American Thought Leaders - Why Are So Many Students Supporting Hamas Terrorism? | Tabia Lee

Episode Date: November 14, 2023

“When I turn on my TV and I see groups of students yelling 'Gas the Jews!'—that's not freedom of speech. That's something else. That's calling for murder. That's supporting killing innocent people. How can we be supportive of that?”In this episode, we sit down with Tabia Lee, a former DEI educator at De Anza College in California. She was fired after refusing to follow the college's woke social justice orthodoxy. Today, she is trying to reform California’s mandatory ethnic studies high school curriculum, which she argues is infused with extremist ideology, including antisemitism.“I never thought I would see something like that in America—the support of terrorist groups and terrorist actions from our students,” Lee says.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

When I turn on my TV and I see groups of students yelling, gas the Jews, that's not freedom of speech. That's calling for murder. How can we be supportive of that? Oh, because of systemic oppression? What is that? Dr. Tabya Lee is a former DEI educator at De Anza College. She was fired for refusing to follow their critical social

justice approach. Today, she's trying to reform California's mandatory ethnic studies high school curriculum. She argues it's infused with extremist ideology, including anti-Semitism. They're not learning about the actual history of the region. They're not learning and understanding indigeneity and what that means. They're learning a twisted version of it that supports a terrorist vision of the world. I never thought I would see something like that in America. The support of terrorist groups from our students.

This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Divya Lee, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. Thank you, Jan. Well, we've got such good reactions to our last interview. Since that time, actually, you've taken on a number of new roles, and I want to talk about this. Notably, you're working on—I don't know if this is the right term, but revitalizing ethnic studies

curriculums or kind of bringing in some new ideas and vibrancy. So tell me about that. Yes, so I am very there I am serving as director of education and building a nationwide teacher network to help teachers to learn more about different approaches to ethnic studies to counter the default approach which is a liberated ethnic studies model and to help support teachers in engaging more humanistic and holistic pedagogies around ethnic studies and gender studies,

which are important areas which have come into the mainstream. They used to be like fringe things on campuses, but they're definitely mainstreamed now, and we're seeing some of the fruits of their labor in the streets with the many protests that we're seeing across the world at this time. Let's dive in. What is this liberated approach that you're describing?

Yes. This is again where we have a subversion of language. When you hear liberated, you think of people being freed and freedom and a focus on that. But really what we're seeing in this model is a critical social justice infused understanding of liberation, of ethnic studies, of gender studies as well. This means, what do I mean by that, a critical social justice approach is one that really emphasizes privilege and oppression and power in every interaction. It sees racism and race in every disparity or human interaction. It encourages us to focus on what are our check boxes of identity? What are our racial check boxes? What are our ethnicity check boxes? What are our gender checkboxes? What are our ethnicity checkboxes? What are our gender-based checkboxes?

And then certain people are elevated into positions of being able to speak on matters and others are supposed to be silent and let their representatives speak for them. Sometimes it's called standpoint epistemology. So it's this idea that you know because of who am, you and I could never fully understand each other because my gender and my, quote, race is influencing and impacting everything that I've experienced. I have access to a unique knowledge that you do not have. And therefore, I should be deemed the authority on any issues relating to those race and gender checkboxes that I occupy. And that I will always be in that particular caste or state or understanding of, you know,

the world. And it really focuses on division, right? If we can never truly understand each other because of these checkboxes, and if I have access to this, you know, secret form of knowledge that you could never know because of your standpoint and your check boxes that you have, how do we ever get to know each other? How do we understand each other? How do we work together from that kind of base division and understanding of each other as humans. Well, and of course, in this model, certain races are elevated and certain are not.

And it's curious how that works. Yes, the ideologues who've created this, the critical social justice ideologues, have what they call a matrix of privilege and oppression. And sometimes they call it a matrix of domination. And it's unfortunate, but our students are being taught, you know, when they come into a classroom, to identify themselves on these matrices

and to interact and engage with each other based on those positionings. And it really flies in the face of a more classical social justice approach, which would, you know, recognize human agency, free will, the individual experience. Now it's a focus on group experience. It's a focus on group representation. It's a focus on these claims that you know America is founded on white supremacy culture and you know all of these other things that some

people may not have heard of right.? When I usually hear white supremacy, I think of white nationalists and neo-Nazis and, you know, people of that nature. But after being called a white supremacist when I was in my former DEI role, and then trying to figure out what were these people saying and where were they coming from, I discovered this whole framework of basically personality characteristics that are being attributed to white culture. And it's very degrading and demoralizing for all other people, right, because supposedly if you're not, you know, white or supporting white supremacy, then you're the opposite of those characteristics.

So you're not being on time. You're not being on time, you're not being objective, you're not looking at the written word as an important thing. All of those things are what we're told we should rail against under the critical social justice framework and that we all have a responsibility or duty to stand in solidarity with those who are oppressed. And the definition of who's oppressed and who isn't is very strange. And we're seeing it manifested in the protests, the pro-Hamas protests on the street,

and some of the social media posts that have been made by these liberated ethnic studies professors who are writing the curriculum that may influence entire future generations, because that's what's being promoted as the model. And there are other models that can be used and that's what part of my work with Coalition

for Empowered Education involves, raising people's awareness that there are other ways to do this work, to understand ethnic studies. To study ethnic studies or gender studies, you don't need to be anti-American. You don't need to put people in checkboxes and, you know, focus on privilege and oppression. There are other ways to study and appreciate, you know, what different cultures and ethnicities and groups have brought to this grand experiment and to do it in a way that is not going to destroy the very fabric and tear it asunder.

So basically, actual diversity and actual inclusion. The equity, maybe we'll leave that out. Yeah. From a classical perspective, I understand equity as fairness, but that's not what critical social justice proponents are understanding it as. They're understanding it as equality of outcomes in our schooling, in our education, in our economic system, in our social system, in every way. Instead of focusing on equality of opportunity, which is something that, you know, first and second wave, some people call it that. John McWhorter is one of the scholars who I'm really thankful for for helping frame that for people to understand that, you know, anti-racist work has always existed and gender-based

work has always existed, but there's different waves of it. So the first and second waves were really focused on equality and now we have this third wave that's very different. It's a different feminism than your grandmother's feminism. It's a different anti-racist effort than your grandmother and grandfather's efforts. Yeah. And so, you know, it may seem bizarre to people that this would somehow be connected with pro-Hamas protesting. And you observed some very interesting things while at De Anza. Essentially you realized that this anti-Semitism

was kind of baked into the ideology, and I want you to kind of break that down for me a bit. Yes. So at my time at De Anza, that's where I really came face to face with modern anti-Semitism. And that's where I really came face to face with modern anti-semitism and that's why I really try to educate people on the connections between anti-semitism and anti-zionism because they are deeply connected. So I agree with Rabbi Sachs and others who have really made it clear

for us that anti-zionism is the new anti-Semitism. We can quibble on university campuses about what is anti-Semitism, how do we define it, what definitions do we use, but in some places there are no definitions. It's very intentional. People refuse to adopt the IRA definition. They refuse to adopt any definition of anti-Semitism, even when students have directly asked for it and De Anza was one of those places. Instead of making a resolution to support the Jewish students requests to define anti-Semitism so that the

university could act on the deeply entrenched anti-Semitism there, the student government ended up condemning Israel and talking about the wrongs that it had done and why it was overreaching and called it a settler colonialist state and made references to apartheid. So things that weren't even related to what the students were asking for, just a place where we could understand and come to a common definition of what is anti-Semitism to us as a learning community. And these were things that took place before I arrived there, but it definitely colored the entire experience.

I was a member of the Equity Action Council, and some of our Hillel local representatives came and they wanted to speak to the Equity Action Council to please make the environment more inclusive of Jewish student faculty and staff members. And they cited that we have a website where it says, you know, anti-racism and we stand against anti-racism and here's some resources. And they said, you know, we see you have Black Lives Matter there. We see you have Stop AAPI Hate. Could you please just add a little thing saying we also stand against anti-Semitism?" And when I went back with my team members and my supervising dean to talk about those recommendations that were given to us, the response I received was very telling.

I was told that it was not important for us to look at these issues, that the college had received recommendations from CARE, which is the Council on Islamic Relations, and that they hadn't followed up on those either. And so I said, well, you know, let me see those recommendations too, because I genuinely want an environment where every student feels welcome to be their most authentic selves. Those recommendations were never shown to me. I don't know if they really exist. There was a lot of instances where things were kind of hidden and not shown even when I made direct requests. So I was told that it wasn't important for us to focus on Jewish inclusion because

Jewish people to their understanding are white oppressors and that the role of faculty and staff was supposed to focus on and center de-centering whiteness and if we did you know discussions or talks around Jewish inclusion that wouldn't be decentering whiteness and so I raised to them I said well that shows a misunderstanding of the Jewish diaspora and the diversity of it like how can you say that Jewish people are white oppressors when it's such a diverse group and global? And they never had an answer for that. They, meaning my supervising dean and my staff, fellow staff members. It was just no, we're not going to do that. I asked if I could have a budget to bring in speakers.

I had no budget, although I was the director. I never knew my budget. So all of those things are withheld and I went ahead and I did it anyways because I felt the need from the needs assessment conversations, from you know everything that I had heard from people who came to address us directly and I just knew that this was something that we needed to address as a community. And unfortunately, I didn't get the support that was needed, not just from my direct supervisor and the folks who were working directly with me, but from the institution on a whole. The summit that I organized wasn't publicized to students.

It was suppressed. It didn't appear on the calendar. But then two weeks after the five-week summit that I ran, there was an event. Topics included things like anti-Israel fill in the blank, anti-Zionist activism, and so forth. And those were highly publicized to the students. When they would log into their online Canvas, it's like a learning management system, when they would log into their emails it would pop up and say come to this meeting so our our events weren't publicized that way and they weren't included on the calendar that way they weren't pushed out to students so

sometimes we give to our former universities because you know we have fond memories of how they shaped us as scholars and you know the the work that we did there and how inclusive it was when we were there but many of these institutions have changed and they're drastically different and so I encourage people if you are giving to your institution if you're you know just doing it out of the duty of you know of tradition go take a look at what's happening see what's happening in these ethnic studies programs and the gender studies programs. See what they're promoting to students. If it's infused with this

critical social justice ideology, does that align with you and your values and what you want to see in the world? These protesters that we're seeing in the streets, they're not popping out of nowhere. They're coming from our colleges and universities. They're supported by faculty that used to be fringe but are now mainstreamed. It's happening in every discipline. So you might think well I'm I'm in the STEM area or you know I'm studying philosophy it has nothing to do with that. Every single discipline on campuses has become infused with this default perspective and that's why I speak so much about it. Because prior to a couple of years ago,

folks didn't have the language to say like, they felt something wrong, but they couldn't say like, oh, okay, this is a critical social justice ideology. Giving people language is so key. Some people call it cultural Marxism. Some people call it critical race theory. But critical social justice is one that captures the gender aspect of it

as well as the ethnic studies aspect of it. And I think that's something that's so crucial because it's those checkboxes that is guiding the new order, if you will, that some people would like for us all to live under. And some of us are questioning that. Have you followed whether these protests are happening at De Anza as well? I mean, you're essentially telling me that this is something that, from what you saw, you would expect. Yes, and happening throughout the Bay Area as well. Some faculty on campuses are offering

their students extra credit to go be political pawns, to do pro-Hamas rallies in the streets. The slogans that are being used are the same slogans that people reported to me that I then took to my dean and tried to get her to act on. When the student government at De Anzo made their resolution condemning Israel when they were asked to define anti-Semitism, instead they came up with with that kind of action the students the Jewish students who brought forth the resolution attempting to define anti-semitism they were shouted down and they were told from the river to the sea Palestine will be free many people haven't heard that statement

until recently when you turn on your news and you see you know these protests where students are chanting that and I think many times Jan I want to believe the students don't know what they're saying and what they're implying when they say that but it really does mean from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea Palestine whatever you conceptualize that to mean will be quote-unquote free. That means the obliteration, the destruction of Israel. That means that the state of Israel, the country, will no longer exist. And it's such a dangerous thing to do and say, and I think that many of the students,

they don't know geography, they don't know exactly the political implications. It sounds like a rhyme. They're joining together. They feel like they're part of something, like they're making change. We've seen these Liberated Ethnic Studies faculty members who are writing the curriculum for the state of California come out and post similar statements on their social media. They have celebrated the attacks of the terrorism and brutality. They have made statements that this is all the result of systemic oppression.

This is because of the systemic racism. You hear all of these terms and equivalence and equivocation for terrorism. I never thought I would see something like that in America. The support of terrorist groups and terrorist actions from our students. How are we even seeing these kinds of things on the streets day after day? I'm someone, of course, you know, you want people to have free speech and freedom of expression and, you know and academic freedom as a professor. But where is the line drawn? When does it become hate speech?

When we call for the obliteration of an entire country and people? Is that too far? So each time I see these student groups coming out and saying these hateful comments and supporting hate speech and perspectives and supporting Hamas, which is a known terrorist organization. I wonder to myself, why are these deans quiet? Why are the presidents of these universities quiet? Is that representing their institution? What does their silence mean? We're often told by these critical social justice ideologues

that silence equals violence and complicity, right? So what does the silence of these institutional leaders mean? But they do seem to be standing up for free speech all of a sudden. That seems like kind of a new thing almost. And the silence is so telling because it's free speech and we tacitly support what's being said because we're not making any statement to the contrary.

And so what the students are getting is affirmation. That's affirmation again. You know, oh, this is what we all stand for. This is what we should be standing for if we're committed to social justice. That's not the social justice that I've taught my students about and that I've been committed to my whole life. It concerns me because if you think back to 9-11

and the terrorism that took place here on American soil and the response from student groups, from educational institutions, from everyone at that time. There was no celebration of the martyrs. There was no saying that this was okay, the acts that took place, because of the hundreds of years of American imperialism and colonization in the middle east and so forth so why is there marching in the streets to support hamas a terrorist organization that seeks to destroy the west the way of life that enables these students to be able to go out and protest and to make these statements and to do

these things i wonder if the students understand and recognize that they would be the first to be tamped down on if Hamas had its way. When we see the destruction of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, the one place where you can be yourself, where you can be an Arab Israeli, you can be a Mizrahi Jew, you can be an LGBTQ plus person freely without being beheaded. But yet we see these students holding up banners that say queers for Palestine. They would be beheaded in an instant. They would be despised. They are considered despicable. Why is that taking place? What has happened to our educational system when we see our students out there promoting anti-American sentiment and supporting terrorism?

What are the dangers to us as a result of that as a society? Where are we heading with that and why? And how has it gotten so far? It used to be a fringe thing, but now this is mainstream and students are being told that it's being normalized, the support of terrorism. That concerns me a great deal because I'm someone who, I love our country and I love this nation. This is a grand experiment.

It's not perfect. We have things to work on and we always will. We're human beings, you know, trying to realize these aspirations that were set out in the founding documents. And some people want to destroy and shred those documents and lead us into what? What kind of system will we be in when the republic is destroyed, as so many people are calling for? I can't support that in good conscience. It's something that worries me a great deal, and I don't think we understand the danger of embracing these kind of ideologies. This is everywhere. It's at our doorstep, and we all need to take a look into what's happening

in our schools. Those are the breeding grounds for many of these toxic ideologies. Are you really safe in a world where our youth are being corrupted, their minds are being destroyed with terrorist propaganda and anti-American sentiment? Both you and I recently reviewed a clip of Hamas leadership explaining what their intentions are. And I just want to roll that clip for the benefit of the viewers. لذلك لا نخجل من أن نقول ذلك. بكل قوة أنه سيجب أن نأدبها. وسنأدبها مرة ثانية وثالثة. وليس هذا سيكون طوفان الأقصى أول مرة. ستكون ثانية وثالثة ورابعة. لأننا لدينا إصرار ولدينا قرار ولدينا إمكانيات. أن نقاتل ونحرب.

لكن كما قلت لك. ندفع ثمن نعم. نحن مستعدين. نحن اسمنا شعب الشهداء. ونفخر أن نقدم شهداء. نحن لا نريد أن نمسك لا بالمدنيين ولا أن نلحق الأذى بهم لكن أوقات لأنه في تعقيدات في الميدان صارت في منطقة موجودة وكان هناك في احتفال وكان في سكان

منطقة واسعة ليست سهلة على امتداد تقريباً 40 كيلو متر تلجب أن ينتهي أن ينتهي وين بقطع كذا لا بتكلم عن كل الأراضي الفلسطينية كل الأراضي الفلسطينية يعني زوال إسرائيل؟ آه طبعا وجود إسرائيل غير منطقي وجود إسرائيل هو البخلق كل هذه الألام والعذابات والدموع والدماء هي إسرائيل مش إحنا

إحنا ضحية الاحتلال نقطة آخر السطر لذلك ما حدا يلومنا إحنا إيش اللي بنعمله في 7 أكتوبر في 10 أكتوبر في مليون أكتوبر إحنا اللي بنعمل مبرر It is justified مبررة. إنها مباركة. يبدو أنها مفتوحة للغاية لأني. وأعتقد أن المعلومات قد تغير بعض الأفكار من الناس الذين لا يفهمون ما يقومون بهذا الامتناء. نعم.

وكما سمعت، these protests. Yes. And as you heard, you know, that Hamas leader say, anything we do is okay because we are the victim. That is the mentality of these individuals and of this worldview. So if you are of the oppressed status or victim status, any action you take, no matter how immoral, no matter how brutal, is okay. Including, as he says explicitly, October 7th type action. Yes, and justifying that and feeling proud of it, and then to see our students out celebrating and saying, it is okay because our teachers and our faculty members and our mentors have told us that this is the response to oppression. This is the response to all of the words they use like

settler colonialism, apartheid, you know all of these things that aren't rooted in any objective reality or history but that students have been taught and that they pare it back because they're not learning anything otherwise. They're not learning about the actual history of the region. They're not learning and understanding indigeneity and what that means. They're learning a twisted version of it that supports a terrorist vision of the world. And it's very toxic and dangerous. And we need to start taking a closer look at it because it's not just people, you know, learned professors in, you know, the small

liberal arts college anymore. We're seeing this in our medical professionals. We're seeing this in our athletes. We're seeing this in every aspect of life on the campus and off the campus in civic life. And it's really deeply concerning to see our helping professions, teachers, medical, healthcare, proposing and stating this toxic ideology, thinking of their patients and their students and the people there, they are to serve

as victims or oppressors as some people should receive certain levels of care and others should not because of their oppressor status or victim status like what kind of world are we headed to you know when our doctor or teacher doesn't look at us as an individual but they see us as a group representative and we should be held accountable for everything that that group has done historically, whether it's historically objectively true or not, based on the narrative that's being taught many times. And a toxic one at that, you know, when I turn on my TV and I see groups of students yelling, gasp the Jews,

that's not freedom of speech. That's something else. That's calling for murder. That's supporting killing innocent people. How can we be supportive of that? Oh, because of a systemic oppression? What is that? I've observed that there's a conflation of the idea of protesting against war at all, for example. Some people are just very committed to being anti-war. And various types of Israeli policy like, for example, the Gaza invasion or simply not liking the current Israeli leadership, right? With the idea of whether, for example, Israel should be allowed to exist at all, which is the Zionism you were talking about earlier.

A lot of confusion about this. I'm wondering if you want to speak to that at all. Yes, I think that we have lost, unfortunately, a lot of our understanding of world history, historical events, the chronology of the world and things that have happened. Something that stands out to me, Jan, is that whenever Israel is attacked there is an immediate call for them to stand down and to not defend themselves. And I have a big problem with that. You know, I am not someone who supports war, but to say

that a country doesn't have a right to defend itself or that they should immediately begin diplomacy, you know, over 200 hostages have been taken and you know we have this situation of just brutal terrorism. I find that so interesting that Israel is held to different standards than every other nation in the world. And we see these statements coming out of the United Nations and other organizations, and they're always the same.

And I just wonder, why is that? And I think it's the deeply rooted antisemitism, again, rearing its head, and it's really deeply rooted anti-semitism again rearing its head and it's really visible for so many of us and that's creating an environment for Jewish students on campus of fear and intimidation and not just Jewish students Zionist students because sometimes people say oh you know it's just Jewish people who are Zionists there are many people who are not Jewish who are also Zionists who support the right of Israel to self-determination and to exist. So these environments

are toxic, not just for Jewish students, but for all students, for freedom, for viewpoint diversity. We're seeing actual students who are holding up, you know, their flags in support of Israel being attacked by students holding Hamas flags and Palestinian flags and so forth. And that's not okay. We're seeing students being locked into the libraries of their schools. You know, it's easy for some people to say, well that's just those students. They're a small number. You know, it doesn't affect me. It does affect you. And those kind of environments where we see authoritarianism advancing, where we see exclusion,

it never just stops with the Jewish people. It marches onward to the next group and the next group. And people need to understand that part of history because history is repeating itself. And some of us are so unaware because we don't have the knowledge of what's taken place so that we can say, no, we don't have the knowledge of what's taken place so that we can say, no, we don't want that kind of world again. And we're so rapidly heading to that. You talked about how this ideology is manifesting in the medical profession. Some of the information I've been hearing is shocking. You were talking about disparate treatment of different

identity groups, right? By doctors? Yes. So tell me about that. Yes. So encouragement in their medical training and in their certificate programs, we're not focusing on medical competency or compassionate care anymore. It's this infusion of the critical social justice ideology.

We have doctors laying on the ground, participating, and medical students laying on the ground participating in die-ins, where they say that to protest this idea or that idea, they're laying and pretending that they are dead. Why do we see our medical professionals saying that they're going out to pro-Homas rallies, and that being part of their practicums? How does that help them to be more compassionate doctors and to serve their patients? What about the Jewish patient or the Zionist patient or fill in the blank, you know, patient that doesn't fit the narrative of critical social justice ideologues, when they come

to that medical professional for care, do they get a different kind of care? We've seen some statements made by medical professionals on social media, very out in the open, celebrating the acts of Hamas. So how is that keeping us safe? Even in the psychology field, we're seeing the American Psychological Association, some of their high leadership coming out

and saying they wanna classify Zionist perspective as a psychosis. So there's all kinds of toxic things happening under this ideology in attempts to redefine what is a psychosis, what is competent care. And with doctors and psychiatrists, perhaps psychologists as well, I think the whole idea is the person could be the worst criminal. You actually provide the care because they're a human being. This is a complete undermining of that. Yes, yes. And I fear for the patients who will be under the care of people who have been

trained in these ideologies. How could they ever see the person sitting in front of them as an individual when they've been taught and accepted that the person in front of you is a representative of their gender checkbox or their race checkbox or the intersections between those different identities and some of them are more oppressed than others. And these are fields that should be focused on the individual and personalization and compassionate care, teaching and learning of the whole individual child that's right there in front of you in the case of educators. There's groups, I think it's White Coats for Black Lives.

There's a few groups that you've written about recently. White Coats for Black Lives has chapters in over 100 American public and private universities. Sometimes we think, oh, they're not in the public school. My child's in an elite private university. Well, they're there too. There's no space that has, where this ideology hasn't crept in and hasn't captured, you know, some of the higher levels of administration and faculty who are then impacting students as well. Behind all of these student groups are faculty advisors who

encourage them, who support the students, who give them extra credit to go out to political rallies, who influence grades based on you know what they say and what they write and if it aligns with the ideology or not and that's that's so saddening because what happened to critical thinking, what happened to the ability to do research and scholarship, and you know all of those things that that we used to value in our educational institutions, but now it's this you know expression of fidelity to the orthodoxy, that's the most important thing. That's more important than your knowledge or innovation or you know things that you're

doing with your peers. they should all be focused on uplifting the oppressed instead. And who defines the oppressed? These ideologues. And how do they define it? Sometimes in ways that aren't rooted in any objective reality. It's rooted in their want to spread anti-Semitism, anti-women, anti-American ideas throughout the society. So there's been this concept of decolonization that's been mentioned

again and again over the past weeks. So what does that actually mean? Yes, the way I've heard it explained by critical social justice ideologues is that it's a decolonization of our minds, of our ways of being in the world, of our ways of understanding the world and each other. Because supposedly our minds have been colonized due to our constant oppression and the things that we experience living in a nation that they claim was founded under white supremacy and white supremacy culture. Some of the people at De Anza, when they would do their workshops, they would talk about this decolonization of the mind and of our learning spaces.

And that meaning that all the white supremacy culture characteristics that they'd identified being on time, being objective, all these other just personality characteristics and traits, we would actively work to not evidence those, to not embody those things, to not support people who promote those types of things. And really, when we think about this whole idea of the settler colonialists and so forth, it really speaks to an ignorance, again, of the geopolitics, of the history of the region, of indigeneity and who is indigenous to

Judea and Samaria, and a willful ignorance around that. These are documented in history in the books, in the research, and the things that we've found and seen about, you know, the past thousands of years of human history. It's not something like, oh oops, we just don't know. It's a painting and a misrepresentation of history that's very intentional, and it aligns with the anti-Semitism that undergirds it. So what does decolonization mean in the context of the Israel-Hamas war now? Well, from the social media posts that we're seeing from these liberated ethnic studies folks, that means that the Hamas terrorists who did the actions that they did on October 7th and before,

and, you know, since that time are justified because they were oppressed. And that's the natural reaction to oppression. You don't see me engaging with that a lot, Jan, because it's malarkey. It's a bunch of gobbledygook. It's not related to objective history or facts. It's not rooted in objective reality. It's a fantasy that has gone widespread. It's a virus that has gone into the minds of our youth, into the minds of our administrators and faculty and so forth, and the way that we see them in the streets so violently yelling and screaming and Free Palestine, free Gaza from Hamas. No one's talking about that part. This is a battle that involves ideas and civilizations

and global and world civilizations. And if you don't understand the connections between the only democracy in the Middle East and America as a society and why it's important for America to always stand with Israel, then I have some questions about that. Some people say, like you mentioned, oh, we're just against war.

We just don't want any war to happen. Great. What do you do when your nation is attacked? When your citizens are brutalized and murdered in their beds? When your children are kidnapped and your Holocaust survivors and elderly people and all of these people are taken, do you sit down and chat with the people who did it or do you have another response? And if you are sitting down and chatting, what does that tell an organization of terrorists who say, we've done it and we will do it again and again? They're not going to stop and they will not stop at Israel. It will be here as well. And it saddens

me to see in the streets, our young people laying out the welcome mat to their own destruction. In 2001, basically immediately after 9-11, a young guy, my age at the time, I was a young guy, saying, America's reaping what it sowed. I haven't thought about him in a while. But I'm wondering if there isn't many more like him that have now been taught or indoctrinated. And I'm very worried about that. We've had this open border.

And I don't know, some people don't call it an open border, but there's at least 7 or 8 million people that have come across it, many of them really have no idea. Of course you would imagine that people that wish the West or America harm would have pushed some of their people through there. What if there is a terrorist attack? How many people would be like that young man I mentioned moments ago? These are much less academic questions than they were once. Yes, they're very real and pressing questions. When you have people that are calling for the dismantling of America, American culture,

American society, after you destroy everything and dismantle it, what's next? And many people can see the danger of that coming to our doorstep. And these students celebrating that, I hope we don't have to learn the hard way that some other nations and peoples have had to learn. I've had the opportunity to speak with people in post-Soviet nations and other places. I think everyone should take a gap year and go travel. I think some of these people with their Queers for Palestine signs and all these other things, go to Gaza. See how you're received with that sign and that placard. If you got to see the world from people who are living in those oppressive environments, your perspective would maybe change a little bit. Well, Tabea Lee, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.

Thank you. Thank you all for joining Tabea Lee and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Yania Kelek.