At the University of Toronto, students, faculty, and community members successfully staged one of the longest-standing encampments on any campus, holding out for a total of 63 days. While the People’s Circle for Palestine ultimately dismantled itself in response to a court injunction, the movement successfully brought the issue of divestment to the fore, and is far from over. Toronto itself has proven to be one of the most stalwart cities in North America’s Palestine solidarity movement, and, come fall, UofT is certain to emerge once again as a major battleground in the international struggle for Palestinian liberation.
Samira Mohyeddin returns to The Marc Steiner Show for a retrospective on the People’s Circle for Palestine, and how the pro-Palestinian movement is reshaping the politics of the US and Canada.
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. An updated version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner, and it’s great to have you all with us. But once again, have a conversation with Samira Mohyeddin, who is an award-winning multi-platform, journalist, producer and broadcaster. Samira is an activist, Middle East scholar, Shakespearean actor who completed studies at the Zoryan Institute of Genocide and Human Rights. She’s joining here not from Toronto this time, but in studio in Baltimore. She’s here for the demonstrations taking place in Washington, D.C., as we face this moment in our country. And she’s an award-winning journalist and a restaurateur, Banu is her restaurant in Toronto, but that’s not her main gig. Well, it isn’t. It’s On The Line Media, her incredible podcast that is now in Patreon and Samira is with us here, studio award-winning journalist, restaurateur, Shakespearean scholar and activist and troublemaker. Good to see you.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Rabble-rouser in studio. How are you, Marc? It’s nice to be here.
Marc Steiner:
Good to have you. Good to have you here. So let’s talk first, obviously about what’s happening in Toronto. The last we talked there was the encampment and the protests that were taking place. You’re pretty intense, so give us a little background about where it’s been since then and what’s happening at this moment.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yeah, so the last time you and I spoke, the University of Toronto had asked the courts to get involved and to issue an injunction which would authorize the police to come in and dismantle the encampment. So that hearing played out. It was two days of hearings, and the judge gave his decision about a week after, and he did grant the injunction. And the students at the encampment, though, they didn’t wait for what they said was “for the police to come in and brutalize us.” They actually decamped a couple of hours before the deadline. And really, I mean, it was a very beautiful way of bringing down the people’s circle for Palestine because they didn’t allow the police to come in and to get physical with them.
And then what ended up happening that day, they gave a press conference, hundreds of people showed up, and a massive protest began on the streets of Toronto, which went around the university and then ended right in front of the Israeli Embassy in Toronto. So hundreds of people marched with the students down the streets. And then in front of the Israeli Embassy, again calling for an immediate ceasefire and still calling for the University of Toronto to divest and disclose.
Marc Steiner:
Let me take a couple steps backwards here just to folks who may be listening to us for the first time together. So let’s talk a bit about the People’s Circle, kind of identify what that is.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Sure. On May 2nd, about 50 students from the University of Toronto breached a fence around King’s College Circle, which is just this patch of grass, which the university had preemptively put up a fence around because of the encampments that were happening in the United States, they put this there to prevent students from going onto the lawn and making their own encampments. But what they actually did was provide fencing for the students who ended up breaching it anyways. And it started off with 50 students, it got up to 175. The students built this world where there was recycling, there were teach-ins happening every day. You had international people coming, like Naomi Klein came and spoke to the students. You had Fatima Hassan come who’s a South African activist, a health justice activist. And so there were all of these really amazing things happening. Kite flying, people’s children were down there all the time.
And so it was really a very beautiful environment. But when you stepped outside of the encampment right in the front, there were always these agitators showing up, calling the students all kinds of names, awful names like terrorists, rapists, supporters, all of these things, and really characterizing the students as being anti-sematic, as being hateful, etc. And the reason I bring this up and why I think it’s important is that the judge during those hearings, although he granted the injunction, said that the university’s claims that the encampment was anti-Semitic and hateful were completely unfounded and hearsay, and that they didn’t meet the bar of prima facie. So they didn’t make a case at all.
The judge really just went with the fact that these students were trespassing on private property and so the judge decided that the trespassing laws trumped the fundamental freedoms of these students of freedom of expression, assembly, etc. And so you had the sort of paradox world of what was happening inside the encampment, and then this hateful vitriolic behavior of what was really mostly pro-Israeli pensioners who were sort of parked outside.
Marc Steiner:
Pensioners?
Samira Mohyeddin:
They were mostly pensioners.
Marc Steiner:
Really?
Samira Mohyeddin:
These were not young people. These were not Jewish students.
Marc Steiner:
They were old people like me.
Samira Mohyeddin:
They were. I’m sorry to say, they were, who had time on their hands who could come down during the day and just stand there and scream and yell and say, “You’re excluding me from the lawn.” And actually, Naomi Klein who came down there made a speech one day and she said, “We really need to distinguish between being uncomfortable and being persecuted.” There is a big difference between that. And she talked about the Jewish community feeling very uncomfortable right now. And so that was really interesting, sort of documenting all of this happening.
Now, what has happened is the students are sort of reorganizing and trying to think, okay, what do we do when fall comes around? Because the governing council, which is the council that decides where the University of Toronto invests its money or decides on this machinations of what the university does, won’t meet again until the fall. So the students have told the university we’re coming back. They had written actually on the lawn, we will return really big on the grass. And the university’s response, the president’s response was that we’re glad that this ended peacefully. And the framing of this by the university, which is another thing that I found really interesting, was that they were saying the Israel-Palestine issue, we are neutral on this issue and that it’s an issue that’s up for debate, scholarly debate, blah, blah, blah. That’s how it’s-
Marc Steiner:
That’s a good university response.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yes. And that’s how it’s framed. Now, this got complicated when the ICJ report just came out, which clearly states that Israel is an illegal occupying force, and it must leave the occupied Palestinian territories because one of the things the students were asking for is for the university to cut all ties with universities that are on occupied Palestinian land. So Hebrew University, for instance, which the University of Toronto has ties with.
So this complicates things now for the University of Toronto. Are they going to be in breach of international law? Are they just going to pretend this didn’t happen? And there’s a history there with the University of Toronto. I mean, they went kicking and screaming towards divestment from South Africa. It took nine years of students agitating and protesting for the university to finally say, “You know what? Maybe apartheid isn’t a good thing.” They did the same thing with divesting from fossil fuels. That took another five to six years. So the students have said, “We’re not going to give up. This is just the beginning.”
Marc Steiner:
The camp is now closed as we speak?
Samira Mohyeddin:
So I’ll tell you what happened, which is hilarious in this theater of the absurd, is that they took the one fence down and they put another one back up and they said temporary closure for a month. So while they were arguing-
Marc Steiner:
The university put it up?
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yes, the university did that. So while they were arguing that this is excluding the University of Toronto community from being able to use the lawn, they put up another fence, a plastic one saying that we have to restore the grass now. So it’s closed right now.
Marc Steiner:
Have to restore the grass.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Restoring the lawn.
Marc Steiner:
So in this complex moment we find ourselves in now, complex because this horrendous war that’s taking place in Gaza, in part on the West Bank as well but in Gaza, the tens of thousands of people have been killed, mostly women and children, western governments, the United States, Canada, supporting Israel in this war. And as we speak, Netanyahu is on his way to address the United States Congress, and we’re also facing a critical election in this country where you have a very powerful neo-fascist right who will actually win the election in America, in United States of America, and it’s happening across the globe. I like to hear your analysis of how these all feed into one another and the danger we face and how the struggle in Palestine now, the Palestinian-Israeli struggle feeds into all of this in a larger global sense.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yeah, I mean, pardon my French, it’s a clusterfuck. I’m not sure if you can-
Marc Steiner:
I like that French word.
Samira Mohyeddin:
There’s a lot of things coming together and impacting one another. So you have the American elections happening, but you cannot ignore what is happening in Palestine, in Gaza, in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, et cetera. It’s a very difficult time, I think, for a lot of people, not just people who are being brutalized in Gaza and the West Bank, but also Americans who really, some of them I’ve spoken to don’t know what to do because a lot of people are saying, “I don’t want to vote for the Democrats because it feels like I am legitimizing their behavior of what they’ve done vis-a-vis Palestine.” But at the same time, there is this real threat of Trump and his followers coming to power. And it’s almost like people forget what Trump was like in 2018. The media is already falling into line, particularly with this attack on Trump saying, “Well, we all need to cool back. We’re all Americans after all, so it doesn’t matter. Let’s cool it with the criticism a little bit.”
Marc Steiner:
We don’t care if you’re in the clan or if you’re liberal or if you’re a communist. We’re all Americans.
Samira Mohyeddin:
We’re all Americans.
Marc Steiner:
We all just get along.
Samira Mohyeddin:
And that’s the most important thing. You can be hooded, but you’re still American. So that’s the difficulty here. And then you have Netanyahu come over in what many are calling this whitewashing tour. I’ll still be welcome to address Congress no matter what I do. I can kill 50, 60,000 Palestinians. But at the end of the day, our values are still similar. So I feel sorry for Americans who are trying to make a very difficult choice right now. And we’ve come down here, On The Line Media, we’ve come down here to cover the protests. There are supposed to be tens of thousands of people making their way from all over the US on buses to protest against Netanyahu and their own government, I think, and the complicity in what is happening in Palestine.
Marc Steiner:
So it is interesting, I mean, because you’re here in the States now to cover this protest. You had the protests going on in Toronto. They’re deeply connected, I think. You can talk a bit about that. And on the way there, one of the things I was reading this morning, I was surprised at the intensity of let’s say Senator Chuck Schumer, who is Zionist and has always supported Israel and as many of his generation do in the Jewish community, my community. But I’ve never heard him so critical, even from his perspective of Israel as he is at this moment. And there’s something bubbling, whether it’s in Toronto or in the United States, in the Jewish community, in the Muslim community, in the larger communities in our countries, something’s shifting here. And I think your encampment in Toronto, the demonstrations here in this country, what’s not being covered much in the American press, the massive protest taking place in Israel itself of Jews and Palestinians walking together saying no, something’s happening.
Samira Mohyeddin:
It’s solidarity.
Marc Steiner:
Oh, yes, it is called that. But I mean, talk a bit about your analysis of the moment you think we’re in and how this could be playing itself out.
Samira Mohyeddin:
I think we’re at a moment of no return. To me, it feels like nothing will ever be the same. And this is a flash point right now. I think a lot of people are making a decision about what type of world we want to live in past this point. It’s very tragic that so many Palestinians have had to die for people to wake up. And I’ve heard this from Palestinians who’ve said, “If this is what it takes, then we will be the sacrifices for it.”
Marc Steiner:
That’s a hell of a thing to say and to just sacrifice.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Because I spoke with actually Diana Buttu a couple of weeks ago.
Marc Steiner:
And for our listeners, she is?
Samira Mohyeddin:
Sorry. She’s a Palestinian Canadian lawyer and an international human rights lawyer and was former negotiator for the PLO. And she’s in Ramallah right now. And she was saying that when she saw these student encampments, there were 183 student encampments in universities around the world at one point, 183. She said it was the first time that Palestinians didn’t feel alone, that the world was seeing what was happening to them and reacting. And she said that, “We felt like other people were screaming for us when we didn’t have a voice anymore.” So there’s a lot going on, on a very personal level for a lot of people. My Jewish friends, for instance, who are anti-Zionists say for the first time, they feel empowered to say that they’re anti-Zionists in a way that they never felt before, and that their voices matter, even though they’re constantly being drowned out as, oh, you’re just the minority. For instance, what would happen there was the Jewish faculty network had a presence inside the University of Toronto encampments, but all of the mainstream media wasn’t really focusing on them.
Marc Steiner:
You mean the Jewish faculty members who were participating in the encampment?
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yes, they were participating in the encampment, but there’s also an organization called the Jewish Faculty Network.
Marc Steiner:
Oh, I see. I’m sorry.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yes, it’s North American. And these are academics, professors, researchers who are all Jewish who are against the occupation. And so they’re sort of denied Jewish voices by other Jewish people who refer to them these awful names like Kapo and self-created Jew and all that stuff.
Marc Steiner:
I’ve experienced that myself. I understand, yeah.
Samira Mohyeddin:
I’m sure. And the anti-Semitism leveled against them is never talked about. So I think we’re at a place right now where a lot of people are having to make a decision not only about who to vote for, but what type of world we want to live in post-Gaza, whatever that looks like. And watching empire collapse is a little icky for a lot of people.
Marc Steiner:
That’s one way to put it.
Samira Mohyeddin:
It’s a little bit uncomfortable for a lot of people who are having to look at themselves in the mirror and say, “All of the things that I thought I was supporting all of these years, right, democratic values, Israel is a democracy.” A lot of people believe this, and I think they can’t believe it anymore. And it makes you very uncomfortable. I think it was Tolstoy who said the lies that people weave into the fabric of their everyday existence are very hard to let go of because you’re almost, it’s like you’re watching yourself crumble. And I put myself in that also.
Marc Steiner:
What do you mean?
Samira Mohyeddin:
Well, I mean, I went from a very corporate media structure that I worked in for nearly a decade and really took a look at myself and the work that I put out during that time and some of the complacency that I had in the way that I discussed this issue of what was happening in Israel-Palestine, fighting every step of the way, but still, I suffered for it. You suffer the moment you look at this issue as an issue that is extremely unbalanced and then purport or pretend as a journalist that this is somehow a balanced situation. What do you think about this? That’s what they think. What do you think about this?
And then you stand in the middle and just go, “Well, that’s what they think.” And I always look back and think, okay, how are people covering apartheid South Africa? And I realized, holy shit, they were covering it the same way. They would bring on the ambassador of apartheid, South Africa, and he would say, “Well, you know, we give them their own government and blah, blah, blah.” And I’m like, really?
Marc Steiner:
They have the Bantu stands. They’re happy.
Samira Mohyeddin:
They run their own Bantu stands.
Marc Steiner:
Right. So one of the things I want to get into before we have to break here, I’m curious what you think happens next, both in terms of the movement that is opposed to Israel and what they’re doing at this moment in this war and how it affects the larger body politic. I mean, I think we’re in a very critical juncture. I said that a minute ago as well, but I a very critical juncture on the planet. I mean, I thought about it. I was thinking about you last night. We were coming back from Seattle, and I was thinking about you as a woman of Iranian heritage who opposes what the Shah did, but opposes what the government is doing in Iran at the moment, that opposes this Israeli government, the things that can be a different world that helps organize these demonstrations in Toronto.
And here you are to witness Netanyahu speak in Congress and also demonstrations against that, that are going to be taking place in Washington DC, that we’ll be talking about as well at the end of this in an addendum. So I’m curious analytically where you think it goes from here, where the struggle takes us.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yeah. I mean it’s interesting because, and it’s difficult, I would say, because right now all I hear is bomb Iran. All I hear is Iran is the octopus with its tentacles everywhere.
Marc Steiner:
Iran is the devil. That’s the only-
Samira Mohyeddin:
Iran’s the devil-
Marc Steiner:
That runs with it-
Samira Mohyeddin:
That’s proxies, are doing everything from the Houthis to the Hezbollah to everything, Iran, Hamas. There were even right after October 7th, you were hearing, “Oh, Iran is behind this.” And then you had the bombings that happened between the drone attacks, the sloth like drones that slowly made their way to Tel Aviv. All of this is happening and it’s complicating a lot of Iranian people’s lives who don’t like their government, but certainly don’t want a bombing campaign unleashed. And I think it’s a very difficult time for every community right now, and everyone who is from the Middle East and everyone who is American, we are all feeling, I just think a weird being in this weird liminal state of not knowing what comes next. I really don’t know what comes next. I don’t, because even in my Canadian context, I am seeing the rise of right-wing politics in Canada.
Marc Steiner:
In the same way it is happening in America?
Samira Mohyeddin:
Oh, very much so. I mean, not to the degree. You have a much larger population, and we don’t have the MAGA movement, but we have our own progressive conservative party who really espouses that language-
Marc Steiner:
And is shifted right?
Samira Mohyeddin:
Absolutely. And the country has shifted right. And what is happening there is very much affecting Canada. And by there, I mean Israel-Palestine, their politics. Toronto specifically, we’ve had characters like Elon Levy, the former Israeli spokesperson, do these tours in Toronto. And so Toronto is a very important place geopolitically for Israel, for Palestine. Even the solidarity movement in Toronto for Palestinians is unlike any other around the world.
Marc Steiner:
What do you mean?
Samira Mohyeddin:
Our protests in Toronto, consistent protests, at least two a week, attended by thousands of people, have not stopped for 10 months. That’s unlike any other city.
Marc Steiner:
The encampment may be closed, but the protests are going on a massive ways.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Oh, absolutely.
Marc Steiner:
Let’s talk a bit about that.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Absolutely. They’ve been happening even before the encampment came about. The encampment was only there 63 days, but one of the largest protests held in Toronto’s history was for Palestinian solidarity. And so I’m talking tens of thousands of people, and you would’ve never had that before. And again, it comes back to the tragedy of so many people being killed. I mean, the sheer level of seeing corpses maimed, burned, children. I mean, I don’t think people have really understood how we’ve been affected by seeing these images on a daily basis. Yes, we’re not there, but we’re being affected in many, many ways. I mean, I know I am. My leg never did this before. When I watch images, my heart palpitates. I mean, I have to take breaks many times, but at the same time when I’m watching it, I feel guilty. So there’s a lot going on.
Marc Steiner:
Not to delve into this too deeply, but I understand that emotion completely. I mean, when I see innocent Palestinians, children maimed, crying, wandering alone, lost everything, don’t know where the people who protected them are, as a father and as a grandfather, it breaks my heart just. I can’t stand watching it. It makes me the same. I have the same visceral reactions as you do when I see it. And also as a Jew, as somebody who grew up with people with numbers on their arms in my living room, to think that we could do something, not the same, but similar enough to another people. I mean, it raises all kinds of questions, but I just think that this is, and there’s a massive growth. I think it’s happening in Canada as you’ve described. It’s happening here in the United States of younger Jews saying, no.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Not in Our Name.
Marc Steiner:
Which is why I produce a series here at Real News called Not in Our Name. So do you think that the Canadian protests in Toronto are going to rev up again, become a presence? What do you think this takes you and your work and what happens in Canada?
Samira Mohyeddin:
I mean, they haven’t stopped in Toronto. They really haven’t. There was a large protest even just yesterday that went through Niagara Falls. And so the Palestinian Youth Movement right now, which is actually their name, worldwide is unlike any other, I think, in the trajectory of the Palestinians’ Solidarity Movement. The youth right now are mobilized in a way that they’ve never been, both Jewish and Palestinians and they’re working together. And that I think scares a lot of people in the upper echelons, that scares the green Blats from the ADL, that scares a lot of people who want to get rid of this TikTok generation, who aren’t really buying the narrative. They’re not buying it. They’re not buying that Israel is a democracy. They’re not buying the David versus Goliath. They’re not buying the origin myth story of how Israel came together. They want to learn about the Nakba, they want to learn about it. They don’t want to deny it. And so these groups and everybody coming together, I use the word solidarity again, is something that scares a lot of people and they don’t want to see it happen.
Marc Steiner:
You have a quote, before we go, you have a quote in one of the pieces I read that you did, which is Hannah Arendt’s quote about Adolf Eichmann and the trial in Jerusalem when they captured Adolf Eichmann. And the quote is “It’s one thing to ferret out mass murderers and other criminals from, were hiding places and it is another thing to find them prominent and flourishing in the public realm.” And that’s where we are.
Samira Mohyeddin:
That’s exactly where we are. And that’s exactly what Netanyahu is doing right now. The fact that the US has invited him here and that he’s going to address the Congress, I’m very eager to see who shows up, who does that standing ovation and clap after clap. Because when he arrived, I was watching the video of him on the tarmac. There was no one to greet him. That is highly unusual, not to say no one. What I’m saying is I did not see noted US government officials on that tarmac. It was mostly people actually speaking Hebrew to him. And I think it was people from the embassy who had come to greet him. And some generals, some of them were speaking Hebrew, actually. But that’s a big shift.
Marc Steiner:
I mean, as much when you see a person like Kamala Harris who’s running for president now, whose husband is Jewish, not showing up at the tarmac, even making some critical statements about Israel and watching Schumer even making critical statements about Israel, what it says to me is not that they’re going to be leaping over to another side, but what it says is that this is having, this is causing a massive shift. Slowly a tectonic shift is going on, and I think people in power do not know how to put their hands around this and what to do with it, but something is shifting and it could shift the country or parts of the world, United States, Canada, frighteningly to the right, or it could blunt their power. And there’s no way to tell which way. And the Israel Palestine struggle is central to it.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Absolutely, right at the center of it.
Marc Steiner:
And then threading all through that is also, besides all that is the reality of how deep anti-Semitism goes too. So it’s a very complex moment that we’re facing.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Absolutely. Because we’re actually seeing an ignoring of the rise of the far right. We’re seeing an ignoring of that anti-Semitism which is very dangerous. Very dangerous.
Marc Steiner:
I know you’re not prescient, but you can tell us what you do next and where you think you’re moving to Canada goes next.
Samira Mohyeddin:
I mean, I’m not sure. I don’t know what the students are up to specifically day to day. I mean, I’ve tried to keep in touch with them because this was my alma mater. I was there in 2005 when students against Israeli apartheid launched Israeli Apartheid Week. I was in the Middle Eastern studies department. The encampment faced my college. So I do have some sympathy for what these students were trying to do and the way they were mischaracterized as they did it.
And that was the real reason I went down to that encampment was because I knew that this was going to happen and that they were going to be called all sorts of names because the students that fought against apartheid in South Africa were labeled just the same way. So these are tricks of the trade, I guess, for people who have a long view of history and see how these things play out. But it’s really just something to watch right now. I’m almost as perplexed as everyone else is. And I came down here really to see the pushback on Netanyahu and to sort of restore my own faith and humanity, to be honest, because let’s not forget, there was a massive movement, and there is still against Netanyahu in Israel, right. Before October 7th, hundreds of thousands of Israelis were on the streets asking him to resign.
Marc Steiner:
And demanding release and the demanding the end of the killing of Palestinians along the release of their own hostages. I mean, they tried to combine the two on the streets.
Samira Mohyeddin:
And we’ve seen how brutal the Israeli police have been towards those protesters, against the families of the hostages themselves. So your guess is as good as mine right now about where this goes next.
Marc Steiner:
What I do look forward to is a continuing conversation after Netanyahu speaks, having you either individually or with some others, talking about what they saw and where they think this takes us and where we go next. This is a very pivotal moment, I think, in US political history and the world, this very moment that we’re about to face.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yeah, pivotal is a great word because I think it’s also personally pivotal for a lot of people. I mean, I’ve watched people struggle personally with this, meaning having to take a real good look at themselves, their jobs, their careers, whether or not to speak up about what they know is right at the sacrifice of their careers and everything else. I’ve watched people go through this process and it’s a difficult time for many.
Marc Steiner:
Well, Samira Mohyeddin, it is really been a pleasure to have you back here in Baltimore, and I’m glad you’re in D.C. We can be fun to have you in studio here, which is great. And I look forward to talking to you in the next couple of days to see what you think about what just is about to occur in Washington and also what’s going to occur in this war and the continuing struggle in Canada. And maybe at the next Toronto protest, I’ll figure out a way to get my butt up to Canada.
Samira Mohyeddin:
That would be great to have you there. Why not?
Marc Steiner:
I’d love to be there.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
Samira, thank you so much. It’s been pleasure to see you.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Thank you so much, Marc. It’s my pleasure.
Marc Steiner:
Thank you for all the work you’re doing and for the struggle you’re making for a better world and for freeing Palestine and the rest.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Thank you very much, Marc.
Marc Steiner:
Thank you.
We are about to continue our conversation with Samira Mohyeddin after she has participated in the demonstrations in D.C. and all the goings-on around the war in Gaza and in Washington, D.C. Samira, good to see you again.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Hi. Nice to see you too, Marc.
Marc Steiner:
So let’s talk a bit about the demonstration. I think it was… Describe what was going on. What I could see was it was bigger than I thought it would be and pretty intense and creative. But talk a bit about that day.
Samira Mohyeddin:
It got bigger and bigger as the day went on. So the organizers, there were many different groups there. You had independent Jewish voices, you had a lot of different unions present and students and everybody. And it started at about 11:00 A.M. People met on Constitution Avenue. Now this is the street that runs right into Capitol Hill and police had completely closed it off. And there were about 200 New York City police officers also brought in to the Capitol to deal with the protests.
And there was a main stage set up there. And you had people like Susan Sarandon speaking, Dr. Jill Stein, some of the Jewish organizations. And as I said, more and more people started to come as the day went on. And at around two o’clock, this is just when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began speaking to Congress, people started marching and it looked like the protest had almost broken up because police had put up barricades all around and you weren’t sure where people were marching to. And so we walked towards Union Station, which is right at the corner of Columbus and Third.
And as we got there, all of a sudden within the distance, I saw what looked like tens of thousands, but it must have been thousands of people just streaming onto this massive square right in front of that train station, Union Station. And thousands of people were there yelling, “Free Gaza” and “Arrest him”, referring to Benjamin Netanyahu. And this is as Benjamin Netanyahu was addressing Congress. So it was around three o’clock, 3:15 in the afternoon, and protesters went up on these flagpoles and brought down the American flag and raised the Palestinian flag. And that’s when police came in. There were about four to five police officers who all of a sudden rushed into the crowd and started beating protesters. There was one gentleman whose face was quite bloodied up, and it was to protect that flag, they were going after the flag.
And so people started dispersing at that point, but then quickly came back because the police backed off at that point and really allowed the crowd to continue protesting and stuff. We left at about, I would say 5:30 in the afternoon. I’m not sure what happened after that point, but it was a real massive turnout, something that I wasn’t expecting to see that many people. What’s interesting is that inside Congress, as thousands of people were outside, Benjamin Netanyahu was saying there aren’t many people out there.
Marc Steiner:
Right. Right.
Samira Mohyeddin:
That was just one of many lies that he told while he was in Congress.
Marc Steiner:
So let me ask you this question. So I know you were out in the streets, you couldn’t watch it live, but I assume that you watched Netanyahu later.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Actually, I was tuned in as it was happening. So I was at the demonstration and I had his speech going live and watching it.
Marc Steiner:
So here you are out there in the demonstration fighting for the rights of Palestinians, listening to Benjamin Netanyahu in your ear.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Yeah, listening to him in my ear, say, “There aren’t many people out there.” And then of course, calling everyone out there useful idiots. And it was the same, I mean, a couple of days ago, I said, “We don’t know what to expect, but we can for sure expect him to blame Iran for everything”, which he did. He said, “Iran is funding protesters. Iran is behind all of this.” And then the same statements that you expect to hear from him that he’s been saying for decades now, that Israeli values are Western values, that Israel is the fighting the good fight for all of democracies around the world in the Middle East, and that he went as far as to call the Middle East a place of barbarians. And to say that Israel is going to make it in Oasis.
So it’s disheartening to watch US lawmakers stand up and clap for such statements. But what I understood is that there were about, I think the number was 87 members of Congress did not even show up, and they had to fill those seats with fillers, just people to come in and make it look like there’s a lot of people there. So as much as it sort of was the same old, same old, there are a lot of significant changes that have happened, I think, and that needs to be acknowledged. Kamala Harris, for instance, was not in that session-
Marc Steiner:
Which was pretty glaring, actually, that she was not in that session.
Samira Mohyeddin:
No, she was not. She did meet with him the next day and she did come out and make a statement that again, is a bit of a break from what Biden has said before. She did talk about the oppression of Palestinians, the suffering of Palestinians. She did say that too many civilians have been killed, innocent civilians. So this gave a lot of hope to people that I was speaking to on the ground, that they’re hoping that there will be a change in the U.S response to what is happening. And I think Americans are looking for any speck of hope they can see right now.
Marc Steiner:
I think that’s true. And I also, I’m very curious as to where you think this may take us. We don’t know who’s going to win the election in November here in the United States, obviously, but this war, the deaths of all these Palestinians, the other destruction of Gaza, the growing resistance inside the Jewish world to what’s happening inside of Israel itself, it’s a major shift, is taking place. I think we’re witnessing something, and I’m curious what your analysis of that is and where you think it takes us and what do you think the possibilities may be?
Samira Mohyeddin:
I think we’re actually seeing a global shift and America and Americans who are fighting for that change are just a portion of that. I have to mention today, Marc, that yesterday the Canada Revenue Agency, which is similar to the IRS, the Canada Revenue Agency is revoking the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund here in Canada.
Marc Steiner:
Really?
Samira Mohyeddin:
This is very significant move on the part of the Canada Revenue Agency because the Jewish National Fund is one of the oldest organizations here in Canada, and it’s been used to dispossess Palestinians from land in Israel, and 25% of their funding comes from Canadian taxpayers getting charitable receipts.
Marc Steiner:
No, I grew up with J&F. Every Jewish store and synagogue had little blue cans that you supposed to put your money into.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Exactly.
Marc Steiner:
Yep.
Samira Mohyeddin:
And those little blue cans went to dispossessing Palestinians from their land specifically since 1967, but even before that, they control 13% of the land in Israel. They only allow Jewish people to live on it, to purchase it, to lease it. And so this is very significant. And the reason the Canadian government did this is because they said the revenue agency found that J&F was funding Israeli military outposts, and the money was going build things on for the military for the IDF. So this is quite a significant move because it’s something that independent Jewish voices Canada has been trying to push for for nearly more than a decade now.
Marc Steiner:
How do you think that happened though? What was the politics that allowed that to happen inside of Canada?
Samira Mohyeddin:
Well, the Canadian government has been under a lot of pressure. You see, Canada prides itself on the rule of law. We are rule keepers in the world. That’s sort of what we take pride in. And once the International Court of Justice, the ICJ ruled that what is happening in the occupied West Bank is illegal, countries that pride themselves on the rule of law can’t really justify anymore aiding and abetting what is happening in the occupied territories. So this is just the way of activists have really been pushing for every little bit they can find to say, “Look, you are now in contravention of international humanitarian law. You are complicit Canada in this.” And so Canada’s finding ways that it can remove itself from this complicity. And I think that the CRA, this is just one example of that. Of course, the Jewish National Fund has said they will appeal this decision, but I don’t think they’re going to win that appeal.
Marc Steiner:
That’s a significant shift for any Western government to do that.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Very much, yes.
Marc Steiner:
So none of us [inaudible 00:40:04], but I’m very curious. I mean, you clearly have been both as an activist and academic, you’ve been deeply involved in this struggle for a long time.
Samira Mohyeddin:
I’ve been very well aware of it and the machinery around it. You see, that’s why sometimes I have a difficult time, and I don’t know if you feel the same, but I have a difficult time debating with people about this issue because so many people don’t actually understand the machinery behind occupation, how it impacts the daily lives of Palestinians. I was speaking to Diana Buttu, and I think I brought this up to you last time. She really does a great job of talking about the laws behind occupation. It’s not like South African apartheid where you see this places is for Blacks only, this is for whites only, and it’s very stark, and you see it right in your face. It’s not how it works in Israel in the occupied territories. And so it’s difficult to talk to people who don’t at the first agree there’s an illegal occupation.
Once that is erased, then you can’t move any further to have a dialogue or a discussion about what’s going on. So if that denial is there, there’s nowhere to go from there. If you don’t believe that the International Court of Justice has jurisdiction, if you don’t believe that Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is against the law, well, there’s nothing for us to talk about. So at that point, you just shut down. And so my education in this regard feeds my “what people may call activism.” I don’t feel that it’s activism. I’m covering a story that is very important right now to be covering. Unfortunately, people see that as activism, but journalism to me, particularly with this issue, is not a matter of balance. This is not a balanced situation at all. Balance is good if you’re covering a soccer match. So and so hit that goal and so and so blocked it. This is not a soccer match. This is an occupation. It’s legal, it’s brutal. And tens of thousands of people have been killed.
Marc Steiner:
Yeah, I mean, it is where we’re sitting now with all this. I mean, in my, good Lord, I’m getting old in my 30, 40 years of covering these, being part of this, I used to produce a series called Voices of the Holy Land. That was, you heard opinions from all sides, settlers, right-wingers, left-wing, revolutionary Israelis, Palestinians of all political stripes, not debating just hearing their voices, what they think and feel. But that for me now is even more difficult because I approach it as someone who is Jewish, as someone who grew up with people with numbers on their arms from concentration camps, who was an active Zionist until until I was 22, 21 years old. And it’s now why the whole movement of Not in Our Name is so important to me and to the struggle because I think now there’s a major shift happening in the Jewish world as well. And it’s a very tough time. I mean, because none of us know where this is going to end up. It’s really hard to see an end.
Samira Mohyeddin:
It’s true. And you don’t know what the end game is when you hear Benjamin Netanyahu come into the Congress and say, “Give us the tools faster and we’ll finish the job faster.” What does finish the job mean? What does that look like? It’s a scary time, but it’s also, and I have to say this, Marc, it’s also a very hopeful time. The solidarity that we’re seeing among Palestinians, among Jewish voices, among Jewish people has been unprecedented, I think.
Marc Steiner:
No, I agree. I agree. I agree. Well, I look forward to many more conversations together. We stay in touch and see where this goes and continue this conversation. I think that it’s one of the most critical struggles that faces the planet could destroy the planet. It’s much bigger than just there.
Samira Mohyeddin:
We haven’t even gotten into the environment what this war has done. That’s something else.
Marc Steiner:
Well, let’s do that. We should do that. We should have that conversation and bring some people along. I think that it’s been devastating, the annihilation taking place in Gaza and just the sheer devastation of the land as well on the West Bank. And I appreciate you taking all this time with us and for what you’ve been doing, and we’ll be linking to your work and Samira, once again, I want to thank you very much for being a guest here on the Mark Steiner Show and the Real News.
Samira Mohyeddin:
Thank you, Marc, it’s always a pleasure to talk to you.
Marc Steiner:
Once again, thank you to Samira Mohyeddin for joining us today, and thanks to Cameron Grandino for running the program and our audio editor, Alena Welch and producer Rosette Sewali for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making the show possible.
Please let me know what you’ve thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@herealnews.com, and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to Samira Mohyeddin for her work and joining us today, and we’ll bring you more stories and conversations about what’s happening between Palestine and Israel here on the Marc Steiner show. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved. Keep listening, and take care.
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