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I presented a piece by a Chinese Muslim writer supporting Palestine at Columbia University. The struggle in Gaza shows a divide between political leaders and the people. Columbia's response to protests was criticized. The writer recalls past student movements and expresses hope for justice. Youth today aim for global justice, unlike past generations. The writer pledges to continue fighting for justice.

Speaker 1's initial reaction to the October 7th Hamas attack was disbelief and prayer, anticipating a disastrous Israeli revenge. During a November 9th rally, an unaffiliated individual yelled "death to Jews." Speaker 1 confronted the person, stating they didn't represent the group and then addressed the crowd, condemning the statement as antisemitic. Speaker 1 believes antisemitism is unjust. The speaker stated that the fight for Palestinian freedom and the fight against antisemitism are interconnected, because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

A leader of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Maryam Alwon, stated that the university is complicit in violence through its rhetoric and investments. Alwon said she has faced repercussions for speaking out and has been avoiding campus, unsure if she will graduate. Other pro-Palestinian student protesters have had their names and faces displayed on a digital billboard outside campus. The SJP was suspended for holding unauthorized rallies. Alwon said the situation has been very scary, citing death threats and professors calling them terrorists. She added that the university has worsened the situation by closing gates and bringing in the NYPD, making students of color feel unsafe.

The speaker, Shay Davide, addresses the audience as a concerned parent and professor at Columbia Business School. He expresses his frustration with university presidents, including Columbia's president, for not speaking out against pro-terror student organizations. He highlights the recent kidnapping of US citizens in Gaza and criticizes the support these organizations receive. Davide emphasizes that his own children are considered legitimate targets by these groups. He calls for action, urging parents to question colleges about their stance on pro-terror organizations and to contact their representatives. Davide concludes by stating that he speaks up because he is afraid and feels unsafe on his own campus.

Jewish students on college campuses are facing anti-Semitic protests, including being spit on, physically assaulted, harassed, and blocked from attending class. People are chanting genocidal slogans. The speaker questions where Jewish students are assaulting Palestinian students, emphasizing the lack of evidence.

Speaker 0 describes being asked to attend a protest and wear a kufia, but he declined. He sensed a sense of hostility alternating with the request. Over a period of days and weeks, there was a push to identify students on campus who carried Palestinian flags or held a “Free Palestine” sign, with instructions to let them know if such individuals were found. When he spoke up against this and said that it was wrong, he sensed increasing hostility, and he states that this hostility continued to grow.

I am an American Jew who recently lived in Israel for four months. When you visit the territories around the West Bank and Gaza, you see the wall, surveillance cameras pointed at Palestinians' homes, and autonomous weapons at checkpoints. It's hard to understand the reality of occupation unless you witness it firsthand. Growing up as a Palestinian child, you know that the country you live in hates you and is willing to kill you based on video footage. Israel's advanced technology allows them to target Hamas members without bombing the entire region. This level of intelligence suggests that Israel's actions are a massacre and genocide, driven by white supremacy, dictatorship, and control over a people who are innocent of the crimes committed against them.

A student thanks the speaker for presenting their point of view and mentions finding interesting information about the MSA organization. They ask for clarification on the connection between the MSA and Jihad terrorist networks. The speaker asks if they will condemn Hamas, to which the student expresses concern about potential consequences. The speaker insists on condemning Hamas and shares a past experience at UC Santa Barbara. The student reluctantly says they are for Hamas, and the speaker thanks them for revealing their stance. The conversation ends abruptly.

On October 22, 2023, Israel bombed my home, killing most of my family, including my father, siblings, nieces, and nephews. Only my 3-year-old nephew, Omar, survived. Determined to challenge the Western media's portrayal of Palestinians, I shared my family's story online. Western media outlets interviewed me, but their questions were demeaning and dismissive. They called my family's deaths collateral damage and blamed Hamas. They even questioned the reality of my loss. The Western media always justifies Israel's actions and portrays Palestinians as terrorists. I will never forgive them. Palestinians are using social media to defy this narrative, but it's also the responsibility of people in the UK, America, and the free world to share our stories and convey our message. We won't forgive them if they don't.

Maryam Alwon, a leader of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), claims the university is complicit in violence through its rhetoric and investments. Alwon states she has faced repercussions for speaking out, including avoiding campus and uncertainty about graduating. Other pro-Palestinian student protesters have had their names and faces displayed on a digital billboard outside campus. The SJP was suspended for holding unauthorized rallies. Alwon says she has received death threats and that professors have called them terrorists, creating a scary environment. She also says the university has worsened the situation by closing gates and bringing in the NYPD, making students of color feel unsafe.

Speaker 0 frames the camera as part of the fight for Palestinian liberation and recalls a Gaza colleague saying, "I resign myself to Allah's will. Bombs, with American cover, with American tax money. They want us to take down our voices and use this." He adds, "They want us to just give up. But trust me, we are shattering their complacency. Israel's problem is the very existence of Palestinians. Yes. It's the very existence of us." He declares, "And we're not silent," and insists, "The time is now. Time is now. The pressure towards liberation starts with us." Speaker 1 recounts personal persecution: "Two weeks ago, I was assaulted by the Israel immigration authorities. I was the only black passenger on the Hondala. It's no coincidence that I was one of the last to be released from prison."

People are fighting back against the Israeli soldiers who shoot at them during demonstrations. Despite the fear, it is important to fight for what is right and not live under occupation. Many families have experienced the same tragedy of losing someone to violence or imprisonment. In our family, our 14-year-old cousin Emce was murdered after going to pray in the mosque. He was caught, tortured, and shot in the heart at close range.

I teach at Duke University and notice that many college students today view the world through a lens where those with less power are seen as being wronged and therefore right. This mindset leads them to automatically support the underdog, even without fully understanding the situation. After a recent event on October 7th, many young people quickly sided with Palestinians without considering the full context, sometimes even supporting Hamas.

Your Palestine pathway program includes two Israeli budget bills. If you truly support the Palestinian people's right to self-determination, how can you justify this? I come from Gaza, and it is a part of all of us. I apologize for expressing this, but I feel compelled to speak out. I am proud to be here and to discuss the ongoing situation in my city, which is unfolding every moment.

I am mayor Baruchin, a history and civics teacher in Tel Aviv. I was fired, arrested, and jailed for four days in solitary confinement in a high security prison. For what? For posting about civilians killed in Gaza. Growing up, I was taught the Zionist claim of a land without people for people without land. I learned of Arabs either as evil and dangerous or as ridiculous and stupid. I didn’t know any Arabs, and I never learned about the Nakba. After these charges were dropped and I returned to teach at my school, some students refused to attend my class. Others cursed me or spat at me or on the ground in front of me. Today, most of my students are respectful and are even willing to listen to what I have to say about what we are doing in Gaza, something they refused to do previously. Education provides an opportunity for Israelis to recognize Palestinian suffering and their history. Through education, we can write a new story of Palestinian and Jews who can live in this place in equality and dignity. But first, Israel must start this genocide.

I am not pulling my perspective on Israel Palestine out of thin air. I have studied and researched this extensively. As a Jewish woman raised by a Zionist family, I have overcome my pro-Israel bias to see the viciousness and violence of the Zionist state. My interest in the conflict grew when friends returned from birthright trips and spoke negatively about Palestinians. I took multiple courses in college to gain a well-rounded understanding of Israeli-Palestinian politics, which solidified my pro-Palestine stance. The history of colonization and exploitation by Britain and the US led to the establishment of Israel on Palestinian land. The current leadership, like Benjamin Netanyahu, prioritizes wealth and military power over the well-being of Palestinians. Israel's actions constitute a genocide, slowly eroding the will of the Palestinian people while benefiting the primary stakeholders.

I need your help. Take out your phone and put it on video. I want to address every parent who sent their kids to prestigious universities like Columbia, NYU, Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley. As a professor at Columbia Business School and a father, I want you to know that we are not protecting your children from pro-terror student organizations. The presidents of these universities refuse to speak out against them. Recently, 14 US citizens, along with others from different nationalities, were kidnapped in Gaza. Despite this, the university president continues to support these pro-terror student organizations.

Speaker 0 argues that the Palestinian people are oppressed and suffer under the occupation. They acknowledge Hamas is an armed group, but they describe Hamas as a reaction to signals of injustice and oppression by Israel. They assert that you cannot talk about peace without justice for Palestine and express a desire to know how the other person addresses that claim. Speaker 1 responds by reframing the situation as a political conflict, stating that while there is ideology involved, the core is colonization. They describe a situation where “a fence” surrounds the people, drones fly above, and “everything is taken over there.” They insist that the people in question are not there voluntarily and describe the people breaking out of their camp as something that provokes anger, calling that a “very peculiar viewpoint.” They further claim that Hamas is largely supported and founded by Mossad, arguing that it was very handy to have Hamas to respond to reactions in the area. Speaker 0 asks for evidence to support that claim. Speaker 1 confirms that evidence exists and says they will post it on Twitter after the conversation. They add that the evidence can also be found from the Israeli government or authorities, describing it as a very specific source.

We are reporting from the heart of the campus that sparked a global student movement for Palestine. We’re seeing right now, Chris, we’re trapped in a dorm room. There are 10 white PDs barricading the doors, and we’re not allowed to leave. What started off as a protest against genocide at an elite Ivy League university was met with a military-style operation to suppress it. We need to find a way to get some spare medication. So when Columbia University sent the NYPD on the campus, they were willing to deploy violent militarized police to maintain their active investment in genocide. This is not about students expressing ideas. It is about a change in tactics that presents a concern and a normalization and mainstreaming of rhetoric. And I’m not just talking about language. I’m now talking about tactics, and that’s what shifted our response yesterday. But a normalization and mainstreaming of rhetoric associated with terrorism has now become pretty common on college campuses. Right? You see people wearing headbands associated with foreign terrorist organizations. This happened in October when you had a viral TikTok reissuing Osama bin Laden’s 2002 letter to America. So that’s a larger concern. It’s separate from what happened yesterday, but they’re related. Speaker 3 asks what was found: basically, NYPD changed the way it did business after the attacks of September Eleventh. It not only changed the way it did business, it created a very deep connection with the CIA. They started to build these intelligence programs that infiltrated Muslim communities in ways that, if the federal government did it, would totally go against rules designed to protect civil liberties. And they did it with an unusual partnership with the CIA. A very senior CIA officer was dispatched by CIA Director George Tenet to be his personal representative to the NYPD and help create these intelligence gathering programs, directing and supervising the intelligence gathering, and that relationship continues today. Speaker 3 notes: Recently, the CIA sent one of its most senior undercover officers to work out of 1 Police Plaza in New York as a covert officer. So we’re talking about former CIA agents now working within the New York Police Department. Well, they’re current CIA; they’re on CIA payroll. They’re on the CIA payroll, working with the NYPD, traveling abroad, and using intelligence in conjunction with the NYPD. Speaker 2 describes one element: there is a program called the demographics program. Officers described it as mapping the human terrain of the city. They placed undercover officers, ethnic officers inside Middle Eastern neighborhoods to blend in and look for things that are suspicious. That could be something as simple as who’s looking at radical books in a bookstore or who’s watching Al Jazeera and perhaps applauds at a report about an IED in Iraq, and that could be enough to get you into a report at the NYPD. They also have informants called mosque crawlers who go to the mosque as the eyes and ears for the NYPD. The FBI places informants in mosques with a criterion of specific information related to criminal activity, while the NYPD reportedly does not have that bar and says they follow leads; but those involved with the mosque crawler program say they’re there as eyes and ears.

Hamas has committed attacks prior to October 7, killing thousands of Israelis and hundreds of Palestinians, sabotaging the peace process. Hamas is more than a terrorist organization; it is a religious, ideological movement waging a holy war against a race, not a national resistance movement to liberate Palestine. Hamas does not believe in political borders, but wants a global state. Supporting pro-Palestine groups gives support to a savage group that committed genocide against Jewish communities. Having lived with Hamas members in prison for 27 months, the speaker witnessed them torturing Palestinians. The speaker believes October 7 could be the worst crime of modern day. Hamas is a radical religious movement with global ambition that does not value human life and does not believe in democracy. Israel, in contrast, is a democratic nation that has extended its hand to the region for peace for over 70 years. Since 1948, Arab nations have tried to annihilate Israel. 95% of wars between Arabs and Israel were initiated by Arab countries. On October 7, Israel suffered genocide, not just a terrorist attack.

I teach at Duke University and observe that many college students today view the world through a lens where marginalized groups are always right. This mindset leads them to automatically support the underdog, even in complex situations like the conflict between Israel and Palestine. After October 7th, many young people quickly sided with Palestinians without fully understanding the situation, sometimes even supporting Hamas.

As an American Jew deeply involved in Judaism, I had a profound experience when I visited Palestinians in the West Bank. It reminded me of the Jim Crow South, witnessing people living without rights, citizenship, or freedom of movement. They endure a harsh military legal system. While I don't agree with Mifda, who supports violence, it's important to acknowledge what Ilhan Omar said: people should see the situation for themselves. I've never met anyone who hasn't been transformed by such an experience. It's similar to visiting SNCC during the civil rights movement and dismissing them based on connections or anti-white sentiments.

Speaker 0 expresses disappointment in the actions of some Israeli civilians and praises Israel as a reliable ally and a tolerant society. The speaker mentions writing a book to address the lack of understanding among young people. They also mention suspending their donations to Columbia University until a change is seen, urging the university to fire a specific professor. The speaker concludes by stating that war is not good, but praising Hamas' actions is unacceptable.

I am not pulling my perspective on Israel Palestine out of thin air. I have studied and researched this extensively. As a Jewish woman raised by a Zionist family, I have overcome my pro-Israel bias to see the viciousness and violence of the Zionist state. In college, I took multiple courses on Israeli-Palestinian politics and the Middle East conflict, which solidified my pro-Palestine stance. The history of Palestine's colonization by Britain and the US, and the displacement of Palestinians for Jewish settlement, is clear. Israel's actions over the past 75 years can be described as a genocide, with the intention of exhausting and displacing the Palestinian population for the benefit of the primary stakeholders.

Mohsen Madawi, co-president of Columbia's Palestinian Students Union, leads a coalition of over 80 campus groups after the suspension of SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace. He criticizes the university's response as one-sided, claiming it fails to acknowledge the Palestinian perspective. Madawi says pro-Israel groups want to silence them and deny them space to mourn the destruction and killing of civilians in Gaza, which he calls a genocide. Madawi, who grew up in a refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, recounts witnessing his friend's death at the hands of Israeli soldiers at age 10. He says his revenge is showing the world the human face of Palestinians. While he has reached out to rabbis and Hillel, the Hamas terror attack aroused old feelings. Madawi says he can empathize with the attack, but clarifies that he does not justify Hamas' actions. He defines empathizing as understanding the root cause and not viewing events in a vacuum, which he believes is the path forward.