Omar Suleiman – Refusing Silence on Gaza #UTD21
AI: Summary ©
The segment discusses the recent protests in the United States, including the use of precision weapons and the accusations of loneliness. The segment also talks about the loss of moral pride among students and the need for students to find their way back home. The segment ends with a call to action and a promise to not allow students to be isolated until all charges have been dealt.
AI: Summary ©
A symbolic display of solidarity on behalf of
each of those universities.
We're not even talking about divestment yet from
the actual arms companies that are invested in
this genocide using these students' money.
Every single university should have stood up in
rejection of this hate and of this genocide.
Every single hospital in Gaza has been bombed.
Not one, not two, every single one of
them.
We would expect that every single medical institution,
every hospital in Dallas and in the United
States would stand up in rejection of this
atrocity.
Instead, it's been crickets.
To the media institutions that are here, 113
journalists that we know of, some of them
are my friends, some of them, as of
last week, were shown to the world beheaded
in their cars by precision bombs, some of
them paid for by our tuition here, manufactured
out of Dallas.
We're the journalists that are standing up in
rejection of the deadliest period that we know
of in the history of armed conflict for
journalists and for press.
We're the faith leaders that have lost their
moral compass that used to stand up against
hate and that would be by our side.
Where are they today?
Unfortunately, there is the Palestine exception.
These students are unfortunately the victims of the
Palestine exception.
Each and every single one of these students
would have read about Martin, Medgar, and Malcolm,
would have read about how indifference, in fact,
was the cause of the lynchings that used
to take place around them here in Dallas,
of all of the moral catastrophes that have
occurred in our not so distant memory.
Yet, when they decided to take a stand
against the genocide that the entire international community
seems to recognize as a genocide, they were
penalized.
They have faced the full thrust of the
law.
They've been told they're not welcome in no
uncertain terms and supposedly a university that is
committed to change makers is penalizing some of
its boldest students who dare to be so.
Lancet British Medical Journal estimates that the death
toll in Gaza is actually around 200,000,
the majority of whom are women and children.
These students decided to take a stand because
some of those casualties are either their relatives
or the relatives of people that they know
or just human beings that look like them
or maybe don't look like them.
They decided to take a stand.
They didn't burn down anything on this campus.
All they did was usher in the spirit
of truth and justice under the dark cloud
of a genocide, which, unfortunately, this university has
been complicit in.
In the wake of those atrocities, I want
you to think about what our parents put
inside of us and instilled inside of us
of the demand to live up to the
opportunity that we had to become voices of
truth and to become voices of these moral
causes and then to find out that the
tuition that you worked your entire life to
pay for, that the tuition that you are
putting to use so that your children could
go to school and could become advocates, become
the heroes that you always hoped they would
be, that that same money is being used
to slaughter your relatives back home.
We're not even talking about taxpayer dollars.
Just think about what the protests were about,
divesting from arms companies, divesting from weapons manufacturers
that are literally beheading women and children on
our screens every single day.
I ask you as a person of moral
conscience, are you okay with that?
I don't care if you're Muslim or Palestinian.
By the way, the majority of the protesters
have not been Muslim or Palestinian.
I'm asking you as a person of moral
conscience, are you okay with that?
And then why we're not doing more collectively
to put pressure on these institutions to do
better.
And so I say this to the UTD
administration, do better.
And if you don't do better, then we
will not be silent.
We will not allow for 21 students to
be isolated, intimidated, and penalized.
You better believe that we will not go
away until all of the charges have been
dropped and until they can proceed with their
education and go on to become who we
know they can be.
And they're already outstanding.
Thank you.