A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - Everything the Media is Getting Wrong About the College Protests

00:00:00.000 As of right now, students do not have access to where their money is going when they pay tuition fees to this university.

00:00:06.880 So crucially, our first demand is full disclosure of financial investments.

00:00:11.220 Crucially about Israel, right?

00:00:12.460 Well, we want to know where all of the money is going.

00:00:14.620 We think that that's key for students to know where their money is going, whether it's about Israel or not.

00:00:19.020 But then with this knowledge, we would like to pursue full divestment from two things.

00:00:24.080 First, from all arms manufacturing companies,

00:00:26.460 Whether it's the current genocide in Gaza or other armed conflict around the world, our university should not be investing in that.

00:00:32.440 This is a situation where we should be learning and contributing to education and a safe community, not to international conflict.

00:00:38.600 And secondly, we request and demand that the university divest from all holdings and any entities that sponsor or are complicit in Israeli occupation, apartheid, and the current genocide in Gaza.

00:00:49.340 hello hello and welcome back to a bit fruity uh i have bronchitis right now as you may be able to

00:01:02.320 hear and i was initially going to take the week off to just try to deal with it and i ultimately

00:01:08.380 and i ultimately decided not to do that because of how passionately i feel about what we're going

00:01:16.740 to talk about today. So I have my cough drops, I have my coffee, I have my inhaler, and I hope

00:01:24.020 that you'll bear with me through the rasp and the nasal while we just try our best to muscle through

00:01:30.640 it today. So the other night here in New York City, quite close to my apartment where we're

00:01:36.160 recording this right now, hundreds of New York police clad in riot gear, guns drawn, descended

00:01:42.740 upon Columbia University's Hamilton Hall, where about 100 students were occupying and protesting

00:01:48.480 for Columbia to divest from Israel. The New York police arrested those 100 or so students.

00:01:54.120 As this was happening, I was tuned in to WKCR, which is the Columbia student-run radio station.

00:02:01.540 It's run by 10 or 15 Columbia University students, and they were on the ground reporting live from

00:02:09.140 what they were describing as this chaotic, pretty violent clash between police and student

00:02:15.280 protesters. So I'm getting reports from Teddy now that there may be an unconscious student

00:02:20.360 in front of Hamilton. Do you have any further confirmation of that, Teddy?

00:02:23.200 Yeah, I have a view of video from someone in Harley looking down onto Hamilton. And yes,

00:02:27.860 there's an unconscious student on the ground. They have removed most of the debris and furniture

00:02:32.320 on the side. And there's an unconscious student on their side on the ground in front of Hamilton.

00:02:35.820 soon. Yes, and we now have a confirmation that there is a fire alarm going off in Hamilton Hall.

00:02:40.940 We are not sure of the cause of that. I would also like to note that I did see

00:02:44.320 one student being dragged. The student did look very limp. I'm not sure if that was a form of

00:02:49.920 resistance or if that was the student who had passed out. And I was flipping back and forth

00:02:54.840 between WKCR and CNN, and I could not believe the difference in what this small on-the-ground

00:03:02.120 student-run radio station was reporting to a few thousand listeners versus what CNN was reporting

00:03:07.600 to the rest of America. And what we have seen on the videos so far is actually the most organized

00:03:15.920 and calmest and most professional police intervention we've ever seen on a college

00:03:21.080 campus. I could not reconcile these two accounts of what was happening at Columbia University

00:03:27.300 in real time. It seemed impossible to me. The intellectual dishonesty with how these campus

00:03:33.540 protests are being reported has gotten so egregious that I just started to make a list of

00:03:39.380 everything I saw which was incorrectly reported. At first due to what I think is an understandable

00:03:45.020 lack of information available at the time, but what's turning into what increasingly feels like

00:03:50.560 a commitment to misunderstanding and misrepresenting this movement and these students.

00:03:56.180 So today, I'm going to attempt the impossible task of correcting the record.

00:04:02.120 And I say impossible because there's just so much partial or total misinformation about

00:04:09.180 what is happening across America right now.

00:04:11.880 Nevertheless, we will try.

00:04:13.520 Before we get into it, if you would like to support the show or myself as a creator,

00:04:18.900 the best, best, best way to do that is through Patreon.

00:04:21.900 The link to that will be in the episode description.

00:04:24.220 on Patreon. I do some bonus episodes. We do some live streams. We have a quite active group chat

00:04:31.300 where we all discuss what's happening in the world. And I don't even bother flicking on the

00:04:37.060 monetization thing on these episodes on YouTube anymore because every single time they get

00:04:41.600 demonetized almost immediately because of the nature of what I talk about on this show. So I'd

00:04:46.720 love to have you over there. And one way or another, I hope that you can kick back and strap

00:04:52.440 in because I have over 20 pages of notes to get through right now. So let's just start.

00:04:58.660 All right, a little background. You probably know this, but we're going to do it anyway,

00:05:02.260 just so everything is in context, right? Following the October 7th attack seven months ago,

00:05:06.920 which killed roughly 1,200 Israelis, Israel has been conducting a brutal airstrike campaign

00:05:12.660 against Palestinians in Gaza, as well as ongoing indiscriminate killings of Palestinians in the

00:05:18.020 Bank, which has resulted in the deaths of over 34,000 Palestinians, with thousands more missing

00:05:23.900 under the rubble, also likely dead. And these numbers are just growing every single day.

00:05:30.220 More than 14,000 Palestinian children have been murdered, and thousands more have been orphaned.

00:05:35.820 More than half of all homes in Gaza have been destroyed. Three quarters of school buildings

00:05:41.000 have been destroyed. Less than a third of the hospitals in Gaza are even partially functional.

00:05:46.000 Israel has continued to designate safe zones, which I put in air quotes, for Palestinian refugees inside of the Gaza Strip, only to bomb these safe zones, the most recent of which has been Rafa.

00:05:58.120 We are witnessing one of the most horrifying crimes against humanity of our lifetime, for which Israel has been globally condemned basically everywhere except the United States,

00:06:09.960 Because the United States is Israel's strongest ally and provides Israel with billions of dollars in military funding every single year, which comes out of our tax dollars. 0.86

00:06:19.620 So yes, I do think you should have an opinion about this.

00:06:22.580 Many American universities, which are, at the end of the day, businesses, invest in companies that do business with Israel and, by extension, profit from Israel.

00:06:32.620 Some of them invest in companies like Google, which works directly with Israel by providing technology to the Israeli Defense Force.

00:06:39.960 And so what started less than a month ago as a single protest at Columbia University has grown to tens of thousands of students at more than 100 American universities, protesting and demanding that their schools disclose which companies they have financial ties with and divest from the ones which profit from their partnership with Israel.

00:06:59.380 Hence, you may have heard the slogan, disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.

00:07:04.160 There has been so much said about these protests over the last few weeks, so much hand-wringing about who these students are, why they're protesting, the methods that they're using to protest.

00:07:16.460 And so I've tried my best to separate what's being said and I think what needs to be corrected about the discourse on these protests into like a few different buckets.

00:07:26.280 And we're just going to start going through them and taking an honest look at what the hell is really going on here.

00:07:31.840 Campus anti-Semitism in the United States is once again the center of a contentious

00:07:36.400 House hearing, this time the head of Columbia University.

00:07:39.520 Of the ways that the hatred of Israel and Jews has erupted on college campuses.

00:07:46.240 Many of these protests started peacefully with legitimate questions about the war,

00:07:51.600 but in many cases they lost the plot. The fear among Jews in this country is palpable right now.

00:07:57.520 The House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed a new bill to fight anti-Semitism.

00:08:03.260 The measure, which will now be considered in the Senate,

00:08:06.080 allows the Education Department to restrict funding to universities that tolerate anti-Semitism.

00:08:11.860 There is no place on any campus in America, any place in America,

00:08:16.600 for anti-Semitism or hate speech or threats of violence of any kind.

00:08:20.880 The first thing that I want to address are the accusations of anti-Semitism,

00:08:25.260 which you've probably heard about. On Passover a couple weeks ago, the White House put out a

00:08:31.300 statement condemning a rise of anti-Semitism on college campuses directly tied to these protests.

00:08:37.660 Marsha Blackburn tweeted, terrorist sympathizers are threatening the safety of Jewish students

00:08:42.880 during Passover. We cannot tolerate this disgusting behavior in the United States.

00:08:47.520 There have been nonstop segments on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, all of them about this supposed dramatic rise in anti-Semitism on campus.

00:08:59.580 And I want to talk about that for a second.

00:09:01.880 And as you probably know, I'm Jewish, but I'm not going to make this entire argument rest on the fact that I'm Jewish.

00:09:08.900 I want to zoom out for myself for a minute.

00:09:11.840 To start, it is not anti-Semitic to criticize Israel.

00:09:15.200 It is not anti-Semitic to call for your university to divest from Israel. Israel is not synonymous

00:09:21.760 with Jewish people. Israel is a state, a state which for 75 years has subjected the Palestinian 0.99

00:09:29.680 people to a brutal apartheid regime. I know, I know, I said apartheid. Some people are going to

00:09:34.980 get mad at me, but let's talk about it, right? When I say apartheid, what do I mean? Well,

00:09:39.380 if you're Palestinian, there is a demoralizing checkpoint system which restricts your ability

00:09:44.480 to move and travel there is the regular seizure and demolition of palestinians homes there is the

00:09:51.000 denial of citizenship to palestinians there is the denial of the right to return for palestinian

00:09:56.560 refugees who were displaced there are the unlawful killings of palestinians which like i said the

00:10:02.060 killing of palestinians in the west bank has just like been a thing for way longer than this most

00:10:07.280 recent escalation of violence there is the illegal military occupation of the gaza strip and the west

00:10:13.220 Bank, which are the Palestinian territories which surround Israel. And there are the Israeli 0.57

00:10:17.300 settlements in occupied Palestinian territories, which have been globally condemned as illegal.

00:10:23.880 This isn't my opinion. None of what I just stated is like, well, I think that's happening.

00:10:28.580 This is just what's been going on in Israel for 75 years. This word apartheid, it's treated like

00:10:36.420 a buzzword, but it's not. It's what's happening. And accusations of apartheid have been levied

00:10:41.900 by members of the United Nations, by Amnesty International, and by a whole bunch of other

00:10:47.960 human rights groups. So no, Jews are not Israel. And it's so intellectually dishonest when people

00:10:55.900 conflate these critiques of Israel as a violent, racist apartheid state with anti-Semitism.

00:11:02.880 And in my opinion, and this is my opinion, it's bad when people, like a lot of the people that

00:11:08.400 we're going to talk about today, conflate Jews with Israel. Because when the whole world is

00:11:13.220 looking at Israel as this ruthless apartheid state, and you're over here on CNN saying that 0.94

00:11:19.900 that's offensive to Jews, that wraps us all up in the crimes against humanity that Israel is 0.83

00:11:25.620 committing. That's why so many thousands of Jews, like myself, are saying, not in my name. Do not 0.73

00:11:32.520 commit this genocide in my name. I do not sign off on this. I do not want this. This is not

00:11:37.940 Judaism. This is nationalism. Even just the other night, thousands of Israeli citizens in Israel are

00:11:45.560 marching in the street calling for a ceasefire. Are you going to accuse thousands of Jews in

00:11:51.260 Israel marching, calling for in part the same thing that the students at Columbia are calling 0.99

00:11:56.680 for, anti-Semitic, while they're marching down the streets of fucking Tel Aviv? So what's actually 0.98

00:12:02.360 going on here? Is there anti-Semitism on campus? Well, I'm not going to say it hasn't happened.

00:12:08.740 There have been a few rare documented examples. And I'm mentioning this because I think it's

00:12:14.500 more effective to address and condemn this bad behavior, no matter how rare, instead of sweeping

00:12:20.700 it under the rug out of concern that it'll make your movement look bad. I think this is what a

00:12:25.540 healthy movement and what a healthy community should do. Like, this is not the Catholic Church,

00:12:30.440 And so for example, one of the student leaders at Columbia was caught on video saying Zionists

00:12:37.260 don't deserve to live. That's despicable. There's no room in an anti-genocide movement to call for 0.77

00:12:45.520 the killing of other people, no matter how much you disagree with them. And this person was

00:12:50.560 rightfully condemned and they were banned from campus. And I think a healthy movement does

00:12:56.380 pushed this shit out. So there have been rare and most definitely abhorrent instances of 0.99

00:13:03.240 anti-Semitism. But there's really no world in which these instances represent the movement as

00:13:09.180 a whole. Like, for the most part, cries of anti-Semitism are mostly smears attempting to

00:13:15.660 shut down any valid and necessary criticisms of Israel. And why is nobody talking about how many

00:13:22.740 Jews are participating in and often leading these pro-Palestinian protests? I've been to some of

00:13:29.160 them. I've been to anti-Zionist Jewish protests where hundreds and sometimes thousands of Jews

00:13:35.640 are in attendance and getting arrested. What about the safety of Jewish students who are protesting

00:13:41.500 in support of the Palestinian cause? When we're having these never-ending conversations about the

00:13:46.640 safety of Jewish students on campus. Which Jewish students exactly are we talking about? Simone

00:13:53.880 Zimmerman, a student at Columbia, tweeted from the Columbia encampment, which has now been

00:13:58.400 raided and shut down. Tonight at Columbia, Jewish students led a full Shabbat service

00:14:03.400 at the Gaza Solidarity encampment. Minutes later, Muslim students had their evening prayer service,

00:14:09.740 all surrounded by love. Please do let the world know there are ways to live that aren't being 1.00

00:14:15.420 a paranoid bigot. Another Jewish Columbia student named Jonathan Ben Menachem in an article called

00:14:21.640 I Am a Jewish Student at Columbia. Don't believe what you're being told about campus anti-Semitism.

00:14:27.200 He wrote, here's what you're not being told. The most pressing threats to our safety as Jewish

00:14:32.520 students do not come from tents on campus. Instead, they come from the Columbia administration 1.00

00:14:38.260 inviting police onto our campus, certain faculty members, and third-party organizations that dox

00:14:44.320 undergraduates. Just the other day, Annalise Orlik, a middle-aged woman, a professor at Dartmouth,

00:14:50.800 was wrestled to the ground and zip-tied by cops while trying to protect her students from being

00:14:56.380 arrested. Annalise Orlik says she was there to support her students when she says police threw

00:15:01.540 her to the ground. The violence came with the police. The violence was welcomed in by Dartmouth

00:15:06.640 and it's really outrageous. It's really shameful in a sleepy little campus, you know, in a rural

00:15:14.020 area like Dartmouth, that they brought in this ridiculous show of arms and strength and violence. 0.53

00:15:23.000 Annalise Orelick is a Jewish woman and the chair of Jewish studies at Dartmouth University.

00:15:30.440 And so while hundreds of Jewish students and professors are being arrested on campuses across

00:15:35.540 the United States, CNN aired a segment with host Dana Bash where she talks to Zionist influencer

00:15:42.060 and actress, Noah Tishby, about supposedly rampant anti-Semitism on campus.

00:15:47.760 Where does this hate come from and how is it connected to the pro-Palestinian protests

00:15:52.560 we see raging on college campuses?

00:15:55.160 Joining me now are Noah Tishby and Emmanuel Acho.

00:15:58.000 And then turns it into a promotion for Noah's forthcoming book, where she once again monetizes

00:16:04.480 the claim that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.

00:16:07.520 So I do believe that this book couldn't have come in a more appropriate moment in our culture.

00:16:13.200 Ted Cruz. Okay, this one is fucking remarkable. Ted Cruz tweeted, quote, 0.99

00:16:20.060 the anti-Semitic protests at universities are funded by George Soros.

00:16:26.280 What? You are using an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about like Jews running the banks and

00:16:33.680 the world to smear anti-war protests as anti-Semitic? What is going on here? Am I losing

00:16:41.940 my fucking mind? You know, there's something so disingenuous about far-right politicians like 1.00

00:16:48.700 Ted Cruz suddenly being so concerned about anti-Semitism on campus after spending how

00:16:56.120 many years allowing and sometimes actively embracing wildly anti-Semitic conspiracy theories

00:17:02.960 to thrive on the right? I mean, Fox News for the past three weeks has been running nonstop coverage

00:17:09.300 of this supposed wild rise of anti-Semitism on college campuses. Fox News, until they fired

00:17:16.340 Tucker Carlson last year, ran 400 episodes of Tucker Carlson where he was talking about the

00:17:22.820 Great Replacement Theory, which is an anti-Semitic conspiracy that says that racialized groups,

00:17:29.280 including Jews, are conspiring to replace the political power and representation of white

00:17:34.720 Americans. These are media moguls and politicians who have happily proliferated anti-Semitic 0.94

00:17:42.440 conspiracy theories that put Jews in danger about Jews running the banks, about Jews running the

00:17:47.740 media, about Jews this and Jews that, and George Soros and the Jewish cabal. These are people who 0.69

00:17:52.320 have happily flirted with QAnon. And now they're going on and on about how we must condemn

00:17:58.960 anti-Semitism on college campuses. This is not about anti-Semitism. These people don't care

00:18:04.740 about the well-being of Jews. These people care about limiting our ability to criticize Israel,

00:18:11.840 which we should all be doing. Because once again, Israel has killed 34,000 Palestinians 0.82

00:18:18.840 in the last seven months. And while we're on this topic still, like, why is there so little

00:18:24.920 discussion about Islamophobia on campus? Where are the United States Senate hearings about racism

00:18:32.480 on campus? Last week, this video went viral from Ole Miss of these white fraternity students

00:18:39.840 harassing this black woman who was protesting in support of Palestine. And they were jeering at her

00:18:46.620 and yelling at her and filming her.

00:18:48.900 And one particular student went notably viral

00:18:51.760 for pretending to be a monkey

00:18:54.640 and making monkey sounds at her.

00:19:02.880 And so surely there's going to be widespread media coverage

00:19:06.380 on Fox News and MSNBC and CNN and the New York Times

00:19:10.360 to denounce racism on campus, right?

00:19:13.440 I mean, it hasn't happened yet, but it's coming, right?

00:19:16.040 I'd like to take a quick break from the show to thank the sponsor of today's episode,

00:19:22.540 Blueland, who, along with my supporters over on Patreon, make it possible for me to spend

00:19:29.000 12 hours a day going down right-wing online rabbit holes. Which, you know what? When I put

00:19:35.020 it that way, maybe we should all stop enabling this behavior. Maybe we need to stop. Blueland

00:19:40.080 is on a mission to eliminate single-use plastic by reinventing cleaning essentials that are better

00:19:44.340 for you and the planet. So you know those dishwasher pods that we all use? I thought those

00:19:50.400 just like dissolve completely because it looks like they do. But actually, they leave hundreds

00:19:55.680 of microplastics that end up back in the water supply. I didn't know this. Maybe that makes me

00:20:00.640 dumb. I recently switched over to Blueland dishwasher tablets, which just like everything 0.82

00:20:05.200 else in their line, both in the product and the packaging and the delivery system, has no single

00:20:10.280 use plastic. You know, I feel like sometimes when you switch over to like the eco-friendly or

00:20:14.460 sustainable version of an everyday product, a lot of times you're sacrificing on quality.

00:20:19.300 But I now live in a basically entirely Blueland household. And I will tell you, my dishes are as

00:20:26.260 white as they've ever been. My clothes are as clean as they've ever been. You're really not

00:20:30.540 sacrificing on quality. And you're really not paying an arm and a leg either. Because with

00:20:34.780 Blueland's really efficient refill system on all of their products, you're not only taking on a

00:20:38.820 more sustainable way to keep your home clean, but you're also saving a good amount of money over

00:20:42.520 time. And I know this isn't really the point, but I will say having an entirely Blue Land household, 0.99

00:20:49.720 it is kind of nice to go to my cleaning supply drawer and everything is in these like beautiful

00:20:56.800 pastel tins and bottles, looking uniform, looking chic. It really does beat all of the, you know,

00:21:03.240 garish drugstore stuff. There are so many reasons to love Blueland. If you would like to try it out,

00:21:09.280 you can go to blueland.com slash fruity for 15% off your first order. Again, that is blueland.com

00:21:17.360 slash fruity. Thank you, thank you, thank you to Blueland for sponsoring this show, and now let's

00:21:24.200 get back to it. So the next thing I want to get into is why these students are protesting. There's

00:21:30.200 been this prevailing rhetoric that the students who are protesting across college campuses

00:21:33.960 don't really believe in the cause that they're protesting for, or they're misinformed, or they

00:21:40.220 have ulterior motives, or there's some foul play. There's been this ongoing narrative by a lot of

00:21:45.820 media people that seem to think that all of the protesters on college campuses are just like

00:21:51.360 doing this to feel cool. Olivia Reingold wrote in the Free Press an article titled

00:21:56.680 Camping Out at Columbia's Communist Coachella. And so here's an excerpt from that article.

00:22:03.180 It's a Monday afternoon at Columbia University, but hundreds of students are not in class.

00:22:08.520 They're camped out on a lawn in front of the main library, making friendship bracelets,

00:22:13.320 painting scraps of cardboard, and gossiping about the Zionists on campus. 0.81

00:22:18.060 What should I do? A girl with a mullet pops out of a tent to ask her friend. 0.96

00:22:22.640 She's holding a Sharpie in her hand, staring at a blank poster board. 1.00

00:22:26.740 I'm thinking, dykes for divestment. 1.00

00:22:29.540 A few steps away, in front of a sign that says, 1.00

00:22:31.820 paint your nails for Palestine,

00:22:32.940 a girl is fanning her freshly polished red toenails.

00:22:38.000 Nearby, a student with Farrah Fawcett's hairstyle,

00:22:41.400 except purple, is frantically asking other students if they've seen her vape.

00:22:46.820 Okay, Olivia Reingold.

00:22:48.780 like yeah okay first of all they're making friendship bracelets and painting their nails

00:22:53.300 hello they're college students but also can i pose an honest question how should they be protesting

00:23:00.840 because when they're chanting in the streets you call them disruptive but when they're laying out

00:23:06.600 in the grass you make fun of them for not going to class but when they break into a building 0.99

00:23:12.520 they're violent but when they're making friendship bracelets and having blue hair they're pathetic 0.93

00:23:17.120 What do you want them to do? How can they get their message across in a way that Olivia 0.98

00:23:22.960 Rheingold of the Free Press will approve of? Philippe Lemoyne wrote on Twitter,

00:23:27.840 my basic model of student protests is that in general, students don't know shit about what 0.94

00:23:32.660 they're protesting against. They do it because it's cool, makes them feel like they're part of

00:23:37.200 something important and they want to be with their friends. And then Nate Silver responded and wrote,

00:23:41.980 This is probably right. Most people don't form political opinions through deep examination of

00:23:47.160 the issues or reasoning from first principles. It's more like picking some particular fashion

00:23:52.200 label or way of dressing, especially for younger people who face more peer pressure.

00:23:58.380 Look, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that like groupthink has no place in this whole thing.

00:24:04.140 When you're a late teenager in your early 20s, you want to feel part of something. It feels good.

00:24:09.920 no denying that but i really struggle to believe that that's the chief motive here how hard is it

00:24:16.400 to believe that college students don't want their tuition money to support the indiscriminate murder

00:24:23.120 of palestinian civilians why is that such a hard thing for us like why do we have to invent a hundred

00:24:29.360 different conspiracy theories about they want to feel cool they want a place to vape they want to 1.00

00:24:34.540 paint their nails. They want to feel like they're partisan. Why is it so hard to imagine that a lot

00:24:41.400 of these students are just against death? Scott Galloway, an NYU professor, went on the news to

00:24:49.280 say that students are turning to, quote, anti-Israel protests because they're not having 0.98

00:24:54.160 enough sex. Part of the problem is young people aren't having enough sex. And so they go on the 0.99

00:24:58.620 hunt for fake threats. And the most popular threat throughout history, type into Google

00:25:03.620 anti-Semitism and pick your century. Like, okay, first of all, have you ever met leftist college

00:25:09.380 students? They're fucking. Trust me, Scott, they're fucking. Like I mentioned before, there are 1.00

00:25:15.040 ironically anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that these pro-Palestinian protests are funded by

00:25:21.900 left-wing Jews, which is made even more ironic by the fact, by the way, that there have been

00:25:27.840 pro-Israel counter-protest demonstrations, which were literally funded by billionaire Bill Ackman

00:25:35.260 and Jerry Seinfeld's wife, Jessica Seinfeld. Just last week, while pro-Palestinian students were

00:25:41.340 sitting peacefully in their encampment at UCLA, a group of about 100 pro-Israel counter-protesters

00:25:47.840 got extremely violent with them, tearing down their barricades and shooting fireworks into

00:25:54.400 their encampment. And just before that happened, Jessica Seinfeld was posting on her Instagram

00:26:09.580 story about how she made a personal $5,000 donation to pro-Israel counter protesters

00:26:15.680 at UCLA. And the billionaire Bill Ackman did the same thing for GW. So like, okay,

00:26:21.640 Why are the students protesting? If it's not the sex, if it's not to feel cool, it's not to feel

00:26:28.200 like you're part of something, why are so many thousands of students protesting? Young people

00:26:34.280 like myself, like all of these college students, like frankly anyone online, we have been bombarded

00:26:42.260 with images of dead Palestinians every day for seven months. It is really not hard to understand

00:26:49.860 why tens of thousands of student protesters at hundreds of universities across America and the

00:26:55.540 world are asking their universities to stop funneling their tuition money to support apartheid

00:27:01.840 and mass death. It's just not. Next, are the protests violent? The university protests have

00:27:08.800 been widely categorized as violent, as extreme, as dangerous. Protesters have often been referred to

00:27:16.100 as terrorists, which also feels like a particularly racialized smear. Just a few days ago, President

00:27:21.680 Biden tweeted, quote, in moments of dissent, there are always those who rush in to score political

00:27:27.240 points. But this isn't a moment for politics. Okay, Joe. This is a moment for clarity. So let

00:27:35.500 me be clear. Peaceful protest is protected in America. Violent protest is not protected. It's

00:27:41.720 against the law. So I would like to start this segment by clarifying that 99% of these protests

00:27:47.600 are, and I cannot stress this enough, students sitting in the grass. Isn't it pretty remarkable

00:27:54.840 how right-wing media has spent years convincing us that American college students are the most

00:28:00.000 delicate little soft snowflakes, socially incapable of meeting the pizza delivery guy at the door,

00:28:05.840 but now they're telling us that these same 19-year-olds are well-funded, well-equipped

00:28:12.060 terrorists capable of the destruction of America? I want to address and correct some wildly

00:28:18.100 misrepresented events that have happened at these protests, starting with the flag poke incident.

00:28:24.880 Sahar Tartak, a Zionist activist and Yale student, was filming pro-Palestinian demonstrators on

00:28:30.940 campus when one of these students who was walking past her and clearly has no idea that she's

00:28:36.480 standing there filming because it's crowded, accidentally pokes her with their pro-Palestinian

00:28:42.100 flag. This event was uncritically reported on as a stabbing by a hundred different media channels,

00:28:58.120 including Fox News, where Sahar made a guest appearance to talk about how she was stabbed.

00:29:04.960 Anti-Israel protests turning violent, injuring our next guest. She wrote a column on this saying,

00:29:10.760 quote, I was stabbed in the eye at Yale. Barry Weiss, again in the Free Press,

00:29:15.960 wrote an article called They Were Assaulted on Campus for Being Jews, where she writes about how,

00:29:22.540 quote, at Yale, Sahar Tartak was stabbed in the eye. And then she also publishes in the free press

00:29:29.300 a first-person narrative essay from Sahar Tartak called, I was stabbed in the eye at Yale. Quote,

00:29:36.120 the school has allowed anti-Israel students to run roughshod over their most basic policies.

00:29:42.180 Yesterday, I paid the price for their inaction. Sahar, you were accidentally poked. And I'm sorry

00:29:49.880 for that to be clear i'm sure it was at worst unpleasant i don't envy you for having been 0.93

00:29:55.740 poked but are we fucking for real right now you guys are lucky i have bronchitis and can't really 0.91

00:30:01.060 like emote properly in the way that i would to these stories because my goodness 0.98

00:30:05.980 morning joe msnbc's morning news show ran a segment where they invited the new york deputy

00:30:14.700 commissioner to come on and show to the camera one of the chains that they collected after arresting

00:30:21.300 student protesters at columbia university where he said quote this is not what students bring to

00:30:26.940 school this is what professionals bring to campuses and universities trying to make the

00:30:32.800 case that these students were like uniquely violent and had access to these like professional

00:30:38.340 tools of destruction and terrorism or something it is a bike chain it's a bike chain and so my 0.99

00:30:46.060 question is like okay whatever the cops are idiots but like did none of these normal ass people on 0.99

00:30:51.940 the set of morning joe look at this guy showing to the camera a bike chain calling it some like 1.00

00:30:58.320 kind of uniquely professional weapon and be like hey dude that's a bike chain why was this aired

00:31:06.760 why was this tweeted by morning joe after it was aired there has no one ever ridden a bike

00:31:13.760 has no one ever locked up a bike what what 0.97

00:31:16.740 fuck me there have been a lot of photos published in local and major news outlets of the pro-palestinian 0.99

00:31:27.340 encampments looking like total messes with the tents toppled over and waste everywhere and 1.00

00:31:33.780 garbage and just like shit strewn about. And these photos are supposed to serve as evidence that 0.97

00:31:40.260 these are violent protests, that these are disorganized. But the thing is, all of these

00:31:46.280 photos have been taken right after the cops raid the encampments, which is why there's never any

00:31:51.840 students in these photos. It's like, yeah, the encampment looks a mess because there was just

00:31:56.740 a violent clash with police and nobody was given any time to clean up. Of course, this is how it

00:32:02.240 looks right now. And so all of this is to say, I just am not buying into this thing that like

00:32:07.820 these protest encampments are putting like students at risk. Like they're again, just

00:32:16.480 kids sitting in the grass. And yes, sometimes they're chanting. Sometimes they're marching.

00:32:21.900 These are the hallmarks of what it means to peacefully protest you guys. But you want to

00:32:26.060 talk about what's actually endangering students with violence in this situation? Cops and the

00:32:31.480 sometimes violent counter-protesters. I'll give you some examples. Like I mentioned earlier,

00:32:36.420 peaceful protesters were just sitting in their UCLA encampment when they were violently attacked

00:32:42.160 by pro-Israel counter-protesters who shot literal fireworks into the encampment. They were tearing

00:32:48.280 down the walls. And before we can even move on from this, I want to mention that the Los Angeles

00:32:54.000 Times wrote an article about this where the headline initially and correctly says,

00:32:59.380 UCLA Cancels Classes After Counter-Protestors Violently Attack Pro-Palestinian Camp. 0.90

00:33:05.400 That's accurate.

00:33:07.200 That headline was changed to,

00:33:10.200 After Violent Protests at UCLA, UC President Launched His Investigation into Response.

00:33:16.800 Violent protests?

00:33:18.660 Who was violent?

00:33:20.580 Who was doing the violence?

00:33:22.480 They were peaceful protests.

00:33:24.600 until pro-Israel counter-protesters shot fireworks into the camp. Again, this isn't my opinion. This

00:33:31.360 is the timeline of events. It's all well documented. I don't understand why there is this

00:33:36.780 unbelievable resistance to describing these events for the public as they're actually happening.

00:33:43.440 And mind you, while the pro-Israel counter-protesters were violently attacking the

00:33:49.160 peaceful ones, the police did nothing. It was only later that the police came in,

00:33:55.240 raided the encampment, and arrested 200 peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters.

00:34:00.340 And right after this raid occurred, the LAPD police chief, Dominic Choi, tweeted,

00:34:05.480 quote, I am thankful there were no serious injuries to officers or protesters.

00:34:10.260 This is a lie. This is a lie. I don't even know how you lie like this when there is footage

00:34:17.620 of cops raiding the UCLA encampment and shooting rubber bullets at students. Rubber bullets hurt,

00:34:25.200 you guys. Rubber bullets is not like toy gun. Rubber bullets fucking hurt. And students were

00:34:31.560 injured. And there are photos of injured students in the hospital with bloody heads, like this one.

00:34:38.360 One person who was at the encampment tweeted a selfie of their head wrapped with blood coming

00:34:46.440 out of their chin and they captioned it, that was me, dot, dot, dot, free Palestine. And then they

00:34:53.300 tweeted another photo from the hospital where they're holding up their bloody keffiyeh and 0.99

00:34:58.520 they tweeted the caption, thank you everyone for the well wishes. Leaving the hospital now with 11 0.91

00:35:03.960 staples and four stitches in my dome. Despite all of this, I'm so proud of everyone that was there

00:35:09.680 tonight and I'm filled with hope. We will see a free Palestine in our lifetime. How does the

00:35:15.360 LAPD police chief tweet, there were no injuries, no one was hurt. And you have this fucking guy on 1.00

00:35:22.220 a hospital bed covered in blood from being shot with rubber bullets by your cops. Hamilton Nolan 1.00

00:35:28.260 tweeted something that I thought was really astute and summarizes everything I've been saying,

00:35:33.260 which is he wrote, quote, having police violently break up protests and then calling them, quote,

00:35:39.180 violent protests is an old trick that succeeds only when the press takes the bait, which is

00:35:44.420 what's happening now. Yeah, that's what's happening now. These are peaceful protests

00:35:50.380 that are being violently broken up over and over again, only to be called violent protests,

00:35:56.380 which they are not. When the New York Police Department entered Hamilton Hall to arrest all

00:36:02.280 of the students who were occupying it, you know, the story that I opened the episode with,

00:36:06.340 it was confirmed by the Manhattan DA that one of the cops' guns fired when they were inside of

00:36:11.700 Hamilton Hall. That is violent. That is putting student safety at risk. It's not chance. It's not

00:36:19.900 even breaking a window. That is a gun firing. That is a student that could have been dead.

00:36:25.380 And you want to tell me that the real threat to student safety here is a bunch of kids sitting

00:36:30.300 in the grass, painting their toenails, as was so astutely reported on in the free press.

00:36:35.760 Yeah, sure. Let's talk about Hamilton Hall for a second. Hamilton Hall is a historic

00:36:41.520 building on Columbia University's campus that pro-Palestinian protesters broke into at around

00:36:47.200 1 a.m. on April 30th, a week ago, and occupied through the following night when they were

00:36:53.580 violently arrested by hundreds of NYPD in riot gear, which is what I was talking about at the

00:36:59.360 top of the episode. Columbia students have a history of occupying Hamilton Hall in protest.

00:37:04.460 They did it during the infamous 1968 student protests against the Vietnam War and the

00:37:10.600 construction of a segregated gym, and they did it again in 1985 during the student protests

00:37:17.000 calling for Columbia to divest from South African apartheid. All of these protests, by the way,

00:37:23.880 were also viewed as nuisances at the time, and of course today are regarded as righteous and brave.

00:37:31.980 On the night following the break-in last week, all of the occupiers in Hamilton were arrested.

00:37:37.360 Footage from that night showed students being shoved to the ground.

00:37:41.120 One particular video shows a student being thrown down a flight of stairs by a cop. 0.99

00:37:45.940 It's pretty jarring shit. 0.98

00:37:47.760 Now, in order to enter Hamilton Hall, a few of the student protesters broke a window on 0.99

00:37:53.380 the door of the front entrance.

00:37:54.840 There were a number of photographs that became extremely well circulated of a masked student

00:38:00.980 using a hammer to break the window on the door.

00:38:04.320 These were the photos that launched, you know, a thousand think pieces about how violence is bad.

00:38:10.200 And I have a few feelings about this.

00:38:12.640 First of all, yes, this is a type of illegal and non-peaceful protest in the sense that, yes, destruction of private property occurred.

00:38:21.000 I will happily differentiate this from what the vast majority of this protest movement is, which is, again, like I have said, students sitting in the grass.

00:38:30.440 but this is also at the end of the day a broken window right and i have a hard time taking it 0.97

00:38:39.200 seriously as anything more than that especially when israel has been bombing gaza relentlessly

00:38:45.580 for seven months which very few american politicians seem to really care about stopping

00:38:51.140 there are no universities left in gaza you know a lot of these pro-israel people keep making jokes

00:38:57.620 of like, well, if the student protesters, if they want to protest so badly, then why

00:39:02.080 don't they go to school in Gaza?

00:39:03.420 Hey, dude, there's no universities left in Gaza.

00:39:05.920 Israel bombed them all.

00:39:07.740 And especially when we live in a country built upon this exact type of protest.

00:39:13.700 Following the break into Hamilton Hall, Biden led this press conference where he said, quote,

00:39:18.340 dissent must not lead to disorder.

00:39:21.140 Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder.

00:39:25.460 My dude, Joe, you are the president of a country that prides itself on its history of exactly that.

00:39:35.100 You know, when civil rights activist John Lewis said get into good trouble, you know, good trouble, that slogan that Democrats love to trot out, like John Lewis wasn't referring to voting for Hillary Clinton.

00:39:48.520 There's been this ongoing myth that everything we're seeing right now on college campuses

00:39:52.760 bears no resemblance to previous successful protest movements, which, you know, unlike

00:39:58.740 the current movement, have all been seared into American history as decidedly good things.

00:40:04.420 Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the ADL, which is a very influential pro-Israel group,

00:40:09.260 tweeted this jab at protesters where he wrote, quote,

00:40:12.580 You're not actually taking a stand if you're unwilling to stand up and be counted.

00:40:16.540 The heroes of Seneca Falls, Birmingham, Stonewall, and so many others, they faced far graver risks

00:40:24.560 and never tried to hide their faces, nor menace those with whom they disagree.

00:40:30.160 There is so much here, but I just want to start with like, what do you guys think Stonewall was?

00:40:37.240 Do you think Stonewall was a meeting? Do you think Stonewall was an email?

00:40:41.840 Do you think Stonewall happened in a conference room?

00:40:44.520 stonewall was a riot stonewall was violent people threw bricks yeah that's the first brick at 0.98

00:40:54.340 stonewall that's not just a meme that's a thing that happened and you know it's also why gay

00:40:59.560 people have rights what does anyone gain from sanitizing history like this you know rosa parks

00:41:06.800 broke the law by refusing to give up her seat to a white person like i know it's unthinkable now 0.93

00:41:13.860 that that was the law, but that was the law. The black college students who congregated every day

00:41:20.380 in 1960 at a whites-only lunch counter in the Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworths department

00:41:27.260 store were illegally occupying space in a privately owned business. People were arrested at these

00:41:34.580 sit-ins. These sit-ins that are widely revered in America today as like brave and righteous.

00:41:41.120 And not only were these protesters arrested at the time, but people disapproved of them then.

00:41:48.000 Gallup, the polling organization, released this poll that they did in 1961, where they asked people if they thought whether or not sit-ins were hurting or helping the civil rights cause.

00:41:59.660 More than half of people in 1961 said that sit-ins at lunch counters were hurting the civil rights cause.

00:42:05.960 Don Lemon also tweeted a jab at the Columbia students, writing,

00:42:09.740 What are you talking about? What's the point of this? The civil rights movement was filled

00:42:27.780 with events that, strategically speaking, very closely resembled the occupation of Hamilton

00:42:33.920 Hall. Why are we sanitizing history like this? There's also been this collective outcry from

00:42:40.100 traditional media and TikTokers alike that the protesters on these college encampments won't

00:42:45.800 talk to them or they ask the media people to speak to specifically chosen media liaisons from

00:42:52.500 the encampments. And this is supposed to be like evidence that the protesters are hiding something

00:42:58.640 sinister about the encampments and that their intentions as a movement aren't as transparent

00:43:03.580 as they seem. This girl, Montana Tucker, who is a singer and influencer with 3 million Instagram

00:43:09.900 followers for whom she's been posting pro-Israel content over the last several months. She also

00:43:15.860 went to the Grammys wearing this pro-Israel dress. She visited one of these college encampments in

00:43:22.920 California. And when they wouldn't speak to her, she started crying as if she had been attacked.

00:43:29.340 We've been seeing all over the news, all the craziness that's happening on college campuses,

00:43:32.200 especially at UCLA, so I decided to come here for myself.

00:43:37.200 Do you mind if I interview?

00:43:38.200 I'm not going to talk to media.

00:43:40.200 Excuse me, do you guys want to tell me what's going on here?

00:43:43.200 No, sorry.

00:43:45.200 I'm not letting any media in if you can, just so you know.

00:43:47.200 Okay, we're just standing outside just trying to...

00:43:49.200 Are we allowed to ask you guys a few questions at all?

00:43:51.200 A lot of us just don't feel comfortable.

00:43:53.200 I can direct you to media liaison.

00:43:55.200 We're not going to...

00:43:57.200 We're not going to interview with you today.

00:43:59.200 She's not going to engage with people that are going to be pushing us.

00:44:04.200 I've never seen anything like this in my life.

00:44:06.200 No, agitators aren't allowed yet.

00:44:08.200 Talk to one of our media.

00:44:09.200 They won't speak to me.

00:44:10.200 No one will speak to me.

00:44:11.200 There's a desk over there with me.

00:44:12.200 I've spoken to them. They won't speak to me.

00:44:14.200 Well, then you can try again.

00:44:15.200 I've tried, and this lady specifically is telling me I'm an agitator.

00:44:18.200 Don't engage with agitators.

00:44:20.200 I'm just trying to understand what you're protesting.

00:44:22.200 For some reason, no one from your guys' team will let you guys speak,

00:44:25.200 and I don't know why you guys can't speak to me.

00:44:28.200 Like, this is so intimidating and scary for you guys to be standing here.

00:44:31.400 I literally have walked around for the past two hours just asking peaceful questions.

00:44:34.840 Like, what's going on here today? Why are you guys here?

00:44:37.400 And no one can speak to me.

00:44:38.600 And you guys are laughing. I don't understand how this is funny.

00:44:41.260 I genuinely wanted to learn from you.

00:44:42.960 And I wish we could have ended in a hug.

00:44:44.580 That's actually what I hoped from this.

00:44:46.180 That's my dream from all of this.

00:44:47.520 That we could understand each other.

00:44:53.900 Sister, why are you crying?

00:44:56.080 You are a famous influencer who walked up to a peaceful protest with a camera crew and expected content. And for what? Why do you feel entitled to this? And why is the fact that they wouldn't give you TikTok content threatening your safety? Your safety was never threatened. They just don't want to talk to you.

00:45:16.240 and that's their right. ContraPoints, who I obviously love and who's been on this podcast

00:45:21.500 a few times, wrote, conservatives spent 20 years scavenging student protests for monetizable

00:45:27.560 triggered lib content and now are shedding literal tears that protesters won't talk to them anymore. 0.99

00:45:34.380 Put simply, students are seeing through the bullshit. Like, yeah, they're not going to give 0.99

00:45:38.280 you TikTok content because they know exactly what you're there for. Another TikToker did this and

00:45:43.660 it like again went viral on twitter with all of these journalists being like why won't these evil

00:45:48.960 protesters talk to us what are they hiding i'm in new york city right now standing outside of a

00:45:54.480 palestine protest i want to know if they actually understand why they are protesting and see they

00:45:58.860 can give me any good answers what are you guys out here protesting for no comment why are you

00:46:03.140 guys out here today to the organizers why can't i i wanted to ask you official statements from

00:46:08.400 the organizers only in the simplest terms why are you guys protesting why

00:46:12.900 are you guys protesting today yeah I don't think it would be a good idea if

00:46:18.840 we why are you guys protesting just to be a part of the cause and what's the

00:46:23.700 cause I'm not the right person to talk to

00:46:29.220 support we're not the spokespeople of this event this is the wrong people to

00:46:32.400 talk to I'm not asking for this book first I'm just asking why you guys are

00:46:36.060 protesting. Why are you guys here today? We're not interested in speaking with you.

00:46:43.300 Peggy Noonan, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, visited the Columbia University encampment

00:46:48.300 before it was torn down by police. And she wrote an article about her visit where she wrote,

00:46:53.180 quote, I was on a bench taking notes as a group of young women, all in sunglasses,

00:46:58.680 masks and keffias, walked by. Friends, please come say hello and tell me what you think,

00:47:04.520 i called they marched past not making eye contact save one a beautiful girl of about 20 i'm not

00:47:12.220 trained she said which is what they're instructed to say to corporate media representatives who will

00:47:17.400 twist your words i'm barely trained you're safe i called and she laughed and half halted but her

00:47:24.900 friends gave her a look and she conformed like what peggy what do you want this hand wringing 0.97

00:47:33.000 about protesters avoiding the media is so ridiculous to me because this is literally 0.82

00:47:38.380 just good organizing on behalf of the students. And I, for one, think it's really impressive 0.51

00:47:44.280 that they continue to demonstrate their ability to do this. They are avoiding being manipulated

00:47:50.080 in some of the very ways we have discussed over the last hour. Like, the kids are all right.

00:47:56.480 I want to top off this episode by highlighting one more thing that I see kind of a lot,

00:48:00.960 which are comparisons drawn between pro-Israel rallies and pro-Palestine protests.

00:48:09.120 A lot of people will tweet videos and photos from these pro-Israel rallies where they'll be upbeat,

00:48:18.300 no one's wearing a mask, seems kind of jubilant, and there will oftentimes be these like snarky

00:48:25.740 remarks made about how like, this is how the Israel side protests, you know, and that's of

00:48:31.140 course supposed to be contrasted with the sometimes anger and the masks and the tension that can

00:48:37.720 sometimes occur at pro-Palestinian protests. You know, the pro-Israel gatherings will often look

00:48:43.160 more like parties where the pro-Palestinian protests will look like protests. And all I

00:48:50.220 really want to say to that is it's not a protest if you are on the same side as the state. What

00:48:56.540 exactly are you rallying for? More money to be sent to Israel? There are these sinister implications

00:49:03.960 that are often attributed to the fact that so many pro-Palestinian protesters wear masks.

00:49:10.060 And there's a really simple explanation for why that is. First of all, COVID and the flu. But

00:49:15.820 second of all, we live in a world with AI facial recognition technology and in a world where

00:49:21.300 simultaneously people's jobs and opportunities and offers are being threatened for being involved

00:49:27.200 with the pro-Palestinian cause. That's just not happening to people involved with pro-Israel

00:49:33.160 activism. And so if we're speaking about the fear of professional repercussions, you have no reason

00:49:39.400 to be masked at a pro-Israel rally. Your jobs aren't being threatened. Your offers aren't being

00:49:45.280 rescinded you have aligned yourself with power and you have aligned yourself with the state

00:49:50.340 at least on this issue you're not protesting you're just hanging out there's a lot more

00:49:57.960 i think that we could say um trying to correct what has been incorrectly reported and portrayed

00:50:05.680 about these protests has been at least to me it's felt like a game of whack-a-mole where every time

00:50:12.080 you correct one thing or attempt to set the record straight, CNN or Fox or the New York Times

00:50:18.540 publishes another thing that is just like wildly untrue or skewed to make pro-Palestinian protesters

00:50:25.720 look bad. And it's just, it's an impossible task. But today, today we have tried. I want to close

00:50:35.600 this episode by expressing my utmost support for the pro-Palestinian protesters. I support

00:50:42.440 this movement and I support these students. Just the other night, I was in Washington Square Park

00:50:47.940 where a number of Jewish students from the pro-Palestinian encampment at NYU, which is where

00:50:54.640 I went to school, led hundreds of people in the park for Friday night Shabbat services

00:51:00.800 in solidarity with Palestine. And it was extraordinarily beautiful. It was extraordinarily

00:51:08.060 well organized. These students have such power and such clarity in their convictions, despite

00:51:14.980 all of the madness in the media. And they gave me so much hope. And they also just solidified

00:51:22.100 my belief that this is also a Jewish movement. This is a movement, the pro-Palestinian movement

00:51:29.980 is one that inevitably has so much space for Jews

00:51:34.060 because liberation is a Jewish value.

00:51:37.580 Again, if you would like to support the show,

00:51:41.480 the best way to do that is Patreon.

00:51:43.820 If you've made it this far, I really appreciate you.

00:51:47.000 If you learn something or perhaps would like to share this episode

00:51:52.740 with a friend or a relative who keeps sending you links to things 1.00

00:51:56.420 that are telling you how unsafe Jewish students feel

00:52:00.260 on college campuses.

00:52:01.940 Interestingly, never the pro-Palestinian Jewish students

00:52:04.220 are being violently arrested,

00:52:05.720 but, you know, or they're sending you stuff

00:52:08.220 about how the protesters are violent

00:52:09.940 or like this, that, and the other.

00:52:11.100 Like, if this was helpful to you,

00:52:13.340 maybe it'll be helpful to someone else.

00:52:15.480 I really appreciate you tuning in.

00:52:18.220 I have tried my best to accomplish what I set out for today.

00:52:22.460 And I guess it's up to you to decide

00:52:24.460 if we've done a decent job or not.

00:52:25.900 But, honey, we tried.

00:52:28.760 Bronchitis and all.

00:52:30.280 I'm going to go take a shower and have some tea.

00:52:33.180 I love you, I love you, I love you.

00:52:35.840 Seriously, I do.

00:52:36.940 And it means a lot that you listened today.

00:52:39.240 And until next time, stay free.

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - May 09, 2024

Everything the Media is Getting Wrong About the College Protests

Episode Stats

Transcript