Omar Suleiman – Gaza Diaries – How Your Tech Is Being Used For Genocide
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I can't sleep.
I'm lying in bed every night and images
of Gaza are running through my head. Fathers
holding their babies, dead, caked in dust.
Bombs dropped on homes, on hospitals,
on schools.
Tens of thousands of dead and indiscriminate bombings.
Children crying,
pulling through rubble to find their families.
This was the first paragraph
in a blog post that many of us
read back in December
called, I can't sleep.
And it was written by an individual named
Paul Bigger, who has since gone on to
found
a group called Tech for Palestine and has
been vocal about the role of Tech
in this atrocious genocide that we have been
witnessing day in and day out.
Dear brothers and sisters, as we've been speaking
about
Gaza diaries, people that have been in Gaza
on the ground
and have witnessed the atrocities firsthand.
I think one of the things that all
of us have greatly underestimated
is the way that tech has been deployed
in this atrocious genocide
that we have been there
in different ways. That the same products that
we consume from the same companies
are being used to
destroy the lives of others, even as they
seemingly improve ours.
That drones that fly above the heads, you
might remember when we interviewed doctor Hayfa and
she spoke about how
you're safe as long as you can hear
the sound of drones. You're not safe when
they disappear because that means that a bombing
is imminent.
You live with this sound,
zzz.
And I was like, what is this?
Because my bed was exactly next to the
window.
And they say it's so casual. Oh, this
is the drones.
Dactora,
don't be scared.
I said drones. They said, oh, no. As
long as you hear it,
then you're safe. It's when it's quiet
you need
to be careful. Mhmm. And if you hear
the sound of bombing,
you need to smile. Listen to this,
SubhanAllah.
If it is coming to you, you will
feel nothing, either you will feel nothing because
you're dead
or the next thing you'll see, everything is
in your head. You will not hear the
sound of the bombing.
That those same drones
have made the sounds of crying children to
force Palestinians to run out to try to
save children only to become the next set
of casualties.
I remember a cousin that,
lived in Gaza
speaking to me, and he just made it
out of Rafah,
just a few days ago.
And I remember in 2021, he shared this
with me. He said that what made this
bombing so different, what made this particular round
of atrocities so different back in 20
21, and he's lived through all of them.
He said that it felt like this time
we were lab rats, that this is just
some
big experiment and we are the subject of
that experiment. He said that
of those that he lost in 2021
are those that
came closest to the bombings in 2021 that
they described these tiny devices coming right to
their windows
and then entering in as tiny devices before
they exploded
that they had seen sophisticated weaponry that they
had not seen before.
We are witnessing
a genocide on our screens,
but the same companies that manufacture our screens
are also part of the perpetrating of this
genocide.
Paul Biggar, I want to welcome you, and
I want to thank you,
for the work that you have been doing
in the past few months to try to
bring about awareness and then to also try
to bring about a solution
to
the atrocious nature of tech these days. Thank
you so much for being with us, today.
If you could briefly introduce yourself and the
work that you do,
to the audience here today. Thank you so
much for having me.
The I I've always been
a startup founder.
I'm a software engineer by training, but I
got into startups and entrepreneurship,
and I've been doing that for
15 ish years.
The,
I started Tech for Palestine
along with a group of
25 other people,
because we were all doing projects that were
that were in some way intended to help
to help people in Palestine, to help change
the narrative around Palestine in the US,
and in particular, to to change the narrative
in, the tech field.
What made
you
write this blog post on December 14th? If
you can kinda walk me through the process,
when did you think about writing it,
What made you write it, and what has
been the reaction since?
I was on vacation
for for a couple of weeks in October,
November,
and I just I wasn't
you know, all the time, I was just
checking my phone to see what was happening
in Gaza.
And so I was I was sort of
marinating
in in the genocide.
And the whole time, I was thinking, what
what can I do
about this? What you know? I I I
think we all expect that that at some
point in our lives, we get to the
point where where we can have some sort
of impact, where where, you know, if we're
successful in our careers, then, you know, finally,
people will will listen to us or we
can do something about
the bad things that happen in the world.
And I was I was feeling extremely helpless,
and
I thought, you know, just what is the
thing that that I can do? And I
realized that,
you know,
I'm good at writing,
and I have a little bit of a
platform, a little bit of a following, not
not huge.
But I realized that the the thing that
I had was was that I have extremely
high
tolerance for risk,
and I'm at a place in my life
where
being canceled just isn't the thing that's gonna
affect me.
And I realized that if I don't write
a piece like this,
then then who will?
The the narrative that I that I realized
I had to take was was one where,
you know, I I don't you know, I
was I was new to Palestine. I I
I've never been, I've never been to Middle
East at all. The,
you know, I I wasn't
someone who could discuss the the that I
had, you know, just read about for the
first time weeks beforehand.
But I realized that that what I could
write was just the feelings that I was
having, and I I felt that probably a
lot of other people were having the same
feelings. So I kinda wanna,
you know,
ask you to sort of take us through
a process of how
this all happens in terms of the tech
world's involvement. You know, over the last few
years,
we've been trying to paint a picture for
people of what the process of apartheid is.
Right? And how that is so
embedded
in the institutions
that we partake in on a daily basis.
So at the core of the BDS Movement,
many people are learning about divestment for the
very first time. Right? They kind of understood
the concept of boycott at a personal level,
but divestment
at the education level. And you can see
the way
that people
are sickened when they come to realize that
the same institutions of higher learning
that they put their kids in or that
they enroll in
to become change makers in the world are
also investing
in such a horrendous occupation, investing
in Apartheid. And you kind of paint that
picture of
someone who goes to school, who works hard
to pay their tuition
with whatever money is left over after the
tax dollars that are also being used to
fund the weaponry
and then coming to realize that that money
is going to
also the investment in occupation and apartheid.
Making people aware of defense contractors and the
role that the military industrial complex plays in
all of this,
the cruelty of this, that this is a
big market. Right I think many people average
Americans came to know about Halliburton and how
that factored into the Iraq war
and so many different ways that
it just speaks to the cruelty
of the so called progress,
in society where you've got someone,
you know, sitting behind a computer
in Nevada, you know, eating a bag of
chips,
sipping on a Coke can that just presses
a button and then that deploys this drone
that goes and blows up a wedding and
murders 200 innocent people. So it's it's painting
the picture. Right?
And walking people through the entire process of
apartheid, the the process of being invested in
apartheid as a country.
How do you start to paint that picture
for someone who doesn't understand how tech factors
into all of this? What is the role
that these companies play
in apartheid,
in the genocide, and how were we maybe
subconsciously playing a part in that process without
even realizing it? I think the challenge that
people have in understanding it is is how
systemic it is. It's it's not
a direct connection between the things that we
do.
It's rather
a
system of everything being connected in a way
that makes it so the money that we
make
when
we scroll through Instagram, right, we we we
make money for Meta. Meta uses that
to,
suppress
the,
the the content that we see. They build
they build AI, and that AI is used
to decide which voices are going to be
seen.
And when you
take a step back from a company that's
doing specific suppression like Meta or Google or
YouTube, the
and you take it back 20 years earlier.
There was a point at which Mark Zuckerberg
was trying to set up Meta or that
Larry Page was setting up Google
where a room full of people,
were deciding,
should we give
$500,000
to Mark Zuckerberg to decide that he can
make this this thing that's gonna take over
the world? And the people in that room
are,
you know, a huge part of the system.
They're you you're talking about universities. They are
also getting a lot of their funding from
universities. So people like Peter Thiel, for example.
Peter Thiel, who made a decisive
and important,
donation
to Donald Trump in the 20 16 election.
Peter Thiel, who invested in Palantir,
and who who who started and cofounded Palantir,
which is part of the AI behind the
war, is the same Peter Thiel who gave
Mark Zuckerberg $500,000
that was instrumental in building Facebook in 2,005.
The systems of venture capital, of right wing,
of weapons manufacturer,
of private equity, they're all,
you know,
interrelated
with the tech companies, whether they're they're social
media tech companies or whether they're they're tech
companies that are, you know, doing
cybersecurity and testing it directly on the Palestinian
people. I think that one of the things
that
really shocks people is not the idea that
these social media companies are actively suppressing
the voices on behalf of the Palestinian cause,
you know, in service to
the Zionist project, I think that what is
shocking to people is how active these same
companies have been in the actual oppression and
the actual operation that's taking place. So, like,
if you were to tell me a few
months ago
that WhatsApp
would be directly complicit, that Meta would be
feeding facial recognition
to the Israeli government, right, which literally puts
people's lives in danger.
That a group of billionaires on a WhatsApp
group
are directing the New York mayor on behalf
of a foreign government
to
shut down encampments at Columbia. That AI
is being used to eliminate Palestinian people already,
that that they have a way by which
they deploy pure tech and that they are
experimenting, that there's big money in this.
You know, I wouldn't have thought
it would be this advanced already. Right? I
think that there have been warnings about AI.
There have been warnings about where these tech
companies are going,
but how far have we already lost the
plot right that's kind of the question is
like how far gone are we already you've
already got
so much that's been done and so much
that's been developed that
there still haven't been leaks about that we
still haven't had,
you know, the the Pauls of the world
come out and tell us about that are
that are operating behind the scenes. So how
far
has this gone, and can it ever be
reeled back? We are gone gone. It's it's
so far.
The
everywhere
that you look,
there's
people who are
promoting Israel,
who are,
controlling some aspect of the conversation,
whether it's the editors of the New York
Times who are printing
direct propaganda direct false propaganda.
Everywhere I look, there's there's someone pulling on
the strings. So I'll give you I'll give
you one example that you're you're asking about
Meta, and this is this is, you know,
frankly shocking.
The
you know, when when you look at the
meta leadership,
Mark Zuckerberg
donated money to Zaca, which is one of
the largest or sorry, one of the creators
of the,
October 7th atrocity propaganda that that has been
consistently and repeatedly proven false by by lots
of different,
publications,
including Israeli ones. They have Sheryl Sandberg, who's
on their board and who for a long
time was was their leader, who is one
of the most active,
spreaders of the,
of the mass * hoax,
that is used to dehumanize
Palestinians.
Their their chief information security officer, Guy Rosen,
is
former IDF,
was former 82100, which is the same people
that built Lavender, Israeli NSA.
He lives in Israel
and lives in Tel Aviv. And this is
the person who has the most power in
deciding at Meta
what conversations are had,
what policies are made about the content that
we're seeing,
and
what
you know, who gets suppressed and and who
doesn't get suppressed. And so everywhere
you look in
Meta, in LinkedIn, in Twitter, in,
in Google,
you are facing
the same sort of of suppression, and it's
the same it's the same story every time.
There's there's people who are extremely pro Israel
in very important positions who are making the
decisions about what content
you and I get to see. And it's
it's in tech, but it's the same thing
that you see in newspapers. It's the same
thing that you see in in CNN and
on Fox News and and on the,
and in international media as well. It's it's
the same thing everywhere.
What do you say
to the idea of making genocide bad for
business? Right? So, like, this idea that, look,
you have,
just from a pure numbers perspective, more people
in the world that use these platforms
that are pro Palestinian
than pro Israel. Right? I mean, in in
the United States, we live in a bubble,
a very carefully crafted genocidal bubble. Right? I
mean, it's it's clear as night and day
for anyone that travels outside of the United
States or
doesn't limit themselves to US media, corporate media,
or talking points from their politicians at every
at every level of government. From just a
business perspective, at what point is it just
bad for business for these companies? Is that
a way forward to make more people around
the world aware and then perhaps to try
to instrumentalize
that people power, that numbers gain
against these companies?
I think that's exactly the way that it
has to go.
It doesn't seem like tech is gonna reform
itself.
In terms of
how the narrative has shifted in the US,
we've seen the narrative shift massively over the
last 6 months,
But tech has been extremely stubborn. And in
fact, I would say is,
is,
you know, one one one of the holdouts
in terms of of narrative shift. You've seen
very little shift at all. When you look
at at
what changed things in South Africa, the the
economic boycott
was one of the
major
aspects of of what caused
apartheid to fall eventually. I don't think that
it's gonna be exactly the same in Israel.
But the economic boycott, the academic boycott, the
sports boycott, the divestment, those are all gonna
be key parts
of,
damaging,
the Israeli economy and and and making
our displeasure felt within Israel,
but also in making it clear to the
United States that you can't keep doing this,
that if you continue to suppress, to shut
down,
to, you know, even to to side with
Israel
or in this case or in in the
most recent case with the block out 2024
campaign,
if you stay quiet during a genocide,
you know, we, as people, are not gonna
continue to support you, and we know, you
know, it's it's America. The place where
we have an effect is with money.
And it's purely for for for these companies.
The only thing that they care about is
is how much money they're gonna make, and
so it becomes
how can
the,
the economics be changed
from continuing to support Israel, which which for
many of them is a,
ideological
interest and not a financial interest.
So as it starts to as it starts
to hurt, there's gonna there's a lot of
people in those organizations who don't have that
ideological interest and who are then saying, why
are we doing this? You know, it's it's
hurting the bottom line.
The reality is is that you've got these
companies that operate that we're all familiar with.
Right? So suppression is happening across the board.
I wouldn't be surprised if Google, YouTube suppressed
this video. They've shadow banned much of our
content on Palestine already. We've been shadow banned
on Meta. We've even TikTok,
x is,
you know, long gone as well. So the
shadow banning, the suppression is all there with
these companies that we're all familiar with, but
then there are names that operate in the
background that I think are even less familiar
to people
than the military contractors. Right? So now people
are kind of starting to become familiar with,
you know, some of the ways that,
Lockheed Martin and Raytheon and, like, you hear
some of these names and and some people
that are not privy to that industry
can catch on a bit.
But when you hear a name like Palantir,
that means nothing to 99.9%
of people.
And they just had a conference
a few weeks ago on,
AI warfare, I guess, the first AI warfare
conference.
And the thought of a bunch of business
executives sitting in a room,
eating their 5 course meals and, you know,
laughing about how they've just developed a new
technology that could eliminate people more efficiently while
still being profit generating
is terrifying to people. But I think that
it's a sign of the moral decay of
society too. Right? Like,
you know, as as the United States sort
of pontificates to the entire world about,
human rights and and and freedom
and,
just
everything
that it stands in complete
contradiction of
as the curtain is kind of being drawn
and the face is being exposed.
How do you start to expose the sick
world of the likes of Palantir,
right, in these conferences? What do you do
to start
sort of shining a spotlight on that so
that people become more aware of the companies
that operate
behind the companies?
The fact is there's nothing we can do
about Palantir, and I think it's it's very
much designed that way in the same way
that there's that there's, you know, nothing we
can directly do about about Lockheed Martin.
Or there's very you know, we can actually
do more about Lockheed Martin because they make
physical products that they need to ship to
places. But when you make
AI that that ships over the Internet, right,
it's it's quite a different,
quite a different experience. You know, one of
the major things that the that we can
do, and this is why I push on
venture capital so much, is that we can
change what company gets fund.
The companies that get funded
at the
very start of the process
are the ones that are decided by a
relatively small group of people that are
very right wing,
folks like Andreessen Horowitz,
Peter Thiel. You know, the the these are
people who
are,
you know, extremely
pro
defense
and war,
and they're
you know, it's it's hard to to
back a society away from that when the
entire
economic engine
of the society is is is based on
that. People make a lot of money for
more.
And the fact that,
you know, we we we moved
a lot of our,
a lot of the the war machine into
the private sector means that the private sector,
you know, has to make money, has to
make more money. You know, they're they're traded
on the stock exchange, and then our,
our pensions get wrapped into it, and our,
you know, public investments and everything
gets pulled into the same system. And then
people start having conversations like, well, if we
divest from Raytheon, the
university
will make,
you know, 9% instead of 10% on its
investments this year, and then the poor students
won't have won't have funding,
for for their for their activities. And, you
know, we we we don't wanna deprive the
students, do we? You know, we have here
in Dallas, we have, General Dynamics, which is
one of the weapons manufacturers. It's literally right
next door
to UTD,
which has stock in it, and it's just
crazy to think about that process. Right? It's
like, you know, we we're gonna need to
continue to blow up university so that you
can have a better gym. Right? It's, you
know, the it is it's a matter of
1% or 2% in the in in the
stock exchange or in the investment in in
the ROI. In tech, you you you have
that that exact same thing that people people
talk about, you know, making the world a
better place. They're they're, you know, we're building
the the future. We're building the the companies
that are gonna change the future. They're gonna
change our lives.
And a lot of these companies are gonna
change our lives in extremely negative ways.
And, you know, even,
you know, even looking past, they're gonna blow
up our homes or they're gonna militarize the
police or they're gonna,
you know, have have,
AI checking on us and and,
you know,
you you you you take it back to
what has actually happened and what tech has
actually done for us so far. They've destroyed
our our attention,
you know, the the dopamine economy of of
the social media networks. They've created this this
gig economy where where people don't have good
jobs anymore, and people are, you know, stringing
2 or 3 jobs together in order to
be able to to to make their rent,
the,
they're they're working with landlords to to collude,
to drive rent prices up. You know, the
the the kind of things that that tech
have done for the world have not been
extremely positive for us,
even when they do the things that they
say are supposed to be positive for us.
There's an interesting question,
that I've personally been asked. So I'm I'm
sure you know many good people that work
at these tech companies. I personally know many
good people that work at Google,
Muslims and otherwise. Right? Palestinians
that work at these companies, and they've tried
to make change
from within. And they kinda have this moral
conundrum. Right? You've got, like, if you think
about it in the government sense, right, you've
got people that still talk about how far
should we engage, which politician should we engage,
how much do we engage the system versus
fighting the system. And,
you know, you've seen a number of people
resign from this particular administration, the Biden administration,
which has proven to be the worst manifestation
of everything that Donald Trump would express, right,
in regards to,
Palestine.
What do you kind of say to people
that work in tech? I mean, I get
asked this question regularly as an Imam. Right?
People come to me with the faith crisis
of sorts, like, look, I work in these
companies.
I've been trying to move the needle.
I thought I was more important to the
company than I actually am because you see
how many I mean, Google laid off what?
Like, 170 people after those protests, 174 people
in in one strike. I thought I was,
you know, I thought I was in good
standing with the company and that my expression
would mean something, but clearly that hasn't been
the case. Do I continue to stay
and keep pushing,
you know, some sort of ethical boundaries and
what is
inherently unethical?
Do I try to make
the best of the situation,
or do I exit
and fight, from the outside? What what do
you say to young people in tech that
come to you with that moral conundrum?
We need people on the inside as well
as the outside.
I'm
not someone who works very well on the
inside.
I'm
much more likely to to start fires on
the outside.
The it is definitely true that that that
people,
you know, are needed on the inside. It's
a difficult it's a difficult game to play.
It's,
you know, when you start getting that that
tech money,
it's difficult to step away from. You know,
people,
I I I've talked to dozens of people
on the inside and, you know, they they
want to speak up. They they know that
the things that they're working on are harmful.
But they have mortgages, and they have kids
in private schools, and it's it's,
it's a difficult line for people,
and I I I I think that that
a lot of people who
who want to to work on it from
the inside,
I think they end up massively dissatisfied by
their own impact.
But at the same time, it is something
that's needed, and the the the people who
are getting fired for for protesting Google,
the people who are writing open letters,
who are publishing
about
what Meta does internally,
even the people who are talking to me
and giving me you know, telling me the
story about what really happens within these companies
can be massively impactful. And if they're not
there,
then,
you know, then the only people who are
having voices in those rooms
are people who are pro Israel. So it
is
absolutely
necessary,
but I think it is also
yeah. I can I can only imagine the
toll that it takes on them? And, I
mean, some of those people, frankly, are are
are there.
And what's keeping them there is not just,
you know, and I'm sure you know this
obviously. And
it's not just the mortgage. It's not just
it's it's actually that they feel like this
is the best way they can make change.
And they usually do,
after a few small wins, suffer a massive
loss, and they wonder about themselves. And, you
know, my advice to them has been along
similar lines. Right? Look. I mean, we need
people there.
You know, obviously, continue to be principled, continue
to be unambiguous about where you stand, continue
to try to push the needle,
and to be wise and to be calculated,
but never to to
to never forsake your courage or your conscience
in the process of that. And it's a
it's a rough conversation even from I mean,
I come to it from a pastoral perspective.
Right? Like,
look, you're doing the right thing, I hope,
based upon what you're saying to me. But,
you know, at the same time,
we need people on the outside as well.
What does the outside look like? You started
Tech for Palestine.
There is a group,
no tech for apartheid, which is not the
same thing as tech for Palestine for those
that might be wondering.
Right? What does the outside look like for
someone that works in tech, and how can
they be effective on the outside if that's
the if that's the route that they choose?
So, fundamentally, tech is a sort of a
a way of thinking about the world.
The there there is the industry, and there's
there's an awful lot that people can do
to call out what's happening in the industry,
but it's also a place where
you can build
tech projects
that actually help change things. So for example,
I was on the I was on a
call earlier with people who are working on
this blockade 20 24 thing
where, you know, they're they're they're helping influencers
feel the the pain of not having spoken
out for for Palestine, and they're helping automate
that. You know, people are going out and
they're unfollowing Kim Kardashian 1 at a time,
and there's people out there who are building
software to allow people to
unfollow
1,000,
you know, 100 of 1,000 of of these
influencers
for for not speaking up. So it's it's
a thing where
where where people can have
impact, the same,
type of impact that makes tech a lucrative
industry
for you know, because of because of automation,
because of AI. All these things can be
can be used to
to help Palestine and to fight against the
system at the same time. So with that
being said, what can the person who is
not in tech do? You know, you've got
thousands of people watching this.
How do they get involved?
Where's the hope in all of this? I
mean, obviously, we've all been
you know, you write that you can't sleep.
None of us have been able to sleep.
Right? Anyone with a moral conscience,
immediately resonates with the words that you wrote,
and they're looking for
a silver lining. I mean, it's hard to
say silver lining in the midst of a
genocide, but how do
we get involved? How can the average person
be more conscious with what they purchase, with
what they consume,
how they use their time, how they involve
something that is so foreign to them being
tech, right, when they're not when they're not
in that world? I I think the main
thing that,
that that affects people and makes them think
that they're that they're not able to do
anything
is
that there's so much going on, and they
see so many things that that they they
feel overwhelmed and and helpless.
And I think that that
if people do wanna get involved,
pick one thing that comes by,
that that you see come past you and
figure out how you can get more involved
in that. So for example,
you see things about Israel bonds sometimes.
Israel bonds is is a thing where,
people actually invest. And when I say people,
I mean,
often
cities, municipalities,
large companies,
invest in Israel bonds in order to support
the Israeli economy and also to to make
money because they're in investments.
This is something that they can start to
investigate
in their locality,
in what time you're in. Is there is
there an investment that has been made by
the municipality?
Is there one in your state?
These this information is public. You can do
similar investigations
on your local politicians,
on the companies that that are in your
area.
There's
there's so many facets
to how Israel has this control in the
United States that it actually makes it really
easy to get involved because you just have
to pick one thing that they're doing
and start to spend time on it, find
the other people who are working on it,
and get organized. Have you been able to
work with anyone from Palestine?
Have you been able to take, like, a
young person from Gaza or from Palestine and
sort of train them up, attack
minds from there? I mean, could you share
any stories about that or any particular individual
that maybe stands out to you? So that
that's not the sort of advocacy that we're
doing at the moment.
We are we are very much focused on,
advocacy within the US,
and and and in the west, but an
awful lot of our
volunteers and the people people the people who
who set up Protect for Palestine, the the
25 initial were 80%,
Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim.
So it's a very, you know, very heavy
involvement in it. The the funny thing about,
you know, about asking about,
you know, helping Palestinians
get technical
is that Palestine is incredibly heavy heavily technical.
The there is a huge number of engineers,
software engineers in particular in Palestine.
As as you know, it's, you know, an
incredibly well educated,
workforce and and population, and a lot of
that is within tech and within within software
engineering.
You know, you're Irish, which is, obviously,
something that
in some ways has to be formative to
the way that you kinda enter into this
arena. You know, I had the pleasure of
going to Ireland, to Dublin, in fact,
you know, back in February,
And I was absolutely blown away by the
solidarity,
of the Irish people with Palestine. It's something
you hear about. It's something you you you
see, but it's another thing to experience that.
And it was absolutely overwhelming. I think that
the experience
of Palestinian solidarity,
finding that within our allies,
this time around, as ugly as the genocide
has been,
as refreshing as the breath of the allyship
has been. We're seeing, obviously, Ireland and South
Africa, but if you go to any encampment,
you see a pretty large Jewish presence.
You see a large presence of people across
the board, Black Palestine solidarity.
Do you see any hope,
you know, in in sort of the breadth
of the pro Palestine movement now and the
broadening of the pro Palestine movement? Is that
something that gives you
hope in particular? Absolutely. And I feel that
that it's barely even started.
You know, we're we're seeing this in the
incumbents.
But
the vast majority of the people in America,
for example,
are are not aware of the other side
of narrative. They've only gotten what they've been
fed
for for decades.
The, you know, the the anti Arab sentiment
and and Islamophobia
after 911, for example,
they
have very much been only fed the idea
of Israel as our ally. Israel is the
only democracy in the Middle East. We need
to support them. We need to keep sending
money their way.
That's that's the narrative they've been fed. And
as, you know, Gen z, in particular, starts
to
starts to ask questions, they learn very quickly
that that they're being lied to. And so
when you see that
narrative break open as we are seeing now,
And, you know, it is it is mainstream
questioning
our alliance with Israel is mainstream,
Questioning whether we should be bombing children in
Gaza and in particular,
whether we should be spending our money on
that instead of health care is is,
you know, we're we're still at the at
the very start of of that movement for
that that to become pervasive within the US.
And
the amount of supporters
that,
that Israel has is actually incredibly low. The
diehard Zionists in in in the US, I
think, you probably have
3,000,000
Jewish Zionists, maybe 10,000,000 Christian Zionists. It's, you
know, it's it's not a,
representative
of a very large portion of the United
States at all. It's just in
pretty powerful positions like the ADL, like APAC,
like the tech companies.
And as the broader
population
learns
as they are learning,
then it's it's
dramatically gonna change things. And you can see
this in
the in how heavy the suppression is coming
down. The the students are being attacked by
power military police. They're being beaten.
TikTok
is being banned because
and and they have, you know, Mitt Romney
and Anthony Blinken sat down in Arizona to
tell us why that was, and it's because
there were pro Palestinian voices on it.
The suppression that we're seeing
is
because it it it has the potential to
bring down the whole system, frankly,
and they are terrified. And that terror is
because
as people learn what's happening,
they immediately say, that's not right. Why are
we supporting that? So I wanna ask you
a deeply personal question that you probably won't
be asked on any, podcast or in any
interview.
But, you know, one of the things that
many have spoken about
not being Palestinian, not being Muslim, is that
as horrified as they are
by the genocide and our complicity in the
genocide,
they're also inspired by the resilience of the
Palestinian people, and perhaps they see their faith,
their
courage as being generated by something deeper.
What have you as Paul Bigger? What have
you kind of learned about the Palestinian people,
maybe even about Islam as a faith,
by watching the resilience of the Palestinian people?
How does that kinda factor into your own
ability to take on
these companies and,
to take this path that you've taken? Oh,
that's an interesting question.
The
you know, I'll I'll I'll say that that
that I knew very little about, about Palestine
and very little about Islam when,
when I started my journey, and I think
that
the,
probably the narrative that I had was was
one that was fed by the the same
US system that's very,
Islamophobic.
Then it's been really interesting to see,
you know,
how peaceful
Islam is. That was
not something that I've been led to believe
my entire life. And,
you know, as we,
as we're breaking down the narrative, so we're
breaking down, you know, some of ours as
well. And
it seems extremely
important
to how the Palestinians,
you know, the people undergoing
the the bombing in in Gaza, how they
they they continue their lives. It's, you know,
as a as a,
not quite lifelong, but but, you know, most
of my life atheist.
It's it's certainly an an interesting
lesson in how people can apply it,
can apply religion positively.
I come from a country that is
removing itself from a multi 100 year,
suppression by the Catholic church.
And so it's, you know, I've always been
in my life going in the other direction,
so it's it's very interesting to see people
who are applying religion very positively.
So 5, 10 years from now, let's let's
take 10 years from now, and I'll kinda
conclude with this.
If you were to kinda look back 10
years from now and say you succeeded,
we
have succeeded,
what does success look like in 10 years,
you know, considering just how overwhelming
and how far gone this all seems? Like,
what do you what do you hope this
conversation looks like in 10 years,
between between you and I and and perhaps
you and and others that have, embarked upon
this mission
to,
reign in tech? I mean, I I I
think fundamentally,
our our mission,
the the mission of all of us in
this are are is to reign in
quite a lot of the the system. Right?
We're we're trying to rein in tech. We're
trying to rein in the US. We're trying
to rein in Zionism, trying to rein in
Israel, of course. If we have succeeded
in in 10 years, then then things will,
you know, have the potential to look dramatically
different.
A free Palestine, obviously, being 1, but one
where a lot of power is is pulled
out of tech and in particular pulled out
of big tech where they no longer have
power
to suppress content because it's it's politically advantageous
to them.
One where,
the war machine is not promoted and not
funded,
and one, you know, ultimately, where where
where workers in,
in tech have a lot more power to,
to effect change,
from the bottom.
And where that's true of the United States
in general, where where the actual people who
are
dramatically
pro ceasefire, who are dramatically against bombing, who
are dramatically against funding Israel, are are listened
to in not only
Middle Eastern foreign policy decisions,
but also in the broad range of things
in which we are ignored and in which
the the US system doesn't work to serve
us.
Paul, thank you so much for
all that you've done and all that you
continue to do and for taking the time
out to be with us and to share
your insights,
to expose us to,
you know, what what we are deeply unfamiliar
with
at the process level, but, unfortunately, have been
seeing at the outcome level. Thank you for
your conscience, and, thank you for your solidarity.
And we look forward to having you on
once again and continuing to struggle alongside you.
Thank you so much for having me.