00:16:03.780So I did want to ask you, I mean, what is the mood like in the United States right now following Mahmoud Khalil's arrest?
00:16:11.660What kind of precedent is this setting? Is it having a chilling effect?
00:16:16.700So it's really interesting being, it really depends where you are in the United States.
00:16:21.700So I am based on the East Coast. I'm in Washington, D.C.
00:16:25.120So when you're in the heart of the empire, it is a very, very, very different experience that you're having because you're not just seeing this on your screens in terms of whether it's this story or any of the other stories that have been happening, especially since January 20th.
00:16:43.260But you're seeing it all play out in your streets as well.
00:16:48.840Regarding the chilling effect, I don't think there's been a chilling effect to the extent that perhaps this administration and many elected officials, not just in the Republican Party, but even the Democratic Party, would want there to be a chilling effect.0.67
00:17:04.020because there's still Americans, there's still, you know, non-Americans, there's still Muslims
00:17:10.820and Arabs who, including students, countless students who are going into the streets,
00:17:16.840whether in New York, in DC or elsewhere in the country and protesting against what seems to be
00:17:22.840the unlawful detainment of a US permanent resident, Mahmoud Khalil, over what is becoming
00:17:32.020increasingly obvious is his speech, specifically his anti-genocide speech. Although I have not yet
00:17:38.460seen really any type of clarification made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, which we now know
00:17:45.100he's the one who was like, it was his decision to revoke the green card, even though under US law,
00:17:52.280the only person who can actually revoke a green card is an immigration judge. So there does seem
00:17:57.860there's a bit of overreach there but does that mean anything anymore who knows like that's that's
00:18:02.580what it's like living in the us what does the law actually mean um it sounds so fun it's it's amazing
00:18:10.260because you try to you're like oh let me appeal to the law and you're like well what does that
00:18:15.060even mean like what does it mean to appeal to the law when literally anything goes anything goes um
00:18:21.220so you know you have someone like marco rubio who has who has said himself as well as um other
00:18:26.580White House officials have said that the reason why Mohammed Khalil was detained and had his
00:18:34.420green card revoked is because he was determined to be a threat to national security. And they
00:18:40.120keep making references to his speech. I mean, we had the head of DHS, Homan, even say like,
00:18:46.100well, there is a limit. Today he said there's a limit to speech, but they don't specify what
00:18:51.860speech it is that they're discussing as well and that's really really concerning i mean this is
00:18:57.140going to have far-reaching consequences um for for i think first and foremost for arab and muslim
00:19:03.620students uh we saw that canary mission which is if you're not familiar with it if your audience
00:19:08.900is not familiar with it it is an awful website that's been around for almost a decade and what
00:19:13.940it does is that it creates a um an inventory of people who work in academia or even journalists
00:19:20.980such as myself i'm on there um and it basically creates little profiles of us um and all like and
00:19:27.380says like we're all supporters of terrorism we're anti-semites so on and so forth um it's a very
00:19:32.500shady organization uh in terms of who's behind it the money behind it and whatnot but that
00:19:37.940organization canary mission is one of several pro-israel groups that we know is is directly
00:19:44.340linked to not only the persecution and detainment and pending deportation of Mahmoud Khalil but also
00:19:54.420of five other Columbia students and professors right so Canary Mission just released a press
00:20:01.940release yesterday as well as a video saying that we've identified five others and four of the five
00:20:07.540are people who are of Arab and Muslim backgrounds so that's going to be the group that's going to
00:20:12.340be first and foremost impacted by this but it's going to have it's going to have reverberations
00:20:18.740beyond and especially with this administration which has shown that it has no interest in the
00:20:24.020protection of anyone's speech anyone who is seen as uh providing a narrative that is antithetical
00:20:30.020to the one that they want to push as well so we are in uh absolutely a full-blown full-blown
00:20:35.540mccarthy uh of era in this country once again you know i'm glad you brought up um canary mission
00:20:42.020because i actually wanted to talk about the role of these groups that have spent the last you know
00:20:48.820few honestly more than the last few years like it's it's been uh a lot of this kind of thing
00:20:54.340has been going on for a long time um misrepresenting folks who oppose atrocities in palestine
00:21:01.460as somehow anti-semitic or aligned with terrorism it seems to me like the folks making those kinds
00:21:07.380of claims have put people in very real danger do you think that's a fair assessment of what
00:21:12.500they're doing and the impact that they have absolutely um canary mission its kind of main
00:21:18.740goal is to make you unemployable right that's always been the goal and we've heard of so many
00:21:23.860stories of especially students who've been put on there struggling to find work i had a really good
00:21:28.420friend of mine a former colleague who uh you know after he left the company he was looking for work
00:21:34.500elsewhere and he got a job but he asked them at some point because he was concerned about his
00:21:38.980canary mission profile he asked you know did you guys come across my canary mission profile and
00:21:43.700they said yes we did and it was a conversation we had even though if you actually look through
00:21:48.820the profiles that canary mission uh creates uh mine for example i'm going to talk about mine um
00:21:55.300please don't visit it because it does help the seo too much but i also will say like they use
00:22:02.260so there's a joke about canary mission that like it's like a really good repository of hot people
00:22:07.460so if you're like looking for someone but so they use beautiful photos for everyone and for me they
00:22:15.060use screenshots of where i'm making because i'm very expressive when i speak and so i've got a
00:22:20.340little better at controlling it on camera but back in the day i did not control it on camera
00:22:24.660and so they have these like screenshots of me making ugly faces and i was like you know what
00:22:29.140you guys are super fascist but you have a sense of humor whoever made my profile was like we're0.52
00:22:34.660gonna make sure she looks ugly as hell um but my profile it has like all these claims like oh0.98
00:22:41.300sana supports um you know this terrorist action and this and that and they hyperlink it and the
00:22:47.860assumption is that you're not actually going to click that hyperlink that you're just going to
00:22:52.500read this and you're not actually going to click on the things that they're referencing the only
00:22:56.340the only kind of the way that they're able to get away with any of this is
00:23:00.060because first of all defamation laws in the United States are very very strict
00:23:04.020so in order to prove defamation it's extremely hard so they can easily say
00:23:09.740well that's our interpretation and so many of the of the hyperlinks out on my
00:23:13.960page are two tweets that are a part of a thread and they just took one ignoring
00:23:18.780the rest to there are literally jokes right there jokes referencing it's like
00:23:23.520from 2012, 2013, where I was like a super troll on Twitter. And so they reference that. And then
00:23:32.200you actually read the context and you're like, what are they talking about? But they do this
00:23:37.580in order to, yeah, make you unemployable, make you an unsavory candidate for any kind of workplace.
00:23:45.500And it has been, unfortunately, detrimental to a lot of people, especially really young
00:23:50.600people. And again, the majority of people who are targeted by Canary Mission, just like by
00:23:58.240organizations like BEITAR, which is one of the oldest Zionist organizations in the world.
00:24:07.020Israeli prime ministers have gone through it. Other Israeli elected officials have gone through it.
00:24:12.360BEITAR, or even the Columbia Jewish Association of Alumni, the people that they primarily,
00:24:18.860or the ADL right the people that they primarily are targeting are again Arabs and Muslims right
00:24:26.280so this is not like yes there are other people absolutely including a lot of Jews a lot of
00:24:30.560anti-Zionist Jews who are also in the crosshairs but when we look at the the demographic that is
00:24:36.660overwhelmingly represented in the crosshairs of these organizations it's Arabs and Muslims and
00:24:43.800And for them, whatever they have said, whether it's like, oh, that wasn't a great thing to
00:24:48.880say, or that was clearly taken out of context, it doesn't matter.
00:24:52.120Because the way that biases work is not going to be obviously in their favor as well.
00:24:58.300Arabs and Muslims in particular, we're not going to be given the benefit of the doubt
00:25:01.700when it comes to our words and how they're construed, especially if they're critiquing
00:25:05.980things like occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
00:25:10.240You know, I'm glad you mentioned the ADL as well, because I'm not sure if you saw their statement on Mahmoud Khalil's arrest.
00:25:18.700What did you think of that? And what do you think of the direction that the ADL, I mean, it's kind of always had this undercurrent, which I was really grateful to Sarah Hagee actually first hit me off to the fact that they might not be the most reliable source after all.
00:25:32.020But, you know, what did you think when you saw their response to his arrest?
00:25:36.200It was like the least surprising thing ever. I mean, under Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL has gone even more extreme. In fact, actually, the one thing that I do appreciate about Greenblatt is that he kind of took the entire mask off of what the organization's real function is, which is not to actually combat real anti-Semitism in this country.
00:26:01.900And we saw people we saw even out in following October 7th, a few people who are working at the ADL leave because they were saying like, hey, we know that the largest threat to Jewish Americans in this country is coming from white supremacists.
00:26:20.360But we're being told, hey, actually, it's these like students win kafias who are saying from the river to the sea, that's those are the real threats to to Jewish safety, so on and so forth.
00:26:30.720But I think the ADL, I mean, it's it's one it's truly a very nefarious organization because it takes something which has a very long cultural memory in the United States.
00:26:41.080Right. For a lot of Americans and especially white Americans, the the history of World War Two, the history of the Holocaust and the lessons of the Holocaust and the lessons of of anti-Semitism.
00:26:53.360that's not a thing of the past that's something that is constantly reiterated in our pop culture
00:26:58.400in our education again and again and again and so what the ADL does it takes it takes that that
00:27:05.280cultural memory and infuses it with like what's happening right now in the country and creates a
00:27:12.100narrative which is actually very easy for I think many Americans although I don't know if most0.92
00:27:16.460Americans, to kind of fall into, which is like, oh, yes, the real threat to Jewish Americans0.99
00:27:23.900are these kids, are these, you know, these women in hijabs, these boys with beards, these people0.94
00:27:30.420who wear, these other Jews who wear kafiyas. That's the real threat. And I think the ADL,1.00
00:27:37.320what it's doing, much like a lot of these Zionist organizations, and specifically Jewish0.86
00:27:41.980Zionist organizations is, you know, I'm not interested in like, especially in this moment,
00:27:47.280as Palestinians are facing, you know, continued genocide, as we have, we see Islamophobia at
00:27:54.500really insane levels. We've seen Palestinians who are Arab and Muslim in this country killed0.53
00:27:59.580and attacked with their physical safety. I'm not interested in this context for like centering,1.00
00:28:03.780um you know jewish americans but what these organizations are doing is setting up a very
00:28:13.620dangerous situation for their own community right especially when they refuse to they absolutely
00:28:21.420refuse to separate and they have no interest in separating and that's a different conversation
00:28:25.680separating their identity their community's identity as a jewish as a jewish community
00:28:32.160from the state of Israel and not just from the state of Israel, but from everything that the
00:28:37.200state of Israel does. So that's what groups like the ADL and all these other Zionist groups and
00:28:42.920specifically Jewish Zionist groups are doing. Not only are they putting my communities at risk,0.94
00:28:48.960putting them in the crosshairs of state violence while defending, you know, the state violence
00:28:57.760against palestinian children right for over 17 18 months at this point i mean even it goes
00:29:04.800obviously to eight decades but especially the last 17 months not only are they doing that but
00:29:09.260they're putting their own community in the crosshairs of white supremacists right and also
00:29:16.640they're going to be a lot of people right now and this is a conversation i've had time and time
00:29:21.140again right i try to explain to people how this trope of oh the oh the jews control everything
00:29:26.300right that's like something you hear again and it's a very very famous anti-semitic trope and0.83
00:29:32.940you hear it a lot more these days because you you see the undue level of influence
00:29:41.260that groups like the adl and others are having on policy domestic policy in particular and the
00:29:49.420safety of all students as well and how they're weaponizing um an experience of their communities
00:29:56.700against other communities right so we're seeing even people who maybe don't have or never like
00:30:03.740i've seen now i mean i'll say it i've seen people from all different backgrounds who don't have any
00:30:08.860kind of prior to this had no kind of uh you know negative inclination towards the jewish community
00:30:15.580and they're seeing these things that are being said by represent people who say we are
00:30:19.660representatives of the Jewish community. And they see, you know, 80% of American Jews identify as
00:30:25.660Zionists as pro Israel, they're seeing these things. And they themselves are now coming0.77
00:30:30.300unfortunately to these conclusions, which again, bolstered by these Jewish Zionist organizations0.99
00:30:35.740are going to have detrimental is going to have detrimental impact on the safety. And I think0.99
00:30:40.060also the cohesion of the jewish american community the number of jewish americans who are actually
00:30:46.380zionists i i believe that there's been quite a bit of um debate over the validity of the figures
00:30:53.260claiming that it that that level is that high and the conflation of zionism with judaism then
00:30:59.820creates the situation where people think that they should be criticized or create these narratives
00:31:05.020about what they claim or describe as jewish groups that are in effect just zionist groups and you
00:31:11.660know anyone can have that ideology as we saw justin trudeau just came out and loudly proclaimed i am
00:31:18.300a zionist in his last few days um empowering the most the most influential zionist of the last
00:31:25.820of the last several decades was joe biden right this catholic guy he was and that's why i tell0.67
00:31:34.140people i'm like the most in terms of that genocide could have stopped had he been like we're done
00:31:42.620we're gonna threat it can take it takes one phone call to do it right and so and that's what i mean
00:31:48.540is that facts do point us in a different direction even like that 80 that 80 is a specific age group
00:31:55.580we find that when you break down the numbers the younger american jews are obviously the less
00:31:59.580zionist they are as well because there's been a break in the community um but yeah i mean the
00:32:04.780you have justin trudeau by the way it's so crazy to me he's on his way out i know and people were
00:32:10.220liking him again and people were liking him which is crazy because i'm like so why did you say you
00:32:16.140actually believe like and which is actually crazier to me that if you actually believe that
00:32:20.700that on his way out within the last week he by the way he didn't say anything about the fact that
00:32:26.940Israel had cut off food, water and electricity into Gaza again. That happened while he was still
00:32:33.000in office. He found time to call himself a Zionist, found time to talk about, oh, we stand with
00:32:38.080Zelensky and with Ukraine, et cetera. Zero time to talk about the fact that Israel, and I do think0.63
00:32:42.820it's interesting. I mean, I'm never going to give the liberals flowers, but I think it's very
00:32:46.540interesting that one of the first things I see Carney say was he comes in as like the new leader
00:32:51.140of the liberal party and kind of the the uh prime minister designate is that he he tweets out about
00:32:58.380like water and electricity being cut off to palestinians and gaza although he doesn't say
00:33:02.440who does it which is usually how they get away with it but you know i'm like ah trudeau like
00:33:07.580you really are just insufferable like on a personal level not even like it's like if he
00:33:14.540was running i'm like okay he's clearly trying to shill it's like no he's free and he's still like0.54
00:33:20.000yes i'm a zionist it's amazing yeah yeah which is again like just and and just the characterization
00:33:26.120of it and stuff being like no one should be afraid to call themselves a zionist i actually
00:33:30.980do think that people should be prepared to face backlash and people criticizing them if they
00:33:36.700characterize themselves specifically as a zionist right now the the distinction there is no one
00:33:43.140should be afraid to call themselves jewish and that is what needs to be protected and who needs
00:33:49.020to be protected. You shouldn't have to defend an ideology. You should be defending people and0.64
00:33:55.120religious groups. So I don't know. It's just it's disappointing. And, you know, I did want to ask
00:34:00.920you, I mean, why do you think Western countries like Canada and the U.S. have made it so0.98
00:34:10.040rhetorically risky to be supportive of Palestinians when they are so clearly
00:34:17.880dealing with egregious human rights violations. I mean, it just, it really, when you actually pay1.00
00:34:25.300attention and look at the UN figures and look at all of the experiences of every single person
00:34:30.800who's ever traveled to that region, it's really clear that something horrifying has been going
00:34:36.420on there for a very long time and it doesn't make sense to me that it's so risky to point that out
00:34:43.460and to to try to defend vulnerable people who are being hurt and are now being subject to a genocide
00:34:48.180why do you think this is the case i think there are multiple reasons i i do think um a huge part
00:34:55.800of it is like just blatant racism as well like the fact that um you know i people will look at
00:35:03.540especially in these Western countries, they look at Israelis as an extension also, right,
00:35:08.880of like Western civilization. I mean, when you repeat again and again and again,0.81
00:35:13.220the only democracy in the Middle East, oh, they're just like us, they're just like us,1.00
00:35:17.420and they're surrounded by a sea of these like bloodthirsty Arabs and Muslims. And we're talking1.00
00:35:22.560about countries which have also built in the last 20 years, their entire security apparatuses,0.85
00:35:26.940national security apparatuses, by demonizing and criminalizing like Muslims and Arabs,0.63
00:35:33.000and their practice and what they look like, what they wear.
00:35:36.340I mean, these are conversations in Canada we have all the time, right?
00:35:38.440I mean, Quebec, right, has been home to should Muslim women wear hijab
00:35:42.560or niqab or this or that for, I mean, I was in high school
00:35:54.860Oh, yeah, like the Quebec are like, hold on.0.98
00:35:57.400But so I think there's that element to it,0.97
00:36:00.480which is that they see israelis as an extension of their i mean and it is right israel is an
00:36:06.960extension of like western european colonization as well so that is a very much so that that through
00:36:12.720line that that needs to be recognized i also think a lot of it has to do with um the really
00:36:20.640incredible i don't mean incredible in a positive way but it's really like
00:36:24.480i would say awesome and i don't mean awesome in a positive way i mean in like the literal sense
00:36:28.080the word like to inspire awe but the awesome lobbying effort by pro-israel groups especially
00:36:34.240since the 1980s one of the big things that happened in the 1980s um when you had the um
00:36:41.440when you had israel uh uh get involved with the start bombing beirut it was involved in the
00:36:46.720lebanese civil war um was that it was for the first time and we got of course the sabr shatila
00:36:51.920Massacre, where Israeli troops oversaw Lebanese phalangist troops who were Christian Maronite,
00:36:59.120go into the Palestinian refugee camps and just slaughter people left and right.
00:37:04.880When these images came out, it was the first time that, for instance, a lot of Americans
00:37:09.920were seeing these type of images. It was the first time that Palestinians, that Arabs and Muslims
00:37:16.160were seen as actual victims versus what we saw post, you know, World War II, where were Jews,
00:37:23.400where the Israeli was like the one who was trying to build his country in the shadows of
00:37:27.640the aftermath of the of the Nazi Holocaust, of Nazism. And so we see this kind of if you look0.64
00:37:36.000at if you actually watch the news coverage from the 1980s, you see that even reporters start
00:37:41.160taking kind of a really harsher tone with Israeli commandos. The Israeli commando goes from being
00:37:47.660like this hero, this pioneer who's fighting for his land to, is he killing children? Is that what
00:37:56.240he's doing? And it's around the same time, I mean, there's that famous story of how, I mean, Reagan
00:38:01.320goes and makes an address and says, this has got to stop. And he famously said, you know, again,
00:38:07.680never to give credit to Reagan, but this always shocks me because we know who Reagan is and what
00:38:12.460he did and what his legacy is. But he says, like, the answer to killing children is not killing more
00:38:16.680children, right? After, I believe it was a Sabah Shatil massacre. And he calls up the Israeli0.87
00:38:21.220Prime Minister and says, you need to put an end to this right now. And he called what they were
00:38:25.520doing, what the Israelis were doing in Lebanon, a Holocaust. That was the language. And that was
00:38:30.420language that was used in the 1980s which is not that long after the the the the the nazi holocaust
00:38:37.460right now what we see also happen in the 1980s is that as pro-israel groups in the united states
00:38:44.660see this they see that hold on a second are you guys turning on us are you saying that our state
00:38:51.220can't do the thing that it needs to do um it starts investing a lot more in lobbying efforts
00:38:59.060Right. And that's why we see the proliferation of groups like not just AIPAC, but we see also camera camera, which is famously like very heavily involved in essentially bullying newsrooms in their in their coverage of Palestinians and their coverage of Israel and their coverage of Israel.
00:39:16.900And there it's you don't hear about it as much anymore, but it's very active.
00:39:21.500and i've heard journalists in the last year talk about i'm talking about veteran journalists talk
00:39:25.740about how they still are afraid of camera sending a letter to their employer camera petitioning to
00:39:30.860get them fired well we have that in canada too with them there's a group called honest reporting
00:39:35.020that has gone after several of my friends who are incredible journalists just absolutely
00:39:40.700really oh my god i was giving a talk i was i was set to give a talk at mcgill university
00:39:46.620yeah um for in october and this was like where it got really weird so they like they started
00:39:53.320sending out emails and they started sending out including emails to the administration and i knew
00:39:56.980they were doing that because uh there were several mcgill administrators that were checking my
00:40:02.460linkedin and i was like oh god so um so they were sending they were sent and there was also like a
00:40:08.240the the event was supposed to be in person um but there was a threat that was received which is
00:40:14.780it's so like common they'll call and or email and threaten a bomb attack or something like that
00:40:19.700so the event was moved completely online it ended up working out but but they had this article on
00:40:24.560me and calling me like a raging anti-semite etc but here's the weird thing here's like the weirdest
00:40:28.720thing it was a photo they took a photo of me and you have to like scroll you scroll to 2020 on my
00:40:35.680instagram to find that photo it was me wearing a traditional pakistani dress however it was black
00:40:41.980with like red flowers so i think they thought it was a traditional palestinian dress because
00:40:45.700usually red and black and like the tatiris uh threading uh style that they have um traditional
00:40:51.620palestinian they took that not only that but because it was like it kind of cut me off um0.76
00:40:57.420they used ai to like essentially they made me super busty with like the most snatched waist
00:41:06.060and i was like i was like and thanks for making me look real hot guys appreciate it
00:41:11.820yeah that's what they did so that's what honest reporting and it's so funny too little freaks
00:41:17.020they promoted and i was super free i was like this is so creepy like oh my god i i did also
00:41:25.960want to mention you highlighted at one point that mark carney came out and actually like kind of
00:41:31.360said something a little bit empathetic towards palestinians without actually naming the perpetrator
00:41:35.940But I wasn't sure if you were aware that he just named his new chief of staff, and it is Marco Mendicino, who has been extremely outspokenly Zionist and who actually even went so far as to say that calling Zionists racist is hate speech and should be a criminal offense.
00:41:58.220So I think it's just so frustrating. It sometimes feels like there's one step forward and then 10 steps back. And it's all just about trying to recognize the basic humanity of people who deserve to be able to live in peace and not be, you know, starved to death or bombarded. It's, yeah, it's frustrating.
00:42:16.240I'm pretty sure Carney said what he said initially about, like, the electricity into Gaza, specifically because, I mean, again, he's thinking about the elections.