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lt is really not the students that were behind what then took place, but rather students were instructed to lodge a complaint with the university against me and they did so. But also the Israel lobby parallel to that and really preceding the complaint launched a national and international campaign to pressure the university to punish and to fire me. And so that is how my case began. The original student complaints was that I'm was anti-Semite. And the original public relations campaign against me said that I'm I'm anti-Semitic. And when it was discovered that that I'm Jewish, they changed the line and they said, "Actually, my crime now is I'm indoctrinating students and I don't and this and that." During the period that I was that I was under investigation and that this whole Israel lobby was was attacking me, I got hundreds of hate mails threatening to kill me. I've got threatening phone calls at my home, V most disgusting, vulgar calls, everything you could imagine. Uh, and I, uh, feared for my safety during that time. Just let me just point out that that notion of silence in the face of social injustices, complicity in that justice goes back to the Holocaust and goes back to the whole notion that governments and peoples around the world were silenced in the face of the silent in the face of the Holocaust. And so they are complicit with the Holocaust. So there's no difference. I mean that now anyone that's silent in the face of these crimes or these atrocities that are committed by the Israeli state are complicit in them.
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My case began in January of 2009. I was teaching a course on global issues and of course January was the latter part of the Israeli siege and massacre in in Gaza, Operation Ironcast. And um so this was part of our curriculum. We were going to discuss um that conflict and I sent to my students. We have a list serve which is set up by the university to distribute course material on the internet. And so I forwarded several items from from the internet. One item was an article written by a Jewish journalist for a Jewish uh newspaper coming out of Kansas City and I forwarded that article. Um I can't recall the second article from the international press that I forwarded and I forwarded a uh photo essay which was also circulating in the in the internationally on the internet and the photo essay showed a left-hand column of Nazi atrocities against uh uh Jews most of them taken from wars from the ghetto and on the right hand side was Israeli atrocities being conducted at that time against the Palestinians in Gaza . uh and there was a little caption and said something like um his history being repeated. I don't remember the details.
Anyway, these were these were for were for classroom discussion. And so this was the f very first week of class and I had 80 students and two uh Jewish students who I don't know I've never met personally um didn't like. They took offense at uh at having to look at this material as part of our course course discussion . and they withdrew from the class and I have I don't even know who withdraws who doesn't withdraw the first day of class eventually you know class roster it come becomes clear several weeks later uh and they went to organizations outside of the university they went to uh they went to the Anti-Defamation League they went to the Simon Weissel Center in uh uh in Los Angeles but they also met with local pro-Israeli or Israeli lobby activists here in Santa Barbara ever.
And it is really not the students that were behind what then took place, but rather students were instructed to lodge a complaint with the university uh against me and they did so. But also the Israel lobby parallel to that and really preceding the complaint preceding the complaint launched a national and international campaign to pressure the university to punish and to fire me. And so that is how my case uh uh began.
And so could you discuss Abe Foxman came out here and what was that all about?
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Abe Foxman is the head of the Anti-Defamation League. Uh let me say something about the Anti-Defamation League. It started decades ago as an organization uh identifying and fighting against anti-semitism. But since the late 1960s, the early 1970s, particularly after the two the two wars, um 67 and 73, uh the Anti-Defamation League has really has very little to do with anti-semitism and is basically an organization that goes after uh and organizes uh um attacks against anyone who criticizes Israeli policy. And that's basically what the anti-defamation does. They do this in a very dirty and underhand way. These are dirty campaigns. The smear campaigns and slander campaigns and aggressive uh character assassination campaigns against anyone in North America who becomes prominent and speaks up against Israeli policies and beyond North America. And I'm going to give you an example how that works. Um and you might know that the Anti-Defamation League was sued at a multi-million dollar level for a scandal back in the 1990s when uh when it had been left from the late 80s and on . had hired private detectives and former cops in San Francisco. You're familiar with the case.
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I'm going to speak with Jeff Blankford.
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Then you'll get the details and I won't go into that. He can give you the details. So Foxman, Abe Foxman, flew out here to the West Coast and he convened a meeting here on campus and he convened a meeting with some 10 or 12 faculty members and two deans and someone who he believed was the chancellor of the university. Number of the faculty members didn't know what the meeting was about. They assumed it was to discuss a Jewish studies program which is being launched here on on campus. He opened the meeting Abe Foxman together with the local representative of the Anti-Defamation League and he said, "I've convened this meeting because I want Robinson fired." And they proceeded to discuss my case for the next hour. It's of course a violation of university policy because the issue is needed to be completely confidential. But this gives you an idea of just what at a high level this campaign was launched to run me from the university. And the backdrop is that they were not after Bill Robinson. The backdrop is that they specifically had declared the Israel lobby in Apac had declared in late 2008 that Israel was losing points on the public relations battlefield and needed to recover um its public relations edge in the United States. And so it was going to target big universities on the west coast and particularly the University of California and it was going to do so exactly what happened with me. Find some person who will be an ideal target to mobilize all of these forces um uh against and so I simply became the uh I became the the the individual that this massive lobby chose to go after.
So you became an icon for or a rallying point for academic freedom. Could you discuss that?
Well, I became a rallying point also for the Israel lobbies, you know, for again, right? But I became a rallying point for the defense of academic freedom because this was an, you know, utter and complete violation of academic freedom. Hands down. There's no debate. There's no discussion. And the university played a very negative role. The university, as far as I'm concerned, violated all of its procedures and all of its policies. And the university became very complicit. It did not back down in the face of this external uh external pressure placed on it. It dragged me through an investigation which had no basis whatsoever and which lasted five months and which uh slandered my national international reputation and and and pulled me through the mud um and basically fed this whole attack against me. There's absolutely no um there's nothing to debate that what I did was fully within the realm of academic freedom. In fact, I carried out my responsibilities as a professor both to make students take up uh issues in our world and think critically about them and see different perspectives on them. And there's no censorship in the classroom. No censorship. And we have a faculty code of conduct. And that code of conduct lists what faculty uh what faculty cannot do and would be in violation of the full code of conduct if they did. And nothing that I did appears on that that list. So there was no question that there was no reason for the university to open up an investigation against me. This was simply a political ploy organized from this massive lobby outside.
Um I read there were threats to withdraw funds by Jewish philanth. Could you address I mean what was your crime and how could what was your crime and what was the threat to you?
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My crime was that I vocally I criticized the Israeli assault on Gaza. That was my crime in the eyes of these forces that went after me. You're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to criticize Israel. You're not allowed to defend the Palestinians and their right to statethood and their right human rights and their national rights, their historic rights. If you do any of that, you're committing a crime in the eyes of well, of the Israeli state, but of the massive lobby apparatus that exists worldwide, but particularly in North America and in uh and in Europe.
Well, how why do they have such power? I mean, how can they just walk in here and cause such a stink? How does that work?
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That's a very good question. It's a very complex question. I can't answer it fully because of lack of time, but there's a number of reasons, I think, why this lobby has has so much power.
1] And one of them has to do with the strategic relationship that the United States has um has with Israel with regard to US and if you want to use the term imperialist policy in the Middle East. Uh you know trans transational corporate control of the Middle East and outside domination of the Middle East. So that resources of the Middle East and the labor of the Middle East is integrated into this global capitalist system and available is really the strategic underpinning of US and of uh big big power policy towards the Middle East and that hinges upon this alliance that is that the United States has made with Israel. So that's part of Israel's strength that uses that uh alliance.
2] The other thing and I I want to make very clear and and I'm Jewish myself and it sounds like you've you've interviewed many uh many Jews um who are critical of Israeli policy and of course distinguish between what it means to be Jewish and what it means to be critical or reject Israeli policies and Zionism as a particular political project and a particular ideology. Having said that, we need to recognize that the Jewish American community might have begun poor and working class. That's how my grandparents came um to the United States. But in the latter part of the 20th century and the 21st century, that community is has been the most successful ethnic group in the United States. One with has tremendous amounts of resources. And those resources are used to promote a pro-Israeli policy and to go after anyone that would try and undermine that pro-Israeli pro-zionist policy.
So you're asking me about the university. There are multi-million dollar donors who are Jewish . the fact they're Jewish is not relevant, but they're Jews who are part of this Israel lobby. And so they threatened to withdraw their funding for the university. There was a meeting uh and this came out on stand with us website. Stand with us is an organization which is dedicated to go on to c to go into campuses across the US and Canada and to stifle any criticism of Israel the part of faculty or students on campuses in the US and Canada. And so they had a meeting with in which the chancellor was present and the vice chancellor was present and they threatened to withdraw $30 million in donations to the University of California to UCSB particularly if uh if I was not prosecuted. We don't know how the chancellor responded to that threat but they the stand with us website boasted about that threat.
Um who is the nemesis? This this has come up a lot of times with a lot of people. Who's the nemesis here? Is it Zionist the Jewish lobby? the Jewish establishment, organized jewelry, and the context to this I'm asking you is because quote Jews are involved in this, there's always the danger of of critic being smeared as an anti-semite. Could you address the issue of who who what's at stake who who are the what is what is the nemesis here?
Right. Well, the the nemesis is very clear and the nemesis is the is legal activities of the Israeli state and how it is justified. That's the nemesis. The nemesis is that Israel is occupying has refused nationhood for the Palestinians. That Israel in violation of international law is occupying Palestinian territory. That Israel and it's been so thoroughly documented that there's nothing to debate here systematically violates the human rights uh of the Palestinian people. That there is what I refer to as a slow motion genocide. And uh and this has been condemned every single year, year after year after year as blatant violations of international law. Uh the Goldstone report found that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza. So that is the nemesis what the Israeli state is doing. It's illegal activity. It's immoral activity. It's violation of human rights and so forth and so on. That's the nemesis. The nemesis is not Jews and another lobby and so forth. Many Jews support that policy and then participate in attacks against anyone who criticizes those policies. And we can analyze sociologically why is it that a good portion of the Jewish community in North America is supportive of policies which are reaching such atrocious levels that someone can make parallels between things that the Nazis did and things that the Israeli state does. Uh but that would be you know a long sociological discussion why. So it's not that Jews are the nemesis but many Jews vocally and actively support criminal activity, illegal activity, colonial activity.
And you you've been smeared as an anti-semite and you're Jewish. Did you think they knew who they were?
No. And they're very interesting. They changed their line. They f the original student complaints was that I'm was anti-semite. And the original public relations campaign against me said that I'm uh I'm anti-Semitic. And when it was discovered that that I'm Jewish, they changed the line and they said actually my crime now is I'm indoctrinating students and I don't and this and that and came up with a whole another set of uh of uh of charges against me.
But here l want to clarify something. The Israeli state and its idea ideologues and its defenders describe something that they call the new anti-semitism. And this is an absolute farce. And they define the new anti-semitism. That is what we understand by anti-semitism. Hatred towards Jews, hostility towards Jews, stereotypes of Jews. That is anti-semitism. That has been around for millennia, for millennia. And culminated of course in uh in the in Nazi in Nazi Germany . uh anti-semitism and anti-semitism of that nature is still around and it needs to be combed. What these people mean when they say the new anti-semitism is criticism of the Israeli state. If you criticize the Israeli state, that is the new anti-semitism. And so you are equated, you are called an anti-semit. And it is a complete farce. It is a way of silencing criticism of the Israeli state. It is a way of imposing censorship and self-censorship on people that would criticize the Israeli state because you don't want to be accused of being an anti-Semitic.
And I want to give you an example of how it's used because one of the things that I sent to my students as as discussion material for the course was a one paragraph commentary by me accompanying these three materials that I pulled from the internet. And by the way, uh, this lobby also tried to would repeatedly and intentionally say that I put together that photo collage, which I didn't. I simply forwarded from what was on the internet. But here here is uh something I pointed out when I sent that material. I made a commentary to my students and I said the Israeli state practices uh colonial occupation and violation of human rights and and and dictatorship over the Palestinians and so forth and so on and they're doing so and with and they are also the principal supporters of dictatorial regimes in other parts of the world. So the Israeli state was one of the key props of the apartheid state in South Africa. The Israeli state was one of the key weapon suppliers and political supporters and trainers of the military dictatorships in Latin America um that that are responsible for the death of millions of Latin Americans. And the Israeli state supported the coup d'eta that took place in Honduras in June of um for getting my date now 2009. There was a illegal coup detad through a democratically elected government, Manuel of Manuel Sallaya, and the Israeli state went in and sent trainers to train and bolster the security forces that were repressing and murdering people protesting this coup d'eta basically supporting once again a dictatorship. You want to ask why Israel has a foreign policy of that nature and what it says about Israeli policy for the Palestinians is then exported to, you know, to the rest of the world and and and so forth.
But here's the key point. The deposed president of Honduras, the legally elected, the Democratic president of Honduras, who hadn't been deposed read the news that Israeli commandos were training Honduran military to repress protesters against the coup and he said, "I want to denounce this. I want to denounce is u this uh that Israel is supporting those that made this kureta." And Abraham Foxman went on the nightly news and he said, "I would like to I'm accusing the the Poland president of being an anti-semite." And so you see how the how the newism the so-called new anti-semitism works. But what did that have the effect of doing? Okay, Manuel Sallaya then heard that and spent the a full half hour that he got the attention of the international media saying over and over, I'm terribly sorry if I offended Jews. I have tremendous respect for Jews. I believe in religious freedom, etc., etc. Now, Manosa didn't need to do any of that because he never did anything which was anti-Semitic. He never did anything to critical of Jews for being Jews. But what that maneuver did is that it took all the world's attention away from what Israel was doing criminally in Honduras and it flipped the world's attention to sympathy towards victims of anti-semitism and a mistake so-called mistake made by the by the by the Honduran president. So you see how this new anti-se so-called new anti-semitism is a very effective ideological and political instrument.
I'm going to interview Daniel Pipes in the next couple days. He gave me an interview. What should I ask him? Do you know who he is? Yeah. I'm I'm just in general.
l know who he is, but why don't you explain who he is in relationship to this particular
Oh, well, he he's the other side. He's he's um Campus Watch behind that, right? I want to read you a quote shortly by Campus Watch, but you should um I I think you should certainly ask him um how do you justif how do you explain that Israel has been the principal weapon supplier and trainer for the bloodiest dictatorships in Latin America and some of the most bloodiest and and violent uh military force in Latin America such as the Colombian military, the Guatemalan military, the coup makers in Honduras. Ask him and see what he says. Okay.
Self-hatred, Jewish self-hatred. That that's that's the parallel to an anti-Semite in the Jewish world is that's a euphemism for Jews who criticize the Israeli state. Okay. If you're not Jewish and you criticize the Israeli state, you're an anti-Semitic. If you're a Jew and you criticize the Israeli Israeli state, you're a self-hating Jew.
How was your case resolved? What happened in the end? How did you get out of this?
The an adhoc committee was formed uh whose members are anonymous. I don't know who they are. Um to investigate the case and determine if I had violated the faculty code of conduct and they deliberated for quite some time and concluded that everything I did was in the realm of academic freedom and there's no violation of the of the faculty code of conduct and there's absolutely no need to continue uh investigation of me and I'm absolved of of anything that I had been charged with.
Did you get an apology or
I got no apology. I got no extra bonus. I got no apology. Uh the university has never explained its actions uh despite my repeated insistence that it does. And not only that, but my it has continues to uh conduct the university itself in such a way that is absolutely outrageous. With regard to my case, on February 9 of 2011, there was a big debate on this campus and academic freedom that took place in our biggest 800 seat auditorium here on campus. And the two people that participated in the debate were uh were uh Stanley Fish, very well-known commentator, writer for the New York Times and so forth, and Carrie Nelson. Carrie Nelson is from uh from the American Association of University Professors. And so it was two different of his debate moderated here by a dean who happened to have been in sitting in that meeting with uh with Abraham Foxman. And the debate was for a couple of hours. This is a packed auditorium. Um, I was not informed beforehand this debate was going to take place. Was not invited to it. Um, and I'll read this paragraph. The case of UCS professor William Robinson was amply discussed during the debate. This is a press release that the university put out. A professor of sociology and global studies, Robinson endured a rocky set of months between February and June 2009 after two of his students dropped his society of globalization, misnamed his sociology of globalization class, and reported him for allegedly distributing anti-semitic materials. Fish insisted that he would have fired Robinson immediately if given the authority. So here I was disgusted in this massive public forum and the university has been so utterly disrespectful towards me and my integrity and the integrity of university and the integrity of academic freedom that it did not invite me to this event and after the fact it did not even inform me that the event had taken place and that I had been the major target of discussion in this event. Uh colleague of mine happened to have come across the press release that the university put out and so I learned about it.
Um what sort of support have you had then? I mean the faculty, students, what have you.
I know there's some the the students my my students mobilized. They formed a committee to defend academic freedom and they launched a campaign in my defense. It eventually involved uh hundreds of students in our campus and thousands of students nationally and internationally. And the faculty mobilized very quickly to support me as well. Um the faculty over the faculty signed a petition that had gotten to about 120 signatures by the time I was absolved. It was still circulating. We have some 400 faculty on campus and so 120 had signed and it was still circulating around the faculty called an emergency meeting a special meeting of the academic senate. And in the meeting of the academic senate, the faculty members in that meeting voted unanimously unanimously to investigate why I was being investigated and to uh investigate why academic freedom was being undermined in our on our campus.
One of the students said who protested against you was a member of Kabad. Is that relevant to this? Do you know who they are, Todd?
I know who they are. I know who they are. And that organization is a component of a much larger network. The way that this Israel lobby works is that it's a network of organizations. And so that organization, Havad, is one is is one and it's one that generally focuses more on on Jewish life, student Jewish life than on political um political activity. But it's closely linked to and it's a part of the campus watch network and the stand with us network which in turn is linked to the Apac and the whole you know structure of the Israeli lobby in North America.
Do you agree with a Richard Faulk made had a quote uh basically saying they're making this your case into a litmus test to silence criticism of Israel? you elaborate on that
completely and that's what I mentioned earlier that APEC APEC held its annual meeting don't quote me on the exact date but this would be I think November or early December of 2008 and in that annual meeting the director of Apac in Washington DC um said we've been losing we've been losing the battle for public opinion and we need to recover public opinion we're losing our legitimacy uh because public opinion is turning against Israeli policies and therefore we need to intensify a campaign and we need to attack the big public universities and we should start in uh the then the ADL said we should start with the University of California and so they specifically selected me exactly as Richard Fox says to make a litmus test and to win one big battle which could allow the whole lobby to move back on the offensive and recover ground that had been that had been losing.
You say in your statement, "Silence in the face of social injustice is complicity in that injustice." Could you elaborate on that stance?
Absolutely. If uh if um if if we're witnessing uh social injustice, if we're witnessing crime uh and we sit by idally, we're complicit if we don't denounce, we don't do what we can to stop a crime. Okay. Um well the big thing that they deal and let me just let me just point out that that notion of silence in the face of social injustice is complicity in their justice goes back to the Holocaust and goes back to the whole notion that governments and peoples around the world were silenced in the face of the silent in the face of the Holocaust and so they are complicit with the Holocaust. So there's no difference. I mean that now anyone that's silent in the face of these crimes or these atrocities that are committed by the Israeli state are complicit in them and and that's the type of parallels I make between uh they're not synonymous the Holocaust and what Israel is doing but there are very important parallels and lessons to be drawn from them.
Have you had any personal costs other this for your taking the stance other than what you you're know the academic issues? I mean friends have you had friends who bail out on you or any threats to you or anything? I mean I ask this because other people have.
During the period that I was uh that I was under investigation and that this whole Israel lobby was was attacking me. I got uh hundreds of hate mails threatening to kill me. I got threatening phone calls at my home. V most disgusting vulgar calls everything you could imagine. Uh and I uh feared for my safety during that time.
Okay. You uh make comparisons to the genocide and the Nazis. That's a big taboo for the ADL people. Could you elaborate on that?
Well, I didn't make comparison. What I what I said is that what the that there are well I forwarded the the photo the uh photo essay and then during the course of the six months I pointed out that there are significant parallels and we need to ask what are the lessons of the of these parallels between uh the Nazi occupation of the of Warsaw turning into the Warsaw ghetto and the Israeli occupation of Gaza and turning Gaza into the a giant open air ghetto the biggest open ghetto in the world. And and there are eerie parallels. The Jews were not allowed outside of the Warsaw Ghetto. If they tried to escape, they would they they would be slaughtered. They couldn't escape. Palestinians are not allowed outside of Gaza. The Warsaw ghetto was blocked. It was blockaded. Food couldn't come in. Medical supplies couldn't come in, so forth and so on. Same thing. Gassa is blockaded. The Israelis decide what can get in and what cannot get in . there's a humanitarian disaster in in uh in Gaza. Um the majority of children suffer from different degrees of malnutrition and disease and so forth and so on. Um if in the Warsaw ghetto someone tried to protest being locked into this open this concentration camp um by lobbying a grenade or trying to some some resistance uh they would be slaughtered by the force holding them in there the the Nazis in Gaza if there's any resistance to occupation it's also you're also cut down and you're slaughtered uh so the resistance is declared illegitimate resistance. So there are so so there there are all these different um parallels but I want to get to some other a deeper point here and and here's the point that the Israeli state and Zionism Zionism by the way is a political project and Zionism is an ideology. So there are Jews who are not Zionists and there are Zionists who are not Jews and in fact worldwide the majority of Zionists are not Jews. Okay. So when we criticize Zionism, we're not criticizing Jews. That's a manipulation by this Zionist project to equate the two.
U but here's the point I want to make. The Israeli state constantly draws on and utilizes the Holocaust and Jewish suffering in order to legitimate its policies and in order to silence critics of those policies. And that's very important to acknowledge that . um you interviewed um Finkelestein Finkelestein and Finkelestein wrote a very important book the Holocaust industry and that book really upset defenders of the Israeli state and scientists and it upset them because in my view and he might have used different language that's totally irrelevant that's his academic freedom use what language he he chooses he and but he hit the nail on the head he hit the sore point for the Israelis because every historical project whatever it is has a legitimating ideology. How do you justify and legitimate this? And you and and and that's what the legitimating ideology is. For the Nazis, it was it was the ideology of Nazism and it was a scapegoat of Jews uh and in Aryan people who were, you know, destined to rule the world. For the United States and its interventions worldwide, it's freedom and democracy. We're in Iraq and Afghanistan. We were in Vietnam. We overthrew governments in Latin America. We support dictators. All of that for freedom and democracy. So there's always a legitimating ideology. And when you attack that legitimating ideology, the smoke screen disappears, right? The curtain is pulled back and you see what's really going on here. So the illegitimating ideology for the Israeli state and its project and sanism is the Holocaust and Jewish suffering. And so that's why they get so upset. They go absolutely berserk when you make some point that there are parallels that there is just like there is Nazilike behavior which Israeli soldiers are engaged in. the Israeli state is engaged in.
Okay. Do you feel intimidated now? Is there are you monitored now, do you think? Is there, you know, a new zone here now?
I'm sure I'm sure I'm I'm monitored and but I think the Israel lobby generally works by going after one target at a time, uses everything it can to undermine that target and then moves on to some new target. So there's um since I was under this attack there have been uh several professors in the east eastern east coast of the US who one one lost an appointment you know an offer that he was given for another university another one lost his course but then there was some mo he wasn't allowed to teach a course but then there was some mobilization and he uh uh his course was restored so they go on to new uh targets how often does this sort of thing occur in academ you and anytime any one time if we looked through the the websites and the newspapers, we'd find that three, four, five scholars in North America, but there's two things going on. But let me finish that point. Three or four or five scholars in in North America, because this is Canada as well, US and Canada, uh are under attack. They're not going to get tenure. They're not going to be hired. They're going to be run from someplace. Uh they're vilified as anti-Semitic and the reputation is ruined. Any one time we can find three, four, five under these attacks.
Um the the um uh other point I wanted to make though and this is equally maybe much more significant is that this threat that if you in your courses bring up the Palestine Israel conflict and criticize Israel or even allow open discussion in your courses critical of Israel then you will suffer sanctions. You will suffer consequences. Your name will be smeared. We will try to run you from university. So this exercises this this imposes a chilling effect on open debate on academic freedom on on what our campuses and the universities is all about. So there's a self-censorship in effect which is very pervasive and it's very dangerous. It undermines democracy in the universities. It undermines what a free society is all about. It undermines what free speech is all about.
Are people afraid to speak?
Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I can tell you that I have dozens of co colleagues here on campus who in one or another way have said look I'd love to introduce the issue of the Israel Palestinian conflict and talk about you know Israeli occupation in my courses but I'm scared I really I can't do it and if that's happening here at the University of California Santa Barbara you can be sure that it's happening all over campuses in North America you say controversy is at the very heart of free academic inquiry could that's important could you elaborate on that absolutely absolutely where the acade free academic inquiry and academic freedom involves challenging assumptions that we have, challenging uh the ideas that students hold. It involves introducing all points of view. It involves being critical and uh interrogating what we think we know about the world and what's going on in the world. And when you do anything to stifle that, you're stifling the very nature of intellectual pursuits of academic of the the whole razetra of the academy.
I I want to read to you one thing before I end this. Uh this is a very important article was written on my case by a couple of colleagues of mine from the University of California at Irvine. And here they're talking about uh the lobby which has been put in place to go after uh those that criticize Israel . and they write, "No fewer than 33 distinct organizations, including APEC, the Zionist Organization of America, the American Jewish Congress, and the Jewish National Fund are gathered together today as members or affiliates of uh the Israeli onampus coalition. The name of that on-ampus coalition is uh Campus Watch. Okay? whose stated objective is to generate and then they quote a manual of uh campus watch quote to generate quote a proactive pro-Israeli agenda on campus." There is accordingly disproportionate and unbalanced intervention on campuses across the country by a coalition of well-funded organizations who have no time for and even less interest in the nicities of intellectual exchange and academic process.
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And then they go on and this is really the u remarkable thing. There's an organization uh the Ashara handbook. The Hashara handbook is this handbook which campus watch if you're following the story gives to its members and is sort of their guide. It's their guide book on how they should be acting on campuses to stifle any criticism of of Israel. And I'm going to read this paragraph. The Hashara handbook promoting titled promoting Israel on campus which is distributed to campus activists by organizations like stand with us explains that it is often better to score points than to engage in actual arguments and offers an explanation for how in its own words to score points whilst avoiding debate. Point scoring, the Hashbara handbook explains, works because most audience members fail to analyze what they hear. Rather, they register only a few key points and form a vague impression of those argu whose argument was stronger. Part of the strategy is to recycle the same claims over and over again in as many settings as possible. This is an actual quote from the book. If people hear something often enough, the document points out, they come to believe it. If people hear something often enough, they come out to believe it.
So, this is a Jewish organization on campuses called Campus Watch who are saying, doesn't matter if you tell the truth. Doesn't matter if you lie . just repeat it over and over and then this very same organization its book says if people hear something often enough they come to believe it now where did you hear that before who first said that person who first said that is Nazi minister of propaganda Joseph goal almost literally he called it the big lie and he said it doesn't matter if it's truth or it's not truth as long as you repeat it over enough people will believe it so so so here an organization that was involved in attacking me and which is is the core of what goes on in on US campuses with regard to the Israel lobby is using a Nazi tactic and that's an empirical fact.
Now, is that for sure campus watch or is that stand with us? Because I do you know I mean well I I'll look that up. So the thing is I have an interview with the guy who founded Campus Watch. If it's in fact that I'd like I'm going to have to look at Campus Watch.
It is Campus Watch.
Yeah . the the article that you can the article you where you what you should do is type in on Google the trial of Israel's campus critics that's the name of the article is written by two colleagues of mine at the University of California Irvine uh you want to write that down the trial of Israel's campus critics it should pop right up the the article so then uh could you give me just a general uh assessment of campus watch because I you know I'd like to japose whatever you have to say in overview with what what what are what is that kind of move.
Well, it's I just quoted from it. Its purpose, it's risetra. The reason it was formed was to be a proactive pro-Israeli agenda to place a proactive pro-Israeli agenda on campus. That's their quote.
Okay. So, what what role does it play generally speaking?
Oh, it goes after if there's um if there's a here on here on the campus, if there's some activity, let's say we're going to invite Norman Finkelstein to come and speak, they'll organize and try and say no, he can't speak on campus and block that. If I distribute, if I have a discussion in my course on uh on Palestinian rights, they'll go after me. If a the some black student union here will have some activity where they're going to talk about the relationship that Israel had with the apartheid regime, they'll go after them. The idea of campus watch is to monitor anything that's critical of Israel on campus and go after and attack that criticism.
One last question, please. Um the issue, many Jews were active in the civil rights movement, very much so, right? and famously so. But when it comes to the issue of Palestinian rights, that's they dry up. Very important question. Discuss that.
Yes. And it's this is the tragedy. This is a tragedy because the Jewish community uh historically worldwide because of being marginalized. Whenever you're marginalized, you're more progressive. Whenever you're marginalized, you're more attuned to suffering and inequality and injustice. And because Jews have been marginalized and persecuted for so many centuries, historically, the Jewish community is is radical . and at least in the United States still very liberal on most issues including being against um against you know the violation of you know being forced civil rights uh and so forth. Tragically and unfortunately the and this was a strategy of Zionism. This was Zionism's strategy as an ideology and a political project among many different project political projects among the Jewish community was to systematically and has been and is to in to equate being Jewish and defending yourself as Jewish with identifying yourself with the state of Israel and defending what the state of Israel does including its occupation and Zionist ideology. And so that's had a tremendous impact on the Jewish community in North America and in Europe and really worldwide. So Jews worldwide now until unless or until you you really critically think um you associate yourself as a Jew with Israel and what Israel does and with his defense and you associate yourself as a Jew against anyone who will criticize Israel. And that's absolutely tragic because imagine saying that for a Muslim imagine any Muslim in the world imagine that Iran could actually do that. I mean, Iran hasn't been able hasn't doesn't. But imagine that if Iran was able to pull off saying uh any Muslim in the world feels that they have to defend the you know the Iranian state and support Iran and if they don't do so they're betraying being a Muslim or they're not being a Muslim. I mean that's the equivalent here.
One last thing real quick please. What was the trigger? How did you become enlightened about Israel? I mean you're Jewish. You must have had pressures in your life to support what happened you well you know in my case very curious. I mean, so everyone has different route. Jews have different different ways of arriving at a critical understanding of the truth about Israel and Zionism and then disassociating themselves and their own Jewish identity from that re from that reality. And I picked up a book uh called Our Roots Are the Story of the Palestinian Struggle. I picked it up when I was 16 years old and um and I read it and it blew me away. I said, "Well, this isn't the story, you know, that I've been given at all." You given it's the exact reverse. The story they're given is a Palestinian first of all that there were no Palestinians there. Secondly, Palestinians hate Jews and wanted to drive them into the ocean. The whole the whole propaganda. It's all total complete distortion and propaganda of history. And that got me to reading and to researching and investigating and um and so that led me in a very different direction.
Yeah. And what would you recommend to viewers of this movie as far as Israel in terms of education and um
educate yourself. All of the facts are out there. There's plenty of, you know, pro-Israeli, the official Israeli story and mainstream. Read that, but read what? Read the other side and all of the facts are out there. The history's out there. You can't erase the facts. You can't erase history. Uh, so just become informed on the issue. I have not interviewed, you know, have systematically interviewed or conducted surveys of of Jewish American, Jewish Americans, Jewish Canadians, Jewish Europeans, but I'm sure that that their information comes from their synagogues or from these organizations, anti-def . haven't actually gone out and researched all of the the real, you know, the history and the and the facts on the ground. And if they did, and if they wanted to be consistent with a moral position in terms of social justice, they they would have to reach the same conclusion, you know, that I reached and that those like myself reach.
Well, I've talked with some conservative Jewish individuals and the fear of another Holocaust, as you always seems to be part of this issue. The pro prospective fear of a holocaust against Israel. Do you have a sense of that?
It's like it's like saying that Honduras, you know, could threaten a holocaust against uh against the United States. I mean, there's there's no one talking about a holocaust. The Palestinians right from the beginning have said their original project project after the initial displacement, the mass displacement of Palestinians. And um for the last five decades, the position of the Palestinians first was a unitary state where Jews, Arabs, where everyone lives, one person, one vote in a single democratic state. And later on, the Palestinians proposed and have continuously pushed for a two-state solution. Palestinians have never said the Israeli Yes, some have, but for that matter, some people in the US have said you should, you know, you should kill anyone who's not a fundamentalist Christian. I mean, there's irrelevant individual Palestinian speaking. Palestinians as a people and as organizations have never never spoken about um you know about a a project of Holocaust. They're the ones that have been insisting on a you know a single a solution which accommodates everyone. So um and the same thing with the Arabs, the same thing with the Arab countries. Um the the Arab League, I believe two years ago, uh don't quote me on exactly when or maybe it was three years ago, had a uh proposal endorsed by all the members of the Arab League saying if Israel withdraws to the 67 borders and acknowledges and recognizes a Palestinian state, we will all of us, all of the Arab countries will normalize our relations with Israel. So the problem in the Middle East and with Palestine Israel is not anti-semitism. That is what I want to emphasize.
Anti-semitism was and is a problem that goes back centuries in other parts of the world. You want to talk about anti-semitism, blame blame Europe, you know, blame blame Europe. Talk about anti-semitism, identify real anti-semites, anti-semites here, some of which are fundamental Christians. Uh some of whom are neo-Nazis. Um some of whom are from the white power movement in the US . identify real anti-semitism and fight anti-semitism has nothing to do with what the Palestinians are struggling for and it and I think that that's just a smokeokc screen what is who is it that said that uh you were quoting here uh pipes yeah I mean that but the argument is absurd as saying if Africans Americans saying we're scared of being reinsslaved or we're scared of you know in you know to reverse be to move backward through history and once again fight you know have massive racism uh and so therefore we're going to try and create a situation where we steal, you know, where we uh create a colonial situation and put whites in concentration camps and uh and deny them rights. I mean, it's absurd. It's that's an ideological justification for defending this project.
Okay. All right. He's been very jazzed.
Transcript
0:00It is really not the students that were behind what then took place, but rather students were instructed to lodge a complaint with the university uh against
0:099 secondsme and they did so. But also the Israel lobby parallel to that and really
0:1616 secondspreceding the complaint preceding the complaint launched a national and international campaign to pressure the university to punish and to fire me. And
0:2525 secondsso that is how my case uh uh began. The original student complaints was that I'm was anti-Semite. And the original public
0:3434 secondsrelations campaign against me said that I'm uh I'm anti-Semitic. And when it was discovered that that I'm Jewish, they
0:4141 secondschanged the line and they said, "Actually, my crime now is I'm indoctrinating students and I don't and this and that." During the period that I was uh that I was under investigation
0:5050 secondsand that this whole Israel lobby was was attacking me, I got uh hundreds of hate mails threatening to kill me. I've got
0:5757 secondsthreatening phone calls at my home, V most disgusting, vulgar calls, everything you could imagine. Uh, and I, uh, feared for my safety during that
1:061 minute, 6 secondstime. Just let me just point out that that notion of silence in the face of
1:141 minute, 14 secondssocial injustices, complicity in that justice goes back to the Holocaust and goes back to the whole notion that governments and peoples around the world
1:211 minute, 21 secondswere silenced in the face of the silent in the face of the Holocaust. And so they are complicit with the Holocaust.
1:271 minute, 27 secondsSo there's no difference. I mean that now anyone that's silent in the face of these crimes or these atrocities that are committed by the Israeli state are complicit in them.
1:551 minute, 55 secondsMy case began in January of 2009. I was teaching a course on global issues and
2:032 minutes, 3 secondsof course January was the latter part of the Israeli siege and massacre in in
2:092 minutes, 9 secondsGaza, Operation Ironcast. And um so this was part of our curriculum. We were
2:162 minutes, 16 secondsgoing to discuss um that conflict and I sent to my students. We have a list serve which is set up by the university
2:232 minutes, 23 secondsto distribute course material on the internet. And so I forwarded several items from from the internet. One item was an article written by a Jewish
2:322 minutes, 32 secondsjournalist for a Jewish uh newspaper coming out of Kansas City and I forwarded that article. Um I can't
2:392 minutes, 39 secondsrecall the second article from the international press that I forwarded and I forwarded a uh photo essay which was also circulating in the in the
2:482 minutes, 48 secondsinternationally on the internet and the photo essay showed a left-hand column of Nazi atrocities against uh uh Jews most
2:562 minutes, 56 secondsof them taken from wars from the ghetto and on the right hand side was Israeli atrocities being conducted at that time
3:033 minutes, 3 secondsagainst the Palestinians in Gaza. uh and there was a little caption and said something like um his history being repeated. I don't remember the details.
3:123 minutes, 12 secondsAnyway, these were these were for were for classroom discussion. And so this was the f very first week of class and I
3:203 minutes, 20 secondshad 80 students and two uh Jewish students who I don't know I've never met personally um didn't like. They took
3:293 minutes, 29 secondsoffense at uh at having to look at this material as part of our course course discussion. and they withdrew from the class and I have I don't even know who
3:383 minutes, 38 secondswithdraws who doesn't withdraw the first day of class eventually you know class roster it come becomes clear several weeks later uh and they went to
3:473 minutes, 47 secondsorganizations outside of the university they went to uh they went to the Anti-Defamation League they went to the Simon Weissel
3:563 minutes, 56 secondsCenter in uh uh in Los Angeles but they also met with local pro-Israeli or Israeli lobby activists here in Santa
4:044 minutes, 4 secondsBarbara ever. And it is really not the students that were behind what then took place, but rather students were instructed to lodge a complaint with the
4:124 minutes, 12 secondsuniversity uh against me and they did so. But also the Israel lobby parallel
4:204 minutes, 20 secondsto that and really preceding the complaint preceding the complaint launched a national and international campaign to pressure the university to
4:284 minutes, 28 secondspunish and to fire me. And so that is how my case uh uh began.
4:354 minutes, 35 secondsAnd so could you discuss Abe Foxman came out here and what was that all about?
4:394 minutes, 39 secondsA a Foxman is the head of the Anti-Defamation League. Uh let me say something about the Anti-Defamation League. It started decades ago as an
4:474 minutes, 47 secondsorganization uh identifying and fighting against anti-semitism. But since the late 1960s, the early 1970s,
4:554 minutes, 55 secondsparticularly after the two the two wars, um 67 and 73, uh the Anti-Defamation League has really has very little to do
5:035 minutes, 3 secondswith anti-semitism and is basically an organization that goes after uh and organizes uh um attacks against anyone
5:105 minutes, 10 secondswho criticizes Israeli policy. And that's basically what the anti-defamation does does. They do this in a very dirty and underhand way. These
5:185 minutes, 18 secondsare dirty campaigns. The smear campaigns and slander campaigns and aggressive uh character assassination campaigns against anyone in North America who
5:275 minutes, 27 secondsbecomes prominent and speaks up against Israeli policies and beyond North America. And I'm going to give you an example how that works. Um and you might
5:355 minutes, 35 secondsknow that the Anti-Defamation League was sued at a multi-million dollar level for a scandal back in the 1990s when uh when
5:445 minutes, 44 secondsit had been left from the late 80s and on. had hired private detectives and former cops in San Francisco. You're familiar with the case. I'm going to speak with Jeff Blankford.
5:525 minutes, 52 secondsThen you'll get the details and I won't go into that. He can he can give you the details. So Foxman, Abe Foxman, flew out here to the West Coast and he convened a
6:006 minutesmeeting here on campus and he convened a meeting with some 10 or 12 faculty members and two deans and someone who he believed was the chancellor of the
6:086 minutes, 8 secondsuniversity. Number of the faculty members didn't know what the meeting was about. They assumed it was to discuss a Jewish studies program which is being
6:156 minutes, 15 secondslaunched here on on campus. He opened the meeting Abe Foxman together with the local representative of the Anti-Defamation League and he said, "I've convened this meeting because I
6:226 minutes, 22 secondswant Robinson fired." And they proceeded to discuss my case for the next hour.
6:276 minutes, 27 secondsIt's of course a violation of university policy because the issue is needed to be completely confidential. But this gives
6:356 minutes, 35 secondsyou an idea of just what at a high level this campaign was launched to run me from the university. And the backdrop is that they were not after Bill Robinson.
6:466 minutes, 46 secondsThe backdrop is that they specifically had declared the Israel lobby in Apac had declared in late 2008 that Israel
6:556 minutes, 55 secondswas losing points on the public relations battlefield and needed to recover um its public relations edge in the United States. And so it was going
7:037 minutes, 3 secondsto target big universities on the west coast and particularly the University of California and it was going to do so exactly what happened with me. Find some
7:117 minutes, 11 secondsperson who will be an ideal target to mobilize all of these forces um uh against and so I simply became the uh I
7:197 minutes, 19 secondsbecame the the the individual that this massive lobby chose to go after.
7:267 minutes, 26 secondsSo you became an icon for or a rallying point for academic freedom. Could you discuss that? Well, I became a rallying point also for the Israel lobbies, you
7:337 minutes, 33 secondsknow, for again, right? But I became a rallying point for the defense of academic freedom because this was an, you know, utter and complete violation
7:417 minutes, 41 secondsof academic freedom. Hands down. There's no debate. There's no discussion. And the university played a very negative role. The university, as far as I'm
7:497 minutes, 49 secondsconcerned, violated all of its procedures and all of its policies. And the university became very complicit. It did not back down in the face of this
7:567 minutes, 56 secondsexternal uh external pressure placed on it. It dragged me through an investigation which had no basis whatsoever and which lasted five months
8:048 minutes, 4 secondsand which uh slandered my national international reputation and and and pulled me through the mud um and
8:118 minutes, 11 secondsbasically fed this whole attack against me. There's absolutely no
8:178 minutes, 17 secondsum there's nothing to debate that what I did was fully within the realm of academic freedom. In fact, I carried out
8:248 minutes, 24 secondsmy responsibilities as a professor both to make students take up uh issues in our world and think critically about them and see different perspectives on
8:328 minutes, 32 secondsthem. And there's no censorship in the classroom. No censorship. And we have a faculty code of conduct. And that code of conduct lists what faculty uh what
8:418 minutes, 41 secondsfaculty cannot do and would be in violation of the full code of conduct if they did. And nothing that I did appears on that that list. So there was no
8:498 minutes, 49 secondsquestion that there was no reason for the university to open up an investigation against me. This was simply a political ploy organized from this massive lobby outside.
8:598 minutes, 59 secondsUm I read there were threats to withdraw funds by Jewish philanth. Could you address I mean what was your crime and
9:069 minutes, 6 secondshow could what was your crime and what was the threat to you? My my crime was that I vocally I criticized the Israeli
9:179 minutes, 17 secondsassault on Gaza. That was my crime in the eyes of these forces that went after me. You're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to criticize Israel.
9:259 minutes, 25 secondsYou're not allowed to defend the Palestinians and their right to statethood and their right human rights and their national rights, their historic rights. If you do any of that,
9:339 minutes, 33 secondsyou're committing a crime in the eyes of well, of the Israeli state, but of the massive lobby apparatus that exists
9:419 minutes, 41 secondsworldwide, but particularly in North America and in uh and in Europe.
9:469 minutes, 46 secondsWell, how why do they have such power? I mean, how can they just walk in here and cause such a stink? How does that work?
9:529 minutes, 52 secondsThat's a very good question. It's a very complex question. I can't answer it fully because of lack of time, but there's a number of reasons, I think, why this lobby has has so much power.
10:0010 minutesAnd one of them has to do with the strategic relationship that the United States has um has with Israel with
10:0810 minutes, 8 secondsregard to US and if you want to use the term imperialist policy in the Middle East. Uh you know trans transational corporate control of the Middle East and outside domination of the Middle East.
10:1710 minutes, 17 secondsSo that resources of the Middle East and the labor of the Middle East is integrated into this global capitalist system and available is really the
10:2410 minutes, 24 secondsstrategic underpinning of US and of uh big big power policy towards the Middle East and that hinges upon this alliance that is that the United States has made
10:3310 minutes, 33 secondswith Israel. So that's part of Israel's strength that uses that uh alliance. The other thing and I I want to make very clear and and I'm Jewish myself and it
10:4110 minutes, 41 secondssounds like you've you've interviewed many uh many Jews um who are critical of Israeli policy and of course distinguish between what it means to be Jewish and
10:5010 minutes, 50 secondswhat it means to be critical or reject Israeli policies and Zionism as a particular political project and a particular ideology. Having said that,
10:5810 minutes, 58 secondswe need to recognize that the Jewish American community might have begun poor and working class. That's how my grandparents came um to the United
11:0711 minutes, 7 secondsStates. But in the latter part of the 20th century and the 21st century, that community is has been the most successful ethnic group in the United
11:1411 minutes, 14 secondsStates. One with has tremendous amounts of resources. And those resources are used to promote a pro-Israeli policy and to go after anyone that would try and
11:2311 minutes, 23 secondsundermine that pro-Israeli pro-sionist uh uh policy. So you're asking me about the university. There are multi-million
11:3111 minutes, 31 secondsdollar donors who are Jewish. the fact they're Jewish is not relevant, but they're Jews who are part of this Israel lobby. And so they threatened to
11:3911 minutes, 39 secondswithdraw their funding for the university. There was a meeting uh and this came out on stand with us website.
11:4411 minutes, 44 secondsStand with us is an organization which is dedicated to go on to c to go into campuses across the US and Canada and to stifle any criticism of Israel the part
11:5311 minutes, 53 secondsof faculty or students on campuses in the US and Canada. And so they had a meeting with in which the chancellor was present and the vice chancellor was
12:0012 minutespresent and they threatened to withdraw $30 million in donations to the University of California to UCSB particularly if uh if I was not
12:0812 minutes, 8 secondsprosecuted. We don't know how the chancellor responded to that threat but they the stand with us website boasted about that threat.
12:1612 minutes, 16 secondsUm who is the nemesis? This this has come up a lot of times with a lot of people. Who's the nemesis here? Is it Zionist the Jewish lobby? the Jewish
12:2312 minutes, 23 secondsestablishment, organized jewelry, and the context to this I'm asking you is because quote Jews are involved in this, there's always the danger of of critic
12:3212 minutes, 32 secondsbeing smeared as an anti-semite. Could you address the issue of who who what's at stake who who are the what is what is the nemesis here?
12:4012 minutes, 40 secondsRight. Well, the the nemesis is very clear and the nemesis is the is legal activities of the Israeli state and how
12:4812 minutes, 48 secondsit is justified. That's the nemesis. The nemesis is that Israel is occupying has refused nationhood for the Palestinians.
12:5512 minutes, 55 secondsThat Israel in violation of international law is occupying Palestinian territory. That Israel and it's been so thoroughly documented that
13:0413 minutes, 4 secondsthere's nothing to debate here systematically violates the human rights uh of the Palestinian people. That there is what I refer to as a slow motion
13:1113 minutes, 11 secondsgenocide. And uh and this has been condemned every single year, year after year after year as blatant violations of international law.
13:2013 minutes, 20 secondsUh the Goldstone report found that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza. So that is the nemesis what the Israeli state is doing. It's illegal activity.
13:2913 minutes, 29 secondsIt's immoral activity. It's violation of human rights and so forth and so on.
13:3213 minutes, 32 secondsThat's the nemesis. The nemesis is not Jews and another lobby and so forth.
13:3813 minutes, 38 secondsMany Jews support that policy and then participate in attacks against anyone who criticizes those policies.
13:4913 minutes, 49 secondsAnd we can analyze sociologically why is it that a good portion of the Jewish community in North America is supportive of policies which are reaching such
13:5713 minutes, 57 secondsatrocious levels that someone can make parallels between things that the Nazis did and things that the Israeli state does. Uh but that would be you know a long sociological discussion why. So
14:0514 minutes, 5 secondsit's not that Jews are the nemesis but many Jews vocally and actively support criminal activity, illegal activity, colonial activity.
14:1514 minutes, 15 secondsAnd you you've been smeared as an anti-semite and you're Jewish. Did you think they knew who they were?
14:2014 minutes, 20 secondsNo. And they're very interesting. They changed their line. They f the original student complaints was that I'm was anti-semite. And the original public
14:2714 minutes, 27 secondsrelations campaign against me said that I'm uh I'm anti-Semitic. And when it was discovered that that I'm Jewish, they
14:3514 minutes, 35 secondschanged the line and they said actually my crime now is I'm indoctrinating students and I don't and this and that and came up with a whole another set of uh of uh of charges against me. But here
14:4414 minutes, 44 secondsI want to clarify something. The Israeli state and its idea ideologues and its defenders
14:5214 minutes, 52 secondsdescribe something that they call the new anti-semitism. And this is an absolute farce. And they define the new anti-semitism. That is what we
15:0015 minutesunderstand by anti-semitism. Hatred towards Jews, hostility towards Jews, stereotypes of Jews. That is anti-semitism. That has been around for
15:0815 minutes, 8 secondsmillennia, for millennia. And culminated of course in uh in the in Nazi in Nazi Germany. uh anti-semitism and
15:1615 minutes, 16 secondsanti-semitism of that nature is still around and it needs to be combed. What these people mean when they say the new
15:2415 minutes, 24 secondsanti-semitism is criticism of the Israeli state. If you criticize the Israeli state, that is the new anti-semitism. And so you are equated,
15:3115 minutes, 31 secondsyou are called an anti-semit. And it is a complete farce. It is a way of silencing criticism of the Israeli
15:3915 minutes, 39 secondsstate. It is a way of imposing censorship and selfcensorship on people that would criticize the Israeli state because you don't want to be accused of
15:4715 minutes, 47 secondsbeing an anti-Semitic. And I want to give you an example of how it's used because one of the things that I sent to
15:5415 minutes, 54 secondsmy students as as discussion material for the course was a one paragraph commentary by me accompanying these
16:0116 minutes, 1 secondthree materials that I pulled from the internet. And by the way, uh, this lobby also tried to would repeatedly and intentionally say that I put together
16:0916 minutes, 9 secondsthat photo collage, which I didn't. I simply forwarded from what was on the internet. But here here is uh something I pointed out when I sent that material.
16:1816 minutes, 18 secondsI made a commentary to my students and I said the Israeli state practices uh colonial occupation and violation of human rights and and and dictatorship
16:2716 minutes, 27 secondsover the Palestinians and so forth and so on and they're doing so and with and they are also the principal supporters of dictatorial regimes in other parts of
16:3616 minutes, 36 secondsthe world. So the Israeli state was one of the key props of the apartheid state in South Africa. The Israeli state was one of the key weapon suppliers and
16:4316 minutes, 43 secondspolitical supporters and trainers of the military dictatorships in Latin America.
16:4816 minutes, 48 secondsum that that are responsible for the death of millions of Latin Americans.
16:5116 minutes, 51 secondsAnd the Israeli state supported the coup d'eta that took place in Honduras in June of um for getting my date now 2009.
17:0217 minutes, 2 secondsThere was a illegal coup detad through a democratically elected government, Manuel of Manuel Sallaya, and the Israeli state went in and sent trainers
17:1017 minutes, 10 secondsto train and bolster the security forces that were repressing and murdering people protesting this coup d'eta.
17:1617 minutes, 16 secondsbasically supporting once again a dictatorship. You want to ask why Israel has a foreign policy of that nature and what it says about Israeli policy for
17:2317 minutes, 23 secondsthe Palestinians is then exported to, you know, to the rest of the world and and and so forth. But here's the key point. The deposed president of
17:3217 minutes, 32 secondsHonduras, the legally elected, the Democratic president of Honduras, who hadn't been deposed read the news that Israeli commandos
17:4117 minutes, 41 secondswere training Honduran military to repress protesters against the coup. and he said, "I want to denounce this. I
17:4717 minutes, 47 secondswant to denounce is u this uh that Israel is supporting those that made this kureta."
17:5417 minutes, 54 secondsAnd Abraham Foxman went on the nightly news and he said, "I would like to I'm accusing the the Poland president of
18:0218 minutes, 2 secondsbeing an anti-semite." And so you see how the how the newism the so-called new anti-semitism works. But what did that
18:0918 minutes, 9 secondshave the effect of doing? Okay, Manuel Sallaya then heard that and spent the a full half hour that he got the attention
18:1718 minutes, 17 secondsof the international media saying over and over, I'm terribly sorry if I offended Jews. I have tremendous respect for Jews. I believe in religious
18:2418 minutes, 24 secondsfreedom, etc., etc. Now, Manosa didn't need to do any of that because he never did anything which was anti-Semitic. He never did anything to critical of Jews
18:3318 minutes, 33 secondsfor being Jews. But what that maneuver did is that it took all the world's attention away from what Israel was
18:4018 minutes, 40 secondsdoing criminally in Honduras and it flipped the world's attention to sympathy towards victims of anti-semitism and a mistake so-called
18:4818 minutes, 48 secondsmistake made by the by the by the Honduran president. So you see how this new anti-se so-called new anti-semitism is a very effective ideological and political instrument.
18:5718 minutes, 57 secondsI'm going to interview Daniel Pipes in the next couple days. He gave me an interview. What should I ask him? Do you know who he is? Yeah. I'm I'm just in general.
19:0519 minutes, 5 secondsI know who he is, but why don't you explain who he is in relationship to this particular Oh, well, he he's the other side. He's he's um Campus Watch behind that,
19:1319 minutes, 13 secondsright? I want to read you a quote shortly by Campus Watch, but you should um I I think you should certainly ask him um how do you justif how do you
19:2219 minutes, 22 secondsexplain that Israel has been the principal weapon supplier and trainer for the bloodiest dictatorships in Latin America and some of the most bloodiest
19:3119 minutes, 31 secondsand and violent uh military force in Latin America such as the Colombian military, the Guatemalan military, the coup makers in Honduras. Ask him and see
19:3819 minutes, 38 secondswhat he says. Okay. Self-hatred, Jewish self-hatred. That that's that's the parallel to an anti-Semite in the Jewish world is that's a euphemism for Jews who
19:4719 minutes, 47 secondscriticize the Israeli state. Okay. If you're not Jewish and you criticize the Israeli state, you're an anti-Semitic.
19:5319 minutes, 53 secondsIf you're a Jew and you criticize the Israeli Israeli state, you're a self-hating Jew.
19:5719 minutes, 57 secondsHow was your case resolved? What happened in the end? How did you get out of this? The an adhoc committee was formed uh whose
20:0520 minutes, 5 secondsmembers are anonymous. I don't know who they are. Um to investigate the case and determine if I had violated the faculty code of conduct and they deliberated for
20:1420 minutes, 14 secondsquite some time and concluded that everything I did was in the realm of academic freedom and there's no violation of the of the faculty code of conduct and there's absolutely no need
20:2220 minutes, 22 secondsto continue uh investigation of me and I'm absolved of of anything that I had been charged with.
20:2620 minutes, 26 secondsDid you get an apology or I got no apology? I got no extra bonus.
20:3020 minutes, 30 secondsI got no apology. Uh the university has never explained its actions uh despite my repeated insistence that it does. And
20:3820 minutes, 38 secondsnot only that, but my it has continues to uh conduct the university
20:4520 minutes, 45 secondsitself in such a way that is absolutely outrageous. With regard to my case, on February 9 of 2011, there was a big
20:5420 minutes, 54 secondsdebate on this campus and academic freedom that took place in our biggest 800 seat auditorium here on campus. And the two people that participated in the
21:0221 minutes, 2 secondsdebate were uh were uh Stanley Fish, very well-known commentator, writer for the New York Times and so forth, and
21:0921 minutes, 9 secondsCarrie Nelson. Carrie Nelson is from uh from the American Association of University Professors. And so it was two different of his debate moderated here
21:1821 minutes, 18 secondsby a dean who happened to have been in sitting in that meeting with uh with Abraham Foxman. And the debate was for a couple of hours. This is a packed
21:2621 minutes, 26 secondsauditorium. Um, I was not informed beforehand this debate was going to take place. Was not invited to it. Um, and I'll read this paragraph. The case of
21:3421 minutes, 34 secondsUCS professor William Robinson was amply discussed during the debate. This is a press release that the university put out. A professor of sociology and global studies, Robinson endured a rocky set of
21:4321 minutes, 43 secondsmonths between February and June 2009 after two of his students dropped his society of globalization, misnamed his sociology of globalization class, and
21:5221 minutes, 52 secondsreported him for allegedly distributing anti-semitic materials. Fish insisted that he would have fired Robinson immediately if given the authority. So
22:0022 minuteshere I was disgusted in this massive public forum and the university has been so utterly disrespectful towards me and my integrity and the integrity of university and the integrity of academic
22:0922 minutes, 9 secondsfreedom that it did not invite me to this event and after the fact it did not even inform me that the event had taken place and that I had been the major
22:1622 minutes, 16 secondstarget of discussion in this event. Uh colleague of mine happened to have come across the press release that the university put out and so I learned about it. Um what sort of support have
22:2522 minutes, 25 secondsyou had then? I mean the faculty, students, what have you. I know there's some the the students my my students mobilized. They formed a committee to
22:3222 minutes, 32 secondsdefend academic freedom and they launched a campaign in my defense. It eventually involved uh hundreds of students in our campus and thousands of students nationally and internationally.
22:4322 minutes, 43 secondsAnd the faculty mobilized very quickly to support me as well. Um the faculty over the faculty signed a petition that
22:5122 minutes, 51 secondshad gotten to about 120 signatures by the time I was absolved. It was still circulating. We have some 400 faculty on campus and so 120 had signed and it was
22:5822 minutes, 58 secondsstill circulating around the faculty called an emergency meeting a special meeting of the academic senate. And in the meeting of the academic senate, the
23:0723 minutes, 7 secondsfaculty members in that meeting voted unanimously unanimously to investigate why I was being investigated and to uh
23:1623 minutes, 16 secondsinvestigate why academic freedom was being undermined in our on our campus.
23:2023 minutes, 20 secondsOne of the students said who protested against you was a member of Kabad. Is that relevant to this? Do you know who they are,
23:2723 minutes, 27 secondsTodd? I know who they are. I know who they are. And that organization is a component of a much larger network. The
23:3623 minutes, 36 secondsway that this Israel lobby works is that it's a network of organizations. And so that organization, Havad, is one is is
23:4423 minutes, 44 secondsone and it's one that generally focuses more on on Jewish life, student Jewish life than on political um political
23:5323 minutes, 53 secondsactivity. But it's closely linked to and it's a part of the campus watch network and the stand with us network which in turn is linked to the Apac and the whole
24:0124 minutes, 1 secondyou know structure of the Israeli lobby in North America.
24:0424 minutes, 4 secondsDo you agree with a Richard Faulk made had a quote uh basically saying they're making this your case into a litmus test
24:1224 minutes, 12 secondsto silence criticism of Israel? you elaborate on that completely and that's what I mentioned earlier that APEC APEC held
24:2024 minutes, 20 secondsits annual meeting don't quote me on the exact date but this would be I think November or early December of 2008 and in that annual
24:2924 minutes, 29 secondsmeeting the director of Apac in Washington DC um said we've been losing we've been losing the battle for public
24:3724 minutes, 37 secondsopinion and we need to recover public opinion we're losing our legitimacy uh because public opinion is turning against Israeli policies and therefore
24:4624 minutes, 46 secondswe need to intensify a campaign and we need to attack the big public universities and we should start in uh
24:5324 minutes, 53 secondsthe then the ADL said we should start with the University of California and so they specifically selected me exactly as
25:0025 minutesRichard Fox says to make a litmus test and to win one big battle which could allow the whole lobby to move back on
25:0825 minutes, 8 secondsthe offensive and recover ground that had been that had been losing. You say in your statement, "Silence in the face of social injustice is complicity in
25:1525 minutes, 15 secondsthat injustice." Could you elaborate on that stance?
25:1825 minutes, 18 secondsAbsolutely. If uh if um if if we're witnessing uh social injustice, if we're witnessing crime uh and we sit by
25:2725 minutes, 27 secondsidally, we're complicit if we don't denounce, we don't do what we can to stop a crime.
25:3225 minutes, 32 secondsOkay. Um well the big thing that they deal and let me just let me just point out that
25:4025 minutes, 40 secondsthat notion of silence in the face of social injustice is complicity in their justice goes back to the Holocaust and
25:4825 minutes, 48 secondsgoes back to the whole notion that governments and peoples around the world were silenced in the face of the silent in the face of the Holocaust and so they are complicit with the Holocaust. So
25:5625 minutes, 56 secondsthere's no difference. I mean that now anyone that's silent in the face of these crimes or these atrocities that are committed by the Israeli state are
26:0326 minutes, 3 secondscomplicit in them and and that's the type of parallels I make between uh they're not synonymous the Holocaust and
26:1126 minutes, 11 secondswhat Israel is doing but there are very important parallels and lessons to be drawn from them. Have you had any personal costs other this for your taking the stance other than what you
26:2026 minutes, 20 secondsyou're you know the academic issues? I mean friends have you had friends who bail out on you or any threats to you or anything? I mean I ask this because other people have.
26:3026 minutes, 30 secondsDuring the period that I was uh that I was under investigation and that this whole Israel lobby was was attacking me.
26:3626 minutes, 36 secondsI got uh hundreds of hate mails threatening to kill me. I got threatening phone calls at my home. V
26:4326 minutes, 43 secondsmost disgusting vulgar calls everything you could imagine. Uh and I uh feared for my safety during that time.
26:5126 minutes, 51 secondsOkay. You uh make comparisons to the genocide and the Nazis. That's a big taboo for the ADL people. Could you elaborate on that?
26:5926 minutes, 59 secondsWell, I didn't make comparison. What I what I said is that what the that there are well I forwarded the the photo the uh photo essay and then during the
27:0727 minutes, 7 secondscourse of the six months I pointed out that there are significant parallels and we need to ask what are the lessons of the of these parallels between uh the
27:1827 minutes, 18 secondsNazi occupation of the of Warsaw turning into the Warsaw ghetto and the Israeli occupation of Gaza and turning Gaza into
27:2727 minutes, 27 secondsthe a giant open air ghetto the biggest open ghetto in the world. And and there are eerie parallels. The Jews were not
27:3427 minutes, 34 secondsallowed outside of the Warsaw Ghetto. If they tried to escape, they would they they would be slaughtered. They couldn't escape. Palestinians are not allowed
27:4227 minutes, 42 secondsoutside of Gaza. The Warsaw ghetto was blocked. It was blockaded. Food couldn't come in. Medical supplies couldn't come in, so forth and so on. Same thing.
27:5227 minutes, 52 secondsGassa is blockaded. The Israelis decide what can get in and what cannot get in.
27:5627 minutes, 56 secondsthere's a humanitarian disaster in in uh in Gaza. Um the majority of children suffer from different degrees of
28:0328 minutes, 3 secondsmalnutrition and disease and so forth and so on. Um if in the Warsaw ghetto
28:1028 minutes, 10 secondssomeone tried to protest being locked into this open this concentration camp um by lobbying a grenade or trying to
28:1928 minutes, 19 secondssome some resistance uh they would be slaughtered by the force holding them in there the the Nazis in Gaza if there's
28:2828 minutes, 28 secondsany resistance to occupation it's also you're also cut down and you're slaughtered uh so the resistance is declared
28:3628 minutes, 36 secondsin legitimate resistance. So there are so so there there are all these different um parallels but I want to get to some other a deeper point here and
28:4528 minutes, 45 secondsand here's the point that the Israeli state and Zionism Zionism by the way is a political project and Zionism is an
28:5328 minutes, 53 secondsideology. So there are Jews who are not Zionists and there are Zionists who are not Jews and in fact worldwide the majority of Zionists are not Jews. Okay.
29:0229 minutes, 2 secondsSo when we criticize Zionism, we're not criticizing Jews. That's a manipulation by this Zionist project to equate the
29:0929 minutes, 9 secondstwo. U but here's the point I want to make. The Israeli state constantly draws on and utilizes the
29:1829 minutes, 18 secondsHolocaust and Jewish suffering in order to legitimate its policies and in order to silence critics of those policies.
29:2629 minutes, 26 secondsAnd that's very important to acknowledge that. um you interviewed um Finkelestein
29:3329 minutes, 33 secondsFinkelestein and Finkelestein wrote a very important book the Holocaust industry and that book really upset defenders of the Israeli state and
29:4229 minutes, 42 secondsscientists and it upset them because in my view and he might have used different language that's totally irrelevant that's his academic freedom use what
29:4929 minutes, 49 secondslanguage he he chooses he and but he hit the nail on the head he hit the sore point for the Israelis because every
29:5629 minutes, 56 secondshistorical project whatever it is has a legit legitimating ideology. How do you justify and legitimate this? And you and and and that's what the legitimating
30:0430 minutes, 4 secondsideology is. For the Nazis, it was it was the ideology of Nazism and it was a scapegoat of Jews uh and in Aryan people who were, you know, destined to rule the
30:1330 minutes, 13 secondsworld. For the United States and its interventions worldwide, it's freedom and democracy. We're in Iraq and Afghanistan. We were in Vietnam. We overthrew governments in Latin America.
30:2130 minutes, 21 secondsWe support dictators. All of that for freedom and democracy. So there's always a legitimating ideology. And when you attack that legitimating ideology, the smoke screen disappears, right? The
30:2930 minutes, 29 secondscurtain is pulled back and you see what's really going on here. So the illegitimating ideology for the Israeli state and its project and sanism is the
30:3830 minutes, 38 secondsHolocaust and Jewish suffering. And so that's why they get so upset. They go absolutely berserk when you make some
30:4730 minutes, 47 secondspoint that there are parallels that there is just like there is Nazilike behavior which Israeli soldiers are engaged in. the Israeli state is engaged in.
30:5630 minutes, 56 secondsOkay. Do you feel intimidated now? Is there are you monitored now, do you think? Is there, you know, a new zone here now?
31:0431 minutes, 4 secondsI'm sure I'm sure I'm I'm monitored and but I think the Israel lobby generally works by going after one target at a time, uses everything it can to
31:1131 minutes, 11 secondsundermine that target and then moves on to some new target. So there's um since I was under this attack there have been
31:1931 minutes, 19 secondsuh several professors in the east eastern east coast of the US who one one lost an appointment you know an offer that he was given for another university
31:2731 minutes, 27 secondsanother one lost his course but then there was some mo he wasn't allowed to teach a course but then there was some mobilization and he uh uh his course was
31:3531 minutes, 35 secondsrestored so they go on to new uh targets how often does this sort of thing occur in academ you
31:4131 minutes, 41 secondsand anytime any one time if we looked through the the websites and the newspapers, we'd find that three, four,
31:4731 minutes, 47 secondsfive scholars in North America, but there's two things going on. But let me finish that point. Three or four or five scholars in in North America, because
31:5631 minutes, 56 secondsthis is Canada as well, US and Canada, uh are under attack. They're not going to get tenure. They're not going to be hired. They're going to be run from someplace. Uh they're vilified as
32:0432 minutes, 4 secondsanti-Semitic and the reputation is ruined. Any one time we can find three, four, five under these attacks. Um the
32:1132 minutes, 11 secondsthe um uh other point I wanted to make though and this is equally maybe much more significant is that this threat
32:2032 minutes, 20 secondsthat if you in your courses bring up the Palestine Israel conflict and criticize Israel or even allow open discussion in
32:2732 minutes, 27 secondsyour courses critical of Israel then you will suffer sanctions. You will suffer consequences. Your name will be smeared. We will try to run you from university.
32:3632 minutes, 36 secondsSo this exercises this this imposes a chilling effect on open debate on academic freedom on on what our campuses
32:4532 minutes, 45 secondsand the universities is all about. So there's a self-censorship in effect which is very pervasive and it's very dangerous. It undermines democracy in
32:5232 minutes, 52 secondsthe universities. It undermines what a free society is all about. It undermines what free speech is all about. Are people afraid to speak?
32:5932 minutes, 59 secondsAbsolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I can tell you that I have dozens of co colleagues here on campus who in one or
33:0733 minutes, 7 secondsanother way have said look I'd love to introduce the issue of the Israel Palestinian conflict and talk about you know Israeli occupation in my courses
33:1433 minutes, 14 secondsbut I'm scared I really I can't do it and if that's happening here at the University of California Santa Barbara you can be sure that it's happening all over campuses in North America
33:2333 minutes, 23 secondsyou say controversy is at the very heart of free academic inquiry could that's important could you elaborate on that absolutely absolutely where the acade
33:3033 minutes, 30 secondsfree academic inquiry and academic freedom involves challenging assumptions that we have, challenging uh the ideas that students hold. It involves
33:3833 minutes, 38 secondsintroducing all points of view. It involves being critical and uh interrogating what we think we know about the world and what's going on in
33:4633 minutes, 46 secondsthe world. And when you do anything to stifle that, you're stifling the very nature of intellectual pursuits of academic of the the whole razetra of the
33:5433 minutes, 54 secondsacademy. I I want to read to you one thing before I end this.
33:5933 minutes, 59 secondsUh this is a very important article was written on my case by a couple of colleagues of mine from the University
34:0734 minutes, 7 secondsof California at Irvine. And here they're talking about uh the lobby which
34:1434 minutes, 14 secondshas been put in place to go after uh those that criticize Israel. and they write, "No fewer than 33 distinct organizations, including APEC, the
34:2434 minutes, 24 secondsZionist Organization of America, the American Jewish Congress, and the Jewish National Fund are gathered together today as members or affiliates of uh the
34:3234 minutes, 32 secondsIsraeli onampus coalition. The name of that on-ampus coalition is uh Campus Watch. Okay? whose stated objective is
34:4134 minutes, 41 secondsto generate and then they quote a manual of uh campus watch quote to generate
34:4834 minutes, 48 secondsquote a proactive pro-Israeli agenda on campus. There is accordingly disproportionate and unbalanced intervention on campuses across the country by a coalition of well-funded
34:5734 minutes, 57 secondsorganizations who have no time for and even less interest in the nicities of intellectual exchange and academic process. And then they go on and this is
35:0635 minutes, 6 secondsreally the u remarkable thing. There's an organization uh the Ashara handbook.
35:1235 minutes, 12 secondsThe Hashara handbook is this handbook which campus watch if you're following the story gives to its members and is sort of their guide. It's their guide
35:2035 minutes, 20 secondsbook on how they should be acting on campuses to stifle any criticism of of Israel. And I'm going to read this paragraph. The Hashara handbook promoting titled promoting Israel on
35:2935 minutes, 29 secondscampus which is distributed to campus activists by organizations like stand with us explains that it is often better to score points than to engage in actual
35:3735 minutes, 37 secondsarguments and offers an explanation for how in its own words to score points whilst avoiding debate. Point scoring,
35:4635 minutes, 46 secondsthe Hashbara handbook explains, works because most audience members fail to analyze what they hear. Rather, they register only a few key points and form
35:5535 minutes, 55 secondsa vague impression of those argu whose argument was stronger. Part of the strategy is to recycle the same claims over and over again in as many settings
36:0236 minutes, 2 secondsas possible. This is an actual quote from the book. If people hear something often enough, the document points out, they come to believe it. If people hear
36:1036 minutes, 10 secondssomething often enough, they come out to believe it. So, this is a Jewish organization on campuses called Campus Watch who are saying, doesn't matter if
36:1836 minutes, 18 secondsyou tell the truth. Doesn't matter if you lie. just repeat it over and over and then this very same organization its book says if people hear something often
36:2636 minutes, 26 secondsenough they come to believe it now where did you hear that before who first said that
36:3436 minutes, 34 secondsperson who first said that is Nazi minister of propaganda Joseph goal almost literally he called it the big lie and he said it doesn't matter if
36:4236 minutes, 42 secondsit's truth or it's not truth as long as you repeat it over enough people will believe it so so so here an organization that was involved in attacking me and
36:4936 minutes, 49 secondswhich is is the core of what goes on in on US campuses with regard to the Israel lobby is using a Nazi tactic and that's an empirical fact.
36:5836 minutes, 58 secondsNow, is that for sure campus watch or is that stand with us? Because I do you know I mean
37:0537 minutes, 5 secondswell I I'll look that up. So the thing is I have an interview with the guy who founded Campus Watch. If it's in fact that I'd like I'm going to have to look at Campus Watch.
37:1337 minutes, 13 secondsIt is Campus Watch.
37:1437 minutes, 14 secondsYeah. the the article that you can the article you where you what you should do is type in on Google the trial of Israel's campus critics that's the name
37:2337 minutes, 23 secondsof the article is written by two colleagues of mine at the University of California Irvine uh you want to write that down the trial of Israel's campus critics it should pop right up the the
37:3137 minutes, 31 secondsarticle so then uh could you give me just a general uh assessment of campus watch because I you know I'd like to japose
37:3937 minutes, 39 secondswhatever you have to say in overview with what what what are what is that kind of move.
37:4437 minutes, 44 secondsWell, it's I just quoted from it. Its purpose, it's risetra. The reason it was formed was to be a proactive pro-Israeli agenda to place a proactive pro-Israeli agenda on campus. That's their quote.
37:5337 minutes, 53 secondsOkay. So, what what role does it play generally speaking?
37:5637 minutes, 56 secondsOh, it goes after if there's um if there's a here on here on the campus, if there's some activity, let's say we're
38:0338 minutes, 3 secondsgoing to invite Norman Finkelstein to come and speak, they'll organize and try and say no, he can't speak on campus and block that. If I distribute, if I have a
38:1038 minutes, 10 secondsdiscussion in my course on uh on Palestinian rights, they'll go after me.
38:1538 minutes, 15 secondsIf uh a the some black student union here will have some activity where they're going to talk about the relationship that Israel had with the apartheid regime, they'll go after them.
38:2538 minutes, 25 secondsThe idea of campus watch is to monitor anything that's critical of Israel on campus and go after and attack that criticism.
38:3138 minutes, 31 secondsOne last question, please. Um the issue, many Jews were active in the civil rights movement, very much so, right? and famously so. But when it
38:3938 minutes, 39 secondscomes to the issue of Palestinian rights, that's they dry up. Very important question. Discuss that.
38:4638 minutes, 46 secondsYes. And it's this is the tragedy. This is a tragedy because the Jewish community uh historically worldwide because of being marginalized. Whenever
38:5438 minutes, 54 secondsyou're marginalized, you're more progressive. Whenever you're marginalized, you're more attuned to suffering and inequality and injustice.
39:0039 minutesAnd because Jews have been marginalized and persecuted for so many centuries, historically, the Jewish community is is radical. and at least in the United States still very liberal on most issues
39:0939 minutes, 9 secondsincluding being against um against you know the violation of you know being forced civil rights uh and so forth.
39:1639 minutes, 16 secondsTragically and unfortunately the and this was a strategy of Zionism. This was Zionism's strategy as an ideology and a
39:2439 minutes, 24 secondspolitical project among many different project political projects among the Jewish community was to systematically
39:2939 minutes, 29 secondsand has been and is to in to equate being Jewish and defending yourself as
39:3839 minutes, 38 secondsJewish with identifying yourself with the state of Israel and defending what the state of Israel does including its
39:4539 minutes, 45 secondsoccupation and Zionist ideology. And so that's had a tremendous impact on the Jewish community in North America and in Europe and really worldwide. So Jews
39:5439 minutes, 54 secondsworldwide now until unless or until you you really critically think um you associate yourself as a Jew with Israel and what Israel does and with his
40:0240 minutes, 2 secondsdefense and you associate yourself as a Jew against anyone who will criticize Israel. And that's absolutely tragic because imagine saying that for a Muslim
40:1040 minutes, 10 secondsimagine any Muslim in the world imagine that Iran could actually do that. I mean, Iran hasn't been able hasn't doesn't. But imagine that if Iran was
40:1740 minutes, 17 secondsable to pull off saying uh any Muslim in the world feels that they have to defend the you know the Iranian state and
40:2440 minutes, 24 secondssupport Iran and if they don't do so they're betraying being a Muslim or they're not being a Muslim. I mean that's the equivalent here.
40:3140 minutes, 31 secondsOne last thing real quick please. What was the trigger? How did you become enlightened about Israel? I mean you're Jewish. You must have had pressures in your life to support what happened
40:4040 minutes, 40 secondsyou well you know in my case very curious. I mean, so everyone has different route. Jews have different different ways of arriving at a critical understanding of the truth about Israel
40:4740 minutes, 47 secondsand Zionism and then disassociating themselves and their own Jewish identity from that re from that reality. And I picked up a book uh called Our Roots Are
40:5640 minutes, 56 secondsthe Story of the Palestinian Struggle. I picked it up when I was 16 years old and um and I read it and it blew me away. I said, "Well, this isn't the story, you
41:0441 minutes, 4 secondsknow, that I've been given at all." You given it's the exact reverse. The story they're given is a Palestinian first of all that there were no Palestinians
41:1141 minutes, 11 secondsthere. Secondly, Palestinians hate Jews and wanted to drive them into the ocean.
41:1441 minutes, 14 secondsThe whole the whole propaganda. It's all total complete distortion and propaganda of history. And that got me to reading
41:2141 minutes, 21 secondsand to researching and investigating and um and so that led me in a very different direction.
41:2641 minutes, 26 secondsYeah. And what would you recommend to viewers of this movie as far as Israel in terms of education and um educate yourself. All of the facts
41:3441 minutes, 34 secondsare out there. There's plenty of, you know, pro-Israeli, the official Israeli story and mainstream. Read that, but read what? Read the other side and all
41:4341 minutes, 43 secondsof the facts are out there. The history's out there. You can't erase the facts. You can't erase history. Uh, so just become informed on the issue. I have not interviewed, you know, have
41:5141 minutes, 51 secondssystematically interviewed or conducted surveys of of Jewish American, Jewish Americans, Jewish Canadians, Jewish Europeans, but I'm sure that that their
41:5941 minutes, 59 secondsinformation comes from their synagogues or from these organizations, anti-def.
42:0342 minutes, 3 secondshaven't actually gone out and researched all of the the real, you know, the history and the and the facts on the ground. And if they did, and if they wanted to be consistent with a moral
42:1142 minutes, 11 secondsposition in terms of social justice, they they would have to reach the same conclusion, you know, that I reached and that those like myself reach.
42:1842 minutes, 18 secondsWell, I've talked with some conservative Jewish individuals and the fear of another Holocaust, as you always seems to be part of this issue. The pro p
42:2542 minutes, 25 secondsprospective fear of a holocaust against Israel. Do you have a sense of that?
42:3042 minutes, 30 secondsIt's like it's like saying that Honduras, you know, could threaten a holocaust against uh against the United States. I mean, there's there's no one
42:3942 minutes, 39 secondstalking about a holocaust. The Palestinians right from the beginning have said their original project project after the initial displacement, the mass
42:4742 minutes, 47 secondsdisplacement of Palestinians. And um for the last five decades, the position of the Palestinians first was a unitary
42:5542 minutes, 55 secondsstate where Jews, Arabs, where everyone lives, one person, one vote in a single democratic state. And later on, the Palestinians proposed and have
43:0343 minutes, 3 secondscontinuously pushed for a two-state solution. Palestinians have never said the Israeli Yes, some have, but for that matter, some people in the US have said
43:1143 minutes, 11 secondsyou should, you know, you should kill anyone who's not a fundamentalist Christian. I mean, there's irrelevant individual Palestinian speaking.
43:1843 minutes, 18 secondsPalestinians as a people and as organizations have never never spoken about um you know about
43:2543 minutes, 25 secondsa a project of Holocaust. They're the ones that have been insisting on a you know a single a solution which accommodates everyone. So um and the
43:3343 minutes, 33 secondssame thing with the Arabs, the same thing with the Arab countries. Um the the Arab League, I believe two years
43:4143 minutes, 41 secondsago, uh don't quote me on exactly when or maybe it was three years ago, had a uh proposal endorsed by all the members
43:4943 minutes, 49 secondsof the Arab League saying if Israel withdraws to the 67 borders and acknowledges and recognizes a Palestinian state, we will all of us,
43:5843 minutes, 58 secondsall of the Arab countries will normalize our relations with Israel. So the problem in the Middle East and with Palestine Israel is not anti-semitism.
44:0644 minutes, 6 secondsThat is what I want to emphasize.
44:0844 minutes, 8 secondsAnti-semitism was and is a problem that goes back centuries in other parts of the world. You want to talk about anti-semitism, blame blame Europe, you
44:1744 minutes, 17 secondsknow, blame blame Europe. Talk about anti-semitism, identify real anti-semites, anti-semites here, some of which are fundamental Christians. Uh
44:2444 minutes, 24 secondssome of whom are neo-Nazis. Um some of whom are from the white power movement in the US. identify real anti-semitism and fight anti-semitism has nothing to
44:3244 minutes, 32 secondsdo with what the Palestinians are struggling for and it and I think that that's just a smokeokc screen what is who is it that said that uh you were quoting here
44:4144 minutes, 41 secondsuh pipes yeah I mean that but the argument is absurd as saying if Africans Americans
44:4844 minutes, 48 secondssaying we're scared of being reinsslaved or we're scared of you know in you know to reverse be to move backward through history and once again fight you know
44:5644 minutes, 56 secondshave massive racism uh and so therefore we're going to try and create a situation where we steal, you know, where we uh create a colonial situation
45:0345 minutes, 3 secondsand put whites in concentration camps and uh and deny them rights. I mean, it's absurd. It's that's an ideological justification for defending this project.
45:1245 minutes, 12 secondsOkay. All right. He's been very jazzed.
