Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/6/24: Israel Psyop On US Politicians, Israeli Settlers Rampage Through Jerusalem, AIPAC Shackles American Politics

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Israel psyop on US politicians, Israelis rampage through Jerusalem, how AIPAC shackles US politicians.    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. So we've got a new report from the New York Times that confirms something we had covered earlier and also confirms an Israeli government direct connection for an influence op that they were running directly on American lawmakers. Let's put this up on the

screen. Headline here, Israel secretly targets U.S. lawmakers with influence campaign on Gaza war. Israel organized and paid for an influence campaign last year targeting U.S. lawmakers and the American public with pro-Israel messaging as it aimed to foster support for its actions in the war with Gaza. That covert campaign was commissioned by Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, a government body that connects Jews around the world with the state of Israel, four Israeli officials said. That ministry allocated about $2 million to the operation and hired Stoic, a political marketing firm in Tel Aviv,

to carry it out, according to the officials in the documents. Chat GPT was used, apparently, to generate a lot of the posts. In addition to, they would, like, reply to members of Congress. In particular, they seemed to target African American members of Congress specifically. They would post links to these three fake news websites that they set up with, you know, pro-Israel propaganda, some of it real, drawn from other news reports, some of it less accurate, let's just say, including some of the October 7th reporting that was ultimately debunked or suggestions by US officials that was ultimately

debunked by Israeli outlets, including Haaretz. Just to give you a sense of what this looks like in real time, let's put this up on the screen. We've got some quotes from the piece. Dozens of Israeli tech startups received emails and WhatsApp messages that month, inviting them to join urgent meetings to become digital soldiers for Israel during the war, according to messages viewed by the Times. Some of the emails and messages were sent from Israeli government officials. Others came from tech startups and incubators. We can put the next piece up on the screen. Some of the fake accounts responded to posts by Richie Torres.

Who else? I don't know why they felt like Richie Torres needed to be even more pro-Israel. That's what I was going to say. They just wanted to encourage him in his pre-existing direction, I guess. They would comment on anti-Semitism on college campuses and major U.S. cities. In response to a December 8th post on X, Mr. Torres, about fire safety, one fake account replied, Hamas is perpetrating the conflict, referring to the Islamist militant group. The post included a hashtag that said Jews were being persecuted. We've got another one here. They said the campaign

also created three fake news sites. That's what I was talking about. Names like Nonagenda and Unfold Magazine Nonagenda, the opposite of what it was, which stole and rewrote material from outlets, including CNN and the Wall Street Journal, to promote Israel's stance during the war. According to fake reporters analysis, that was the original news site that broke this story. Fake accounts on Reddit then linked to the articles on the so-called news sites to help promote them. And accounts on Reddit then linked to the articles on the so-called news sites to help promote them. And it was apparently pretty sloppy, this whole effort. It was not like well done. I don't expect that it really had a lot of impact on the American political conversation. But in any case, they say in at least two instances, accounts with profile

photos of black men posted about being middle-aged Jewish women on 118 posts in which the fake account shared pro-Israel articles. The same sentence appeared, quote, I got to reevaluate my opinions due to this new information. So I saw, I remember when a fake reporter originally did this analysis, they brought up also these posts that would be profile picture of a black man and it would say like, as a middle-aged Jewish woman, I feel blah, blah, blah. So sloppy effort. I'm not saying it really changed the discourse, but Sagar, you remember the level of continued freak out about, you know, some Russian Bernie bro memes on Facebook or whatever, like that was determinative in the 2016 election. We still are living with the

political, domestic, and foreign affairs ramifications of that whole entire freakout. And on this, we have confirmed an American ally directly running an influence up on our own population and elected officials. Crickets. And in fact, the dollar amount here is more than the amount that was spent on those so-called Russian memes. Amazing. And this is the difference. At the time, we were like, yeah, this obviously didn't swing the election. Like, okay.

And then here around two, this is actually terrible. As usual, it's not even particularly well done. No one is even claiming Richie Torres needed a meme to turn him more pro-Israel. I think the AIPAC money is probably instead of enough for him. Yeah, that's probably a hell of a lot more actually impactful. Or even just like genuine belief. I don't know who he is. He's just craving.

He just wants to get reelected. All right, so let's put that to the side. But considering what all these people said, including one MSNBC at the time Matt Miller said about Russian propaganda, it's a little bit different. Now that he's in the State Department briefing and the reporters are asking him about it, the intercepts Prem Thakur, who we had here on the show, pressed him on it. Let's take a listen. A little over two months ago, the U.S. announced sanctions on Russians for creating false websites and then using fake social media accounts to amplify misleading content. So

similar to what the government of Israel has reportedly carried out. And of course, the U.S. has taken similar stance over the past few years. So I'm wondering, I know that you said the U.S. has laws, you expect compliance. Will U.S. take similar action here? So as I said, in response to Nadia's question, right now we have a news report. It's not U.S. government information. So I'm not going to speak to it specifically, but I think I'll leave it at that. And as I said, though, we do have laws that we vigorously enforce and we expect people to comply with them. If the U.S. does find that this reporting does bear out, and this is not meant to be like a hypothetical, this is meant to be more of a commitment towards norms. Will the U.S. act

in accordance with how it has before, how it has with Russia? So it is somewhat of a hypothetical, only because you have to actually look at the facts of every case and see what the appropriate response is. But as is always the case, we look at violations of our law. A lot of that is carried out by other agencies within the United States government and develop the appropriate response. But I just, I can't respond with any level of detail here because it is always very fact specific. It's always very fact specific. It actually was the opposite of fact specific, whatever it came to Russia. And we had some BS report up front. What was it from the ODNI? They're like, we conclude Russia will swing the election. And before even that, Matt Miller was on MSNBC and

all this talking about how this is a complete catastrophe and a violation of sovereignty. So either they were lying at that time or they believed it then, but it's okay for Israel. But of course, as usual, there's an exception here. Yeah, State Department, they've never seen the reports. They never know. They'll always get back to us. They're going to look into it. They can't really say, you know, they don't really know what's a war crime.

They don't know if the details are correct. I mean, they just obviously you're never going to get a straight answer out of this guy. But it's very inconvenient for them. their invasion of Ukraine and their war crimes. All that rhetoric that just unfolded from the state and continues to flow from the State Department, from Tony Blinken, etc. And then you ask about the same or worse atrocities when it comes to Israel, and suddenly they don't know, they can't say, they haven't seen, they haven't read the reports. They'll get back to you. And of course they never do. So no surprise there that the hypocrisy looms incredibly large. But it's also just, I mean, it's also just an extraordinary look at how important Israel thinks these lawmakers positions are.

Yeah, that's right. And, you know, the fact that, again, this is, this is supposedly a top ally, someone that we ship billions of dollars to every single year, this war or any other year notwithstanding. And, you know, they're here meddling in our elections and messing with our lawmakers. And we don't have the self-respect to, like, even stand up for ourselves and say, hey, maybe you don't do that. I wish you wouldn't interfere. And they have the gall anytime any of our lawmakers weighs in on their actions to say, hey, we're a sovereign country. How dare you? How dare you interfere? It's just the whole thing is preposterous.

Let's just respect each other's sovereignty, shall we? I'd be fine with that. I really would. But apparently that's not on the cards. All right. Meanwhile, we have some horrific news coming out of the Gaza Strip. We can put this up on the screen. Israeli airstrike on a school where thousands were sheltering has killed dozens of people. The numbers I saw were somewhere around 45 people, many more who were injured, including women and children. This comes in the context of, of course, just massive annihilation of the Gaza Strip and also these ongoing ceasefire talks. We don't know where things stand with all of that after Biden gave his speech and tried to apply some rhetorical pressure, at least to the

Israelis and to Hamas as well, to come to some sort of a ceasefire deal. Very unclear where all of that stands. And obviously, this is just the latest horror in what is an almost incalculable level of destruction. This is the latest attempt that I saw for people to try to wrap their heads around what has been done in a very short period of time to the Gaza Strip by the Israelis. Let's put this up on the screen. 70,000 tons of bombs have been dropped on Gaza since October, far surpassing the combined total for Dresden, Hamburg, and London, all put together during World War II. So, you know, you guys have seen the images of all of these cities reduced to rubble, you know, Kanunis, Gaza City now targeting Rafah. You've seen the way schools, hospitals, any sort of civilian building, universities, mosques, churches, etc., have been completely decimated. And you really can't even wrap your head around this level of destruction and that

amount of tonnage of bombs being dropped on what is, again, a very, very small territory, Sagar. Yeah, no, it is shocking. It is a reminder, too, of just modern warfare, how quickly you can surpass that. There was a single Vietnamese operation in Vietnam which surpassed all the bombs that had been dropped in World War II. And it's just a good example that I bring up from Vietnam and that my, I guess, I'm the contemporary of the people who brought this up at the time. They're like, hey, guys, if this was just simply an air power problem, we could bomb our way out of this, then we would have won this war a long, long time ago. But that's not what's happening here. We're fighting a very different

war, a very similar war, actually, in this particular case, where you're watching air power, and in fact, turn the population even further and further against you, very different and counter to the goals that you allegedly set out to accomplish. And that misalignment between the US, what it supposedly wants, between what the Israelis want, and then what the Palestinians, at least, allegedly, everyone is working to try and get to a different state. That's what's causing both a tremendous amount of death and some bad strategy. So put it all together on top of some of the domestic stuff that's going on in Israel and things are not trending in a good direction. Let's talk about some of that domestic stuff so we can put this up on the screen. You had a huge number of right-wing Jewish Israelis

who were marauding through the old city in Jerusalem for the Muslim quarter in particular. And as part of that, and this is sort of an annual affair, it's called Flag Day. I'll get into some of the specifics in a moment. But as part of that, and this is what's really significant, Israeli cabinet minister Ben-Gavir has said it's his policy to let Jews pray on the Temple Mount. You have a very significant religious site that is significant both to Jews and to Muslims. For Muslims, it's the Al-Aqsa Mosque. For Jews, they call it the Temple Mount. In an apparent breach of the longstanding status quo, he said that it is his policy, and again, this is a government cabinet minister who has power over such things, to allow Jewish prayer at that contested Jerusalem holy site. He said,

and I quote, I am also happy that Jews went up to the Temple Mount and prayed there today. It is very important. My policy is very clear on this matter. Jews can be anywhere in Jerusalem, pray anywhere. As the prayers are not conducted only informally in a whisper. Ben-Gavir said, no, no, no. No one whispered. Jews prayed on the Temple Mount. That's the ministerial position.

And Jews pray on the Temple Mount. And that is a good thing. So that is an extraordinary provocation. He also talked about how this is meant to intentionally be a provocation. He said that Muslims hang pictures of the Temple Mount and pictures of Jerusalem, and we tell them our Jerusalem, our novelist gate, our Temple Mount. Today, according to my policy, Jews entered the Old City freely, and on the Temple Mount, Jews prayed freely. We say in the simplest way, it's ours. He also went to this parade, which again, it's an annual affair of Jewish right-wing Israelis.

A lot of settlers are involved, incredibly provocative. There were numerous assaults. There were chants by many of the individuals there of death to Arabs and other genocidal eliminationist chants as part of this quote unquote parade. We can put Ben-Gavir up on the screen. So here he is at this parade, at this march, where he says, Jerusalem is ours. Damascus Gate is ours. The Temple Mount is ours. Today, in accordance with my policy, Jews prayed freely on the Temple Mount. We say in the simplest way, it's ours. We also have, let's put this next piece up on the screen.

We have some of the images from this, you know, sort of marauding bands going through the streets. You can see what the scene was. Here we have Ben-Gavir. Again, this is more imagery of him. We have, you can see, very young, very young children here who are assaulting. I believe this was a Palestinian member of the press that you can see who's being assaulted there. We have some extraordinary images as well of that assault. You can see who's being assaulted there. We have some extraordinary images as well of that assault. You can see him being surrounded in a press vest by all of these young, you know, many of them settlers, certainly Jewish extremists. You see here a Haaretz Israeli Jewish member of the press who also was assaulted by this group attempting to protect. I think we have one more image there that was really going around attempting to protect this Palestinian press member. You know,

you had all sorts of reports of hateful chants, like I said, death to Arabs, may their villages burn, I think was another one of them. You had various assaults. You had them going into Palestinian shops and you had the police clearing any Palestinians from the area because they, you know, couldn't or wouldn't protect them and, you know, forcing them out of their own shops, et cetera. So that was what was going on yesterday. Yeah. I mean, the reason why this stuff is so important, I know it seems tedious. Remember that the entire second Intifada was sparked by Ariel Sharon visiting the Temple Mount. I mean, this is why it's so – I mean, it's kind of crazy that we even got to the point where it just barely even notes a mention in the U.S. press.

The visit to the Temple Mount in, what was it, September of 2000 was basically the beginning of the collapse of Oslo, of the Middle East Peace Summit, and the Second Intifada. And the stated purpose at the time, by the way, Ariel Sharon was the head of the Likud party. You know, he said, assert the right of all Israelis to visit the Temple Mount. This sets off like a whole Palestinian condemnation. Things develop into riots. It's a huge, very important event in the history of so-called like peace activists, because it basically broke a lot of the peace consensus on the Palestinian, on the Israeli side. There were suicide bombs or riots. It led to like the modern, basically establishment of the Likud party. So for them to just like continue doing this is also both a shove in the face

of anybody who still like even tries to pretend to be a part of the peace movement, but just shows like how far things have moved in a different direction. Yeah. At the same time, there's a real risk of continued escalation, especially with regard to Lebanon and Hezbollah. Let's put this up on the screen. Israeli leaders have threatened to take, quote unquote, more intense action against Hezbollah after an escalation and cross-border fire, increasing tensions and the prospect of all-out war with the Lebanese militant group. You'll recall northern Israel has largely been evacuated since October 7th. So you have quite a number of Israelis who have been evacuated from that area. You've had this cross-border fire ongoing. And Netanyahu commented,

he said yesterday, the earth was on fire here, but it was also on fire in Lebanon. Whoever thinks that they can hurt us and that we will sit idly by is making a big mistake. We are prepared for very intense action in the north. One way or another, we will restore security to the north. So, you know, Sagar, there have been all kinds of threats towards Lebanon. Previously, we also have new reports, once again, of more Israeli use of white phosphorus being dropped directly on residential areas. That is in direct contradiction of international law. So yet another war crime being documented by human rights organizations that are on the ground. And, you know, one possibility here, if there is enough pressure applied that there's some sort of even a

temporary ceasefire in terms of Gaza, you could see this escalation occurring as a way, again, for Bibi to continue to justify his grip on power and his avoidance, too, of the criminal charges that could possibly land him in prison once the war is over. This could be another avenue for him to claim some sort of victory over what has, by all accounts, been really a complete failure for the Israeli government and the Israeli military in terms of their offensive. Yeah, this is what they want. They want to continue this. The only question is whether the actual world can constrain it. That's it. I mean, we have no idea whether we're going to be able to. We've successfully done so so far. I would say that's maybe one piece of successful diplomacy. But clearly, they want the action. And Hezbollah, too, has not been afraid to hit back. There's been several IDF soldiers who've been

killed in cross-border fires. I don't know if you saw, some of the images of northern Israel were crazy a couple of days ago, which showed the bombs, the white phosphorus, the hills were all on fire. Both sides are rearing and ready to go. So this could easily be a major expansion and would be 10 times more deadly than anything we've seen in Gaza for the Israelis. They should be afraid. Yeah, and we should be really, I mean, this is directly tied, like Hezbollah didn't have anything to do with October 7th. According to the Israelis, not us. Like that's what even Israel says. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, everyone is unanimous in that. No one is even arguing that that is the case. And so the, you know, action with regard to Hezbollah is directly tied to what Israel is doing in Gaza Strip. Hezbollah feels, you know, that they need to show that they're defending the Palestinian people.

So you really don't have a resolution to that conflagration, which could potentially escalate in a very damaging way for both Israeli and Lebanese civilians. You don't have any even possibility of a resolution there until you have a cessation of the Israeli assault on Gaza. So something else that we have our eye on. At the same time, there have been a lot of developments with regard to media censorship and one-sided crackdowns in terms of American politics and crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protesters. We have a fantastic guest standing by to help us understand what exactly is going on there. Let's get to it. So you guys, I'm sure recall we had a whole national conversation about quote-unquote anti-Semitism on campus and Jewish students potentially being made to feel or reality being unsafe in connection with pro-Palestine protests and encampments that sprung up on a variety of

college campuses. One of those was at UCLA, where after the fact, it was documented pretty clearly that all the violence was very one-sided, was on the side of the pro-Israeli counter-protesters. Numerous journalistic organizations, including the LA Times, documented that pretty closely and video evidence bore that out as well.

CNN also did extraordinary coverage there. We have joining us this morning, extraordinary guest, Salam al-Maryadi, who's president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, who met with a variety of public officials in the wake of those violent counter protests to find out where the concern lies, if they were going to conduct investigations. And he joins us now. Great to have you, sir. Good to see you, sir. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, of course. So talk to us about your interest in what unfolded at UCLA and some of the meetings you were able to have.

I attended the encampment. It was peaceful. I met a lot of students, a lot of Jewish students, Muslim students, a lot of non-religious students. It was an array that you saw there, and I was inspired by it. And it was peaceful. And in fact, a Princeton study bridging the divide initiative showed that 95% of the encampments are peaceful, of the 1,000 that they assessed. And so when I met with officials and they were concerned about violence from these encampments, I said, these are peaceful gatherings. They're protesting in

the great student tradition. When I met with Eric Holder some years back, he said he occupied a building when he was in college. That was different though, of course. Yeah, of course. Not this situation, right? And so we see the double standards. And then I have attended college football games. And if you're concerned about disorderly conduct and vandalism and harassment, well, are we going to be canceling football games because of our concern? Of course not. So that's how ridiculous this argument is that there's concern about violence. And if there was violence, as you said, it was the violence against the students. It was the violence by bringing in the police to dismantle the encampments.

And so we talked to officials about that. And when I met with the attorney general and the FBI director, the concern there was, you know, they're looking at violent extremism and how foreign actors can use these public gatherings to attack Americans. And I said, it already happened. It happened on the night of April 30th against the student protesters, against a pro-Palestinian student encampment. And what are you doing about that?

So they promised that they would look into it, that there should be an investigation. Why did law enforcement step back and stand by watching the assault on the pro-Palestinian protesters? And so this was Attorney General Merrick Garland that you were speaking to. And you're talking about the counter-protest. At UCLA, which, you know, again, documented there were hours that these assaults were occurring in which the police did absolutely nothing.

The next day, the police come in and they arrest the largely peaceful pro-Palestinian side. And so what was the response from Garland when you, you know, press for an investigation into what had occurred? He said he would look into it. The FBI director said he would look into it. We received communications from their offices that there might be an investigation happening. But nothing is official, of course. And we just have to keep pressing the issue. In fact, I'm meeting today with the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Christian Clark, on the same matter. So we're

going to get a report from them and to see where we are with the situation. But we just have to keep pressing. Just like we have to keep pressing for prosecution of the January 6th coup against our country at the U.S. Capitol, we have to press here for an investigation of law enforcement and exactly who these culprits were that instigated violence against the students. And right now, as of now, there's only been one arrest. Right. And even with Los Angeles Police Department, they said they didn't have enough resources to investigate. And we called that nonsense. Well, yeah, so tell us about,

you were talking previously with us about some of the meetings you've had with public officials. I'm curious from your end, what is it like, how much can you see very clearly that there is external pressure on these individuals to not, let's say, they definitely would have acted differently, as you said, let's say the January 6th investigation or any of that, in response

to some of this protest violence that we saw, violence against the protesters. How has their difference in tone and all that come through to you and the evidence of external pressure on them? Well, I can't tell you exactly what evidence there is, but we know it's there. Yeah. I mean, I've been doing this. But you can see it in their, you know, in their response. Yeah, in their tone. Tell us about that.

In their tone. And they're sort of trying to console us that, yes, it was terrible what happened. And we said, we don't need sympathy. We need action. We need you to look into what's happening here. You know, you've had Los Angeles Police Department officers go to Israel and pose with IDF forces next to the bombs that were going to kill Palestinians. And we said, what kind of infiltration or influence is there within our law enforcement by the Israeli Defense Forces?

We need you to investigate that as well. And so we've called on the LAPD Commission, Police Commission, to look into that. And I hope that something will come out of it. But again, we just have to keep pressing and keep advocating. I've been doing this for 40 years. When I started, way before your time, the first case that I was involved in was called the LA-8. And what happened was the agency at that time was called the INS, Immigration Naturalization Service, instead of DHS. And they were looking at Palestinians who were distributing communist literature using a McCarthy-era law, the McCarran-Walter Act.

And, of course, it was ridiculous. It took 20 years to vindicate those individuals. But this kind of McCarthyism is coming back. And it's coming back with a force. I think the pro-Israel groups, the hardliners from that side, are using everything to pressure those officials that you're referring to, Sagar,

and really silencing them. And while they come to us with sympathy, they really can't do anything because they know that the other side is ready to clobber them if they do take action. So it is a bit of a political game, unfortunately, but we feel that there's a growing support. In fact, for the first time,

an LA City Councilwoman, Nithya Raman, finally sponsored a growing support. In fact, for the first time, an LA City Councilwoman, Nithya Raman, finally sponsored a resolution for a ceasefire in the LA City Council. So we'll see where that goes. And they also passed a resolution 15 to nothing in LA City to investigate LAPD for what happened on April 30th. Got it. So the mayor of LA now is Karen Bass. You met with her as well. I mean, she's positioned herself as a relatively progressive Democrat. What was that meaning?

How much is your sense that, you know, we talk a lot about AIPAC and the influence that their money and their lobbying has on, you know, all sorts of races? They've threatened, I think, $100 million in their war chest to defeat candidates that, in their view, are insufficiently pro-Israel. How much does that loom over these conversations that you're having with politicians? Like I said, we know it exists. It doesn't come out in these conversations, of course. But the main concern is that they're worried about the reaction that they're going to get if they come out in support of these students. And the school officials say the same thing, that they come to us and say, you know, it's not our fault. It's really the Department of Education that's being influenced

to come in. And every time there's a pro-Palestinian event happening on campus, they call for an investigation. Then I go to the Department of Education and say, hey, the school officials are complaining about you. And they said, it has nothing to do with us. It's the school officials that are being pressured by the pro-Israel group. So everybody is pointing the finger to everybody else right now. And we know that game. We've been around the block a couple of times. But as I said, it's really about continuing our advocacy. And we really appreciate shows like this that for the first time, the public is seeing the truth. That was my question too, is you've obviously been involved in this for a long time,

presumably even meeting with Democratic lawmakers. This may be like, what has this experience been like for you to watch them change a lot of their tune that you previously may have seen sympathy and, you know, whenever it was Republicans doing it, they were willing to decry it. But this time, now that they're in power, what has it been like to watch some of these people who you presumably know well, even meetings with them for a long time, just completely shift, you know, post-October 7th? Well, it starts with the president himself. I mean, I couldn't believe it when he says that I'm a Zionist. And I said, well, then how can he be our president?

You don't represent us then. So he met with Palestinians, he changed his tone. I believe that the protests are forcing him to change his rhetoric. It hasn't changed any action yet. With other lawmakers that we've met, we met with, for example, Rohana yesterday. He came to our conference and spoke. It is a change because 20 years ago,

we didn't see 30 lawmakers say say we are supporting a ceasefire. Now we're finally seeing that. The last time I saw a lawmaker actually call out Israel was Bob Dole in the 80s when he said, oh, we should stop sending arms to Israel. That's right. I remember that. Right? Yeah. That was the last time. And then in between that, nothing.

There was pure silence. So now we're finally coming back to some lawmakers having some backbone and saying, if we care about American national security interests, this is not helping. This is hurting. And so we see these 30. I hope that it grows. We even see some Republicans now beginning to question what's happening in Gaza and blind support for Israel. Yeah, there are a few libertarian voices out there. Bob Dole vindicated, though. Glad to hear that. Yeah.

Hey, Bob. We wanted to get your thoughts, too, on another news event that I thought you would find interesting. Let's put this up on the screen. This is really wild. So this is from the AP. After publishing an article critical of Israel, Columbia Law Review's website is shut down by the board. Let me read a little bit of this. Student editors at the Columbia Law Review say they were pressured by the journal's board of directors to halt publication of an academic article written by a Palestinian human rights lawyer that accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and upholding an apartheid regime.

When the editors refused the request and published that piece Monday morning anyway. The board, which is made up of faculty and alumni from Columbia University's law school, shut down the law review's website entirely. It remained offline Tuesday evening, a static homepage informing visitors the domain is under maintenance. Of course, the irony here is probably no one would have really paid attention to this article. The student editors went ahead and published it separately at a permanent link that couldn't be taken down. And it's probably gotten way more attention than it ever would have if they just let it be published. But what do you make of this extraordinary effort at censorship of, you know, a pro-Palestinian view? Well, it's like what they tried to do with Esna Tabessim at USC.

They canceled her speech. So instead of talking to- She was the valedictorian who was meant to speak. And then they canceled the whole commencement, right? Canceled the whole thing. And so with Esna now, instead of speaking to 60,000 people, she's speaking to millions of people. And now this article, which basically saying that we need a new legal construct for Palestinians. It's not just about apartheid or occupation.

That doesn't fit. Let us look to what's called the Nakba, the catastrophe that happened in 1948 and has continued to this day as a legal construct, right? And so by shutting this down, by this kind of censorship, now this is gonna get more traction and more people will go and read it and look to not only why there's censorship,

but what is this all about? You know, I've been involved with groups, not involved with, but people have monitored students by groups called Campus Watch. It's their form of lawfare against these students. And Campus Watch is a pro-Israel website that says that these students are anti-Semitic. I was called anti-Semitic. I was appointed to the Congressional Commission for Terrorism in 1998 by Richard Gephardt. The ADL, the American Jewish Committee, the Conference of Jewish Presidents all lobbied to rescind the nomination.

Wow. The New York Times headline of that was, Gephardt bows to Jews' anger for that. And so we know that this is happening. It's going to continue to happen until the establishment gets the message. And the establishment still has not received that message that this is a violation of our First Amendment. So we are now coming out with the Bureau for Academic Freedom to organize around this issue, to defend the First Amendment rights of our students, to defend the First Amendment of our country. We're the ones now that are at the center of this issue. And so it will help these students and really say, if we're really about the

Constitution and the Bill of Rights, then this censorship has got to stop, especially in public universities. And I think it's important to point out, too, that even as this particular article, because it got a headline, it got a lot of attention, it got a lot of eyeballs, that the censorship effort didn't work. But you will have many people who don't speak out, who don't write the articles that they would have, who don't publish the articles that they would have because they don't have the stomach for it, right? They don't want to be under scrutiny. They don't want to have a truck driving around their college campus with their face on it, et cetera. So while this individual effort maybe failed, backfired,

strides into effect, the overall chilling effect is still incredibly important. So what is some of the work that you'll be doing at the Bureau of Academic Freedom and where can people find out more about what you're up to? You go to our website, Muslim Public Affairs Council, mpac.org, and we're going to launch it this week or within the next week. And the main issue is to expose this kind of chilling effect this kind of censorship this kind of intimidation against our students And to provide support for them whether it's legal support political support community support We need to we need to be there at the forefront and to show that this is you know

What these student protesters are doing is part of an American campus tradition. We saw that in Vietnam. We saw that for civil rights. We saw that against apartheid. This is nothing new in terms of the student tradition, whereas students are leading us because everybody else is politically shackled in Washington from speaking out. They're speaking the conscience of our country and we have to support them. So the Bureau of Academic Freedom is objective

is to end this intimidation. It's gonna be a long battle. I've been doing this now going on 36 years and it may take more decades for us to see a resolution to this conflict. But the Bureau of Academic Freedom is aimed to resolving this and really defend the First Amendment. Salam, thank you so much for your time today. It's a pleasure to meet you. Good to see you, sir. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much. Appreciate the time. Thank you. All right. We'll see you guys later. this is an iHeart podcast