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So we've got a new report from New York Times that confirms something we had covered earlier and also confirms an Israeli government direct connection for an influence up that they were running directly on American lawmakers. Let's put this up on the screen headline here, Israel secretly targets US
lawmakers with influence campaign on Gaza war. Israel organized and paid for an influence campaign last year, targeting US lawmakers and the American public with pro Israel messaging as it aimed to foster support for its actions in the war with Gaza. That covert campaign was commissioned by Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, a government body that connects Jews around the world with the.
State of Israel for as Really.
Officials said that Ministry allocated about two million dollars to the operation and hired a Stoic, a political marketing firm in Tel Aviv, to carry it out.
According to the officials and the.
Documents, chat GPT was used apparently to generate a lot of the posts. In addition to they would like reply to members of Congress in particular, they seem to target African American members of Congress. Specifically, they would post links to these three fake news websites that they set up with you know, pro Israel propaganda. Some of it real drawn from you know, other news reports, some of it
less accurate. Let's just say, including some of the you know, October seventh reporting that was ultimately debunked or suggestions by US officials that was ultimately debunked by Israeli outlests, including Haretz. Just to give you a sense of what this looked like in real time, let's put this up on the screen. We've got some quotes from the piece. Dozens of Israeli tech startups received emails and whats App messages that month inviting them to join urgent meetings to become digital soldiers
for Israel during the war. Cording to messages viewed by the Times, some of the emails and messages were sent from Israeli government officials. Others came from Steck tech startups and incubators. We can put the next piece up.
On the screen.
Some of the fake accounts responded to post by Richie Torres who else. I don't know why they felt like Richie torrested to be even more pro isn't really. They just wanted to rigem in his pre existing direction. I guess they would comment on anti Semitism on college campuses and major US cities. In response to December eighth post on X mister Torres about fire safety, one fake account replied Hamas is perpetrating in the conflict, referring to the
Islam's militant group. The posts included a hashtag that said Jews were being persecuted. We've got another one here, they said. The campaign also created three fake news sites That's what I was talking about, names like non Agenda and Unfold Magazine. Non Agenda in the opposite of what it was, which stole and rewrote material from outlets including CNN and The Wall Street Journal to promote Israel's stance during the war. According to fake Reporter's analysis, that was the original news
site that broke this story. Fake accounts on Reddit then linked to the articles on the so called news sites to help promote them, and it was apparently pretty sloppy. This whole effort was not like well done. I don't expect that it really had a lot of impact on the American political conversation. But in any case, they say, in at least two instances, accounts with profile photos of
black men posted about being middle aged Jewish women. On one hundred and eighteen posts in which the fake accounts here pro Israel articles, the same sentence appeared quote I got to reevaluate my opinions due to this new information, so I saw.
I remember when a.
Fake reporter originally did this analysis, they brought up also these posts that would be profile picture of a black man and would say like, as a middle aged Jewish woman,
I feel blah blah blah. So sloppy effort. I'm not saying it really changed a discourse, but Sager, you remember the level of continued, of course freak ount about some Russian birdie bro memes on Facebook or whatever like that, was determinative in the twenty sixteen election, and we still are living with the political, domestic and foreign affairs ramifications.
Of that whole entire freak out.
And on this we have confirmed an American ally directly running an influence up on our own population and elected officials.
Cricket.
And in fact, the dollar amount here is more than the amount that was spent on those so called Russian memes.
Which amazing, and this is the difference.
At the time, we were like, yeah, this obviously didn't swing the election, like okay, and then here around two this is actually terrible as usual. It's not even particularly well done. No one is even claiming Richie Torrez needed a meme to turn him more pro Israel.
The APAC money is probably it's probably all of a lot.
More actually impactful or even just like genuine belief. I don't know what, you know, who he is. He just craven. He just wants to get reelected, all right, So let's put that to the side. But considering what all these people said, including one MSNBC at the time, Matt Miller said about Russian propaganda, it's a little bit different now that he's in the State Department briefing and the reporters are asking him about it. The Intercepts prem talker who we had here on the show, pressed him on it.
Let's take a listen.
A little over two months ago, the US announce sanctions on Russians for creating false websites and then using fake social media accounts to amplify the misleading content. So similar to what the government of Israel is reportedly carried out. And of course the US has taken similar stances in the past few years. So I'm wondering. I know that you said the US has laws you expect compliance. Will US take similar action here?
So, as I said in response to not a question right now, we have a US report. It's not US government information, so I'm not going to speak to it specifically, but I think I'll leave it at that. And as I said, though, we do have laws that we vigorously enforce and we expect people to comply with them.
If you know, the US does find that this reporting does bear out, and this is not meant to be like a hypothetical, This is meant to be more of a commitment towards the norms. Will you know the US act in accordance with how it has before it has with Russia.
So it is somewhat of hypothetical only because you have to actually look at the facts of every case and see what the appropriate response is. But as is always the case, we look at violations of our law, A lot of that is carried out by other agencies within the United States government and developed the appropriate response. But I just I can't respond with any level of detail here because it is always very fact specific.
Mmm, it's always very fact specific. It actually was the opposite of facts specific whenever it came to Russia and we had some BS report up from what was it from the O d n I that we conclude Russia our chart or something no election. And before even that, Matt Miller was on MSNBC and all this talking about how this is a complete catastrophe and a violation of sovereignties.
So either they were lying at that time or they believed it then. But it's okay for Israel. But of course, as usual, there's an exception here.
Yeah, State Department, they've never seen the reports. They never know, they'll always get back to us, They're going to look into it. They can't really say, you know, they don't really know what's a war crime. They don't know if the details are correct. I mean, they just obviously you're never going to get a straight answer out of this guy.
But it's very inconvenient for them, the fact of all the rhetoric surrounding Russia when it was the context of you know, their influence up and their invasion of Ukraine and their war crimes, all that rhetoric that just unfolded from the State and continues to flow from the State Department, from Tony Blincoln, etc. And then you ask about the same or worse atrocities when it comes to Israel, and suddenly they don't know, They can't say they haven't seen, they haven't read the reports.
They'll get back to you, and of course they never do.
So no surprise there that the hypocrisy looms incredibly large.
But it's also just I mean, it's also just.
An extraordinary look at how important Israel thinks these lawmakers' position.
That's right, that's right.
And you know the fact that again this is this is supposedly a top ally, someone that we ship billions of dollars to every single year, this war or any other year notwithstanding, and you know, they're here meddling in our elections and messing with our lawmakers, and we don't have the self respect to like even stand up for ourselves and say, hey, maybe you don't do that.
I wish you wouldn't interfere.
And they have the goal anytime any of our lawmakers weighs in on their actions, to say, hey, we're a sovereign country. How dare you, how dare you interfere?
It's just the whole thing.
Is preposter Let's just respect each other's sovereignty, shall we.
I'd be fine with that, I really would, but apparently that's not on the cards.
All right.
Meanwhile, we have some horrific news coming out the Gaza Strip.
We can put this up on the screen.
Israeli airstrike on a school where thousands were sheltering has killed dozens of people. The numbers I saw were somewhere around forty five people. Many more who were injured, including women and children. This comes in the context of, of course, you know, just massive annihilation of the Gaza Strip and also these ongoing ceasefire talks. We don't know where things
stand with all of that. After Biden gave his speech and you know, tried to apply some rhetorical pressure at least to these Raelis into Hamas as well, to come to some sort of a ceasefire deal. Very unclear where all of that stands. And obviously this is just the latest horror and what is an almost incalculable level of destruction.
This was the latest attempt that I saw for people to try to wrap their heads around what has been done in a very short period of time to the Gaza strip by the Israelis.
Let's put this up on the screen.
Seventy tons of bombs have been dropped on Gaza since October, far surpassing the combined total for Dresden, Hamburg and London all put together during World War Two. So you know, you guys have seen the images of all of these cities reduced to rubble, you know, communists Gaza City now targeting Rafa. You've seen the way schools, hospitals, any sort of civilian building, universities, mosques, churches, et cetera, have been
completely decimated. And you really can't even wrap your head around this level of destruction and that amount of tonnage of bombs being dropped on what is again a very very small territory soccer.
Yeah, no, it is. It is shocking. It is a reminder too of just modern warfare. How quickly you can surpass that There was a single Vietnamese operation in Vietnam which surpassed all the.
That have been dropped in World War Two.
And it's just a good example that I bring up from Vietnam and that my I guess I'm the contemporary of the people of who brought this up at the time. They're like, hey, guys, if this was just simply an air power problem, we could bomb our way out of this, then we would have won this war a long long
time ago. But that's not what's happening here. We're fighting a very different war, a very similar war actually in this particular case, where you're watching airpower and in fact turn the population even further and further against you, very different en counter to the goals that you allegedly set out to accomplish. And that misalignment between the US what it supposedly wants, between what the Israelis want and then what the Palestindians, at least allegedly everyone is working to
try and get to a different state. That's what's causing both of tremendous amount of death and some bad strategy.
So put it all together.
On top of some of the domestic stuff is going on in Israel and things are not trending in a good direction.
Let's talk about some of that domestic stuff so we can put this up on the screen. You had a huge number of our right wing Jewish Israelis who were marauding through the Old City in Jerusalem for the Muslim quarter in particular. And as part of that, and this is this sort of an annual affair, it's called Flag Day.
I'll get into some of the specifics in a moment, but as part of that, and this is what's really significant, Israeli Cabinet minister Ben Gevere has said it's his policy to let Jews pray.
On the Temple Mount.
You have a very significant religious site that is significant both to Jews and to Muslims. For Muslims it's the alak Samusk. For Jews, they call it the Temple. There's the Temple Mount and an apparent breach of the long standing status quo. He said that it is his policy. And again this is a government cabinet minister who has power over such things to allow Jewish prayer at that contested Jerusalem holy site. He said, and I quote, I am also happy that Jews went up to the Temple
Mount and prayed there today. It is very important. My policy is very clear on this matter. Jews can be anywhere in Jerusalem, pray anywhere. Acid prayers are not conducted only informally in a whisper. Ben Gaverer said, no, no, no, no one whispered. Jews prayed on the Temple Mount. That's the ministerial position. And Jews pray on the Temple Mount, and that is a good thing. So that is an extraordinary provocation. He also talked about how this is meant
to intentionally be a provocation. He said that Muslims hang pictures of the Temple Mount and pictures of Jerusalem, and we tell them our Jerusalem, our novelist gate, our Temple Mount. Today, according to my policy, Jews entered the Old City freely, and on the Temple Mount, Jews prayed freely. We say, in the simplest way, it's hours, okay. He also went to this parade, which again I say, it's an annual affair of Jewish right wing Israelis. A lot of settlers are involved incredibly provocative.
There were numerous assaults.
There were chants by many individuals there of death to Arabs and other genocidal eliminationist chants. As part of this quote unquote parade, we can put Ben Gavier up on the screen.
So here he.
Is at this at this parade, at this march, where he says, Jerusalem is ours, Damascus Gate is ours, the Temple Mount is ours.
Today in accordance.
With my policy, Jews prayed freely on the Temple Mount. We say, in the simplest way, it's ours. We also have put this next piece up on the screen. We have some of the images from this, you know, sort of marauding bands going.
Through the streets. You can see what the scene was.
Here we have Ben Gavie again, this more imagery of him.
We have you can.
See very young, very young children here who are assaulting. I believe this was a Palestinian member of the press that you can see who's being assaulted.
There.
We have some extraordinary images as well of that assault. You can see him being surrounded in a press vest by all of these young you know, many of them settlers, certainly Jewish extremists. You see here a Haretz, Israeli Jewish member of the press who also was assaulted by this group attempting to protect I think we have one more image there that was really going around attempting to protect
this Palestinian press member. You know, you had all sorts of reports of hateful chants, like I said, death to Arabs, made their villages burn, I think was another one of them. You had various assaults, you had them going into Palestinian shops, and you had the police clearing any Palestinians from the area because they you know, couldn't or wouldn't protect them, and you know, forcing the amount of their own shops, et cetera.
So that was what was going on yesterday.
Yeah, I mean, the reason why this stuff is so important, I know it seems tedious, remember that the entire Second Intifado was sparked by a real Sharon visiting the Temple Mount. I mean, this is why it's so it's I mean, it's kind of crazy that we even got to the point where this barely even notes a mention in the
US Press. The visit to the Temple Mount in what was a September of two thousand was basically the beginning of the collapse of Oslo, of the Middle East Peace Summit and the Second Intafada, and the stated purpose at the time, by the way, Aerol Sharon was the head of the Lacud Party. You know, he's to assert the right of all Israelis to visit the Temple mount. This sets off like a whole Palestindian condemnation, Things develop into riots.
It's a huge, very important event in the history of so called like peace activists because it basically broke a lot of the peace consensus on the Palaestini and on the Israeli side, there were suicide bombs or riots. It led to like the modern basically establishment of the Lacud Party.
So for them to just like continue doing this is also both a shove in the face of anybody who still like even tried to pretend to be a part of the peace movement, but just shows like how far things have moved in a different direction.
Yeah.
At the same time, there's a real risk of continued escalation, especially with regard to Lebanon and has Below.
Let's put this up on the screen.
Israeli leaders have threatened to take quote unquote more intense action against Hesbel after an escalation and cross border fire, increasing tensions in the prospect of all out war with the Lebanese militant group. You'll recall northern Israel has largely been evacuated since October seventh, so you have quite a number of Israelis who have been evacuated from that area. You've had this cross border fire ongoing, and net Yahoo commented, he said, yesterday the earth was on fire here, but
it was also on fire in Lebanon. Whoever thinks that they can hurt us and that we will sit idly by is making.
A big mistake.
We are prepared for very intense action in the north. One way or another, we will restore security to the North, so you know, and all kinds of threats towards Lebanon previously.
We also have new reports.
Once again of more Israeli use of white phosphorus being dropped directly on residential areas that is in direct contradiction of international law. So yet another war crime being documented
by human rights organizations that are on the ground. And one possibility here if there is enough pressure applied that there's some sort of even a temporary cease fire in terms of Gaza, you could see this escalation occurring as a way again for BB to continue to justify his grip on power and his avoidance too of the criminal charges that could possibly land him in prison once the
war is over. This could be another avenue for him to claim some sort of victory over what has by all accounts been really a complete failure for the Israeli government and the Israeli military in terms of their offensive enda.
Yeah, this is what they want. They want to cont in you this. The only question is whether the actual world can constrain it.
That's it.
I mean, we have no idea whether we're going to be able to We've successfully done so so far. I would say that's maybe one piece of successful diplomacy. But clearly they want the action, and Hesbullet too has not been afraid, you know, to hit back. They've there's been several IDF soldiers who've been killed and cross border fires.
I don't know if you saw some of the images of northern.
Israel crazy a couple of days ago, which showed the bombs, the White Phosphorus, the hills were all on fire. Both sides are rearing and ready to go. So this could easily be a major expansion and would be ten times.
More deadly than anything we've seen in Gaza. For the Israelies, they should be afraid.
Yeah, and we should be really, I mean, this is directly tied like Hezbulla didn't have anything to do with October seventh, five days.
According to the Israelies, not us, Like that's what even Israel says.
Yeah, exactly, yeah, I mean everyone is unanimous and that no one is even arguing that that is the case. And so the you know, action with regard to to Hesla is directly tied to what Israel is doing in God's Strip. Hesbla feels, you know, that they need to show that they're defending the Palestinian people. So you really don't have a resolution to that conflagration, which could potentially escalate in a very damaging way for both Israeli and
Lebanese civilians. You don't have any even possibility of a resolution there until you have a cessation of the you know, Israeli assault on Gaza. So something else that we have our eye on. At the same time, there have been a lot of developments with regard to media censorship and one sided crackdowns in terms of American politics and crackdowns on pro Palestinian protest, which we have a fantastic gas standing by to help us understand what exactly is going on there.
Let's get to it.
So you guys, I'm sure recall we had a whole national conversation about quote unquote anti Semitism on campus and Jewish students potentially being made to feel or reality being unsafe in connection with pro Palestine protests and encampments. That's brung up on a variety of college campuses. One of those was that UCLA, where after the fact it was documented pretty clearly that all the violence was very one sided, was on the side of the pro Israeli counter protesters.
Numerous journalistic organizations, including the LA Times documented that pretty closely, and video evidence bore that out as well. CNN also
did extraordinary coverage there. We have joining us this morning extraordinary guest Salam al Mariati, who's president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, who met with a variety of public officials in the wake of those violent counter protests to find out where the concern la if they were going to conduct investigations, and he joins us now, great to have you.
Sir, good Caezer, thank you, thank you for having me.
Yeah, of course, so talk to us about your interest in what unfolded at UCLA and some of the meetings.
You were able to have.
I attended the encampment. It was peaceful. I met a lot of students, a lot of Jewish students, Muslim students, a lot of non religious students. It was an array that you saw there, and I was inspired by it, and it was peaceful. And in fact, a Princeton study Bridging the Divide initiative showed that ninety five percent of the encampments are peaceful of the thousand that they assessed.
And so when I met with officials and they're concerned about violence from these encampments, I said, these are peaceful gatherings. They're protesting in the great student tradition. When I met with Eric Holders some years back, he said he occupied a building when he was in college. So what was different though, of course not the situation, right, And so
we see the double standards. And then I have attended college football games, and if you're concerned about disorderly conduct and vandalism and harassment, well are we going to be canceling football games because of our concern, of course not. So that's how ridiculous this argument is that there's concern about violence. And if there was violence, as you said, it was the violence against the students, it was the violence by bringing in the police to dismantle the encampments.
And so we talked to officials about that, and when I met with the Attorney General and the FBI director, the concern there was, you know, they're looking at violent extremism and how foreign actors can use these public gatherings to attack Americans. And I said, it already happened. It happened on the night of April thirtieth against the student protesters, against the pro Palestinian student encampment, and what are you doing about that? So they promised that they would look
into it, that there should be an investigation. Why did law enforcement step back and stand by watching the assault on the pro Palestinian protest.
And so this was Attorney General Meyrick Garland that you were speaking to, and you're talking about the kind of protest at UCLA, which you know, again documented there were hours that these assaults were occurring in which the police did absolutely nothing. The next day, the police come in and they arrest the largely peaceful pro Palestinian side. And so what was the response from Garland when you press for an investigation into what had occurred?
He said he would look into it. The FBI director said he would look into it. We receive communications from their offices that there might be an investigation happening, but nothing is official, of course, and we just have to keep pressing the issue. In fact, I'm meeting today with the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Christian Clerk, on the same matter. So we're going to get a report from them and to see where we are with the situation.
But we just have to keep pressing. Just like we have to keep pressing for prosecution of the January sixth coup against our country at the US capital, we have to press here for an investigation of law enforcement and exactly who these culports were that instigated violence against the students. And right now, as of now, there's only been one arrest, and even with Los Angeles Police Department said they didn't have enough resources to investigate, and we called that nonsense.
Well, yeah, so tell us about you were talking previously with us about some of the meetings you've had with public officials. I'm curious from your end, what is it like, how much can you see very clearly that there is external pressure on these individuals to not let's say, they definitely would have acted differently as you said, let's say the January sixth investigation or any of that in response to some of this protest violence that we saw, a
violence against the protesters. How has their difference in tone and all that come through to you and the evidence of external pressure on them.
Well, I can't tell you exactly what evidence there is, but we know it's there.
Yeah, I mean, I've been doing that, but you can see it in the you know, in the response and there tell us about that.
In their tone, and they're sort of trying to console us that yes, it was terrible what happened, And we said, we don't need sympathy, we need action. We need you to look into what's happening here. You know, you've had Los Angeles Police Department officers go to Israel and pose with IDF forces next to the bombs that were going to go kill Palestinians. And we said, what kind of infiltration or influence is there within our law enforcement by
the Israeli defense forces? We need you to investigate that as well, and so we've called on the LAPD Commission Police Commission to look into that, and I hope that something will come out of it. But again, we just have to keep pressing and keep advocating. I've been doing this for forty years. When I started, way before your time.
The first case that I was involved in was called the LA eight and what happened was was the agency at that time was called the Immigration Naturalization Service instead of DHS, and they were looking at Palestinians who were distributing communist literature using a McCarthy era law, the mccaren Walter Act, And of course it was ridiculous. It took twenty years to vindic those individuals. But this kind of McCarthyism is coming back, and it's coming back with a force.
I think the pro Israel groups, the hardliners from that side, are using everything to pressure those officials that you're referring to Zagar and really si silence in them. And while they come to us with sympathy, they really can't do anything because they know that the other side is ready to clabber them if they do take action. So it is a bit of a political game, unfortunately, but we
feel that there's there's more, there's a growing support. In fact, for the first time an LA City councilwoman Nathia Rahman, finally sponsored a resolution for a ceasefire in the La City Council. So we'll see where that goes. And they also passed a resolution fifteen to nothing in La City to investigate LAPD for what happened on April Thirtyeth got it.
So the mayor of La now as Karen Bass. You met with her as well.
I mean she's positioned herself as relatively progressive Democrat.
What was that meaning like?
And how much is your sense that we talk a lot about APAC and the influence that their money and their lobbying has on all sorts of races. They've threatened, I think one hundred million dollars in their war chest to defeat candidates that, in their view are insufficiently pro Israel. How much does that loom over these conversations that you're having with politicians.
Like I said, we know it exists. It doesn't come out in these conversations, of course, but the main concern is that they're worried about the reaction that they're going to get if they come out and support of these students, and the school officials say the same thing that they come to us and say, you know, it's not our fault. It's really the Department of Education that's being influenced to come in and every time there's a pro Palestinian event
happening on campus, they call for an investigation. Then I go to the Department of Education and say, hey, the school officials are complaining about you, and they said, it has nothing to do with us. It's the school officials that are being pressure by the pro Israel group. So everybody is pointing the finger to everybody else right now. And we know that game. We've been around the block
a couple of times. But as I said, it's really about continuing our advocacy and we really appreciate shows like this that for the first time, the public is seeing the truth.
That was my question too, is you've obviously been involved in this for a long time, presumably been meeting with democratic lawmakers. This may be like, what has this been experience been like for you to watch them change a lot of their tune that you previously may have seen sympathy, and you know, whenever it was Republicans doing it, they
were willing to decry it. But this time and now that they're in power, what has it been like to watch some of these people, who you presumably know well, even meetings with them for a long time, just completely shift, you know a post October seven.
Well, it starts with the president himself. I mean, I couldn't believe it when he says that I'm a Zionist and I said, well, then how can you be our president? You don't represent us. Then so he met with Alstinians, he changed his tone. I believe that the protests are forcing him to change his rhetoric. It hasn't changed any action yet with other lawmakers that we've met. We met with for example Rohanna yesterday he came to our conference
and spoke. It is a change because twenty years ago we didn't see thirty lawmakers say we are supporting a ceasefire. Now we're finally seeing that. The last time I saw a lawmaker actually call out Israel was Bob Dole in the eighties when he said, oh, we should stop sending on as for Israel over that right. That was the last time. And in between that, nothing there was pure silence.
So now we're finally coming back to some lawmakers having some backbone and saying if we care about American national security interests, this is not helping. This is hurting. And so we see these thirty I hope that it grows. We even see some Republicans now beginning to question what's happening in Gusin and blind support for this issue.
Yeah, their few libertarian voices out there.
Bob dol vindicated though, Glad we wanted to get your thoughts to on another news event that I thought you would find interesting.
Lists put this up on the screen. This is really wild.
So this is from the ap After publishing an article critical of Israel, Columbia Law Reviews website is shut down by the board. Let me read a little bit of those student editors at the Columbia Law Reviews say they were pressured by the journal's board of directors to halt publication of an academic article written by a Palestinian human rights lawyer that accuses Israel of committing genocide and gaza
and upholding and apartheid regime. When editors refuse the request and publish that peace Monday morning, anyway, the board, which is made up of faculty and alumni from Columbia University's Law school, shut down. The Law Reviews website entirely remained offline Tuesday evening is static homepage informing visitors the domain is under maintenance. Of course, that irony here is probably no one would have really paid attention to this article.
The student to published it separately at a permanent link that couldn't be taken down, and it's probably gotten way more attention than it ever would have if they just let it be published. But what do you make of this extraordinary effort at censorship of a pro Palestinian view.
Well, it's like what they tried to do with Esna tabeslom at USC. They canceled her speech, so instead of talking, it.
Was the valedictoria, it was a mental speech, and then they canceled the whole commencement, right.
Canceled the whole thing. And so with Esna, now instead of speaking to sixty thousand people, she's speaking to millions of people. And now this article which basically saying that we need a new legal construct for Palestinians. It's not just about apartheid or occupation. That doesn't fit. Let us look to what's called the Nekba, the catastrophe that happened in nineteen forty eight and has continued to this day
as a legal construct. Right. And so by shutting this down by this kind of censorship, now this is going to get more traction and more people will go and read it and look to not only why their censorship, but what is this all about? You know, I've been involved with groups, not involved with but people have monitored students by groups called campus Watch. It's their form of lawfare against these students. And campus Watch is a pro Israel website that says that these students are anti Semitic.
I was called anti semitic. You know. I was appointed to the Congressional Commission for Terrorism in nineteen ninety eight by Richard Geppart. The ADL, the American Jewish Committee, the Conference of Jewish Presidents all lobbied to rescind the nomination. The New York Times headline of that was get part bows to Jews, anger for that. And so we know that this is happening is going to continue to happen
until the establishment gets the message. And the establishment still has not received that message that this is this is a violation of our First Amendment. So we have we're now coming out with the Bureau for Academic Freedom to organize around this issue, to defend the First Amendment rights of our students, to defend the First Amendment of our country.
We're the ones now that are at the center of this issue, and so it will help these students and really say, if we're really about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, then the censorship has got to stop, especially in public universities.
And I think it's important to point out too that even as this particular article, because it got a headline, I got a lot of attention, I got a lot
of eyeballs that the censorship effort didn't work. But you will have many people who don't speak out, who don't write the articles that they would have, who don't publish the articles that they would have, because they don't have the stomach for it right, they don't want to be under screwty, they don't want to have a truck driving around their college campus with their face on it, etc. So, while this individual effort maybe failed, backfired stries and effect,
the overall chilling effect is still incredibly important. So what are some of the work that you'll be doing at the Bureau of Academic Freedom, and where can people find out more about what you're up to.
You go to our website, Muslim Public Affairs Council NPAC dot org and we're going to launch it this week or within the next week. And the main issue is to expose this kind of chilling effect, this kind of censorship, this kind of intimidation against our students, and to provide support for them, whether it's legal support, political support, community support.
We need to we need to be there at the forefront and to show that this is what these student protesters are doing is part of an American campus tradition. We saw that in Vietnam, we saw that for civil rights, we saw that against apartheid. This is nothing new in terms of the student tradition where students are leading us because everybody else is politically shackled in Washington from peking out. They're speaking the conscience of our country and we have
to support them. So the Beeer of Academic Freedom is objective is to end this intimidation. It's going to be a long battle. I've been doing this you know now going on thirty six years, and it may take more decades for us to see a resolution to this conflict. But the beeer of academic freedom is aimed to resolving this and really defend the First Amendment.
So thank you so much for your time today. It's a pleasure to meet.
You, sir.
Thank you for coming. Thank you so much. I appreciate the time.
Thank you, all right, we'll see you guys later.