Campus Protest Propaganda Snowballs; Congress Moves to Criminalize Israel Critics
TIMESTAMPS:
Intro (0:00)
Campus Crackdown (6:09)
Interview with Laila Al-Arian (26:03)
Protest Propaganda Push (41:45)
Congress to Criminalize Israel Criticism (50:34)
Outro (1:12:30)
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, a massive show of police force was deployed at various colleges throughout New York City designed to forcibly shut down protests and arrest protesters with the largest presence at Columbia.
Many journalists who have covered protests around the world said they have never seen so much police forth gathered to crack down on political dissent.
Meanwhile, a group of pro-Israel counter-protesters appeared at UCLA and violently attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment, screaming anti-Palestinian vulgarities and using force, including wood and other weapons, in order to attack the protesters who have been long gathered there.
It was really remarkable to watch.
How much propaganda and even lies were so glaringly unleashed and spread by the American media to attempt to demonize the protests against the U.S.-supported and financed Israeli war in Gaza?
As just one example, It was alleged by the NYPD and then mindlessly recited by media outlets who are obsessively pro-Israel, such as CNN, that the wife of a known terrorist was a menacing presence at the Columbia protest.
Now, as it turns out, they were referring to the wife of former University of South Florida professor Samuel Arien, who was arrested right after 9-11 and became the first test case for how far the Patriot Act could be stretched.
When the Bush administration accused him of, quote, material support for terrorism as a result of his fundraising for charities in Gaza that were alleged to be linked to groups the U.S.
had designated as terrorist organizations.
I follow and reported on that case very closely at the time, including interview Al-Aryan and his family while he was under house arrest.
And it was really one of the worst abuses of the criminal justice system I had ever seen.
Al-Aryan was acquitted by a jury on the most serious charges, namely providing material support to terrorism, even though the government had been spying on him for many years while that trial produced a hung jury on the more minor charges, and yet he was never let go.
He ended up being consigned for years under house arrest until he finally agreed to be deported to Turkey as the only way to finally end that case and the persecution of his family.
His daughter, the longtime broadcast journalist Laila Al-Aryan, will be with us to discuss this case.
But perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all of this is how cynically these alleged human rights concerns are weaponized.
Whenever the officially designated bad countries such as Russia and China and Iran send police to arrest protesters and crush protest movements in Hong Kong or Tehran or throughout Russia, it is immediately denounced in the United States as pure evil tyranny.
Yet when dictatorships that are the U.S.' 's closest allies cross-protest with police force in, say, Saudi Arabia or Egypt, that is basically ignored because there's no benefit in denouncing the world's most savage pro-American tyrants.
And yet when the U.S.
engages in these same human rights abuses, when it indefinitely imprisons Julian Assange to try to kill him, or when the government deploys massive police force to crack down on political protesters, that same act is cheered by the people who feign horror when done by America's enemies.
We'll examine all this propaganda and deceit surrounding this use of police power over the last week to try and finally end these protests against the foreign government in Tel Aviv.
Then the House of Representatives today, by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 320 to 91, enacted a law designed to wildly expand the official definition of, quote, anti-Semitism, a definition that, as we will show you now, explicitly includes all sorts of common, valid, normal explicitly includes all sorts of common, valid, normal criticisms of the Israeli government.
By doing so, Congress is proclaiming that the desire to shield this foreign country and its government is more important than preserving the free speech rights of American citizens.
We will look in detail at this bill and the vote to examine all of its implications.
It has horrified even many people on the right who are supportive of Israel and yet who are saying this is one of the gravest attacks on the First Amendment in years.
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It has done many times to diplomatically shield the Israelis from condemnation by the UN and other international institutions.
There has been an obvious growing desire to find some way to render those political protests criminal to crack down on them, to put an end to them.
And over the last month, these protests have been growing and growing to the point where they are now, like other protests, relying on tactics such as using permanent encampments as a way of making their presence felt.
In Colombia, they resorted to occupying a building that had been occupied many times over many decades for all kinds of different protests.
And yet it has become obvious that even though protesting is a fundamental First Amendment right, even though criticizing a foreign government and a foreign war that the United States finances and supports is a core fundamental right, there has been a strong desire to use police force to criminalize those views and to shut down those protests. there has been a strong desire to use police force And that's exactly what we watched happen, primarily in New York City, but around the country as massive police force.
Including the paramilitary units of the local police and the state police were deployed to remove all of these protesters by force.
From the Wall Street Journal today, quote, hundreds of protesters were arrested as universities blame outsiders for escalating violence.
Police cracked down on pro-Palestinian encampments at Columbia, UCLA, and other schools.
Quote, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday that nearly 300 people were arrested at Columbia University and City College of New York.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison said police dispersed an encampment and arrested 34 people.
Tulane University in New Orleans said 14 protesters were arrested Wednesday, in addition to the six arrested a day earlier.
At the University of California Los Angeles, dozens of counter-protesters gathered at a pro-Palestinian encampment's perimeter around 11 p.m.
Tuesday night, and tensions escalated quickly.
According to video from local TV news and witnesses the counter protesters dismantled metal barricades Around the encampment in some case throwing them throwing the metal barricades at the pro-palestinian demonstrators some of the encampment members attempted to pull barricades back and Reconstruct the barrier quote.
This is a move.
There's a movement to radicalize young people New York City Mayor Adam said I'm not going to allow that to happen How can The mayor of New York announced that he's not going to allow whatever he considers radicalization.
You're allowed to express views designed to radicalize people on a certain issue.
You're allowed to go and tell them you believe the 2020 election was stolen.
You're allowed to go and tell them that Hillary Clinton is a corrupt and evil figure who would be disastrous as president.
You're allowed to go and tell them that the Israeli war in Gaza is a war crime and the United States is a collaborator by financing it and arming it.
You're allowed to say any of those things.
It's not up to the mayor to stop ideas or protest movements that he regards as quote radicalizing.
And yet that's what he said on Wednesday, that they, as they, the police moved to arrest protesters after noticing that they had shifted their tactics, is the Wall Street Journal article that we can put on the screen, including distributing pamphlets that said, quote, globalize the intifada.
Can we put that paragraph up on the screen?
So that's the Wall Street Journal report.
And as you can see, they are taking whatever you believe of these opinions.
A call to globalize the Intifada, which as we said before is an Arabic word for an uprising.
There's nothing inherently violent about it.
You're allowed to argue that there should be a global Intifada to end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the bombing of Gaza.
Even if you don't like those opinions, you should feel far more bothered if the police are being deployed to shut down those opinions because if they're shutting down those opinions when you don't like them, they can easily shut them down for the opinions that you like as well.
The LA Times earlier today reported on what became the violent attack by pro-Israel protesters, Quote, pro-Israel counter-protesters attack pro-Palestinian camp at UCLA.
Violence continues for hours.
The counter-protesters tried to tear down the barricades surrounding the encampment.
Some on campus said they were stunned it took so long before officials stepped in.
And you can see some videos here of the massive show of police force that was deployed in New York City.
Looked like armies like of the kind of that you see in the countries we're told to believe are tyrannies like in China and Iran and Russia when illegal protests happen and you see these massive armies of armed agents of the state bearing down on these protesters.
Now it is true that in Colombia Protesters occupied a building on campus that had been occupied many times.
It's kind of a symbolic building for Columbia, where a lot of student protests over the decades against the Vietnam War, against the invasion of Iraq, against the U.S.
support for the apartheid regime of South Africa in the 1980s.
All of those protests took place.
It often involved occupying buildings.
This is a normal way that students protest, and yet you're seeing The one issue where apparently that will pour police officers into the streets.
Remember under President Trump in 2020, we saw protests going on for months in every major American city.
And there was never any kind of response of this kind that was deployed against people who are protesting Israel.
Here is Michael Tracy who is at the Columbia campus.
Here is the video that he produced where he was reporting on what was going on as he saw it.
You see these columns of paramilitarized police officers shutting down all the streets surrounding Columbia and then marching in.
Let's go!
The police police are under arrest and charged with the police.
Yes, you can find an example of students yelling at each other, but it's not as though Jewish students on Columbia's campus or anywhere else were being physically assaulted or attacked, except on UCLA, where the violence was initiated by the pro-Israel protesters.
And yet, They're acting as though some terrorist organization has taken over American buildings through force and are heavily armed.
And they're responding in a way that you would expect almost a military response to look like.
Not a protest movement against, not an attempt to shut down a protest by unarmed college students.
Who are 19 and 20 and into their early 20s.
Now the reports that came out of the New York Police Department designed to justify what they were doing were wildly speculative and in many cases just outright false.
And yet of course they were laundered by the media without any kind of critical scrutiny.
Here, for example, on Morning Joe.
The MSNBC show this morning just airing unvetted and unverified and ultimately false police claims about these protests.
Tell us about this change.
Yeah, so when we entered Hamilton Hall, this is not what students bring to school.
There you see what is basically a paramilitary truck.
to campuses and universities.
These are heavy industrial chains that were locked with bike locks.
And this is what we encountered on every door inside of Hamilton Hall.
And so in order for our emergency services group to enter into the building, they had to first cut through these chains, but also get...
There you see what is basically a paramilitary truck.
This is what happened was the United States bought an enormous amount of military gear after 9-11 that they intended to use in war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq and over the world.
And they ended up buying way more than they could possibly use.
And so Congress directed that the excess be given to police departments all around the country in the name of fighting terrorism.
And now they are armed with weapons and with all kinds of machinery that is intended for war zones.
problems.
But they're not used for war zones, they're used against domestic dissent.
And that's where all of this comes from.
The massive spending splurge after 9-11 on all kinds of military equipment.
Here you see the NYPD that never gets to use their cool toys using it now in order to enter this campus.
And you hear this justification.
Look at these chains.
These chains that you can buy anywhere.
These are terrorist chains.
This was how, for those of you who didn't live through 9-11, what it was like all the time.
They would take the most banal facts and they would say, oh, look, this is something that only terrorists do.
We've shown you before certain statements that were made about how they would take people to Guantanamo and they would tie them up and put goggles on them and prevent them from hearing or seeing.
They would gag them, their mouths, for 12-hour trips.
And when media asked why Is there such extreme repression of people using tactics that we don't usually use on human beings?
They would link things like, oh, these guys can, like, chew through a hydraulic tube and take down a C-17, you know, turning them into, like, supervillains.
Like super, like superheroes, but of the kind that Humanity never sees these kind of powers.
And that's what this is designed to do, is to say, look at these chains.
Only serious terrorists use these chains.
No student could buy a chain like that.
You can get those chains anywhere.
Here's the rest of this.
Rid of debris and barricaded doors that were barricaded with refrigerators, vending machines, chairs, you name it, they pushed it up against those doors to try and stop us from coming in.
But our guys would not be stopped.
They did a fantastic job of entering into that location and taking people into custody without incident last night.
They took about 40 to 50 people into custody inside the lobby of Hamilton Hall last night.
Wow, congratulations to the NYPD on the spectacular achievement of removing unarmed 20-year-olds from a college building and putting them into trucks and arresting them all for the crime of politically protesting.
Now, in addition to the terrorist chains that we were told were utilized at these protests, we were also told that there was a wife of a known terrorist Who is one of the protesters on Columbia University's campus.
Here is Ali Bauman, a local CBS New York affiliate reporter, who, and again, they just are fed this by the New York Police Department and they just write it down and spread it without the slightest concern for whether or not it's true.
The tweet reads from Ali Bauman, quote, New York City Hall sources tell CBS evidence that the wife of a known terrorist is with protesters on Columbia University campus.
And there you see she deleted the tweet afterward because the claim was so preposterous.
The wife of a known terrorist was present on Columbia's campus.
Here is CNN spreading the same report and listen to what it is that they said to try and make these protests sound as sinister as possible.
Here's Laura Coates last night reporting on the protests by repeating what the NYPD told her.
And we're learning tonight that the wife of an indicted terrorist was on the campus last week.
It was pointed to a post on X by Sami Al-Arian, a former University of Colorado professor who pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to provide services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in 2006.
He posted on X last week to a photo of his wife on the campus of Columbia University saying, quote, my wife Nala is audacious and brave and very determined.
So none of this was hidden.
The quote-unquote known terrorist posted a photo of his elderly wife, she's in her I believe now mid-60s maybe even older, who was on the campus in solidarity with the protesters because they're Palestinians.
And he proudly tweeted that, quote, "My wife Nala in solidarity with the brave and very determined Columbia University students." Now this was, this claim was spread all around social media by Israel supporters to make it seem like this was a terrorist attack that was happening on Columbia rather than what it was.
A peaceful protest of unarmed students.
Every single one of them that was arrested at Columbia was a student even though there were claims that they were composed mostly of outsiders.
They were all students.
But because they were with the wife of a known terrorist, you were supposed to believe that this was kind of very sinister and menacing, terroristic act that we needed our paramilitarized police to put a stop to.
Now as I said, the case of Sami Al-Aryan was one that I reported on extensively throughout the Bush years and then into the Obama years.
And in 2015, along with my colleague at the Intercept, Murtaza Hussein, we published an interview, an exclusive interview, with Sami Al-Aryan, the professor who defeated a controversial terrorism charge and then got deported from the U.S.
And the reason I spent so much time reporting on this case is because it was the first test case to see how far they could stretch the Patriot Act and all of the new powers that they had.
And the FBI took this person, Samuel Arien, who was in the United States for years as a college professor.
In fact, he raised money for George Bush's 2000 campaign.
He met with President Bush by himself.
If he were some kind of terrorist, he could have taken a pen and stabbed President Bush with.
He had lived in the United States without incident forever but he was definitely an advocate of the Palestinian cause.
He raised money and sent it to Gaza in charities that the U.S.
government decided to use the Patriot Act to claim that these charities were linked to designated terrorist organizations in Gaza and as a result he was accused of material support for terrorism.
A felony that if he were convicted of it would send him to prison for the rest of his life.
And they put him on trial and because of the Patriot Act, they were able to spy on his telephone conversations for years.
And despite all of those pages and all of those years of transcripts of hearing and listening and surveilling what he was doing and saying, the jury listened to all of that evidence and acquitted him.
Do you know how hard it is to get an acquittal in a terrorism case against an Arab man in the United States in the years right after 9-11?
It's basically impossible.
The federal judges, the federal courts are all wildly pro-prosecution.
And for a jury not even to split but to acquit on this charge of supporting a terrorist organization shows you how dubious this case was from the start.
It was just an attempt to punish somebody who was a critic of Israel under these new laws, under the Patriot Act.
That they got.
Now, here in the LA Times in December of 2005, which is when they had the trial, there you see, ex-professor is acquitted in the Patriot Act test case.
Quote, in a case closely watched as a key test of the Patriot Act, a former university professor accused of helping lead a Palestinian terrorist organization was acquitted Tuesday on nearly half of the charges against him and the jury deadlocked on the rest.
Samuel Arien, who taught computer engineering at the University of South Florida in Tampa, wept and embraced his lawyer after the federal jury found him not guilty on eight of 17 counts, including conspiring to murder and maim people outside the United States.
The panel deadlocked on charges that he had, among other things, engaged in money laundering and attempting to illegally obtain U.S.
citizenship.
So just these minor charges they tacked on that had nothing to do with him supposedly being a terrorist leader.
And that didn't stop everybody last night, including CNN, from screeching that a wife of a known terrorist, namely Samuel Arien, who was acquitted of the charges, was present at the Columbia protest.
Now, amazingly, after he was acquitted and there was a hung jury, the Justice Department did not let him go.
Almost immediately after they charged him with another crime, namely contempt because it was refusal to testify in another case, and a federal court judge ordered him to be confined to home imprisonment, and they filed a motion to dismiss, to dismiss the charges.
And the federal judge in New York, Lorena Brinkman, sat on the motion.
She just refused to decide the motion, not for months, but for years.
She just didn't rule on it.
And as a result he remained charged the second time, went to prison again, then was put into...
Home prison.
He was not able to leave his house.
That's where I first interviewed him and met him and his family.
And then here's Politico in June of 2014.
So it was an eight-year ordeal after he was first acquitted.
The feds drop the El-Aryan prosecution.
Quote, the Justice Department has dropped a long-stalled second criminal prosecution of a former college professor who pleaded guilty to aiding a terrorist group following a high-profile trial in Florida that ended with a muddled verdict almost a decade ago.
Federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia, filed a motion seeking to dismiss a criminal contempt indictment brought in 2008 against former University of South Florida Mechanical Engineer Professor Sami Al-Arian, who was boarding Kuwait to Palestinian parents.
In the new filing, prosecutors said they decided to give up on the contempt case after delays precipitated by U.S.
District Court Judge Leoni Brinkema sitting for years on a critical motion in the case without ruling one way or another.
So this is the person that we were told was the known terrorist whose wife was found to be president at Columbia and people who were Israel supporters spread this and use this continuously in order to try and imply that the protest at Columbia was not what it was, namely a peaceful political protest objecting to the Israeli war in Gaza.
But instead that it was some sort of gathering of terrorists who wanted to violently attack the United States and therefore some sort of massive attack of physical force was necessary in order to shut down a political protest.
Samia Al-Aryan's daughter is Laila Al-Aryan, who I've known for a long time.
She's a long-time broadcast journalist for Al Jazeera English.
She's a graduate of Columbia Journalism School, and she has written for multiple magazines and news outlets around the country, often focusing on the Middle East, and her series on the 2018 travel ban won an Emmy Award.
She is, as I said, the daughter of Samia Al-Aryan and also Nalia Al-Aryan, whom the media attempted to depict as, quote, the wife of a known terrorist present at the Columbia protest, and we're delighted to Have her on our show to talk to us about all of this.
Lila, good evening.
It's great to see you.
Thanks so much for joining us tonight.
Thank you, Glenn.
Thanks for having me.
Absolutely.
So I just went over some of the facts of your father's case, which, as you know, I extensively followed at the time, obviously because of the concerns that I had about the Patriot Act.
It's amazing.
This was sort of the test case of the Patriot Act, and a lot of people who claim that they disliked the Patriot Act were labeling your father a known terrorist.
So before we get a little bit into the details of what was done to him, just talk a little bit about Who your father is, what he was doing in the United States at the time that he was charged by the Bush administration with these felonies?
Sure.
Well, my father actually came to the United States when he was 17 years old.
He came to study here.
He actually, you know, studied undergrad and then went on to get his master's and PhD.
He became a university professor of computer engineering at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida, where he was tenured.
He won teaching awards.
He was a really great professor, but he also, as a son of Palestinian refugees who were forcibly expelled from their home in 1948, he was never allowed to forget that he was Palestinian.
He grew up in Egypt, where laws actually discriminated against Palestinians, and that was actually what brought him to the United States to study.
And he was a very passionate advocate for Palestinian rights.
He founded a number of different organizations in which he held conferences and published magazines and gave speeches about the Palestinian cause and really was a tireless advocate.
As you mentioned, his story really goes on for many, many years, so we can talk about it for hours.
But I think part of what caught the eye of very, you know, nefarious, I would say, pro-Israel groups is how effective he was as an advocate and as a spokesperson for the Palestinian issue.
And then he was investigated by the FBI for years.
They never really had any evidence to charge him.
It wasn't until 9-11 that they kind of took advantage of the situation of the environment of fear and hysteria and ended up Putting together this, you know, massive indictment involving four men, so three other Palestinian men, in addition to my father, with, you know, many counts between them.
They spent millions of dollars to go after him.
You know, in the trial, they brought dozens of witnesses, including two dozen from Israel, to testify about acts that the government itself conceded my father had nothing to do with, but it was really a way to try to emotionally sway the jury.
The jury was made up of 12 people from the Tampa area where the media had been after my father for over a decade.
And you can imagine it was the worst kind of smear campaign you can imagine, very sustained.
And yet, and yet, despite the environment of fear and hysteria after 9-11, the anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian sentiment, despite the resources that the government put in going after my father and trying to get multiple life sentences for him, they failed.
They failed miserably.
They were humiliated and embarrassed.
They couldn't get a single guilty verdict out of this jury.
Afterwards, local reporters asked one of the jurors, what would it have taken?
Or they said, why didn't you convict Dr. Alarian and the other men?
He said there was no evidence.
And they said, what would it have taken for you to convict them?
He said, evidence.
So there was no evidence for their claims, for their very sensationalist accusations against him.
And they failed.
And as you mentioned, his case dragged on for a total of 12 years because of the vindictive nature of the Department of Justice, particularly one prosecutor here in Northern Virginia, where I now live, who tried to retry the Florida case in Northern Virginia.
And thankfully, he also failed.
So I was doing my show last night and then immediately after began hearing this claim that a wife of a known terrorist was present at the Columbia protest.
And I could just tell right away, given the ambiguity of it, given this formulation, that it was almost certainly something that was just fabricated out of whole cloth.
And then when I learned that it was actually your mother who they were referring to, I was just so amazed because as part of the reporting I did, I got to know your family some and I remember meeting with your father when he was under house arrest and got to know not just him and his wife and your mother, but also several of his children.
I remember walking away thinking, wow, this is like the classic immigrant success story.
You have like this couple who are fleeing persecution.
They come to the United States because they want to be free.
Your father became politically involved in his community, politically involved on a national level as well.
And then Had his children, who were raised in the United States, become highly successful and highly educated?
Talk a little bit about the work that you've done and the work that your brothers and sisters have done as well.
Sure.
Well, a lot of us, as you mentioned, are actually working in media.
So I'm a journalist.
My sister, Lemma, is also a journalist.
We've both made documentaries.
I'm now the executive producer of a documentary show called Fault Lines on Al Jazeera English.
We actually did an episode about the oppression of Columbia students, pro-Palestine students, called the Palestine Exception, that came out a month ago, so before even the encampment.
But that's just some of the work that my program does.
And My brother, you know, another brother's in academia, another brother's also a documentary filmmaker, civil rights activism as well in the family.
So we're all very, you know, sort of active, educated, as you mentioned.
And as soon as I saw what you mentioned, the smears against my mother and the fact that the media was Was just regurgitating it, you know, mindlessly, thoughtlessly.
I was appalled.
I mean, this is clearly a really desperate attempt by Mayor Eric Adams to justify the horrific scenes we saw last night, which will be in the history books as a case of state repression and overreach in terms of sending dozens and dozens of NYPD officers to remove students from a building.
Of course, we know there's this Long-standing tradition of students taking over buildings and anti-war protests, but in this case, he decided to justify it by invoking my mother, a 63-year-old retired teacher who simply wanted to see this beautiful act of solidarity, this protest in support of the people of Gaza.
She herself, her father was from Gaza.
She's lost over 200 family members in the last six months in Israel's horrific and violent campaign in Gaza.
And it was just this scene that really gave her hope and made her feel this sense of solidarity.
And it's really shameful that the Adams administration used her presence during a very short time on campus in a disgusting attempt to smear these student activists.
And what's equally shameful is the media just regurgitating it without actually trying to do their jobs as journalists reporting it out.
Ali Bauman tweeting it out of local CBS in New York and then deleting it only after, you know, 101.5 million people had seen it.
And then CNN also had a really shameful segment last night mentioning it as if it's some breaking news that a 63-year-old woman visited the encampment.
It's simply because of the fact that we're a Palestinian Muslim family, that my father was targeted after 9-11 and smeared in this way.
And it shows you how bankrupt they are, that they actually have nothing against these students that they're really reaching.
It is notable, I think, to me at least, that we've had decades of very similar protests, but those were aimed at the United States government primarily.
The war in Vietnam, the invasion of Iraq, the support for apartheid South Africa, the Black Lives Matter protest, and we didn't see anything like this kind of force, especially in the first couple of weeks.
And yet, it seems like You're fine if you're engaged in a protest movement aimed at the United States government, but the one thing that you can't do, the one line you can't cross, unless you want to provoke a paramilitary response, is criticizing this foreign government of Israel.
Let me just ask you, just returning to your father's case, because one of the things that bugged me so much was Independent of this effort to turn your mother into this sinister presence, also calling your father a known terrorist was simply false because, as you said, the attempt to charge him with that ended in an acquittal.
The charges that were actually about him being involved in a terrorist organization, the rest were produced a hung jury.
After, just talk about the series of events after your father was acquitted and the Bush administration got humiliated, had this hung jury, despite having access to every one of his conversations.
They didn't let him go.
They, again, as you said, continue to try and pursue him.
What is it that was done to him after that acquittal?
Sure.
Well, after he was acquitted, he actually signed a plea agreement with the government because technically there were some charges that the jury was hung on.
And just to explain what happened, 10 out of the 12 jurors wanted to fully acquit him.
The two jurors that did not want to fully acquit him were the two that happened to read the Tampa Tribune.
It's now a defunct newspaper, but at the time it was a major daily in Tampa.
And it happened to be the right-wing daily that smeared my father for many years, and they happened to be the two readers of the Tampa Tribune.
So it was no coincidence.
You see here sort of the role of the media and the press and the persecution, and even in the fact that these two jurors, despite being presented with no solid evidence of the government's claims still, would say, well, it's in our gut that he's guilty.
That's why we don't want to fully acquit him.
So the judge was able to see where the jury was leaning after 13 days of deliberations.
He actually stopped the deliberations.
He was very biased against my father and the other men, and he actually told the jury to stop deliberating.
And because of that, they weren't able to agree on the remaining counts, so the government technically could retry my father on those remaining counts.
My father then eventually reached a plea agreement with the Department of Justice to say, OK, I'm going to plead to this lesser charge in order for this case to be concluded, for my family's suffering to end.
And he actually agreed to deportation at that point.
We expected, this was 2006, so we expected he'd be deported that year, maybe the following year.
Instead, this very vindictive, extremely pro-Israel prosecutor named Gordon Cromberg here in the Eastern District of Virginia, he's the same person who's going after Julian Assange, just to give you a sense of who this prosecutor is, as well as some of the other police 9-11, really troubling.
He has brought some of the most dubious post 9-11 cases, charging people with major, major crimes based on the slimmest read.
As you said, he's just a pure political activist, a fanatical supporter of Israel.
Go ahead.
So what did he do?
Absolutely.
I mean, he's made a string of Islamophobic anti-Palestinian statements as well.
So, very troubling history.
So, Cromberg wanted to sort of prolong, you know, my father's suffering, our family's suffering, and also try to retry the Florida case the DOJ lost so badly.
in Florida here in Virginia.
So what he was doing was engaging in a fishing expedition of some major Muslim American organizations here in Northern Virginia, including a think tank that the government had been investigating for years and wasn't able to charge with anything because it's a big thing.
So he would bring my father to testify before a grand jury about that case, ostensibly, but what he really wanted to do was ask him questions about the Florida case.
So it was really a perjury trap.
And it's really easy to charge someone of perjury in these situations under, in these grand jury situations.
So, but, but however, my father and his plea agreement with the DOJ said, I will not be a cooperating witness.
This is something that the government does a lot when they sign plea agreements with people, which is to try to get them to be cooperating witnesses.
My father knew that he wasn't interested in that.
He said, as part of my agreement, you know, this will conclude my dealings with the government.
I will not be a cooperating witness.
What Cronberg was doing was violating that plea agreement.
However, because my father wouldn't testify before this grand jury, he was held first in civil contempt and then charged criminal contempt.
Again, this was a way for Cronberg to prolong his suffering and to try to retry the Florida case because the questions he really wanted to ask were about the Florida case.
My father was charged with criminal contempt.
He was placed on house arrest.
And as you mentioned, Judge Leonie Brinkema here in the Eastern District of Virginia simply didn't rule between 2008 and 2014, when the Obama administration, DOJ, finally decided to just drop that criminal contempt charge.
We don't know why they decided to drop it.
I mean, it had been going on for so long and, you know, nothing was moving in the case.
And he was eventually deported from the U.S. because that was part of his plea agreement.
So he's been in this country since the age of 17.
The Eastern District of Virginia, where they tried to bring the case, is absolutely notorious for basically being a a place that national security defendants go and have no chance of anything other than a guilty verdict.
That's precisely why they want to bring Julian Assange to that district in Virginia under that same prosecutor, under all these judges who are absolutely notorious for being just mindlessly pro-government.
And, you know, as I said, I think this is one of the most abusive cases I had ever seen.
It's amazing how many people on the right who say how opposed they are to the Patriot Act seem to be perfectly willing to call your father a terrorist even though he was the first test case of how far they could take the Patriot Act and they failed in their charge of trying to turn him into a terrorist.
When I learned that it was your mother last night that they were referring to at first, I kind of laughed and then I realized it was actually not funny.
I mean, it's just, it's such a profoundly deceitful way of trying to depict that situation and to suggest that the Columbia protest was some kind of a terroristic threat to Americans.
Well, I'm really happy we were able to get you on tonight and to remind people, including me, about the trajectory of your father's case.
I'm sorry that you had to hear your mother being described that way last night, but I think people and the fact that this journalist Thank you so much.
ended up deleting her tweet.
I think people understand that they went way too far in making those claims.
So there was at least that.
Thank you so much.
It was great to see you.
Thank you so much, Glenn.
And one last thing, if your audience is interested in learning more about the case, there was a documentary made about it called USA vs. Al-Aryan, that if you just Google USA vs. Al-Aryan, you can find free to stream on Vimeo.
We will put the link underneath the video.
So for people who are interested, and I hope you go and watch it, they can go and watch that to get a sense for what things were like after 9-11, because in so many ways, it's like we're living through it again.
Thank you so much.
Have a great evening.
Okay.
Now, one of the issues that is so amazing about the reaction to this crackdown and how many people in both political parties are supportive of it is that when similar things happen in the countries that we're all trained to hate and dislike because they're adversaries of the United States, countries like China and Iran and Russia, where we're constantly hearing about police crackdowns on protesters,
The reaction is much, much different from the very same people who are plotting the police for going and cracking down on protests inside the United States.
Here, for example, is Senator Josh Hawley, the Republican from Missouri, in 2019, saying the following, quote, Hong Kong police are trapping hundreds of students inside Poly University, won't let them leave.
Apparently they want mass arrests.
These actions by Beijing-backed government raise question whether China is in violation of its 1984 Joint Declaration commitment.
So you had students in Hong Kong, very devoted to a cause, but breaking the law, trespassing in buildings, occupying buildings, and when the police That were sent by the by Beijing and controlled the Hong Kong police controlled by Beijing went and did the same thing which is remove those protesters from that building and then arrest them people like Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton We're indignant with rage over the tyranny we were witnessing.
Here's Tom Cotton in 2019, quote, the police violence against protesters in Hong Kong is unacceptable.
We must support these brave individuals standing against Chinese Communist Party tyranny and pass the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.
It's so inspiring that U.S.
Senators are so interested in the rights of protest of people on the other side of the world in Hong Kong and yet so eager to trample over them when they're Americans and on American soil and expressing a view these Senators dislike.
Here was Marco Rubio in 2021.
As the Iranian people peacefully demand freedom from the regime in Tehran, Senator Rubio condemns the regime's brutal use of force to disperse peaceful protesters.
The US should stand in support instead of negotiating a deal with the evil regime in Tehran.
Do you see how these human rights concerns are completely manipulated based on whatever the interests are of the American government at the time?
Here from the Associated Press, in September of 19, Nancy Pelosi welcomes Hong Kong pro-democracy activists to the Capitol.
Pelosi thanked the activists for, quote, challenging the conscience, not only of the Chinese government, but the worldwide community with their mass protest over the territory's autonomous status.
She sided with the protesters' demand and universal suffrage and a, quote, political system accountable to the people.
Republicans joined the Democratic leader, as always, alongside several Hong Kong activists who have become prominent figures in the mass protest since June in a stately room off the House floor beneath a portrait of George Washington.
Republican Congressman Michael McFaul of Texas said Americans see the young people waving American flags on the Hong Kong streets.
Quote, America stands with you, he said.
Nancy Pelosi has been scorning the protesters using their First Amendment rights here in the United States, claiming that they're pro-Russian, that they're being controlled by the Kremlin, they're outside her house, she hates them.
We love political protests and political protesters when they're in the bad countries whose governments we want to overthrow.
And yet when it comes to our own country or the dictatorships who are very pro-American and who are allies, we don't care about those crackdowns at all.
Hear from Reuters in June of 2016, quote, after university crackdown, Egyptian students feel for their future.
In June 2014, a 23-year-old engineering student, Mohamed Badri, was expelled from Cairo University.
The university has said it objected him for obstructing the education process and for rioting and destruction at a protest against President el-Sisi's government.
Badwy said it was because he protested against the government and supported the Muslim Brotherhood, a political movement that the Egyptian government has banned as a terrorist organization.
Rights groups and students say that under Sisi, Egypt's universities have hounded students as a matter of routine, stationing dozens of security forces on campuses, expelling hundreds of students suspected of Islamist leanings, and abusing or torturing many of those they arrest.
Some of those arrested admit they support or even belong to the Muslim Brotherhood.
And have taken part in protests that sometimes turn violent but often they say they were reacting against abuses by the security forces.
Now, you can look in vain, in vain, for the Josh Hollys and Tom Cotton's and Nancy Pelosi's of the world to side with the Egyptian students who are protesting one of the most savage and tyrannical governments on the planet, which is the government of Cairo, because General Sisi is someone who we helped install into power in a coup that overthrew because General Sisi is someone who we helped install into power in a coup that overthrew the only elected
So they're our friends, the dictatorship, and so you will never hear condemnation of crackdowns in Egypt or in Saudi Arabia.
This is reserved only for, condemnations are for the countries that we're supposed to hate because they're adverse to us.
Here from NBC News in November of 2019.
Human rights group slams Saudi Arabia for a crackdown on dissent.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's reforms obscure his harsh repression of opponents, Human Rights Watch says.
Quote, NBC News reported in January that former US officials and diplomats were deeply troubled by the United States' reluctance to confront Saudi Arabia over its continuing human rights abuses.
They said Washington's failure to confront the kingdom was a repudiation of decades of U.S. policy that would serve as a tacit green light, signaling the Trump administration's approval.
In other words, they were blaming Trump at the time for refusing to condemn the Egyptians, or the Saudis rather, but we never condemn the Egyptians or the Saudis because those are our close allies.
There's no benefit to condemning crackdowns on protests and students in those countries.
The only time we hear condemnations is when it's in the countries that Don't do our bidding.
It's a complete weaponization, so cynically, of claimed human rights abuses.
It's the same exact thing that leads the U.S. media to stand up and denounce Russia and Syria for imprisoning journalists, but have no ability, no capacity to condemn the United States government for doing exactly the same thing in their treatment of Julian Assange or the Ukrainian government's treatment no capacity to condemn the United States government for doing exactly the same Because human rights abuses and condemnations are only for the bad countries.
When it's done by our allies, they get ignored.
When it's done by ourselves, It gets cheered.
So Josh Hawley's communications director, in response to an Obama official, Tommy Veeder, pointing out this inconsistency that Josh Hawley loves student protesters in Hong Kong who occupy buildings and break the law, but hates them when they're here in the United States.
She said, well, obviously there's a huge difference between someone protesting in Hong Kong for their freedom and someone protesting in the United States in support of Hamas.
The right to protest doesn't depend on whether your views and your cause is one that Josh Hawley's staff thinks is a good or a bad one.
The right to protest remains the same regardless of the views that people have of that cause of those in power.
And yet you see radically different reactions.
When the police in Iran and China and Russia crack down on student protests versus when the Saudis and the Egyptians do versus when the United States does.
And so all these people who claim to hate China so much and hate the Russians and hate the Iranians, and who would be outraged if they saw a paramilitarized force marching against unarmed student protesters, stand by and watch it happen in the United States and cheer for it.
Because the cause that is being advanced by the student protest in the United States is a cause that those leaders hate.
And if you support the right of protest, if you support the right of free speech, the one thing you should stand most vigilant against is an attempt to impose different standards based on how favorable that cause or the views of it are seen by people in power.
Speaking of the attempt to crack down on people's right to criticize Israel in the United States, the House of Representatives today overwhelmingly passed H.R.
6090 that is essentially designed to adopt a radically broad definition of anti-Semitism and impose it into American anti-discrimination law so that if you do any of the acts under this new definition of anti-Semitism, And it includes criticizing Israel in ways that the U.S.
Congress considers unfair or unjust.
You will be deemed formally guilty of the crime of anti-Semitism and can be punished under the law for having done so.
And I don't want you to take my word for it.
I want you to see what this law says.
Because there has been a longstanding effort to try and criminalize criticisms of Israel in the United States, especially on college campuses.
And all you have to do is take a look at the law that the Congress on a massive bipartisan basis just enacted.
70 Democrats voted no, 25 Republicans, something like that.
It was about 90 members of the House who voted no.
Mike Johnson led the way in joining with Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, yet again.
In supporting the enactment of this legislation, that's one of the gravest attacks, most explicit attacks on the First Amendment right to free speech that we've seen in many years.
Regardless of your views on Israel, this should be deeply disturbing to you.
So here is the text of the law itself, quote, 6090, House Resolution 6090, to provide for the consideration of a definition of anti-Semitism as set forth by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
For the enforcement of the federal anti-discrimination law concerning education programs or activities and for other purposes.
So just to be very clear, the purpose of this law is not just a resolution to condemn certain criticisms of Israel as anti-Semitic, it is intended to ensure the enforcement By federal administration laws concerning education, activities, and other purposes.
Now this is the kind of thing that is legally barred from doing.
And you're about to see that what is barred is expressing a wide range of critical views about Israel.
This is the definition that the Israeli government has been advocating all around the West to basically criminalize criticism of and activism against that foreign government.
The resolution goes on, quote, it is the sense of Congress that one, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.
Three, discrimination against Jews may give rise to a violation of such title when the discrimination is based on race, color, 4.
It is the policy of the United States to enforce such title against prohibited forms of discrimination rooted in antisemitism as vigorously as against all other forms of discrimination prohibited by such title.
5.
As noted in the U.S.
National Strategy to Counter Anti-Semitism issued by the White House on May 25, 2023, it is critical to a. Increase awareness and understanding of anti-Semitism, including its threat to America, b. Improve safety and security for Jewish communities, c. Reverse the normalization of anti-Semitism and counter anti-Semitic discrimination, and d. Expand communication and collaboration between communities.
Paragraph four is definitions.
It says, for the purpose of this act, the term, quote, definition of anti-Semitism means the definition of anti-Semitism adopted on May 26, 2016 by the IHRA, of which the United States is a member, which definition has been adopted by the Department of State, and two, includes the contemporary examples of anti-Semitism identified in the IHRA definition.
Now the bill itself does not provide that definition, the IHRA definition, and that's because anybody who read this definition of antisemitism would immediately see what a grave assault it is on core political rights of free speech.
Here are some of the examples.
of what is called antisemitism under the IHRA definition that has just been incorporated into American law and the law itself said that they're not only adopting the definition itself but also the examples of antisemitism provided under this interpretation.
Here are some of the things that you are now prohibited legally from doing in the United States.
Number one, accusing Jewish students of being more loyal to Israel or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide than to the interests of their own nations.
So if you look at AIPAC or you look at the ADL or you look at members of Congress who are Jewish or Evangelical, if you look at Ben Shapiro and you want to argue, you know what, it seems to me as though they're prioritizing the interests of this foreign country and Israel.
More than their loyalty to the United States, this is now legal.
You are legally barred from saying it.
You will be formally and officially accused of anti-Semitic, of anti-Semitism if you make those claims against Barry Weiss or Ben Shapiro or Chuck Schumer or the ADL.
That's not allowed.
Also not allowed, quote, denying the Jewish people their right of self-determination, e.g.
by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor.
What if you think that the creation of the Israeli state was wrong?
And that the Israelis don't have the right to have an ethno-state led by and composed of a majority of Jews?
What if you don't find that valid or just?
You're no longer allowed to express that opinion.
Because that is something that is now deemed anti-Semitic.
Now, you can say it about the US government.
You can say, oh, the U.S.
government was created by colonizing the land and genociding the Native Americans, and therefore the creation of the United States was unjust.
You're allowed to say that.
That's perfectly legal.
You can say that about any other country you want, too.
You can say it about Egypt or Saudi Arabia.
I think the creation of those states were artificial and wrong.
You can say it about Pakistan.
Whatever country you want, just not Israel.
Here's another thing you're not allowed to do, quote, applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
So if the Congress or the courts or prosecutors believe that you are making criticism of Israel, that you don't consistently apply to other countries, you can now be found to be in violation of federal law by being an anti-Semite.
You're allowed to put burdens on China that you don't put on other countries.
You're allowed to put them on Peru or South Korea or Norway or any other country you want.
You're just not legally allowed to express criticism of Israel that the government might believe is unfair because you're imposing on them a burden that you don't apply equally to other democratic countries.
Here's another thing you're not allowed to do under federal laws enacted by the House of Representatives today.
Quote, drawn comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
Now, the whole point of the Nuremberg trials, and if you haven't read those judgments and the transcripts of the proceedings, I really encourage you to do so.
I've written about it many times.
The point of the Nuremberg trials, which convicted All kinds of officials of the Nazi regime of crimes against humanity executed on that basis.
The point of the Nuremberg Trials was not that it is a unique evil to commit atrocities against the Jewish people.
Nor was it that Germans or Christians are uniquely likely to commit atrocities.
The purpose of the Nuremberg Trials explicitly stated Was that the atrocities we saw in World War II are ones that come from human nature.
And that we need laws and conventions in place to make it a crime, a war crime, a crime against humanity for any country to engage in those war crimes.
And the Nuremberg trial specifically said the judgment that we are imposing today We'll have no moral validity, no legal or ethical validity, unless it's applied equally in the future to the countries that now sit in judgment.
Meaning that if the United States or France or Russia or Israel in the future commits acts of genocide or atrocities and crimes of humanity, they have to be equally liable You're not allowed to say that what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians seems similar in kind to what the Nazis did to the Jews.
That's a prohibited opinion in the United States.
You are not allowed to say that.
You can accuse Argentina of acting like Nazis.
You can accuse the UK of that, if you want.
You can accuse the Russians of it, if you like.
You can accuse the Ukrainians of that, as well, if you like.
You can point out that the Ukrainians have Nazi, neo-Nazi battalions in it.
You can say that about any country you want, including the United States.
You just can't say it about Israel.
Otherwise, you will be in violation of federal law.
One of the members of Congress, one of the few Republicans who opposed this was Congressman Thomas Massey of Kentucky, unsurprisingly, and in a tweet he said, quote, the following, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader, says at a press conference that he will vote for the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act.
There is some opposition among Democrats to it, though one house Dem tells Axios they expect, quote, a lot of their colleagues to vote for it with Jeffries on board.
So yet again, Mike Johnson, says Congressman Massey, encounters opposition from several Republicans to a hate speech bill that many of us believe is a violation of the First Amendment, yet Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, offers to bail out Mike Johnson again by providing Democratic votes.
And that's exactly what happened.
Mike Johnson was able to get this bill passed, even though there were 20 members of his caucus opposed to it and 70 members of the Democratic caucus opposed to it on free speech grounds.
Because yet again, Democrats saved Mike Johnson.
Now, I was actually relieved and happy to see that there were some prominent conservatives who rose up in very vocal opposition to this bill as a grave violation of free speech, including people who are very supportive of Israel, one of whom was Charlie Kirk.
In response to campus anti-Israeli protests, the House is rushing to vote on a new bill, H.R.
690.
The new bill would officially define anti-Semitism so the federal government can sue, prosecute, or sanction more people, businesses, and universities for supposed violations of civil rights law.
I abhor anti-Semitism, but this bill is flagrantly unconstitutional and an appalling attack on the First Amendment.
This bill would make it illegal to compare Israeli policies to Nazi policies.
It would make it illegal to describe Israel as racist.
It would make it illegal to accuse an American citizen of being more loyal to Israel than to the United States.
All of those behaviors might be stupid or repugnant, but they are indisputably protected by the First Amendment.
Yet now, congressional Republicans are rushing to gut the First Amendment in order to pass a European-style ban on hate speech.
I don't know why that's so difficult for Conservatives to say, because they've been marching around saying how much they hate censorship and believe in free speech, and yet so many of them now stand by and support what is such a flagrant attack on free speech, basically an announcement that it's more important to shield this foreign government of Israel from criticisms than it is to preserve and protect the free speech rights of American citizens.
In other words, they seem more loyal to the interests of Israel than they do to the American people.
Something that, under this law, I would not be allowed to say any longer.
Especially if the people about whom I'm saying it happen to be Jewish.
Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire actually posted a similar, even more assertive, denunciation of this law saying that it's a grave attack on free speech.
Now here's the House roll call vote.
And there you see it passed overwhelmingly.
187 Republicans voted yes.
21 Republicans voted no.
133 Democrats voted yes.
70 Democrats voted no.
And the total was 320 to 91.
and 33 Democrats voted yes, 70 Democrats voted no, and the total was 320 to 91.
So you have more Democrats opposing this, And the reason is obvious.
They've been far more supportive of censorship when it comes to right-wing speech, and the Republicans have been objecting.
But now it's reversed because there's a lot more support for Israel in the Republican Party, so they're happy to limit and legally prohibit criticism of Israel, whereas there's more opposition in the Democratic Party, yet both parties provided overwhelming support for this bill and enabled it to pass by a massive margin.
I've been warning for years that the threat to criminalize Israel criticism and anti-Israel activism in the West is the single greatest threat to free speech in the West.
Here is an article as just one example that I wrote in The Intercept in February of 2016.
There you see the title, The Greatest Threat to Free Speech in the West, Criminalizing Activism Against Israeli Occupation.
There is a coordinated and well-financed campaign led by Israel and its supporters literally to criminalize political speech and activism against Israeli occupation.
Now, a lot of this was led by Israel that many years ago began criminalizing criticism of their own country, of their own government, attempts to engage in activism, to boycott Israel, to stop the occupation of the West Bank, here in the New York Times, July 2011.
A op-ed entitled, Not Befitting a Democracy, quote, Israel's reputation as a vibrant democracy has been seriously tarnished by a new law intended to stifle outspoken critics of its occupation of the West Bank.
The law, approved in a 47 to 38 vote by Parliament, effectively bans any public call for a boycott, economic, cultural, academic, against Israel or its West Bank settlements, making such action a punishable offense.
It would enable Israeli citizens to bring civil suits against people and organizations instigating such boycotts and subject violators to monetary penalties.
Now, it's one thing for... Do we have that now?
All right, let me put this Matt Walsh tweet on the screen just because it's such a clear example of somebody, a prominent voice on the right, denouncing this law.
I can't see it.
The vast majority of Republicans just voted, he said, for a bill to criminalize criticism of the Israeli government.
If this bill passes, you will be guilty of hate speech if you apply double standards to the government of Israel or accuse it of genocide.
This is honestly one of the most insane pieces of legislation I've ever seen.
And he's exactly right.
The problem is there are very few people on the right willing to say that.
As I just showed, Israel was the one that initiated this idea that activism against its occupation of the West Bank should be declared criminal, and it began then pressuring the West to adopt it, and the West began doing so.
Hear from The Independent, the British newspaper, in February of 2016, quote, Israel boycott ban.
Shunning Israeli goods to become a criminal offense for public bodies and student unions.
Local councils, public bodies, and even some university student unions are to be banned by law from boycotting, quote, unethical companies as part of a controversial crackdown being announced by the government, the British government.
Under the plan, all publicly funded institutions will lose the freedom to refuse to buy goods and services from companies involved in the arms trade, fossil fuels, tobacco product, or Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Any public bodies that continue to pursue boycotts will face, quote, severe penalties, Minister said.
Senior government sources said they were cracking down on town hall boycotts because they, quote, undermined good community relations, poisoned and polarized debate, and fueled anti-Semitism.
There were actual criminal prosecutions throughout Europe of activists who advocated a boycott of Israel in order to stop the occupation of the West Bank.
They were criminally prosecuted as criminal anti-Semites.
Here from the Jewish outlet The Forward in October of 2015, there you see the headline, quote, France court upholds a, quote, BDS's discrimination ruling.
France's highest court of appeals confirmed earlier rulings that found that promoters of a boycott against Israel are guilty of inciting hate or discrimination.
The ruling passed on Tuesday by the Paris-based Court of Cessation confirmed the November 20th conviction of 12 individuals by the Colmar Court of Appeals in connection with their 2009 and 2010 actions in supermarkets near the eastern city of Mulhouse.
Here's what they did that got them prosecuted.
Quote, the individuals arrived at the supermarket wearing shirts emblazoned with the words, quote, Long Live Palestine, Boycott Israel.
They also handed out flyers that said, quote, Buying Israeli product means legitimizing crimes in Gaza.
They were criminally prosecuted for wearing t-shirts that advocated a boycott of Israel and called for the freeing of Palestine.
Is that something you want in the United States?
Because whether or not it is, it's what we now have.
And this is hardly the first law designed to do that, as we've reported many times before.
Many red states, legislatures, and governors, along with Andrew Cuomo in New York, legally banned the state from offering any contracts to anybody who was refusing to sign a pledge that they did not support a boycott of Israel.
And we reported on cases such as a speech pathologist in the Austin School District in Texas, who had worked with students with speech deficiencies and speech pathologies for many years, had nothing but overwhelmingly positive work reviews.
And when it came time to renew her contract for the 10th or 11th year, she noticed that there was an appendix that she was required to sign, and the appendix was essentially a loyalty pledge, a vow not to support a boycott of Israel.
But she couldn't sign it because she does support a boycott of Israel.
Yet under Texas law, anyone who says that they won't support a boycott of Israel, that that's a requirement to employment.
If you're not willing to vow that you don't boycott Israel, you cannot get employment in Texas and in 24 other states.
Now fortunately, federal courts that looked at those laws have almost unanimously declared them unconstitutional.
And of course there will be judicial challenges of this new law as well.
But it is amazing to watch, as we discussed in the first segment about the protests, where we've had student protests for decades of this kind that were permitted because they were aimed at criticizing and working against the policies of the US government.
What's not allowed in the United States is working against the policies of Israel.
And by the same token, the Republican Party, of overwhelming numbers, despite pretending to be free speech champions for the last decade, joined with the Democrats, in an overwhelming majority, to formally adopt a definition of anti-Semitism that makes it illegal to express all sorts of criticisms about Israel and Jewish people in the United States that you are free to say against anybody else.
So when it comes time to decide whether you believe that American Jews are this besieged, vulnerable, victim group, a minority, and that, oh, there's so much anti-Israeli sentiment, or whether you want to believe the exact opposite, that American Jews are actually doing quite well in the United States.
They occupy a lot of positions of power, as do other Israel supporters who are evangelicals or national security hawks.
And that Israel wields a great deal of power inside the United States.
All you have to do is look at the bill that was passed today to see what opinions you are allowed to express and what opinions you're not allowed to express.
And therein is the proof of the people in the countries who occupy and exert the greatest power.
And they have now used that power to formally attack the free speech rights of American citizens in some of the most glaring and explicit ways that I've ever seen.
All right, so that concludes our show for this evening.
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