 I've had it with the Palestinians. I've given up on the Palestinians. If I was in Israel, I wouldn't be talking about a Palestinian state right now. I don't think Joe Biden should be talking about a Palestinian state right now. And I don't like how people tried to differentiate between the Palestinians and Hamas. To me, I see people with guns. That's a mass that people without the guns are the Palestinians. They believe the same thing. The Palestinians hire Hamas to run their government. You pull them. They all love killing Jews in their charter. They say they believe in suicide bombings. Every time a Palestinian refugee goes to another country, it doesn't work out so well for the other country and for those Palestinians. No one wants them. You don't see Egypt opening up their doors. You don't see Jordan opening up. You don't see the Saudis. Why don't they want the Palestinians, Dana? You just got a small taste of the far right dehumanizing rhetoric towards Palestinians, where they not only push this idea that Palestinian civilians are indistinguishable from Hamas, but they also argue that Palestinians are literally less human than everyone else on the planet. But this racist Islamophobic caricature of Palestinians is nothing new. In 2010, Ben Shapiro famously tweeted, Israelis like to build Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage. This is not a difficult issue. Hashtag settlements rock and during Israel's 2014 incursion into Gaza, anti-woke author who couldn't define woke Bethany Mandel tweeted the following, not nuking these fucking animals is the only restraint I expect. And that's only because the cloud would hurt Israelis. Now, in response to that tweet resurfacing, she said, it was sent in the heat of the moment after another brutal attack. But I had a point. So unsurprisingly, the far right in America is in lockstep with the far right in Israel, who also referred to Palestinians as human animals and claimed that civilians in Gaza are also responsible for the crimes of Hamas. So if this kind of dehumanizing rhetoric towards Palestinians is that common on the right, well, it's no surprise that Republican politicians aren't just echoing the same thing, but they're taking things much further by proposing draconian policies to go along with said dehumanizing rhetoric. In fact, Republican presidential candidates are vowing to censor and punish protesters who dare defend Palestinian civilians. And their primary targets will first and foremost be foreign students on college campuses. The Washington Post reports, Trump, the dominant polling leader in the GOP race said this week that if he has returned to the White House, his administration would revoke student visas of, quote, radical anti-American and anti-Semitic foreigners. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also expressed support for deporting international students, who he deemed supportive of Hamas, saying, you don't have a right to be here on a visa. You don't have a right to be studying in the United States. In a radio interview, the same day Senator Tim Scott said of the student protests, if any of those students on college campuses are foreign nationals on a visa, they should be sent back to their country. And additionally, Ron DeSantis has ordered students at the University of Florida and the University of South Florida to deactivate their students for justice in Palestine groups, because they supposedly violate laws in Florida against anti-Semitism. Now, regardless if these students are American citizens or not, they still have First Amendment protections from our Constitution. They still apply. But yet these self-proclaimed pro-free speech candidates are openly vowing to violate the Constitution in order to punish critics of Israel. But when Washington Post reporter Dillon Wells reached out to all of the campaigns of these Republicans proposing this and asked them, how do you reconcile this position with your supposed support for free speech? Well, guess what? She got no response. Predictable. Now, by introducing these plans, American fascists are following the footsteps of fascist leaders in Israel, who are also punishing critics of the Israeli government. The nation reports that Palestinians and Jews in Israel are being punished over their criticisms of Israel on social media. They explain that about 50 Palestinians have either faced disciplinary action or faced suspension from various Israeli academic institutions. Also about 30 Palestinian civilians of Israel have been fired from their jobs and 170 have been detained or questioned for allegedly making social media posts in support of Hamas. And this crackdown comes after a hearts report about a Likud minister drafting emergency regulations to jail citizens who quote, harm national morale, how democratic of Israel. Now, to be clear, the justification for punishment and censorship is that these people are accused of supporting Hamas. But understand that any criticism of the Israeli government is deemed pro-Hamas, the goal is to silence all critics of Israel's war crimes in Gaza, period, full stop. And the easiest way to justify it and cultivate public support for this censorship campaign is to just say, well, they sympathize with terrorists. We're seeing a version of that here in the United States as well, where people who speak out on the behalf of Palestinian civilians like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are being referred to as terrorist sympathizers. It's the oldest trick in the book. Now, thankfully, censorship over social media posts hasn't gone that bad yet here in the United States, but social media companies are being accused of suppressing Palestinian voices. Meta, for example, is being accused of suppressing information on Instagram and popular pro-Palestine accounts on Twitter like Palestine Action is alleging that they are being suppressed as well. And as someone who followed them and then had to refollow after I was automatically unfollowed, I do think that there is some merit to their claims if it's not just a bug or a glitch. But I think that Ilhan Musk probably is responsible for censorship here. He's been censoring voices that he disagreed with before. So who's to say that he's not doing it again? But don't assume that widespread censorship isn't occurring here in the United States because it's not as prevalent as it is in Israel because it is happening and it has been happening. Journalists like Katie Halper, Mark Lamont Hill, Nathan J. Robinson, they've all been fired from the Hill, CNN and The Guardian, respectively, for being critical of Israel. And furthermore, within the last 10 years, anti-BDS laws in the United States have exploded with 38 states adopting anti-BDS laws, as you could see by this chart here. Now, here's what this means. Quote, states with anti-boycott laws are effectively telling companies that if you do the right thing and disentangle yourself from settlement abuses, you can't do business with us. Said Andrea Prasso, Deputy U.S. Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch, quote, states should encourage not sanctioned companies that avoid contributing to human rights abuses. Many states have anti-boycott laws or policies that extend to individuals and companies that enter into business contracts with states. These laws and policies require people entering into contracts to assert that they will not engage in any boycott activity. So in the United States of America, you could be punished for speaking up and condemning a foreign government. But sometimes, even if you keep your mouth shut, it's what you don't do that can get you into trouble. You're sometimes punished for not signing a loyalty pledge to Israel in America. This happened to a Texas teacher who was fired for refusing to sign an anti-BDS loyalty pledge to Israel. And the same exact thing happened to Abby Martin, as she explained in this video from November of 2020. In February of this year, I was supposed to give a keynote speech at Georgia Southern University before the event. I refused to sign a state mandated pledge to not boycott Israel in order to speak. My invitation was rescinded and the conference canceled as a result. I decided to sue the state of Georgia because signing an anti-BDS clause in order to work in the state is a direct violation of my constitutional rights to free speech and to participate in political boycotts. Just days after this lawsuit was filed and widely reported in the press, Netanyahu tweeted this. He said, whoever boycotts us will be boycotted. In recent years, we've promoted laws in most U.S. states which determine that strong action is to be taken against whoever tries to boycott Israel. So here you have a foreign country essentially threatening economic consequences to dictate the constitutional rights of Americans. Then you had Georgia state officials essentially citing, I mean, actually citing Israel Netanyahu as part of their defense for these laws. I mean, this is a free speech case under the U.S. Constitution. So why is it that you have a foreign leader, you know, making veiled threats for economic consequences? And then you have actual state officials in Georgia citing foreign officials as their reason to undermine the U.S. Constitution here. It's remarkable and fundamentally distressing that you have elected officials in the United States who actually are willing to sacrifice Americans, First Amendment rights, cherished First Amendment rights at the request of a foreign country. And it's demanding basically that you and anyone else sign a loyalty oath to a foreign country in order to be able to contract with the state of Georgia. And the situation is so extreme that, in fact, one of the state legislatures, Deborah Silcox, when they were seeking to amend the law and raise that limit to $100,000 to try and moot your case, actually said in a committee meeting at the state legislature that she had been asked to take that step by the Israeli consulate and apparently even brought a member of the Israeli consulate to speak in that meeting. This is the United States. This is where, you know, we're told over and over again that, you know, it's American rights, that we have the First Amendment, that we have the Constitution, that we have the Bill of Rights, that this stands for American freedom. And then they can just quickly turn around and say, well, another country directed that we take these actions. And so we're going to do that. Absolutely chilling. Now, thankfully, Abby Martin ended up winning her lawsuit. And I will link you to the video down below where I talked about the outcome of that case. But just for a second, imagine that your employer fired you because they demanded that you sign a loyalty pledge to Russia or Saudi Arabia or China, and you didn't. I mean, politicians would quickly condemn that. The media would condemn that. But we have a far right Israeli government literally dictating the free speech rights of United States citizens. And it's just a common phenomenon here. It's not even controversial. And as you've seen, we don't want Israel to dictate free speech rights in the United States because they're pretty fucking bad at protecting free speech in their country. They're penalizing people who criticize them. But furthermore, just having a foreign government dictate US policy at all is a bit of a slippery slope. No, it's a bit frightening. Is it not? Now, obviously, these anti-BDS laws are in violation of the First Amendment, which is why Abhimaran won her lawsuit and why multiple anti-BDS laws have been blocked by federal courts multiple times. But it's not always a sure bet, given the politicized nature of our judiciary and an anti-BDS law in Arkansas was actually upheld by US appeals court in 2022. But understand that this attack on free speech at the behest of Israel is not unique to the United States. France literally banned all Palestinian protests. France, democratic country controlled by a liberal government, banned all pro-Palestinian protests. And as Amnesty International points out, Germany has banned pro-Palestine protests in most cities. Switzerland also banned protests in certain cities and waving the Palestinian flag may soon be illegal in the UK as well. Now, at the start of this video, I pointed out the Republicans who supported draconian crackdown of free speech at the behest of the Israeli government. And that's not surprising considering the far right in the US has authoritarian ambitions just like the far right does in Israel. In fact, Netanyahu's judicial overhaul has been characterized as a coup because it would spawn a constitutional crisis. And also Donald Trump here in the United States was accused of doing a coup as well, or at least attempting a coup by trying to illegally stay in power after he lost the election. But what's interesting is that liberals in the US can clearly acknowledge the threat posed by Donald Trump's far right, ultra nationalist fascist policies. But when it comes to Israel's version of Donald Trump, Netanyahu and their far right, ultra nationalist government, liberals seem to have a blind spot. They can't see how Netanyahu, like Trump, also poses a danger to democracy, not just democracy in Israel. Our democracy, too, because they are literally pushing for policies to censor United States citizens. Benjamin Netanyahu admitted this. And those anti-BDS laws that I mentioned, guess who supports those? It's not just Republicans like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis and Tim Scott. These anti-BDS laws have widespread bipartisan support. It's not just Republicans who support them. Perhaps Republicans support the most draconian crackdowns on free speech. But Democrats aren't opposing what Republicans are saying here. So if you're disgusted by the sensorious proposals from Republican presidential candidates, don't be surprised if Democrats come out and support them, too, or propose their own versions that maybe are a little bit tamer. And the reason why so many US politicians are choosing to go along with the far right government of Israel, even if they're liberal, is because, I mean, well, there's multiple reasons. First of all, propaganda. Second of all, there is the Israel lobby. There's a lot of foreign governments that spend millions of dollars lobbying US politicians, and Israel is in the top 10, one of the biggest spenders to influence US policy. And a lot of them, if they speak out, even if they don't take APAC money, for example, there could be a primary challenge to them. So they're afraid, which makes them complicit. But I mean, if you're a liberal who is on the same side as people like Ben Shapiro and Jesse Waters, who was bought into the total dehumanization of Palestinian people to the point where you were agreeing with Republicans that censorship of American citizens who criticize Israel is good, I don't know, maybe a little bit of introspection is needed.