking away, it will not only continue its crimes, it will go further and further, in its intentional, purposeful, clear and open criminality. We’re talking about clear aggression—even medical crews, even nurses, even paramedics haven’t escaped these crimes. They killed everything. It’s got to the stage that they are bombing hospitals… Is there something worse that this? 

Mohamed Farhat: 

I’ve become convinced that Israel will never be held to account. For anything. From the first days of conflict between the various Arab countries and Israel, until today. Shireen Abu Akleh—does anyone doubt that Israel killed her? Israel has not been held to account. What’s happened in Gaza, what’s happened in Lebanon. The Israelis announced that it was them that targeted us in Hasbaya. They announced it! OK, so where is the accountability? Today: Israel is always above the law, and it always has excuses. Israel is protected internationally, and the powers that protect Israel are stronger than the law, stronger than the courts, stronger than everything. 

With regards to me, if—God forbid—there was a return to war, of course, I will go and cover. I won’t back down. I won’t stop. 

Christina Assi: 

Before I knew all this I didn’t really want to live, I wanted to die. The pain was enormous, more than you can imagine. And the morphine wasn’t helping. Yeh, I didn’t want to, I didn’t want—I didn’t want to stay living like this—with all the injuries. The moment I discovered that we lost Issam, this changed everything. It gave me a push: He took the whole hit. If it wasn’t for him, both of us would be dead. The difference of a millimetre or centimetre would have killed us both. So I have to go back and speak and say what happened. Although there’s no point, we’ve been talking since a year now for Issam, for Elie, for all of us.

At the 2025 National Membership Meeting of Jewish Voice for Peace in Baltimore, thousands of anti-Zionist Jews gathered to reaffirm their opposition to Israel’s occupation of Palestine and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians—and to reject the antisemitic notion that the political ideology of Zionism represents all Jews. In this vital and wide-ranging discussion recorded during the JVP gathering in Baltimore, TRNN’s Marc Steiner sits down with self-identified Palestinian Jews Esther Farmer and Ariella Aïsha Azoulay to discuss the complexities of Jewish identity and belonging today, the historical origins of Israel, and “the way that Zionism destroyed both Palestine and the diverse modes of Jewish life” that predate and reject the Zionist project.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay is a Palestinian Jew of African origins, film essayist, curator, and professor of modern culture and comparative literature at Brown University. She is the author of numerous books, including: Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism; The Civil Contract of Photography; and From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947-1950. 

Esther Farmer is a Palestinian Jew and native Brooklynite passionate about using theater as a tool for community development. She is former Ombudsman and Manager for the New York City Housing Authority, former United Nations representative for the International Association for Community Development and was an original founder of Teamsters for a Democratic Union. She is also a Jewish Voice for Peace NYC chapter leader and the director and playwright of “Wrestling with Zionism.”

Studio Production: Cameron Granadino, David Hebden
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner, it’s good to have you all with us.

Jewish Voice for Peace is having their national convention right here in Baltimore, and The Real News is there to bring you the story. Two of the leading participants in JVP are joining me in studio here at The Real News, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay is professor of modern culture and media and comparative literature, and a film essayist and curator of archives and exhibitions. Her books include Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism; Civil Imagination: A Political Ontology of Photography; The Civil Contract of Photography; and From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947-1950. Among her films: Un-Documented — Unlearning Imperial Plunder, and Civil Alliance, Palestine, 47-48. Among her exhibitions: “Errata” in Barcelona, “HKW” in Berlin; “Enough! The Natural Violence of the New World Order” that was done in Leipzig.

And we’re also joined by Esther Farmer, who is a Palestinian Jew, a native Brooklynite whose passion is using theater as a tool for community development. She’s the director of “Wrestling with Zionism,” a reader’s theater project in New York City, as well as the author of several published articles on theater and community development. Esther is an active member and part of the leadership team of Jewish Voice for Peace in New York City. And they join us here in studio.

So welcome both of you. It’s good to have you here. I’m really happy you could take the time from the conference to join us here for a little bit. One of the things that fascinated me about the two of you as I was going through all of your work — Not all of it, but going through your work, is that you both identify as Palestinian Jews. Can we talk about what that means? You never hear that. Maybe in certain circles you do, but in the rest of the world you don’t hear that notion, idea of Palestinian Jew and what that means and why that’s the way you identify.

Esther Farmer:  So my father was born in Hebron, Palestine. My grandfather was a Turkish Jew who went to Palestine pretty much to avoid the draft from World War I [Steiner laughs]. He was a draft dodger.

Marc Steiner:  Didn’t want to fight for the Turkish army.

Esther Farmer:  He was a progressive Jew, didn’t believe in war. I found out much later that the penalty for avoiding the draft was to be hung. So several Jews actually left. But he did not realize that since Palestine was a Turkish protectorate, he was drafted anyway, and that’s why they came to the United States. They came to New York.

So this was way before the Nakba and way before 1948. My family lived on the Lower East Side, they were very poor, and they were very anti-Zionist. So my family’s existence gives the lie to all Jews loved Israel, and certainly Ariella’s work really ties into that, that before the Holocaust, most Jews were not Zionists. So what does it mean to be a Palestinian Jew is that there was a country called Palestine, and it was Muslim, Christian, and Jewish. It was very diverse, and the vast majority at that time, 80%, were not Jewish, they were Muslim. So Israel was a creation of people who did not live there for their own interest.

Marc Steiner:  I want to get to that point because that’s really a critical point people don’t get about it, what Israel is and why it is. Ariella?

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  Yeah. So I think that first of all, we have to be reminded that the category of identity is a colonial category. And I was born into the Zionist colony in Palestine, and an identity was imposed on me at birth called Israeli identity. And this identity was fabricated 14 years before I was born, which means a synthetic identity that was meant to cultivate or to create a factory of Israeli babies, that their identity is predicated on their opposition to others who lived in this country, who lived in this place, which were defined Palestinians.

So when I’m speaking about these kind of human factories in the Zionist colony in Palestine, I’m speaking about the way that Zionism destroyed both Palestine and the diverse modes of Jewish life. Part of them took place in Palestine. My family moved to Palestine, my maternal side, they were expelled together with Muslims when the first white Christian state was created in Spain, when Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain. So they moved from Spain to Portugal, France, Austria, Bulgaria, and then Palestine, way before the Zionist movement started to colonize or to aspire to colonize Palestine.

So they were Palestinian Jews in the very factual way. They were part of Palestine. And this is not a colonial identity, this is a form of belonging. And when I’m saying that I’m a Palestinian Jew, it is a way of undoing, first of all, the identity that was imposed on me at birth, that I’m not recognizing myself in it, and all the other colonial identities that await for me like American or like French. So claiming that I am a Palestinian Jew is claiming a form of belonging that was the form of belonging of my maternal ancestors. From my paternal side, we were Algerian Jews. And both identities were destroyed. Both forms of belonging, sorry, not identities were destroyed through two colonial projects: the French colonization of Algeria on the one hand, and the Zionist colonization of Palestine. So being an Algerian Jew, a Palestinian Jew, a Muslim Jew is a mode of reclaiming my ancestral modes of belonging.

Marc Steiner:  I love that. Both of you have really interesting stories, very powerful stories. I want to dive back into that. But I was thinking as you were talking that, and I’ve wrestled this a lot and I’ve written about this, which is that if there had been no Holocaust there’d be no Israel. I mean, that’s the fundamental… Most Jews were not interested in being Zionists. They were in the socialist movements here. They were doing whatever they were doing, whatever we were.

Esther Farmer:  I don’t know about that.

Marc Steiner:  OK, please go ahead.

Esther Farmer:  I mean, I don’t know how we could know that, but there’s an assumption there that the imperialist powers at that time wouldn’t have… I mean, they certainly used the Holocaust and the sympathy of the world, or the Zionists claimed that they absolutely had to have Israel, and it was seen as some kind of reparation or something. But as my father used to say — Also, I love Ariella’s work because it puts a context to things that my family would say is that the Zionists love Israel and they hate Jews. And I think that says a lot. So I don’t know that the imperialists wouldn’t have created Israel one way or another. I don’t know. I just think it’s an assumption.

Marc Steiner:  Good.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  Maybe I can complete it from a different perspective.

Marc Steiner:  Yeah, please.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  I think that we cannot say that if there [were] not the Holocaust there won’t be the state of Israel. We have to ask ourself what is the continuity between the Holocaust and the state of Israel? In order to reply that we have to go back in time because the Holocaust didn’t arrive from nowhere.

OK, if it didn’t arrive from nowhere, we have to ask ourself what did Europe want from the Jews in order to have the Holocaust and then to force on the Jews all over the world to be represented by the Zionists that destroyed Palestine and created the state of Israel as the destiny of the Jewish people. For that, I invite in my book, The Jewelers of the Ummah, have it here with me, A Potential History of the Jewish Muslim World. What I invite people to look at is in the wake of the French Revolution, when the modern citizenship was invented, Jews who lived in France were not part of the citizenship. They were “given” this citizenship a few years after the French Revolution.

But what interests me is not the fact that the Jews were naturalized in the wake of the French Revolution. What interests me is the price that they had to pay in order to become citizens. They had to forget that they were Jews. And forgetting that they were Jews, this was a European project. So eliminating the Jews either by assimilating them into the Christian world or assimilating them into what the Euro American powers invented in the wake of World War II as the Judeo Christian tradition, or eliminating the Jews through extermination, all these are part of the same project: what to do with the Jews. Europe invented the Jews as a question, as a problem. And at the same time that Europe invented the Jews as a problem, they also invented the “solution” to make out of diverse Jewish communities a Jewish people with a destiny.

This brings us to the beginning of the 19th century. [At] the beginning of the 19th century, they invent Palestine as a question, and they invent the Jews as a question, and they merge both questions. Napoleon, Napoleonic Wars already saw the possibility of transferring the Jews to Palestine. So this connection between Palestine and the Jews is something that Europe invented way before the Nakba.

And the last point in time that I would like to bring to our conversation is in the wake of World War II. After the Holocaust, Euro American powers imposed what they called [the] new world order. They created the UN as the organ to facilitate their solutions to different people. The Jews were in displaced person camps in Europe from ’45 to ’48. The Zionist movement was a marginal movement in the life of Jews, worldwide, marginalized movement. In the Jewish Muslim world, it has almost no presence.

And Europe, that was responsible for the extermination of the Jews, had to innocent itself, making Europe innocent, making Europe one of the liberating powers, had to what was relied on the exceptional of the Nazi, which legitimized all the European colonies and the exceptionalization of the Jewish suffering. This double exceptionalization and the recognition of the Zionist as representative of the Jews, which means those who were mandated to destroy a diverse Jewish life all over the world in Asia, in North Africa, in many other places. And the Zionists were mandated to destroy Palestine. This was part of Europe and Euro American powers, part of their response to what to do with the Jews.

So if we speak about the final solution by the Nazis as an extermination, the final final solution or the post final solution was to impose on the Jews a state that will be, for them, at the price of Palestine, at the price of the destruction of diverse Jewish communities.

Esther Farmer:  Which is fascinating to me because it’s the way that Zionism is so deeply antisemitic.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  It is antisemitic, obviously.

Esther Farmer:  By homogenizing.

Marc Steiner:  Let’s jump into that. Please go ahead.

Esther Farmer:  Well, just by homogenizing, and now it’s being used [crosstalk] —

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  [Inaudible] form of Jewish life, except the Zionist one.

Esther Farmer:  Right. And it’s this way of Jews being used. That was something that my family taught me very deeply in my DNA, that Jews are used by imperialists for their own interests. And the creation of Israel was so much about that. And yet, we’re all supposed to say that, as Jews, we all love Israel, which is the most antisemitic thing possible. And of course for me, as someone who comes from a very strong leftist Jewish background, what Israel is doing is a travesty.

And back to that question of the Zionists, love Israel and hate Jews, that incident that happened when there was a boatload of refugees and they were coming to the United States and they were turned away. They weren’t interested in going to Israel. They wanted to come to the United States. And the United States turned them away, and the Zionists were fine with that as long as the United States supported Israel.

So it’s just a perfect example in your face of how Jews and Israel are not the same thing, but we have been inundated with propaganda to make our identities. Ariella’s work is so fascinating to me because they’ve literally erased our memories and have changed the narrative and the dialogue to the point where it’s unrecognizable as to who people are. And now Christian nationalists are telling us what it is to be a Jew, which the IHRA definition says that you’re only a Jew if you support Zionism. So they’re literally erasing our memories and history.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  Yeah, no, this goes back to Napoleonic Wars and Napoleon, who codified what is Judaism, who invented the Jewish [inaudible] story, who created Jewish life as a pyramidal modes of being, who are entangled being Jewish with the state in a way that the state, the states, different states can tell us today, what does it mean to be a Jew? And there are bad Jews and good Jews, and the anti-Zionists are being considered the bad Jews. And those are Christians who never reckoned with their antisemitism or anti Judaism with their racism toward many groups that are telling us what does it mean to be a Jew?

And I would like just to add that Europe, in order to innocent itself from its crimes against the Jews, first of all, imposed the state of Israel or imposed the Zionists as representative of the Jews, but also exchanged with the enemy of the Jews and created Palestinians, Arab, and Muslims as the enemies of the Jews.

And these were never our enemies. If the Jews had a systematic enemy, this was Europe. For centuries, Jews were expelled from one place to another in Europe. And it ended up with a project that is being called, as a euphemistic term to describe it, was called the emancipation of the Jews in the 18th century and the 19th century. What is this emancipation? This emancipation meant to kill the Jew within the Jew.

I think that here in the US, we have to think about it as similar to the project of killing the Indigenous within the Indigenous. It’s like the boarding schools. So on a global scale, Europe killed the Jew within the Jew, and many of the members of what is being called here in a way that always surprises me, American Jewry, many of the members of this community don’t even remember that they belong to other communities that were destroyed by Europe. American Jewry is an invention, is an amalgamation, is another amalgamation that is built on the European amalgamation of the Jewish people in the 19th century. So we have to be reminded also that Zionism started as a Christian movement. The colonization of Palestine was a Christian ideology before it became a Jewish Zionist ideology.

Esther Farmer:  It’s interesting that I remember when Biden said, if we didn’t have Israel, we would have to invent it. Which is, again, the most antisemitic thing in the world —

Marc Steiner:  Very telling.

Esther Farmer:  — Are you saying that Jews are not safe where they are? So we’re not safe here, so we have to create Israel, and you support that. You can’t get more antisemitic than that. But where are the Zionists? Where’s the outrage from the Zionist around that statement?

Marc Steiner:  You both have just said so much [laughs] that we can stay here for hours just pulling it all apart and really taking a deep dive here into all of it that you’ve said. What both of you have pointed out on one level, a number of levels, you have on one level is how antisemitism drove Zionism, in many ways, to create Israel for the power of the West, as I put it once a long time ago, is to force refugees, to create refugees.

And what you’ve all described, how do you take that and make it understood both politically and socially in this country? So some of the Zionist leaders will immediately call you and me self hating Jews. That’s the first thing they’ll say. But how do you take what you’ve just described and get people to really understand and put their hands around what it really means, how Israel was really created, what it stands for, and what it’s done to us?

Esther Farmer:  Well, we are doing this conference now where we have 2,000 anti-Zionist Jews in a room. 15 years ago, be lucky if you got 15 [Steiner laughs] anti-Zionist Jews in a room. So this is happening right now because the impact of what Zionism has done is war, militarism, and imperialism. And that’s being seen now throughout the whole world. So our job in JVP is to move Jews, and everyone, away from Zionism, and that’s happening.

The issue is that the narrative, I mean, I’ve been doing this work for 50 years, and I have never seen the narrative the way it is right now. It has substantially changed, and that took a tremendous amount of work, and we’re proud of that work. So that’s happening. And yet the policies of the United States are still the same. So that says a lot about what so-called democracy is, when the majority of the country is with us, poll after poll is saying they are not supporting what Israel is doing, but yet that’s still the policy.

So I think these issues of identity and the relentless propaganda that has gone on since this Zionist, I dunno what you want to call it, experiment, has been both so destructive to Palestinians and to Jews, really, really destructive. And that’s why it’s so important for us to have this, as Naomi Klein says it, exodus away from Zionism.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  No, I think that just maybe we have to remind ourselves that there is genocide going on. It’s almost two years, and there are some common ways to understand what is genocide, which is related to what was done by Lemkin and the UN the convention against genocide.

But I think that we have to maybe ask other questions about genocide. Rather than defining what is genocide, understanding that settler colonial regimes are genocidal regimes, and the state of Israel is a genocidal regime that serves the West, serves the West to “solve” the Jewish question another time in its history, and serves the West to have its mercenaries in the form of Israelis.

And I think that it became very clear that since October 2023, without the arms and the money and the propaganda machine all over the world, in the Western world, in what you call policies, and state apparatuses, the persecution of voices that are denouncing the genocide, without all these Western powers, the genocide will not last more than 1, 2, 3 weeks.

Israel does not have the power to have a genocide. Israel itself would not survive in ’48 without the destruction of Jewish diverse communities without forcing the Jews in Europe, the survivors to go to Palestine rather than to rebuild their communities in Europe, without inciting violence in the Jewish Muslim world and making the life of Jews in the Jewish Muslim world impossible in a way that they slowly, slowly, this world was dismantled and Jews had to leave. Most of them did not want to go to Palestine. The case of Algeria in ’62, at the moment of the end of the War of Independence —

Marc Steiner:  For Algeria.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  — In Algeria, only 20% of the Jews were forced to leave Algeria because two colonial projects forced them to leave Algeria. Only 20% went to the Zionist colony in Palestine. The rest of them went to Canada and France.

So they were not Zionists. So we have to understand that the state of Israel was sustained with Western power. It was not an expression of a Jewish liberation project. It was a European project, Euro American project to reorganize the entire world to create what they called the Jewish Judeo Christian tradition, which never existed, to remove the Jews from the Jewish Muslim world —

Marc Steiner:  Which did exist.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  Yeah — To create Palestine as, allegedly, a state for the Jews, and to turn Palestinians into an exterminable group. So when I relate to the term genocide, when I wrote several texts since the beginning of the genocide, I put aside the legal definition of genocide, and I am trying to reconstruct how the genocide against Palestinians started. And it started in the wake of World War II when Western power, through the mediation of the UN, decided that Palestinians are exterminable for the sake of Zionists, for the sake of creating a Zionist state.

So rather than speaking about genocide as an event, I speak about genocidal regime, I speak about genocidal technologies. And when you understand the genocidal regime, you understand that already the Nakba was the beginning of the genocide because Palestinians were exterminable. They had to pay the price, they could be exterminated because their presence there was an obstacle for the imposition of the “new world order”, which was a Euro American project of innocenting Europe of its crimes against the Jews and of its crimes against other colonies.

We have to be reminded that in 45 European powers — And we’re speaking about the British, the French, Spanish, they still had colonies in different places in the world. So by exceptionalizing the Nazi, by exceptionalizing the suffering of the Jews, they actually continued to run the world and not to reckon with their crimes against the Jews and against other racialized communities.

Esther Farmer:  One of the things that gets me always is when people say, well, Israel has a right to exist, as if the country was established by God. Countries are created by the powers that be for their own interests. When I was growing up, there was no Bosnia. This was created, generally not created by the people that live in these places, it’s created, as Ariella was saying, by the Western world for their imperialist interest. So I don’t know why this country of Israel has any more right to exist than anybody else.

And I think there’s a difference between these countries and the people that live in them. But this idea that countries, that Israel has a right to exist, it’s just so interesting. It’s an example of how the assumptions and how we’ve been trained to think in these ways around nation states and the creation of these things that just has nothing to do with our actual lived experience and history.

Marc Steiner:  So you both have said so much and given such deep analysis about where this is, in some ways, I think, that is not heard very often and really original. It’s not the way people describe what is being faced at this moment. And as you were speaking, 10 things were going through my head. One was, how do you take the analytical description that you both have given us and popularize that message so people understand it, so people can grasp it? Because the way you describe it, it’s very simple, very clear about what created this — I’m sorry, go ahead.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  No, no. It just occurred to me to think about it not as we would do this work — JVP does an incredible work, but it is not only about people doing this work, the genocide made it clear to millions that this is a genocide and Israel is a genocidal regime. I can write this book and this book and you can do your work, et cetera. But people are not stupid. And there is a moment when people understand they cannot do accelerated lessons that you take with someone who already did the work. But with the beginning of the genocide, millions went to the street, took it to the street to say, this is a genocide, and they’re being persecuted constantly. All these draconian laws, all these draconian policies of the Trump administration is because there are millions who are saying that this is a genocidal regime.

So the question is not how you bring these ideas. The question is maybe how we exit, as Naomi Klein said, Zionism, but how we exit the structures that imperial powers created as benign structures: Museums, archives, nation states, borders, naturalization, all these structures are against people.

So the questions are much bigger than how you transmit the lies of Zionism to other people. For me, the main question is outcome. That all the crimes that were committed against the Jews as if they never existed because the Jews were “received” a state, or the Jews received a citizenship. The question is how to bring the Jews to participate in the anti-colonial, general global anti-colonial struggle to decolonize this world. So it’s not only how you convince your parents or your siblings, it’s about how we exit from those institutions that were normalized as benign institutions, but actually they are reproducing the destruction of the world.

Marc Steiner:  So one of the things I think about as you all describe where we are and why we’re here, I think about historically here in this country that 70% of all the civil rights workers in the South when I was a civil rights worker in the South as a young man were Jews. 70% of all the white civil rights workers, civil rights workers in the South were Jews. And that we were the heart of the labor movement. We were the heart of the revolutionary movements in Europe. There’s a different spirit, I think, that has to be grasped and put out there, a different heritage and tradition of who we are, as opposed to having it being defined by this Zionist domination that was pushed and created by the imperial powers, as you were talking about, so they have a beachhead in the Middle East and they figured out what to do with the Jews.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  But the example that you bring is very interesting because Jews participated in the Civil Rights Movement. They were in solidarity with the Black. They didn’t fight their own struggle as part of it. And I think that what JVP maybe today offers is how to think about the liberation aspirations of the Jews together with the liberation aspirations of other groups.

And I think that what happened with the US, what happened with this kind of erasure of what Europe did to us, what Euro American did to us, is the removal of the Jews from the history of colonization in a way that the Jews from a long time did not have a project of decolonization while they were still colonized. To act only as a blank American citizen in the movement for the Civil Rights Movement means not understanding how much Jews were still colonized. So they could act as blank citizens, but not as Jews who are affirming this as their own struggle. They struggle for Black Americans.

And I think that here there is a very interesting thing for Jews to do in the US, is to reclaim their histories. How come they became American Jews? How come their history is a very short history, the history of their life in America? Where is their history in Europe? What was taken from them? There are traditions, there are beliefs, there are many things [that] were taken from them. There are possibilities to live their life there. So I’m not speaking about in terms of returning to Europe, but I’m speaking about reclaiming their histories. If the Jews will reclaim their histories, they will not be blank citizens in empire, only joining other struggles.

And I think the JVPs, that maybe the first time that there is a broad Jewish movement in the US where Jews are speaking about what was taken from them. And cementing Zionism as their identity is part of what was taken from them. But there is much more to that.

Esther Farmer:  I feel very personally angry at Zionism from my experience as a leftist Jew. My father was a union organizer, and I grew up with that history of, as you say, in the labor movement and Jews. And I have always felt, and I have seen this with my own eyes, how this Zionist project has moved Jews to the right in the way that you are describing, has moved Jews in the direction where it’s unrecognizable to me. That’s the other way in which I see Zionism as so antisemitic. The whole history of Jews being for justice, even in the biblical text and stuff, it’s just completely thrown away by only us.

My mother used to say, we are Jews for justice, not just us [Steiner laughs]. That was the history, what it meant to me to be a Jew. And in Ariella’s work, it’s like a deliberate attempt to erase an understanding of Jews as standing with the oppressed in the world. That’s interesting what you said about… From my family, I did experience that connection between what happened to the Jews and other people, that solidarity. I did feel that, and I think that there were other people who did feel that. But I also think that there was a deliberate attempt to break that memory in some ways, though I think that’s what’s so interesting about what we’re talking about.

Marc Steiner:  I think the reason… I’m not usually at a loss for words because that’s how I make my living, but one of the things that really struck me about this conversation we’ve had so far is that it’s one that doesn’t take place in very many places, where there’s an introspection about Jewish history and Jewish life and what it means in what we face today and how we’ve become sucked into this imperial world oppressing Palestinians. And when I was a kid, it was the fight against Jewish store owners in inner city neighborhoods that we used to boycott and go after because of what they were doing. But now becomes a prominent aspect of American Jewry at this moment. And I think the way you two describe this, the depth of which you describe this is something I think that people need to wrestle with. Beyond JVP.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  There are many initiatives. If we see millions in the street protesting against the genocide, many of them are organized in different collectives. Strike MoMA, making munches, Beit Kohenet, so many collectives, small, middle size that are reclaiming their Jewish heritage. And reclaiming their Jewish heritage is saying, we are not white. Try to whiten us, this is what they’re saying, but Jews were never white.

So while accepting as part of the Jewish identity in the US, it’s something that always strikes me, accepting this category that the Jews are white is accepting to erase their history. They were first racialized, their histories were destroyed in order to tell them, we give you the passage to pass as white, but Jews are not white. So I think that we cannot see the millions in the street protesting against the genocide and believe that there is only JVP. JVP is very powerful, very broad because you have branches in different cities, but there are many, many initiatives all over to reclaim what was taken from the Jews.

And what was taken from the Jews, part of it is, major part of it today, their history as victims of genocide, and now the Zionists are perpetrating genocide that implicate the entire Jewish community because of a long history of conflating between Zionists and Jews. Because when the West recognized the Zionists as representing the Jewish people with no reason to recognize them, but it served the interest of the West, it created a conflation. And this conflation took from the Jews many things that people are struggling to today to introduce a distance from them and from this identification or this false mode of being represented by the state of Israel and the Zionist without renouncing the responsibility to continue the struggle against the genocidal regime.

Marc Steiner:  So as we conclude here, I was thinking about this neofascist regime that exists in Israel and this neofascist regime that’s taking over the country that we live in here, and all the experience the two of you have had and the creative work you’ve done and the political work you’ve done, and where you see the hope and where we’re going, where you see the struggle going, and what we face right now. Seeing JVP grow as it has is amazing, and other groups are there, but the right is really on the rise. And in many ways, as you were alluding to, the right often uses Jews, and people get sucked into the right. So where do you both think this takes us all, after all your years of struggle and being parts of movements in your work?

Esther Farmer:  Hits the horror and the hope every second. Across the street you’ve got 2,000 anti-Zionist Jews, that’s the hope. And we have this fascistic thing, is this really happening right now? Again, I think it’s a really interesting moment when the majority of the country is with us, and yet we still have these policies now. That contradiction is only going to grow.

I think there’s so much grassroots organizing going on, not just from JVP, in so many areas, and it’s really important, I think, this concept of intersectionality and solidarity is extremely important. And that’s the hope is the solidarity and the intersectionality of our movements.

And as Ariella was saying, it’s a worldwide thing. It’s not only about Israel, it’s not only about Palestine. It’s this whole way of understanding even how nation states are organized. I struggle with that myself because I come from a time when national liberation struggles were a very progressive thing and people wanted independence. And then there are these states that exist, and have they helped the world? Have they not helped the world? What does that mean to have the world organized by these nation states? Is there a difference between anti-colonial and decolonial? These are interesting questions that are coming up right now, for me, anyway. So yeah, I think there is hope. There is organizing going on. People are moving, and both sides are moving very fast.

Marc Steiner:  Yes, they are.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  So if I may just pick on something that you said right now, I don’t think that these were a national liberation movement. These were anti-colonial movements that were intercepted by the colonizers to become national liberation movements. All the process of decolonization of Africa was intercepted by the West through the creation of the UN. We have to be reminded that in 45, there were several 40, 45 states in the world. Today we have 200 states, which means that the decolonization of Africa, decolonization of Asia, rather than being decolonized from the imperial powers, the imperial powers created [an] international organization that imposed that the only way to decolonize a place would be to create a nation state.

Esther Farmer:  That’s very interesting.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  So I don’t think that these were national liberation struggles. These were anticolonial liberation struggles that were intercepted by the West. In Algeria, it’s very typical. It was an anticolonial struggle and it ended up with an independent state from where the Jews, Algerian Jews, had to leave because this was the model that is built on the purification of the body politic from elements that do not fit there. So the Jews didn’t fit here, and the Jews didn’t fit there, and the Jews didn’t fit there, and others didn’t fit there, and we got the new world order.

One comment about what you said, I don’t think that in Israel it is a neofascist regime. Israel is, as I said earlier, a genocidal regime to begin with. The fact that Netanyahu ran this genocide cannot make us forget that the genocide against Palestinians started in ’48. The destruction of Palestine, the destruction of the Palestinian society didn’t start with Netanyahu. And this phase of the genocide is horrible and is the highest in terms of casualties, but it is not the highest in terms of the destruction of the Palestinian society.

And when you ask about hope, if there is hope, it is in a global decolonial transformation of the world. Because all these structures that enabled 45 [states] to impose another settler colonial state as a liberation project for the Jews while it was a project of liberation of Europe from its crimes to appear in the world as the liberator. So I think that the fact that those organs continue to exist as benign organs, museums, for example, that looted so much of ancestral worlds of Black, of Jews, of Muslims, and impose themselves as the guardians of this culture while they participated in the decimation of the material culture of so many people.

So I think that there is a lot of work to be done in order to undo imperial plunder, to undo the imperial organization of the world, and not only to speak about throwing away this or that government. It’s about stopping the genocidal regimes that are still being recognized as [a] benign democratic regime with an accident, with [a] side project that should be reformed. Israel cannot be reformed. Israel is a genocidal regime. And Israeli state apparatuses should be dismantled in order to allow the return of Palestine in which Jews will also be part of it as one of the minority groups and not as the governor, the masters of the land.

Marc Steiner:  I want to say that this has been one of the best conversations I’ve had in a long time, and mostly because I didn’t do much talking at all, which is great. I think you both brought a very profound and different analysis to this conversation that’s not often heard, and I wish we could sit here for the next three hours, but we can’t. And I just want to say thank you to Ariella Azoulay, and to you both, Esther Farmer, for being here today and being part of this conversation.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  Thank you for inviting us. It was a pleasure.

Esther Farmer:  Yes. Thank you so much for having us [crosstalk].

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  Pleasure to share the floor with you.

Marc Steiner:  I deeply appreciate it, really. The joke from my friends that were listening, Marc, you didn’t say anything. It’s OK because what came out of this, I think, was something that people have to really wrestle with about where our future is going, not just as Jews, not just as Israel Palestine, but in terms of where the world is going and why this is so central to all of that.

Esther Farmer:  And there’s something very liberating about thinking about the world without nation states or thinking about the world without borders. Can we have those imaginations? Can we think beyond what they’ve given us, that we have to think that way? Can we think beyond that? And now maybe is a moment, the horror and the hope, where we can think in different ways.

Marc Steiner:  We have to. Thank you both so much for taking all this time.

Esther Farmer:  Thank you.

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:  Thank you.

Marc Steiner:  See you back at the JVP conference.

Once again, thank you to Ariella Aïsha Azoulay and Esther Farmer for joining us today. And thanks to David Hebden and Cameron Granadino for running the program, and audio editor Alina Nehlich, and producer Rosette Sewali for always working her magic behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today and what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Ariella Aïsha Azoulay and Esther Farmer for being our guests today here on The Marc Steiner Show at The Real News. And remember, we can’t do this without you, so please share, join our community by clicking on the subscribe button right below here and support The Real News Network. Do it now. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

Antisemitism is a real, violent, and pervasive scourge that spans the globe, but as anti-Zionist Jews like Molly Kraft argue, conflating opposition to Israel with antisemitism will make Jewish people less safe, not more. “Any systematic review of antisemitism must separate antisemitism from the Israeli state’s claims to represent all Jewish people, or more precisely, all Jewish safety,” Kraft writes in The Grind. “This is both because no colonial state can provide safety as it destroys and expels Indigenous populations, but also because Jewish safety will only come through the destruction of all oppressive systems.” In the latest installment of “Not in Our Name,” a Marc Steiner Show series bringing together voices across the Jewish world speaking out against Israel’s Occupation and destruction of Palestine, Marc Steiner speaks with Kraft about the need to accurately identify and fight antisemitism while forcefully rejecting Zionists’ attempts to weaponize antisemitism to perpetuate genocidal violence and justify repressive censorship.

Molly Kraft is a Canadian labor and community organizer, writer, a founding member of the Jews Say No to Genocide Coalition, and co-founder of Standing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) – Toronto.

Producer: Rosette Sewali
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show, here at the Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us. And this is another edition of Not in Our name, and today we’re talking to Molly Kraft, who’s in Canada. She’s a union and grassroots organizer over 20 years experience organizing and she is motivated to support movements to win by building collective power to tear down all kinds of oppressive systems of showing up for racial justice. Toronto Jews say No to genocide, their national coalition in Canada of anti-Zionist groups. She’s been works at this intensely. She lives in Toronto, as I said with her partner. They have two children. She fights for justice, that’s her life’s work and also organizes with the nurses union. So she’s a busy woman and takes time out for us today. Welcome. Good to see you, Molly. Good to have you here.

Molly Kraft:

Thanks, Marc. You

Marc Steiner:

Wrote this article that I thought was really, really well done and powerful and it’s called, and we’re going to link to this here so you all can read it yourselves. It’s in a magazine called The Grind To Fight Antisemitism, we need to accurately identify it. Too often we’re failing. So one of the things that really struck me about the piece that you wrote is this, the difficulty of really getting to the heart of both antisemitism, the death of its history for thousands of years, people trying to wipe us off the face of the earth, but then in comes the state of Israel, which intensifies antisemitism while it oppresses Palestinians and forgets our own struggles for survival and fighting for justice. So talk about how you put that together and your theory of all that.

Molly Kraft:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think it’s important to position myself so that people understand why I would make this claim. So I’m the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and they fled and lost their whole families and ended up in displaced persons camps and are highly traumatized from the Holocaust. And even my aunt, so I’m not even really technically a full third generation. My mom’s sister died in a concentration camp. So my mom was lucky enough to be born in the United States. My mom met my dad in Canada, and I grew up with a very clear understanding that it was only because of people who fought for justice, that my grandparents were saved and brought over to the United States by being sponsored by friends of friends coming to Peoria, Illinois and being able to start their life. So my understanding of why oppression is able to lead to the mass murder of people is through the funding by state apparatus that allow those things to happen.

And so when I look at the history and the trajectory of antisemitism, which allowed the killing of my family, I see exactly to your point, the creation of Israel and the massive amount of funding backed by both Britain and then the US and now really global superpowers everywhere. To say that this is a state that is to do absolutely anything that it wants in the name of Jewish safety or fighting antisemitism, that actually that just replicates the kind of violence that we all fled from. And so the connection that I see is that Ashkenazi Jews, specifically in the West we’re able to come into whiteness, be welcomed into whiteness, be closer to power, to get to what they thought was safety, what we thought was safety, right? We’re going to become more like white people. We’re going to become more normal. We’re going to assimilated into American society, and that’s going to be our ticket away from these violent histories.

And Israel is going to be the primary place that makes this happen. We’re going to get away from the vision of that really weak Yiddish Jew, and we’re going to become this masculinized Israeli white like big buff, modern man Jew, and no one’s ever going to do that to us again. And that cozying up to whiteness, that closeness to whiteness, that closeness to empire, to imperial power then allows a state funding of a kind of impunity that we’ve really rarely seen before. And I think it’s important that we actually debunk it, pull it apart, say that this doesn’t actually, most of this doesn’t have to do with antisemitism anymore. It’s an imperial project. And that Jews have to identify the difference between real antisemitism, like you said, that has historical and painful roots, deeply connected to white supremacy and then criticism of the state of Israel and their absolute death cults, destruction of Palestine and the Palestinian people. And so it felt very important to me personally to say I have a stake in that as well because my own history is tied up in that narrative.

Marc Steiner:

Lemme tell you something, Lord, I have mercy. You laid out so much here. I got to figure out how to parse this out.

Molly Kraft:

Yeah, sorry. We’ll just slow

Marc Steiner:

Down. No, no, it’s great. It’s wonderful. It’s great because you gave us a kind of analytical history of why we’re here and who we are.

Molly Kraft:

I

Marc Steiner:

Think it’s really important. Lemme ask you a quick personal question.

Molly Kraft:

Yeah, absolutely.

Marc Steiner:

And then jump into this. So did you know your grandparents with numbers on their arms?

Molly Kraft:

No. So my grandparents were both very lucky. They survived through not being in camps. So they were actually communists and they were imprisoned because they were communist and because they were Polish, Russian polish, as soon as they got out of jail, their communist friends said, you’ve got to get out of here because you’re communist. They’re coming for you. So they left their daughter and one of them went and fought on the eastern front, and he actually survived the war through fighting the Nazis on the other side. So he was a survivor through never being in a camp. My bubba hid and snuck around and made it all the way again to a displaced person’s camp in Stuttgart, Germany. And they were reunited in that displaced person’s camp. So they are lucky enough to have never been in a concentration camp, but they did live for three years in a displaced person’s camp. And that’s where they had my second aunt. But the family members that I grew up with had numbers on their arms. So when I would go to Peac or any other family holiday in Fort Lauderdale, which is where they all ended up after living in New York,

Marc Steiner:

Where else would they go?

Molly Kraft:

Where would they go after living in New York City for many years. So at payback, people would show us these were the numbers on their arms, and it was very strict in our family. There was not going to be any tattoos on any part of our arms. We have tattoos elsewhere. But as Jews who were supposed to be respecting these elders, we were not supposed to do that. And we grew up with stories of this is part of you, it’s part of our blood, it’s part of our very much present in everything we do. It’s a joke, but it isn’t, I’m sure people have said this to you, but which Christian friends going to hide you? What will you do when the day comes that this inevitably returns? What will you do to survive? And that was very much a part of our identity growing up.

Marc Steiner:

That’s a very interesting story in itself. I mean, just growing up in a left Jewish family that survived the war, that could be a movie on its own.

Molly Kraft:

Yes, exactly.

Marc Steiner:

It could. So I really want to explore your thoughts on antisemitism and how that plays into what’s happening now in Israel Palestine, and also how this struggle against Palestinian oppression can also bubble up the antisemitism because of what Israel is doing. Not blaming Jews for antisemitism, but just saying because it’s there. So talk a bit about your analysis that you wrote about that incredible

Molly Kraft:

Article. Yeah, so that’s such a brilliant question, and if we can’t actually have this conversation, I don’t believe that we will ever be able to come to justice because I think that if the left does not have a sharp analysis of antisemitism, we will never be able to bring Jews over from Zionism. And I think what I mean by that is that antisemitism is so prevalent within our societies because we live in Christian dominant societies. Antisemitism is part of Christian dominant societies, just the same way patriarchy is. It’s the soil, it’s the air. So to imagine ourselves on the left as somehow outside of that is an error because it leaves Jews saying, wait a minute, I don’t want to be in this group because they don’t acknowledge it. I actually believe that the primary backlash to DEI comes from, at least in Canada, there’s a huge movement of white Jews who said, wait a minute.

I was forced to go into the white group with all the Christians to caucus and talk about whiteness, but nobody’s talking about antisemitism. And to give them credit where credit is due until the left is able to say antisemitism is a unique and specific form of discrimination that changes. And it is about the being cast out and being brought back in. And so what do we mean by that? Ashkenazi Jews have been sent out othered, and then in times when it’s convenient brought back in, when do we see that close? Clearly Donald Trump, anti-Semitic, literal Nazis in his circles would’ve cast out Jews when it was convenient. And now the bringing back in unquote of Jews, even though actually the neo-Nazis all are still in his inner circles, but using Jews very much as a scapegoat to do his own fascist state repression of free speech on campuses and education policies and funding of universities.

This is how antisemitism operates. That’s different than, for example, anti-black racism. Anti-black racism is a permanent pushing down, a permanent casting out. You are different because of blackness. You are far from whiteness. So we have to have an analysis on the left. That’s the first thing to understand how to have multiracial movements. Because if we don’t know what antisemitism is, we actually can’t include left Jews in these movements. So when we look at things like how we talk about Israel Palestine, what we so often miss is an analysis that says Israel by cozying up to imperial powers, by becoming best friends with the United States, this is not a coincidence. The money to mass murder children in Gaza, the money to occupy the West Bank, the direct movement of Michael from Brooklyn into a house, someone’s Palestinian’s house in the West Bank, these are not accidents. The United States imperial project of overtaking land in a very, very special place in this earth is intended to maintain white colonial power. And the Jews, I actually believe are a bit of a scapegoat in this. Unfortunately, this is a historical and biblical connection for Jews. We can debate how much or how little, that’s a whole other podcast,

But it’s not an accident that the United States is this invested in this genocide or in the displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank. And what happens is we don’t have an analysis of the fact that Christian Zionism, so there are more Christian Zionists in the world than there are Jews there absolutely believe more Christian Zionists even in the United States than there are Jews in the

Marc Steiner:

United States. Correct.

Molly Kraft:

So what we have to be able to say is that confluence of things, it doesn’t make antisemitism go away. It also doesn’t make it the biggest oppression of all time. There are bigger oppressions, especially because most Jews, it’s hard to say exactly how many, but most Jews globally are probably more like Ashkenazi, probably present more like white in societies where whiteness is the norm, that means that they are closer to power, which means that, for example, I do have the ability to not face discrimination all the time because most people probably don’t know that I’m Jewish. Again,

Marc Steiner:

To

Molly Kraft:

Distinguish from anti-black racism, it’s not the same form of discrimination. White Jews coming to America, I’m bouncing around here, but white Jews coming to America and cosing up to whiteness to try to escape those lineages of violence and try to get to safety have traded in saying that we have to fight all oppressions at the same time. And if we believed that we had to fight all oppressions at the same time, then we would’ve never displaced anyone from the West Bank. We would’ve never stolen occupied lands in Israel. Whatever land had been given, we would’ve co occupied because if we believed that all oppressions were interlinked, if we believed that our survival was bound up in the success of the Palestinians that already existed on that land, then we would be fighting that as co-conspirators. And so for me, it’s very obvious that Israel is a settler colonial project with an imperial power backing it.

And what I believe is so important for the left to be able to name is that that settler power backing it is the United States. It is Christian hegemony, it is imperial power that cares about gas and oil. These things matter because otherwise we get into, oh, the Jews in Israel have so much power. Oh, the reason the world is letting this happen is because it’s the Jews. And then you get into global conspiracy theories which are antisemitic in nature. And so as long as we can say Israel doesn’t have more power because of being Jewish, Israel has more power because Christian Zionism is invested in Israeli Jewish Zionism to flourish. That is an important piece of this story,

Marc Steiner:

Right? It is. And preach this to preach.

Molly Kraft:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Marc Steiner:

Right. So two quick questions in the time we have here.

Molly Kraft:

Yeah.

Marc Steiner:

So given the analysis you just laid out in the table for everybody to ponder, how does that affect the ability to organize in the Jewish world? Let’s start there in the Jewish world to move people over. I mean, you can see generationally now that more and more younger Jews, your generation and younger are moving over saying something’s wrong. What Israel is doing is not right. This is not who we are. We can’t be the oppressor. So talk about your experience in that kind of organizing and where you think that’s going.

Molly Kraft:

Yeah, I think it’s such a good point. And even just your own framing of that reminds us why it’s like if you tap into the humanity of most Jewish folks’ story, if you can get a little bit of distance from that trauma. That’s why I believe it is generational. I believe that my mom’s generation, the older generations are a little bit too close and there is a genuine traumatic response that does not tell people to say, I’m looking at other human beings. There is a full transference. I mean, Naomi Klein talks way better about this than I can, but a full transference of Nazis to Palestinians like the Palestinians have become the people that they did nothing to us, but instead we will avenge all of our trauma on them. So that space into this next generation. Exactly. To your point, I think that if you can tap into the humanity of what is happening to say there is absolutely no justification for the mass slaughter of innocent children, men, women, elders, hospitals, community clinics, places where people eat playgrounds.

Like most young Jewish people, if they are not being fed absolute propaganda and lies about their own safety, I think can see that if the reverse, if this was our story and we were talking about fighting Nazis that no one would, there would be no question. And so I think that you go into the place of what safety will come from this, where will you get, we do not end up in a safer place if every single one of these people is slaughtered. We end up in a place where there will be many more people who hate Jews. I personally believe that the rise of actual antisemitism is far worse because of the situation that we find ourselves in. And I believe that the Trump administration is key in this because of scapegoating. Now, Jews, and I’ve been listening to American news in the last couple of days, and I think Jewish Americans are starting to say the repression of Palestinian pro-Palestinian protestors in the states will only lead to more antisemitism because it looks like a Jewish conspiracy. It looks like the Jews in power are saying you don’t talk like that. You don’t get to say that you don’t get funding like global Jewish conspiracy much. It’s very playing into classic antisemitic tropes,

Marc Steiner:

Right?

Molly Kraft:

So I think when we speak to Jews in North America, white Jews about organizing, it has to be collective humanity, our own histories. How is our own liberation tied up in this? And where will you actually find safety in this? You will never, ever get safe through mass murdering children. It’s just not possible. And I think young people know that.

Marc Steiner:

Again, you’ve said so much here, and I think that there is this generational trauma. I mean, I spent a long time in the Zionist movement as a young person, Haman and the Marxist Zionist after, because we all grew up with those stories. I mean, in my family, my bubby, my grandmother who’s also Ashkenazi, and folks who are listening, Ashkenazi means Eastern European Jews. If you don’t know that, we grew up with those stories because there were people in our living room with numbers in their arms growing up. And my grandmother, my bubby, her story was chilling. When the cossacks attacked her, she told the Jewish ghetto she ran from them holding her little sister’s hand, and the cossack rode up next to them and lopped off her little sister’s head while she was holding her hand. So we grew up with these stories, and I think that in some ways what you’re saying is that we have to make other Jews understand other people as well. But other Jews understand that what is being done in our name in Palestine and Israel against Palestinians is no different than what happened to my bubby.

Molly Kraft:

Exactly, exactly.

Marc Steiner:

To bring people over emotionally to see this is not us. This is not who we should be.

Molly Kraft:

Exactly.

Marc Steiner:

And I think that your work and your words are just really profound. I want to tell you that I think they are, because analytically and dialectically kind of put these ideas together both in your article and the way you describe it. So I’m curious where you think as we conclude, we can stay for the next two hours. I know we can’t. Where do you think the struggle goes from here, given everything that’s going on right now with Gaza in Israel, with this rightwing government in the United States with right wing growing across the globe as well? Tell me your own analysis, where you think it goes and where historical goes now, especially when it comes to Israel Palestine.

Molly Kraft:

Well also thank you for sharing that story because I think it’s so telling of why you have the politics that you do, which is that if you really embody what that means to a human being’s life, you carry that. And it means that you look at every Palestinian child and you think of your bubby sister and you know that you are responsible. We always say there’s that amazing quote of, I want you to look at every child like they’re your child.

Marc Steiner:

Yes, my bubby used to wear her little sister’s necklace around her neck until the day she died.

Molly Kraft:

That’s so beautiful. And you carry the hope of fighting for that whoever that new little sister is each day. And we’ve heard too many countless stories of those little sisters in Gaza, and we are not doing enough to save them. So I believe the way we make those connections is through saying that the actual root of all of this is white supremacist colonial violence, and if we cannot tie all of our struggles together, then we’ll get nowhere. So for example, the reason the Democratic party has crashed and burned so hard is because those struggles have been separated. And the working classes of America are saying, actually, you don’t represent me anymore because you’re so fixated on only fighting for the elite, right? We have to say as white Jews that we are invested in fighting anti-black racism, anti Palestinian racism, fighting for indigenous sovereignty. And the reason that must be part of our struggle is because if we don’t make those connections, governments will take over and manipulate our, that is what is happening.

They will manipulate our struggles. So right now, antisemitism is being used to enact some of the most violent state sanctioned policies of fascist repression that we’ve probably seen since the McCarthy era, both in Canada and the United States. If you so much as say that you support Palestine, you have a chance of being deported, losing your job, we’re doxed a lot up here. I’m sure you guys are as well, where our public information is shared online, we’re threatened, our children are threatened, our jobs are threatened. That is happening because actually the people who are in power are white supremacists, neo-Nazis. They’re not invested in my safety. And it’s my job to say I know that because I understand. I have a clear seeing of the whole operation of power. I know that you don’t actually care about the safety of my neighbors, of my black neighbors, of my undocumented neighbors, of my native neighbors, of my disabled neighbors.

We must make cross intersectional analysis for our fights for justice in order to tie our struggles to others. I think that the question for Jews right now is very complicated, and I think it still remains to be seen where we are best positioned at the beginning of all of this. At the beginning of the genocide, it was so powerful to hear us say, not in our name, this will not happen. And now we’re being manipulated in that. And so I think we will have to continue to put our heads together to say, how can we support our Palestinian families across both North America and in Palestine by dismantling empire? And that is a bigger question because I actually think we’ll need our Christians in that, right? This isn’t going to go anywhere until we have mass public pressure saying that your tax dollars, my tax dollars are not going to pay for weapons. I read that ridiculous statistic at the beginning of the genocide, that it was only three days that if America cut off the supply of weapons, there was only a three day weapons supply because that’s how many weapons are using. So

If all taxpayers were invested in saying that needs to end now, maybe that’s our way through. I’m not so sure where Jews fit into that, but I do know that it comes from building coalition. We must build coalition, and we must be clear that these values are not Jewish. These values are not in leftist. They’re not in any tradition of a radical anti-oppressive fighting to say that we allow this kind of behavior and anyone who tells us that is manipulating us and is using Jews, I believe as scapegoat in order to do their bidding.

Marc Steiner:

Monica, I want to thank you so much for being here today. I mean, I just think that your analysis is really sharp and intense with its depth, and I really appreciate you taking the time here for the Marc Steiner show and not in our name. And we’re going to link to your article. People need to read it so well written. You’ll just sit and go through it. And I look forward to other conversations and staying in touch. Thank you so much for your work and putting everything on the line, and I appreciate you joining us today.

Molly Kraft:

Thank you so much, Marc, for having me. It was a real pleasure.

Marc Steiner:

Once again, let me thank Molly Kraft for joining us today with her brilliant and coaching analysis and ideas, and we’ll link to her work and her article from The Grind. It’s called To Fight Antisemitism. We need to accurately identify it. Too often we are failing. It’s brilliantly written, so I encourage you all to go there and read it. And thanks to Cameron Grino for running the program today and audio editor Alina Nek, who working her magic Roset Ali for producing the Marc Steiner show and the titleless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making the show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you Molly Craft for joining us today. It was a great conversation. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Mark Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening, and take care.

On Jan. 19, 2025, a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel went into effect—and, for an all-too-brief moment, the slaughter in Gaza halted. TRNN was on the ground in Gaza speaking with displaced Palestinians about their reactions to the ceasefire, the incalculable losses and horrors they had experienced during the previous 15 months, and their hopes for the future once they returned to the ruins of their homes. “I haven’t seen my family for 430 days,” journalist Mustafa Zarzour says. “I’ve been literally waiting for the moment to see my family—since the beginning of the war.”

Since the filming of this report, Israel broke the ceasefire agreement and re-launched its assault on Gaza, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stating that Israel had “resumed combat in full force.” Netanyahu further stated Israel’s intent this week to conquer and control the Gaza Strip, adding that Gaza’s remaining Palestinian population “will be moved.” According to the UN, 90% of Gaza’s remaining population have been forced from their homes, and no aid has been allowed into the Gaza Strip since March 2, 2025—the longest period of aid blockage since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023.

Producer: Belal Awad, Leo Erhardt
Videographer: Ruwaida Amer, Mahmoud Al Mashharawi
Video Editor: Leo Erhardt

Transcript

Khalil Khater:

Honestly, I felt happy but not so much. You feel like your heart is split. I mean, it’s true people are returning to their homes, but I don’t have a home. And still, it’s bittersweet. I lost my brother and his children. It felt like he died again when they announced the ceasefire.

Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:

A huge joy that can’t be described—I was overjoyed. The first thing I thought was: I will find my son and bury him. I want to go to Gaza City, find my house and bury my son and look for reminders of him—pictures, or some mementos of him. Anything really, that has his scent. God is greater. God is greater. God is greater. There is no God but Allah.

Mustafa Zarzour – journalist:

Frankly, there are mixed feelings. Between joy and the fact that we have forgotten the meaning of joy. Because we’ve spent 470 days witnessing bloodshed, air strikes, explosions, displacement. But today, something has returned to us—something like joy. Despite all the blood and all the loss—we have all lost—I lost my brother. This joy is because despite all that happened we are still steadfast.

Mohammed Rayan – Head of Admissions, Shuhada Al Aqsa Hospital:

Frankly, our pain is vast and our wounds are big, there’s not really a lot of room for joy, honestly. What we will do is visit the graves of our martyrs and pay our respects to them. Our feelings swing between happiness and despair, pain and loss, hope, and the immense suffering that our people will continue to endure in the coming days. The loss—because there is no home in the Gaza Strip that has not suffered loss.

Khalil Khater:

I love your uncle and your cousins, sweetheart. OK, I’ll stop crying—for you. We’ll go to Gaza, God willing, and see your grandpa. You can play with your cousins, because you miss them a lot, right?

Chantings:

God is greater. God is greater.

Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:

I lost my brother, my son, and my brother’s children. I lost two brothers who were taken prisoner. My family had already lost 18 martyrs. My mother, the embrace of my loving mother. My siblings in the North, I’ve missed them so much.

Khalil Khater:

What did the war take? First it took my health. I’m really exhausted. It took the most important people from me. It took them. That’s what it took from me. I lost my work—I was a kindergarten teacher. I lost my home, where I used to feel safe, where I raised my children. Life in a tent is really, really hard. And I lost my brother, of course I can’t get him back, only memories remain. God rest his soul. God rest his soul. Praise be to God in every circumstance.

Rayef Mustafa Al Adadla:

I shall search for my second martyred son, who hasn’t been buried. Then we will return to our homes and fill them. We will rebuild them to say: we rebuild our nation, no matter what the occupation destroys.

Khalil Khater:

I don’t want to return to our old neighborhood because that’s it—we were kicked out of our home. There’s no place for us there. Our neighborhood was near the border, there are a lot of houses that were destroyed, and the building we were in was bombed many times. The tower block next to us was also bombed repeatedly.

Rayef Mustafa Al Adadla:

My house is destroyed, but I will return to it. Despite all the circumstances, I will set up a tent on its ruins or beside it. I will stay on my land, beside my house. We won’t go far. We won’t abandon Gaza, and we won’t emigrate, because we are steadfast—like the mountains. We will stay beside it in the same area, God willing.

Mustafa Zarzour – journalist:

Our house was struck six times. It’s just rubble now, but we will organize this rubble and build again, God willing. What will I find? I’ll find rubble. Blood mixed with rubble. I’ll find ashes. I’ll find… body parts. I won’t find any people, but I’ll return, rebuild it, and live there. We will thank God and continue with our lives. We will move forward, get married, have children—all of us will do this, God willing.

Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:

My house was destroyed early in the war, on day four. I think I’ll find it bulldozed. I hope I will find some photos of my son. Some of his belongings, to remind us of him. All will be well, God willing. We’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.

Khalil Khater:

We’ve been waiting for a ceasefire for a long time. I didn’t sleep all night. I waited until 08:30 to hear them announce a ceasefire.

Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:

One and a half years. From the beginning of the war, I kept saying: “Tomorrow it will be over, tomorrow it will be over.” Hopefully—thank God—today, it’s over. God willing.

Mustafa Zarzour – journalist:

I haven’t seen my family for 430 days. I’ve been literally waiting for the moment to see my family—since the beginning of the war. From day one, I’ve been praying for it to end. We go, we come back again. We’ve been waiting to return for 470 days. Today, the feelings… I literally don’t know how to describe them. Beyond description. Peace means the oppressor and occupier leave all of Palestine—not just Gaza, and not just a ceasefire. Because this is a war of extermination. A war of extermination—where they committed every kind of war crime. It’s not two states. There is only one Palestine. They are the brutal occupier. So our peace is when the occupation leaves.

Mother of the Martyr Mohammed Wadi:

Peace and safety mean no massacres, no bodies, no mass extermination. No martyrs, no jets, no drones, no tanks.

Mustafa Zarzour – journalist:

God rest his soul—my older brother, who was my father’s successor, died. I want to see his kids. His kids are now my responsibility. So the first thing I want to do is see my brother’s children.

Khalil Khater:

When I truly believe that the war is over, I will go and throw myself into my mother’s arms. I don’t know… I’m sure that Gaza City will have changed. All its landmarks will have changed.

Freedom House, the $94 million, nominally independent “human rights” NGO, has been suspiciously quiet as the Trump administration disappears, imprisons, and deports activists opposing the US and Israel’s assault on Gaza. 

The arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil on March 8 kicked off an harrowing wave of free speech suppression aimed at those protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Over 300 high-profile arrests and deportation threats followed Khalil, including that of Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk, who has been rotting in a prison for 41 days for simply writing an op-ed critical of Israel in a student paper. She is being held in gulag-like conditions in a Louisiana prison, far from her family, despite the fact that the State Department’s own internal report found she broke no law. Since March 8, Freedom House has published dozens of reports, essays, blog posts, articles, media quotes and social media posts. But, strangely for an alleged human rights group, none have mentioned the White House’s unprecedented crackdown on free expression.

Freedom House’s own website makes clear that defending “free speech” is central to its mission. “Free speech and expression is the lifeblood of democracy, facilitating open debate, the proper consideration of diverse interests and perspectives,” they wax romantically. Which makes it all the more strange they have said nothing about these textbook cases of criminalizing freedom of expression. 

TRNN reached out to Freedom House several times for comment on their silence, or to explain why they haven’t issued a statement of solidarity with any of those who disappeared for Gaza activism, but the organization did not return our emails. Freedom House receives over 80% of its budget from the US State Department and, by its own admission, has been hit hard by Trump’s cuts to foreign aid. In their statement asking for private donors to fill the void left by the Trump cuts, they hinted at one reason why they are silent on Trump’s authoritarian crackdown—it seems only “America’s adversaries” can be authoritarian, not the US or its allies. “Freedom House has been severely impacted by the disruption of US foreign assistance,” they wrote, “and the termination of critical programs that Congress funded to counter America’s authoritarian adversaries and support the global struggle for democracy.”

So what happens when the US is the authoritarian in question? It seems the response is to simply act like the draconian suppression of speech doesn’t exist. Trump’s crackdown on Gaza activists isn’t the first time the US has been authoritarian, of course. The US has long had the world’s largest prison population by a wide margin, long had a deeply racist and unequal justice system, long visited authoritarian violence and economic hardship on other countries—including the underlying genocide in Gaza in question. 

But Trump’s deportation and imprisoning of people for—by the White House’s own admission—pure political speech marks a meaningful escalation that is clearly in conflict with Freedom House’s already limited, negative rights framework of “freedom.” Plenty of other freedom of speech organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights have aggressively defended Khalil and others by filing lawsuits, issuing statements, and making clear where they stand. Why hasn’t an organization with tens of millions of dollars like Freedom House done the same?

The answer is obvious: Freedom House is not an independent organization. They are, and always have been, a soft power organ of the US State Department that uses the thin patina of independence to meddle and concern troll the human rights abuses of “foreign adversaries” while downplaying and whitewashing those by the US and its allies. Israel, for example, always gets their nice green “free” label despite currently carrying out what Amnesty International labels a “genocide” and militarily occupying 4.5 million Palestinians who, even before Oct. 7, were either subject to decades of siege in Gaza or brutal occupation in the West Bank. But don’t worry, Freedom House bifurcates the West Bank from Israel’s score. Why? It’s unclear. Israel has waged a decades-long occupation of Palestine, where the freedom of movement, commerce, food, everyday internal travel, and basic human dignity of Palestinians is subject to the whims of Israeli leaders, but, Freedom House has to get that score above 70 and bestow Israel with a nice green label, lest they get angry phone calls from Congress and the White House.

The silence from the risibly named “Fred Hiatt Program to Free Political Prisoners” program housed within Freedom House is the most conspicuous. We tried to reach them specifically for comment, but they also did not respond to our request. The program is named after the late Washington Post columnist Fred Haitt, whose most impactful contribution to American politics was lying and lobbying for the Invasion of Iraq both in his personal capacity and as editorial page editor at the Post. Which is the perfect face of an organization entirely neoconservative in its feigned concern for “freedom,” a selective tool of shallow moralizing unconcerned with introspection or criticism of the myriad ways the United States suppressed freedom of speech and human rights. Even when Trump comes into office and unleashes an unsophisticated, explicitly illiberal attack on basic liberal rights, Freedom House can’t bring itself to release a token statement or half-hearted condemnation to maintain the pretense of independence. Instead, its reaction is cowardly silence and moving on to condemn safe, official Bad Guy Countries like China and Cuba.

World-renowned political cartoonist Dwayne Booth, more commonly known as Mr. Fish, has found himself in the crosshairs of the new McCarthyist assault on free expression and higher education. While employed as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, Booth became a target of Zionist and pro-Israel critics, and his work became a flashpoint of controversy in the months leading up to his firing in March. Facing charges that certain cartoons contained anti-Semitic tropes, J. Larry Jameson, interim president of the University of Pennsylvania, denounced Booth’s illustrations as “reprehensible.”

In a statement about his firing, Booth writes: “The reality – and something that, unfortunately, is not unique to Penn – is that colleges and universities nationwide have been way too complicit with the largely Republican-led efforts to target students and faculty members engaged in any and all speech rendered in support of trans/black/immigrant, and women’s rights, free speech, the independent press, academic freedom, and medical research – speech that also voices bold criticism of right-wing nationalism, genocide, apartheid, fascism, and specifically the Israeli assault on Palestine.”

In this special edition of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc sits down with Booth in the TRNN studio in Baltimore to discuss the events that led to his firing, the purpose and effects of political art, and how to respond to the repressive crackdown on art and dissent as genocide is unfolding and fascism is rising.

Producer: Rosette Sewali

Studio Production / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show. I’m Marc Steiner, and it’s great to have you all with us.

A wave of authoritarian oppression has gripped colleges and universities. Life on campus looks in some ways similar but in other ways very intensely different than it did when I was a young man in the 1960s. International students like Mahmoud, Khalil are being abducted on the street and disappeared by ICE agents in broad daylight, and hundreds of student visas have been abruptly revoked. Faculty and graduate students are being fired, expelled, and doxxed online. From Columbia University to Harvard, Northwestern to Cornell, the Trump administration is holding billions of dollars of federal grants and contracts hostage in order to bend universities to Trump’s will and to squash our constitutional protected rights to free speech and free assembly.

Now, while the administration has justified these unprecedented attacks as necessary to root out so-called woke scours like diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and trans athletes playing college sports, the primary justification they’ve cited is combating antisemitism on campuses, which the administration has recategorized to mean virtually any criticism, opposition to Israel, its political ideolog, Zionism, and Israel’s US-backed obliteration of Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Now, our guest today is Dwayne Booth, more commonly known as Mr. Fish, has found himself in the crosshairs of this top-down political battle to reshape higher education in our country. Booth is a world-renowned political cartoonist based in Philadelphia. His work has appeared in venues like Harvard’s Magazine, The Nation, The Village Voice, The Atlantic. Until recently, he was a lecturer at the Annenberg School [for] Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. And just days after the Trump administration announced it was freezing $175 million in federal funds depend, Booth was fired.

Booth’s work has become a flashpoint of controversy in the months leading up to his firing, facing charges that certain cartoons he made contained antisemitic tropes. J. Larry Jameson, interim president of the University of Pennsylvania, denounced Booth’s illustrations as reprehensible.

In a statement about his firing posted on his Patreon page on March 20, Booth wrote this: “The reality and something that, unfortunately, is not unique to Penn is that colleges and universities nationwide have been way too complicit with largely Republican-led efforts to target students and faculty members engaged in any and all speech rendered in support of trans, Black, immigrants, and women’s rights, free speech, the independent press, academic freedom, and medical research, speech that also voices bold criticism of right-wing nationalism, genocide, apartheid, fascism, and specifically the Israeli assault on Palestine.

Today we’re going straight to the heart of the matter, and we’re speaking with Mr. Fish himself right here in The Real News Studio. Welcome. Good to have you with us.

Dwayne Booth:

Great to be here.

Marc Steiner:

So I gotta ask you this question first. Just get it out of the way. So where did the fish come from?

Dwayne Booth:

Oh my gosh. Well, that’s a long tale. I attempted to name my mother, had gotten my stepfather a new bird for Father’s Day. And this was right after I dropped out of college and was living in the back of my parents’ house and fulfilling the dream of every parent to have their son return. I’m not getting a job, I’m going to draw cartoons, and my real name is Dwayne Booth, and I wasn’t going to start. I started to draw cartoons just as a side, and I couldn’t sign it “Booth” because George Booth was the main cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine, and I couldn’t just write “Dwayne” because it was too Cher or Madonna, I wasn’t going to go for just this straight first name.

So I attempted to name this new bird that came into the house. My mother asked for names and I said, Mr. Fish is the best name for a pet bird, and she rejected it. So I said, I’ll use it. And I signed all my cartoons “Mr. Fish”, and I immediately got published. And one of the editors, in fact, who published me immediately had pretended to follow me for 30 years. Mr. Fish, I can’t believe Mr. Fish finally sent us. Oh, it was locked in. I had to be Mr. Fish.

Marc Steiner:

I love it. I love it. So the work you’ve been doing, first of all, it’s amazing that a person without artistic training creates these incredible, complicated, intricate cartoons. Clearly it’s just innate inside of you.

You have this piece you did, I dunno why this one keeps sticking in my head, but the “Guernica” piece, which takes on the Trump administration and puts their figures in the place of the original work, to talk about that for a minute, how you came to create that, and why you use “Guernica”?

Dwayne Booth:

Well, it’s called “Eternal Damn Nation”. And one of the things that we should be responsible and how we communicate our dismay to other people. Now, what we attempt to do as artists is figure out the quickest path to make your point. So we tend to utilize various iconic images or things from history that will get the viewer to a certain emotional state and then piggyback the modern version on top of it, and also challenge the whole notion that these kinds of injustices have been happening over and over and over again. Because the Picasso piece is about fascism. Guess what? Guess what’s happening now? So you want to use those things to say that this might refer to a historical truism from the past, but it has application now, and it speaks to people, as you said, it resonated. Why did it resonate? Because it seems like a blunt version of truth that we have to contend with.

Marc Steiner:

So when you draw your pieces, before we go to Israel Palestine, I want to talk about Trump for a moment. Trump has been a target of your cartoons from the beginning. And the way he’s portrayed eating feces — Can I say the other word? Eating shit and just having shit all over him, a big fat slob and a beast of a fascist. Talk about your own image of this man, why you portray him this way. What do you think he represents here at this moment?

Dwayne Booth:

Well, it’s interesting because, in many ways, what I try to do with the images, the cartoons that you’re referring to, is, yes, I try to make it as obscene as I possibly can because the reality is also obscene. So I always want to challenge somebody who might look at something like that and say, oh my gosh, I don’t want to look at it. It’s important to look at these things.

The reality is, yes, I create these metaphors, eating shit and being a very lethal buffoon and clown. Those, to me, are the metaphors for something that is actually more dangerous. He’s being enabled by a power structure and being legitimized by these power brokers that surround him to enact real misery in America and the rest of the world, so you don’t want to treat somebody respectfully who is doing that. You want to say, this is shit. This is bullshit. This is an obscenity that we have to not shy away from and face it.

And if it is that ugly, if the metaphor is that ugly, again, challenge me to say that I should be respecting this person in a different way, should be pulling my punches. No, no. We should be going full-throated dissent against this kind of person and this kind of movement because it is an obscenity and we have to do something about it.

Marc Steiner:

The way you portray what’s happening in this country at this moment in many of your cartoons, in many of your works, Trump next door with Hitler, Trump as a figure with his middle finger to the air, all of that, when you do these things. How do you think about transient that into political action?

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that’s one of the tricks with satire, and I think that satire, I don’t think people know how to read satire anymore. What stands —

Marc Steiner:

It’s a lost art.

Dwayne Booth:

It’s a lost art. People think that Saturday Night Live is satire, and it’s not. It’s comedy, it’s burlesque is what it is.

Marc Steiner:

It’s burlesque.

Dwayne Booth:

It’s burlesque, it’s parody —

Marc Steiner:

It’s burlesque.

Dwayne Booth:

And what it does is it allows people to address politics in a way that ends with laughter and ridicule, which is the physiological reaction. And when you laugh at something, you’re telling your body, in a way, that it’s going to be okay. We can now congregate around our disdain and minimize the monstrosity by turning Trump into a clown or a buffoon. Only then we can say we’ve done our work. Look at how ridiculous he is. Now we can rely on other people, then, to do something about it.

Satire is supposed to, from my understanding through history, is supposed to have some humor in it. A lot of the humor is just speaking the blatant truth about something, and it’s supposed to reveal social injustices and political villainy in such a way that when you’re finished with it, you’re still upset and you do want to do something about it. Again, if we have to start worrying about how we are communicating our disdain about something that is deserving of disdain, Lenny Bruce quote, something that always has moved me and is the reason I do what I do. When he said, “Take away the right to say fuck, and you take away the right to say fuck the government.”

Marc Steiner:

Yes, I saw that in one of your pieces.

Dwayne Booth:

We need that tool. So when I am addressing something that I find upsetting, I lead with my heart because it is a visceral reaction. It’s very, very upsetting. I pour that into the artwork that I’m rendering, and then I share with other people because people are suffering. I know what suffering feels like. So the emotional component is really, really important to me.

And if you notice, looking at the cartooning that I do about Trump, is those are very involved, most often, fine art pieces. They’re not the whimsy of a cartoon because it’s more serious than that. I want to communicate through the craft that I bring to the piece that I’m willing to spend. Some of those things take me days to complete.

Marc Steiner:

I’m sure.

Dwayne Booth:

This is so important to me, and you’re going to see my dedication to, A, giving a shit and wanting to do something about it. If I can keep you in front of that piece of art longer than if it was just a zippy cartoon, it might seep into your understanding, your soul, and your enthusiasm to also join some sort of movement to change things.

Marc Steiner:

What popped in my head when I first started looking into the piece was the use of humor and satire in attacking fascism, attacking the growth of fascism. Maybe think of Charlie Chaplin.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah, The Great Dictator

Marc Steiner:

That was so effective. But the buffoonery that he characterized Hitler with is the same with Trump. It is frightening and close.

Dwayne Booth:

It is. And I would say, again, one thing I just want to be clear about is that there can be elements of parody and burlesque in there, because what that does is that that invites the viewer into the conversation. It says that this is not so dangerous that you should cower. This person is a fool — A fool who is capable of great catastrophic actions, but he’s an idiot. He’s an idiot. You’re allowed to be smarter than an idiot, and you’re allowed to lose patience with an idiot.

So the second question. So, OK, if you can inspire somebody to be upset and recognize that they are somewhere in this strategy coming from an authoritarian of I will devour you at some point, and maybe this is where… I don’t know if you want to get into the college experience necessarily right now, but that was one of the things that’s interesting about being a professor for. I taught there for 11 years, and it’s always been in my mind. I love teaching, but I was hired as a professional because I was a professional cartoonist. I’m actually a college dropout, and so I bring the practice of what I do into the classroom.

One of the things that was very interesting is, as the world blows up, colleges and universities are institutions of privilege. There’s no way around it. There’s students, yes, that might be there with a great deal of financial aid or some part of a program that gets them in, but by and large, these are communities of privilege. So it was very interesting to see when the society was falling apart, when there was an obvious threat before it was exactly demonstrated about academic freedom and so forth, the strategy from many colleagues that I spoke to was, all right, if we hold our breaths and maybe get to the midterms, we’ll be okay. If we can hold our breaths and just keep our heads down for four years, maybe things will be better. And my reaction was just, do you realize that that’s a privileged position? There’s people who are really suffering. If that is what your strategy is moving forward, then we are doomed because there’s no reason to be brave and stick your neck out.

Marc Steiner:

A number of the things running through my head as you were just describing this, before we go back to your cartoons, which I want to get right back to, which is I was part of the student movement into the 1960s. We took over places, we fought police, we got arrested and expelled from schools. I was thrown out of University of Maryland after three semesters and got drafted. Don’t have to go into that story now, but that happened. So I’m saying there’ve always been places of radical disruption and anger and fighting for justice.

How do you see that different now? I mean, look, in terms of the work you do and what happened to you at Annenberg, tossing you out.

Dwayne Booth:

Well, that’s a two-part question, and we can get to the second part of that in a second. But when it comes to that question of what has happened to college campuses, essentially, is look around. The commodification of everything has reduced the call for speaking your mind, for free speech. Because if you’re going to be indoctrinated into thinking that the commodification of everything is what’s calling you to a successful life, then colleges and universities become indoctrination centers for job placement, way more than even… When I was in college, it was different. You were there to explore, to figure out who you were, what you wanted to do, literally, with the rest of your life. It wasn’t about like, OK, this is how you play the game and keep your mouth shut if you want to succeed. That is the new paradigm that is now framing the kinds of conversations and the pressures inside the classroom to “succeed”.

But my thing with my classes, I would always tell my class a version of the very first day is, what you’re going to learn in this class is not going to help you get a job [Steiner laughs]. What it’s going to do, if I’m successful, and I hope I will be, is it will allow you the potentiality to keep a white-knuckled grip on your soul. Because the stuff we’re looking at is how did the arts community communicate what the humanitarian approach to life should be? That’s not a moneymaking scenario. In fact, there’s examples all through history where you’re penalized for that kind of thinking.

But what is revealed to students is that this is a glimpse into what makes a meaningful life. It’s not surrendering to bureaucracy and hierarchy. It’s about pushing back against that.

Marc Steiner:

Right. And the most important thing in an institution can do — And I don’t want to dive too deep into this now — But is make you question and make you probe and uncover. If you’re not doing that, then you’re not teaching, and you’re not learning.

Dwayne Booth:

Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. And that’s where we are now. Just even asking the question has become a huge problem. Even when everything started to happen with Gaza and with Israel, we had some conversations in class, without even getting, I wasn’t even trying to start conversations about which side are you going to be on? This is why you should be on this side and abhor the other side. It wasn’t even questions like that. The conversations we ended up having was the terror on the campus to even broach the subject.

My classes where we spoke very frankly about, I can’t even say the word “Israel”, I can’t say it. And it was also among the faculty. And I don’t know if you’ve spoken to other faculty members at other universities, and this shouldn’t be shocking, but at some point, a year ago, we were told, and we all agreed unanimously, not to use school email. They’re listening. We were going to communicate with WhatsApp or try to have personal conversations off campus because we do not trust the administration not to surrender all of our personal correspondence with these congressional committees attempting to blow up universities.

And they did that with me. There was some communication about Congress wants all of your communication with colleagues and students.

Marc Steiner:

That literally happened.

Dwayne Booth:

Yes.

Marc Steiner:

They wanted all your communication?

Dwayne Booth:

Yes. And I wasn’t alone. This is what’s going on on college campuses. So A, it’s a really interesting thing to ask because I don’t own the correspondence I have on the servers at school. I don’t. So it’s not even up to me. I can say no, but they’re still going to do it. So that kind of question, what that does is say, you are under our boot. We want to make sure that you understand that you are under our boot and that you’re going to cooperate.

So what was my answer to that? My answer was, fuck you. Because this is coming after a semester where a couple of times I had to teach remotely because not only there were death threats on me, but being the professor in front of this class, there were death threats on my students. So knowing that and really being angry at the main administration and the interim president Jameson for surrendering to this kind of McCarthyism. Again, that’s an easy equation to make, but it’s accurate. It’s a hundred percent accurate.

Marc Steiner:

I’m really curious. Let’s stay with this for a moment before we leap into some other areas here, that when did you become first aware that they were coming after you? And B, how did they do it? What did they literally do to push you out?

Dwayne Booth:

Me being pushed out, it’s an interesting question to ask because Annenberg actually protected me. Jameson wanted me out when The Washington Free Beacon article came out in February of last year.

Marc Steiner:

The one that accused you of being an antisemite?

Dwayne Booth:

Yes.

Marc Steiner:

Right.

Dwayne Booth:

So again, what do we do with that? We clean house. We don’t look at the truth of the matter. We don’t look at the specifics. We don’t push back, we surrender. That’s the stance of the administration. So he wanted me fired, but the Dean of Annenberg was just like, no. So they protected me. It’s the School for Communication. It has a history of…

Marc Steiner:

It’s a school where you’re trained journalists and other people to tell the truth and tell the stories and dig deep and put it out there.

Dwayne Booth:

And to say no when you need to say no.

Marc Steiner:

Yes.

Dwayne Booth:

Right. So that happened. So they protected me. I was there because Annenburg protected me. It didn’t stop the administration, as you said at the beginning of the segment, Jameson then makes a public statement that basically says I’m an antisemite and that I’m reprehensible.

So that went on for all of last year, not so much the beginning of this semester because everybody was very focused on what the election was going to reveal.

So I was given the opportunity to develop a new class for this coming fall. So I took off the semester, was paid to develop this new course for, actually, about the alternative press and the underground comics movement of the ’60s and ’70s.

Marc Steiner:

I remember it well [laughs].

Dwayne Booth:

Very good. And so that’s considered the golden age for opinion journalism, which is lacking now. So I’m like, this is a great opportunity to, again, expose what our responsibility is as a free and open society. Let’s really talk about it. I even was going to start a newspaper as part of the class that students were going to contribute to. It was going to be a very big to-do.

Trump won. The newspaper was the first thing to be canceled. We don’t want to invite too much attention from this new regime on the campus. Again, it’s this cowardice that has real ramifications, as you were saying. These funds, as soon as there’s money involved, the strategy for moving forward becomes an economic decision and not one that has to do with people and their lives.

So me being let go, I was part of a number of adjuncts and lecturers who were also let go. So it’s not an easy connection to say that I was specifically targeted as somebody who should be fired. But that said, you could feel some relief. And as a matter of fact, being let go and then being, again, the attacks from the right-wing press increased, and all of a sudden we’re like, finally UPenn has gotten rid of the antisemite. And then we’re back in this old ridiculous argument.

And luckily, I’m not alone. I’m not so much in the spotlight because many people are stepping forward and, again, trying to promote the right kind of conversation about this.

Marc Steiner:

One of the things, a bunch of things that went through my head as you were talking, I was thinking about the course you wanted to teach on alternative press. I you ever get to teach that course again, I have tons of files for you to have, to go through.

Dwayne Booth:

[Laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was writing the textbook.

Marc Steiner:

Textbook. Oh, were you? OK.

Dwayne Booth:

I’m going to France, actually, and I’m going to interview Robert Crumb. I’m staying over his house. Oh, that’s great.

Marc Steiner:

Oh, that’s great. He must be really old now.

Dwayne Booth:

Yes. I’m really looking forward to it.

Marc Steiner:

[Laughs] I was there at the very [beginning]. I helped found Liberation News Service.

Dwayne Booth:

Oh, see.

Marc Steiner:

And I was at Washington Free Press back in the ’60s.

Dwayne Booth:

See? So you know. I curated an exhibit on the alternative press for the University of Connecticut a couple years ago. Hugely popular. They have an archive that is dizzying. It might be the biggest in the country. And so when I was curating and putting together that exhibit, I would go in and I would be, all day, I wouldn’t even eat, and I would pore through these newspapers and magazines at the time. And I would leave, and I would actually have this real sense of woe because looking at what that kind of journalism was attempting and accomplishing made me feel like we have lost.

Marc Steiner:

Every city and community had an underground paper across the country, and Liberation newspapers were there to service all those papers and bring them together. The power of the media in that era was very different and very strong.

Dwayne Booth:

Well, the work that I do as a cartoonist and somebody who uses visuals to communicate this stuff, that was all through these newspapers, all through this movement. The idea being is the arts community is there — Well, let’s do it this way. The job of journalism, one could say, is that it provides us with the first draft of history, which we’ve heard.

Marc Steiner:

Exactly.

Dwayne Booth:

So the idea as a journalist, what you’re supposed to be asking yourself is what is the real story here? And I’m going to approach it and try to be objective about it, but what is the real story here? The job of an artist in the arts community is to ask the very same question. What is this story really about? What does this feel like? But rather than searching for the objective version of that, it’s about looking for the subjective. This is how I feel about it. And that invites people in to share their own stories. Because really we’re just stories. We’re really just stories.

Marc Steiner:

Storytellers.

Dwayne Booth:

Exactly. So if you can have a form of journalism that not only draws on straight journalism but also can bring in Allen Ginsburg to write a poem that will then explore what does it mean to be a human being? Why are we vulnerable and why do we deserve protection? Until you have that inside of a conversation, why argue in favor of protecting, say, the people of Gaza?

Marc Steiner:

Let’s talk a bit about that. Now, look, this is what got you fired [laughs].

Dwayne Booth:

Well, I don’t… Well, again.

Marc Steiner:

It’s part of what got you fired.

Dwayne Booth:

It created a lot of heat for me last year, we can say.

Marc Steiner:

It is a very difficult question on many levels, being accused of being an antisemite or a self-hating Jew. If you criticize Israel, whether you use the word genocide or slaughter, whatever word you use has infected the entire country at this moment. Campuses, newspapers, everywhere, magazines. And in itself, it seems to me, also creates antisemitism. It makes it bubble up. Because it’s always there, it’s just below the surface. It doesn’t take much to unleash it. So I think we’re in this very dangerous moment.

Dwayne Booth:

We are. But I would say that, with that broad description, if people only approach the question with that broad of an approach, I think we’re in trouble.

Marc Steiner:

What do you mean by that?

Dwayne Booth:

I think the question of attempting to criticize Israel and then being called an antisemite is conflating politics with religion, nationalism with religion. Because really, again, look at it. Just look at all of the conversations that people have been having. To criticize the state of Israel is criticizing the state of Israel. It has really nothing to do with criticizing Judaism at all. Now, if somebody is Jewish and supporting Israel, OK, they’ve made that connection for themselves. So therefore, you can’t have an argument that says, you’re hurting my Jewishness, my Jewish identity by attacking a nation state, because they’re two different things. And if you’re protecting the virtue of a nation state, that is nationalism.

Marc Steiner:

It is. I don’t want to digress on this too deeply, but I think that when you are part of a minority that has been persecuted — My grandfather fought the czars, people in the streets of Warsaw, in the pogroms. My dad fought the Nazis. When you know that they just hate you because of who you are, which is the excuse they used to create Israel out of Palestine, which makes it a very complex matter. It was FDR who would not let Jews here and said, you have to go. You want to get out of those camps? You’re going there.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah. There is that. Yep.

Marc Steiner:

So what I’m saying to all that, I’m saying it’s a very complicated matter.

Dwayne Booth:

And so the argument, though, and I totally agree with you. So what is important for that, the fact that it is a complicated matter, then you need to create space for the conversation to happen, and you have to create the space to be large enough to accommodate all of the emotion, the emotional component that is part of this, because that’s also very, very real. And then the less emotional stuff, like what is the intellectual argument piece of this? So yes, it is all completely knotted up, but the solution is to recognize how complicated it is and then create the space for people then to untangle it.

Because again, that’s why I said about the broad approach. The broad approach is not going to help us. The broad approach is going to actually disenfranchise people from wanting to enter into the conversation. Because you don’t want to say, and as you can see it happening over and over again, anybody who says, I’m against Israel, what Israel is doing, immediately they’re called, they’re shut down by people who don’t want to have that conversation, as being antisemitic. And nobody wants to feel like they could be called an antisemitic, especially if they are not one. Remember, people who are antisemitic, they tend to be proud of the fact that they are antisemitic.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah, I know. But there are a lot of antisemites out there, a lot of racists who don’t admit that they’re antisemitic or racist.

Dwayne Booth:

Again, and the question, they don’t admit it. So again, so that’s where you need that kind of conversation to turn the light on in that darkness and give them the opportunity to either defend their antisemitism, have their antisemitism revealed so that they can then self-assess who they are. Because a lot of prejudices people have, they don’t know that they have them, and they have not been challenged.

So much of what we think and feel is reflexive thinking and feeling. You can’t burn that flag. I’m an American, it’s hurting my heart. Let’s look at the issue. What is trying to be communicated by the burning of the flag? It’s not shitting on your grandfather for fighting in the Second World War. But again, if somebody is going to have all that knotted up into this emotional cluster, it’s up to us as sane human beings who are seeking understanding and also empathy with each other to be able to enter in those things assuming, until it’s disproven, that we actually have the potential for empathy and understanding among each other. But you need to create the space and the conversation for that to happen.

Marc Steiner:

What was the specific work that had them attack you as an antisemite at Annenberg? What did they pull out?

Dwayne Booth:

They pulled out some cartoons that I had. It was interesting because they pulled out mostly illustrations that I had done for Chris Hedges. I’ve been Chris Hedges’s illustrator for a very long time.

Marc Steiner:

He used to work out of this building [laughs].

Dwayne Booth:

Yes, exactly. And so what they did was they pulled out these illustrations completely out of context from the article that I was illustrating, had them as standalone pieces, which again, if you’re doing cartoons or you’re doing any illustrations, what you’re trying to do, you’re trying to be provocative and communicate with a very short form. If it’s something as fiery as this issue, then you need, potentially, more information to know what my intent is as an artist. Those were connected to Chris Hedges’s articles that had them make absolute sense. So those were shown without the context of Chris Hedges’s articles.

They showed a couple cartoons that also were just standalone cartoons that had been published and posted for four months without anything except great adulation from readers, because I also work for Scheer Post, which is Robert Scheer’s publication. And I’ve known Bob for decades. And if you don’t know who Bob is, you should know who Bob is. He was the editor of Ramparts and has a very long history of attempting independent journalism.

Marc Steiner:

I can’t believe he’s still rolling.

Dwayne Booth:

He is. He’s 89.

Marc Steiner:

I know [laughs].

Dwayne Booth:

It’s amazing. And so he was running my cartoons. He lost more than half of his family in the Holocaust. He knows what antisemitism looks like. And so these cartoons that were pulled, again, I had nothing but people understanding what I was trying to say. But taken, again, out of context, shown to an audience that is looking for any excuse to call somebody an antisemite, which is the Washington Free Beacon, who has called everybody an antisemite: Obama, Bernie Sanders, just everybody. And framing the parameters of that slander, presenting it to their audience who blew up, again, then started writing me: I want to rape your wife and murder your children. I know where you live. All of those sorts of things all of a sudden come out. So that happened.

And so again, there I am — And I’ve had hate mail. I’ve had death threats before. I’ve never been part of an institution where the strategy for moving forward is being part of a community was… All right. I was told to just not say anything at first. We’ll see if we can weather this. And then when the Jameson statement came out, I wrote to my dean and I said, I have to say something now. I can’t sit back and just let these people frame the argument because it’s not accurate.

Marc Steiner:

Right, right.

Dwayne Booth:

Then I started to talk to the press, and again, started to say, we need to understand that there is intent and context for all of these things, and I cannot allow the truncation of communication to happen to the degree where people are silenced and then people are encouraged to self-censor.

Marc Steiner:

So I’ll ask you a question. I’ve been wrestling with this question I wanted to ask you about one of your cartoons. It’s the cartoon where Netanyahu [inaudible] are drinking blood.

Dwayne Booth:

It’s not Netanyahu. I know which… Is it with the dove?

Marc Steiner:

Yeah.

Dwayne Booth:

OK. Yeah. Netanyahu is not in there.

Marc Steiner:

That’s right, I’m sorry. So the first thing that popped in my head when I saw that picture was the blood libel against the Jews by the Christians that took place. My father told me stories about when he was a kid how Christian kids across from Patterson, the other side of the park, would chase him. You killed, you drank Jesus’s blood, you killed Jesus, the major fights that they had. So talk a bit about that. That’s not the reaction you want us to have.

Dwayne Booth:

No, no, no, no. Absolutely not. It is interesting because I think that’s probably the leading one that people — And now when all this started up, again, they don’t even show it, they just describe it, and they describe it so inaccurately [Steiner laughs] that it just makes me crazy.

Marc Steiner:

You’re not shocked, are you [both laugh]?

Dwayne Booth:

No, no. But in the cartoon, it’s actually, it’s power brokers. These guys look like they’re power brokers from the 1950s. I like to draw that style of… And if you want to look at these guys, they look completely not Jewish. I pulled them from, like I said, they’re basically clip art from the 1950s. So they’re power brokers at a cocktail party. It’s playing off of the New Yorker style of the cocktail party with the upper class.

So they’re upper crust power brokers. Behind them is a hybrid flag that is half the American flag and half the Israeli flag. And they are drinking blood from glasses that says “Gaza”. And there is a peace dove that is walking into the room and somebody says, who invited that lousy antisemite.

As a cartoonist, understand that when it comes to, as I said earlier, trying to figure out how to make the point as quickly as you can and as eye catching as you can. If you look through the history of the genre, drinking blood is what monsters do. They do it all of the time in their criticism of people who are powerful and who are called monsters. I, frankly, when I was drawing it, I [wasn’t] like, well, this might be misinterpreted as blood libel. I didn’t know what blood libel was.

Marc Steiner:

I’m sure you didn’t.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah. And again, and it was posted for a long time and nobody’s said anything about it. But then when it was called that, it became a very interesting conversation because it was like, oh, OK. So now I can see how that would flood the interpretation of the cartoon. And again, this is what happens in regular conversation. And particularly if you’re communicating as somebody who uses the visuals as your form of communication, there’s a thousand ways to interpret a visual.

Marc Steiner:

There are.

Dwayne Booth:

There are. And as the artist, you have to understand that you’re going to do the best that you can and hope that the majority of people are going to get what you’re trying to do. Which brings us, again, back to that second question or that point that I was making earlier, which is let’s have the conversation afterwards. If you understand that my intent was playing off of not a Jewish trope but a trope of criticizing power — Which, actually, out of curiosity, I went through the internet and I all of a sudden started to assemble, through time, using people are drinking blood constantly who are evil. So it’s used and so forth.

And so the challenge with something like that was to then try to communicate that that was not my intent. I know a communications, a free speech expert, in fact. She and I had a really interesting conversation about it because she is such a radical, she’s been more radical than I am. She wanted me to know that it was blood libel, and she wanted to hear me say, yes, I knew it was blood libel, but I’m going to use that to force the conversation and reclaim what that blood libel was supposed to be as, A, this ridiculous thing that actually is being applied as a truism in this circumstance.

But all of a sudden it became this academic conversation and I was just like, whoa, I don’t need it to be that, because you don’t want to upset everybody and confuse what your communication is, obviously. So I said, it wasn’t that. She goes, you sure [Steiner laughs]? Are you sure you weren’t trying to do that? I’m like, no, I wasn’t trying to do that. So that’s what that one was.

Marc Steiner:

So I’m glad we talked about this because I think that… I’m not going to dwell on this cartoon, but when I first showed this to some of my friends —

Dwayne Booth:

You’re not alone [crosstalk]. I get it. I totally get it.

Marc Steiner:

As I was preparing for our conversation, that was their first reaction as well.

Dwayne Booth:

Right. Right.

Marc Steiner:

Because your cartoons, they’re really powerful, and they get under an issue, and it glares in front of your eyes like a bright light. And they’re very to hard look at sometimes, whether it’s Trump eating shit, literally [both laugh], and the other images you give us. It’s like you can’t allow us to look away. You want us to ingest them.

Dwayne Booth:

I want you to ingest them and then have an honest reaction. And then, again, it doesn’t have to be in a conversation with me, have a conversation with somebody else. Because that cartoon that you were talking about, it started a bunch of debates.

Marc Steiner:

The Trump one?

Dwayne Booth:

No, no, no.

Marc Steiner:

Oh, the blood libel.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah, yeah — Don’t call it the blood libel one. See what I mean, man [both laugh]? So it started, what I would say is necessary debate to really get to the bottom of issues. Again, that’s really what we should be doing. We should be encouraging more and more difficult conversations. Because we’re not, and look at where we are. People are uncomfortable to even go into the streets. You don’t have to shout. You don’t have to carry a sign. People are being conditioned to be uncomfortable with making a statement in the name of humanity, even though humanity is suffering in real time in front of us. Look at Gaza. For me, there’s no way to frame the argument that can justify that. There’s just no way. There’s too many bodies, there’s too many dead people. There’s too much evidence that the human suffering that is happening over there right now in front of the world needs not to be happening.

Marc Steiner:

It needs not to be happening. [I’ll] tell [you] what just popped through my head as you were saying that, a couple things. One was the Vietnam War where millions of Vietnamese were slaughtered, North, South, all over. And we didn’t call that a genocide. We called that a slaughter. And then I was thinking as you were speaking about… I speak at synagogues sometimes about why we as Jews have to oppose what Israel’s doing to Gaza.

Dwayne Booth:

And I’ve gone to synagogues and seen those talks. That’s also what I’m [crosstalk] —

Marc Steiner:

They’re very difficult talks to have people just…

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah.

Marc Steiner:

Because it’s an emotional issue as much as it’s a —

Dwayne Booth:

Exactly.

Marc Steiner:

— Logical and political issue. And so, when I look at your work, again, it engenders conversation. It makes you think it’s not just his little typical political cartoon. It’s like you sink yourself into your cartoons like an actor sinks himself into a part. That’s what I felt looking at your work.

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s funny because just hearing you say that, it’s true that quite often I forget about my cartoons soon after I do them because I’m already onto the next one. And I’ve done searches for things and found my cartoons that I’ve forgotten. I have no memory of doing them [Steiner laughs]. Some of them I don’t even get, and I literally have to call my older brother and say, what was I trying to say with this? He’s very good at remembering what I was trying to say and can decipher my cartoons for me.

But yeah, it is a form of meditation. If you look at the work that I do, again, if you’re going to stick with a piece of art for hours, you have to be able to sustain your focus on it. So I meditate while I’m doing it and see if it feels true to my emotional reaction to what’s going on, then I post it.

Marc Steiner:

So lemme ask you this question. So think of one of your most recent cartoons, I dunno which one, I’ll let you think of it since I don’t know what your most recent cartoon is, and it’s about Gaza and Israel and this moment. Describe it and what you went through to create it.

Dwayne Booth:

One of the most recent ones that I did was, as the death toll continued to climb, and I think it was right after Trump started to talk about how beautiful he’s going to make Gaza once we take over. The normalizing of that, and even the attempts to make it a sexy strategy, hit me so hard that my approach to that was, OK, well what would that look like? What would the attempt to normalize that amount of human suffering, what would that look like?

Well, it sounds like a travel poster that is going to invite people to the new Gaza. So I decided to do a travel poster riffing off of an old Italian vintage come to Italy poster, just like a Vespa. Let’s get a Vespa in there and a sexy couple. Now, I don’t want to render something that has Gaza completely Trumpified already. We’ve seen what that looks like. Let’s, OK, satire. But let’s talk about, let’s visualize what that would look like right now moving towards that. So I have this young couple on a Vespa coming down a giant mountain of skulls, heading to the beach. And out in the beach there’s some Israeli warships. And it’s rendered, at a glance, to be very gleeful, but then you start to notice the details of it and the attempt to normalize, again, an ocean of skulls, [and] nobody’s recognizing the fact that these are a slaughtered population. So that’s what I thought.

And so, again, sometimes what you want to do is you want to say, alright, this is an ugly truth that’s being promoted as something that is beautiful, I’m going to show you what that looks like as something that’s been beautified. And the reaction, of course, is just like, oh my God, this hits harder than if I showed the gore, in the same way that if you go back to Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal”, right? He published that anonymously. And he also, it’s very interesting because it’s about what do we do with the poor, bedraggled Irish people? We make them refuse for the needs of the British. We will cook the children, kill some of the grownups, make belts, make wallets, all of these things to feed the gentry of the British.

What’s very interesting about that is he sustained the irony of that all the way through. You don’t have the sense, he did not turn it into parody or burlesque or wild craziness. He presented it as a solution to the problem. Now, if you look at that, it actually makes business sense. It would actually solve the problem — Minus all the horror of killing babies and killing a bunch of people. It makes good business sense.

Now, if you look at that and you see that as a parallel to what is justified by big business and corporations now, it happens every single day. It’s been completely normalized. Look what’s going on with the environment. Look at the Rust Belt across this country. All of that stuff is rendered in service of profit and economics the same way that “Modest Proposal” was, and people have been conditioned to see it as normal and ignore the human suffering.

Marc Steiner:

I’m curious. The first one is, where’s that latest cartoon published?

Dwayne Booth:

I actually gave it to Hedges for one of his columns, and then I posted it and people wanted prints. I’ve sold prints of it. And it was also in the paper that comes out of Washington that Ralph Nader does… Gosh, what’s it called? The Capitol…

Marc Steiner:

I should know this

Dwayne Booth:

Myself. I should know this too, because I’ve been doing cartoons for them for a few years now.

Marc Steiner:

Capitol Hill Citizen.

Dwayne Booth:

That’s it. See, I missed the word “hill”. Thank God.

Marc Steiner:

Capitol Hill Citizen.

Dwayne Booth:

Which is a great newspaper. And it gives me the opportunity to see my stuff on physical paper again, which looks gorgeous to me. I’d rather —

Marc Steiner:

Now that you’ve described the cartoon, I saw it this morning as I was getting ready for this conversation. I didn’t know whether it was the latest one you’ve done.

Now that you were facing what we face here, both in Gaza and with Trump and these neofascists in charge of the country, your brain must be full of how you portray this. I just want you to talk a bit about, both creatively and substantively, how you approach this moment when we are literally facing down a neofascist power taking over our country and about to destroy our democracy. People think that’s hyperbole, you’re being crazy. But we’re not.

Dwayne Booth:

No, it’s happening.

Marc Steiner:

And if you, as I was, a civil rights worker in the South, you saw what it was like to live under tyranny, under an authoritarian dictatorship if you were not white. I can feel the entire country tumbling in at this moment. So tell me how you think about that and how you approach it with your work.

Dwayne Booth:

It’s an interesting time because, in many ways, my work is quadrupled. Partly because it’s just what I’ve always done, but the other part is I don’t see this profession stepping up to the challenge at all. I don’t see any single-panel cartoonists who are hitting the Israel Gaza issue nearly as hard as I am.

Marc Steiner:

No, they’re not.

Dwayne Booth:

No. And I see a lot also, of the attacks on Trump. And again, it always strikes me as, how would the Democratic Party render a cartoon? That’s what I see out there. And it’s too soft. It is just way too soft. So as I increase my output, I feel the light getting brighter and brighter on me, which makes me feel more and more unsafe inside this society because yes, they’re targeting people who are not citizens, but what’s next? We all know the poem.

But at the same time, I feel like it’s a responsibility that I have, and I’m sure that you probably have this same sense of responsibility. Speaking up, talking out loud, even though it’s on my nervous system, it is grinding me down in a way that is new.

But that said, my numbers of people who are coming to me are increasing. I’m actually starting a substack so I can have my own conversations with people and so forth, because we have got to increase this megaphone. We just have to.

In fact, one thing that was interesting is just this last October I was invited to speak at a cartooning conference in Montreal. And the whole reason to have me up there and to talk about it was was from the perspective of the people, the organizers, I was the only American cartoonist who was cartooning about Gaza.

Marc Steiner:

Really?

Dwayne Booth:

Yeah. And I’d had conversations, remember, that there’s some cartoonists who are doing some things that, again, are just a little bit too polite. Because if we’re looking at this thing and we do think that this is a genocide, you can’t pull your punches. And so, in fact, when this stuff had happened with me initially with the Washington Free Beacon, I reached out.

There’s another colleague I have who’s a cartoonist, whose name is Andy Singer, and he and I have been in communication over the years, and he’s somewhat fearless on this issue. He and I were talking, and we came up with this idea, let’s publish a book that has cartoonists who, over the last many decades, have had a problem criticizing Israel for fear of being called anti-Semitic.

We sent it out to our colleagues and other international cartoonists and so forth. We found two, Matt Wuerker and Ted Rall, who were willing to participate in this project. I had a number of conversations with others who just contacted me privately and said, I can’t do it because I’ll lose my job. I can’t do it because I’ll be targeted and I’m too afraid. I can’t get close to this subject, my editor won’t let me do it, so I can’t do it. International cartoonists, different idea, a whole different approach, sending me stuff. I can tell my story. I’ve been jailed. I’ve been beaten up for this kind of work. And so it became a very interesting thing.

Again, the United States is, by and large, it’s an extremely privileged society. And yet, when it comes to issues like this, it demonstrates the most cowardice because we’ve been made to be way too sensitive about our own discomfort to advance the cause of humanity and justice, love, all of those things because we’ve seen that there is a penalty for doing that, and we do not want to give up certain creature comforts. We don’t want to be called something that we are not, and we need to be uncomfortable. In many ways we have to break soft rules. We have to chain ourself to fences and then make it an inconvenience to be pulled from those fences.

Marc Steiner:

This has been a fascinating conversation. I appreciate you being here today and for all the work that you do. And I think that we’re at this moment where the reason that many of us who are part of Jewish Voices for Peace and other organizations is to say those voices are critical in saying this is wrong and has to end now. And I appreciate the power of the work you do. It’s just amazing. And we encourage everybody, we’ll be linking to your work so people can see it and consume it. And I hope we have a conversation together in the future.

Dwayne Booth:

Thanks. I agree. Thanks a lot, Marc.

Marc Steiner:

Good to have you sliding through Baltimore.

Dwayne Booth:

Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

Once again, let me thank Dwayne Booth, also known as Mr. Fish, for joining us today here for this powerful and honest conversation. We will link to his work when we post this episode. You want to check that out.

And thanks to David Hebden for running the program today, audio editor Alina Nehlich for working on her magic, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

So please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

This story originally appeared in Mondoweiss on Apr. 30, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi is free on bail after a federal judge in Vermont ordered his release.

It’s the first order mandating the release of a student detained by the Trump administration. The New York Times called his release “a defeat” for the administration’s “widening crackdown against student protesters.”

“The two weeks of detention so far demonstrate great harm to a person who has been charged with no crime,” said Judge Geoffrey Crawford at an April 30 hearing. “Mr. Mahdawi, I will order you released.”

Crawford also compared Trump’s crackdown to the Red Scare and said that period of history wasn’t one that people should be proud of.

“For anybody who is doubting justice, this is a light of hope and faith in the justice system in America,” Mahdawi told a crowd outside the courthouse after his release. “We are witnessing the fight for justice in America, which means a true democracy, and the fight for justice for Palestinians, which means that both liberation are interconnected, because no one of us is free unless we all are.”

“I am saying it clear and loud,” he added. “To President Trump and his cabinet: I am not afraid of you.”

“Today’s victory cannot be overstated. It is a victory for Mohsen who gets to walk free today out of this court,” said Shezza Abboushi Dallal, one of Mahdawi’s lawyers. “And it is also a victory for everyone else in this country invested in the very ability to dissent, who want to be able to speak out for the causes that they feel a moral imperative to lend their voices to and want to do that without fear that they will be abducted by masked men.”

Mahdawi, a permanent U.S. resident and green card holder for the past decade, was arrested by immigration officials on April 14 during his naturalization interview to become a United States citizen.

According to a recent legal brief from Mahdawi’s attorneys, the citizenship appointment had been a trap, as ICE agents intended to ambush the Columbia student and send him to a detention facility in Louisiana, where the Trump administration is holding Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk.

A judge blocked Trump from transferring Mahdawi out Vermont before agents could transport him.

A court filing submitted in the case by the Justice Department included a letter from Secretary of State Marco Rubio claiming that Mahdawi’s presence in the United States could “potentially undermine” the Middle East peace process.

Earlier this month, Vermont Senator Peter Welch (D-VT) visited Mahdawi at the ICE detention center where he was being held.

“I am centered, I am clear, I am grounded, and I don’t want you to worry about me,” Mahdawi told Welch. “I want you to continue working for the democracy of this country and for humanity. The war must stop.”

The Trump administration continues to escalate its authoritarian assault on higher education, free speech, and political dissent—and university administrators and state government officials are willingly aiding that assault. On the morning of April 23, at the direction of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, law enforcement officers, including FBI agents, raided the homes of multiple student organizers connected to Palestine solidarity protests at the University of Michigan. “According to the group Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE), agents seized the students’ electronics and a number of personal items,” Michael Arria reports at Mondoweiss. “Four individuals were detained, but eventually released.” In this urgent episode of Working People, we speak with a panel of graduate student workers from the University of Michigan and Columbia University about how they and their unions are fighting back against ICE abductions, FBI raids, and top-down political repression, all while trying to carry on with their day-to-day work.

Panelists include: Lavinia, a PhD student at the University of Michigan School of Information and an officer in the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO); Ember McCoy, a PhD candidate in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan and a rank-and-file member of GEO and the TAHRIR Coalition; Jessie Rubin, a PhD student in the School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University and a rank-and-file member of Student Workers of Columbia (SWC); and Conlan Olson, a PhD student in Computer Science at Columbia and a member of the SWC bargaining committee.

Additional links/info:

• Graduate Employees Organization (GEO), University of Michigan website, Instagram, Facebook page, and X page
• Student Workers of Columbia-UAW Local 2710 website, Instagram, Facebook page, and X page
• TAHRIR Coalition UMich X page
• Legal Fund of Michigan Students for Palestine
• GEO Worker Solidarity Fund
• GEO Press Release: FBI and police raid homes of pro-Palestine activists, including a GEO member
• Mahmoud Khalil statement from ICE detention: “My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner”
• Allie Wong, The Intercept, “This is not about antisemitism, Palestine, or Columbia. It’s Trump dismantling the American dream“
• Grant Miner, The Nation, “Columbia expelled me for my palestine activism, but I won’t be silenced”
• Michael Arria, Mondoweiss, “FBI and police raid homes of Palestine activists in Michigan”
• Alvin Powell, The Harvard Gazette, “Harvard files lawsuit against Trump administration”
• Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network, “‘Worse’ than McCarthyism: Trump’s war on higher education, free speech, and political dissent”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “‘A tremendous chilling effect’: Columbia students describe dystopian reality on campus amid Trump attacks”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “‘People are hiding in their apartments’: Inside Trump’s assault on universities”

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music…

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez
Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we are continuing our ongoing coverage of the Trump administration’s authoritarian assault on higher education and the people who live, learn, and work there. Things have continued to escalate since we published our episodes earlier in April where I first interviewed Todd Wolfson in Chen Akua of the American Association of University Professors, and then interviewed graduate student workers at Columbia University, Ali Wong and Caitlyn Liss. Now many since then have praised the development of Harvard University standing up and challenging Trump’s attacks in a public statement titled, upholding Our Values, defending Our University.

Harvard’s president Alan m Garber wrote Dear members of the Harvard Community. Over the course of the past week, the federal government has taken several actions following Harvard’s refusal to comply with its illegal demands. Although some members of the administration have said their April 11th letter was sent by mistake. Other statements and their actions suggest otherwise doubling down on the letters, sweeping and intrusive demands which would impose unprecedented and improper control over the university. The government has, in addition to the initial freeze of $2.2 billion in funding, considered taking steps to freeze an additional $1 billion in grants initiated numerous investigations of Harvard’s operations, threatened the education of international students, and announced that it is considering a revocation of Harvard’s 5 0 1 C3 tax exempt status. These actions have stark real life consequences for patients, students, faculty, staff, researchers, and the standing of American higher education in the world. Moments ago, we filed a lawsuit to halt the funding freeze because it is unlawful and beyond the government’s authority.

Now at the same time at the University of Michigan, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies raided multiple homes of student activists connected to Gaza solidarity protests as Michael Aria reports at Monde Weiss. On the morning of April 23rd, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies executed search warrants at multiple homes in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and Canton Township, Michigan. The raids reportedly targeted a number of student organizers who were connected to Gaza protests at the University of Michigan. According to the group, students allied for Freedom and Equality or safe agents seized the students’ electronics and a number of personal items. Four individuals were detained but eventually released to rear coalition. A student led movement calling for divestment from Israel said that officers initially refused to present warrants at the Ypsilanti raid. They were unable to confirm whether ICE was present at the raid. A Detroit FBI office spokesman declined to explain why the warrants were executed, but confirmed that the matter was being handled by the Office of Michigan.

Attorney General Dana Nessel. Nessel has refused to confirm whether the raids were connected to Palestine activism thus far, but her office has aggressively targeted the movement. Last fall, Nestle introduced criminal charges against at least 11 protestors involved in the University of Michigan Gaza encampment. An investigation by the Guardian revealed that members of University of Michigan’s governing board had pressed Nestle to bring charges against the students. The report notes that six of eight Regents donated more than $33,000 combined to Nestle’s campaigns after the regents called for action. Nestle took the cases over from local district attorney Ellie Savitt, an extremely rare move as local prosecutors typically handle such cases. Listen, as we’ve been saying repeatedly on this show and across the Real news, the battle on and over are institutions of higher education have been and will continue to be a critical front where the future of democracy and the Trump Administration’s agenda will be decided.

And it will be decided not just by what Trump does and how university administrators and boards of regents respond, but by how faculty respond students, grad students, staff, campus communities, and the public writ large. And today we are very grateful to be joined by four guests who are on the front lines of that fight. We’re joined today by Lavinia, a PhD student at the University of Michigan School of Information and an officer in the Graduate Employees organization or GEO, which full disclosure is my old union. Ember McCoy is also joining us. Ember is a PhD candidate in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan and a rank and file member of GEO and the Tare Coalition. And we are also joined today by Jesse Rubin, a PhD student in the School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University and a rank and file member of Student Workers of Columbia.

We are also joined by Conlin Olson, a PhD student in computer science at Columbia, and a member of the Bargaining Committee for Student Workers of Columbia, Lavinia Ember, Jesse Conlin. Thank you all so much for joining us today, especially amidst this terrifying reality that we all find ourselves in. I wanted to just jump right in and start there because since we have y’all and you are new voices in this ongoing coverage that we’re trying to do of these authoritarian attacks on higher ed, I wanted to start by just going around the table and asking if y’all could briefly introduce yourselves and tell us about what your life and work have been like these past few weeks and months as all of this Orwellian nightmare has been unfolding.

Lavinia:

Yeah. Hi everyone. Thank you so much, max for putting this together. So by and large, my life just continues to revolve around research. I’m actually on an NSF fellowship and that means that I basically spend all of my time in the office doing research. That being said, over the past couple of months, especially sort of in the context of organizing, a lot of what I and other grad workers at the University of Michigan have been working on is safety planning and mutual aid efforts related to immigration. And then of course in the past couple of weeks there’s been sort of this really alarming, as you said, escalation in repression by the state government of pro-Palestine protestors. So recently a lot of organizing work has also been related to that, but just to personalize it, the people who are affected by this repression, our friends, they’re coworkers and it’s just been extremely scary recently even just sort of trying to navigate being on campus in this really kind of tense political environment.

Ember McCoy:

So for me, this is kind a continuation of the organizing that I’ve been doing throughout the PhD and before I was vice president of the grad union during our 2023 strike, and there was a lot of infrastructure that we built and organizing models that we’ve changed, that we’ve talked about. Even I think on this podcast leading into the strike, which I think then we got a contract in September of 2023 and then pretty much right away ended up transitioning our work to be very focused on Palestine Pro Palestine organizing in collaboration with undergrad students after October 7th, which I think is really important for some of the infrastructure we built and organizing models we built, thinking about how we’ve been able to transition from labor organizing to pro-Palestine organizing to ICE organizing and all the way back around and in between. On a personal level, this week, Monday morning, I had a meeting with my advisor.

I told him, I promised him I was going to lock in. I was like, I’m going to do it. I need to finish. By August, two hours later, I found out my NSF grant was terminated. I study environmental justice, I have a doctoral dissertation research grant, and then I spent Tuesday trying to do paperwork around that. And Monday morning I woke up to my friend’s houses being rated by the FBI and safe to say, I’ve not worked on my dissertation the rest of the week. So yeah, I think it’s just important like Lavinia said, to think about how, I don’t know, we’re all operating in this space of navigating, trying to continue thinking about our work and the obligations we have as workers for students at the University of Michigan. It is finals week, so the raids happen Wednesdays finals started Thursday. And also not only continuing the fight for pre Palestine, but also making sure our comrades are okay and that they’re safe.

Jessie Rubin:

Hi everyone. It’s really nice to meet you Lavinia and Ember, and thank you so much Max for inviting us to be a part of this. My name is Jessie and I’m a PhD candidate at Columbia in the music department and also a rank and file member of Student Workers of Columbia. I guess to start off with the more personal side with my own research, I guess I’m lucky in that my research has not been threatened with funding cuts the same way that embers has been, and I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now. Ember much love and solidarity to you, but my research does engage Palestine. I researched the Palestine Solidarity movement in Ireland and this past year has definitely been a whirlwind of being scared that I could get in trouble even for just talking about my own research on campus, scared that if I share my research with my students, that might be grounds for discipline.

So it’s definitely been this large existential fight of trying to write my dissertation and write it well while also feeling like Columbia doesn’t want me to be doing the dissertation that I am doing. At the same time, I’ve been really invigorated and motivated through working with my fellow union members. I’m a member of our communications committee, which has obviously taken off a ton in the past few months with social media, internal communications and press, and figuring out how we as a union can sort of express our demands to a broader audience in America and around the globe. I’m also a member of our political education and solidarity committee, and that has been really moving, I mean really exciting to see how different members of our community and also the broader union work with other groups on campus through mutual aid efforts, through actions, through all sorts of activity to fight against this attack on higher ed. And lastly, I also joined our Palestine working group last year. Our union passed a BDS resolution, which then sort of necessitated the formation of our working group. And our working group has been working to think about what Palestine might look like in our upcoming bargaining. We are just entering bargaining and Conlin who’s here with us today can probably talk more about what that’s been looking like as they’re a member of our bargaining team.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And it should also be remembered from listeners from our previous episode with members of Student workers of Columbia. Don’t forget that the university expelled and functionally fired Grant Minor, the former president of Student Workers of Columbia, right before bargaining sessions opened with the university.

Conlan Olson:

Yeah, that’s right. This is Conlin. Like Jesse said, I’m a member of the bargaining committee at Student Workers of Columbia. I’m also a PhD student in computer science. I study algorithmic fairness and data privacy, which are sort of terrifyingly relevant right now. And in addition to our current contract campaign, just on a day-to-day organizing level, and we’re all really trying hard to build the left and build the labor movement among tech workers and STEM workers, which is an uphill battle, but I think is really important work. And I think there is a lot of potential for solidarity and labor power in those areas, even if at Columbia right now they feel under organized.

And in our contract campaign, we are currently, we have contract articles ready. We have a comprehensive health and safety article that includes protections for international students. We have articles about keeping federal law enforcement off our campus. And of course we have all the usual articles that you would see in a union contract. We have a non-discrimination and harassment article that provides real recourse in a way that we don’t have right now. And so we are ready to bargain and we have our unit standing behind us and the university really has refused to meet us in good faith. As Max said, they’ve fired our president and then we still brought our president because he’s still our president to bargaining. And the next time we went to schedule a bargaining session, they declared him persona non grata from campus. And so we said, well, we can’t meet you on campus because we need our president. Here’s a zoom link. And Columbia, of course refused to show up on Zoom. So we are frustrated. We are ready to bargain. We have the power, we have the contract articles and the universities refusing to meet us. So we are building a powerful campaign to ask them to meet us and to try to get them to the table and work on reaching a fair contract for all of our workers. Yeah, I think that’s most of my day-to-day these days is working on our contract campaign.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I just want to say speaking only for myself and full disclosure, I am a former GEO member at the University of Michigan. I got my PhDs there as well, and I remember after already leaving the university to come work at the Chronicle of Higher Education, but I was still a BD, meaning I hadn’t fully finished my dissertation and defended it. Then COD hit in 2020 and our university was doing the same thing of amidst this chaotic nightmare that we were all living through. My professors and administrators were saying, Hey, finish that dissertation. And I think I rightly said, I rightly expressed what many of us were feeling, which was, Hey man, I’ve earned that goddamn thing at this point. Just give me the degree. I can’t imagine how y’all are still trying to write and defend your dissertations amidst these funding cuts amidst when the future of higher education itself is in doubt. So I would just say for myself and for no one else, just give PhD candidates their goddamn doctorates at this point, man, what are you doing? But anyway, ember Lavinia, I want to go to y’all and ask if you could help us break down the FBI and police raids out there in Ann Arbor Ypsilanti all around the University of Michigan. Can you tell us more about what happened, how the people who were detained are doing, how folks on campus are responding and just where the hell things stand now?

Ember McCoy:

And you did a really thorough job covering the timeline of what happened on Wednesday morning. So on Wednesday between six and 9:00 AM the FBI, along with Michigan State police and local police officers in the three different cities and University of Michigan police conducted a coordinated raid in unmarked vehicles at the home of homes of multiple University of Michigan pro-Palestine activists. And I think that’s very important to name because the attorney general who a democrat who signed these warrants that have no probable cause is saying that in their press release that the raids don’t have anything to do with University of Michigan campus activism, and they don’t have anything to do with the encampments, but the people whose home berated are prominent pro-Palestine activists at the University of Michigan. So trying to say those things aren’t connected is not at all, and there’s no charges, right? There’s no charges that has happened for these folks whose homes have been rated. And so it’s just a crazy situation to say the least. I would say people are doing as well as they can be. Some of their immediate thoughts were like, I need to figure out my finals and I no longer have my devices or access to my university meme Michigan accounts because of duo two factor authentication.

Yeah. So I mean, I think the organizing of course is still continuing. Another big thing that’s happened. I guess to scale out a little bit, what happened Wednesday is just another thing that has happened in this year long campaign where the Attorney General of Michigan, Dana Nessel, is really targeting University of Michigan activists Ann Arbor activists for pro-Palestine free speech. So as you alluded to, there are 11 people facing felony charges from the Attorney general related to the encampment raid. There’s another four people facing charges as a result of a die-in that we did in the fall. And so that is also all still ongoing and very much a part of this. So there’s almost 40 different activists that they’re targeting across these different attacks. And we actually had Thursday, we had a court date coincidentally for the encampment 11, and it was the intention of it was to file a motion to ask the judge to recuse Dana Nessel, the Attorney General.

She has already had to recuse herself from a different case due to perceived Islamic Islamic phobic bias. And she’s a prominent Zionist in the state. And so our argument is kind of like if she’s had to recuse herself from that case, she should also have to recuse herself from this case. They would fall under similar intent. However, when we were at that court case, one of the encampment 11 also was accused of violating his bond. So as a part of their bond, they’re not allowed to be on campus unless for class or for work, though most of them have been fired from their jobs at this point. And he was accused of being, he was surveilled on campus 20 minutes after his class ended and he was walking through and stopped allegedly to say hi to friends. So he was sent to jail for four days right then and there.

The judge and the prosecutor originally said they were trying to put him in jail for 10 days, but they didn’t want him to miss his graduation and wax poetic about how they didn’t want his parents to have to miss his graduation. So instead, they sent him to jail for four days and he got out Sunday morning. And so yeah, it’s been a lot, right? There’s all these different things that are happening, but I think the organizing still continues. People are very mobilized. People are probably more agitated than they were before. And after this, a bunch of us are heading to a rally at Dana Nestle’s office in Lansing. So I would say that it definitely hasn’t curtailed the movement for a free Palestine and the movement for free speech broadly in the state of Michigan. That was long-winded, but lots going on.

Lavinia:

That was such a great summary, Amber. Great. Yeah. I also just want to add that there has been a lot of repression on campus that doesn’t rise to the level of criminal charges or legal actions. Instead, it’s stuff like, for instance, one of my friends was pulled into a disciplinary meeting because he sent a mass email about Palestine or there have been many instances of police deploying pepper spray on campus against protesters. So there’s also just kind of this general climate of fear, which is reinforced in many different contexts on campus, specifically surrounding Palestine.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and Conlin. Jesse, I wanted to bring you in here because as we discussed in the recent episode with two other members of your union, Trump’s administration really set the template for this broader assault on higher ed by first going after Columbia. So what is your message to workers and students on other campuses like Michigan who are facing similar attacks? What can we learn from Columbia that may help people at other universities be better prepared for what’s coming?

Jessie Rubin:

Great question. First and foremost, I would say the biggest takeaway is that we help us. It’s us who take care of each other. We can’t expect the university or the administration to protect the most vulnerable among us to protect our international students, to protect our research. It’s us who has to create the infrastructure to keep us safe. For example, it was the union that provided the most robust know your rights trainings and detailed information to support international students on our campus. While the university has pretty much stayed silent and offered completely hollow support, I mean, we saw this with our fellow union member, Ron Boston, who had her visa revoked for totally no reason at all, and the university immediately dis-enrolled her from her program and from her housing. So it’s really clear that the university does not have our safety as a top priority. And if anything, I mean the university’s response to the Trump administration has made it clear that they’re not just capitulating, but they are active collaborators. And I would say that we can expect the same from other universities. And through their collaboration with the Trump administration, through their appeasement, we haven’t gotten anything. Columbia has gone above and beyond here, and even still our programs are getting hit with funding cuts and this continued federal overreach.

Conlan Olson:

And I think this lesson that appeasement gets us, nothing also has a parallel lesson for activists. So as a union, as activists, we can’t just sit this tight or wait this out, we can’t stay quiet in order to survive. And I really feel that if we start appeasing or hedging our bets, we’re going to lose our values and just get beat one step at a time. And this is why our union has really not backed down from fighting for Ranjani, why we’ve not backed down from fighting for a grant minor. And it’s why we’re fighting for such a strong contract with really unprecedented articles to protect non-citizens, to keep cops off our campus, to provide for parents to ensure financial transparency and justice in Columbia’s financial investments. And of course, to get paid a living wage. I think as a union, we could have backed down or softened our position, but I really think this would’ve meant losing before we even start.

We are labor unionists. We are people fighting for justice. If we start backing off, we’re just going to get beat one step at a time. And I do think that our activism is starting to work. So yesterday, Columbia, for the first time named Mah Halil and most of madi for the first time in public communications, and they offered slightly more support for non-citizens. And so to be clear, it’s still absolutely ridiculous that they’re not doing more and really despicable that they’re only now naming those people by name. But we are starting to see the needle moved because of activist campaigns by our union, both to pressure the university and to just provide, as Jesse said, know your rights training and outreach to students on our campus.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And Ember, Lavinia, I wanted to bring you all back in as well and ask if you had any kind of thoughts or messages to folks at Columbia or people on other campuses right now. I mean, of course this looks differently depending on what state people are in and what university they’re at. But I guess for folks out there who are listening to this and preparing for what may happen on their campuses, did you have any sort of messages you wanted to let folks know?

Lavinia:

Yeah, so I kind of want to echo Jesse’s point that really we keep us safe. Many of these university administrations I think historically are intransigent in their negotiations with students. So for instance, with go, we had a 2022 to 2023 bargaining cycle where the university didn’t really budget all. And I think that in some way sort of set the precedent for what’s happening now, but I think we know in general, sort of the incentive structures for these academic institutions are really not set up to support what protects grad workers or students or really people who are just in the community. So that’s why things like safety planning or for instance within NGEO, we have an immigration hotline, those sort of community infrastructures are so important. So I just really want to advocate for thinking about how you as a community can support each other, especially in the face of new or more exaggerated threats from the government and the university.

Ember McCoy:

And if I could just add quickly too, I think one, I want to name that part of the reason we were so prepared this week is because we are following the footsteps of Columbia and our Columbia comrades. We’ve been able to do similar safety planning and set up these hotlines because we witnessed first the horrors that happened to you all. And I think that’s really important to be able to directly connect with you all which we had been previously, and to help other people do the same. And as Livinia mentioned, the reason we knew the raids were happening at 6:00 AM on Wednesday is because one of the people called our hotline called our ice hotline and our ICE hotline as Jail support hotline and we’re able to get people out because that’s an infrastructure that they knew about to try to suddenly get people’s attention.

And another one of the homes we knew they were being rated because we have a group in collaboration with community partners where there’s an ice watch group and people put in the group chat that there was FBI staging nearby, and then they watched people raid someone’s homes. And that brought out tons of people immediately to the scene. And so those infrastructures, many of them were actually for ice, and there was not ice in collaboration in the FBI raid. But I think it’s really important how those infrastructures which build off each other originally were able to protect us and us safe on Wednesday.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Gang, I wanted to sort of talk about the signs of life that we’re seeing. And y’all mentioned some on your campuses, like amidst all of this darkness and repression, and as I mentioned in the introduction, a lot of folks around the country, a lot of folks that I’ve talked to in higher ed have been really galvanized by seeing the news that Harvard of all places is fighting Donald Trump’s attacks. It may not be perfect, but it’s something right. And I wanted to ask if there are more efforts that you’re seeing on your campus or other campuses that are giving you hope right now?

Conlan Olson:

I just want to say, so I happen to be a Harvard alum also, and I don’t want to be too down here, but I think that the way that we should think about Harvard’s efforts are really what Max called them, which is just a sign of life. I don’t have that much faith in our institutions. I appreciate the Big 10 movement and that we need a diversity of tactics here. But we should also keep in mind that yesterday Harvard renamed its diversity office and cut all of its affinity graduation celebrations in response to pressure from the federal government. Harvard remains invested in Israeli genocide and continues to suppress student protest. They fired the leadership of the Center for Middle East Studies last month. And so while I appreciate this sort of sign of life, I really feel that our institutions are not going to save us.

And so these days looking for inspiration, I’m far more inspired by activist movements by students, staff, professors, community members. So for example, yesterday just the same day that Harvard canceled these affinity graduation celebrations, students responded committing to holding their own, and we’re still seeing student protests, we’re seeing increasing faculty support for student protests, which is really important to me. We’re seeing mutual aid projects. We’re seeing legal movements to fight against visa ramifications. And so I think these places really from the ground up and from activism by the people at these universities are much more the things that are inspiring me these days.

Jessie Rubin:

I completely agree with Conland that it’s been so heartwarming to see the power of student movements, the power of working people movements on our campuses. It’s been heartwarming to see encampments starting to pop up again around the country even though the stakes are much higher than they’ve been than ever. Students are putting their bodies on the line, they’re risking expulsion, they’re risking arrest, they’re risking physical injury. And it’s really clear that no matter how hard our administrations try to stamp out dissent, including by expelling core organizers, that students keep coming out in and greater force and developing new tools to keep each other safe. And we see that this student pressure works. Just a few days ago, MIT was forced to cut ties with Elbit systems after a targeted campaign by a BDS group on campus. EL I is an Israeli arms company and has been a target in many BDS campaigns across the globe.

Ember McCoy:

Yeah, one thing I similarly, I similarly don’t want to be a downer, but one thing I think for us that’s been really present on my mind at least this week is the importance of also making connections between not just what the Trump administration is doing to facilitate the targeting of pro-Palestine activists, but what Democrat elected officials are doing in the state of Michigan to help support that. Dana Nessel, who is our attorney general is there’s all these articles and things and she’s coming out being like, oh, she’s a big anti-Trump democrat. She’s taking an aggressive approach to these ICE and these lawsuits. But at the same time, she sent Trump’s FBI to our houses on Wednesday, and she’s continuing to prosecute our free speech in a way that is really important to connect the criminalization of international students or international community members who are then that platform is then going to be able to be used, potentially could be used to by Trump’s administration.

And so there’s all these really important connections that I think need to be made. And for me, obviously what the Trump administration is doing is horrible, but it’s also really, really important that to name that this did not start or end with the Trump administration and it’s being actively facilitated by democratic elected officials across the United States. But I think one thing that’s a bright spot is I do think that activists at the University of Michigan and in our community are doing a really good job of trying to name that and to have really concrete political education for our community members. And I’m really inspired by the ways in which our community showed up for us on Wednesday and the rest of the week and the ways in which people were able to galvanize around us and act quickly and kind of test our infrastructures as successful in that way.

Lavinia:

Yeah, I think the threats to academic freedom through things like grant withholding or threatening DEI offices or what have you, are I think waking up faculty in particular to sort the broader power structures which govern universities. And those power structures frequently don’t include faculty. So a lot of them are, I think being, I wouldn’t say radicalized, but awakened to the kind of undemocratic nature of these institutions and specifically how they can threaten their students. I mean, I know especially as PhD students, we do tend to work closely with a lot of faculty. And I think there is sort of an inspiring change happening there as well.

Ember McCoy:

One additional thing about Harvard is I would say I agree with everything Conlin said, and the University of Michigan has the largest public endowment in the country. We now have a 20 billion endowment. It’s $3 billion more than it was in 2023 when we were doing our strike. And part of I think why Harvard is able to make the statement so that they can around resisting Trump’s funding is because they have the resources to do so, and a lot of institutions do not. University of Michigan is one that absolutely does. And so I do think it helps us try to leverage that argument that what is the 20 billion endowment for if it’s not for right now, why are we just immediately bending the knee to the Trump administration, especially on a campus that is known to have a long legacy of anti-war divestment and all of these other really important things.

And two weeks ago, I think it was time is nothing right now, but we got an email from President Ono saying that the NIH is requiring that institutions who get grants from the NIH certify that they don’t have diversity, equity and inclusion programs. And this was a new thing, do not have BDS campaigns, that they’re not divesting from Israel, which is not only obviously one of the main demands of the TER Coalition, but has also been a demand that students on campus that geo has taken stand for decades for over 20 years at the University of Michigan. And so seeing that all being facilitated is really, really scary, and I think it’s really frustrating that the University of Michigan administration is doing what they’re doing. So I think for me, there’s just a little teeny glimmer of hope to be able to use that as leverage more than anything.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and as we’ve mentioned on this call and in previous episodes, I mean the Trump administration is using multiple things to justify these attacks, including the notion that universities are just overrun with woke ideology embodied in diversity, equity and inclusion programs, trans student athletes participating in sports. But really the tip of this authoritarian spear has been the charge that this administration is protecting campuses from a scourge of antisemitism that is rampant across institutions of higher education around the country. And of course, like plenty of university administrations have gone along with that framing and have even adopted policies that accept the premise that criticism of the state of Israel and the political ideology of Zionism is tantamount to anti-Semitism, including Harvard. And so I wanted to just ask y’all, if you had a chance to talk to people out there who are buying this, what is the reality on campuses? Are they overrun with antisemitism and wokeness the way people are being told? What do you want people to know about the reality on campus versus what they’re hearing from the White House and on Fox News and stuff?

Jessie Rubin:

Yeah, I mean, I can start by answering as an anti-Zionist Jew, I would say that the schools are of course not overrun by antisemitism, but instead we’re seeing growing mass movements that are anti genocide movements, that are Palestine liberation movements, and that is by no means antisemitic. And on top of that, these new definitions of antisemitism that are getting adopted on campuses actually make me feel less safe. They completely invalidate my identity as an anti-Zionist Jew and say that my religion or my culture is somehow at odds with my politics.

Ember McCoy:

I mean, I would just echo what Jesse said. I think that’s something we’re definitely being accused of, right at the University of Michigan, like you said, the elected officials are Zionists, right? And so they’re weaponizing this argument of antisemitism on campus and while also persecuting and charging anti-Zionist Jews with felony charges for speaking out for pro-Palestine. I think for those listening really all, it seems so simple, but I feel like it’s just you have to really listen to the people who are part of these movements and look as who’s a part of it. Because I think, as Jesse said, it’s really an intergenerational interfaith group that have shared politics. And it’s really important to understand that distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism that is being inflated in really, really terrifying ways.

Conlan Olson:

And I would just say the encampments, especially last spring and now again this spring and student movements really community spaces and spaces where people are taking care of each other, and that is what it feels like being in campus activism these days. I feel cared for by my comrades and the people I organize with. And I think that when we say solidarity, it’s not just a political statement, it’s also something that we really feel. And so yeah, I would invite people worried about antisemitism or other divisive ideologies on college campuses to just listen to the students who feel cared for and who are doing the work to care for each other.

Lavinia:

Yeah, I think one thing that was really wonderful, at least about the encampment at U of M is that there were lots of people who I think did have this misconception that there was some relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, and then upon visiting the encampment and seeing the kind of solidarity that was being displayed there, they sort of potentially were a bit disabused of that notion. Unfortunately, I think that’s part of why the encampments in particular were so threatening to university administrations and Zionist officials, et cetera.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Now, Lavinia, Ember, Jesse Conlin, there’s so much more that we could talk about here. But with the final minutes that I have, I wanted to focus in on the fact that y’all are unions and union members, and this is a show about and for workers. And I wanted to round things off by sort of talking about what role unions and collective labor power have to play in this terrifying moment. How can graduate student unions like yours and other unions like faculty unions and unions representing staff workers on campuses, what can labor organizations do to work together to fight this?

Jessie Rubin:

Sure. Thank you for your question. The first thing that I want to say is as workers, the most powerful tool that we have is our labor, and we have the power to withhold labor. We have to remember that we’re not just bystanders who the Trump administration can cross with no consequences. Graduate students, we produce their research that saves lives in human health. We write books that shape American life and we invent the things that America is so proud of. We also teach undergraduates, the university would just simply not run without its graduate students. So a strike poses a threat that simply cannot be ignored.

Conlan Olson:

And in addition to our work in higher education, the whole point is that we believe in solidarity, and that includes solidarity across sectors and across borders. And of course, mobilizing in this way is a huge task, but we’re seeing really inspiring work. For example, UIW Labor for Palestine is a coalition of workers in manufacturing to legal services to higher education, all fighting together against investment in Israeli genocide. And so I think that cross sectoral organizing both between grad students and other unions on campuses, but even unions, not on campuses at all, is really important. And I think working to connect people is a huge part of the work that needs to be done now.

Ember McCoy:

So I think we already little mentioned a little bit at the University of Michigan, what we built during our strike and the organizing model and the networks and community that we built at that time has directly supported our pro-Palestine activism and our ICE organizing and the combination of the two through things like safety planning department meetings, and then literally being the institutions that have resources to do things like set up a hotline or to have bodies that are mobilized and already connected to each other. And so a lot of it is, I don’t feel that we’re even reinventing the real wheel right now, right? It’s like unions are this space where this collective organizing and this solidarity and financial and physical and legal resources already exist. And so we should absolutely be leveraging those to protect ourselves and our comrades. And at the University of Michigan, I know this is not the case everywhere, including Columbia, but until two weeks ago anyways, there hadn’t been a unionized staff member who was fired. So while undergrad research assistants were getting hiring bands and being fired from their jobs, they’re not unionized, grad workers were not being fired. And I think a lot of that is in part because we have an incredibly strong contract. And it would’ve been really hard to fire someone who was a graduate teaching instructor last two weeks ago. There was a full-time staff member who was fired for something or for allegedly participating in a protest that happened before she was even hired or applied to the job.

She is a part of our new United Staff University staff United Union. Is that right? Vidia? Did I? Yeah, I think it’s university. Okay. Yeah. So she’s a part of our university staff, United Union. They don’t have a contract yet though. So she is in a position where she has people that can start to try to fight for her, but then they don’t have a contract. And so I think also for workers who are not yet unionized, this is a really critical time to be able to use that type of institution to protect workers because we are seeing it work in many places.

Conlan Olson:

And just to build on that, I think one troubling pattern that we’ve seen recently is people who are nervous to sign a union card because they’re worried about retaliation for being involved with labor organizing. And just to start, I think that fear is totally understandable, and I don’t think it’s silly or invalid, but I also think that we need to remember that people are far safer in a union than they are without a union. And so in addition to our power to withhold labor, we’re also just a group of people who keep each other safe. So we have mutual aid collectives, we run campaigns to defend each other, like the one that we’re running for Rani. And so lying low is just not going to work, especially in this political moment. And so yeah, I really want people to remember that unions keep you safe.

Lavinia:

I think empirically there has been sort of a duality in the organizing conversations that we’re having for GEO as well where people both see how dangerous the situation is right now and want to be involved, but at the same time, especially if they’re not a citizen, they don’t necessarily feel comfortable exposing themselves, I guess. So I think one thing that’s just important in general for unions right now is providing avenues for people who are in that situation to get involved and contribute, even if that’s not necessarily going to the media or speaking out in a very public way.

Maximillian Alvarez:

With the last couple minutes that we have here, I wanted to end on that note and just acknowledge the reality that this podcast is going to be listened to by students, grad students, faculty, non university affiliated folks who are terrified right now, people who are self-censoring, people who are going back in their Facebook feeds and Instagram feeds and deleting past posts because they’re terrified of the government surveilling them and scrubbing them. And people are worried about getting abducted on the street by agents of the state losing their jobs, their livelihoods, their research. This is a very terrifying moment, and the more filled with terror we are, the more immobilized we are and the easier we are to control. So I wanted to ask y’all if you just had any final messages to folks out there on your campus or beyond your campus who are feeling this way, what would you say to them about ways they could get involved in this effort to fight back or any sort of parting messages that you wanted to leave listeners with before we break?

Lavinia:

I think doubt is a wonderful time to plug in. So for people who maybe previously hadn’t been thinking about unions especially as sort of an important part of their lives or thought, oh, the union on my campus is just doing whatever it needs to do, but I don’t necessarily need to have any personal involvement in their activities, I think right now is when we need all hands on deck given the level of political repression that’s happening. And also just to maybe bring in that old Martin Eller quote about first they came for the communist and I did not speak up because I was not a communist, et cetera. I think it’s also just really important to emphasize that I don’t think any of this is going to stop here. And even within the context of pro-Palestine organizing at the university, it is basically escalated in terms of the severity of the legal charges that are being brought. Obviously bringing in the FB is kind of really crazy, et cetera. So I don’t think that this is going to stop here or there’s any reason to assume that if you are not taking action right now, that means that you’re going to be safe ultimately. Yeah,

Ember McCoy:

And I think I would add, like many of us had said in the call, I think it’s very clear that we keep each other safe. The institutions that we’ve built, the organizing communities that we’ve built are very much actively keeping each other safe. And I think we’re seeing that in many different ways. And it’s important to acknowledge that and see that we’re much stronger fighting together as a part of these networks than that we are alone.

Conlan Olson:

I think as a closing thought, I also just want to say I think it’s really essential that we expand our view beyond just higher education. And so let me say why I think that’s true. So people know about Mahmud and Mosen and Ru Mesa, but I also want people to know about Alfredo Juarez, also known as Lelo, who’s a worker and labor organizer with the Independent Farm Workers Union in Washington state. And Lelo was kidnapped by ice from his car on his way to work in the tulip fields about a month ago. He’s an incredibly powerful labor organizer. He’s known especially for his ability to organize his fellow indigenous mixed deco speaking workers, and he was targeted by the state for this organizing. I think it’s important to keep this in mind and to learn from campaigns that are going on elsewhere and also to contribute to them.

And also I want people to remember that it’s not all dark. And so one story that was really inspiring to me recently was that in early April, a mother and her three young children living in a small town on the shore of Lake Ontario and upstate New York were taken by ice. And in response, the town, which keep in mind is a predominantly Republican voting town, turned out a thousand out of 1300 people in the town to a rally, and the family’s free now. And so we’re all labor organizers. Turning out a thousand out of 1300 people is some seriously impressive organizing. And I think learning from these lessons and keeping these victories in mind is really important. Not only as just an intellectual exercise, but also solidarity is something that we do every day. So it’s for example, why we fight for divestment from genocide. It’s why we do mutual aid. It’s why we engage with the neighborhoods that our universities are in. It’s why we don’t just defend our comrades who are highly educated, who have high earning potential, but we also defend our comrades who are taken, whose names we don’t even know yet. And so I just think expanding our view beyond just higher education is both a source of wisdom and something that we can learn from and also a source of hope for me

Jessie Rubin:

Really beautifully said Conlin. And I just want to add that expanding our view beyond higher education also includes the communities that our campuses reside on. I mean, I’m coming from a Columbia perspective where my university is consistently displacing people in Harlem who have been there for decades in this project of expanding Columbia’s campus continues to this day, and it’s something that we must fight back against. It’s really important that we protect our neighbors, not just on campus but also off campus. It’s important that we get to know our neighbors, that we are truly fully members of our greater community.

Ember McCoy:

If folks listening are interested in supporting us here at the University of Michigan, and I hope our Columbia colleagues can do the same, we have a legal slash mutual aid fund for our comrades who are facing charges and who are rated by the FBI. It is Bitly, BIT ly slash legal fund, and that is all lowercase, which matters. And we’re also happy to take solidarity statements and Columbia SWC did a great one for us and we’re happy to do the same. Thank you.

Maximillian Alvarez:

All right, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank our guests, Ember McCoy and Lavinia from the University of Michigan Graduate Employees Organization and Jessie Rubin and Conlan Olson from Student Workers of Columbia University. And I want to thank you all for listening, and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you all back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. Sign up for the Real News Newsletter so you never miss a story and help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximillian Alvarez. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.

Even before the end of the ceasefire in Gaza, Israeli attacks on the West Bank were escalating in 2025. By Feb. 5, 70 Palestinians were reported killed this year alone. Anna Lippman, a member of Independent Jewish Voices, has traveled on numerous occasions to the West Bank from her home in Toronto, Canada, to stand with Palestinians defending their land from attacks by Israeli soldiers and armed settlers.

Most recently, Lippman was in the Masafer Yatta community in the occupied West Bank as Hamdan Ballal, Oscar-winning Palestinian director of the film No Other Land, was detained by Israeli forces after being attacked by armed Israeli settlers in that same community. Lippman joins The Marc Steiner Show for an in-depth discussion on her experiences on the ground in the West Bank, where attempted land grabs and expulsions of Palestinians are growing by the day.

Producer: Rosette Sewali
Studio Production: David Hebden
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. It’s good to have you all with us as we continue to cover Palestine and Israel and hear from people throughout that struggle, and continue our series Not in Our Name — Jewish voices that oppose the occupation of Palestine and the oppression and repression of Palestinians by Israelis.

On March 24, co-director of the film No Other Land, Hamdan Bilal, was attacked by Israeli settlers and was badly injured — And while in the ambulance, he was attacked again. The Israeli police took him to an unknown location and, following an international outcry, he was released the next day.

Toronto resident Anna Lippman was in the area known as Masafer Yatta on the West Bank. While she was providing protective presence to Palestinians, Lippman, whois Jewish, was also attacked — Though not as severely — By Israeli settlers, and also was not arrested. Lippman spoke afterwards to the online media where she said what brings you back here is the people, meeting the people here, the children, the elders, the activists, the mothers, all of them, seeing the way that they continue to resist — Not just writing articles, but sharing their story through their everyday acts of resistance, continuing to be on their land, continuing their careers, their family lives, and the joy they find on their land and with their families, with their communities. It’s so beautiful. The hospitality they gave me as a Jewish person whose taxes and identity are used to kill their cousins, they welcome me into their home and feed me even though they have almost nothing.

Today we are joined by Anna Lippman. She’s a Toronto member of Independent Jewish Voices, and has long been showing up in solidarity with Palestinian people in opposition to Israel’s campaign of violence and displacement. And she opposes deeply, which we’ll talk about today, the conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Now, she went to the West Bank to protect Palestinians and showed huge heart and courage in her time there. She’s the daughter of a Holocaust surviving family and takes that into her heart as well when it comes to fighting and supporting liberation of Palestinian people.

Anna, welcome. It’s good to have you with us.

Anna Lippman:  Thanks for having me.

Marc Steiner:  So many places to start, but let me just begin, if you could just talk a bit about your time on the West Bank: A, was that the first time you’ve been there? And B, how did that affect you? You went there already opposed to the occupation, but I’m very curious how that affected you when you were there.

Anna Lippman:  Yeah, so I’m actually currently in the West Bank.

Marc Steiner:  At this moment?

Anna Lippman:  At this moment, which is why my internet is still terrible. So I’ve been here for two months, and I’ll be here for another month. It’s actually my fourth time here doing protective presence work, using both my international and my Jewish privilege to try to mitigate the violence and the ethnic cleansing.

As a kid, I went to Israel a lot of times, but I had never been to the occupied Palestinian territories, the West Bank. And so going for my first time and seeing it, even though I had been doing this work for so long, it really made my resolve so much stronger because the things that you see here, it’s impossible to imagine. And the relationships that you make with the people here and then the violence that you witness upon them, it just breaks your heart.

Marc Steiner:  So let me jump into some things you just said because I think it’s important. For people listening to us today, where are you on the West Bank? Who are you staying with?

Anna Lippman:  I am in the region of Masafer Yatta, the South Hebron Hills, and I’m in the village of Susya, most famous for being the home of Academy Award-winning director Hamdan Bilal.

Marc Steiner:  So I assume then, if you’re there, you’re staying with Palestinian families?

Anna Lippman:  They’re hosting us in the village. They have basically a guest house in the middle of the village where we sleep and where basically, when we’re not sleeping, children either are playing with us [Steiner laughs] or people are coming to get us to respond to attacks.

Marc Steiner:  And who is the “we”?

Anna Lippman:  So I’m actually here with seven other Jewish activists. We’re part of the Center for Jewish Nonviolence. There’s also several other non-Jewish activists. But for myself and for the people in this group, it’s really important for us to show up as Jews because, not [inaudible] show the world what it means to oppose the state and Zionism, but also so many Palestinians here have never met a Jew that doesn’t want to harm them. And so this, in many ways, is the work of doing that cultural exchange and helping people understand that this is a terrible thing that is happening, but it doesn’t represent all Jews.

Marc Steiner:  One thing you said, just to explore briefly for a moment together about the pain and terror the Jews and Israelis are foisting on Palestinians in this occupation and more. And I was reading about your work and who you are, and the idea that Jews, who suffered so much over thousands of years, who survived — And my family survived the Holocaust, the Cossack repressions in Eastern Poland, the inquisitions that took place. Everything that has happened to us as a people over the millennia, that we could then turn and do what we’re doing in Israel.

Anna Lippman:  Yes, I agree with you. And on the inside, I wonder the same way. Especially, like you, I’m the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. She was in Auschwitz. To understand the way that that which happened before I was born impacts my life, I could never want to do this to someone else. But also, it’s the plain and sad truth that hurt people hurt people. And if Jews, we don’t deal with our trauma, if we’re able to let others exploit it for their imperial goals, then of course we’re seeing what’s happening in Israel.

Marc Steiner:  So I’m very curious what the response has been to you, first from the Israelis, but then the Palestinians. What has been your experience in what we might call Israel proper, for the moment, in terms of what you experience when people know who you are and why you’re there?

Anna Lippman:  To be honest, I don’t tell people within Israel proper who I am and why I’m there [Steiner laughs].

Marc Steiner:  I get it.

Anna Lippman:  [Crosstalk] I fear for my life.

Marc Steiner:  Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes.

Anna Lippman:  And even in the West Bank, we have to be a little careful who we talk to about what we’re doing because there are many ways that these names get back to the Israeli government. It’s despicably easy for me to get away with this within Israel because I look very Ashkenazi. I look like everyone else. No one looks at me and blinks twice. And that’s why the Jews come to do this work is because we have these privileges and we might as well exploit them for something good.

Marc Steiner:  So let’s explore for a moment what that work is. When you say, we’ve said a number of times, you’re there doing this work, talk to people listening to us today about what this work is that you’re doing.

Anna Lippman:  So a lot of what we’re doing is documentation and accompaniment work. So, especially in Masafer Yatta, most of the people here are farmers and shepherds. They very much rely on the land. And so a key way for them to be able to remain here is to be able to take their flocks out, is to be able to harvest their crops. And so we literally just accompany them on their shepherding shifts, as they go to the grocery store, what have you, not only because Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals understand that you don’t want to act the same towards Palestinians in private that you do in front of an international. Because I’m getting this interview and Palestinians are not, so they don’t want us to tell the world what they’re doing to the Palestinians, what’s happening. And this is what we do when we bring our privilege here is we’re able to share it back out.

Marc Steiner:  In the process of your work over there, what has been your interaction with Israelis, with Jewish Israelis, about what you’re doing?

Anna Lippman:  Yeah, it’s been terrible. When the army comes, they give us quite a hard time despite us being Jewish. They call us anarchists. They say we are making chaos. A soldier told me the other day that I was here to make problems for the Jewish. And the settlers themselves, they’re even worse. The army will call us traitors, self-hating Jews, but the settlers will yell all kinds of profanities at us. They’ll chase us. I’ve been in multiple rock attacks.

Marc Steiner:  What does that mean?

Anna Lippman:  Groups of young settlers coming to throw rocks at the villages, the Palestinians, basically a stoning.

Marc Steiner:  In their minds a biblical stoning.

Anna Lippman:  Yes, of course.

Marc Steiner:  The vast majority of settlers in the West Bank are right-wing extremist, Orthodox Jews, is that right?

Anna Lippman:  Yeah. And the thing is that on the front lines of these more extremist settlements are mostly young men, like 15- to 20-year-olds that are sometimes called the Hilltop Youth, who are taken from bad homes, off the street, and brought to these settlements that are run by really right-wing fascist people that tell them, this is your land. You must protect it. You must shepherd. And if you see Palestinians, attack them before they attack you. And so who we mostly see is teenage boys, and that makes it a difficult dynamic to hate them.

Marc Steiner:  I understand. Let me take a step backwards here with you for just a minute because this is literally, I’ve been involved in this, in covering this, my entire life, almost. But what you’re describing now, what you just said about Israeli boys on these settlements attacking you and the Palestinians were brought there, were in trouble and brought to these… Talk a bit about that. Who are these kids? Where do they come from? What do you mean they were in trouble? It sounds like what — And I hate saying this — It sounds like what fascists did in Germany and Italy, taking youths off the street and turning them into stormtroopers.

Anna Lippman:  Yes, exactly. And it’s very similar here. Sometimes it’s rabbis, sometimes it’s just agricultural entrepreneurs. And they’ll go to places like Tel Aviv, like Jerusalem, like Be’er Sheva, places within 48, and they’ll tout their programs as helping at-risk youth and providing rehabilitation centers for at-risk youth. So these previously street youths are now productive members of society. They’re learning how to farm, they’re going to school.

And actually, because they’re touted this way, they get a lot of funding from places like the JNF that funds social service projects, from places like the Israeli government that funds rehabilitation for at-risk youth. But at the same time, there’s enough of a distance that the Israeli government can blame these youth for an attack. And then, through keeping an arm’s distance to them, they’re both supporting the youth to be there to do this ethnic cleansing, and they can blame the youth and say it’s not part of the state, it’s extrastate actors.

Marc Steiner:  So would it be fair to say, just to explore this for a moment — Then we can go on something else — But is it fair to say that these kids that are taken to these settlements, who are in trouble from the stuff they did in the streets, are kids who are what we call Mizrahim, that there are kids who are from Arab African descent in Israel. Would that be about right?

Anna Lippman:  Mostly not. Mostly they’re Ashkenazi. Sometimes they’re Mizrahi, but the vast majority of them are Ashkenazi. A lot of them are from places like Europe and Ukraine. A lot of them are just born and raised in Israel.

Marc Steiner:  That’s a pretty horrendous description. I think the world is not aware of what you’re describing at this moment. I think most people, I wasn’t, are not aware, and I stay on top of this. It’s something that is almost, it’s a frightening Orwellian step.

Anna Lippman:  It definitely is. And it’s been happening for quite a while. And not only is it terrible for the Palestinians, but it’s so exploitative [of] these young men.

Marc Steiner:  Yes, absolutely. I’m also curious, I’ve not been to the West Bank, but as a young person — I was a very young person — I was a Freedom Rider, and I was [on the] Eastern Shore, Maryland, Mississippi, Alabama. And it was terrifying. But you did it because it had to be done.

Anna Lippman:  Exactly.

Marc Steiner:  So I want to talk about you in that regard, what it’s like for you to live on the edge of that violence, protecting the human rights and liberation of Palestinians as a Jewish woman?

Anna Lippman:  It’s a lot. It’s very scary, and it’s not comfortable. I think a lot of times I feel like I’m on a three-month firefighting shift. You can never really put your guard completely down because things could go off at any minute and you’ll have to run out of the house and go stop this fire. And it really impacts the activists here because it’s a lot on your body, on your mind.

And then I see the Palestinians who live this every day, and I remember that I will go home to Netflix and Uber Eats, and they will not. This is where they live. And so I think, just like you said, this is what has to be done, even though it’s not my favorite thing to do, for sure.

Marc Steiner:  All right. So I guess you’ve been aware of all the crackdowns taking place in Canada, in Germany, across the globe, against Palestinians.

Anna Lippman:  Absolutely.

Marc Steiner:  So just to hear your thoughts and analysis of what all that means, this literally international crackdown, and it’s going to begin to happen in larger ways here in the United States as well with Donald Trump back in the White House.

Anna Lippman:  Absolutely, yeah. No, I totally agree. And Canada is not that far off from Trump. We don’t know who’s going to win this next election, and Canada is going quite right itself. And I think one thing I’ve always learned about Palestine is it’s sort of the moral center of the world. Everything that Israel does in Palestine, their militarization, their technology, their AI, they export it to the rest of the world. Police, [armies] from all over the world, go train with the IDF.

And so to me, [it’s] surprising to see the ways that this extreme crackdown is going global and is starting to impact people that perhaps thought they were a bit more safe. And I think that’s why everyone who feels strongly about this, who feels strongly about the right to speak up for what you believe in, needs to be saying no, needs to be standing up. Because if we don’t say this is too much, what student are they going to snatch off the streets next?

Marc Steiner:  And it sounds like, what I’ve seen written before and what you’re describing, people don’t realize this Western American and Israeli cooperation in testing out weaponry and more is a test run for oppression universally.

Anna Lippman:  Exactly, yes. And Israel does it very well. And other imperial settler colonial countries like Canada, they pay attention. They want to do it well too.

Marc Steiner:  So tell me a bit, for people listening to us in the time we have left, a bit about what your daily life and work is like there, what you’re experiencing firsthand as a young Jewish woman in the West Bank living with Palestinians and staring down right-wing settlers and the Israeli army.

Anna Lippman:  I think what, to me, is most noticeable about my day-to-day experience here is it’s so unpredictable that it’s impossible to plan a month ahead, and very difficult to plan two days ahead.

Marc Steiner:  Wow.

Anna Lippman:  We’ll wake up, we’ll go shepherding, we’ll be having a lovely time, and then suddenly a settler will come in their truck, try to run us over, and we’re taking footage of this, talking to lawyers, taking people to the police station to give testimony. And that’s your whole day. And sometimes we can be very lucky and we’ll just have a morning where things are great and we’ll get to hang out with the families and just chill. But even in those quiet times, there’s still tension because it’s so unpredictable that you never know what is coming or when. And every time that you continue to stay in your land, that you continue to call settlers out, they seek revenge. So just like the Palestinians here, I can’t really give you a day-to-day because the settlers don’t let us have that regularity and schedule.

Marc Steiner:  What do you mean by that?

Anna Lippman:  They keep us on our toes by intentionally being unpredictable, by telling us they’ll come back tonight, then not, but coming to attack three days later. So it’s very hard.

Marc Steiner:  As an activist in the midst of this, and more in the middle of it than most people are who might oppose what’s happening, because you’re there, physically there, putting your life on the line, how do you see it unfolding in the future? And where are the possibilities that we can actually find a road to peace where Israelis and Palestinians, Muslims, Christians, and Jews live in that place together? Because in the end, for me, I have this poster on my wall — I’ve said this before on other shows — I have this poster on my wall that I got in Cuba in 1968, and it’s a map of all of Palestine, and it has a Palestinian flag on one side and an Israeli flag on the other side, and it says “One state, two people, three faiths”. And that’s kind of been my mantra for a long time. So I’m asking you that question in that spirit because it almost feels impossible to attain.

Anna Lippman:  Yeah, I think that it has been really grim for the last two or so years, and it’s been really difficult to find hope. I think where I find hope is the fact that so many more people know about Palestine than they did in 2014, than they did in 2021. So for me, this gives me hope when I see a random person that’s not Jewish, that’s not Arab, who knows about Palestine and cares about the injustice there. I think the more we speak up, the more we ask our governments to hold the Israeli government accountable, the more that we will find actual peace.

But it’s also important to recognize that peace, true peace, means equality, humanity, and dignity for everyone from the river to the sea. And so we cannot have a state, two states, 12 states, I don’t care [Steiner laughs]. But if Palestinians don’t have the right to live in their land, to return to their ancestral land, to be as much of a society as an Israeli citizen is, there will never be peace because peace is not built on oppression.

Marc Steiner:  Anna Lippman, a couple of things here. First of all, I do want to say this to you, and I want everyone listening to us here at The Real News to know it, what you and others like you are doing at this moment takes, and the Yiddish word is chutzpah, takes a lot of heart and strength and bravery to stand up for what you’re doing. It’s not just carrying a placard around an embassy. You’re in the midst of it, saying, no, not in our name, this has to end.

And I do want to thank you for what you’re doing. I think your voice and the voices of others around you, along with Palestinians, is what we want to continue to hear more [of] on this program. And for one, I want to stay in touch, and I want to help work to bring more voices like yours on, but also to expand those voices and give people the opportunity and chance to do exactly what you are doing.

Anna Lippman:  Yes, I love that.

Marc Steiner:  That will change it.

Anna Lippman:  I think so. We gotta have hope, right?

Marc Steiner:  Yes, we do. Look, I’ll say this one last thing. I say this often. One of the scariest things for people in the South during Civil Rights, which you see all the white freedom workers, and among those, the majority of the white people who put their lives on the line in Civil Rights were Jews.

Anna Lippman:  Yes. This is our history, right?

Marc Steiner:  Yes. Right. So you’re carrying on a tradition, and you’re a brave human being, a brave woman. Let’s do stay in touch, and whatever stories we can tell together about your experience and others’ experiences and the experiences of the Palestinian lives that you touch and live with, we want to put on the air and do that.

Anna Lippman:  Yeah. That’s so great. Thank you so much for having me, and, really, for everything.

Marc Steiner:  Please stay safe and stay strong. Thank you.

Anna Lippman:  Thank you.

Marc Steiner:  Thank you once again to Anna Lippman for joining us today. And I want to reiterate what I said during our conversation. The bravery she and other young Jews are showing in Israel Palestine, living with Palestinians to say, we, as Jews, say not in our name, is literally putting their lives on the line, just as people did to end racial segregation in America. We will, I will, continue to highlight their work, and we’ll be hearing more from Anna Lippman, and other Anna Lippmans as well, as the voices of the Palestinians they work with put their lives on the line, and they’re there to stand with them.

Once again, thank you to Anna Lippman for joining us today. Thanks to David Hebden for running the program today, our audio editor, Alina Nehlich, and producer, Rosette Sewali, for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you, Anna Lippman, for all the work you do and for joining us today. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

One year ago, Columbia University became ground zero for the student-led Gaza solidarity encampment movement that spread to campuses across the country and around the world. Now, Columbia has become ground zero for the Trump administration’s authoritarian assault on higher education, academic freedom, and the right to free speech and free assembly—all under the McCarthyist guise of rooting out “anti-semitism.” From Trump’s threats to cancel $400 million in federal grants and contracts with Columbia to the abduction of international students like Mahmoud Khalil by ICE agents, to the university’s firing and expulsion of Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers union president Grant Miner, “a tremendous chilling effect” has gripped Columbia’s campus community. In this urgent episode of Working People, we speak with: Caitlin Liss, a PhD candidate in history at Columbia University and a member of Student Workers of Columbia-UAW (SWC); and Allie Wong, a PhD student at the Columbia Journalism School and a SWC member who was arrested and beaten by police during the second raid on the Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia on April 30, 2024.

Additional links/info:

• Student Workers of Columbia-UAW Local 2710 website
• April 17: Day of Action to Defend Higher Ed website
• Mahmoud Khalil statement from ICE detention: “My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner”
• Allie Wong, The Intercept, “This is not about antisemitism, Palestine, or Columbia. It’s Trump dismantling the American dream“
• Grant Miner, The Nation, “Columbia expelled me for my palestine activism, but I won’t be silenced”
• Jonah E. Bromwich & Hamed Aleaziz, The New York Times, “Columbia student hunted by ICE sues to prevent deportation”
• AAUP letter to college and university legal offices: “Institutions Should Not Provide Student and Faculty Info To Enable Deportations”
• Alan Blinder, The New York Times, “Trump Has Targeted These Universities. Why?”
• Oliver Laughland, The Guardian, “‘Detention Alley’: inside the Ice centres in the US south where foreign students and undocumented migrants languish”
• Alice Speri, The Guardian, “‘A huge cudgel’: alarm as Trump’s war on universities could target accreditors”
• Annie Ma, Makiya Seminera, & Christopher L. Keller, Associated Press, “Visa cancellations sow panic for international students, with hundreds fearing deportation”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “‘People are hiding in their apartments’: Inside Trump’s assault on universities”
• Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “‘Kill these cuts before they kill us’: Federally funded researchers warn DOGE cuts will be fatal”

Permanent links below…

• Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
• Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
• The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page

Featured Music…

• Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez
Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we are continuing our urgent coverage of the Trump Administration’s all out assault on our institutions of higher education and the people who live, learn and work there. Today we are going deeper into the heart of authoritarian darkness that has gripped colleges and universities across the country and we’re talking with two graduate student workers at Columbia University. Columbia has become ground zero for the administration’s gangster government style moves to hold billions of dollars of federal funding hostage in order to bend universities to Donald Trump’s will to reshape the curricula culture and research infrastructure of American higher ed as such and to squash our constitutionally protected rights to free speech and free assembly, all under the McCarthy’s guise of rooting out supposed antisemitism, which the administration has recategorized to mean virtually any criticism of an opposition to the state of Israel.

The political ideology of Zionism and Israel’s US backed genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians just one year ago. Columbia University was also ground zero for the student-led Palestine solidarity protests and encampments that spread to campuses across the country and even around the world. It was exactly one year ago that the first Gaza solidarity encampment began at Columbia on April 17th, 2024 and that same month on more than one occasion, Columbia’s own president at the time minutia authorized the NYPD to descend on campus like an occupying force, beat an arrest protestors and dismantle the camps. Now fast forward to March of this year. On Friday, March 7th, the Trump administration announced that it was canceling $400 million in federal grants and contracts with Columbia claiming that the move was due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students. The very next day, March 8th Mahmud, Khalil was abducted by ICE agents at his New York City apartment building in front of his pregnant wife and disappeared to a Louisiana immigration jail.

Khalil, a Palestinian born legal resident with a green card had just completed his master’s program and was set to graduate in May. He had served as a key negotiator with the university administration and spokesperson for the student encampment last year. He’s not accused of breaking any laws during that time, but the Trump administration has weaponized a rarely used section of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, invoking the Secretary of States power to deport non-citizens if they supposedly believed their presence in the country could negatively affect US foreign policy. Just days after Khalil’s abduction, the university also expelled grant minor president of the Student Workers of Columbia Union, a local of the United Auto Workers, and that was just one day before contract negotiations were set to open between the union and the university. On March 13th, I was expelled from Columbia University for participating in the protest movement against the ongoing genocide in Gaza, minor rights in an op-ed for the nation.

I was not the only one. He continues, 22 students, all of whom like me had been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, were either expelled, suspended for years or had their hard earned degrees revoked on the same day all for allegedly occupying a building that has been occupied at least four times throughout Columbia’s history. And then there’s Y Sao Chung, a 21-year-old undergraduate and legal permanent resident who is suing the government after ICE moved to deport her, following her arrest on March 5th while protesting Columbia’s disciplinary actions against student protestors. I mean, this is just a small, terrifying snapshot of the broader Orwellian nightmare that has become all too real, all too quickly at Columbia University and it is increasingly becoming reality around the country and things got even darker last week with the latest development in Mahmood Khalil’s case as the American Civil Liberties Union stated on Friday in a decision that appeared to be pre-written, an immigration judge ruled immediately after a hearing today that Mahmud Khalil is removable under US immigration law. This comes less than 48 hours after the US government handed over the evidence they have on Mr. Khalil, which included nothing more than a letter from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that made clear Mr. Khalil had not committed a crime and was being targeted solely based on his speech. He’s not yet scheduled for deportation.

Listen, this isn’t just a redux of McCarthyism and the red scare. It has elements of that absolutely, but it is also monstrously terrifyingly new. I don’t know how far down this road we’re going to go. All I know is that whatever comes next will depend on what people of conscience do now or what they don’t do. Will other universities cave and capitulate to Trump as quickly as Columbia has? Will we see instead faculty, staff, students, grad students, parents, community members and others coming together on campuses across the country to fight this or will fear submission silence and self-censorship went out? What is it even like to be living, working and studying at Columbia University right now? Well, today you’ll hear all about that firsthand from our two guests. With all of this going on, I got to speak with Caitlin Liss, a PhD candidate in history at Columbia University and a member of Student workers of Columbia, and I also spoke with Alie Wong, a PhD student at the Columbia Journalism School, and a student workers of Columbia member who was arrested and beaten by police during the second raid on the Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia on April 30th, 2024.

Here’s my conversation with Caitlin and Allie recorded on Saturday April 12th. Well, Caitlin, Allie, thank you both so much for joining us today on the show. I really appreciate it, especially in the midst of everything going on right now. And I basically wanted to start there and ask if you could tell us from your own firsthand experience as student workers at Columbia, like what is the mood on campus and in your life right now, especially in light of the latest ruling on Mahmud Khalil’s case?

Caitlin Liss:

Okay. Yeah, so thank you for having us. I’m happy to be here. The mood on campus has been, you probably won’t be surprised to hear pretty bleak, pretty bad. We found out yesterday that Mahmood Kalila is not going to be released from jail in Louisiana. I think a lot of us were hoping that this ruling that was coming up was going to be in his favor and he would be released and be back home in time to be there for the birth of his baby. And it didn’t happen. And I think it’s just another horrible thing that has happened in a month, two months of just unrelenting bad news on campus. So stuff is feeling pretty bad. People are afraid, especially international students are afraid to leave their house. They’re afraid to speak up in class. I hear from people who are afraid to go to a union meeting and even those of us who are citizens feel afraid as well.

I mean, I wake up every day and I look at my phone to see if I’ve gotten a text message telling me that one of my friends has been abducted. It’s really scary. And on top of the sort of personal relationships with our friends and comrades who are at risk, there’s the sense that also our careers are industry are at risk. So, and many other members of student workers of Columbia have spent many years dedicated to getting a PhD and being in academia and it’s increasingly starting to feel like academia might not exist for that much longer. So it’s feeling pretty bleak.

Allie Wong:

Yeah, I would definitely agree. And again, thank you so much Max for having us here. It’s a real pleasure to be able to share our stories and have a platform to do that. Yeah, I would agree. I think that there is a tremendous chilling effect that’s sunk in across the campus. And on one hand it’s not terribly surprising considering that’s the strategy of the Trump administration on the other. It is really a defeating feeling to see the momentum that we had last year, the ways that we were not only telling the story but telling it across the world that all eyes were on Columbia and we had this really incredible momentum. And so to see not just that lack of momentum, but the actual fear that has saturated the entire campus that has indiscriminately permeated people’s attitudes, whether you’re an American citizen or not, whether you’re light-skinned or not, has been something that’s been incredibly harrowing.

I know that after Mahmood, I at least had the anticipation of quite a bit of activity, but between that ranjani the other students and Columbia’s capitulation, it actually has gone the opposite way in that while I expected there to be tons of masks on campus after Columbia agreed to have a total mask ban, there was no one when I expected to see different vigils or protests or the breakdown of silos that have emerged across the campus of different groups, whether they’re student groups or faculty groups, I’m just hoping to see some kind of solidarity there. It hasn’t, and I think it’s largely because of the chilling effect because that this is the strategy of the Trump administration and unfortunately it’s such a dire situation that I think it’s really squashed a lot of the fervor and a lot of the fearlessness that many of us had prior to this moment.

Maximillian Alvarez:

It feels like a ice pick to the heart to hear that, especially knowing not just what we saw on campuses across the country just a year ago, but also the long tradition of campus protests and universities and higher education being a place of free speech, free thought free debate and the right to protest and lead with a moral consciousness like movements that help direct the whole of society to see that this is what is happening here now in front of all of us. And since I have so much more, I want to ask about the past month for you both on campus, but while we’re on that subject that Allie just brought up about the expectation right now, which I have heard echoed a lot of places online and offline of why aren’t there mass protests across higher ed in every state in the country right now, you would think that the generation of the sixties would do just that if Nixon had tried such a thing. And a lot of folks have been asking us why aren’t we seeing that right now? And so I wanted to ask if y’all had any thoughts on that and also if that would in your mind change things like if you saw other campuses that weren’t being targeted as intently as Columbia is, if you saw students and faculty and others protesting on behalf of what’s happening to you, would that change the mood on campus you think?

Caitlin Liss:

I mean that there’s a few things going on. Part of it is, like Allie said, the chilling effect of what’s been happening is making a really large percentage of our members and people in our community afraid to publicly take action. International student workers make up a really big percentage of our membership, and a lot of those people are afraid to even sign their name to a petition. In my departments. We sent a joint letter to the departments about what was going on, and a bunch of students didn’t want their names appearing on this letter that was just being sent the chair of the departments. So the chilling effect is real and very strong, and I think that that’s preventing a lot of people from showing up in ways that they might have done otherwise. I think that another part of it is just the kind of unrelenting nature of what’s been happening.

It has been one horrible thing after another and trying to react to everything as it comes in is difficult, but I don’t think it’s the case that we’re not doing anything. We are doing quite a bit and really trying through many different avenues to use our power as a union to fight back against what’s happening. We are talking with other unions on campus, we talk to other higher ed unions across the country, and so I think that there is quite a lot going on, but it does sometimes feel like we can’t keep up with the pace of the things that are happening just because they are happening so quickly and accumulating so fast.

Allie Wong:

Yeah, I mean I would definitely agree. I think that it’s the fire hose strategy, which has proven to be effective not just on Columbia but across the nation with the dismantling of the federal government attack on institutions, the arts, the legal processes and legal entities. And so I think that again, that that’s part of the strategy is to just overwhelm people with the number of issues that would require attention. And I think that’s happening on Columbia’s campus as well. If we take even divestment as an example where it was a pretty straightforward ask last year, but now we’re seeing an issue on campus where it’s no longer about Palestine, Israel divestment, it’s about immigration reform and law enforcement. It’s about the American dream class consciousness. So many of these different things that are happening not just to the student body, but to faculty and the administration.

And so I think that in terms of trying to galvanize people, it’s a really difficult ask when you have so many different things that are coming apart at the seams. And that’s not to say it’s an insurmountable task. As Caitlin mentioned, we are moving forward, we are putting infrastructure in place and asks in place, but I think it’s difficult to mobilize people around so many different issues when everyone already feels not only powerless but cynical about the ability to change things when again, that momentum that we had last year has waned and the issues have broadened.

Caitlin Liss:

Just in terms of your question about support or solidarity from other campuses, I think that one of the things that has been most dispiriting about being at Columbia right now is that it’s clear that Columbia is essentially a test case for the Trump administration. We were the first school to be and are still in many ways kind of the center of attention, but it’s not just us, but it feels like the way that Columbia is reacting is kind of setting the tone for what other universities and colleges can do across the country. And what Columbia is doing is folding, so they are setting an example that is just rolling over and giving up in terms of what other colleges can do. I think we’re seeing other universities are reacting to these kinds of attacks in ways that are much better than Columbia has done. We just saw that Tufts, I think filed some legal documents in support of Ru Mesa Ozturk because she is a student there.

Columbia has done no such thing for Ranjani, for Uno, for Mahmood. They haven’t even mentioned them. And so we can see other universities are reacting in ways that are better. And I think that that gives us hope and not only gives us hope, but it gives us also something to point to when people at Columbia say, well, Columbia can’t do things any differently. It’s like, well, clearly it can because these other universities are doing something. Columbia doesn’t have to be doing this. It is making a choice to completely give in to everything that Trump is demanding.

Allie Wong:

And I would also add to that point, and going back to your question about Mahmood and sort of how either us individually or collectively are feeling about that, to Caitlin’s point, I think there’s so much that’s symbolic about Columbia, whether it has to do with Trump’s personal pettiness or the fact that it was kind of the epicenter of the encampments list last year. I think what happened with Mahmood is incredibly symbolic. If you look at particularly him and Ranjani, the first two that were targeted by the university, so much of their situations are almost comical in how they planned the ambiguity of policy and antisemitism where you look at Mahmud and he, it’s almost funny that he was the person who was targeted because he’s an incredibly calm, gentle person. He provided a sense of peace during the chaos of last year. He’s unequivocally condemned, Hamas, very publicly condemned terrorism, condemned antisemitism.

So if you were looking for someone who would be a great example, he’s not really one considering they don’t have any evidence on him. And the same thing for Ranjani who literally wasn’t even in the country when October 7th happened in that entire year, had never participated in the protests at most, had kind of engaged with social media by liking things, but two really good examples of people who don’t actually quite fit the bill in terms of trying to root out antisemitism. But in my mind it’s really strategic because it really communicates that nobody is safe. Whether you’ve participated in protests or not, you’re not safe, whether you’ve condemned antisemitism or not, you’re not safe. And I think that plays into the symbolic nature of Columbia as well, where Trump is trying to make an example out of Columbia and out of Columbia students. And we see that very clearly in the ruling yesterday with Mahmud.

Again, that’s not to say that it’s not an insurmountable thing, but it’s disappointing and it’s frankly embarrassing to be a part of an institution that brags about its long history of protests, its long history of social change through student movements. When you look at 1968 and Columbia called the NYPD on students arrested 700 students, and yet it kind of enshrines that moment in history as a place of pride, and I see that happening right now as well where 20, 30, 50 years from now, we’ll be looking at this moment and Columbia will be proud of it when really they’re the perpetrators of violence and hatred and bigotry and kind of turning the gun on their own students. So yeah, it’s a really precarious time to be a Columbia student and to be advocating for ourselves and our friends, our brothers and sisters who are experiencing this kind of oppression and persecution from our own country.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Allie, Caitlin, I want to ask if we could again take that step back to the beginning of March where things were this terrifying new reality was really ramping up with the Trump administration’s freezing and threatening of completely withholding $400 million in federal funds and grants to Columbia just one day before Mahmood Khalil was abducted by ice agents and disappeared to a jail in Louisiana thousands of miles away. So from that point to now, I wanted to ask, as self-identified student workers at Columbia University, how have you and others been feeling throughout all of this as it’s been unfolding and trying to get through your day-to-day work? What does that even look like? Teaching and researching under these terrifying circumstances?

Allie Wong:

For me, it has been incredibly scary. As you mentioned, I was someone who was arrested and beaten last year after the second Gaza solidarity encampment raid and have spoken quite publicly about it. I authored a number of pieces around that time and since then and have been pretty open about my involvement being okay serving as a lightning rod for a lot of that PR stuff. And so for me, coming into this iteration of students battles with the university, it’s been really scary to kind see how many of the students that I was arrested with, many of my friends and colleagues are now either being targeted because of their involvement or living in the fear of being targeted because there is an opacity around what those policies are and how they’re being enforced and implemented. So it really does feel quite McCarthys in the sense that you don’t really know what the dangers are, but you know that they’re there, you’re looking over your shoulder all the time.

I don’t leave my house without wearing a mask just because through this whole process, many students have been doxed. Both Caitlin and myself have been doxed quite heavily through Canary mission and other groups online, and many folks have experienced offline behavior that has been threatening or scary to their own physical emotional security. And so that’s been a big piece for me is just being aware of my surroundings, being mindful of when I leave the house. In many respects, it does feel like I am growing in paranoia, but at the same time I consider it a moral obligation to be on the front lines as a light-skinned US citizen to be serving as a literal and figurative shield for my international brothers and sisters. And so it’s an interesting place as particularly a US citizen to say, what is my responsibility to the people around me?

What’s my responsibility to myself and keeping myself and my home safe? What’s my responsibility for sticking up for those who are targeted as someone who has the privilege of being able to be a citizen? And so I think it’s kind of a confusing time for those of us on the ground wanting to do more, wanting to help, wanting to offer our assistance with the privileges that we have and everyone’s level of comfort is different, and so my expectation is not that other people would take the kinds of risks I’m taking, but everyone has a part to play and whether that’s a visual part or a non-visual part, being in the public, it doesn’t really matter. We all have a part to play. And so given what we talked about just about the strategy of the Trump administration and the objectives to make us fearful and make us not speak out, I think it’s more important now than ever for those of us who are able to have the covering of US citizenship, to be doing everything in our power with the resources we’ve been given to take those risks because it’s much more important now in this administration than it’s ever been.

Caitlin Liss:

And I think on top of the stuff allie’s talking about, we do still have to continue doing our jobs. So for me, that is teaching. I’m teaching a class this semester and that has been very challenging to do, having to continue going in and talking about the subject matter, which is stuff that is very interesting to me personally and that I’m very excited to be teaching about in the classroom, but at the same time, there’s so much going on campus, it just feels impossible to be turning our attention to Ana and I hear from my students are scared, so part of my job has become having to help my students through that. I have heard lots of people who are trying to move their classes off campus because students don’t want to be on campus right now.

ICE is crawling all over campus. The NYPD is all over the place. I don’t know if you saw this, but Columbia has agreed to hire these 36 quote peace officers who are going to be on campus and have arresting power. So now essentially we have cops on campus full time and then on top of all of that, you have to wait in these horrible security lines to even get onto campus so the environment on campus doesn’t feel safe, so my students don’t feel safe. I don’t think anyone’s students feel safe right now. My colleagues who are international students don’t feel safe. I had a friend ask me what to do because she was TAing for a class and she wasn’t allowed to move it off campus or onto Zoom, and she said, I don’t feel safe on campus because I’m an international student and what am I going to do if ice comes to the door?

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do in that situation. And so the students are scared, my colleagues are scared. I’ve even heard from a lot of professors who are feeling like they have to watch their words in the classroom because they don’t want to end up on Canary mission for having said something. So that’s quite difficult. Teaching in this environment is very difficult and I think that the students are having a really hard time. And then on top of that, I am in the sixth year of my PhD, so I’m supposed to be writing a dissertation right now, and that is also quite difficult to be keeping up with my research, which is supposed to be a big part of the PhD is producing research and it’s really hard to do right now because it feels like we have, my friends and my colleagues are at risk right now, so that’s quite difficult to maintain your attention in all those different places.

Allie Wong:

Just one more piece to add because I know that we’ve been pretty negative and it is a pretty negative situation, so I don’t want to silver line things. That being said, I do feel as though it’s been really beautiful to see people step up and really beautiful to see this kind of symbiotic relationship happening between US students and international students. I’m at the journalism school, which is overwhelmingly international, and I was really discouraged when there was a report that came out from the New York Times a couple of weeks ago about a closed town hall that we had where our dean, Jelani Cobb more or less said to students, we can’t protect you as much as I would love to be able to say here are the processes and protocols and the ways to keep yourself safe and the ways that we’re here to support you, but he just said we can’t.

And he got a lot of flack for that because that’s a pretty horrible thing for a dean to say. But I actually really appreciated it because it was the most honest and direct thing he could have said to students when the university itself was just sending us barrages of emails with these empty platitudes about values and a 270 year history of freethinking and all this nonsense. That being said, I think that it was a really difficult story to read, but at the same time it’s been really beautiful to see community gather around and clinging together when there are unknowns, people taking notes for each other when students don’t feel comfortable going to campus, students starting to host off campus happy hour groups and sit-ins together and things of that nature that have been really, again, amazing to see happen under such terrible circumstances and people just wanting to help each other out in the ways that they can.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Caitlyn, Allie, you were just giving us a pretty harrowing view of your day-to-day reality there as student workers of Columbia PhD working on your PhDs and dealing with all of this Orwellian madness that we’ve been talking about today. When I was listening to you both, I was hearing so many kind of resonances from my own experience, just one sort of decade back, right? I mean, because I remember being a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan during the first Trump administration and co-founding for full disclosure, I was a member of the grad union there. I was a co-founder of the campus anti-fascist network. I was doing a lot of public writing. I started this podcast in that sort of era, and there were so many things that y’all were talking about that sounded similar from the fear of websites like Canary Mission, putting people’s names out there and encouraging them to be doxed and disciplined and even deported.

That resonated with me because it just ate nine years ago. That was groups like Turning Point USA, they were the ones trying to film professors in class and then send it to Breitbart and hopefully get it into the Fox News outrage cycle. And I experienced some of that. But what I’m hearing also is just that the things we were dealing with during the first Trump administration are not what y’all are dealing with now. There is first and foremost a fully, the state is now part of it. The state is now sort of leading that. It’s not just the sort of far right groups and people online and that kind of thing, but also it feels like the mechanisms of surveillance and punishment are entirely different as well. I wanted to ask if y’all could speak a little more to that side of things. It’s not just the university administration that you’re contending with, you’re contending with a lot of different forces here that are converging on you and your rights at this very moment.

Caitlin Liss:

Yeah, I mean I think the one thing that has been coming up a lot for us, we’re used to fighting Columbia, the institution for our rights in the workplace for fair pay. And Columbia has always been a very stubborn adversary, very difficult to get anything out of them. Our first contract fight lasted for years, and now we’re looking at not just Columbia as someone to be fighting with, but at the federal government as a whole. And it’s quite scary. I think we talked about this a little bit, about international students being afraid to participate in protests, being afraid to go to union meetings. We’re hearing a lot of fear from people who aren’t citizens about to what extent participating in the union is safe for them right now. And on the one hand you want to say participating in a union is a protected activity.

There’s nothing illegal about it. You can’t get in trouble. In fact, it’s illegal to retaliate against you for being in a union. But on the other hand, it doesn’t necessarily feel like the law is being that protective right now. So it’s a very scary place to be in. And I think that from our point of view, the main tool we have in this moment is just our solidarity with one another and labor power as a union because the federal governments does not seem that interested in protecting our rights as a union. And so we have to rely on each other in order to fight for what we need and what will make our workplace safe.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and I was wondering, Allie, if I could also toss it to you there, because this makes me think of something you said earlier about how the conditions at Columbia, the structure of Columbia, how Columbia’s run, have sort of made it vulnerable to what’s happening now or the ways that Columbia talks about itself versus what Columbia actually is, are quite stark here. And connecting that to what Caitlin just said, I think it should also be understood as someone who has covered grad student campaigns, contract campaigns at Columbia and elsewhere, that when these sorts of strikes are happening when graduate student workers are taking action against the administration, the first ones that are threatened by the administration with punitive measures including potentially the revocation of their visas are international students. They have always been the most vulnerable members of grad student unions that administrations have actually used as leverage to compel unions to bend to their demand. So I make that point speaking only for myself here as a journalist who has observed this in many other times, that this precedent of going after international students in the way the Trump administration is like didn’t just come out of nowhere.

Allie Wong:

Exactly. Yeah. So I mean I think if you even look at how Trump campaigned, he really doubled down on immigration policy. I mean, it’s the most obvious statement I can say, but the high hyperbole, the hatred, the racism, you see that as a direct map onto what’s happening right now. And I think that’s part of what maybe isn’t unique about Columbia, but as we’re starting to see other universities take a stand, Caitlin mentioned Tufts. I know Princeton also recently kind said that they would not capitulate. So there is precedent for something different from how Columbia has behaved, and I think you see them just playing exactly into Trump’s hands folding to his kind of proxy policy of wanting to make Colombian example. And it’s a really disappointing thing from a university that prides itself on its liberal values, prides itself on its diversity on protecting students.

When you actually see quite the opposite, not only is Columbia not just doing anything, it’s actively participating in what’s happening on campus, the fact that they have yet to even name the students who have very publicly been abducted or chased out of the country because of their complicity, the fact that they will send emails or make these statements about values, but actually not tell us anything that’s going to be helpful, like how policies will be implemented when they’re going to be implemented, what these ice agents look like, things of that nature that could be done to protect students. And also obviously not negotiating in good faith. The fact that Grant was expelled and fired the day before we had a collective bargaining meeting right before we were about to talk about protections for international students, just communicates that the university is not operating in good faith, they’re not interested in the wellbeing of their students or doing anything within their power, which is quite a tremendous power to say to the Trump administration, our students come first. Our students are an entity of us and we’re going to do whatever we can in our power to block you from demonizing and targeting international students who, as you said, are the most vulnerable people on our campus, but also those who bring so much diversity and brilliance and life to our university and our country.

Caitlin Liss:

And I think on the subject of international students, you, you’re right that they have always been in a more precarious position in higher ed unions. But on the other hand, I think that that shows us what power we do have as a union. I’m thinking. So we’ve been talking a lot about to what extent it’s safe for international workers to stay involved in the union, and our contract is expiring in June, which is why we’re having these bargaining sessions and we’re talking about going on strike next fall potentially. And there’s a lot of questions about to what extent can international students participate now because who knows what kind of protections they’re going to have? And I’ve been thinking about the last time we went on strike, it was a 10 week strike and we were striking through the end of the semester. It was the fall semester and we were still on strike when the semester ended.

And Columbia said that if we didn’t come off strike that they weren’t going to rehire the workers who were striking for the next semester. So anyone who was on strike wouldn’t get hired for a position in the spring semester and for international students that was going to affect their visa status. So it was very scary for them. And we of course said, that’s illegal. You can, that’s retaliation for us for going on strike. You can’t do that. And they said, it’s not illegal because we’re just not rehiring you. And it was this real moment of risk even though we felt much more confident in the legal protection because it felt like they could still do it and our recourse would have to be going to court and winning the case that this was illegal. So it was still very scary for international students, but we voted together to stay on strike and we held the line and Columbia did not in fact want to fire all of us who were on strike, and we won a contract anyway, even though there was this scary moment for international students even back then. And I have been telling people this story when we are thinking about protections for international students now, because I think that the moral of the story is that even under a situation where there’s a lot more legal security and legal protection, it’s still scary. And the way that you get over it being scary is by trusting that everyone coming together and standing together is what’s going to win and rather than whatever the legal protection might be.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Caitlin and Allie, I have so many more thoughts and questions, but I know that we only have about 10 minutes left here and I want to use the time that we have left with y’all to sort of tug on the thread that you were just pulling there. Caitlin, looking at this through the union’s perspective or through a labor perspective, can you frame these attacks on higher ed and the people who live, learn and work there through a labor and working workers’ rights perspective, and talk about what your message is to other union members and other people who listen to this show who are working people, union and non-union, why this is important, why they need to care and what people can do about it.

Caitlin Liss:

It’s very clear why it’s important and why other workers should care. The funding cuts to Columbia University and other universities really threaten not just the university, but the whole ecosystem of research. So these are people’s careers that are at risk and careers that not only they have an interest in having, but careers that benefit everyone in our society, people who do public health research, people who do medical research, people who do research about climate change. These are really important jobs that the opportunities to pursue them are vanishing. And so that obviously is important. And then when we’re looking at the attacks on international students, if m kil can be abducted for speaking out in support of Palestine and against the genocide and Gaza, then none of us are safe. No worker is safe if the governments can just abduct you and deport you for something like that.

On the one hand, even people who aren’t citizens are protected by the first amendments, but also it’s not clear that that’s where they’re going to stop. I think that this is a moment that we should all take very seriously. I mean, it’s very serious for the future of higher education as a whole. I feel like we are in sort of an existential fight here. And at the moment, Columbia is just completely welcoming this fascist takeover with open arms and it threatens higher ed as an institution. What kind of university is this? If the Middle Eastern studies department is being controlled by some outside force who says what they can and can’t teach, and now Trump is threatening to put all of Columbia under some consent decree, so we’re going to have to be beholden to whatever the Trump administration says we’re allowed to do on campus. So it is a major threat to higher education, but it’s also a threat I think, in a much larger sense to workers all over the country because it is sending the message that none of us are safe. No one is safe to express ourselves. We can’t expect to be safe in the workplace. And it’s really important that as a labor union that we take a stand here because it is not just destroying our workplaces, but sort of it’s threatening everyone’s workplace.

Allie Wong:

Exactly. That’s exactly what I was thinking too. I know it’s such an overused word at this point, but I think a huge aspect of this has to do with precedent and how, as we were mentioning, Columbia is so symbolic for a lot of reasons, including the fact that all eyes are on Columbia. And so when Columbia sets a precedent for what can and cannot not be done by University of Administration in caving to the federal government, I think that sets a precedent for not just academic institutions, but institutions writ large and the workers that work in those institutions. Because what happens here is happening across the federal government and will happen to institutions everywhere. And so I think it’s really critical that we bake trust back into our systems, both trust in administrations by having them prove that they do have our backs and they do care about student workers, but also that they trust student workers.

They trust us to do the really important research that keeps the heartbeat of this university alive. And I think that it’s going to crumble not just Columbia, but other academic institutions if really critical research gets defunded. Research that doesn’t just affect right now, but affects our country in perpetuity, in the kinds of opportunities that will be presented later in the future, the kinds of research that will be instrumental in making our society healthier and more equitable place in the future. And so this isn’t just a moment in time, but it’s one that absolutely will ripple out into history.

Caitlin Liss:

And we happen right now to be sort of fortunately bargaining a new contract as we speak. So like I said before, our contract is expiring in June. And so for us, obviously these kinds of issues are the top of mind when we’re thinking about what we can get in the contract. So in what way is this contract that we’re bargaining for going to be able to help us? So we’re fighting for Columbia to restore the funding cuts we’re fighting for them to instate a sanctuary campus and to reinstate grant minor, our president who was expelled, and Ronan who was enrolled, and everyone else who has been expelled or experienced sanctions because of their protests for Palestine. And so in a lot of ways, I think that the contract fight is a big part of what we’re concentrating on right now. But there’s also, there’s many unions on Columbia’s campus.

There’s the postdoc union, UAW 4,100, there’s the support staff and the Barnard contingent faculty who are UAW 2110. There’s building service employees, I think they’re 32 BJ and the maintenance staff is TW. So there’s many unions on campus. And I think about this a lot because I think what we’re seeing is we haven’t mentioned the trustees yet, I don’t think, but recently our interim president, Katrina Armstrong stepped down and was replaced by an acting president, was the former co-chair of the board of trustees Claire Shipman. And in many ways, I think what we’ve been seeing happening at Columbia is the result of the board of trustees not caving, but welcoming the things that Trump is demanding. I think that they’re complicit in this, but the board of trustees is like 21 people. There’s not very many of them. And there’s thousands of us at Columbia who actually are the people who make the university work, the students, the faculty, the staff, thousands of people in unions, thousands of non-unionized students and workers on campus as well.

And we outnumber the trustees by such a huge amount. And I think that thinking about the power we have when we all come together as the thousands of people who do the actual work of the university as opposed to these 21 people who are making decisions for us without consulting us that we don’t want, and that’s the way we have to think about reclaiming the university. I think we have to try and take back the power as workers, as students, as faculty from the board of trustees and start thinking about how we can make decisions that are in our interests.

Allie Wong:

One more thing that I wanted to call out, I’m not sure where this fits in. I think Caitlin talking about the board of trustees made me think of it is just the fact that I think that another big issue is the fact that there’s this very amorphous idea of antisemitism that all of this is being done under the banner of, and I think that it’s incredibly problematic because first of all, what is antisemitism? It’s this catchall phrase that is used to weaponize against dissent. And I think that when you look at the track record of these now three presidents that we’ve had in the past year, each of them has condemned antisemitism but has not condemned other forms of racism, including an especially Islamophobia that has permeated our campus. And because everything is done under the banner of antisemitism and you have folks like Claire Shipman who have been aligned with Zionist organizations, it also erodes the trust in of the student body, but then especially student workers, many of whom are Jewish and many of whom are having their research be threatened under the banner of antisemitism being done in their name. And yet it’s the thing that is stunting their ability to thrive at this university. And so I think that as we talk about the administration and board of trustees, just calling out the hypocrisy there of how they are behaving on campus, the ways that they’re capitulating and doing it under the guise of protecting Jewish students, but in the process of actually made Jewish students and faculty a target by not only withholding their funding but also saying that this is all to protect Jewish students but have created a more threatening environment than existed before.

Caitlin Liss:

Yeah, I mean, as a Jewish student personally, I’m about to go to my family’s Seder to talk about celebrating liberation from oppression while our friends and colleagues are sitting in jail. It’s quite depressing and quite horrific to see people saying that they’re doing this to protect Jews when it’s so clearly not the case.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, I wanted to ask in just this final two minutes that we got here, I want to bring it back down to that level to again remind folks listening that you both are student workers, you are working people just like everyone else that we talk to on this show. And I as a former graduate student worker can’t help but identify with the situation that y’all are in. But it makes me think about the conversations I had with my family when I was on the job market and I was trying to go from being a PhD student to a faculty member somewhere and hearing that maybe my political activism or my public writing would be like a mark against me in my quest to get that career that I had worked so many years for and just having that in the back of my mind. But that still seems so far away and so minuscule in comparison to what y’all are dealing with. And I just wanted to ask as act scholars, as people working on your careers as well, how are you talking to your families about this and what future in or outside of academia do you feel is still open to you and people, graduate student workers like yourselves in today’s higher ed?

Caitlin Liss:

I mean the job market for history, PhDs has been quite bad for a long time even before this. So I mean, when I started the PhD program, I think I knew that I might not get a job in academia. And it’s sad because I really love it. I love teaching especially, but at the end of the day, I don’t feel like it’s a choice to stop speaking up about what’s happening, to stop condemning what’s happening in Gaza, to stop condemning the fascist takeover of our government and the attacks on our colleagues. It’s just I can’t not say something about it. I can’t do nothing, and if it means I can’t get a job after this, that will be very sad. But I don’t think that that is a choice that I can or should make to do nothing or say nothing so that I can try and preserve my career if I have to. I’ll get another kind of job.

Allie Wong:

Yeah, I completely agree. How dare I try to protect some nice job that I could potentially have in the future when there are friends and students on campus who are running for their lives. It just is not something that’s even comparable. And so I just feel like it’s an argument a lot of folks have made that if in the future there’s a job that decides not to hire me based off of my advocacy, I don’t want that job. I want a job based off of my skills and qualifications and experience, not my opinions about a genocide that’s happening halfway across the world, that any person should feel strongly against the slaughtering of tens of thousands of children and innocent folks. If that’s an inhibitor of a potential job, then that’s not the kind of environment I want to work in anyway. And that’s a really privileged position to have. I recognize that. But I think it’s incredibly crucial to be able to couch that issue in the broader perspective of not just this horrific genocide that’s happening, but also the future of our democracy and how critical it is to be someone who is willing to take a risk for the future of this country and the future of our basic civil liberties and freedoms.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank our guests, Caitlin Liss and Allie Wong of Student Workers of Columbia, and I want to thank you for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you Allall back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. And we need to hear those voices now more than ever. Sign up for the real new newsletter so you never miss a story. And help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximilian Alvarez, take care of yourselves. Take care of each other, solidarity forever.

This story originally appeared in Truthout on Apr. 09, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

The Senate has confirmed former Arkansas governor and fervent Christian Zionist Mike Huckabee as the U.S.’s next ambassador to Israel after numerous rights groups called on the Senate to oppose his nomination.

Huckabee was confirmed 53 to 46, in what was a largely party line vote — except for Democratic Sen. John Fetterman (Pennsylvania), who voted with Republicans in favor.

Advocates for Palestinian rights have long raised alarm about Huckabee’s nomination over his clear bias toward Israel and his numerous statements dehumanizing Palestinians.

He has visited Israel over 100 times and espouses his beliefs as a Christian Zionist who believes that Jewish people must take over Palestine in order to fulfill a Biblical prophecy; many anti-Zionists have pointed out that Christian Zionists often hold antisemitic beliefs in their support of this goal.

Huckabee has backed President Donald Trump’s plan for the total ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza, and has called for Israel to annex the West Bank — the latter of which he refers to as “Judea and Samaria,” a term used by Zionists to erase Palestinians’ name for the region and imply Israel’s supposed “right” to the land. He refuses to acknowledge that Israel is occupying Palestine, despite international authorities recognizing Israel’s illegal occupation.

Huckabee also once said, at a campaign stop in 2008, that there is “really no such thing as a Palestinian,” erasing the existence of an entire people and stripping them of their cultural identity — much like Trump and Israeli officials seem to be seeking to do with their genocide in Gaza.

When asked about this comment during his confirmation hearing, he denied that this comment had anything to do with the forced expulsion of Palestinians, saying, “I simply referenced the biblical mandate that goes all the way back to the time of Abraham, 3,500 years ago.”

Dozens of rights and faith groups had protested Huckabee’s confirmation, and have sent numerous letters urging senators to vote against him. Advocates for Palestinian rights have condemned Huckabee’s confirmation.

“The Senate’s decision to confirm Mike Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel is a threat to Palestinians and Israelis, and to Jews, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, and people of color in the United States,” said IfNotNow in a statement. “He has claimed Palestinians do not exist & has allied with Israel’s violent settler movement and extremist evangelicals in the United States — and will undoubtedly pursue his dangerous Christian Nationalist worldview as ambassador.”

Many have specifically called out Fetterman, who is facing increasing isolation from his voter base and fellow Democrats over his zealous support of Israel since he took office.

“Fetterman was the only ‘Democrat’ who voted for Trump’s [Attorney General] Pam Bondi, who is ripping up the Constitution. Now he is the only ‘Democrat’ to vote for Huckabee — who wants to bring about Armageddon by ethnically cleansing Palestinians,” said the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project. “Pennsylvania deserves a new Senator.”

Birju Dattani’s tenure as Canada’s chief human rights commissioner was short-lived. After holding the post for less than a year, Dattani was forced to resign by a smear campaign targeting him for his social media posts criticizing Israel. Now, Dattani is suing his critics, and joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss his case and the wider implications for human rights and free speech in countries backing Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.

Links:

• Read the Statement of Claim: https://www.stlbarristers.ca/for-media
• Support Birju Dattani’s legal fund: https://gogetfunding.com/help-birju-dattani-put-cija-lantsmann-and-levant-on-trial/

Production: David Hebden, Rosette Sewali
Post-production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. Great to have y’all with us, and we continue covering issues around the globe with people under attack from the right, and there’s a war going on. We know that war is happening in this country, United States, in Canada, across the globe, where the right is seizing power in one country after the other. And we are all here in that battle for the future. And we’re talking today to Birju Dattani. He was the executive director of the Yukon Human Rights Commission that’s in Canada, but for a very short while. That’s what we’re going to talk about. And he works as Director of Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at Centennial College, assistant regional director of the Alberta Human Rights Commission, and has been an activist and a lawyer and keeps on fighting despite the fact that he was pushed out by right male elements in the Jewish community and in the parliament that went after him and forced him to resign, which he did. The battle continues in court in other places. And vi welcome. Good to have you with us.

Birju Dattani:

Thank you, Marc. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

Marc Steiner:

Let me just, for folks who don’t know Canada that well, our American listeners or European listeners may not know a lot about what’s going on. What is the climate, the political climate that allowed you to be pushed out of a human rights commission to be attacked? What is the politics going on there?

Birju Dattani:

Well, I think the climate here in some ways is from where I sit worse than it is, or was, I should say, worse than it was in the United States. I think with this current regime that you have in the United States, all bets are off, of course. But I think that in a lot of ways historically and in a post October 7th world, the environment in Canada did not admit and has not admitted a diversity of voices on this issue or a diversity of perspectives on this issue. So in that sense, the space for discussion of things such as Israeli policy has been extraordinarily narrow, narrowly narrow. And that I think in the months following October 7th became narrower still. So for instance, and some of this you may have heard, but for the benefit of your audience, university students who would sign open letters in support or in solidarity with Palestinians would be boycotted from the legal profession if they were law students. Not only the students signing those letters, but the entirety of law schools would be boycotted by prominent law firms, thereby barring the participation to the legal profession, often from law students who are from historically marginalized backgrounds.

Marc Steiner:

That’s what’s happening at this moment.

Birju Dattani:

So in the aftermath of October 7th, so I’m going back to

November, December, 2023 letters were issued, the healthcare workers, educators who had shared a critical perspective would be canceled, many of them fired, run out of employment broadcasters, same thing and very little politically. I know that in the United States, you have voices like Rashida tb, you have Ellan Omar, you have a larger aggregate of voices, I think, on the left than we do in Canada. I mean, we do have some voices. Heather McPherson, for instance, of the NDP has been quite good on this issue. Nikki Ashton, Charlie Angus, but I think smaller country, those voices are in the aggregate, smaller and power is often concentrated in the hands of people who are a lot more, not only to the right, but even the center. And the center left positions on this issue are indistinguishable in some cases.

Marc Steiner:

Yeah. Quick digression, then jump right back in. I mean, you mentioned a new Democratic party, the left party in Canada. I remember when we all were excited at one point that they were actually potentially had some power, but I mean, it says a lot about where our two countries are. So let’s really step back for a moment and really explore what happened to you in the first place as a Muslim, the first Muslim in that kind of position and the battles it took place and the attack the place as soon as you got this job, as soon as you were being appointed to this commission, the attacks came from people in Parliament and other folks in Canada accusing you of being pro Hamas, being a terrorist, hating Jews being an antisemite. Tell us a bit about how that unfurled.

Birju Dattani:

Well, I think that the way that it unfurled is something that was never a secret in an employment situation. I mean, I have a resume like anybody else does. And when I was a PhD student at the School of Oriental and African Studies, I was a member of the Center for Palestine Studies among other academic institutions based out of that university. That was of course, on my resume, not a secret, certainly not a secret that I’ve kept. Some of my scholarship is available publicly, some of it isn’t. And just the way that it works. I’ve been on so many panels on international law, much of it on Israel Palestine, some of it not, some of it being on other issues that was being dredged up, and it was a lot of innuendos. So it would be something along the lines of you lectured during Israel apartheid week. That’s it. No one really knew what I had said.

So oftentimes it would be a guilt by association, paint by numbers type of a thing. So for instance, I shared a podium with Ben White who’s authored a number of books, who’s a journalist. His articles have appeared in the Independent, the Guardian, et cetera. So someone would go searching through Ben White’s books to find something that looked objectionable from a certain standpoint. And I thought, okay, well those are Ben White’s views and Ben White is entitled to his views. Being on a panel is not a team sport. I mean, my views are my views, but a lot of what I was doing during Israel Apartheid week was to explain what apartheid is, an international law, for example, or having shared a panel with Moba who was a Guantanamo Bay detainee, the same sort of horror stories. At some point he’s released from Guantanamo Bay, he’s given a settlement by the British government.

It was omitted that while I did share a panel with him, and I’ve always been against torture. I also, on that panel, I shared a platform with someone from Breitbart News. Of course, they put the thumbs over the words that would indicate that the person sitting right next to me was from Breitbart News or number of panels where I shared a platform with someone who was aboard the Mafia Marmara, which I didn’t know at the time, and it doesn’t really matter to me that he was aboard the Mafia Marmara. But at a lot of these panels, there’d be also members of the Zionist Federation of the United Kingdom, members of the pro-Israel lobby in Britain who were also on that panel. So there was in omission or selective rendering of this in a way that you would have to go out of your way to omit those facts.

And so this started to take on a life of its own in some ways. But I sat there thinking, at any point is someone going to attribute a view to me that they find objectionable? Which eventually did come in, again, a sentence taken out of context from part of my dissertation, which talked about or aligned, that suggested that terrorism as a strategy can be rational. And of course that isn’t a controversial proposition in the academic literature, but that was used to make it seem as though I was someone who glorified terrorism, the bad faith illusion that was taking place. I think that prompted almost a dozen academics in Canada to then speak publicly to the fact that number one, I wasn’t justifying terrorism number two, that’s basic international relations 1 0 1 stuff. And lastly that this seemed to be a bad faith smear job because they weren’t actually checking in with experts in the field.

Marc Steiner:

So I want to talk a bit about what the political dynamics are right now in Canada that even allowed this attack on you personally to take place. And the present conflict with Israel and Gaza. Israel and Palestinians has really gripped the world and people are really divided over it in deep ways. And I just want to know what the dynamic is in Canada and around you that allowed this to happen. Why did it happen?

Birju Dattani:

Sure. So I think that activism from pro-Israel law groups, I think around me and around this issue and related issues have focused really on two things. The first is to push to adopt the highly controversial IRA definition or our IHRA definition on antisemitism IRA standing for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance,

Which conflates criticism of Israel in a lot of cases with antisemitism. And second, this attempt to suppress any concept of anti Palestinian racism as being recognized as a bonafide and legitimate type of racism. So adding to that context, there was a proposed piece of legislation called Bill C 63, also known as the Online Harms bill, where the liberal government was seeking to reintroduce a provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which would prescribe hate speech among other things. So there are criminal law dimensions to that, which would have nothing to do with the Canadian Human Rights Commission or the Canadian Human Rights Act, but there was a provision which would resurrect something that existed in that act before, which is to make hate speech actionable under Canadian human rights legislation. So a lot of these groups likely looked at the fact that given those twin efforts, calling on the adoption of the IRA definition of antisemitism on the one hand, and trying to suppress any notion of anti Palestinian racism as a legitimate racism on the other, I’m sure that if the person proposed for my position was a technocrat that really didn’t know very much about these issues, it’s easier than to direct your lobbying efforts in a way that that person might take your position.

I think that that would be harder with me given my academic background on these issues, but also and don’t want to lose sight of the fact that the conniption over my personal identity as someone who identifies as a Muslim who’s a person of color, those two things or those consolation of factors led to these efforts and the alacrity with which they were pursued.

Marc Steiner:

So in Canada at this moment, I mean Jews are minority in Canada. I have cousins in Canada, they all flipped from Poland. They came here, they went to Canada, they went to Palestine, they went all over Uruguay. But so I have cousins from Montreal and Toronto, and they are a minority community. And so what I was shocked about when I read what happened to you was that that was allowed to happen in terms of using antisemitism. The more they use and abuse antisemitism, the more it loses its meaning because it has lots of depth. It’s all over the place. So I’m very curious about the political dynamic in Canada at this moment that allows you and people like you to be attacked and where that comes from and what kind of movement is growing to fight it.

Birju Dattani:

And that’s a really interesting question mark. So I think what this looks like is, in some respects, Canada isn’t all that different in terms of the approaches and the views on this from the United States, from Europe, from the Anglosphere in terms of Jewish communities and in particular Jewish institutions as distinct from Jewish communities. So whether or not the institutions are an accurate reflection of the constituencies that they represent, I think is very much being called into question. But again, that doesn’t always play out in a way that’s reflective. So you’ve probably often heard it said, particularly in the American context, that most members of Jewish communities favor a two state solution. They are against the increase of settlements. They are typically voters. They vote for the Democratic party.

But that doesn’t come out when you look at the institutions that purport to speak to their names. So you wouldn’t know that by seeing what organizations like APAC or the A DL are doing or saying relative to those positions. So I’m reminded of Ron Dermer when he was the ambassador to Israel in the last Trump administration. He very famously said, we should stop dedicating our attentions on American Jews who are disproportionately among our critics. Let’s focus instead on evangelical Christians implying that there are more reliable ally. I think those dynamics play out in a similar way in Canada where the views of Jewish communities are not always reflected in the institutions that purport to speak out in their name. So there’s been wider efforts on those members of the Jewish community who do see this as problematic and who have been more vocal in speaking out. So the group independent Jewish voices, for instance, has been among my most strident supporters. I think they’ve issued multiple statements. They join me at the Deus during my press conference. They have posted a lot of my story on social media. I I actually attended a Shabbat dinner on Purim with members of the United Jewish People’s Order of Canada, independent Jewish voices and other members of the progressive Jewish community who have been very vocal. So

Marc Steiner:

In terms of what’s happening to you right now, you attacked online in a pretty vicious manner by Bene Brith and this woman, doya Kurtz, who refers to you as Ew hater, talking about how you were a terrorist supporter. I’ve looked at, I spent some time looking at what you write, looking at things you put out, nothing I saw in any of that that can be construed as antisemitic, as hating Jews. So what is the political dynamic in Canada that allows that to happen now? And what about the movement building to defend you? It seems like a lot of places that you would think but naturally come around and say, this is outrageous. We can’t let this happen. It’s not happening. So I want to hear about those two things. If you could lay those out for us.

Birju Dattani:

Yeah. I think that to put it this way, the way that these attacks took place has less to do with what I’ve actually said or written. And again, as I’ve mentioned before, part of the frustrating things was there have been very few opinions or positions attributed to me, it’s almost, there is the plugging in of buzzwords, right? So when you plug in words like apartheid, when you plug in words like occupation, that seems to elicit an emotive response, not a rational one. And again, political Zionism is a type of nationalism. Nationalism is emotional. So there’s an emotive response that doesn’t focus on what I’ve actually said. But then when you combine that with the fact that I’m Muslim and have three names biju, so again, the scrutiny of my middle name and what it could mean, the harnessing of fear did a really effective job. And so it becomes more what I’m capable of. So it’s basically suggesting that here is a person who’s a Muslim who has written about not just Israel-Palestine, but who’s written a lot about critically about terrorism, those national security type discussions.

What is he capable of? It really didn’t matter what I said at that point. It’s harnessing the imagination for people to really think or let their imaginations run wild in terms of, well, what is he capable of? Do you trust him to be in this sort of position? And again, as Churchill has said, I’m not in the habit of quoting him. I’m going to make an exception here, but a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has had an opportunity to put its pants on. And so I think the efforts then to come to my defense, the Yukon Human Rights Commission was one of the first out of the gate, and they made two public statements, which I’m very grateful for, and which were really powerful to say that in the time that he served as our executive director, we’ve known him to be intelligent, thoughtful, innovative, fair, and he has never been biased. He believes in human rights for all people. And we are all too familiar with the sorts of attacks that target human rights defenders. I’m paraphrasing that, but it is really rare for your former employer in that climate to put their necks out on the line publicly unless they’re very sure that this is just all a big smear campaign.

Some other organizations did defend me. Some of the defenses were run the spectrum of conservative tepid defenses to a lot more strident and fiery ones. But you are right to the extent that your question implies that there hasn’t been the same level of defense from the places that you’d typically expect it from, or at least to match the volume and the strided of the attacks, your guess is as good as mine. Although I would imagine that whenever one throws out the term or the smear where it’s false, antisemitism is something that sticks and it’s something that people are terrified about. So to even attempt a defense, if you’re an institution or a public body, you run the risk of conscripting yourself into that smear. And I think that the fear that comes with that is very hard to underestimate sometimes.

Marc Steiner:

It seems what’s happening to you at this moment being pushed out of a very prestigious, important position is the tip of the iceberg of what’s happening. It means there’s a dynamic happening at this moment here in the United States and in Canada and happening across the globe that centers so many things. One of those centers is the struggle inside of Israel Palestine right now. And if you don’t take the establishment position, you can have your career damaged. And so it seems to me that what happened to you in Canada could just be the beginning of something much larger,

Birju Dattani:

Perhaps. And I think that, and I should point out here, that there are some independent journalists that have kept a running tally of all of the people that have lost their jobs, right? From jobs that are prominent in the public eye to those which are maybe more, for lack of a better way of putting it, garden variety. For example, mark Haven, professor Mark Haven writing in Canadian Dimension has maintained a tally in every sector of people that have lost their jobs. And it’s staggering that list. I would imagine at this point, and this is just an estimate, but it’s probably approaching 55 0 documented cases. So in some ways, mine is one of the more public stories. It was a role that is a very important public office. But there are a number of doctors, educators, lawyers, et cetera, public servants that have lost their jobs or who have been investigated, and it’s found that these smears are actually

Marc Steiner:

Lost their jobs because of what,

Birju Dattani:

So let me clarify that for speaking about Israel Palestine. So for posts that they’re making on social media for conversations that they’re having around this, and so their social media posts will be highlighted where it’s in solidarity with Palestinians, or that’s critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

Marc Steiner:

And you’re saying that Pia can use that to fire somebody to move them from their jobs?

Birju Dattani:

Oh, yeah. It is been attempted. So what they’ll do is they’ll use this provision of bringing the employer into disrepute. So there’s a lawyer, brilliant lawyer here, Jackie Mond, at a firm called Cavazos who’s talked about this, about how employers will use certain vague social media policies in the workplace to fire people in unionized environments. It’s harder to do, and there’s a lot of times where those investigations discover that the allegations don’t have any merit. So that also does happen. But in places where there are no union protections, for example, that is a lot easier to do and has happened

Marc Steiner:

In other conversations with some of the people you mentioned. We should have those to show the extent of how this is happening in Canada and where it’s going. I think it’s important for all of us to understand that this is a very dangerous trend, a frightening trend, actually. And so in your particular case at this moment, talk a bit about where, I know you can’t get into specifics. You are suing the Canadian government?

Birju Dattani:

No. So I’m suing certain groups and personalities. So for example, Ben Iri, the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

Marc Steiner:

That’s right, I’m sorry. Yeah, yeah,

Birju Dattani:

Yeah. Ezra Event, who is the founder of Rebel Media, which is sort of our version of Alex Jones, to put it that way.

Marc Steiner:

No, I watched him and I watched him attack you. And he is, I mean, he very typical of the very right wing hosts that you become your raw meat for them.

Birju Dattani:

And of course, I’ve never been particularly interested in this show, so I steer clear of that. But yeah, he’s something akin to an Alex Jones here in Canada. That’s sort of how he’s regarded. Dalia Kurtz, whom you mentioned, who’s something of a social media influencer. I, again, don’t really know all that much more about her. And Melissa Lansman, who’s a conservative member of parliament here, who I think, again, just in terms of sheer volume, there’s a lot that’s come from her in terms of attacks. So that’s who we are pursuing in this litigation.

Marc Steiner:

I mean, yeah, she literally came out and said that you were a supporter of terrorism.

Birju Dattani:

Yes, that’s correct.

Marc Steiner:

So talk a bit about before we have to leave the movement growing around this and the support you’re getting and where that’s coming from.

Birju Dattani:

So I think that the movement around me is growing. I think one of the things that I did do is it’s easier now for me to talk about this than I was at the height of this. So before I stepped down, I was walking on eggshells. And so now not being encumbered in the same way, I am able to speak more about my experiences, what happened, the fact that I’m launching a lawsuit. And I think a lot of people are looking at that and saying it’s about time. It is high time that people who smear other people falsely as being antisemitic when there’s no basis in fact of that, of being terrorism, adjacent terrorism, glor supporter, et cetera, that a lot of people are rallying around this because a lot of people are exhausted and tired and fed up by all of this, especially what’s happened in the last 18 months and how frequent and shameless a lot of this was and has been for other people. And a lot of these people are members of the Jewish community who are rallying around me, which to a certain extent, I mean Jewish communities, like any community are non monolithic. But I think there have been so many members of the Jewish community and Israelis as well who have rallied to this because I think there’s also a struggle for who defines identity. And we’re sort of in this bizarre place where parliamentarians, those that are not Jewish, are dictating to members of the Jewish community, their Jewish identity,

That this is what it means to be Jewish in our eyes. And I think that they look at that with anger, with frustration, and to say, no, no one has bequeathed unto you the ability to tell us as those who identify as Jewish, that we are Jewish any more than. And again, some of these institutions, it’s the same thing. So in terms of the suppression of dissent among their ranks. And so there has been a movement that believes that to combat racism, you have to do that in solidarity with marginalized groups that face discrimination rather than treating these things as discreet disparate phenomenon. Really that’s what this is beginning to represent from what I can see. So that movement is growing, it is encompassing and countenance saying increasingly prominent figures. To give you an example, there is a member of Montreal City Council who has now publicly come out with his own lawsuit against the mayor of a town in Ontario, Hampton, Ontario, who was attacking him as an antisemite in ways that are very reminiscent of what happened to me. And so I reposted his statement that he’s suing Mayor Jeremy Levy on my LinkedIn. And this city councilor Alex Norris, publicly supported my lawsuit and I amplified his. So we may have led a spark. And so more of this may happen. And so now the courts become a forum potentially to conduct this struggle. And it looks like more people may be doing that.

Marc Steiner:

I think what’s happening to you is a critical story because it’s one of those things that happens. It’s a tip of an iceberg. It’s the beginning of something that could become an avalanche. You just said 50 more people are facing these kinds of discrimination and attacks throughout Canada. And so I think that we want to stay in touch with you as this fight unfolds, and also talk to some of the other folks in Canada who are also fighting and what that portends for Canadian democracy and the battle around for people who really believe that peace has to come to Israel Palestine. And I think what’s happening to you is nothing short of obscenity. And so we want to give you all the room you need here to get that story out and keep it out to make people understand what’s going on around us.

Birju Dattani:

Thank you so much, mark. I’m so grateful for that. And

Marc Steiner:

I appreciate you standing up, Biju, Biju, Ani. We’re going to link to all the stuff here on our site about the struggle he’s going through. You can read it yourself from different publications, see what he’s doing, and we will stay on top of this so that we can expose the power of the right here in this country and across the globe, taking away our rights to speak as we wish. And good luck and let’s stay in touch.

Birju Dattani:

Absolutely, mark and such a pleasure. And thank you for everything you’re doing to highlight some of these stories that are not getting airing in a more mainstream or wide stream forum. So thank you so much for everything you’re doing in terms of highlighting these stories.

Marc Steiner:

We won’t let them win.

Birju Dattani:

Absolutely hear here.

Marc Steiner:

Once again, let me thank Birju Dattani for joining us today, and thanks to David Hebden for running the program today and audio editor Alina Nehlich for working her audio magic Rosette Sewali for producing the Marc Steiner show and the Titleless Taylor rra for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at marc@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

As Israel resumes its genocide in Gaza with the full support of the Trump administration, the movement in solidarity with Palestine has returned to Washington, DC, in a mass mobilization on April 5. The Real News reports from the ground in the nation’s capital.

Videography / Production: Jaisal Noor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Jaisal Noor:

On April 5th, thousands joined anti-Trump protests across the US, including multiple rallies in Washington, DC.

Roua:

I am here to demand an end to the genocide. I am here to demand an arms embargo, and I am here to demand an end to the deportations and repression against the Palestine movement.

Jaisal Noor:

The Hands-Off 2025 protests criticized the Trump administration’s assault on basic democratic rights, while a large pro-Palestine rally demanded an end to US-backed violence and Gaza and growing repression.

Miriam:

I think it’s really important for everyone to come out and protest what’s happening with the Trump administration. These cuts to public benefits, to public housing, it’s really, really destructive to working-class people everywhere. It’s also important, as we’re showing here today, that Gaza be at the front of this.

Jaisal Noor:

Critics claim, these protests are anti-Semitic and support Hamas. We got a response from participants.

Miriam:

No. This is a narrative that is being parroted by all of these politicians, pulled forward by what is ultimately a right-wing white supremacist administration. And what it’s trying to do is demonize any kind of political dissent right now. It’s trying to paint the movement for Palestine as something that it’s not. What we’re really out here for is an end to genocide. An end to the war machine that has been murdering tens of thousands of people for the last year and a half.

Jaisal Noor:

Recent Gallup polls show a historic low in US public support for Israel, yet only 15 US senators supported Bernie Sanders’ recent bill to block 8.8 billion in arms sales to the close US ally.

Eugene Puryear:

I think what we’re hoping to achieve with protests like this is like the abolitionists years ago with the longterm campaigns of petitioning and other forms of pressuring the government, and their own forms of demonstrations and others is to help build a stronger moral conscious movement in this country in solidarity with the Palestinian people and to end this genocide. And we know this country is so undemocratic, it’s so gerrymandered, it’s so difficult to get the voices of the people, even when they’re in the majority, represented inside of Congress. And so we’re here to crystallize our position, to show people they’re not alone, to encourage them to stand up in their own localities, to keep building a movement that cannot be denied.

Jaisal Noor:

Protesters also highlighted the Trump administration’s crackdown on student activists, including revoking 300 student visas and detaining Mahmoud Khalil under a controversial Cold War-era law that permits deporting non-citizens deemed a threat to US foreign policy.

Roua:

The repression against the Palestine movement speaks to the power of the Palestine movement. You have the president of the country with one of the strongest militaries in the entire world, and at the forefront of his agenda is revoking the visas of anti-genocide student protesters. That is how effective our movement, the Palestine movement, has been in exposing Israel’s crimes. And that is how strong we are. And I think that gives me hope. That gives me the power and the inspiration to know that what we are doing is working and what we are doing must continue to be done.

Jaisal Noor:

For The Real News, this is Jaisal Noor in Washington, DC.

On March 18 Israel broke the Gaza ceasefire and recommenced its full scale assault, siege, and bombing of Gaza. Since then, over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed and the humanitarian situation is as desperate as ever. Watching mainstream media, however, one would hardly notice. 

While US media outlets continue to report below the fold on the daily airstrikes, they are no longer treated as major stories meriting emphasis and urgency. This is especially true for the New York Times and TV broadcast news, which have all but forgotten there’s an unprecedented humanitarian crisis ongoing in Gaza–still funded and armed by the US government. 

The paper of record, the New York Times, ran a front page story March 19, the day after Israel broke the ceasefire and killed hundreds in one day, but didn’t run a front page story on Israel’s bombing and siege of Gaza in the 13 days since. (They ran a front page story on April 3 that centered Israel’s military “tactics” in Gaza but didn’t mention civilian death totals.) The Times did find room on March 27 for a front page image of anti-Hamas protests in Gaza which, of course, are a favorite media topic for the pro-genocide crowd as they see it as evidence their “war on Hamas” is both morally justified and, somehow, endorsed by Palestinians themselves. 

Like the New York Times, the nightly news shows–CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, and ABC World News Tonight–covered the initial bombing and breaking of the ceasefire the day after (ABC News’s lede after Israel killed 400+ in under 24 hours: “What does this mean for the hostages?”), but have subsequently ignored Gaza entirely, with one notable exception. CBS Evening News did a 4-minute segment on March 26 on “allegations” Israel was using Palestinians, and Palestinian children in particular, as human shields and even this was front loaded with bizarre denunciations of Hamas “using human shields”:

Most conspicuous of all was the total erasure of Gaza from the “agenda-setting” Sunday news programs that are designed to tell elites in Washington what they should care about. Gaza wasn’t mentioned once on any of the Sunday news shows–ABC’s This Week, CBS’s Face the Nation and NBC’s Meet the Press, and CNN’s State of the Union–for the weeks of March 23 and March 30. Despite Israel breaking the ceasefire on Tuesday March 18 and killing more than 400 Palestinians–including over 200 women and children–in less than 24 hours, none of the Sunday morning news programs that have aired since have covered Gaza at all. 

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said yesterday that at least 322 children had been killed and 609 injured since Israel broke the ceasefire on March 18. 

Whereas the media approach during the Biden years was to spin, obfuscate, blame Hamas, and help distance the White House from the images of carnage emanating from Gaza by propping up fake “ceasefire talks,” the media approach now that Trump is doubling down on Biden’s strategy of unfettered support for genocide appears to be to largely ignore it. 

All indications are that Israeli officials were banking on US news outlets normalizing the ongoing genocide of Gaza, assuming–correctly, as it turns out–that the death and despair would become so routine it would take on a “dog bites man” element. Combined with the nonstop “flood the zone” strategy of the Trump White House as it attacks dozens of perceived enemies at once, the US-backed genocide in Gaza is now both cliche and low priority. 

By way of comparison, the Sunday shows, nightly news shows, and the front page of the New York Times ran wall-to-wall coverage of the Yemen-Signal group chat controversy. Obviously, administration officials using unsecured channels to discuss war plans is a news story (though not nearly as important as the war crimes casually being discussed) but the fact that Israel recommenced its bombing, siege, and starvation strategy on an already decimated population is, objectively, a more urgent story with much higher human stakes. 

Indeed, Palestinians reporting from Gaza say the situation is as dire as it’s ever been. Israel cut off all aid on March 2 and the bombings have been as relentless and brutal as any time period pre-ceasefire. Meanwhile, with Trump openly endorsing ethnic cleansing, “debates” around how best to facilitate this ethnic cleansing are presented as sober, practical foreign policy discussions–not the open planning of a crime against humanity. “You mentioned Gaza,” Margaret Brennan casually said to Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, the last time Gaza was mentioned on CBS’s Face the Nation, March 16. “I want to ask you what specifics you are looking at when it comes to relocating the two million Palestinians in Gaza. In the past, you’ve mentioned Egypt. You’ve mentioned Jordan. Are you talking to other countries at this point about resettling?” 

Witkoff would go on to say Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza would “lead to a better life for Gazans,” to which Brennan politely nodded, thanked him and moved on. Watching this exchange one would hardly know that was being discussed–mass forceable population transfer–is a textbook war crime. Recent revelations by the UN that aid workers had been found in a mass grave have also been ignored by broadcast news. 15 Palestinian rescue workers, including at least one United Nations employee, were killed by Israeli forces “one by one,” according to the UN humanitarian affairs office (OCHA) and the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS). This story has not been covered on-air by ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, MSNBC, or CNN. 

The ongoing suffering in Gaza, still very much armed and funded by the White House, continues to fade into the background. It’s become routine, banal, and not something that can drive a wedge into the Democratic coalition. This dynamic, combined with US media’s general pro-Israel bias, means the daily starvation and death is not going to be making major headlines anytime soon. It’s now, after 18 months of genocide, just another boring “foreign policy” story. 

The ceasefire in Gaza has shattered, and Israel’s military has resumed the genocide. Simultaneously, organizations and activists in the US are sounding the alarm over Trump’s persecution of Mahmoud Khalil and other student activists. Palestinian American lawyer and activist Huwaida Arraf joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss the situation in Gaza, and the urgency of ramping up the solidarity movement with Palestine to combat genocide and the rise of fascism.

Production: David Hebden, Rosette Sewali
Post-production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Marc Steiner:

Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here in The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us. We’re talking today with Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian woman, a lawyer born in Israel, an international renowned human rights lawyer, trilingual and English, Arabic, and Hebrew. A nonviolent activist who co-founded International Solidarity Network fighting for Palestinian rights and nationhood. She ran for Congress in Michigan’s 10th congressional district writes extensively and which her mind, body, literally, and spirit on the line for Palestinian freedom and Hu to welcome. Good to have you with us.

Huwaida Arraf:

It’s good to be with you, Marc. Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

You have been, I mean, doing this for a while.

Huwaida Arraf:

Yeah, I had hoped it wouldn’t be this long, but the fight goes on.

Marc Steiner:

As we had this conversation today, I was looking at the news before I walked into the studio and Israel has resumed their operations in central and South Gaza. They’ve started their airstrikes, 20 Palestinians were killed. Almost all of them health workers for a hundred Palestinians were killed in airstrikes. Since the beginning is conflict. I mean, what’s happening in Gaza is almost unbelievable. I think it’s hard for people to fathom the extent of death and destruction that’s taking place. This is not simply a war.

Huwaida Arraf:

Absolutely. I don’t like to use that term at all because war implies you have two equal sites and that’s absolutely not what you have here. Have a population that has been oppressed and colonized for nearly eight decades and for the past almost two decades in Gaza specifically really has been caged and cut off from essentials. And you take that and over the years also every few years Israel bombs decimate the society, the infrastructure. You have a medieval siege that’s imposed on the entire civilian population that really leaves people not able to control even their daily lives. I mean, forget about just being able to leave the Gaza Strip to go get what you need to go to school, to visit family, to get the medical attention that you need, what you might be able to find food that day is completely determined by what Israel allows in and what doesn’t allow in.

And for the past two and a half weeks before it restarted, this barbaric bombardment of Gaza has been cutting off all food and medical aid and then just cut off also electricity, which means they can’t desalinate water. I mean people have nothing. It is truly a caged, beleaguered star population that Israel has also restarted viciously bombing from the air. So just in the past couple of days, nearly 500 killed so many children. At least the last number, and I don’t even like to say numbers because it changes by the minute, but over 180 children, babies, infants, and no one seems to be able to stop Israel. No one is willing to do it. And the reports are that the United States, the White House has given the green light. They were briefed on it, and the slaughter continues. It really, I am unable to find words these days to describe to the evil that we went missing.

Marc Steiner:

And you mentioned the United States. I mean the kind of lack of political will in the Biden administration to intervene and stop it. And now we’re faced with a government in this country which actively supports Israel in its destruction of Palestinians and the murder of Palestinians. It is really time for, I think those of us in America to step up and really heighten the protests and the confrontations with our own government to say, no, this can’t take place. So I’m curious as an activist here, where you see that going, where you see what our role is here in the United States to stop this kind of genocide taking place in Gaza.

Huwaida Arraf:

Absolutely, and that is the question, right? Because I worked for a long time volunteering in the occupied Palestinian territory and welcoming people from around the world to come see what’s actually happening in Palestine. And Palestinians would be so grateful for the international solidarity and for people leaving the comforts of their own home to travel to stand with them. But what we would hear over and over again from Palestinians is just please go back to your countries, especially the United States, and change the policies there because it is the policies of especially the Western countries led by the United States that’s enabling Israel. And so what we do here in the United States really, really matters. I mean, it’s not adequate to just say it’s not our problem, it’s not happening here. It’s thousands of miles away because we are so actively involved and complicit. It’s our tax dollars.

It is our elected representatives that are making these choices to continuously fund Israel’s genocide. So it comes down to us to create that political will to change policy. Now, how do we do that? It seems to be really overwhelming. A lot of it really comes down to educating people because for decades we have been programmed here in the United States by the mainstream media, by popular culture to dehumanize Palestinians and to think that Israel is the victim here. So there’s a lot of education that goes into it, opening people’s eyes in terms of what has really been happening and then changing that act or moving that education into mobilization and really pushing our elected representatives to make the right choices to stop funding genocide and colonialism and apartheid. And so that requires us making our voices heard, whether in the streets, in protests, to going to town halls, making appointments with our elected representatives, calling them, writing to them every day and letting them know that this is an issue that matters, that we care about, that we will vote on.

Yes, there are other issues that affect our daily lives, but this is also an issue that affects life, that affects life, and it affects our daily lives because it is not just about being what happens in Palestine. Yes, that’s horrible, but I have other concerns. What happens in Palestine and the extent in which the United States is funding and enabling what Israel is doing comes back here to affect us. If we look at the billions and billions of dollars that this government and the previous government and for decades, the United States has been giving of our tax dollars to Israel, that money can be spent in our own communities. I mean, $3.8 billion, that’s just yearly without all of the extra packages that Israel has gotten, which is now in the last 16, 17 months, has topped I think 30 billion. Billion. So yearly is 3.8 billion of our tax dollars.

And on top of that, the United States has authorized more and more money and weapon shipments to Israel that can be used in our own communities. Then when we talk about our own civil liberties here, the extent to which there is a crackdown on freedom of speech and on education, and that people are being doxed and fired from their jobs and silenced if they dare to criticize Israel. That affects our own civil liberties here. And I am involved in cases to defend students’ rights who have been persecuted, who have been kicked out of school. Their organizations suspended because they advocate for Palestinian rights. So if it’s not our tax dollars in our own communities and life in Palestine, it is our own ability to speak out and to exercise our freedom of speech that is being curtailed and actually really threatened all to protect a country that is committing a genocide.

It is really shameful. And I think that when we look back at this time, and I firmly believe there will come a time where we will look back and truly feel ashamed that we allowed this to happen. Those who were silent or those who advocated for this policy of supporting this genocide, it will be seen as a stain on US history. And I think what I keep saying is to everyone around me, this is happening in our lifetime on our watch. What are we going to say we did to stop it? And if we think about that every day, we will find our place what we can do. It could be joining a protest. I’m heading to a protest today, but it could be talking to your neighbor. It could be picking up the phone to talk to your member of Congress. Each one of us have a role to play.

And I think that if we understand that we can’t always be the top, we can’t always be at the front of those demonstrations, but if you do what you can from where you are and we each do that, it will build up. It will create that critical mass that we need to change policy. And I do believe that things have, in all of the years that you mentioned, I have been doing this, but we need to keep pushing. We need to keep pushing until we reach that tipping point. And I just seeing all the carnage, you just have to wonder how many more lives destroyed until we get to that tipping point where policy has changed. I mean, that motivates me every single day, and I hope we can all find it in ourselves to realize that there is something we can do about it.

Marc Steiner:

I hope so too. And I think that from your work, from helping to found a free gaze in 2006 with your co-founding international solidarity, the non-violent movement to fight for Palestinian rights, that we seem to be an precipice of the moment though, given what’s happening in Gaza, given the crackdown in this country on Palestinians who are standing up and given the crackdowns taking place inside Israel at this moment, people I’ve talked to who are both Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Israelis are talking about the intense pressure that they’re under every day. Some even being arrested because they’re standing up to the government saying, no, I don’t think people just really get and understand the depth of the repression that’s taking place on the West Bank in Gaza and in Israel itself.

Huwaida Arraf:

Yep, absolutely. I have family. So my family is partially from the West Bank and the other part is from inside 48, what is now Israel. And so,

Marc Steiner:

And you’re an Israeli citizen as well, or was were right,

Huwaida Arraf:

An Israeli citizen. Yes, of course. I mean, I always say I’m not the kind of citizen that Israel wants. Unfortunately, I’m considered a demographic threat because of, again, Israel’s project of really colonization. And when we call it apartheid, it’s not just throwing out words. It really is a government and a regime that wants to create a society and the state with specific rights for certain people based on your religion. So even though my village and my family was there before the state of Israel was created, we are not equal citizens. And the last time I talked to my family, I mean, they’re terrified. They can’t say anything in their place of work. If they like a Facebook post, they could be arrested, right? And they have Israeli citizens that are walking around armed, coming into their place of business, whether it is their clinics or their shops.

And you don’t know if what you’re going to say is going to get you injured, killed, arrested. And those are Palestinians who are citizens of Israel, who Israel likes to say are equal or have more rights than they would have anywhere else, which is just not true at all. And then when you talk about Israeli citizens, I mean, yeah, there are protests. People are not happy with Netanyahu, and there is, especially the families of the hostages and other people who are worried about the hostages are protesting and are getting arrested for these protests. And there is a crackdown. I wish I had something a little bit better or more hopeful to say about Israeli society because I spent so many years in the occupied territories and worked with some wonderful Israelis, Israelis who put their safety and their lives on the line and firmly believe in true equality and spend their time in Palestinian villages and standing up to their own soldiers.

But those numbers are so, so few, the polls are showing that a vast majority of Israelis support what their government has been doing in Gaza. If they didn’t have hostages in Gaza, they wouldn’t care at all about the Palestinian civilians there and what’s happening to them. And that’s really frightening. I mean, that’s frightening, just from a humanitarian perspective, that’s frightening when you think about any society to be supportive of such ruthless violence. And if it wasn’t for having some of your own people there wouldn’t care at all what happens to the population that your government is occupying, oppressing and killing. And so that is scary. And what we have been seeing in Israeli society is this decline, this decline towards more isolationism, fascism, violence. And it’s not good for anybody, certainly not good for Israeli society. And even the future where I say, I’ve always said that we need to live together in what we’re working to create.

We’re working to end Israeli colonialism and apartheid so that there can be a future where anybody and everybody who wants to live in historic Palestine in this land can do so as equals. Right. And what we have been seeing, again on the enormous violence unleashed on Palestinians and the almost complete disregard by Israelis except for where it concerns their own population, it means that it’s going to be very, very, very difficult to rebuild a lot of that. And this is, we’re talking about it because we don’t have too much time, but we shouldn’t just gloss over the amount of violence being used. And that’s not just in Gaza, that’s not just when we come to the death and dismemberment and amputations and the starvations, but the torture, the deliberate killings, the humiliation, the people, children who have seen their parents killed dismembered, the humiliated, what kind of psychological effect this has on people is really hard, really hard to fathom.

And especially when we’re looking at Gaza, but also the West Bank, this is all Palestinians have known most Palestinians for their entire lives is this kind of violence, is this kind of complete disregard by the international community and the rest of the world. And just this overwhelming oppression and this attempt really to get rid of you. You’re an undesirable, your life doesn’t matter. That’s all Palestinians have known. And despite this, they try to continue, they try to insist on, but what kind of psychological effect this has on people is really hard to know as of like 20 years ago, 20 years ago, before these massive bombing started in Gaza, there’s, it’s a Gaza community mental health program that was saying over 90% of Gaza’s children are traumatized. And that is back in 2006, you have seen at least five massive bombing campaigns since then and now an act of full-blown genocide if over 90% of Gaza’s children were traumatized before all this, what do we say now? So it is really, really dismal. But that doesn’t mean we give up. We have no choice but to keep going and fighting because we are fighting for the rights of people to live.

Marc Steiner:

It’s true. And those children now you talk about are now in their twenties and thirties and trying to survive.

Huwaida Arraf:

Yeah, trying to survive, probably trying to keep their children alive, probably trying to find a way to keep their children safe to find food. And these are children that have been traumatized themselves. In 2009, after Israel’s first major bombing campaign operation cast led on Gaza, this was 2008, 2009, I went in with a delegation of US attorneys to try to document and report on US weapons that were used in Operation Castlight to commit war crimes. And we did produce a report after that, but some of the stories that we heard, I mean one home that was bombed and Israel did not allow the Red Crescent or any rescue services to get to the home for three days. And when they got to the home, found a number, most of the adults in that home killed

And number of children who were still alive, injured, and forced to stay with the relatives, with the bodies of their dead parents for three days without food or water. Those children, that was 2008, 2009, if those children even survived, what they’re trying to do now in keeping their, they probably hope that their children wouldn’t have to endure the same. But not only are they doing the same, it’s so much worse now. It’s as bad as it has ever been. And that doesn’t even come remotely close to describing it. There’s a report that just came out from the un, and I’m almost, I’ve read the bullet points, but I can’t even bring myself to read it because even though the summary is so bad, it is so bad about the kind of torture, what people have been subjected to things that humans should never, ever do to each other. I can’t, as a human rights attorney, I’m almost embarrassed to admit I just can’t even bring myself to read it.

Marc Steiner:

What’s the name of the report?

Huwaida Arraf:

It was done by the, there’s a un fact finding patient. It’s an independent commission that is investigating what Israel is doing in the occupied policy and territory and in Gaza. And they came out, I’d have to pull up the report, but one of their findings is that Israel is committing genocidal acts. Israel has deliberately targeted the maternal wards, the ability of Palestinian, Palestinian women to reproduce in various ways. But part of that also covers the torture that Palestinian hostages also have endured in Israeli captivity and some of the torture tactics and the rape that is described is just horrific. And that’s just the summary. So I can pull the exact name of the report for you, but it was done by an independent fact finding commission.

Marc Steiner:

Well, we’ll add that just so people can access that, because I think that’s important. I mean, as you describe the reality that Palestinians face, and I mean, just think about you personally. I’ve been reading all the things you’ve been writing and I’ve been reading about you and the bravery you showed on the Flotillas and other, the places in the face of Israeli violence standing up to it, putting your life on the line. And you’re married to a Jewish man who’s thrown out of Israel because he stood up. I mean, this is something people have to understand. I think for us to get beyond this and to find this path to peace, and there are over one and a half to 2 billion Israelis who no longer live in Israel and live in Europe and live in the United States. Most of ’em would be the people who oppose this government that’s taking place in Israel at this moment.

Huwaida Arraf:

I mean, that’s what we’re hearing. And then the large number of Israelis who are leaving would be the more moderate ones, leaving the Israelis, more the ideological. This land was given to us by God. It’s only our land and everybody else needs to be kicked out, are the ones that are remaining. And we see the government that is now in power is a right wing fascist government. And that is the, as I said earlier, that the Israeli society where it has going and the fact that it’s become so extreme, it doesn’t bode well for anyone. But how do we break that? And for a lot of the work that I’ve done originally when I went over to Palestine in shortly after college, it was in the year 2000, it was to work for a conflict resolution organization that was bringing Palestinian and Israeli youth together.

Marc Steiner:

Seeds of peace.

Huwaida Arraf:

Yes, yes.

Marc Steiner:

Right.

Huwaida Arraf:

And I quickly realized the problem with these organizations, because they don’t actually get to the heart of the matter, they don’t do the work that needs to be done to dismantle the racist structures or the structures of oppression that tear people apart. And it’s more about getting to know each other and doing these normalization projects. Becoming friends is great. Obviously we lifelong friends, but when you don’t actually, or when you avoid the work that needs to be done to dismantle the structures of oppression, then you are just normalizing oppression, right? So I don’t necessarily support these organizations, but I went on, even in founding the International Solidarity Movement, it was bringing internationals, but also bringing Israelis and bringing everybody irrespective of religion, of ethnicity, of nationality. I mean, we are all humans and we are all standing for freedom and for equality and for dignity, for everybody.

And there is this attempt to also reach Israelis with the actions that we were doing. A lot of the protests I was face to face with Israeli soldiers and trying to say, look, what are you doing? You are here shooting at children. You are invading these people’s villages, maybe getting them to think about what role they’re playing in this violence. And then I think that we are so far from that right now. People just have been so siloed, I feel, and so hard. There’s those that are hardened and just don’t want to hear anything that has to do with Palestinian humanity. And then there are those, the ideological Israelis that are bent on having this Jewish state that was promised to them by God. And everybody else needs to either agree to be subservient or they can be killed or they can get out. And that is really what we are fighting here. We are fighting this idea that there can be any kind of religious or ethno religious supremacy for anybody. And we are fighting for a world, a region, a country, I mean everywhere, certainly in Israel, Palestine, but around the world where everyone is respected in everyone is equal. And we seem to be so far away from that. But I say this because there is this idea, and you probably know well, anytime that we in the United States or in other places speak up for Palestinian rights, we are automatically labeled as antisemites

Marc Steiner:

Or self-hating Jews

Huwaida Arraf:

Or yourself Jews, my husband celebrating Jews all the time. And we seem to just lost this ability to look at each other as humans. And it doesn’t bode well for where we are in this moment in time. It is very dangerous what is happening, certainly in the region. But then what is happening here, and I mentioned, we started talking also about the restrictions on our civil liberties here.

We know that we are creating certainly Trump’s policy, cracking down even more on those who speak up for Palestinian rights. But one thing that I want to say there is that it didn’t start with Trump, right? It has been US policy. And certainly I blame the previous administration, the Biden administration, for laying the groundwork for where we are now. For 15 months we were protesting trying to get the Biden Harris administration to put an arms embargo on Israel to stop the genocide. And they gaslit the American people in that Israel has a right to defend itself. That’s what we always hear. But Israel is not defending itself. Israel is fighting for a land that is free of the indigenous Palestinian population. And the United States has been supporting that. But what is positive, I don’t want to be all negative. What is positive is that so many people like yourself, mark, but so many also younger American Jews, and even when we started the International Solidarity Movement, so many of those who came to join us were young American or European Jews.

We look at the protests on college campuses, so many of them Jewish students who reject this notion that what Israel is doing and what the US is doing in cracking down on protesters in any way serves Jewish safety. Certainly not Jewish Americans. And where I am in Michigan, the University of Michigan, we have 12 protesters that are being prosecuted actually by the Attorney General in a shameful, really prosecution. But about half of those protesters being prosecuted for protesting in the encampments and for Palestinian rights are Jewish. So on one hand, there are those who are really pushing really hard to label all advocates of Palestinian rights as antisemitic and supporting this kind of crackdown, whether what Israel’s doing or what this administration is doing as fighting antisemitism or protecting the Jewish people when it’s just the opposite. And it’s heartening to see that so many young Jews, but also of all ages that are, I have a good friend who is well into her eighties Jewish activist, and she’s just so feisty and that I really consider my family, my family, and these are the kind of people that I always want to stand side by side with and fighting for everybody’s rights.

Marc Steiner:

So before we end, a couple of things. One is I’m curious, in your life now, you’ve been through a lot facing violence in the Israeli Army, Navy violence, dealing on flotillas, the work you’ve done over there, the work you’re doing here, educating your life to this, what are you in the midst of now? Where is the struggle taking you? Now,

Huwaida Arraf:

That is a good question because I feel like I’m torn in so many different ways because there’s so much work to be done, and I want to always do as much as I can. One of my most important roles right now, although my kids would probably beg to differ, is raising the next generation. But I frequently hear from them that I’m always busy and I’m always doing something for Palestine or some other social justice issues. So I might be not doing as well as I should be in that arena, but raising the next generation, my kids are 10 and 11, and if I impart anything on them, I want it to be a strong belief in their ability and their obligation to do something when they see that something is wrong, whether it is in their elementary classroom, if somebody is being racist or somebody is being bullied to stand up to, if it’s the president of the United States, you can get out and protest when something’s happening that is not right.

You are able to, and you should do something about it. If I impart anything on them, I want it to be that. So that is one of my most important jobs. But I am also an attorney and I’m also working with other attorneys both to defensive liberties here at home. So I am one helping with the defense of students who are being persecuted for standing up for Palestinian rights and also suing the University of Michigan for violating the constitutional rights of these students by treating them differently, by curtailing the First Amendment rights. Because these institutions and these state power that is cracking down on our students, on protestors, on citizens should not be allowed to get away with this. So it’s defense and offense there and activism. We are still trying to support people to go to the occupied Palestinian territory, to volunteer with the international Solidarity movement if they are able to.

And if somebody can, unfortunately we cannot get into Gaza, but people are still able to get into Jerusalem and the West Bank and the international solidarity movement there is trying as much as possible to be a presence, to witness, to document, to stand in solidarity with the people there who are being terrorized by settlers and soldiers. Just in the past month, over 40,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their refugee camps in and in Janine. So in these Palestinian cities, Israeli soldiers would come through and literally blow up their homes or demolish their homes. And those that are still in their villages are being attacked by settlers, supported by soldiers. So having people there to witness to try to deter some of the violence by saying to the state of Israel, like, Hey, we’re here and we see what we’re doing can help deter violence sometimes and can help let Palestinians know that they’re not alone.

So I encourage anyone who is able to travel to look up the international solidarity movement and see about volunteering there. At the same time, we are trying to stop the atrocities in Gaza in a variety of ways. I am still involved with the Freedom Flotilla and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and that we have been trying for years to break Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza. We started, as you mentioned, I mean the first time we got into Gaza with two small fishing boats in 2008. And that was a deliberate action to challenge, to confront, to try to break Israel’s stranglehold and its naval blockade on Gaza. We were able to get through a few times, but then Israel started lethally attacking our ships, but we did not give up. And we, as of last year also, were pulling together if flotilla, unfortunately, some states sabotaged our mission, but again, we are not giving up.

We are readying ships to try to sail again. And we are encouraging these organizations that are being blocked from entering Gaza and from rendering aid to people to join us, to put their aid on these ships and directly confront Israel’s policy. Because Israel’s policy is illegal. A siege on an entire civilian population is illegal, and it is part of a larger genocide, a crime against humanity. But what is infuriating is that these organizations and world governments only talk, they do not do anything to actively confront Israel’s policy. So effectively, you have every single government in the world that is respecting Israel’s control over Gaza. They are complicit. They are complicit in the starvation and the genocide of the Palestinian people. I mean, the government of Turkey held back three of our ships that were supposed to sail to confront Israel’s blockade. Why isn’t Turkey itself sailing?

Why isn’t Greece sailing? Why aren’t these Arab countries sailing and daring Israel to confront them and to insist that we are getting to the people that you are trying to annihilate in Gaza. So we are still trying to do that as a civilian initiative and hopefully within the next few weeks or months, I hope it’s not longer, your listeners will hear about and are able to support the Freedom Flotilla coalition and try to break through this blockade. And here at home. Aside from the legal front, there’s also the political front and continuing to push our elected representatives and continuing to encourage people that really represent our ideals and our principles, our vision of human rights and inequality for everybody to run for office. I am trying to encourage young people, the Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, to actually get involved. And so our voices are represented and we are heard. So it’s a lot of work on a lot of different friends. Sometimes I feel like I’m trying to be in too many spaces and not doing anything particularly relevant. Well, we continue to try to do what we can. I think that that’s important just as continue to do what we can and there’s a space for everyone.

Marc Steiner:

I want to first say thank you, hued our off. You’re doing amazing work. I want to stay in touch with you to see how this Portilla gathering is growing and what the next moves are, so we can then support to that and bring those voices to the people in this country and across the globe. So I appreciate the work you’re doing, and thank you so much for being here today.

Huwaida Arraf:

Thank you for having me, and please continue to speak out because as we know, our freedom of speech is really being threatened right now. And I encourage your listeners to really follow the case of il, who is the government is trying to set an example by deporting him illegally for speaking out for Palestinian rights. And they’re again, trying to not only make an example of him, but silence speech by sending this chill through the communities, the pro-Palestinian community or anyone would dare to speak out. And it is, like I say again, the extent to which our own civil liberties, our right to the first amendment, our right to due process are really at stake right now is really hard to overemphasize. We need everybody to be watching, to be speaking out, and to be letting our elected representatives know that we will not stand for this and that they need to fight. So thank you for doing your part in continuing to speak out and bring voices of protests, of dissent to your listeners, and I would love to stay in touch.

Marc Steiner:

We will stay in touch. Thank you very much.

Huwaida Arraf:

Thank you.

Marc Steiner:

Once again, thank you to Huda Araf for joining us today. And thanks for David Hebdon for running the program and audio editor Alina Neek and producer Roset Sole for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Huwaida Arraf for joining us today and for the work that she does. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening, and take care.

He stood up against genocide. 

And for this, he was ambushed at his home, abducted, and arrested. Arrested without cause. Arrested without a warrant. By plainclothes officers who refused to give their names.

Just handcuffed and shoved into the back of a car, while his wife — eight months pregnant — watches and tries to understand what’s happening.

This is not a scene from some dark chapter of a distant past filled with black-and-white photos of bygone dictatorships. This happened here, in the United States of America, in March of this year. It’s happening here right now. 

Mahmoud Khalil was a graduate student at Columbia University last year when he led protests against Israel’s US-backed Occupation of historic Palestine and genocidal slaughter of Palestinians. 

But now, speaking out carries a high price.

And free speech is no longer so free.

Mahmoud Khalil is a U.S. resident, born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. But Trump officials say they’ve striped him of his Green Card, and they’re holding him in an ICE jail in Louisiana… far from his home in New York. Far from his wife. Unable to communicate with his lawyers or the outside world for days after his illegal abduction.

But Mahmoud Khalil is, still, not silent.

And he is not alone. 

As he stood up for the Palestinians facing Israeli bombs and the barrels of their guns, others are standing up for Khalil. People have rallied for his freedom. Hundreds. Thousands.

From New York City to Boston. Phoenix to Miami. North Carolina to Oklahoma City. Jewish peace activists protested inside Trump Tower. The people will not be silent as the powerful try to silence the people’s freedom to speak.

To be willingly silent now will mean more unwilling silence later. 

Because, as we’re already seeing, Mahmoud Khalil is only the first of many. The first of many to be detained. The first of many to be silenced. For themselves standing against occupation and violence. Or even standing next to those who do.

But the people will not be quiet.

Not in the 1960s, denouncing the war in Vietnam.

Not in the 1980s, against the war in Nicaragua.

Not in the 2020s, against the war in Palestine.

And not now… 

In defense of those standing up for what’s right and for their rights.

In defense of the people’s inalienable right to speak up and speak freely.

In defense of life and those who fight for peace. 

In defense of Mahmoud Khalil. 

On March 8, 2025, ICE agents detained, without a warrant, Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil at his home in New York City. Khalil is a US resident, but Trump officials said they’d stripped him of his green card. His crime? Standing up and speaking out against the US-backed Israeli attack on Palestine. As a graduate student at Columbia University last year, he helped to lead protests against Israeli genocide in Gaza.

And just as he stood up for the Palestinians, others are standing up for Khalil. People have rallied for his freedom across the country.

Folksinger David Rovics latest song is called Mahmoud Khalil, you can listen to it here. You can check out and subscribe to Rovics’ Substack, here, and sign up for his podcast on Spotify. 

This is episode 13 of Stories of Resistance—a new podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

You can see his exclusive pictures of many of the episodes and support Stories of Resistance at www.patreon.com/mfox.

This story originally appeared in Truthout on Mar. 26, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk was abducted by federal agents on Tuesday and has reportedly had her visa revoked, the university says, in what seems to be the latest instance of the Trump administration targeting and detaining an immigrant for their pro-Palestine advocacy.

Ozturk, who hails from Turkey, is in the U.S. on a valid F-1 student visa, according to her lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai. She is a doctoral candidate in the university’s Child Study and Human Development department and formerly attended Columbia University as a Fulbright Scholar, according to The Tufts Daily.

Video of Ozturk’s arrest captured by a home security camera shows the student being apprehended by a group of six people in plain clothes whose faces are covered by masks and hats. A man first approaches and apprehends her, then grabs her wrists as the others convene from different directions. She asks if she can call the police for help, and they tell her, “we are the police.”

The group takes her backpack and handcuffs her before escorting her to an unmarked car parked nearby. The arrest and abduction take place in the course of less than two minutes.

Khanbabai says that the PhD candidate was on her way to meet friends for iftar, when those observing Ramadan break their fast, when she was apprehended by and detained by Department of Homeland Security agents.

Officials initially did not specify where Ozturk had been taken, and Khanbabai was unable to reach her. Later on Wednesday, Khanbabai said in a motion that she was informed by a senator’s office that the student was transferred to Louisiana. DHS agents also sent Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil to Louisiana, where he is being held in an immigration jail notorious for its abuses.

The transfer is despite the fact that a judge approved a petition barring Ozturk from being removed from Massachusetts without advance notice filed by Khanbabai on Tuesday. The Trump administration has been openly flouting court orders when it comes to its anti-immigrant onslaught; earlier this month, for instance, immigration officials deported Brown University assistant professor and doctor Rasha Alawieh to Lebanon, despite a judge having ordered the visa holder not to be removed.

Ozturk’s abduction comes just days after she was doxxed by Zionist vigilante group Canary Mission, advocates for Palestinian rights said. The group cited her activism against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, including an op-ed published in Tufts Daily last year demanding that university leadership divest from Israel and condemn its slaughter of Palestinians.

Pro-Palestine activist groups have organized a rally in solidarity with Ozturk on Wednesday to demand her release. This is the first known instance of a student being targeted by immigration officials for their pro-Palestine activism in Boston.

Ozturk is the latest campus activist involved in the student movement against Israel’s genocide to be targeted by ICE in recent weeks. Recent Columbia University graduate and leader of student protests Khalil was abducted by ICE earlier this month and had his green card revoked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Trump officials openly admitted that Khalil was targeted for his activism, in what legal experts say is a clear violation of free speech rights.

Columbia student Yunseo Chung has also been targeted by the Trump administration for her participation in student protests. Immigration officials are seeking to deport Chung, a legal permanent resident who moved to the U.S. when she was 7 years old, according to a lawsuit filed by Chung against the administration this week.

Note: This story has been updated to reflect new information about Ozturk’s location.

Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student activist at Columbia University, is currently in ICE detention facing deportation proceedings—and the future of free speech in America hangs on the outcome of his case. Khalil, who has permanent resident status, was illegally abducted by ICE agents in front of his pregnant wife on March 8, sparking national and international outrage and raising alarms about what his extrajudicial abduction and imprisonment means for the present and future of civil liberties in Trump’s America. Michael Arria, a reporter with Mondoweiss, joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss the current status of Khalil’s case and the rapid escalation of Trump’s crackdown on political dissent and the movement for Palestine.

Production: David Hebden, Rosette Sewali
Post-production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

Marc Steiner:  Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner, it’s great to have you all with us.

Mahmoud Khalil is in the news. 11 days ago, this father-to-be was a student, a leading voice at Columbia University to end the war on Gaza, and for the rights of Palestinian people. He’s Palestinian. Then all of a sudden, 11 days ago, federal agents burst into his apartment, taking him away, threatening him with deportation. His wife is about to give birth to their first child.

Other Palestinian students have been targeted by the federal government, and Trump has told Columbia he’ll withdraw $400 million of federal support if you don’t ban masks, empower campus cops, and put the school’s Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies under academic receivership, which would mean they’re no longer controlled by the university or the faculty, among other things.

Mahmoud Khalil languishes now in a federal lockup in Louisiana. We’re about to have a conversation with a man who’s been covering this. Michael Arria has been covering this from Mondoweiss, where he’s a US correspondent. And he’s the author of Medium Blue: The Politics of MSNBC.

Michael, welcome, good to have you with us.

Michael Arria:  Thanks for having me.

Marc Steiner:  So this story, I remember when I first watched this happening, saw this happening, I was just incredulous. Let me just take a step backwards with you for a moment for a broader overview before we jump into this specific story and what this is emblematic of, what’s happening to our country at this moment, colleges around the country being threatened, Palestinian people — I have Palestinian friends who feel now that they’re under threat of deportation. Talk a bit about your analysis of where you think we are and what’s happening to us right now.

Michael Arria:  It’s an interesting question. I think, obviously, these things don’t occur in a vacuum. Unfortunately, Khalil’s detention, it was not altogether shocking. I think we all expected the Trump administration to act in some capacity. He’s been very upfront, even dating back to the campaign trail. The Washington Post reported last May that he had told a group of pro-Israel donors that if they helped elect him, he would crack down on the Palestine movement and set it back decades.

And he specifically outlined how he would do that, which is to deport students. He repeated that line throughout the campaign, as did members of the new administration upon arriving at the White House. We saw executive orders shortly after he arrived at the White House, obviously also targeting student protesters.

But I think you bring up an interesting point because some of these college investigations actually began under the Biden administration. And something we cover at the site every week, especially me as the US correspondent, is this war that’s been waged against the US Palestine movement domestically, particularly strengthened and amplified, I think, in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack, but really was going on long before that through legal means, in the courts, pro-Israel organizations, pro-Israel lawmakers criminalizing BDS, attempting to adopt the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, which essentially classifies some criticisms of Israel as antisemitic. So this has been a real push.

And it has to be said, although Trump is amping it up to a level we have yet to see, it has largely been a bipartisan affair. We have seen these kinds of attacks on the Palestine movement in the US for quite some time, and this is, I think, in many ways, a culmination of these kinds of actions that we’ve seen over the past decade, really since BDS emerged as a force. We’ve really seen this attempt to criminalize dissent.

A lot of these pro-Israel groups see the campus as the terrain where that battle is going to be fought. And they’ve really fought to blur the line between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. They’ve really fought for pro-Israel students to be regarded as a civil rights classification unto themself. You see this a lot with ALEC, where they find somebody who claims that the fact they had to join a union infringes upon their freedom of speech or something, and then you see these big right-wing right-to-work groups support them.

And that’s happened in this situation too. You’ve seen some of these pro-Israel groups like the Brandeis Center back these pro-Israel students and try to get this stuff on the books and change the legal definition for what you can and can’t do as it relates to Palestine protests.

So that’s a little backstory, I’d say, in terms of what leads up to this arrest that we saw on March 8.

Marc Steiner:  If the United States government uses the leverage that it’s using against Columbia now, saying, we’re going to take away $400 million from the university if you don’t do what we tell you, if you don’t stop these anti-Israel protests, and more, they could do this across the country. This signals, this is a bellwether for real dangerous, almost neofascistic policies being instituted by Trump against higher education.

Michael Arria:  Yeah, I completely agree with that. And it’s interesting. Obviously there’s some big-picture stories here, like a big-picture story is obviously Trump’s deportation plans and anti-immigrant designs are not limited to student protesters or Palestinians. So that’s one big-picture story. I think another big-picture story is what we just discussed. This is a long time coming in terms of this blurring of what is considered antisemitism versus what is considered legitimate pro-Palestine protest.

But I think the third issue is the one you bring up, which is this issue of what do the institutions of higher education, what do they stand for in the United States in the year 2025?

Shortly before the election, I interviewed Mara Finkelstein, who I think you’ve had on your show.

Marc Steiner:  Yes, yes.

Michael Arria:  She was the first tenured professor to lose her job over pro-Palestine speech. She had an Instagram post where she criticized Zionism and lost her job.

And she said something very interesting to me when we spoke last October, where she connected this to the decades of policies that we’ve seen, education policy that we’ve seen in the United States, this neoliberal model that we’ve seen emerge where we’ve seen the rolling back of federal funding of higher education — And this is another thing Trump has amped up, obviously, as we’ve seen in recent weeks — And we have seen that replaced with a donor model, schools essentially becoming a marketplace in that regard.

And I think you tap into this. Trump sent this letter to Columbia University saying that $400 million is potentially on the line; we might revisit this and give it back to you if you do the following things, and basically laid out a crackdown on pro-Palestine protesters.

And one of those demands was also, it’s everything you mentioned, but in addition to that was the Trump administration calling for the suspension of a number of student activists who were involved in the occupation of Hamilton Hall last April. This is a hall at Columbia that was occupied by a number of students drawing attention to what was happening, the genocidal assault.

Marc Steiner:  And was occupied during the anti-war demonstrations in Vietnam as well [laughs].

Michael Arria:  Exactly

Marc Steiner:  Right, right.

Michael Arria:  And it should be pointed out, Columbia — We’ve seen so much news in the last week, it’s hard to keep up, I realize. But something that happened is that, the other day, Columbia announced that they were suspending, expelling, and potentially taking degrees away from a number of the people who were connected to that protest.

So I think part of the story here is, obviously, the Trump administration. The other part is how these universities have either complied or just been straight up complicit in the designs of the Trump administration, presumably because they do not want to see their endowments threatened in any capacity.

And now you have an announcement from Linda McMahon, the new head of Department of Education, sending out this announcement that 60 schools which have been investigated for alleged antisemitism are potentially on the verge of facing disciplinary action, presumably similar to what happened with Columbia, where they’ll have their federal contracts and grants pulled and are put in a position where they’re really between a rock and a hard place, so to speak, and what they want to do.

And I think when it comes down to it, that’s what Mara Finkelstein told me. She said, I don’t have to have sympathy for the people who fired me to acknowledge the fact that my school was put in this position where they could either get rid of an anthropology professor or have their endowment threatened, and to them it probably wasn’t a big decision [Steiner laughs].

So I think that’s something that we have to keep in mind here. This isn’t only a story about immigration or Trump or McCarthyism. It also is a story about what the face of higher education looks like in the United States — Especially a place like Columbia, which is a private university and therefore, technically, isn’t beholden by the First Amendment in the same way that other places are. There’s legitimate questions here: What kind of responsibility do they have to their faculty? What kind of responsibility do they have to their students? And it’s all this stuff about freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry, all this kind of stuff that you see in the mission statements of universities like Columbia and like Harvard. Does that mean anything, or do these actions prove that it’s all just words that they don’t really take seriously?

Marc Steiner:  What happened at Columbia, as I said earlier, I think, is just the tip of the iceberg. This was, I think, in some ways, a test for the Trump administration and the right wing to see how far they could go, where they could begin this process, how they could clamp down on protest. And I think that this whole issue of antisemitism…

Let me take a step back for a second. I’m Jewish. I grew up in a family of pogrom and Holocaust survivors, and I’ve been involved in the movement against the occupation since the late ’60s, and I think they used this bogus move to call protests against the occupation antisemitic. I think antisemitism is there, antisemites are everywhere, but the protest movements and the movement itself is not antisemitic. I think this is an excuse they use also to divide America and to be able to justify their clamping down on campuses, and Columbia was the place they started.

Before we jump back into that, let me ask you a bit more about Mahmoud Khalil and what you know now, what you know about what his situation is, what is happening legally, and where he is.

Michael Arria:  Sure. So as we mentioned at the top, Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by ICE agents on March 8. These are ICE agents that were plainclothes agents who followed him into his home alongside his wife — Who, as you mentioned, is eight months pregnant — They did not initially produce a warrant. There had been reporting initially that the ICE agents themselves were a little confused because, we should point out, Mahmoud is a permanent resident with an active green card.

So when his wife produced the green card, reportedly, the ICE agents had called, presumably their supervisor or the office, and had basically said this might be some sort of mistake, he has a green card, and were told that the state department had revoked the green card as well as his student visa.

So he is taken into custody by the ICE agents. There was a period of about 24 hours where nobody, including his attorneys, were able to figure out where he was. I should point out that, sadly, that is not altogether shocking when you look at ICE, how they operate, and the history of our immigration detention system. But it is, nonetheless, very concerning. They couldn’t get in touch with him.

We eventually figured out that he was in a detention facility in Louisiana. So he’s moved thousands of miles away from his family to this detention facility. A judge in New York blocks the deportation order that was issued by the Trump administration and calls everybody into court. This is last Wednesday. And the Trump administration, the Trump lawyers were trying to get this thrown out of the New York court. They’re essentially arguing that it has no jurisdiction, that everything should go to Louisiana, where Mahmoud is being held. At that hearing, we found out that his lawyers still had no communication with him. They had no way to get in touch with him. So the judge actually, some news shortly before we got on this call today, the judge ruled that the proceedings will happen, will occur in New Jersey.

Marc Steiner:  And that hasn’t happened yet.

Michael Arria:  That hasn’t happened yet. It was just announced. And the lawyers, some of his attorneys, put out statements that basically said, this isn’t necessarily a cause to celebrate, but it is something of a small victory because it is a setback for the Trump administration, which is trying to have this moved.

So that’s where we’re at now. And as you point out, this is just the first. Trump has said, as soon as it happened, he celebrated on social media and said that there were many more to come. There have since been additional Columbia students that have been, one who was detained who we know very little about, detained in a similar [way] in Newark and is currently at a facility in Texas, a detention facility.

And then there’s another Indian student, a doctoral student architect from India who is actually set to finish a doctoral program in urban planning this May at Columbia, and learned that she was being targeted by the Department of Homeland Security, so actually fled the country trying to escape this targeting by the Trump administration.

So his arrest has really kicked off, I think, further arrests. We’ve seen it at Columbia, but, unfortunately, I have no reason to believe we won’t start seeing it at other places. And the administration’s being very explicit about the fact that these will continue, that this is not an isolated incident.

Marc Steiner:  You mentioned, just to put their names out there, Leqaa Kordia is the Palestinian student, the woman who was from the West Bank, and the other is Ranjani Srinivasan, the Indian national who was targeted. And you’re right, because Trump now has this rhetoric and history of ignoring the courts, saying he can do what he wants to do.

Michael Arria:  Yes.

Marc Steiner:  It’s almost difficult to put your hands around this in terms of what the potential is for the strengthening of this neofascist regime in Washington, because if they win this battle, they don’t stop there. They’ll continue.

Michael Arria:  Right, that’s absolutely true. When Mahmoud was first detained, I think there was a belief from many people that the Trump administration would be relying on some of the anti-terrorism measures that came out of the Bush administration. For those of us who remember the immediate aftermath after 9/11, things like the Patriot Act, like many situations — I just talked about how Biden paved the way — A lot of the war on terror legislation, some of the groundwork had really been done in previous administrations.

So the anti-terrorism bill that Bill Clinton passed in 1995 had a provision in it about material support for terrorist groups. It’s interesting, that legislation came in response to the Oklahoma City bombing, and he was pressured by pro-Israel groups to include this provision in it in order to go after Palestinian organizations.

I think a lot of people, when Mahmoud was originally arrested, a lot of people assumed this was going to be the root of the Trump administration. They were going to try to prove, in some capacity, although it still seemed like a legally shaky argument, that student protesters had somehow supported Hamas. Hamas is, of course, regarded as a terrorist group by the United States government.

What we learned pretty quickly through the court documents and some people connected to this case that had spoken to places like The New York Times is that they are not relying on that type of framework. They’re relying on a provision from the Immigration and Nationality Act from back in 1952. The dark irony of this is, as you say, they’re invoking this issue of antisemitism. The last time this provision was wielded was the height of the Red Scare, and it was used to target Holocaust survivors who were suspected of being Soviet agents. So it was actually used to go to target Jewish people in the United States.

And there’s a provision in there that basically says if you’re an alien whose presence or activities create reasonable grounds to believe that they would potentially seriously impact the foreign policy objectives of the United States, then you can be deported. And that is very troubling.

I think this is potentially a scary thing, I think, that even goes beyond some of the stuff we saw in the war on terror. Because in the war on terror, we saw these esteemed legal minds in the Bush administration pore over the Constitution and try to find these little loopholes or reinterpret it in a way where they could justify all these draconian measures or unconstitutional measures. In this case, the Trump administration is not even pretending that Mahmoud committed a crime. They’re not pointing to anything. We had this one comment from the White House press secretary where she said she had some photos in her office that showed he had handed out literature that was pro-Hamas. They’ve never returned to this, which makes me think it doesn’t exist.

Marc Steiner:  It doesn’t exist.

Michael Arria:  It doesn’t exist. And even if it did, we should point out that it is not illegal. Mahmoud still has protections of the First Amendment regardless of whether or not he had the green card.

So we’ve seen nothing in terms of the administration coming out and claiming that he actually committed a crime. And that’s very, I think, terrifying for people who are looking at this case because it basically sets up a situation where people can be targeted and deported much in a similar way that they were during periods of time like the Red Scare, without having to prove that they committed any sort of crime whatsoever. It really opens up, as you say, a very dangerous can of worms going forward, and I think what happens here will potentially have massive repercussions for the next three years.

Marc Steiner:  You quote a friend of mine who I’ve done work in media with before, Jelani Cobb, who’s now the dean of journalism at Columbia, saying, nobody can protect you. These are dangerous times. When I read that, knowing Jelani Cobb, who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, who’s not easily intimidated, who’s got great analysis, to say something like that is something that America should listen to to understand what it is we face.

Michael Arria:  Yeah, absolutely. That is a quote from a New York Times article that ran about a week and a half ago. It was in response to the fact that another professor, an adjunct professor, Stuart Carl, had basically told a group of students, stop posting on your social media about the Middle East. If you have a social media page, make sure it doesn’t have commentary about the Middle East. And a Palestinian student had basically objected to that and brought up the fact that the school was promoting censorship and bowing to the Trump administration. And that’s when Cobb made the statement that you said allegedly, or was reported to The Times, nobody can protect you. He said, these are dangerous times. So yeah, I think it’s very ominous to hear this kind of stuff from this institution.

I think it’s worth pointing out also, shortly before Mahmoud was apprehended by ICE agents, the administration of Columbia sent out a statement to faculty and staff notifying them that their protocol as it relates to ICE had shifted. Prior to that point, they had been regarded as what’s [called] a sanctuary university, which is similar to a sanctuary city. Basically, it said, if ICE shows up on campus, we’re not going to assist them. They had modified that to basically say, in some circumstances we have to let ICE on campus without a warrant.

So we see that. We see, as I mentioned before, the suspensions of the students. Again, this is not happening in a vacuum. We’re seeing it across the university in many ways. We’re seeing this inability to, not just an inability to stand up to the Trump administration, but also we see them aligned with them when it comes to this type of behavior. The interim president, Katrina Armstrong, had sent out an email when ICE agents showed up at campus the other day saying she was heartbroken that this had occurred, but she wanted to inform everybody.

I think it’s really hard for students, probably, who are engaged in these protests, to take those sentiments seriously when they look at the sequence of events here and they look at how Columbia and other higher education institutions have acted over the past few months.

Marc Steiner:  I’m going to read another quote here and come back to Mahmoud before we have to go. You have a quote here from Helyeh Doutaghi’s attorney, who was a scholar of international law at Yale, was placed on administrative leave. And the quote is this from Eric Lee, his attorney, “Future historians will treat the role of American universities as an example of collaborationism, like we view the Vichy government today. The role played by the vast majority of professors is absolutely shameful.”

I want to talk about that for a minute before we go back to Mahmoud because I think we’re on a very dangerous precipice. If this is allowed to happen, if they’re allowed to go into universities, arrest Palestinian students, arrest students who are protesting anything, threatening universities with taking away their federal dollars. Either universities find a backbone and join the fight or they actually get what they want — I’m talking about the Trump government.

Michael Arria:  Yeah, it’s a very scary situation. The lawyer that you quote there, Eric Lee, he’s actually the attorney for a student at Yale Law School who is also caught up in a similar situation where she was placed on administrative leave following an AI generated article falsely accusing her of terrorist connections. Rubio had announced this was going to happen —

Marc Steiner:  Which is insane, describing that for that moment. Alleged, not even proven.

Michael Arria:  Yeah, we are in a real dystopian, I think, with some of the stuff, situation. This announcement from the Trump administration that they’re going to use AI in order to determine whether or not students support Hamas. It’s really incredible.

But to your point, we’re seeing this across all kinds of universities, not just Columbia. I think all eyes are on Columbia for very obvious reasons, but I think I mentioned in that piece, Swarthmore College just suspended students for their involvement in the Gaza protest. They handed out 25 violations of code of conduct as a result of those protests. The student who got suspended was suspended for using a bullhorn indoors, which is the first time somebody has ever been suspended for this nationally. So we’re seeing schools crack down on this dissent and stifle criticism of Israel, support of Gaza, alongside this push for the Trump administration, as you say.

Before we get off this topic, I should quickly mention there are a couple lawsuits. One is a couple graduate students and a Cornell professor are actually suing the Trump administration over its push to deport students. One of those students was actually almost deported last year after he was suspended for participating in a pro-Palestine protest.

The other lawsuit I think is important here is Khalil and seven other current Columbia students are suing the school and a Republican out of Michigan, Rep. Tim Wahlberg, to prevent their private disciplinary records from being handed over to the House Committee on Education and Workforce. And people probably remember this is the committee that has consistently tried to bring university presidents before Congress and grill them on their alleged inability to crack down on antisemitism. This is an important part of this.

I think it’s hard to know where one group begins and the other ends, but there is definitely this, you see this collaboration that is precisely Eric Lee’s point in your quote, this collaboration with the government, pro-Israel lawmakers, and these schools. And I think it’s a really important point. We’re going to learn a lot, I think, in the coming weeks and months about how that breaks down and how people are going to be able to battle against it and fight against it.

Marc Steiner:  So let me ask you this: What have you learned since your article about Mahmoud Khalil and his legal situation, where he is? I know you’ll probably stay on top of this, I just want to get an update from you on what’s happening to him, to Mahmoud.

Michael Arria:  As I mentioned, he’s hypothetically supposed to be heading back to the East Coast. I think today was, obviously, as I said, something of a victory for his legal team and for him. His wife put out a statement today basically saying this is a good first step, but we need to continue to demand justice for Mahmoud because he was unlawfully and unjustly detained. And she basically said, we’re not going to stop fighting until he is home.

Your listeners have probably seen there’s been protests all across the United States in regards to this. There’s actually been a number of, I’d say, pro-Israel voices, even, who have come out and said, this violates the First Amendment. Whether or not you agree with the Palestine protesters, this should still be opposed.

I think it’s a very dire situation for everyone in this country who cares about the First Amendment or anyone who wants to exercise their right to free speech. I think his current situation, we’ll see what happens, but as it stands, this is going to continue to progress in court. Now it’s supposed to take place on the East Coast, and we’ll be able to see how that goes.

Yesterday, we saw the first statement from him. His lawyers released a statement from him where he basically explained his situation and provided some disturbing details. He wasn’t given a blanket, for instance, the first night he spent sleeping on the cold ground, and his ordeal, and it detailed what he’s thinking. But it also highlighted the fact that he’s committed to the liberation of the Palestinian people, as many people are, and they’re going to continue to fight. And Columbia has targeted him for his views. And really, when you read his statement — Which I encourage people to check out, they can check it out on CCR’s website —

Marc Steiner:  And we will link to it.

Michael Arria:  We actually ran it on our site as well. When you read this, you really start thinking of Dr. Martin Luther King’s letter from the Birmingham Jail. This is a political prisoner. This man is being held with no charges, no crime has been identified by the administration. I think, quite obviously, for the simple reason that he has advocated for Gaza and he has advocated for Palestine, and he has consistently criticized the genocidal assault that has been unleashed on those people by Israel with the support of the United States the entire way through. So that’s the situation we’re in right now, I’d say.

Marc Steiner:  You took the words out of my brain as I read it just a little bit ago, thinking about King’s letter from the Birmingham Jail, that I think that he’s this eloquent spokesman, stuck in jail, wife about to give birth. And we’re going to stay on top of what happens to Mahmoud Khalil, and we’ll stay on top of that and keep abreast of what’s happening to him, and what you can do to support his release and his freedom and to keep that going. This is a very dangerous moment we’re living in, and we have to be really aware, careful, and on top of these issues. So we fight for our democracy and keep this alive.

And Michael, I want to thank you so much for your work and your writing, and we’re going to link to your article and your other work as well. Thank you so much for joining us today, and let’s keep in contact and keep this conversation going and free Mahmoud.

Michael Arria:  Of course. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Marc Steiner:  Thank you. Once again, thank you to Michael Arria for joining us today. And thanks to David Hebden for the program, and audio editor Alina Nehlich, and producer Rosette Sewali for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.

Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Michael Arria for joining us today. And so for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.

This story originally appeared in Truthout on Mar. 24, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

Israeli forces killed two Palestinian journalists in Gaza on Monday in separate strikes, bringing the total number of Palestinian journalists killed to at least 208 since October 7, 2023, according to a count by Gaza officials.

Mohammad Mansour, a correspondent for Palestine Today, was killed along with his wife and child when Israel struck his home in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. Al Jazeera reported that Israel deliberately targeted Mansour in the attack.

Shortly after, Israeli forces killed Hossam Shabat with a targeted airstrike while he was driving his car in Beit Lahiya, local sources reported. Shabat, who was 23 years old, had become well-known for his reports from northern Gaza amid Israel’s total siege on the region. He was a contributor to U.S. outlet Drop Site News and a reporter for Al Jazeera Mubasher.

Shabat’s friends posted a message written by the young journalist that he requested to be published on social media in the event of his death.

“If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed — most likely targeted — by the Israeli occupation forces,” he said. “When this all began, I was only 21 years old — a college student with dreams like anyone else. For the past 18 months, I have dedicated every moment of my life to my people. I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury.”

“By God, I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report the truth, and now, I am finally at rest — something I haven’t known in the past 18 months,” he wrote. “I did all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I believe this land is ours, and it has been the highest honor of my life to die defending it and serving its people.”

Drop Site condemned the attack in a statement. “Drop Site News holds Israel and the U.S. responsible for killing Hossam,” the outlet said. “More than 200 of our Palestinian media colleagues have been killed by Israel — supplied with weapons and given blanket impunity by most Western governments — over the past seventeen months.”

Fellow journalists in Gaza mourned Shabat’s death. “I no longer have words,” said Gaza journalist Abubaker Abed, who was a colleague of Shabat at Drop Site. “This is just an incalculable loss. This is unbearable.”

Shabat, like Abed and many other young people in Gaza, became a war journalist when the genocide began despite having other aspirations. Last year, he thanked university students across the world for protesting for Gaza, noting that he was in his third year in college when the genocide began on October 7, 2023.

“I’ll never be able to finish my studies because Israeli occupation forces bombed my university and every other university in Gaza,” he wrote.

His life was upended as he went out to report on Israel’s genocide, separating from his family in order to show the world the barbarity of the killings.

In October 2024, Israeli authorities issued a list of journalists it was seemingly targeting for assassination, accusing them, without evidence, as being affiliated with “Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist” groups. Shabat, who was one of the only journalists left in north Gaza at the time, was on that list. He had already survived another targeted attack in November, when Israeli forces injured him in an apparent “double tap” strike on a house in northern Gaza.

Despite the November attack and concerns he was being hunted by Israeli forces for his work, Shabat pledged to continue reporting.

Just a month ago, amid the ceasefire, Shabat posted a video of him and his mother being reunited after 492 days, having been separated due to Israel’s evacuation orders.

"Time now is measured not in minutes, but in lifetimes of pain and tears. With every passing moment the anxiety and tension of the people here grows, as they wonder whether they will stay alive long enough for the fire to cease," wrote Hossam Shabat in one of his stories for us.

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) March 24, 2025

Last week, shortly after Israeli authorities resumed their heavy bombing of Gaza despite the ceasefire agreement, Shabat posted a video of him once again putting on his flak jacket and helmet marked “press.”

“I thought it was over and I’d finally get some rest, but the genocide is back in full force, and I’m back on the front lines,” he said.

Shabat had continually pleaded for the world to intervene and end the genocide.

“On October 17th, 2023, Israel bombed Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza,” Shabat wrote in his final Instagram reel. “Israel denied it. Western media believed it. And the bombing continued as ‘Israel investigated itself.’ UN and NGO investigations proved that Israel indeed did it. No government acted. No condemnations.”

“So Israel continued bombing, besieging and targeting EVERY SINGLE HOSPITAL in Gaza,” he continued. “Eighteen months of genocide and impunity meant that they didn’t have to deny bombing hospitals anymore. No one cares… They say the magic H word and war crimes are justified.”

Even posthumously, Shabat pled for Palestinian rights.

“I ask you now: do not stop speaking about Gaza,” the journalist wrote in his final message. “Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories — until Palestine is free.”

Israel shattered the ceasefire in Gaza in the early hours of March 18 with a massive series of airstrikes targeting Palestinian civilians living in tents inside the designated “safe zones” of the strip. In a single night, more than 400 people were killed, and cities across the world have responded with a new wave of protests. Amid this calamity, Chuck Schumer has quietly cancelled the tour for his newest book, Antisemitism in America: A Warning. In spite of this, Baltimore-based organizers with Jewish Voice for Peace went ahead with a planned protest of Schumer’s cancelled event in their city, raising up a message of Jewish solidarity with Palestinians and a rejection of Zionism. Jaisal Noor reports from Baltimore.

Pre/Post-production: Jaisal Noor

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Jaisal Noor:

Jewish peace activists and their allies rallied in Baltimore on March 17th, just hours after New York Senator Chuck Schumer abruptly canceled his book talk amid planned protests. The demonstration led by the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace was meant to challenge the top Senate Democrat stance on Israel and assert that criticizing Israel’s genocide in Gaza is not anti-Semitic.

Nikki Morse:

As it turns out, Chuck Schumer canceled the event, but we didn’t feel like we should cancel ours because the information we wanted to share with each other, with our community, it’s still relevant. It was relevant decades ago, and it is relevant right now because we have to understand what anti-Semitism is and what it isn’t, if we’re going to stop it, and if we’re going to fight other forms of oppression.

Zackary Berger:

The right wing is trying to drive a wedge into the Jewish community and trying to use charges of anti-Semitism to cover up its anti-democratic and frankly, fascistic tendencies. And the fact that Senator Schumer is aligning with those groups, even implicitly, is very disappointing.

Jaisal Noor:

Schumer’s also facing amounting backlash for voting for the Republican budget bill instead of doing more to fight the GOP’s cuts on vital government services.

Nikki Morse:

We’re a group of people that include LGBTQ folks, trans folks, queer folks, people of color, people of low income, unhoused folks. We have people who are undocumented, who are threatened by deportation. These are all the things that we need our leaders to be fighting

Jaisal Noor:

Many voiced support for Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student and spokesperson for the pro-Palestine protest on campus who is facing deportation by the Trump administration despite being a green card holder and not being charged with a crime. Activists call it a blatant attempt to silence dissent.

Nikki Morse:

In Jewish Voice for Peace, we see that as a sign of the threat to all of us. The chant that we’ve been saying tonight is “Come for one, face us all. Free Mahmoud, free us all,” because we see our fates as intimately intertwined with the fate of someone like Mahmoud Khalil.

Jaisal Noor:

For The Real News, I’m Jaisal Noor in Baltimore.

Son of Nun [singing]:

From the IDF for divest.

Divest.

Divest.

Divest.

Divest and let’s lay apartheid to rest.

My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.

Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.

Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.

On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours — I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.

My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.

I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention — imprisonment without trial or charge — to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.

I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.

While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns — based on racism and disinformation — to go unchecked.Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students — some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation — and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.

If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change — leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.

The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.

Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.

This story originally appeared in Mondoweiss on Mar. 18, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

Israel resumed heavy airstrikes across the Gaza Strip after two weeks of systematic Israeli violations of the terms of the ceasefire and the stalling of negotiations over the agreement’s second phase. The Israeli army began bombing numerous targets in the Gaza Strip early on Tuesday past midnight, including civilian homes and tents for the displaced. As of the time of writing, the Ministry of Health in Gaza reports that over 404 people have been killed in Gaza and 562 were injured in multiple massacres carried out by Israeli forces since the early morning hours. According to the Health Ministry, among the slain are 174 children, 89 women, and 32 seniors.

After nearly two months of relative calm, the airstrikes resumed overnight without prior warning or evacuation orders, with local sources reporting that bombs dropped over Gaza City, northern Gaza, Khan Younis, Rafah, al-Bureij, and several other parts of the Strip.

Familiar scenes of mass killing returned to Gaza as hundreds of families gathered at hospitals throughout the Strip, carrying the remains of their loved ones.

“We were sleeping when suddenly a volcano descended on my children’s heads,” Muhammad al-Sakani, 42, told Mondoweiss in front of the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, standing over the bodies of his two slain children. “This is the bank of targets of Netanyahu, Trump, and all the other cowards.” 

“They are not to blame,” he added. “Their only crime is that our enemy is a criminal who assassinates children and women as they sleep.”

The Israeli military announced that it had carried out extensive strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza, adding that it was “prepared to continue attacks against Hamas leaders and infrastructure in Gaza for as long as necessary.” The army said that the attack would expand beyond airstrikes, signaling the likelihood of the return of a ground invasion. After the airstrikes had already begun and claimed hundreds of casualties, the Israeli military spokesperson warned several areas, such as Beit Hanoun and the Khuza’a and Abasan areas in Khan Younis, that they needed to be evacuated.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Office announced in a statement that the Prime Minister had instructed the army to “take strong action” against Hamas and that Israel would act “with increased military might from now on.” 

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the resumed fighting was due to  “Hamas’s refusal” to release Israeli captives and “its threats to harm” Israeli soldiers and communities near Gaza. Katz added that Israel would not stop fighting until all captives were returned and “all the war’s aims” were achieved.

In an interview with Fox News, White House spokesperson Caroline Leavitt said that “the Trump administration and the White House were consulted by the Israelis on their attacks in Gaza tonight.” 

“President Trump has made it absolutely clear that Hamas, the Houthis, Iran, and all those who seek to spread terror, not only against Israel but also against the United States, will pay a price for their actions,” Leavitt added.

Hamas remains committed to implementing ceasefire

Despite the Israeli aggression, Hamas continues to call on the international community to intervene and put an end to the bombing taking place in Gaza, reaffirming the movement’s commitment to completing the ceasefire deal.

Hamas spokesperson Abdul Latif al-Qanou told Mondoweiss that Israel was “resuming its war of genocide and committing dozens of massacres against our people,” adding that Israel’s “prior coordination with the American administration confirms [U.S.] partnership in the war of extermination against our people.”

Al-Qanou stressed that Netanyahu resumed the war on Gaza to escape his internal crises and impose new negotiating conditions on the Palestinian resistance, referencing Netanyahu’s battle against corruption charges and his attempts to revive his right-wing government coalition. Qanou pointed out that Hamas adhered to all the terms of the ceasefire agreement and remains keen on moving on to its second phase.

“All the mediators are aware of Hamas’s commitment to the terms of the agreement, despite Netanyahu’s procrastination,” Qanou added. “His reversal requires them to reveal this to the world.”

The Israeli raids have killed several Hamas leaders across Gaza, including those holding civilian positions, such as Ayman Abu Teir, director of the nutrition department at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, who was assassinated by Israel in his home in Khan Younis along with 13 members of his family. 

Hamas mourned several of its leaders, including Issam al-Da’alis, head of Government Operations in the Gaza Strip, Ahmad al-Hatta, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Justice, Major General Mahmoud Abu Watfa, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Interior, and Major General Bahjat Abu Sultan, Director-General of the Internal Security Service.

Local media sources affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) also revealed that the military spokesperson of the PIJ’s armed wing, the al-Quds Brigades, was killed in an Israeli airstrike. Known by his nom de guerre, “Abu Hamza,” the spokesperson’s real name was revealed to be Naji Abu Saif, according to media reports. The PIJ did not officially confirm the news as of the time of writing. 

Systematic Israeli ceasefire violations

Since the signing of the ceasefire agreement on January 17, which stipulated three consecutive 42-day phases under Egyptian, Qatari, and American sponsorship, Hamas has largely adhered to the terms of the first phase, while Israel has systematically violated it by suspending the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza and progressively resuming the targeting and killing of civilians in Gaza’s border areas.

Hamas released 33 Israeli captives during the first phase as stipulated in the agreement, but Israel did not comply with its end of the deal, including the delay or prevention of the entry of reconstruction material, tents, and prefabricated mobile homes. More importantly, Israel has consistently attempted to walk back its commitments to engage in talks over the permanent end of the war and the full withdrawal of its forces from Gaza. Israel was supposed to withdraw from the Philadelphi corridor along the Egyptian border during the first phase of the ceasefire. It was also supposed to have entered into talks over the second phase of the deal in mid-February, ahead of the end of the first phase. Israel did neither, instead shifting the goalposts for the agreement by insisting that Hamas continue to release more Israeli captives without entering into negotiations over withdrawing or ending the war.

In early March, Israeli officials threatened to completely close the crossings and prevent food, medicine, water, and electricity from reaching Gaza if more Israeli captives weren’t released. It implemented these threats during the past two weeks. Moreover, without announcing the resumption of the war, Israel resumed bombarding various areas throughout Gaza starting in March, resulting in the death of dozens of Palestinian civilians. In the two days before the official resumption of the war, Israeli airstrikes killed more than 15 people across Gaza.

This story originally appeared in Truthout on Mar. 11, 2025. It is shared here with permission.

A group of over a dozen lawmakers is demanding the “immediate” release of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil after his likely illegal arrest and threat of deportation by the Trump administration this week.

The House members, led by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), raised alarm about the threat to free speech raised by Khalil’s detention, saying that his arrest violates immigration laws and effectively criminalizes protest.

“Mahmoud Khalil must be freed from DHS custody immediately. He is a political prisoner, wrongfully and unlawfully detained, who deserves to be at home in New York preparing for the birth of his first child,” the lawmakers wrote. “Universities throughout the country must protect their students from this vile assault on free thought and expression, and [the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)] must immediately refrain from any further illegal arrests targeting constitutionally protected speech and activity.”

The arrest violated Khalil’s constitutional rights to freedom of speech and due process, the lawmakers said.

The letter was signed by 14 Democrats in the House: Representatives André Carson (Indiana) Jasmine Crockett (Texas), Al Green (Texas), Summer Lee (Pennsylvania), Jim McGovern (Massachusetts), Gwen Moore (Wisconsin), Ilhan Omar (Minnesota), Mark Pocan (Wisconsin), Ayanna Pressley (Massachusetts), Lateefah Simon (California), Delia Ramirez (Illinois), Nydia Velázquez (New York) and Nikema Williams (Georgia).

The case has been met with silence by other Democratic leaders like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who represents the state where the arrest happened and is a fervent Zionist. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, also from New York, has also refused to denounce the arrest.

On Saturday night, DHS officers detained Khalil at his home in Columbia University student housing, citing his role in organizing pro-Palestine protests at the university last year. The Trump administration has threatened to revoke Khalil’s green card and deport him for his activism — which experts say is illegal and a major overstep of the administration’s power.

Federal agents seemingly covertly transported Khalil, who is Palestinian, to a private jail in Louisiana without telling his wife, who is eight months pregnant. On Monday night, a federal judge temporarily blocked the planned deportation of the activist, pending more legal action.

“Khalil has not been charged or convicted of any crime,” the lawmakers said. “As the Trump administration proudly admits, he was targeted solely for his activism and organizing as a student leader and negotiator for the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on Columbia University campus, protesting the Israeli government’s brutal assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza and his university’s complicity in this oppression.”

“We must be extremely clear: this is an attempt to criminalize political protest and is a direct assault on the freedom of speech of everyone in this country,” they went on. “Khalil’s arrest is an act of anti-Palestinian racism intended to silence the Palestine solidarity movement in this country, but this lawless abuse of power and political repression is a threat to all Americans.”

Khalil’s detention has been widely denounced by advocates for Palestinian rights and civil society organizations.

“This arrest is unprecedented, illegal, and un-American. The federal government is claiming the authority to deport people with deep ties to the U.S. and revoke their green cards for advocating positions that the government opposes,” said Ben Wizner, who heads the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “To be clear: The First Amendment protects everyone in the U.S. The government’s actions are obviously intended to intimidate and chill speech on one side of a public debate.”

The shaky ceasefire in Gaza is entering the final days of its first phase, but the genocide of the Palestinian people has not been paused. On Feb. 25, Israeli tanks stormed Jenin, the heart of the Palestinian resistance in the West Bank, for the first time since the Second Intifada. From Donald Trump’s declarations that the US should “own” Gaza to promises to deport pro-Palestine student activists, the new administration’s intentions to accelerate the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and criminalize solidarity with Palestinians have been made clear. Abby Martin, independent journalist and host of Empire Files, joins The Real News to help analyze how war on Palestine is expanding and evolving.

Studio Production: David Hebden, Adam Coley

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Welcome to the Real News Network and welcome back to our weekly live stream Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Fear that Israel is preparing to unleash the same people destroying population, displacing civilization, erasing force that it unleashed on Gaza for 15 months, beginning just days after Israel and Hamas began Phase one of last month’s fragile ceasefire in Gaza, the Israeli military has sent troops, bulldozers, drones, helicopters, and heavy battle tanks into the Northern West Bank, United Nations. Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez said on Monday that he was gravely concerned by the rising violence in the occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers and other violations. Palestinian writer and journalist, Miriam Bardi told democracy now this week that what we are seeing in fact is a green light of annexation. What is happening right now, she said in the West Bank is defacto annexation of lands. This Israeli offensive, the so-called Operation Iron Wall, is one of the most intense military operations in the West Bank since the height of the second Infa Palestinian uprising against Israel’s occupation.

Just over two decades ago, Israel’s defense minister Israel Kaz, said this week that 40,000 Palestinians have been forced out of the refugee camps in Janine Tu and Hams. All activity by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in those areas has also been stopped. Now, Katz made it clear that this is not a short-term operation. In a written statement, Katz said, I instructed the IDF to prepare for a long stay in the camps that were cleared for the coming year, and to not allow residents to return and the terror to return and grow, we will not return to the reality that was in the past. He said, we will continue to clear refugee camps and other terror centers to dismantle the battalions and terror infrastructure of extreme Islam that was built, armed, funded, and supported by the Iranian evil axis he claimed in an attempt to establish an Eastern terror front. Now, I want you to keep those statements from Israel’s defense minister in your head as you watch this next clip. This is actually from an incredible documentary report that we filmed in the now empty Janine Refugee Camp in July of 20 23, 3 months before October 7th. The report was shot produced by shot and produced by Ross Domini, Nadia Per Do and Ahad Elbaz. Take a look.

Nadia Péridot:

The Real News Network spoke to Haniya Salameh whose son Farouk was killed by the Israeli army just days before he was due to be married.

Speaker 3:

Far

Nadia Péridot:

Like many of Janine’s residents is a refugee of the 1948 Zionist expulsion of people from across Palestine. Today, these depopulated villages either remain empty or have been raised to the ground to make way for Israel’s settlements. Palestinians are banned from returning to these

Speaker 3:

Homes

Maximillian Alvarez:

With these tanks and bulldozers rolling through the occupied West Bank right now with Israel launching new attacks in southern Syria this week with the ceasefire in Gaza, still very much in danger of collapsing before phase one of the deal is set to end on Saturday and with Donald Trump still joking that it would be best if the US took over Gaza. The bubble has officially burst on any pre inauguration hopes that people had that Trump’s presidency would somehow usher in peace in the Middle East and an end to the humanitarian horror of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from what remains of occupied historic Palestine and the United States’ support for it. Quite the opposite in fact. And not only that, but here in the so-called West the United States, Canada, Europe, we’re seeing a corresponding surge in state and institutional repression of free speech, the free press and the independent and corporate media sides speaking the truth about Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and our government’s complicity in it.

We are also seeing a surge in the criminalization of Palestine solidarity protests and attempts to classify solidarity with Palestine as support for terrorism. So listen, we need to get real about where we are right now, what we are facing, and how we can keep forging forward, fighting for what’s right and good and beautiful in times of great darkness and great danger, like the time we’re in now, fighting for peace in a world of war, fighting for life in a culture of mass death. And that is why I could not be more grateful that we’ve got the great Abby Martin on the live stream today to help us do just that. You all should know Abby by now, but in case you don’t for some reason and you’ve been living under a rock, Abby Martin is an independent journalist and host of the Empire Files, an interview and documentary series that everyone needs to watch and support.

She’s the director of the 2019 documentary, Gaza Fights for Freedom and is also directing a new documentary called Earth’s Greatest Enemy, which examines how the United States Empire is not only a primary contributor to climate change, but the central entity that imperils life on earth. Abby, thank you so much for joining us again. It’s always so great to have you back on the Real News. I want to start with the latest horrifying developments in Israel’s war on Palestine. Can you walk us through what we’re seeing and perhaps what we’re not seeing in the West Bank right now?

Abby Martin:

I mean, I think your intro did a really great job at laying out the current situation Max, and thank you for the intro. To me, that was wonderful. Look, it’s very clear that whatever ceasefire deal was negotiated, that the annexation and the green lighting of the further annexation of the West Bank was part of the sweetheart edition to that ceasefire deal. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen, just completely transition from Gaza to the West Bank where extremist settlers in tandem with Israeli soldiers are clearing out entire refugee camps and villages and at an expulsion rate that we have never frankly seen before. I mean, 40,000 Palestinians being expelled just over 35 days is just extraordinary. And this is happening almost on a daily basis. We’re at the barrel of a gun. Dozens of Palestinians are being forced and rejected from their homes. We’ve seen 60 Palestinians be killed in this timeframe.

Several children, just over the last week, we saw two Palestinian children being gunned down. This just is happening at such a rapid pace. It’s very dizzying, and it just seems like there are no measures in place whatsoever to stop this rapid annexation and this whole operation Iron Wall. It’s very clear that the ultimate goal is to clear out as much as possible and just have the plausible deniability, oh, it’s settlers. Oh, it’s Hamas fighters. Oh, well, we have to do it because of the violence that’s happening. I mean, again, if you don’t get to the root of the violence, it’s just going to erupt. It’s a tinderbox and it’s a pressure cooker. So all of the things that are happening as a result of the clearing out of these villages and refugee camps, it’s an inevitability. So you’re going to see waves of attacks, whether they be knife attacks or suicide bombings or like the inert bombs that didn’t explode and actually kill people on those buses. I mean, all of these things are inevitabilities. Once you engage on a full scale invasion and war to the native population, that’s already under a very extremely repressive police state dictatorship that prevents them from doing anything at all.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Could you say just a little more on that last point you filmed there in the West Bank, you’ve been there, you’ve reported on it many, many times. I guess for folks who maybe haven’t looked into the West Bank as much as they’ve learned about Gaza over the past two years, could you just say a little more for folks who are watching this about the state of life as such in the West Bank before this operation Iron Wall began?

Abby Martin:

Yeah, and a perfect example of that is this current ceasefire deal, phase one where people may be asking themselves how is it possible that hundreds of Palestinian prisoners really their hostages in their own right? How is it possible that there’s so many hundreds of Palestinians being held and being released at the behest of Hamas’ demands? It may be confusing to some to see just a couple dozen hostages from the Israeli side being released for hundreds of Palestinians. Well, the answer is basically the fact that there’s this repressive police state style dictatorship that wantonly just arrests hundreds of people, detains them, arbitrarily, keeps them without charges or trial, and that’s precisely what we’ve seen, ramp up and escalate in the aftermath of October 7th, hundreds and hundreds of Palestinians, including dozens of children and women, not to take away the revolutionary agency or political agency of women, but it is just unbelievable how many people have been detained arbitrarily and held.

Why aren’t they called hostages? I have no idea. But it just again, just kind of paints the picture of what Palestinians are living under. They cannot raise a Palestinian flag. They cannot practice any political activity. It is crazy. I mean, they can set up arbitrary checkpoints, resort these people’s lives to a living. Hell set up just random blockades that can reroute people just take hours out of their day just to make their lives extremely uncomfortable. But it just goes far beyond that. I mean, raiding killing Palestinians arbitrarily having no recourse whatsoever. You certainly cannot have armed resistance. I mean, anything that can be construed as a weapon in these people’s homes or cars can just subject you to not only humiliating tactics, but also just being thrown in prison. I mean, we’re talking about such a crazy level of control that simply the David versus Goliath, just symbolism of throwing a rock at a tank. There’s a law on the books that can put a Palestinian child in prison for 20 years for simply throwing a rock at an armed tank. So these are the kind of measures that have been in place since 1967 when this military dictatorship was imposed illegally. And ever since then, we’ve been placated as Westerners with this promise of a two states solution, which has just been a cover for the continued annexation of the West Bank and under Trump, we’ve seen just a complete rapid green lighting of just continuing that policy.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah, man. I mean, I did not want to incorporate it as a visual element in this live stream because frankly, it’s too ghoulish and horrifying to give any more airtime to. But I would point folks, if you haven’t already seen it, to an AI generated video that our president shared on his truth social account, promoting the transformation of Gaza into a luxury beach front destination filled with skyscrapers, condos, bearded belly dancers like Monde Weiss reported the video shows Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunbathing together in Gaza, Elon Musk eating hummus, the area being converted into resort called Trump, Gaza, a golden Trump statue and children running from rubble into picturesque beaches. What the hell, man? I mean, I guess where do you even find your center of humanity in such an inhumane timeline?

Abby Martin:

I mean, that’s what’s so creepy about it. It’s the dizzying spectacle of it all. And I feel like Trump, I feel like he was much more dialed in 2016 personally because he was less senile and whatever. He was younger and more astute. But now it does seem like he’s kind of, he doesn’t give a shit. I mean, he is just going for it and letting all of these crazy outliers just take the government for a ride. I mean, Elon Musk, this AI stuff, it’s like by the time that you’re trying to unpack this press conference where he is sitting next to this grinning genocide fugitive talking about how Gaza is a hellhole and how you’re going to get, why would you want to go back to Gaza? You’re just going to get shot and killed next to the grinning genocide fugitive, who did it. I mean, once you unpack that, he’s already signed another thousand executive orders once you try to make sense of this AI generated video of Trump’s golden head on a balloon, and kids running out of the rubble into a more attractive version of Elon Musk eating hummus and peta.

I mean, they’ve already done this, that and the other. So again, it’s the spectacle. It’s like no response is the good response. It’s so difficult to even maneuver this new political landscape even for us who follow it for a job. I mean, a perfect example is the sig. He twice the Nazi salute from Elon. I mean, it’s like, what is the appropriate response to this? Because they will just gaslight you and say what you see isn’t reality. And so by the time you’re like, no, no, no, that’s a Nazi salute. No, no, no, it’s like they’ve already done this, that and the other thing. So it’s such an insane time to be living and to navigate this political space, and I just keep comparing it to the mass hallucinations. Everyone’s relegated to their own framework of reality. The algorithm boosts whatever it is that you want to justify as that reality, and that’s kind of our respective mass hallucinations that we’re wading through. I mean, I feel like I’m living in reality, and that’s why I’m so aghast and horrified by everything. But

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah, that’s why I wake up screaming every night. And in fact, so much of our politics is a war on the means of perceiving reality. It is a war over the narrative of what we’re actually seeing. And from everyone’s watching a plane crash down the road in Washington DC and it’s immediately a battle over is this DEI or is this something else? Is the fires in my home state of California? Is this A DEI thing? Is this climate change? The war over the means of perception, I think is really the terrain upon which so many of us are fighting or forced to fight in the 21st century. And I definitely want to circle back to Trump Musk and how we navigate all of this here at home in the second half of the discussion. But I guess before we move on, I wanted to bring us back to the West Bank.

You mentioned the gaslighting, right? You mentioned the ways that that war on perception, the top down narratives handed to us by the very villains who are committing genocide and destroying our government and so on and so forth. I am not drawing an equivalence between our situation and that of the occupied Palestinian. But I think in your amazing conversation and interview with the great Muhammad el-Kurd about his new book, I was learning so many lessons from him that feel very relevant to us today, particularly the gaslighting and the sort of top down effort to turn the victim into the terrorist. I wanted to play that clip really quick from Muhammad el-Kurd. This is a clip from Abby show, the Empire Files, which she interviewed Muhammad on recently. So let’s play that clip and let’s talk about what this can tell us about how to navigate what we’re up against now.

Mohammed el-Kurd:

Yeah, and I think the average person, anybody with common sense would understand that defending yourself against intruders, against colonizers, against thiefs, against burglars, against murderous regimes is a fundamental right that you are entitled to defend yourself and your family. And actually across history, people who have done so have been hailed as heroes. But violence itself is essentially a mutating concept. It’s something to celebrate when it’s sanctioned by the empire, and it’s something to pearl clutch out when it’s done by natives, by these young men in tracksuits. But again, this is, it’s not like a fundamental western opposition to violence or militias or whatever. It’s a rejection of any kind of political prospect for the Palestinian, because anytime the Palestinian has engaged in armed resistance or has engaged in kinds of resistance that have extended beyond the bounds of what is acceptable to a liberal society, that those are some of the only times we have been heard.

So what does that say about the world and what does that say to the Palestinian? When we are told time and time again, the only time people are going to listen to us and talk about us and put us in their headlines is when we engage in violent resistance. But ultimately, this is about the rejection of Palestinian. Armed resistance is about a rejection of a Palestinian national project is about a rejection of actually ending the occupation. Everybody can sing every day about ending the occupation, but when it becomes real, we are terrified of it. We lose our compass. We refuse, we refuse to even entertain it. For years, maybe all of my life, I’ve been hearing about a two-state solution while Israeli bulldozers eat away at our land in areas that are supposedly under Palestinian authority control. It’s like a circus where they’re just telling us these narratives to buy time while they’re creating facts on the ground, while they’re setting greedy the terms of engagement and creating the roadmap for the future while robbing us of any kind of future.

And while sanctioning even our ambitions, even our intentions, even our hopes and dreams. You know what I mean? There’s also a hyper, when we say defanging of Palestinians, it’s not just taking our rifles and vilifying our freedom fighters, but there’s also an interrogation of our thoughts. They ask us, do you condemn this and do you condemn that and do you want to do this, and do you want to throw Israelis into the sea? And what’s your issue with those people? And it’s never about actually engaging with you in a certain political uplifted discourse, but it’s about making sure you concede to the liberal world order before you are even allowed entry to the conversation. And that needs to be,

Maximillian Alvarez:

Everyone should go watch that full interview first thing. Second thing, everyone should go read Muhammad el-Kurd’s book by Haymarket Books. Perfect victim. Third thing, Abby, I’ve got just some questions I want to throw at you really quick. Can you talk about that clip, what Muhammad’s saying there and how this applies to what we’re seeing in the West Bank? A lot of these refugee camps, yes, they’re where freedom fighters lived, but also a bunch of regular people who have nowhere else to go. So can you help folks apply what Muhammad’s saying there to what we’re seeing unfold in the West Bank, but also how this applies to us here? It does feel eerily reminiscent of the right wing in this country, condemning violence of Black Lives Matter protesters while celebrating Kyle Rittenhouse shooting them. Right? That double standard does seem to be very much at play here. So I wanted to ask if we could talk about it in the context of the West Bank first and then bring it back home after that.

Abby Martin:

Absolutely. I think, look, it’s really, really clear to understand that the West Bank is under illegal occupation and under international law, Palestinians as well as other people under occupying forces have the legal right to armed resistance that is enshrined in law. And so when you’re looking at a place like the West Bank that hosts houses 3 million Palestinians, and a lot of people are resisting naturally, so of course, I mean, that’s going to be an inevitability you’re going to resist if you’re denied basic human rights, denied clean water, denied mobility. I mean, when you’re living under this harsh repression where you can’t even celebrate the hostages coming home, you can’t grieve, you can’t publicly mourn. You can’t erect a flag. I mean, it’s absolutely insane what these people are subjected to on a day-to-day basis. And given the genocide that we’ve seen erupt in Gaza, the unending slaughter of children, I mean, obviously Palestinians are united front despite the political schisms and divisions.

And so you’re going to see resistance in the West Bank, especially when you see full scale mobilizations to invade and annex your land illegally. And so it’s actually a legal right to see resistance mobilized against Israeli invaders. So first and foremost, we need to zoom out and realize not only is this an egregious and flagrant violation of just the ceasefire, the idea of a ceasefire that Israel considers a ceasefire, just no one reacting to them constantly violating the ceasefire, whether it be in Lebanon or Gaza or in the West Bank. They can just go on and do whatever they want with complete impunity. And the second that a Palestinian fights back, oh, they’ve broken the ceasefire. Oh, the deal’s off the table. It is so disgustingly. But when you zoom out from that, I mean, yeah, Palestinians have the right to resist. So what you’re seeing in refugee camps, what you’re seeing in places like Janine is resistance, legal resistance actually.

So when Israel uses that as a precursor to then further colonize, it’s just absolutely dumbfounding because it’s just completely violating every single law in the books, and this is what they’ve done for decades. And they’re ramping it up under the cover of the ceasefire of the genocides saying that Hamas fighters are on the ground. Oh, well, they did this. So of course we need to go and eject thousands of people from their homes say that they can never return. And it’s gaslighting upon gaslighting, but it’s also just a refusal of just basic reality and the facts that we know to be true Max. When you apply that to the United States, it is just such a double sighted. I mean, it just a completely absurd notion that we worship. We’re a culture of violence. We worship war. I mean militarism and war is so ingrained in the psyche of American citizens, especially in the wake of nine 11.

It’s just a constant thing. But it’s only the good arbiters of violence. I mean, of course, the US military can do whatever it wants around the world as long as it’s doing it in the name of democracy and human rights. If Ukrainians resist against evil Russia, give them all the weapons in the world, turn it into a proxy war where we’re throwing Ukrainians into just making them cannon fodder. I mean, it’s absolutely insane. But when you’re looking at just the basic tenets of what would you do if someone came to your home and said, get out, this is my home now because the Bible says that it is from thousands of years ago, get the hell out at the barrel of a gun. What would you do? What would your family do? Obviously you would band together and resist like anyone would, especially Americans. I mean, we’re talking about a country that has stand your ground laws that if you just go up and knock on the wrong door, you could get shot and killed legally.

So it is just the paradoxical nature of propaganda. It does not make sense and it does not equate, and it’s only because of the deep, deep embedded dehumanization of Arabs and specifically Palestinians. And this has been part and parcel with the war on terror propaganda, the deep dehumanization of just Arabs and Muslims in general, and Palestinians are just, I mean, it’s absolutely absurd how much they’ve been dehumanized where people, even my fellow colleagues as journalists don’t even consider Palestinian journalists, journalists. So it’s a disgrace upon disgrace. But I think what Muhammad’s talking about is so many salient points there of just the utter hypocrisy of the way that we perceive violence. And when it comes to actual decolonization and liberation, which are concepts that make liberals feel uncomfortable, they’d rather keep Palestinians in a perpetual victimhood and treat them as if they just need aid instead of need freedom. Because when you talk about what that actually means, it means fighting back. It means resisting this unending violence and slaughter. What do these people think it means? So what does that actually look like? How does that play out and how is it successful? And that’s why history is so sanitized, and these things are just rewritten by the victors because they don’t want to teach us the hard lessons of how entire countries and peoples have been victorious and have been liberated from empires and from their colonizers in the past.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah, man, I think that’s powerfully put. And I just wanted to emphasize for folks, when Abby was asking us like, what would you do if someone came in and pointed a gun at you and said, get out of your home. That happened to Muhammad, that happened to him and his family. He became a very prominent international voice, like while settlers were taking over their home from the states. So we’re not asking a rhetorical question here. This is a real question. What would you do in that situation? And in terms of how those rules of engagement he talked about are set by this by definition, hypocritical by definition, like Ill intended entity that does not want us to win, that does not want us to have a leg to stand on. We’re seeing that being baked into this kind of repressive apparatus that is spreading out across the so-called west here to make an example, claiming that Palestine solidarity encampments on a college campus are a threat to the safety of Jewish students while Zionists beating the shit out of student encampment.

Students who are encamping on campus is not categorized in the same violent way. So keep that in mind because I want to kind of focus in here on this sort of the state of repression back here at home as the war across over Palestine. The war on Palestine intensifies because over the past two years, even with the ruling elites in government and this whole imperialist capitalist warmaking establishment doing everything that they could to maintain the longstanding, unconditional support for Israel’s genocidal occupation, ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, while all of that has been going on, we have seen a sea change at the base of societies around the globe, and especially here in the United States, the explosion of the Palestine solidarity movement, mass protests in DC and around the country, the student encampment movement that I mentioned, but the empire is striking back. As you know, Abby, the reactionary ruling class answer to all of this grassroots opposition to Israel’s war on Palestine has been to criminalize the methods of that opposition and to even criminalize and legally recategorize solidarity with Palestinians itself as anti-Semitic, anti-American, and even supportive of terrorism like here in the United States.

For folks who may have forgotten in the first weeks in office of his new administration, president Trump signed an executive order to deport foreign university students who participate in Gaza solidarity protests in a chilling quote fact sheet that accompanied the executive ordered the White House said quote to all the resident aliens who joined in the pro jihadist protests. We put you on notice, come 2025, we will find you and we will deport you and quote, but this is not just happening in the us. Our colleague, Ali Abu Nima, Palestinian American journalist and executive director of the online publication, the Electronic Intifada, traveled to Switzerland last month to give a speech in Zurich. And after being allowed to enter the country, Abu Nima was arrested by plainclothes officers, forced into an unmarked vehicle, held incommunicado in jail for two nights, and then he was deported from the country.

And in Canada, things were getting very dark very quickly. pro-Palestinian Canadian author and activist, Eves Engler was jailed this week for criticizing Zionist influencer Dalia Kurtz on the social media platform, X Kurtz accused angler and his posts of harassment. And he was jailed by Montreal Police for five days. And all of this is happening back in Toronto. The largest school board in Canada has taken steps to adopt the institutional recategorize of Zionists as a protected class and anti-Zionism as antisemitism. And we actually asked our friend and colleague, the brilliant Toronto-based journalist and founder of On the Line Media, Samira Moine to give us a little update on that story. So let’s play that really quick, and then we’re going to go back to Abby.

Samira Mohyeddin:

The decision by the Toronto District School Board to receive this report on antisemitism is dangerous for a number of reasons. The most important being is that the report conflates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and moves to make Zionist a protected class of people under the anti-racism policy. So basically a political ideology such as Zionism will now be protected as anything else, will be like race, religion, gender, sexuality. It will fall under that realm, which means that to criticize a political ideology such as Zionism will mean that you will be falling under someone who I don’t know, is critical of someone’s religion, critical of their sexuality. It will actually make it so that this is a weaponization of people who criticize the actions of Israel, which is a state. So this is very dangerous, and we don’t know what sort of effects this will have, what effect will it have on teachers who are teaching history, who are teaching social studies? Does this mean that they can’t criticize Israel? What does this mean for Jewish students who are critical of Israeli actions? Will they be penalized? So there’s a whole realm of things that the Toronto District School Board really doesn’t have answers for yet, and we’re really waiting to see how receiving this report or what even receiving of the report means, what impact it will have, both on parents, on students, and most importantly on teachers who really don’t know how to navigate such a thing. And so this is very, very dangerous.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Okay. Abby Martin, what the hell is going on with all of this? How are you seeing, I guess, the broad sweep of all this repression?

Abby Martin:

I mean, even before the genocide in Gaza, I foresaw the writing on the wall because I myself was engaged in this litigation against the state of Georgia for their anti BDS law. So I knew that states were taking measures to preempt the wave of Palestine solidarity that they inevitably knew would come. And that’s why we’ve seen consulate officials and the Israeli lobby officials going and essentially seeking to undermine our first amendment rights, the constitutionally protected right to boycott a country that was enshrined during the Montgomery Bus boycotts during the civil rights movement. So I knew that pro-Palestine speech was among the most repressed, among the most criminalized because of these laws. And we’ve seen attacks on college campuses even though there’s this kind of notion that right wing speech is what’s heckled and suppressed and repressed on college campuses. I think it’s very clear as day, especially in the wake of the Gaza genocide, that pro-Palestine speech is the most repressed and criminalized speech in the country, even though we have the sacred First Amendment, which unfortunately places like the UK doesn’t.

So you’re seeing raids and arrests of journalists like Aza Wi Stanley from the electronic ADA as well, who was also his electronic communications were seized. I mean, people like Richard Medhurst, they are being arrested and detained with their communications seized and their devices seized under these absurd counter terror powers. I mean, usually the charges don’t stick at the end of the day, but it’s just meant to create a chilling effect and to cement that repressive state where you feel like you can’t even do your job as a journalist. So even though we have the First Amendment, it is not doing much to protect us, especially with what’s happening on college campuses. I mean, the threats even from Israeli government officials saying, you’re never going to have a job again. I mean, it’s just absolutely insane. I don’t even know the words to describe this political climate because like Muhammad articulated so well, it is living in someone else’s hallucination.

It’s like living in a fever dream imposed by someone. It’s just like, what are we even talking about here? You’re telling me that saying from the river to the sea is a terrorist incitement to genocide. While I’m seeing genocide, I’m logging onto my device and seeing a genocide. But you’re saying that people’s words for liberation is the threat. So it’s just this topsy-turvy reality that we’re trying to wade through. Meanwhile, people’s lives are being ruined and destroyed. People are being suspended, expelled. I mean, their jobs are being taken away from them for just speaking facts and just trying to stand in solidarity with people who are being repressed and occupied and killed, and what’s happening to journalists. I mean, the fact that Western powers, European powers are more concerned with criminalizing pro-Palestine journalism and speech, and they are stopping a genocide, really just says it all, doesn’t it?

These institutions, these global bodies that have been in place for the last 70 years to try to prevent the never again to try to stop genocide, at least in the era or the auspices of, and these same institutions have just been made a mockery of by the same states that have created them. I mean, I think we know at this point the rules-based order in these international bodies. It was never designed to really have egalitarianism or to protect all peoples who are oppressed. No, it was to protect and shroud the west with impunity. And when it’s a western ally that’s committing genocide in plain day, well, we see exactly what these institutions are designed to do. And we’ve seen the threats, the ICC sanctions against the members of the court, their families, what’s happening in South Africa from the Trump administration. It is an upside down world where drone bombings are not terrorism because that’s just seen as normal day-to-day operations of the empire, and its junior collaborators and its colonial outposts.

But words and incitement, all of these things are unacceptable. And so that’s what you’re seeing. You’re seeing an extreme policing of our language and intent, intent. Meanwhile, the people who are ruling the world, the global elite, can do whatever they want out of the shadows, plain as day, commit genocide and ethnic cleansing and boast about it and make all of us just scurry like mice trying to catch up. Meanwhile, we can’t say shit. And so it’s a war on the mind. It’s a war on our thoughts. It is beyond even an information war. I mean, it is a war on reality itself,

Maximillian Alvarez:

And those of us who are trying to report on it mean we didn’t even mention it, but there’s on top of everything, there’s the nonprofit killer Bill HR 9 4 9 5 or the stop terror financing and tax penalties on American Hostages Act that already passed the House of Representatives going to pass the Senate at some point. But that’s another thing that I think about daily because I am the co-executive director and editor in chief of a nonprofit journalism outlet. And this bill if passed, would effectively give the Trump administration the ability to unilaterally declare that orgs like ours are terrorist supporting, not because we’re providing material support for Hamas or anything like that, but because our speech, the way we report honestly about the genocide in Palestine is being re-categorized as support for terrorism. And so we could lose our nonprofit status that’s going to kill most nonprofits that get targeted.

It won’t kill all of them, but it’ll be a massive financial hit. But also the leaders of those orgs could be held personally liable. They could be attacked, like this is something that I have to think about and talk to my family about all the time. I mean this plus the firings of tenured professors at universities threats to deport foreign students who are participating in protests, locking up journalists for social media posts. This is a really intense and dark time. And while all of this is happening, Elon Musk and is leading a techno fascist coup in our government, and I want to end there in a second, but by way of getting there, since we’ve got you on, and since you mentioned it, Abby, of course, you, Abby Martin, were famously at the center of this critical free speech battle against Georgia Southern University when the university rescinded the offer to have you deliver a keynote speech because you refuse to sign a BS contract that illegally stipulated speakers were forbidden from openly supporting any boycott of Israel. So I wanted to ask if, just by way of getting us to the final turn, if there are any lessons that you learned even from just the decision to fight that we could really internalize and need to internalize to face what we’re facing today?

Abby Martin:

Yes, I think it’s a multi-pronged battle, and we have to utilize every arm of the fight. I mean, the courts are absolutely one important facet that we need to utilize. I think if there were plaintiffs in every state taking on these BDS laws, then hopefully it will go to the Supreme Court, even though they said that they didn’t want to hear it. Right Now, there are enough mixed verdicts that would bring this to the attention of the Supreme Court, and I think if anyone is trained in constitutional law, well, we don’t know about these Trump appointees, but I mean anyone who knows the Constitution would say it’s very clear these are flagrantly unconstitutional laws, and hopefully we would put an end to it. But I think that they’re just so desperate and they know that it’s going to take, it’s a long slog to challenge all these laws, but we absolutely have to have in every single state.

And that’s just one part of it, max. I mean, the media, obviously, the fact that Elon Musk has taken over our town hall, he is, I mean, on one hand what Trump and Elon Musk are doing is kind of exposing the incestuous relationship with the so-called legacy media and the way that the political establishment operates within it. But on the other hand, it’s very scary because they’re maneuvering it all to consolidate it with the right wings, sphere of influence, and using this kind of populist fake news rhetoric to do that. And that’s very disturbing and damaging because as leftists and people who are trying to do citizen journalism for grassroots organizing and things like that, we are in for a very tough road ahead because we don’t have billionaire funding like they do. But I would say my biggest lesson learned is that we have to take on every part of the battle they have. I mean, they’ve planned for 50 years taking over the institutions, taking over the media and taking over the courts, and we are 10 steps behind and we have to do everything in our power. And that means day in and day out. It’s not pulling the lever every two to four years. It’s being a part of this active struggle to maintain democratic rights, human rights, and try to have some sort of international solidarity with the people living under the boot of our policies.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Let’s keep talking about that in this last 15 minutes that we’ve got here. One of the many folks that I’ve been thinking about a lot since Trump was inaugurated, really wondering what your analysis of all of this is. And so many of us are trying to figure out and articulate what is actually happening. I just interviewed three federal workers, two of whom were illegally fired for the podcast working people. We published it yesterday. Folks should go listen to what they have to say. It’s really important. But even there, we’re talking about battling the narrative that Musk himself and Trump and the whole administration and Fox News and these rejiggered algorithms on social media that are platforming and pushing more right-wing narratives. All of that is saying that this is all done in the name of efficiency that Trump and Musk are out there cutting government waste, attacking the corrupt deep state that’s getting in the way of the will of the American people. But if you talk to federal workers, they’re like, no, that’s not what they’re doing at all. They are slashing the hell out of it. They are just non-surgically destroying government agencies, laying groups of people off and throwing the government into disarray. None of this is done in the name of efficiency, and we shouldn’t even be taking that at face value when the guy who’s telling us that it’s being done in the name of efficiency is giving Ziggy salutes on public stages. So maybe we should stop assuming as the great

Abby Martin:

Adam Johnson said, it’s a stiff, armed, awkward gesture,

Maximillian Alvarez:

Stiff arm, Roman stiff

Abby Martin:

Arm, Roman salute in an awkward gesture.

Maximillian Alvarez:

It is nuts, but it’s just like, maybe the point being is, hey, maybe this guy is acting ideologically, maybe he’s acting self interestedly. Why do we keep buying the narrative that he’s acting uninterested in just the name of efficiency? That’s insane. It requires us to ignore the reality in front of our faces. But again, I wanted to bring us back to this point because everything we’ve been talking about now from tanks in the West Bank, the potential of the Gaza ceasefire falling apart, criminalization and crackdown on free speech and protest across the west, all of that is happening while like Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and the unelected destroyer of government agencies is literally and figuratively like on a maniacal chainsaw, wielding rampage through the institutional guts of what remains of liberal democracy and the administrative state. And so this all feels so overwhelming, and I think most folks, because they know what you just said is right, that we’re playing so far behind and they have seemingly all the control, the impulse is going to be to close off to protect what’s ours, to hide, to silence ourselves. So I wanted to ask you, with those last few minutes we’ve got, what is your analysis of what’s happening in our government right now and what does this all mean for how do we move forward and keep fighting for what’s right and good, even though it’s getting really perilous and really dangerous out there? Oh

Abby Martin:

My God. I mean, it’s really difficult. And looking at the lessons gleaned from the Iraq war era when I was radicalized and activated to do media work and activism, what was different about that time was the fact that there was a more multi-pronged kind of united front with a lot of libertarians who were disaffected, a lot more like right wingers who hated the Bush administration. There seems to be a cult-like emergence of the sycophant, worshiping of a figure like Donald Trump. And that’s what’s so disturbing about MAGA in general and by proxy, someone like Elon Musk, a South African oligarch as well as the whole PayPal Mafia, all these oligarchs from South Africa coming over here and just seizing government control, which is completely illegal. I mean, that doesn’t even really need to be said, all the unconstitutional nature of what they’re doing, but it’s just so perplexing because of the way that he’s been able to siphon support from people who historically would not necessarily just worship a billionaire.

I mean, back decades ago it was the Republican party was kind of cartoonishly, just so detached from the working class because it was just so clearly just a party for billionaires and tax breaks for the wealthy. But because of the abject failure of the Democrats to form any sort of opposition, I mean, what is their project 2025? There is no goal. There’s no vision. They’re scrambling to figure out how could they even stand in opposition to what’s going on their 10 steps behind, but because of their failure and their ineptitude and the lies and the propaganda and the media manipulation and the war, the war on terror, because they’ve failed so horribly and mirrored Republicans on so much naturally, you’ve seen this kind of faux populism reroute a lot of disaffected people into the Republican party. And for the first time we saw people who were under a hundred thousand dollars or less actually vote en mass for Trump.

This is an unprecedented shift, a tectonic shift in how these parties have really played out. So I would argue the failure of the Democrats have driven people into the hands of Trump, and it doesn’t matter if it’s fake or not, they want someone to blame for their problems. And they look at Trump and they say, yeah, immigrants, trans people, sure, whatever will help solve my basically buffer my reality. They want people to say what is wrong and who’s doing it. That’s why Bernie resonated so much. I mean, he pointed to the oligarchic class, he pointed to the people, the actual robber barons who consolidated all of the wealth during the Covid era, but now we’re in this really bizarre, weirdly entrenched new Trump regime where he’s folded in all of the tech overlords, who, by the way, all the DEI rhetoric and all the people who are like corporations are woke, woke and liberalism have taken over and dominated our culture.

Actually, it was just the notion that women should have rights and gay people should be out because you saw the virtue signaling completely go by the wayside. The second that everyone resigned to the fact that Trump was going to be president again, what happened with Google, don’t be evil. All of these people who were actually protesting the Muslim ban and had really strong rhetoric against Trump back in 2016, they’re completely folded in just seamlessly because it never was about that. It was all virtue signaling. They were always right wing. They always didn’t care that Trump was who he is. I mean, it really is just so obvious. The ruling class never really cared about Trump or his policies or the threat of fascism or the erosion of democracy. They just cared that he was a bull in a China shop. He was just unpredictable. He was uncouth, and all they care about is that peaceful transition of power, and the system just keeps going, and the status quo just keeps churning on.

And that’s why January 6th was such an abomination for them. It wasn’t because of anything else. And so now I think everything’s been exposed. Everything is clear as day. That’s why we don’t see anything. There’s no actual opposition forming. And when you look at the grassroots and all the mobilized efforts, I mean, I think there’s such a fatigue with activism because for the last 15 months, people have been out in the streets opposing biden’s subsidization and oversight of genocide. So now we’re supposed to go and fight tooth and nail against the fascist takeover of the government. It’s like, God damn, for the last 15 months we’ve been out in the streets and no one’s been listening to us about stopping genocide. So I mean, it’s such a dizzying, disorienting time intentionally, the shock and awe of this mass firings of federal workers, the thousands and thousands of federal workers, it’s so clear as day what they’re doing.

They’re just gutting in the interim. They’re trying to do as much damage as they can because they know that the time that the courts basically do their jobs, it’s going to be too late. Trump has stacked enough courts at the end of the day, and Republicans have that. Even if there’s a million challenges legally, the damage is going to be done. You can’t pick up the pieces and just go back to the way things were. And that’s the intent. For all intents and purposes, they’re trying to gut any sort of semblance of institutions that care for people. Cruelty is the point. Poor people, elderly people, disabled people, those are who are going to be the brunt of these services that are being cut. The veterans affairs, I mean, all these people from the crisis hotline, all these veterans who are calling with suicidal ideation, those people are being cut Medicaid.

I mean, the statistic flying around 880 billion, that’s the entirety of Medicaid. So when they’re talking about, oh, these budget cuts are going to cut 880 billion from this one committee, yeah, that’s the entirety of Medicaid. Who is that going to affect 73 million Americans? I mean, the shortsightedness of all of this is just astonishing, but that’s not the point. They know how much damage it’s going to do. They don’t care. They want to gut everything and privatize everything, the post office, the va, every last bastion of government services that work that are good and healthy for a democratic society, and it’s going to do so much damage. I mean, just the environmental damage, the environmental damage. And what’s so funny, all of the discussions, people like to take everything that Trump says at face value. They’re like, oh, well, he says he wants to cut the Pentagon budget in half.

Oh, well, really, because on the other side of his mouth, he’s saying the exact opposite, that he wants to increase the Pentagon budget for this, that and the other. And when you look at what Hegseth is saying about what they’re actually cutting, it’s all the climate change initiatives that they were all the cursory attempts to try to placate environmentalists like, no, no, no. We’re greening this global military empire. So it’s just all, it’s so bad in every way, but I would just urge people to just not feel overwhelmed with the barrage of news, the rapid fire nature of the algorithm. Our brains are not meant to digest news in this way or information in this way. Let Max and I do it. Let us do it. Don’t get overwhelmed by the day to day just paralysis of the shock and awe of what they’re doing because that’s the intent. You cannot get paralyzed. You cannot just detach yourself from this. We have to be plugged in to the capacity that you can. We have to all be plugged into how we can all make a dent in our lives and let Max and I do the dirty work of sorting through the propaganda on the day to day. But it’s going to be a really tough road ahead, Max.

Maximillian Alvarez:

It is, and I appreciate everything that you said, and I just kind of had a final tiny question. I know we got a wrap, but on that last point, because Abby and I, our whole team here at the Real News, everyone you see on screen and also everyone, you don’t who makes everything that we produce possible. We’re going to keep manning our posts. We’re going to keep doing our work. We’re going to keep speaking the truth. But as you have learned from this conversation, there may be a great cost to pay for that. And I think that’s also something that we all need to sit with and think about because people don’t ask to be kind of in the moments in history they find theirselves in, but how we respond to those moments defines who we are as people, as generations and as movements. And so Abby, I didn’t go to journalism school.

I don’t know if you did. I never set out to be a journalist. I never thought I would find myself sitting in this chair as the executive director, co-executive director and editor in chief of a nonprofit journalism outlet. But if I can think back to even my early days, the through line from then to here, I was raised by great people who taught me to stand up for what’s right and speak my truth, especially speak it unwaveringly in the face of those who want to shut me up. And I’m not someone who shuts up easily. That’s probably why I’m here. That’s why Abby’s doing what she does. If you try to shut her up, she’ll file a lawsuit against your ass and win it, right? I mean, but there’s a non-zero chance that being who we are, doing what we do, because we’re going to do it.

We’re going to do it for you. We’re going to do it because it’s right. There’s a non-zero chance we could end up in prison for it or have our outlet shut down, but that just is what it is. And so Abby, with that kind of on the table, I just wanted to ask if you had any kind of parting words to folks out there who depend on our journalism, folks out there who do journalism, any final notes about the real state that we’re in, what we’re facing, but also how we need to be kind of stealing our hearts to keep fighting for what’s right and not allowing ourselves to be silenced, even though they’re going to try really hard to do so?

Abby Martin:

Absolutely. I mean, it’s going to be so hard for just average Americans and workers who are suffering the brunt of these policies. Obviously it’s going to be really hard for them to engage in the struggle because they’re worried about how they’re going to survive day to day. They have no savings and their living paycheck to paycheck, and it’s just going to get worse. I mean, look, I became a journalist out of necessity because I saw the failure of the institutional media and the legacy media and the drive to the Iraq war, and I realized that it didn’t matter if I was standing in a street corner with a sign. I mean, no one’s going to hear what you have to say unless you advocate through a media avenue. I mean, you have to utilize the tools that we have available to speak these truths, to speak powers truth to power, to hold, power to account.

And we’re in a very dystopian era where again, words are considered terrorist incitement, especially when it comes to pro-Palestine advocacy. I run a nonprofit as well. Empire Files is a nonprofit, and it’s this paradox where you have our job revenues and our ability to tell this information potentially being threatened with shut down. Meanwhile, you have charities very active and lucrative, being able to fund people from America to go over and take over a Palestinian family’s home, like literally, nonprofit charities can go fund a genocidal army to kill Palestinians for sport. So that’s the world that we’re living in. It’s a very topsy turvy world set by actually a crime syndicate and a global mafia. And the enforcer is the US military. I am in a place of privilege to the point where I can at least speak these facts. We’re not living under a totalitarian dictatorship yet where our First Amendment is completely gone.

So I will continue to speak out and speak these facts and hold power to account and speak the truth as I see it and not be played or propagandized by the billionaire class. I am happy that at least we can rise above this deep seated propaganda where they’re telling us black is white and saying, no, this multi-billion dollar propaganda apparatus does not work on me. And we’re able to see things clearly, and we’re going to speak those truths clearly no matter where they take us, because Max, I think you and I both know that even though it’s a dangerous road ahead, we’re not going to stop doing our jobs. We’re going to speak truth to power, and we see what’s happening to our colleagues. But you know what? I’m going to keep speaking truth to power because my colleagues are being gunned down, mowed down systematically.

And so until that threat is on my doorstep, you’re not going to be able to shut me up, man. You’re not going to be able to shut me up because my friends are being killed. And I take that very seriously because a threat to justice anywhere means that injustice is still rooted everywhere. So we have to keep fighting because we can’t stop. We’re going to let these criminals win. We’re going to let them destroy the planet and kill off the sake of any viable habitat for our children. We’re going to let that happen. No. Yes, the odds are stacked against us. Yes, the institutions have completely been hijacked by these maniacs, these genocidal maniacs and sociopaths. But that’s not enough to stop us. We have to keep fighting. We have no other choice. And even if we lose, well, we sure as hell tried. We sure as hell tried, and we owe it to every person on this planet that is living under the boot of our policies that doesn’t have the privilege of being an American citizen.

That’s just dealing with the brunt of the effects of sanctions, of war, of bombings, of this economic terrorism. We owe it to them and we owe it to the kids that we’ve brought into this world. We cannot stop, max. We cannot stop. And history has been stacked before. Yes, the crisis is more existential with the environmental calamities that we’re facing, but we’ve been in deep crises before slavery, the civil rights, I mean, not people literally living in abject slavery. We have to continue to fight for the better future that we know is possible. I would not be able to live with myself if I gave up. It’s not an option. It’s not an option.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Wholeheartedly agree sis. And I love you, and I’m in solidarity with you, and I’m as scared as I think I’ll ever be, but I’m not going to stop either. So it’s an honor to be in this struggle with you and to all of you watching again, we will continue to speak truth to power, and we will continue fighting for the truth and speaking that truth to empower you because that is also why we do what we do. Because when working people have the truth, the powerful cannot take that away from us. And it is the truth that we need to know how to act because we are ultimately the ones who are going to decide how this history is written. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few years, but I know what will happen if we regular people, people of conscious do nothing.

If we do nothing, I can tell you what’s going to happen. But what happens next is up to us and Abby, the Real News, all of our colleagues who are out there fighting for the truth. We’ll keep doing that as long as we possibly can to empower you to be the change that we need to see in this world because this world is worth fighting for and the future is worth fighting for, and it’s not gone yet. So thank you all for fighting. Thank you for caring. Abby Martin, thank you so much for coming on The Real News yet again, thank you for all the invaluable work that you do. Can you please just tell folks one more time where they can find you, how they can support your work? And then I promise we’ll let you go.

Abby Martin:

Max, thank you so much. I couldn’t agree more. I mean, the love and the family are in the struggle. And for people who may be feeling really isolated out in the middle of nowhere and feel, what can I do? I’m totally just immobilized from all of this. The paralysis from our political state of affairs, I mean, reach out. It is literally the most important thing you could do is reach out to your like-minded people in your area, go on meetup groups, figure out what people are doing to just generate activism with whatever issue because that is where the love and the family and the friendships are is the struggle and getting involved, and that’s going to take you out of this kind of atomization that the system imposes on us. I love Real News Network. I’m so honored to be on Anytime Max, I’m honored to call you a friend in a comrade. People can find my work at Empire Files, the Empire Files tv, and also our new documentary is going to come out this year. I’m really excited about it. Earth’s greatest enemy.com. Thank you so much again.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Oh yeah, thank you sis. And all you watching that is the great Abby Martin, if you are not already, please, please, please go subscribe to her channel. The Empire Files support the work that she’s doing, and please support the work that we’re doing here at The Real News. We cannot keep doing it without you, and we do it for you. So please, before you go subscribe to this channel, become a member of our YouTube community, please donate to The Real News by going to the real news.com/donate, especially if you want to see more conversations like this and more coverage from the front lines of struggle around the US and across the world. And for all of us here at the Real News Network, this is Maximilian Alvarez signing off. Please take care of yourselves, take care of each other, solidarity forever. Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network, where we lift up the voices, stories and struggles that you care about most, and we need your help to keep doing this work. So please tap your screen now, subscribe and donate to the Real News Network. Solidarity forever.