Omar Suleiman – Columbia University Gaza Protests Students Divest From Israel – Lex Fridman
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the protests on campus against Israel and the messaging of the protests, which are against Israeli policy. They recommend going to the media to see one of the protestors and stress the importance of listening to the overwhelming majority of voices for justice.
AI: Summary ©
What do you think about the protests on
campus against Israel?
Every protest I've been to has had the
exact same tenor, has had the exact same
messaging, but you always have that idiot or
two that shows up with a sign.
And no one knows who that idiot is,
ironically, never comes with anybody else, always shows
up somehow in the middle of the protest
and puts up a sign that says something
completely contrary to the messaging of the protest,
and then all the cameras shift towards that
guy.
I see it every single time, but the
overwhelming tenor of all of these protests has
been consistent.
It's been calling for freedom, it's been calling
for liberation, it's been calling for an end
to the genocide, a ceasefire, an end to
the occupation, an end to the apartheid.
People go and serve in the IDF and
then come back to the United States or
the they're not stigmatized for participating in apartheid
policies or participating in a genocide.
How am I supposed to feel as a
Palestinian knowing that this guy right next to
me participated in murdering my relatives in Gaza,
right?
And has open rein to say what he
wants to say or do what he wants
to do.
And so we haven't seen the other side
of that as well, but I'd recommend to
anyone that's talking about, you know, pro-Palestine
protests to actually go see one.
But I think that this is a sign
of the outrage and the anger and the
frustration that many students have about being silenced.
Again, in the media, in academic settings, professors
are losing their jobs, students are having their
faces put on trucks, being doxed, the shady
watch lists that get put out.
I'm on a few of them as well,
and I just don't care anymore.
Right.
But you got these shady watch lists.
People are losing their jobs at law firms.
They're losing all of their future opportunities, young
Palestinian students, because of something that they tweeted
that's being taken out of context 10 years
ago, right, when they were 17 years old.
It's ridiculous.
And so I think that, you know, we
have to listen to the overwhelming majority of
voices of people that are demonstrating for justice.