Keep on riding with us as we continue to broadcast the balance and defend the discourse from these hip hop weekly studios. Welcome back to Civic e Scipher. I am your host, Rams's Jah.
He is Rams's Jah. I am q Ward. You are either still listening to or just tuning in to Civic Cypher.
Either way, we appreciate you. We are having a big old time. Today we have a good friend of the show back with us to clear up some things for those that missed it. Last week we had a conversation with a friend of the show, his name is Ami Horowitz, giving us an update on the Israeli perspective with respect to the Israel Hamas war. And today we have the two Punch the other shoe drops. We have Suzanne Oslin who is a human rights major, former Miss arab USA actress,
and an activist turned writer. You can follow her on social media at the Activist and she is here to respond and to answer some other questions. Clear up a few things. So before we get back to that conversation. First up, it's time to be a b a discussed becoming a better ally Blaba. Today's Bobba sponsored by Friends of the movement. You can sign up for the free voter wallet from fotmglobal dot com. Support black businesses and
allied businesses. Again, that's FOTM Global dot com. And today I'm going to share a bit from the Daily Bruin. You know, it's from college kids that are getting out there and getting busy. So shout out to these guys, all right, shout out to the youth. So a move by the Undergraduate Students Association Council to vote on a resolution endorsing the Boycott, divest and sanctions movement against Israel quickly turned into a tent standoff, reflecting rising campus tensions
over the ongoing violence in the Gaza Strip. The ten to three vote to pass the resolution was conducted by secret ballot amid privacy and security concerns, given that hundreds of emails from non UCLA students had flooded council members emails, said Cultural Affairs Commissioner Alisha Verdugo, a resolution sponsor who is facing facing calls from teach due to allegations of
anti Semitism from pro Israel groups and Jewish students. The resolution follows similar BDS resolutions proposed at other California institutions with UC Davis's student government in the UCLA Graduate Student Association voting to support BDS resolutions. Resolution requires USAC to maintain a list of corporations that reportedly fund violations of human rights and international laws that is accessible by student
groups and departments. It will include companies targeted by the Palestinian BDS National Committee, such as Hewlett Packard, Chevron and Puma. And I do want to say that this isn't the only instance of this. This has actually happened at a few different schools. So shout out to all the students that are organizing, that are letting their voices be known on the campus, that are unafraid of the pushback, because I know that that is a real thing we have
to live with. But right is right, and when everything is said and done, you will go down on the right side of history. You are the better ally that we all should become. All right, So, Suzanne, before we have some more conversations, I want to make sure that you have you came with some talking points. I want to make sure you get all those talking points off, so anything else that we need to hit before.
We uh Regarding Tommy, A couple other things that he said, Lord help me, he said, when you when you talk to him about the number of people who have been killed, he and you said it was twenty five thousand women and children. He combated that, and he was like, NATO roughly kills for one like bad guy they kill, there's three civilians who die for Israel. According to what Amy says, for one terrorist that they kill, it's one point five civilians who die, so good job.
Well, first of all, one of the things that he said is that among that number of people, some of those terrorists are underage children. And he's saying that that's okay because they're terrorists. There's nothing okay about killing children. And you have no proof that those are that's twelve thousand people that he's saying are terrorists, twelve thousand people and a bunch of them are kids. Make that make sense.
It was just so it was just so unconscionable because you would never say that about another group of people ever ever. And suddenly something just switches when you talk about Palestine, where you become comfortable with dehumanizing them, comfortable with just randomly killing kids and it being okay. You guys know what I'm talking about one of the things he said is he was like, there's you know, making mistakes is a.
Part of war.
So either they're incredibly savvy and we have to respect what they do the State of Israel because the United the State Department here in the US, they do anything that's like over the top that Israel does, it's over the top. The State Department goes, well, we've asked Israel to investigate the matter, and they've investigated and they haven't found anything that's really interesting.
It's really really interesting too. At the same time, there.
Was an allegation that Israel put out that you and Adawa the UN organization un RWA, that there might be hemas supporters or ms.
At individuals in that organization.
Five top countries that give so much funding to you and Ottawa completely cut it off without any any credibility, without any evidence that any of that was true. They immediately cut off funding to you and Ottawa. But when Israel does something really horrible, they're like, well, we've asked them to check themselves.
You guys know what I'm talking about.
Q definitely knows you've got there. It's like a motif on the show. Tell them about the police, quipe.
I don't have to make it about the police. There's a reason why so much rings familiar with what the people in Palestine are dealing with, and why there seem to be so many through lines and very very obvious synergies of mental, emotional, and historical presence between black people's struggle all over the world, but specifically in the United
States and what they are dealing with currently. There is a strategy put forth by those who look to oppress since the beginning, and the most important and long lasting part of that strategy is to other and then sub humanize them. And once you do that successfully, treating them as such becomes acceptable, where even decent people just see that as the cost of life, and that's just how things go. So there's nothing for us to be offended about,
because that's just how it is. Sweetie. And I use the word sweety intentionally because I'm picturing adults talking to children.
Right.
You guys brought up the TikTok legislation that's being put forth. The children are, for lack of a better term, awake, and that is terrifying to people in power because these awake children are speaking out and they're going outside and marching and protesting and organizing at rates that are alarming if the idea is to keep people underneath your thumb.
So this masterful plan that has worked for centuries. The reason why you go back to the sixties, and you can go back further than that and you'll see through lines, is because the strategy hasn't changed. It's quite masterful and effective in its efficacy. It's working, it has worked, and it always will. So when I have these moments of frustration and seeming helplessness, is because I've seen the movie before.
I see the outcry, I see the frustration, I see the marches in the protest, but I see the outcome remaining the same over and over again.
So here's what I'm going to do.
So not to cut you off there, but of course, let them police themselves and them and then find that they've done nothing wrong. Of course, my son will come back from his room and say it's already clean, and he already did his homework, And Dad, I don't understand why you're putting me my own punishment. If I left it to him to be his own father, to be his own protector, and to do his own investigation into his own homework, like, of course Dad, it was of course I did it already.
And I did it right.
Yeah, of course we've done nothing wrong here. There's nothing to see here.
Here's what I want to do. I want to ask a bunch of questions rapid fire, just for the sake of time. You got something you need to get off, you get it off. But I want to make sure that we get the people just litle bit more insight. Okay, So first thing, it was a video of Aaron Bushnaw set himself on fire for those that'd seen the video, and he spent his last breath yelling brief Palestine. He felt like that was what he needed to do to bring attention to what was going on in the Middle East.
How does that hit your people? How was your people's reaction to that? What you've seen online with your activism, etc.
Not only did he do that, but he also gave all of his money and his will to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund.
I didn't know that, which.
Is really.
I wish he didn't do it because it would have been I mean, just his family alone. I just think I'm a mom, and I think of his parents, and I think like my God, can you imagine when it comes to Palestine. That's a soul we would have loved to have with. Yes, you know, that is a powerful human and we're all really devastated, and it's hit in Gaza. People know in Gaza, they are holding up pictures of him on their.
Street named after him.
There's a street in Jericho in the West Bank now named after Aaron Bushnell.
So he is, he's become a martyr.
Okay, I'm glad to ask you that one. I would ask you about all the Super Bowl commercials and things like that, because that's happened since we've been up here before. But I feel like it's not nearly as important. Let's talk about the President's State of the Union address. Okay, he said, I'm.
Gonna quote him to the leadership of Israel I say this humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or bargaining ship. Protecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority. The only real is a two state solution. What do you make of that?
How do you say that?
Well, literally, at the exact same time that speech is being given, the money and weapons that you are also giving is thrown onto the people and it's creating the humanitarian catastrophe that you were saying is so important, and it's not a secondary thing to think about how does that work?
That's it's since it's it's i'm gonna I'm gonna say this. Don't let me state your brief. But there's a saying that we use here. Sometimes we even have to do it ourselves. But it's kind of like talking out of both sides of your mouth. Is that does that kind of encapsulate what you feel like he's doing that it's.
Just there, he's he's mad, that he's he's actually mad. He actually this has come out in the last week that he's really off. That he doesn't understand why his his ratings have gone down in Georgia and Michigan.
Well over Gaza you know why.
Yeah, but he doesn't get it. He's his numbers are dropping.
So he's got let's talk about that. Let's talk about that though, So that organized organizing of you know, there's a there's a huge community in Michigan.
The metro Detroit Detroit area has probably in this part of the world, the largest concentration of Muslim and.
Arab people outside of the Middle East.
So yeah, of course Michigan will show up, and thankfully, thankfully Michigan has shown up in the way that it has. And of course people are very very upset right because there's a stunning and startling similarity between the left and the right and this country when it comes to their foundation of Christianity and white Christianity more specifically right. So they don't expect this type of pushback. Neither side would expect this type of pushback in support of something that's
not American. You know, you're not being a patriot and you're not being a good, God loving American Christian person if you stand up in a time like this to support something like this. Of course, that's going to be very confusing for a president who's kind of not had his finger on the pulse of any of the things that matter to us since we got him elected.
Can I say something else while we're here and me and u Q we have this conversation quite a bit about why do black people always vote Democrat? Why the black people always vote Democrat? They don't do they don't do. This. One of the things that has inspired me by our Arab American brothers and sisters with this, what was the vote, the name of the vote, whereas you're not voting for anybody, but you're showing up to undecided or uncommitted, uncommitted. That
was it. One of the things that I'm hoping will resonate with the democratic establishment is that they will feel the presence of our absence, right, And it is our Arab American brothers and sisters who have kind of spearheaded that movement, because just that little bit is enough to suggest like, oh wait, if they get organized and they
withhold their vote, then we lose power. And if they want power, then they have to be accountable to the people on the ground, which is there is no silver lining about I'm forever a changed man seeing what happened to those children. I'm a father. We're all parents here, yes, and we're parents of young children, so we can see that very easily. I mean, you guys, see my kid running around in his undwear all the time, right, unconsciable, inconceivable to think of me picking my own baby out
of a pile of rubble. He has such a bright future, right. If there is a silver lining though, and I don't mean to be polished, it's that the organization that came from this to show that, and this is why we done our best to really stand in solidarity with the people that we feel needed, you know which, Again, admittedly I've admitted I know I'm a journalist, but I've admitted that Palestinian people, like history will look back on this and say, Yo, the Palestinian people needed us to do
even more we talk on the radio. So just what we do but shoot, give us a ticket and whatever else we need, we'll go get busy whatever. Anyway, that part is something that I've really been able to appreciate. I don't want to take up too much of your time, so let me get back here. I'm going to read a few things, just get one reaction from you before time runs out. So there was a lot of lies that I pressed last week. I pressed Amion just to get his reaction. I'd like to do the same with you,
just to get your reaction. A lot about lives that have since been debunked. First, there was already a cease fire on October sixth, and the pushback was that Israel had been firing on Palaestinian people prior to October seventh, and so that narrative has been proven that there's footage, there's incidents documented, that sort of thing. The next one is that the priority was freeing the hostages, and the IDF is in fact killed some of the hospital hostages
that they've been trying to save. Right, of course, we talked about the forty babies that were beheaded that ended up being one hundred percent not true. I think there was only one baby that was like under the age of two that actually died, and one is too many, but that baby was not beheaded, and I don't think that that was even a let me not speak on it,
but I don't think that baby was like a target. Specifically, the Hamas main base under the Alchifa hospital helped me Al Shifa Hospital, and the AP ultimately found out that that base, that sophisticated base, ended up being just kind of one room with two metal cots that looked like it wasn't even being used. So that's another debunked lie that was surrounding this narrative about Israel's justification for attacking
Al Gaza. Next one Washington, Oh sorry, yeah, the Washington Post also found that there was no military base under that hospital. The Israeli ministry uses the Gaza Ministry of Health's numbers, and they found those numbers to be a reliable source of info. And we talked about some other sources that also confirmed that the numbers coming out of Gaza were in fact reliable, and the people pushing back against that, all of them have no credibility journalistically or scientists.
Don't want to be true because it makes it look back.
But scientifically speaking and journalistically speaking, they're not credible or else are we. You mentioned the US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin discussing twenty five thousand women and children being killed by Israel. At present, four out of five of the Hungary's people in the world are in Gaza right now. That is a fact. And the other lie that has been associated with this conflict is that the Gazans elected Hamas as a way of justifying and making every one
culpable for the attack on January second. So everyone has to pay and if there are, if there's collateral damage, then so be it. It's the cost of doing business. And that was for those that listened to last week's episode, which if you haven't, please go back and listen because this will make a lot more sense. But the one time in that conversation when we really had a tense moment, me an amy was because of that very thing, you know, that that justification which feels so unfair that in and
of itself is a war crime. Collective punishment is a warfime. But as we've discussed, the numbers do not support the fact. First off, the Hamas did not win a majority of the votes in the election. And second, while the election was in two thousand and six, and the vast majority of the people that have suffering, the people on the ground, yeah, they weren't even old enough to vote in that election in the first place.
And that was asked fifty percent of the population. I mean, that's a big number.
So most of the human beings on the ground paying the price for this did not vote.
So here's what I'll.
Say this is there's two wars happening. There's the war that's happening on the ground, and there's the narrative war. And for the first time in seventy five years, Israel is losing their narrative war and they are terrified. And one thing one way to decipher is that everything that they every accusation is a confession. Every everyone so every time they say they're using people's human shields, they use
people as human shields. This they're doing collective punishment. He mass is the one that's taking food away from people. They're the ones taking food away from people. Every time they accuse Hamas or the Palstine authority or the Palsinen people of something, it is actually a confession of things that they do.
It's how they come up with it.
You know. Another said thing I'm just saying real quick. There was another video that broke my heart. There was a black and white video on CNN. You had some food out there and you see the people. They look like little dots. They were coming to get the food. Yeah, they started shooting the flower massacre. Yeah, and then one hundreds some people died.
It was the flower massacre.
They didn't die, they were murdered by snipers when they went to go get food, flower off of an AID truck. So people left their homes, dads left their kids to go get food and never came back. And they somehow managed to blame how Masks for it.
Q And you had some.
I really start to lose hope on the idea that we could get to a place where we figure out a way to see each other collectively as human beings. Those who look to oppress have done the most incredible job at teaching us to focus on the things that make us different, because if they can keep us separated, they can keep us colonized and disorganized and fighting amongst each other and oppressed. Because they are by far the minority. By far, there are seven and a half billion people
on this planet. Seven point four billion of them are poor. We have far more in common than the things that separate us. But they have done the most masterful divide and conquer. They have implemented this strategy. It has taken root, and it has the fruit that it bears. Seems to be undefeated. There seems to be no solution, no formula that can get us to look at each other as
brothers and sisters of the human race. We rather be black and Irish and Jamaican and Haitian and Chinese and Japanese and you know whatever that makes us different, and Christian and Buddhist and Catholic and gay and Muslim and gay and straight, and we can go on and on, but even that list is short. You know, if I say all of those things together there are still far more that makes us the same, and we got to find a way back to that.
Well. As always the short This show is way too short, So just a couple of closing thoughts here. We always, in forever will stand with Jewish people. Can't say the same about any country, can't say the same about any logo. There's a lot more conversation that needs to be had. I'm going to ask you to do us one more favor, one more bab ba. Please follow at the actorist on social media and follow another friend of the show. Resistance
is beautiful, Resistance underscore is underscore beautiful. To get some more insight into these and to keep the conversation going. Of course, you have a standing invitation to come back, and you know, please keep fighting the good fight out there, do your research and keep rocking with us until next week, y'all.
Peace,