Humanity STANDS with Palestine

Bismillah Al hamdu lillah wa salatu salam ala started the name of Allah Almighty, the Most Merciful maker they have in the earth. All praise is due to Him. And we give peace and citations on the final prophet Mohammed Ali. So to set up, first of all, thank you, everyone for coming out today. Thank you to Utica Police Department for assisting us in this thank you for City Hall.

All we really want is consistency. And all we really want is fairness. Right when we see in our own city, the city of Utica, the city that loves refugees, and we know how many people we have in the city of Utica, and the Mohawk Valley that are Palestinians, how many Palestinian refugees we have some of them twice refugee refugee refugees once from Palestine, refugee twice from Iraq, hundreds and hundreds in this community, if not 1000s. And then we see that the City Hall raises up the Israeli flag. And then we hear that Palestinian students are getting suspended from school, because they're upset that teachers in their school in the Utica City School District are flying the flag of

Israel in the classrooms. We just want fairness, we just want equality. We want to have a fair a fair share of the mic, a fair share of the representation, when we see in the news that the demonstrations in support of Israel are well covered by the Sentinel and by the different sort of news outlets. And we see that no matter how hard we try, we see that our efforts are minimized and ignored. All we want is a fair shake. All we want is equality, because we believe firmly that we err on the side of truth. And so we believe that if we were given a fair shake, if we were given equality, if we were given the mic for an equal amount of time covered in the press or an equal

amount of time, that we are confident that the truth would prevail, because this is not this is not this is not an issue of Muslim versus Jew. That's a complete lie. It's not even an issue of out of versus Israeli or anything like that. This is an issue of truth versus falsehood. This is an issue of justice versus oppression. And that's why this is caused that every single person can get behind. And you know, I saw one of the signs I saw I forget what who it was humanity stands with Palestine. If you go across the world, you go to South America, you go to Asia, you go to Australia, you go to Africa, you go all across the world, people understand intuitively. They understand intuitively,

because we've seen this playbook before. The playbook of lies. The playbook of hate. That playbook that tells us that tells us not to believe our eyes, tells us not to believe our ears tells us not to believe things that we've that we know very well. Like, for example, we know that the Israeli government lies they lie about when they bomb hospitals, they lie about when they bombed schools they lie about when they target civilians. They know. Somebody said for example, it's like there's there's an there's an enemy everywhere. Was there an enemy inside the child's skull when you sniped them on the street?

How can you you keep we're not dumb, we're not stupid. But they use the lies and they have a platform and they put pressure, they put pressure on our politicians. They have a very strong presence in Washington, they have a very strong presence in New York state, with the senators and elsewhere, all we want is a fair shake. We bet on ourselves 100% of the time, if we had a fair opportunity to speak, and a fair platform on which to show the world that we are 100% confident that people come to the site of truth in the sight of justice. So this is all that we want. We don't want we don't hate anybody. We just want justice. This is something that is we see on the on CNN and on

Fox News. We see active Israeli military personnel shouting their genocidal intentions, being extremely explicit with what they want to do. And people like the news anchors and pundits are trying to actually cover for them. You can't cover for them anymore. They've gotten in front of the camera, and they've told everyone exactly what they want to do. They blame the Gaza, for they believe all of us, every man, woman and child in Nevada, they blame them. Every man, woman and child in the West Bank, they want their land, and they are going to continue and continue to steal and this possess and rape and murder and kill if no one stops them, if no one stops them and for us in

this community, first of all into the United States, which just passed a $14 billion military aid package to Israel to the shame of every single good hearted person in this country. And across the world. We feel a particular duty, and specifically in this community in Utica, in the Mohawk Valley, where we have again, hundreds if not 1000s of Palestinian refugees. And I don't know maybe there are but I've never met a single Israeli refugee. I've never met one. Maybe they exist. I'm not sure maybe it's like Bigfoot. But if that doesn't show you the asymmetry of the conflict, the asymmetry of the situation that I don't know what will

we do not agree and we will not stand for the Congress, the United States become just a weapons dealer.

We will not stand to see our country captured by the interests of a foreign nation.

We don't have any control over. Right? We refuse to allow our, our supposedly elected representatives to hijack, to not be accountable to us, but to be more accountable to AIPAC and the Israeli lobby and other sort of interests that are pushing genocide. Right, they're going to write this history down. People are going to read this history one day, and we're going we have an immense responsibility may we might be the most responsible people on Earth. The citizens of the United States and the people living in this place might be the most responsible people on the earth when it comes to ending this. So we have to we have to come together, we have to unite, we have to be clear

about what this is about. And we have to strive for justice, we tell Congress and we tell the government not a penny more, not 14 billion not we don't want it down to 13 billion, we don't want it down to 12 billion, not a penny more, stop being an arms dealer. For foreign nations study in Washington, George Washington, he said something that we cannot have such a thing as an ally, that's a permanent ally that just gets blank checks. I'm paraphrasing, obviously. But look at what the situation is. We have absolutely no accountability, I suppose that ally, which we spend more money on four times more money, propping up the Israeli army, then we spend on food stamps in the United

States, we don't have health care, we don't have adequate food. We don't have proper education, everything's falling apart in this country. And yet, we prop up the Israeli military to kill and achieve their genocidal aims. Tell me what is the sense of that, telling me that our government isn't captured by foreign interests.

So we're here today as just a small cell, part of a larger organism. And that organism is sweeping across the world to fight for justice, to stand up and to be counted and to not be silenced. Because we've seen how we've seen this movie before. We've seen the intimidation tactics, and the four students that were suspended from the Utica City School District, this is one of the scare tactics, to be quiet, to be silenced, to not speak up, we won't be quiet, we're not going to be silent. We're not going to be intimidated. If some of us have to lose our jobs. Okay, well, we'll lose our jobs, we'll take it. That's the price that we have to pay. Well lucky if that's the price that we have to

pay to set to set Palestine free will pay it, no problem. If we have to be spat on, if we have to be beat up. We remember not too long ago, this country had to go through this when it came to the rights of African Americans. We saw the African Americans at the lunch counters and getting the hoses turned on them and the dog sit on them and getting beat up by the police. If that has to be asked, and we're ready. If we that that has to be us, then we'll do it. We'd rather not. But if we have to do it, we will. If that's what it's going to take to stop the unaccountability and the blank checks and the sponsoring of genocide and murder that will do it. And so we asked everybody to be

brave. We asked everybody not to be intimidated. We asked everybody to come together. And to understand that this is how community works. Every single person here face to face now and these are people who live in the community. We could have walked here if we wanted to. We live right down the street, everybody here, the police officer here, we're all part of the same community. And so we have an accountability towards each other. It's not about the foreign interests that come from half the world away that are paying lobbyists in Washington, DC to get Chuck Schumer or the other representatives to do what they want. This is about community. And if we don't stand up for our

community, nobody else will. And if we don't stand up to end this and to stop the state support of terrorism, which is what the Israeli government is doing. It's terrorism and genocide, then no one else will