Pretty powerful BURN IT DOWN WITH KIM BROWN.
I went to grab one -- a BURN IT DOWN WITH KIM BROWN -- because there's at least one I haven't highlighted this week (one or two) and that's because she's done a lot of them in the last seven days. But that one above is fresh from tonight. It's pretty powerful.
"My body would tremble," Torres recalls the severe effects of the heat during his construction job in South Florida.
Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed a law blocking municipalities from enacting ordinances that would provide crucial heat protections for workers.
With last year hitting record temperatures, the National Weather Service warns that this trend will only continue.
Outdoor workers are expected to face even harsher conditions. "The heat can be very intense," Torres explained, emphasizing the desperate need for basic protections like water and shade.
IMPACT: Late night television host Bill Maher has a history of inviting guests who hold anti-Muslim views and support anti-Muslim policies. Maher is known for making discriminatory statements about Muslims and has a history of using racial and derogatory slurs against marginalized communities.
Bill Maher is a comedian, political commentator, and the host of HBO’s
“Real Time with Bill Maher” since 2003. He is known for his
controversial satire on religious, political, and current events, and
has made headlines in recent years for his comments about Muslims and
Islam.
In 2017, the Webby-award winning AlterNet news service published a seven minute video of Maher’s “outrageous statements about Islam and Muslims.” Some of the clips include Maher justifying the exclusion of Syrian refugees from the “West” by stating that “their cultures are not like ours.” Another clip shows Maher claiming “if Muslim men could get laid more, we wouldn’t have this problem.” Another clip shows him reiterating his support of author Sam Harris’ inflammatory statement claiming “Islam is the motherload of bad ideas.”
In a May 2010 interview with Anderson Cooper, Maher described Muslims as “threatening,” “bringing that desert stuff to our world,” and uncivilized. Cooper asked Maher if he bought the claim by Muslims that Islam is a religion of peace; Maher responded, “Yeah they blow you up, there’s a piece of you over there, there’s a piece of you over there, there’s a piece of you over there.”
Following the killings at the Charlie Hebdo offices in 2015, Maher claimed that “hundreds of millions” of Muslims would be supportive of that kind of violence. He continued: “I know most Muslim people would not have carried out an attack like this. But here’s the important point: Hundreds of millions of them support an attack like this. They applaud an attack like this.”
In September 2015, Maher reacted to the arrest of 14-year old American-Muslim student, Ahmed Mohamed, after he brought a homemade clock to school that his teacher thought was a bomb. Politicians and public figures criticized the incident, calling it racial and religious profiling. Maher said: “Look, this kid deserves an apology. No doubt about it. They were wrong, but…for the last 30 years, it’s been one culture that has been blowing shit up over and over again.”
In a “Real Time” episode in July 2015, Ret. U.S. Army Colonel and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson used this analogy to challenge Maher’s views on Islam and violence: “Trying to address the shooter as a product of Islam is like…trying to address the priest who abuses children as a product of Christianity.”
Islam and Muslims are subjects that comes up frequently on “Real Time,” both in conversations with guests and in Maher’s closing monologue. In September 2014, for instance, Maher closed his show by arguing that the “Muslim world” has “too much in common with ISIS.”
In 2014, Maher clashed with Charlie Rose while talking about Islam, stating: “to claim that this religion is like other religions is just naive and plain wrong. [Islam]is not like other religions.” In January 2016, Maher told his viewers that “the more you know [about Islam], the more you would be afraid.”
In an October 2014 episode of “Real Time,” Maher and his guests, who included actor Ben Affleck and author Sam Harris, entered into a heated discussion about Islam and Islamophobia. In the debate, Maher asserted that Islam is “the only religion that acts like the Mafia, that will f***ing kill you if you say the wrong thing…”
In a March 2011 interview with Representative Keith Ellison, the first elected Muslim Member of the U.S. Congress, Maher referred to the Qur’an as a “hate filled Holy Book.” In the same interview, Maher described Islam as a “culture in its medieval era” and a “culture of suicide bombings,” disagreeing with Rep. Ellison’s statements to the contrary and instead referencing commentary by Sam Harris, who identifies as an atheist and is not a scholar of religions.
In the past, Maher has attempted to discredit the word “Islamophobia.” In a 2014 interview Maher repeated a claim made by writer and critic of religion Christopher Hitchens, that “Islamophobic is a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.” In a 2015 interview with evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, Maher stated, Islamophobia is “a silly word that means nothing.”
In a talk with Sam Harris on the problem of “radical Islam” and President Trump’s travel ban, otherwise known as the Muslim ban, Maher said “I think we both agree his ban–I’ve always said–it’s stupid, it’s counterproductive, it’s un-American.” He agreed with Harris that the U.S. is currently in a “war of ideas” that requires the help of a willing and “moderate” Muslim population. Scholars have criticized the use of the term “moderate Muslims.”
In response to a study finding that “Muhammad” was the most popular baby name in Great Britain, Maher stated: “Am I racist to feel I am by that because I am,” and “I don’t have to apologize do I for not wanting the western world to be taken over by Islam.”
In discussion on Islam, Maher often cites the life experience and opinions of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and has hosted her on his t.v show numerous times, where they discussed how to convince liberals to stand up to “the cancer of Islamic extremism.” Maher has also given a platform to other individuals who support anti-Muslim policies including Sam Harris, Ann Coulter, Maajid Nawaz, and Asra Nomani.
Many have questioned Maher’s approach, claiming he takes a simplistic view of religion and fails to recognize the injustices and atrocities done by non-Muslims. Muslim scholar and author Reza Aslan has said “The way that [Maher] talks about Islam is undeniably bigoted…” Others have expressed skepticism regarding the polls he cites.
In February 2017, Bill Maher had former Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos on his show, an exchange that was described by The Washington Post as a “bromance.” On the show, Yiannopoulos told Maher, “you’re sound on Islam unlike most of the people on your side.” A Buzzfeed investigation found that Yiannopoulos worked with self-avowed White Supremacists, calling one his “best friend.”
Maher also has a long history of using racial slurs as documented by ThinkProgress. In a June 2017 episode of his show, Maher responded to an invitation by his guest, U.S. Senator Ben Sasse from Nebraska, to “work in the fields with us” by stating ,“Work in the fields? Senator, I’m a house n*****.” An article in The Root also documented Maher’s repeated use of the n-word.
How can you ignore this and applaud him? He's disgusting.
Here's a pretty cool track of Stevie Nicks singing a song acapella.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Last month, a large number of Kennedys endorsed Joe Biden for president, a turn of events that presumably stung fellow 2024 hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Now, another member of the family has made his feelings about Kennedy’s candidacy clear, albeit in a slightly more unorthodox way: Jack Schlossberg, a.k.a. John Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg, a.k.a. John F. Kennedy’s grandson.
In a series of videos on Instagram, Schlossberg alternatively inhabited a number of stereotypical personas to criticize his mother’s first cousin. “Jimmy” is a Kennedy fan with a thick Boston accent; “Wade,” a Southerner who works with horses; “Anthony,” an Italian American from Long Island; “Joshua,” an older Jewish man from New York; and “Tiny Tim,” appears to be a…beach bum/east Londoner.
As Jimmy, Schlossberg tells viewers, of RFK Jr.: “You know, I’m a fan of his father. And you know his uncle? Rest in peace. I remember where I was the day he was killed, I mean it was a tragic day, the entire country wept. But listen, that guy, he’s a prick. The new guy, the young guy, he’s a friggin prick. He’s lying to you, alright? ‘Independent,‘ ‘third party,’ yeah freakin’ right. He’s got Trump’s donors. He’s got Trump’s advisers, him and Trump go way freaking back. Don’t be fooled by that. Don’t throw away your vote.”
As Wade, he says: “I want to tell you who I’m voting for this cycle. It’s Biden. And I’ll tell you why: because I think behavior matters and I think the behavior we set for our children matters. I’ve got three daughters and I don’t want them growing up with a president, president Trump 2.0 who’s grabbing stuff, painted orange, and ripping everybody down with no shame. Do I want to vote for Bobby Kennedy Jr.? Doesn’t seem like he shows much respect for anybody neither. He’s lying to us, that’s for sure. Plus, I raise horses. And you can always tell when a horse is being pumped full of testosterone—steroids doesn’t make the horse think any better.”
Since the start of the seven-month Israel-Hamas conflict, powerful US-supplied 2,000-pound bombs have been used in bombardments on Gaza's heavily populated cities.
Now, for the first time, US President Joe Biden has acknowledged that the bombs, which military experts say turn "earth into liquid", have killed civilians in Gaza.
And the US will be delaying a shipment of thousands of bombs over concerns about Israel's invasion of the southern city of Rafah.
"Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centres," Mr Biden told CNN.
"I made it clear that if they go into Rafah ... we're not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells used."
“It’s no coincidence that immediately after our government sent the Israeli apartheid regime over $14 billion with absolutely no conditions on upholding human rights, Netanyahu began a ground invasion of Rafah to continue the genocide of Palestinians—with ammunition and bombs paid for by our tax dollars. Over 1.5 million Palestinian civilians, including over 600,000 children, are trapped in Rafah, living in makeshift tents, without food, clean water, sanitation, medicine, or any form of shelter. Israeli forces have already killed over 35,000 Palestinians, and the families displaced in Rafah will now face even more unimaginable human suffering. Many of my colleagues are going to express concern and horror at the crimes against humanity that are about to unfold, even though they just voted to send Netanyahu billions more in weapons. Do not be misled, they gave their consent for these atrocities, and our country is actively participating in genocide. For months, Netanyahu made his intent to invade Rafah clear, yet the majority of my colleagues and President Biden sent more weapons to enable the massacre.
“There is nowhere safe in Gaza. Nearly 80% of the civilian infrastructure has been destroyed. There is no feasible evacuation plan, and the Israeli government is only trying to provide a false pretense of safety to try to maintain legal cover at the International Court of Justice. Netanyahu knows that he will only stay in power as long as the fighting continues. It is now more apparent than ever that we must end all U.S. military funding for the Israeli apartheid regime, and demand that President Biden facilitate an immediate, permanent ceasefire that includes a complete withdraw of Israeli forces from Gaza, and the release of all hostages and arbitrarily detained Palestinians. I urge the ICC to swiftly issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and senior Israeli officials to finally hold them accountable for this genocide, as is obviously warranted by these well-documented violations of the Genocide Convention under international law.”
While some Palestine defenders on Wednesday welcomed U.S. President Joe Biden's threat to withhold bombs and artillery shells from Israel
if it launches a major invasion of Rafah, critics noted that an
invasion is already underway and accused the American leader of walking
back a previous "red line" warning against an Israeli assault on the
southern Gaza city.
Biden said for the first time that he'll stop sending bombs, artillery shells, and other arms to Israel if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians forcibly displaced from other parts of the embattled Gaza Strip are sheltering alongside around 280,000 local residents.
Referring to Israel's use of U.S.-supplied 2,000-pound bombs—which can destroy an entire city block and have been used in some of the war's worst atrocities—Biden toldCNN's Erin Burnett that "civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers."
Even the U.S. military—which has killed more foreign civilians than any other armed force on the planet since the end of World War II—won't use 2,000-pound bombs in urban areas. But Israel does, including when it launched a strike to assassinate a single Hamas commander by dropping the munitions on the Jabalia refugee camp last October, killing more than 120 civilians.
"If they go into Rafah, I'm not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities," Biden said Wednesday.
Israeli forces have already gone into Rafah, and it was reported Tuesday that Biden was taking the unusual step of delaying shipments of two types of Boeing-made bombs to Israel to send a message to the country's far-right government. It was, however, a mixed message, as the president also earlier in the day reaffirmed his support for Israel's war on Gaza, which the International Court of Justice said is "plausibly" genocidal in a preliminary ruling in January.
People across the world are watching in horror as scenes of violent
crackdowns on peaceful student protests reach the news and social media.
Students protesting America’s role in Israel’s mass murder of
Palestinians face police in riot gear wielding batons.
In Boston, as police closed in, Amina Adeyola, an Emerson College student organizer working with hundreds of protesters , made an impassioned speech urging the mayor to call off the city’s police. She highlighted that the city ordinance used by the police to arrest protesters was the same one first designed to remove unhoused people from a large encampment just months earlier.
Immediately after her speech, she was arrested. Scenes of Emerson students being dragged, body-slammed, belongings being torn from their hands, were live-streamed on social media. Students reported substantial injuries.
The student protesters implore us to see the interconnectedness of global freedom struggles against systemic oppression and authoritarian force.
As physicians caring for people experiencing homelessness in Boston, we are all too familiar with the anti-homeless ordinance used to arrest the students. The context was different, but the swift crackdown in the name of public health and safety was the same. We see haunting similarities in the use of expanded police power and the weaponization of public health and safety to criminalize dissent and control oppressed groups.
Just a few months earlier, facing a crisis of increasing homelessness and rising housing costs, Boston enacted the new ordinance banning tent camping throughout the city. The mayor called on the police to sweep encampments of homeless communities and to ticket and fine individuals for living outside. While the ordinance required that police first offer storage for belongings and a shelter bed, this seemed disingenuous. The largest shelters in Boston were already full, with people routinely sleeping on the floor.
We vociferously opposed the measure based both on personal experience and on evidence from encampments across the country. After prior sweeps, our patients who were receiving life-saving medications, including treatments for HIV and other serious infections, would disappear—whether in jail, pushed to a more distant encampment, or dead, we often did not know. Disturbing images from previous encampment removals were fresh in our minds: wheelchairs being confiscated and crushed, medications and other crucial belongings being forcibly taken from patients. Mounting public health research shows that law enforcement-led sweeps of homeless encampments do not bring health and safety. They do not result in less violence. They do not result in less drug use. They result in disconnection from life-saving harm reduction services and medical care. They result in more hospitalizations and fatal overdoses.
To hear city officials, including physicians, cite “health and safety” as the motivation for the ordinance was deeply unsettling. The well-being of the unhoused individuals who were ultimately arrested, or pushed into less visible parts of the city, was never the primary concern. Instead of investing the necessary money and time into tackling hard problems—lack of affordable housing, cycles of incarceration and poverty, inadequate addiction treatment—the city chose to expand police power against an already marginalized group.
Today we see this same ordinance wielded against students demanding divestment from Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In defending the police action, Mayor Michelle Wu cited the “health and safety” of Bostonians. The morning after the Emerson College protest crackdown, city workers cleaned up blood from the protest site. It’s difficult to square the sight of protesters’ blood on sidewalks resulting from police violence, with that call for health and safety. How could they do this?
As Adeyola astutely pointed out, we gave them the tools.
Rather than fund housing and other necessary services to prevent homelessness, our elected leaders use our tax dollars to fund police and prisons which are full of unhoused people. Rather than disclose and divest from Israeli apartheid, occupation, and genocide, university leaders invite police forces (often militarized by the Israeli Defense Force) onto campus in the name of student safety, to brutalize and arrest students and their faculty and community supporters.
The student protesters implore us to see the interconnectedness of global freedom struggles against systemic oppression and authoritarian force. They demand that we not shield our eyes from our leaders’ brutal disregard of Palestinian life in the false name of Israeli security. As medical providers, we have an obligation to speak out against the deliberate destruction of Gaza’s critical infrastructure and the mass murder of healthcare workers who are desperately trying to save civilian lives. As healthcare workers committed to the genuine health and well-being of all—whether unhoused people, student protesters, or the people of Gaza—we must denounce everywhere the use of state violence in the name of safety. And beyond rhetoric, we must protect and support those most vulnerable who speak out and demand a more just world. We cannot abandon our young people to risk everything alone. Healthcare workers must be by their sides, flooding every student encampment across the nation.
AMY GOODMAN: College campuses around the world have ignited in a global uprising of students protesting Israel’s assault on Gaza. From New York to Berlin, San Francisco to Sydney, students have set up Gaza solidarity encampments to call for a ceasefire and to demand that their schools disclose and divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Many universities have responded by calling the police onto their campuses to violently break up the encampments. In the U.S. alone, over 2,000 students, faculty and supporters have been arrested at dozens of universities over the past three weeks.
But as the campus crackdowns continue, students at a number of universities have managed to negotiate agreements where administrators have acceded to some of the protesters’ demands. One of the first was Pitzer College in California on April 1st.
Today we’re joined by students from four universities where school administrations have agreed to a number of key demands, such as publicly calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and exploring divestment from Israel.
At Brown University, which came to an agreement last week, we’re joined by Rafi Ash, a sophomore majoring in urban studies, part of Brown Jews for a Ceasefire Now and Brown Divest Coalition. He’s joining us from Providence, Rhode Island.
At Middlebury College, which struck a deal on Sunday, we’re joined by Duncan Kreps, a graduating senior at Middlebury, where he’s majoring in mathematics. He was part of the pro-Palestinian Middlebury solidarity encampment, and he joins us from Middlebury, Vermont.
At Evergreen State College in Washington, which came to an agreement last week, we’re joined by Alex Marshall, a third-year student, joining us from Olympia. Evergreen is the alma mater of Rachel Corrie, the American peace activist killed by an Israeli military bulldozer in Gaza March 16th, 2003.
And at Rutgers University in New Jersey, we’re joined by Aseel, a Palestinian student at Rutgers who has family in Gaza. She’s part of Students for Justice in Palestine.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Let’s begin at Brown. Rafi Ash, you are a sophomore in urban studies at Brown. Can you talk about the encampment that was set up and then what ensued?
RAFI ASH: Yeah. So, we set up an encampment last — two weeks ago at this point, and our encampment was on the Main Green, our central quad on campus. And we set up for seven days. And while the administration raised its disciplinary threats over the course of those days, that really did not, you know, sway students. And as the administration was trying to start setup for commencement, the pressure grew on them to actually begin to, you know, either force us out or come to the table. And we were able to force them to the table on Monday of last week, and that led to a multiday negotiations process.
And, you know, I think these negotiations didn’t really seem like a possibility before these encampments began, but through them, we were able to actually push to force a vote on divestment, and that’s a vote that’s never happened before at Brown, and that’s something that we’ve been pushing for for a long time, that our Board of Corporation will first have a more informational session on divestment without a vote, but then followed by, at the meeting after, a guaranteed vote. And, you know, that’s not the end of the story. We still have so much more work to do, and we need to make sure that that vote is a yes for divestment. But that was a huge step that came out of an escalatory encampment.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, a while ago, there were a number of arrests on campus. There were protests after Hisham Awartani, who is the Brown student who was shot in Burlington, Vermont, when he and two of his best friends from the Friends Academy in Ramallah, who had come to the United States to go to college, where their families thought it was safer, was shot by a white man off his porch when they were taking a walk on the way to his grandmother’s house. Hisham is now paralyzed. Can you talk about what happened after that and the number of arrests that took place and the administration’s response to that? And are there — the quashing of those charges also a part of this discussion with the administration?
RAFI ASH: Yeah. So, we had, last semester, 61 arrests on campus, 20 of them in early November, before the shooting, and then another 41 in the weeks after Hisham’s shooting. And I think there’s a — it brings it very personal and directly to home that the violence against Palestinians is — that our university is currently complicit in through its endowment. Yes, that affects — that is not only affecting Palestinians in Palestine, but it also incites violence against Palestinians here and against Brown’s own Palestinian students.
AMY GOODMAN: So, at this —
RAFI ASH: And —
AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead.
RAFI ASH: Well, that this makes it very, very personal and very essential to so many Brown students to stand up against the administration’s violence.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Duncan Kreps into the conversation, a senior at Middlebury College at Middlebury, Vermont. Duncan, talk about setting up the encampment and what happened next.
DUNCAN KREPS: Yeah. We set up our encampment, I guess, early morning two Sundays ago and then started engaging with the administration on Tuesday of that following week and had negotiations from there. I think a notable part of our experience is the atmosphere of relative calm that we existed in. We didn’t experience the counterprotests of many other college campuses, and also our administration decided to not send the police in on students, which we want to clarify we believe is the bare minimum for any administrative response to student activism and free speech.
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about the demands in the negotiations and who is on the team, on both sides, administration and students.
DUNCAN KREPS: Yeah. We met with the four administrators, consistently, representing kind of different aspects of the institution, and then we sent a rotating team of students to kind of spread the burden of those negotiations and also to ensure that various voices are being heard in that room. But all decisions were brought back to the camp and made as a collective.
AMY GOODMAN: And the students took down the encampment?
DUNCAN KREPS: I’m sorry?
AMY GOODMAN: The students took down the encampment?
DUNCAN KREPS: Yes. So, we voted to accept an agreement, after six rounds of negotiations, that came down on Monday, in exchange for significant progress on all five demands. Our administration agreed to call for a ceasefire. And we also made progress on divestment.
The decision to bring down the encampment was a strategic one. We believed that we could assign resources in other ways to continue to put pressure, especially on divestment, and hold the administration accountable to their comments. And we now look towards an upcoming Board of Trustees meeting where divestment will be discussed.
AMY GOODMAN: Why do you care about this issue, Duncan? You’re a graduating math senior at Middlebury College in Vermont.
DUNCAN KREPS: Yeah, I don’t know how I couldn’t. I mean, we see what’s happening. We see the invasion of Rafah happening before our eyes. This feels like the — in many ways, the most horrific thing I’ve seen happen in my lifetime. And being an American complicit in this and being a student at an institution complicit in this genocide directly, I couldn’t imagine standing by and not acting.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to Alex Marshall, who’s across the country, a third-year student at Evergreen State College. Now, Evergreen State College is in Olympia, Washington. It’s the home city of the parents of Rachel Corrie. In fact, it’s the alma mater of Rachel Corrie. She was set to graduate from Evergreen in 2003 and went to Gaza and stood in front of a pharmacist’s home as an Israeli bulldozer was moving in to demolish it, and she was crushed to death by that bulldozer. Alex, can you talk about the protest encampment, when it was set up, and then what you negotiated with Evergreen authorities, the administration?
ALEX MARSHALL: Yeah. Thank you for having me.
So, our encampment was established on Tuesday the 23rd. And negotiations began with administration on the following day, Wednesday the 24th. There was initially a rotating team of negotiators, but then a second team was established to step in on Sunday the 28th. And I was a part of that new team.
Our demands were formulated through a process of consensus within the encampment. And we focused on divesting from companies that are profiting off of the Israel — off of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, changing Evergreen’s grant acceptance policy to no longer accept funding from Zionist organizations that support stifling students’ free speech, as well as a Police Services Community Review Board structure to be created and the creation of an alternative model of crisis response. Evergreen also agreed to prohibit study abroad programs to Israel, Gaza or the West Bank, until the day comes when Palestinian students would be allowed entry. And they also agreed to release a statement calling for a ceasefire and acknowledging the International Court of Justice’s genocide investigation.
AMY GOODMAN: And who were the people who negotiated on both sides, Alex?
ALEX MARSHALL: Well, I was on a team of four. And on the administrative side, it was the vice president of the college and the dean of students.
AMY GOODMAN: And what do you think was different about your school than places like Columbia, where they called in the police twice?
ALEX MARSHALL: Well, it being Rachel Corrie’s alma mater, I think, is significant. She’s been gone for 20 years, but her memory lives on amongst the student body and the Olympia community at large. Craig and Cindy Corrie came to one of our rallies to speak. And I think her memory — you know, I have learned about her. I’ve read her emails to her parents in multiple classes that I’ve taken at Evergreen, and her memory being so inspiring in that way.
I believe also that Evergreen has an interest in maintaining its image as a college that highly values diversity and equity, working across significant differences and advocating for students’ voices and students’ abilities to exercise their rights to freedom of speech, freedom of protest. And Evergreen is a small college. We’ve had — the college has had a rough few years after the media storm that occurred in 2017. And administration knew that there would be serious repercussions to Evergreen’s image if police were called in.
We are extremely grateful that all of our students were safe and we had no arrests and no students have been written up for policy violations. And I think that that really speaks to Evergreen’s — the culture of Evergreen’s student body as one that really emphasizes taking care of each other and fighting for the struggle for justice.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to end with Aseel, who is a Palestinian student at Rutgers University in New Jersey who has family in Gaza. We’re only using Aseel’s first name because she is concerned about doxxing. Aseel, can you talk about what happened at Rutgers after students set up the Rutgers encampment?
ASEEL: Yeah. Hi. So, last Thursday, we ended our encampment. It was a four-day encampment. And as a result of our collective efforts, we were able to have Rutgers, the Rutgers administration, agree to commit to eight out of 10 demands, which we are like really, really happy about. And I just also want to note that this encampment came in like the span of three weeks, where we did a — like, it was our second encampment, because we revived Tent State University. That’s one.
And another thing, as well, is we are very excited that part of our demands is, number one, that we are going to welcome 10 Gazan students, some of whom we anticipate to be our family members. Another thing is that we are going to finally have Palestinian flags hung, and Holloway is finally going to acknowledge his Palestinian students, finally, and name Palestine and Palestinians in his statements, instead of like the “Middle East region” and “the Gaza region.” And then, not only that, but we are also going to hire additional professors of Palestinian studies, because apparently everyone thinks that this started on October 7th. So, I think that’s pretty important. Another thing is that we are finally going to have an Arab cultural center. “Why didn’t we have one before?” is the real question. We are also going to finally get a Middle Eastern Studies Department. Again, why did we not have one before? Another thing is that we are going to be granted, hopefully — hopefully Rutgers commits to this — amnesty and no suspensions for our encampment. And yeah, I hope I’m not missing anything, but it’s eight demands.
AMY GOODMAN: One of the standard calls for — at these campus encampments has been to disclose and divest. Was that an issue for Rutgers students?
ASEEL: Yes, that was our main reason why we came. We demanded to divest from Israel, from Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism. And also, our second most important demand was to end our relationship with Tel Aviv University and close down the construction of the HELIX Hub, which is right next to the New Brunswick train station. It should also be noted that Tel Aviv University is not just any university. It is a like very prime component of Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism. They manufacture weapons that basically kill my family in Gaza. Not only that, but they also hold the corpses of like 60 to 70 corpses of Palestinians. Just to like also illustrate how close this hits to home is that one of these corpses is the cousin of our beloved professor Noura Erakat. And they basically refuse to give back these corpses, these bodies, to Palestinian families.
We, unfortunately, were not able to get these agreements. However, we did get an agreement to have a meeting with the Joint Committee on Investments, with the Board of Governors, with President Holloway, for divestment, which is a process to divestment. So, this is incredible progress, in our eyes, and to everyone’s eyes, I think, because we had been asking for a meeting for five years, and we finally got one. And that’s why we decided to not get arrested, to not — to leave, basically, the encampment and shut it down, because we got the meeting, we got the eight demands, and we believe that these are just like increment steps towards divestment. But it should be noted that we were more than willing to get arrested. We were actually prepared for it. But we decided not to. And —
AMY GOODMAN: Aseel —
ASEEL: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: — you mentioned your family. I wanted to end by asking about your family in Gaza. How are they?
ASEEL: Yeah. So, they are not OK. A hundred members of my — nearly like a hundred members, I think — we don’t know exactly, because of Netanyahu’s psychological warfare of cutting down the electricity and cellular devices to be able to, honestly, reach them. But nearly a hundred of my members were martyred.
And obviously, I still have family left. I am still in contact with them. But they are all displaced. Our family home’s basically destroyed. Even photos, like, just show that, like, on the walls say “Blame Hamas.” And it should be noted that none of my family members are in Hamas, have nothing to do with them. And yeah, like, even the photos of Gaza are just unrecognizable. I can’t even tell, like, where anything is anymore. Photos on my phone of, like, so many memories I had don’t even exist anymore. The Gaza that I once knew is essentially gone. But I am more than confident, along with my family, that we will return and that we will rebuild it.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Aseel, deepest condolences on the death of so many family members in Gaza. Aseel is a Palestinian student at Rutgers University in New Jersey. I want to thank you for being with us; Rafi Ash, a sophomore in urban studies at Brown University; Duncan Kreps, a graduating senior at Middlebury College; and Alex Marshall, a junior at Evergreen State College in Washington.
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AMY GOODMAN: RISD, Rhode Island School of Design, students singing at a vigil last night while they barricaded themselves inside a campus building which they renamed Fathi Ghaben Hall after the acclaimed Palestinian artist who died after being unable to get care in Gaza. Special thanks to Democracy Now! fellow Eric Halvarson.
The University of Barcelona passed a motion on Wednesday to cut ties with Israel after students set up a camp on Monday to protest against the war in Gaza.
The students demanded that "governing bodies break institutional and academic relations with any Israeli university, research institute, company or other Israeli institutions".
They called such action a way to put "pressure on the state of Israel until the genocide ends, the Israeli apartheid system is eradicated and the colonisation of Palestine ends".
They also called on the Spanish and Catalan governments to sever relations with Israel, "starting with the end of the arms trade with a state that in the eyes of the world is committing genocide".
Students pledged not to leave the protest camp until they saw concrete action from the universities and Spanish and Catalan governments.
It's not just colleges: Across the U.S., high school students have been protesting the war in Gaza — and Congress is paying attention.
Why it matters: Young people under the age of 18 have been organizing demonstrations, sit-ins and walkouts at their schools, where the academic year typically extends into June.
- "Their generation is really defined by a lot of these global protest movements," said Versha Sharma, the editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue.
What's happening: High school students across the country have made efforts to demonstrate since the arrests at Columbia University — although some have been thwarted by city or academic authorities.
- Students have held sit-ins and walkouts in Chicago; Salem, Oregon; Austin, Texas; and across Washington state.
State of play: For the first time, leaders of K-12 public school districts in a few liberal cities testified Wednesday before the same GOP-led House committee that's grilled the presidents of Harvard and Columbia.
With the dust still settling from protests at Columbia University, former and current students gathered last week to celebrate the career of Rashid Khalidi, one of the West's most prominent champions of Palestine.
Some speakers at the two-day retirement conference drew a line between Khalidi's scholarship and the student protest movement, noting that the now-shuttered Columbia encampments included those who had studied under the Middle East history professor.
But Khalidi, whose latest book on Palestine has been a best-seller since October, said his work has at most played a small role in the uprising.
"I hope that I've had some impact through my writing, but I don't really think that students are endangering their careers because of something that (I) wrote," Khalidi told AFP.
Pointing to social media as a galvanizing force, Khalidi said there was a large part of the younger generation "that feels that moral imperative to oppose what they see on their phones as a genocide."
Gaza remains under assault. Day 216 of the assault in the wave that began in October. Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction. But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets: How to justify it? Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence." CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund." ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them." NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher. United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse." THE NATIONAL notes, "Gaza death toll reaches 34,844, with 78,404 injured ." Months ago, AP noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing." February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home." February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:
More than half of the Gaza Strip’s population of two million is sheltering in Rafah – a town of 150,000 that has been transformed throughout Israel’s war.
Among the city’s huddled masses are 600,000 children, all of them with an uncertain future and nowhere else to go.
Unicef, the UN’s children’s agency, has described these children as being “at the edge of survival”. The picture the agency’s staff paint is stark. More than a tenth of the children are thought to have a “pre-existing disability, including difficulties seeing, hearing, walking, understanding and learning”.
Of the 195,000 who are under the age of five, 90 per cent are affected by one or more infectious diseases. These can have catastrophic effects on their health. For instance, empyema, a potentially fatal condition caused by pus pooling around the lungs, is extremely rare in children around the world; doctors in Rafah report it is common among those they treat, as a side effect of communicable disease.
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