Fighting Antisemitism w/ Adela Cojab

1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:08,200
There are few things that make people successful.

2
00:00:08,200 --> 00:00:13,220
Taking a step forward to change their lives is one successful trait, but it takes some

3
00:00:13,220 --> 00:00:14,800
time to get there.

4
00:00:14,800 --> 00:00:18,640
How do you move forward to greet the success that awaits you?

5
00:00:18,640 --> 00:00:22,600
Welcome to Next Steps Forward with host Chris Meek.

6
00:00:22,600 --> 00:00:30,200
Each week, Chris brings on another guest who has successfully taken the next steps forward.

7
00:00:30,200 --> 00:00:32,480
Now here is Chris Meek.

8
00:00:32,480 --> 00:00:33,480
Hello.

9
00:00:33,480 --> 00:00:40,680
Welcome to this week's episode of Next Steps Forward, and I'm your host, Chris Meek.

10
00:00:40,680 --> 00:00:43,040
As always, it's a pleasure to have you with us.

11
00:00:43,040 --> 00:00:46,320
Next Steps Forward is committed to helping others achieve more than ever while experiencing

12
00:00:46,320 --> 00:00:48,880
greater personal empowerment and well-being.

13
00:00:48,880 --> 00:00:51,400
Our guest today is Adela Kohab.

14
00:00:51,400 --> 00:00:54,720
Adela is a legal advocate and media contributor recognized for her commitment to protecting

15
00:00:54,720 --> 00:00:59,320
Jewish rights and addressing anti-Semitism in economic institutions.

16
00:00:59,320 --> 00:01:05,040
She's best known for filing a complaint against New York University in 2019 under Title VI

17
00:01:05,040 --> 00:01:09,880
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for failing to protect its Jewish community from discrimination

18
00:01:09,880 --> 00:01:11,560
and harassment.

19
00:01:11,560 --> 00:01:15,960
Her case contributed to the executive order on combating anti-Semitism, laying the groundwork

20
00:01:15,960 --> 00:01:18,040
for subsequent cases.

21
00:01:18,040 --> 00:01:22,480
Adela has served as a commentator on major networks, including Fox, Telemundo, and Univision,

22
00:01:22,480 --> 00:01:25,960
and has consulted on multiple anti-Semitism cases.

23
00:01:25,960 --> 00:01:31,320
Her work, from political advocacy to interfaith peace rallies, has been recognized internationally.

24
00:01:31,320 --> 00:01:35,200
Adela earned her bachelor's degree from NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study and

25
00:01:35,200 --> 00:01:39,360
her law degree from Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

26
00:01:39,360 --> 00:01:42,880
She's a legal fellow at the National Jewish Advocacy Center handling cases to protect

27
00:01:42,880 --> 00:01:47,800
Jewish civil rights, and she hosts Open Door Media's daily YouTube show, Today Unpacked.

28
00:01:47,800 --> 00:01:51,080
Adela Khabab, welcome to Next Steps Forward.

29
00:01:51,080 --> 00:01:52,080
Thank you so much, Chris.

30
00:01:52,080 --> 00:01:53,080
I'm really happy to be here.

31
00:01:53,080 --> 00:01:57,280
Again, pre-show, I mentioned I'm honored to have you here, and I actually saw you on Fox

32
00:01:57,280 --> 00:02:01,000
a few months ago, and I said, I've got to have this person on the show, and so we're

33
00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:02,880
going to dive right into it.

34
00:02:02,880 --> 00:02:07,120
You've described followers of the Jewish faith as, quote, kind of perpetual wanderers throughout

35
00:02:07,120 --> 00:02:08,120
history.

36
00:02:08,120 --> 00:02:10,720
The description would certainly apply to your own family.

37
00:02:10,720 --> 00:02:15,280
Take us on that long and fascinating journey of your ancestors and your immediate family.

38
00:02:15,280 --> 00:02:16,640
Absolutely.

39
00:02:16,640 --> 00:02:20,560
My family's originally from Syria and from Lebanon.

40
00:02:20,560 --> 00:02:27,520
We are Sephardic Jews, but if you look actually genetically, we have no Sephardic, you know,

41
00:02:27,520 --> 00:02:28,760
Spanish blood in us at all.

42
00:02:28,760 --> 00:02:30,560
We are entirely Middle Eastern.

43
00:02:30,560 --> 00:02:35,600
So on my dad's side, they were in Syria for generations upon generations, and on my mom's

44
00:02:35,600 --> 00:02:38,880
side, they were in Syria and then Lebanon for generations.

45
00:02:38,880 --> 00:02:43,920
On my dad's side, they went to Mexico, of all places, and that's where my father was

46
00:02:43,920 --> 00:02:44,920
born.

47
00:02:44,920 --> 00:02:50,200
And then my mom's side, they left Lebanon, went through Canada to get to Mexico, and

48
00:02:50,200 --> 00:02:51,200
that's where my parents met.

49
00:02:51,200 --> 00:02:52,600
So I was born in Mexico.

50
00:02:52,600 --> 00:02:55,040
My family is pretty much spread around the world.

51
00:02:55,040 --> 00:03:00,480
We are Syrian-Lebanese Jews, and I have family in, of course, Mexico, where I was born, but

52
00:03:00,480 --> 00:03:03,720
also in Brazil, in Montreal, in Monaco, in London.

53
00:03:03,720 --> 00:03:06,360
And it's kind of this story of Judaism, right?

54
00:03:06,360 --> 00:03:10,040
If you look throughout history, it doesn't matter if your family, you know, was Jewish

55
00:03:10,040 --> 00:03:14,680
in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, at some point, it became

56
00:03:14,680 --> 00:03:17,640
dangerous to be a Jew, and we had to leave.

57
00:03:17,640 --> 00:03:21,560
And because of that, I think that it really played into the Jewish psyche of the perpetual

58
00:03:21,560 --> 00:03:25,160
wanderer, consistently being guests in host countries.

59
00:03:25,160 --> 00:03:28,440
And then suddenly, when you reach that point of enlightenment, where you say, that's it,

60
00:03:28,440 --> 00:03:34,240
we have equal rights, look at Germany, you know, pre-1930s, the Jews considered themselves

61
00:03:34,240 --> 00:03:36,240
to be part of the fabric of that community.

62
00:03:36,240 --> 00:03:40,360
And then, of course, it's just a matter of time until a host society realizes that there's

63
00:03:40,360 --> 00:03:43,160
unwanted guests, if that's how they want to call it.

64
00:03:43,160 --> 00:03:45,080
And that's the story of Jewish history.

65
00:03:45,080 --> 00:03:47,680
Jewish history throughout has been a story of migration.

66
00:03:47,680 --> 00:03:50,880
Now, of course, the story is different.

67
00:03:50,880 --> 00:03:55,920
The existence of the State of Israel, not as a contingency plan for Jews to go to when

68
00:03:55,920 --> 00:04:00,240
it's dangerous, but rather as an anchor of Jewish identity, allows Jews in the diaspora

69
00:04:00,240 --> 00:04:01,320
to exist.

70
00:04:01,320 --> 00:04:05,240
So right now, when becoming Jewish makes you different, and being different makes you a

71
00:04:05,240 --> 00:04:11,000
target, instead of that only option of hide or run, we have the opportunity to actually

72
00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:14,320
stand our ground, because it feels less existential.

73
00:04:14,320 --> 00:04:16,800
It feels less, well, if not here, where, right?

74
00:04:16,800 --> 00:04:19,000
I'm trying to think, everyone says, well, why Mexico?

75
00:04:19,000 --> 00:04:20,840
You know, your family left Syria and Lebanon.

76
00:04:20,840 --> 00:04:21,920
Why Mexico?

77
00:04:21,920 --> 00:04:23,120
I wish I had an answer to that.

78
00:04:23,120 --> 00:04:27,920
I asked my grandparents, I asked my great-grandparents before they passed, and they just said, well,

79
00:04:27,920 --> 00:04:29,960
we had started setting up a community there.

80
00:04:29,960 --> 00:04:33,280
A lot of men had gone there on business, so there happened to be some businessmen.

81
00:04:33,280 --> 00:04:37,040
So when things got dangerous, it became a natural place, but that was never the plan.

82
00:04:37,040 --> 00:04:41,640
The Syrian Jewish community never said, I wonder what Latin America is like, you know?

83
00:04:41,640 --> 00:04:45,280
But here we are, and I'm actually coming at you right now live from Mexico City, in my

84
00:04:45,280 --> 00:04:46,280
grandparents' home.

85
00:04:46,280 --> 00:04:47,640
Yeah, thanks for rubbing that in.

86
00:04:47,640 --> 00:04:51,240
We were talking again pre-show about the difference in temperature between Mexico City and the

87
00:04:51,240 --> 00:04:55,000
tri-state area right now, and it's probably about 100 degree difference is my guess.

88
00:04:55,000 --> 00:04:56,000
Yep.

89
00:04:56,000 --> 00:04:57,000
I won't apologize.

90
00:04:57,000 --> 00:04:58,000
Fair enough.

91
00:04:58,040 --> 00:04:59,040
Fair enough.

92
00:04:59,040 --> 00:05:03,440
Adela, what were your feelings, expectations, and impressions when you came to the United

93
00:05:03,440 --> 00:05:07,720
States from Mexico, and what prompted you to choose NYU for your undergraduate studies?

94
00:05:07,720 --> 00:05:09,200
That's a great question.

95
00:05:09,200 --> 00:05:14,360
So my family, my immediate family, decided to leave Mexico after the attempted kidnapping

96
00:05:14,360 --> 00:05:18,280
of my brother, which I know sounds very dramatic, but unfortunately here in Mexico, it was a

97
00:05:18,280 --> 00:05:24,120
reality in the late 90s, early 2000s, there were just almost every week news of other

98
00:05:24,120 --> 00:05:25,120
kidnappings.

99
00:05:25,440 --> 00:05:29,280
Kidnappings were mainly to hold kids for ransom, and get the ransom money, you return them

100
00:05:29,280 --> 00:05:30,280
back.

101
00:05:30,280 --> 00:05:34,680
I know personally kids who were kidnapped, and they just sat in a living room eating

102
00:05:34,680 --> 00:05:38,640
cereal, watching TV until their parents had enough funds to pay.

103
00:05:38,640 --> 00:05:43,840
So that is the reality of second world countries and third world countries.

104
00:05:43,840 --> 00:05:46,240
It's this lack of security, lack of safety.

105
00:05:46,240 --> 00:05:50,560
So when we came to the States, originally it was because the Mexican government said,

106
00:05:50,560 --> 00:05:53,240
we can't protect you, have you tried leaving?

107
00:05:53,240 --> 00:05:56,720
Our solution for kidnapping was to just leave.

108
00:05:56,720 --> 00:06:02,720
So my family planned to move to New Jersey for two, three years, and my mom shows up

109
00:06:02,720 --> 00:06:04,880
and she sees the American dream.

110
00:06:04,880 --> 00:06:10,720
I grew up in Deal, New Jersey, a small Jewish Syrian community on the Jersey shore, where

111
00:06:10,720 --> 00:06:14,640
everyone rides their bicycle, people leave their cars running outside of 7-Eleven so

112
00:06:14,640 --> 00:06:16,600
it doesn't get cold.

113
00:06:16,600 --> 00:06:20,960
Completely different from what we were used to in Mexico in terms of security.

114
00:06:20,960 --> 00:06:24,320
And she put my brother in football, she put me in cheerleading, and she said, this is

115
00:06:24,320 --> 00:06:25,920
America and I love it.

116
00:06:25,920 --> 00:06:30,240
So one thing led to another, my mom made the decision to stay, my dad did not.

117
00:06:30,240 --> 00:06:33,320
My dad actually moved back to Mexico, my parents got divorced.

118
00:06:33,320 --> 00:06:36,400
And I really was instilled with this idea of the American dream.

119
00:06:36,400 --> 00:06:41,440
Now as to why I went to NYU, Syrian Jews aren't very education prone.

120
00:06:41,440 --> 00:06:45,840
For the most part, we work for family businesses, women especially don't really pursue education.

121
00:06:45,840 --> 00:06:49,440
But I was always different, maybe because my parents got divorced, and maybe because

122
00:06:49,440 --> 00:06:54,800
my mom had four kids in a foreign country, no work experience, was engaged at 17, that

123
00:06:54,800 --> 00:06:58,280
she told me, I should go to college and I should want an education and I should want

124
00:06:58,280 --> 00:07:02,480
to work and have these opportunities that I have in the States.

125
00:07:02,480 --> 00:07:08,440
And someone at NYU, someone did their job right, someone on NYU's PR team.

126
00:07:08,440 --> 00:07:14,600
Because I got a pamphlet at some point that said, NYU is global and connected and worldly

127
00:07:14,600 --> 00:07:17,600
and it's the school for leaders.

128
00:07:17,640 --> 00:07:23,480
And I said, I'm global and connected and worldly and I'm meant to go to a school for leaders.

129
00:07:23,480 --> 00:07:27,840
And from fourth grade on, NYU was always my dream, a school in and of the city, a school,

130
00:07:27,840 --> 00:07:32,840
I actually, it's funny we say this, I, in my application essay, I ended it with saying

131
00:07:32,840 --> 00:07:37,480
it would be an honor to attend a school as diverse as I am.

132
00:07:37,480 --> 00:07:41,880
And you know, I don't want to spoil anything, but NYU ended up being very different from

133
00:07:41,880 --> 00:07:43,040
what I expected.

134
00:07:43,040 --> 00:07:47,680
I went to NYU undergraduate, but even before that I went to NYU's summer program.

135
00:07:47,680 --> 00:07:49,040
I was a pre-college ambassador.

136
00:07:49,040 --> 00:07:50,160
My brother went to NYU.

137
00:07:50,160 --> 00:07:52,760
I loved NYU with every fiber of my being.

138
00:07:52,760 --> 00:07:57,040
And if you would have told me, spoilers, that, you know, four years later after getting that

139
00:07:57,040 --> 00:08:02,000
acceptance letter, I would be filing a lawsuit against NYU for anti-Semitism, I would have

140
00:08:02,000 --> 00:08:03,320
told you, you were crazy.

141
00:08:03,320 --> 00:08:04,960
I bled violet through and through.

142
00:08:04,960 --> 00:08:06,600
Well, that's a great segue.

143
00:08:06,600 --> 00:08:08,680
It's almost like you read the notes here.

144
00:08:08,680 --> 00:08:12,680
How long was it before things began to change for the worse at NYU and what were the first

145
00:08:12,680 --> 00:08:15,280
hints that things weren't the same?

146
00:08:15,280 --> 00:08:19,440
So for my first two years at NYU, they were honestly wonderful.

147
00:08:19,440 --> 00:08:20,440
They were great.

148
00:08:20,440 --> 00:08:22,720
I was involved in the Jewish community.

149
00:08:22,720 --> 00:08:27,280
I was president of the pro-Israel club, but at the same time I had a radio show on WNYU

150
00:08:27,280 --> 00:08:28,280
radio.

151
00:08:28,280 --> 00:08:29,280
I was on hall council.

152
00:08:29,280 --> 00:08:31,080
I was on student government as a senator.

153
00:08:31,080 --> 00:08:36,800
I, you know, branched out of the Jewish community to the point that I was in and of NYU's community

154
00:08:36,800 --> 00:08:42,160
and everything was really great, but it was almost like a switch was flipped.

155
00:08:42,160 --> 00:08:48,680
And it was in the spring of 2018, suddenly everything turned to Israel and Palestine.

156
00:08:48,680 --> 00:08:55,200
And it all started with the mention of Zionism in the same category as racism and Nazism.

157
00:08:55,200 --> 00:08:58,660
And it was a statement that was released by the minority student council.

158
00:08:58,660 --> 00:09:02,960
And of course, as we know, no one reads student government emails except for me.

159
00:09:02,960 --> 00:09:06,360
So I saw the statement and I reached out to what I thought were my friends who had been

160
00:09:06,360 --> 00:09:08,680
doing great work with on student government.

161
00:09:08,680 --> 00:09:11,640
And I said, Hey, you know, I saw the statement you put out, can we talk about it?

162
00:09:11,640 --> 00:09:14,700
And they said, no, because we don't speak to fascists.

163
00:09:14,700 --> 00:09:18,320
And that was the first time that my Zionism kept me from a space I was previously welcomed

164
00:09:18,320 --> 00:09:19,320
in.

165
00:09:19,320 --> 00:09:24,360
And it was, it was kind of this, this breaking point moment where we, we wrote a statement

166
00:09:24,360 --> 00:09:25,360
we were going to release.

167
00:09:25,360 --> 00:09:28,840
And I was called by a mentor who asked me if I wanted to start a campus war.

168
00:09:28,840 --> 00:09:31,100
And I said, well, what do you mean by that?

169
00:09:31,100 --> 00:09:33,280
And he said, well, who reads student government emails?

170
00:09:33,280 --> 00:09:36,120
If you draw attention to this, you'll make it bigger.

171
00:09:36,120 --> 00:09:39,240
And if you ignore it, I promise you it'll go away.

172
00:09:39,240 --> 00:09:44,080
And I thought about it and it was my own decision against the wishes of my community.

173
00:09:44,080 --> 00:09:48,300
But as the president of the Jewish community there, I made the decision not to publish.

174
00:09:48,300 --> 00:09:52,240
And I truly did believe that if we ignored it, it would go away.

175
00:09:52,240 --> 00:09:53,640
And we ignored it till this day.

176
00:09:53,640 --> 00:09:59,000
It's my biggest regret because over the next three months, NYU became one of the most anti-Semitic

177
00:09:59,000 --> 00:10:01,960
campuses in the United States because no, we didn't publish.

178
00:10:01,960 --> 00:10:06,020
But over that semester, over the course of the next three months, we had two weeks after

179
00:10:06,020 --> 00:10:10,700
that statement, a resolution on NYU student government against NYU Tel Aviv campus.

180
00:10:10,700 --> 00:10:17,460
Two weeks later, a resolution by all academics, by 70 professors at NYU to boycott all Israeli

181
00:10:17,460 --> 00:10:18,460
academics.

182
00:10:18,460 --> 00:10:22,420
And then two weeks after that, we had a resolution by all student clubs, a pledge to boycott

183
00:10:22,420 --> 00:10:26,620
not only Realize Israel, the pro-Israel club I was president of, but any club that would

184
00:10:26,620 --> 00:10:27,700
partner with us.

185
00:10:27,700 --> 00:10:32,540
So if you were a Jewish pro-Israel student on campus, as most Jewish students are, you

186
00:10:32,540 --> 00:10:34,140
knew your student government was against you.

187
00:10:34,140 --> 00:10:38,420
Your professor was boycotting Israeli academics and no club would work with you.

188
00:10:38,420 --> 00:10:42,380
So it was this social isolation, academic isolation that just started hitting one week

189
00:10:42,380 --> 00:10:44,500
after the other, after the other.

190
00:10:44,500 --> 00:10:49,660
And at some point, I had to take a step back and say, how did we get here?

191
00:10:49,660 --> 00:10:51,220
So this was your junior year all this happened?

192
00:10:51,220 --> 00:10:52,940
It's my junior year.

193
00:10:52,940 --> 00:10:53,940
So you're 20-ish?

194
00:10:53,940 --> 00:10:54,940
Yes.

195
00:10:54,940 --> 00:10:56,940
I was about 20 years old.

196
00:10:56,940 --> 00:11:00,820
I mean, that's the weight of the world on your shoulders and the world that you thought

197
00:11:00,820 --> 00:11:04,180
you knew crashing down on you.

198
00:11:04,180 --> 00:11:08,500
When you spoke out, the NYU administration considered you to be a danger to other students.

199
00:11:08,500 --> 00:11:09,500
Yes.

200
00:11:09,500 --> 00:11:13,500
I mean, that to me seems like a living embodiment of George Orwell's 1984.

201
00:11:13,500 --> 00:11:17,300
Did they share their rationale with you and did you have any allies, anyone on campus

202
00:11:17,300 --> 00:11:18,660
who stood up for you?

203
00:11:18,660 --> 00:11:19,660
Yeah.

204
00:11:19,660 --> 00:11:25,140
So as everything was going down and things started progressing, we were leading up to

205
00:11:25,140 --> 00:11:28,820
a big party we have for Israel Independence Day in Washington Square.

206
00:11:28,820 --> 00:11:31,060
Basically, we rent out Washington Square Park.

207
00:11:31,060 --> 00:11:35,420
We fly in a DJ, we give out food, we make this big block party open to everyone.

208
00:11:35,420 --> 00:11:38,040
We had been doing this for three years in a row.

209
00:11:38,040 --> 00:11:41,660
And it's usually a beautiful celebration, but that year I knew it would be different.

210
00:11:41,660 --> 00:11:42,740
I reached out to the school.

211
00:11:42,740 --> 00:11:44,540
I said, I'm worried for student safety.

212
00:11:44,540 --> 00:11:47,420
I'd been meeting with administrators every single week.

213
00:11:47,420 --> 00:11:50,820
Every administrator would send me to another administrator and I met with everyone.

214
00:11:50,820 --> 00:11:55,620
We're talking Student Affairs, Center of Multicultural Education, Student Conduct, Student Safety.

215
00:11:55,620 --> 00:11:57,820
I met with every single department.

216
00:11:57,820 --> 00:12:00,980
And leading up to this event, I said, I really feel something big is coming and I'm scared

217
00:12:00,980 --> 00:12:02,980
for the safety of my community.

218
00:12:02,980 --> 00:12:07,460
And the school told me I was overreacting, that I was perceiving threats that did not

219
00:12:07,460 --> 00:12:08,580
exist.

220
00:12:08,580 --> 00:12:11,900
And lo and behold, the way that event kicked off was with an anti-Israel student coming

221
00:12:11,900 --> 00:12:16,340
to the forefront, Israeli flag in hand, lighting it on fire, throwing it on the ground, and

222
00:12:16,340 --> 00:12:21,980
other students about bragging that they threw gasoline on it to make the flames burn brighter.

223
00:12:21,980 --> 00:12:26,740
Right later on, when we got to the end, when we sing Hatikvah, the Israeli anthem, another

224
00:12:26,740 --> 00:12:30,180
student who I was in multiple classes with comes to the center of the circle, grabs the

225
00:12:30,180 --> 00:12:33,220
microphone from the girl who was singing, starts yelling, free Palestine.

226
00:12:33,220 --> 00:12:35,740
He gets surrounded by NYPD, gets brought out.

227
00:12:35,740 --> 00:12:37,580
At that point, the protesters start closing in.

228
00:12:37,580 --> 00:12:40,880
They start chanting, no Zionists, no Zionists at NYU.

229
00:12:40,880 --> 00:12:41,880
We look up.

230
00:12:41,880 --> 00:12:44,740
We realize that they took our other flags, tore them to shreds, hung them from trees

231
00:12:44,740 --> 00:12:45,740
and lampposts.

232
00:12:45,740 --> 00:12:46,980
This is Manhattan.

233
00:12:46,980 --> 00:12:48,940
This is in the middle of New York.

234
00:12:48,940 --> 00:12:52,460
I could tell you every Jewish student that was watching their flag burn and torn while

235
00:12:52,460 --> 00:12:55,940
people chanted surrounding them felt afraid.

236
00:12:56,380 --> 00:12:59,900
When I went to the school about this, they again told me I was overreacting.

237
00:12:59,900 --> 00:13:03,060
They told me a line was crossed, but that any action they would take would be behind

238
00:13:03,060 --> 00:13:04,060
the scenes.

239
00:13:04,060 --> 00:13:06,020
Again, I made the decision to trust the school.

240
00:13:06,020 --> 00:13:08,180
On a personal level, I was on student government.

241
00:13:08,180 --> 00:13:09,540
I was boycotted out.

242
00:13:09,540 --> 00:13:12,100
There were whole group chats dedicated to making fun of me.

243
00:13:12,100 --> 00:13:14,660
People would even take pictures of me when they spotted me throughout campus and send

244
00:13:14,660 --> 00:13:18,220
it to the group chat saying, spotted the Zionist, spotted the Zionist.

245
00:13:18,220 --> 00:13:21,660
My professors in the Middle Eastern Studies Department told me to stop coming to class

246
00:13:21,660 --> 00:13:22,660
exactly for what you said.

247
00:13:22,740 --> 00:13:27,740
They said that my presence as a Zionist was a danger to other students.

248
00:13:27,740 --> 00:13:29,180
All I did was exist.

249
00:13:29,180 --> 00:13:30,540
I wasn't the one assaulting students.

250
00:13:30,540 --> 00:13:34,380
I wasn't the one calling for the assault of students, but meanwhile, I was the one who

251
00:13:34,380 --> 00:13:36,140
shouldn't have been allowed to go into my classes.

252
00:13:36,140 --> 00:13:41,700
I actually had to take my final exams in a separate room, and there was one student who

253
00:13:41,700 --> 00:13:45,420
agreed to work with me, ever refused to partner with me in my projects.

254
00:13:45,420 --> 00:13:50,460
One student, uninvolved, not Jewish, agreed to partner with me, and she started being

255
00:13:50,460 --> 00:13:51,460
boycotted too.

256
00:13:51,460 --> 00:13:55,300
She was actually asked to take her final exams with me instead of the rest of the class.

257
00:13:55,300 --> 00:13:59,780
The school's rationale actually was that if I stopped going to class, then they wouldn't

258
00:13:59,780 --> 00:14:04,300
have to protect me, because at one point, NYU did send me to class with a security detail.

259
00:14:04,300 --> 00:14:07,460
There was even one night that I had turned off my phone.

260
00:14:07,460 --> 00:14:08,460
I went to the library.

261
00:14:08,460 --> 00:14:11,180
I wanted to really work on my projects.

262
00:14:11,180 --> 00:14:17,620
This is getting close to finals of my junior year, and at one point, I had school security

263
00:14:17,620 --> 00:14:19,780
coming to find me in the library with my friends.

264
00:14:19,780 --> 00:14:20,780
I was completely confused.

265
00:14:21,100 --> 00:14:22,100
I had no idea what was going on.

266
00:14:22,100 --> 00:14:26,020
Apparently, while my phone was off on Facebook, there was this whole entire post that exploded

267
00:14:26,020 --> 00:14:27,020
about me.

268
00:14:27,020 --> 00:14:30,140
Apparently, people were commenting the most disgusting things, saying that they would

269
00:14:30,140 --> 00:14:35,140
do anything to see my head hit the gravel, really, really bad things coming from fellow

270
00:14:35,140 --> 00:14:39,540
students to the point that my mom got nervous, because all this was public on Facebook.

271
00:14:39,540 --> 00:14:40,580
My friends were nervous.

272
00:14:40,580 --> 00:14:43,060
My friends and my mom are the ones that approach student safety.

273
00:14:43,060 --> 00:14:44,340
They said, we can't get through to her.

274
00:14:44,340 --> 00:14:45,340
Her phone's off.

275
00:14:45,340 --> 00:14:46,340
She's not answering her calls.

276
00:14:46,340 --> 00:14:48,340
There was this manhunt on campus to try to find me.

277
00:14:48,660 --> 00:14:52,420
When I finally went to student government, my friends had to go, sorry, to student safety,

278
00:14:52,420 --> 00:14:54,620
and they took me to the public safety office.

279
00:14:54,620 --> 00:14:57,940
My friends had to come and pick me up and check me out.

280
00:14:57,940 --> 00:14:59,380
It was insane.

281
00:14:59,380 --> 00:15:00,380
It was insane.

282
00:15:00,380 --> 00:15:03,420
There was clearly one group of students that was creating an unsafe campus environment,

283
00:15:03,420 --> 00:15:05,100
and that group was not us.

284
00:15:05,100 --> 00:15:07,540
But at the end of the day, we were the ones that were told, well, maybe if you didn't

285
00:15:07,540 --> 00:15:11,580
exist as loudly or as proudly, you wouldn't have all of these issues, and it's the same

286
00:15:11,580 --> 00:15:13,260
ingrained mentality of the wandering Jew.

287
00:15:13,260 --> 00:15:17,780
Well, maybe if I had my identity, they won't hate me so much.

288
00:15:17,780 --> 00:15:22,460
You couldn't have been the only Jewish person at NYU.

289
00:15:22,460 --> 00:15:23,460
Why were you targeted?

290
00:15:23,460 --> 00:15:28,420
Why were you the poster child of this hate and aggression?

291
00:15:28,420 --> 00:15:29,420
You know what?

292
00:15:29,420 --> 00:15:31,300
There's something we call self-ghettoization, right?

293
00:15:31,300 --> 00:15:36,580
For communities that are like the Jewish community, that have gone through hate or cycles of expulsions,

294
00:15:36,580 --> 00:15:39,540
migrations, we're very insular.

295
00:15:39,540 --> 00:15:43,500
The reason why the Jewish community is successful is because we really care for our own.

296
00:15:43,500 --> 00:15:46,820
All of my friends who did go to college, they really just found their friends in the Jewish

297
00:15:46,860 --> 00:15:47,860
community.

298
00:15:47,860 --> 00:15:51,020
They stayed in the Jewish dorm, and that was going to be their existence, and that was

299
00:15:51,020 --> 00:15:53,580
the exact opposite of the outlook I had when I got to college.

300
00:15:53,580 --> 00:15:55,940
I said, I want to be in and of NYU.

301
00:15:55,940 --> 00:15:59,340
So the reason why I ended up taking the brunt of this is because I had stepped out of that

302
00:15:59,340 --> 00:16:01,820
safe comfort bubble, right?

303
00:16:01,820 --> 00:16:04,620
Because if I would not have been on student government, yes, they would still have the

304
00:16:04,620 --> 00:16:08,140
BDS resolution, but I wouldn't have been the person who was standing up speaking against

305
00:16:08,140 --> 00:16:09,140
it.

306
00:16:09,140 --> 00:16:11,420
It probably would have just passed without any opposition, right?

307
00:16:11,420 --> 00:16:14,620
So part of it was this internalized guilt, right?

308
00:16:14,620 --> 00:16:16,780
I decided to study Middle Eastern politics.

309
00:16:16,780 --> 00:16:18,660
I decided to join student government.

310
00:16:18,660 --> 00:16:19,980
So did I bring this onto myself?

311
00:16:19,980 --> 00:16:23,700
But then you take a step back and you realize, no, right?

312
00:16:23,700 --> 00:16:25,540
I was an NYU student as much as anyone else.

313
00:16:25,540 --> 00:16:28,220
I should have access to the same academic opportunities.

314
00:16:28,220 --> 00:16:33,100
Someone even once told me from my Arabic class years later, they said that it was disgusting

315
00:16:33,100 --> 00:16:36,100
to see the Zionist activists that I've become.

316
00:16:36,100 --> 00:16:39,460
Did you only take Arabic to use their language against them?

317
00:16:39,460 --> 00:16:42,340
And I replied, what a shame that you're so small minded.

318
00:16:42,340 --> 00:16:46,460
I took Arabic so I could better communicate with my grandparents.

319
00:16:46,460 --> 00:16:50,500
And it was one of those things that, you know, whatever experiences I had, it doesn't matter

320
00:16:50,500 --> 00:16:53,060
if you try to be in and of the masses, right?

321
00:16:53,060 --> 00:16:55,420
I'm Syrian, Lebanese, Mexican.

322
00:16:55,420 --> 00:16:59,820
It doesn't matter what I am, what they saw was a Zionist.

323
00:16:59,820 --> 00:17:03,500
And the irony of all this, for those who don't know New York City, about two dozen blocks

324
00:17:03,500 --> 00:17:06,180
north is the United Nations.

325
00:17:06,180 --> 00:17:08,060
Absolutely.

326
00:17:08,060 --> 00:17:09,740
This is unbelievable.

327
00:17:09,740 --> 00:17:12,860
I think I know the answer to this because I think you just gave it, but what was the

328
00:17:12,860 --> 00:17:16,620
tipping point that made you decide to take legal action in general and file a title six

329
00:17:16,620 --> 00:17:17,620
lawsuit specifically?

330
00:17:17,620 --> 00:17:21,940
Because many people would think that was either unconventional approach or even a drastic

331
00:17:21,940 --> 00:17:22,940
step.

332
00:17:22,940 --> 00:17:30,820
So, actually, I, after the assault against the girls and the flag burnings and after

333
00:17:30,820 --> 00:17:32,700
all of that, I decided to take a step back.

334
00:17:32,700 --> 00:17:35,300
You know, I said, maybe I did bring this onto myself.

335
00:17:35,300 --> 00:17:37,060
So I left the Middle Eastern Studies Department.

336
00:17:37,060 --> 00:17:41,020
I left student government knowing full well that they would replace me with someone who

337
00:17:41,020 --> 00:17:42,980
hated my people.

338
00:17:42,980 --> 00:17:43,980
And they did.

339
00:17:43,980 --> 00:17:48,900
And instead of taking classes in my major, which is what I should have been doing in

340
00:17:48,900 --> 00:17:53,740
college, I took classes in creative writing and dance just to get enough credits to graduate.

341
00:17:53,740 --> 00:17:59,500
I put all my classes on two days a week, showed up to campus, left campus right after.

342
00:17:59,500 --> 00:18:02,540
I did not want to participate in NYU life.

343
00:18:02,540 --> 00:18:04,500
And I stepped away from all my leadership roles.

344
00:18:04,940 --> 00:18:10,660
And it wasn't until 2019, my senior year, spring semester, February, about three months

345
00:18:10,660 --> 00:18:17,420
for my graduation, that NYU revealed the recipient of the President's Service Award, which is

346
00:18:17,420 --> 00:18:20,380
the highest honor you can get as a group on campus.

347
00:18:20,380 --> 00:18:24,220
And that year, one of the recipients was Students for Justice in Palestine.

348
00:18:24,220 --> 00:18:26,580
And when I saw it, I honest to God thought it was hilarious.

349
00:18:26,580 --> 00:18:28,340
I thought it was so funny.

350
00:18:28,340 --> 00:18:29,860
And then friends started texting me about it.

351
00:18:29,860 --> 00:18:33,660
And I said, yes, typical NYU giving awards to anti-Semites.

352
00:18:33,820 --> 00:18:34,820
And another friend texted me.

353
00:18:34,820 --> 00:18:37,620
And another friend texted me until a friend called me and said, what are you going to

354
00:18:37,620 --> 00:18:38,620
do about it?

355
00:18:38,620 --> 00:18:42,860
And I said to me, I gave three years of my life to this.

356
00:18:42,860 --> 00:18:43,860
It's not my job anymore.

357
00:18:43,860 --> 00:18:46,460
I ruined my entire academic experience.

358
00:18:46,460 --> 00:18:49,980
I don't know what I'm going to do for work after college because working in any human

359
00:18:49,980 --> 00:18:53,540
rights space I might be blacklisted from, I said, this isn't my job anymore.

360
00:18:53,540 --> 00:18:55,620
I'm out of here in three months.

361
00:18:55,620 --> 00:18:59,060
And it really took, you know, my friend asked me, well, can you at least get us a meeting

362
00:18:59,060 --> 00:19:01,100
with the vice president of the school?

363
00:19:01,100 --> 00:19:05,340
I'd been meeting with the vice president of the school every week for the year prior.

364
00:19:05,340 --> 00:19:07,060
So I said, I'm sure I could get you a meeting.

365
00:19:07,060 --> 00:19:08,500
It shouldn't be an issue.

366
00:19:08,500 --> 00:19:10,460
And I was stonewalled.

367
00:19:10,460 --> 00:19:12,460
Every time I called, they would send me to voicemail.

368
00:19:12,460 --> 00:19:16,060
Finally one time the secretary picked up and without me even saying a word, she said, Adela,

369
00:19:16,060 --> 00:19:18,940
he doesn't have time for you and hung up immediately.

370
00:19:18,940 --> 00:19:20,620
And at that point, it felt personal.

371
00:19:20,620 --> 00:19:21,620
It felt personal.

372
00:19:21,620 --> 00:19:22,620
So I went to his office.

373
00:19:22,620 --> 00:19:23,620
He refused to meet with me.

374
00:19:23,620 --> 00:19:28,900
He finally scheduled a meeting for the week before my graduation in May.

375
00:19:28,900 --> 00:19:29,900
And I said, it's February.

376
00:19:30,020 --> 00:19:31,580
He said, yeah, May.

377
00:19:31,580 --> 00:19:34,820
And that's kind of when I realized the school didn't want to make a change.

378
00:19:34,820 --> 00:19:39,180
They didn't care about making a change, not in the years prior, not in the years to come.

379
00:19:39,180 --> 00:19:42,260
And that's when I made the decision to get in touch with lawyers.

380
00:19:42,260 --> 00:19:44,100
And I, you know, I called them.

381
00:19:44,100 --> 00:19:47,260
I told them, you know, this is happening at NYU.

382
00:19:47,260 --> 00:19:48,260
I gave them the lowdown.

383
00:19:48,260 --> 00:19:49,620
And I asked if I had a case on.

384
00:19:49,620 --> 00:19:52,220
They told me very clearly that I did not.

385
00:19:52,220 --> 00:19:53,220
And I said, what do you mean?

386
00:19:53,220 --> 00:19:57,780
And they said, well, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act does not include religious protections.

387
00:19:57,820 --> 00:20:00,020
And Judaism is a faith-based religion.

388
00:20:00,020 --> 00:20:04,380
So unfortunately, you're not a nationality, an ethnicity, or a race.

389
00:20:04,380 --> 00:20:06,780
And therefore, you're not protected under the law.

390
00:20:06,780 --> 00:20:09,580
I told them that I felt this case was different.

391
00:20:09,580 --> 00:20:12,100
I asked if I could send them every document I had.

392
00:20:12,100 --> 00:20:13,100
They said yes.

393
00:20:13,100 --> 00:20:17,900
And they called me back within the day, after reviewing over 70 pages of documents I sent,

394
00:20:17,900 --> 00:20:21,380
to tell me that not only did I have a case, but I had the strongest case they'd seen.

395
00:20:21,380 --> 00:20:24,140
And they told me outright, they said, you will not win.

396
00:20:24,140 --> 00:20:26,100
But this case could begin to move the needle.

397
00:20:26,100 --> 00:20:27,100
It could be a foot in the door.

398
00:20:27,420 --> 00:20:31,060
And it could potentially become a cornerstone in Jewish history in the United States, or

399
00:20:31,060 --> 00:20:34,020
history for religious liberties protections.

400
00:20:34,020 --> 00:20:35,620
And they asked me if I was ready to file.

401
00:20:35,620 --> 00:20:37,860
And I called my mom and I said, I'm suing NYU for anti-Semitism.

402
00:20:37,860 --> 00:20:39,420
She said, what does that mean?

403
00:20:39,420 --> 00:20:40,980
I said, I have no idea.

404
00:20:40,980 --> 00:20:43,540
I am 21 years old.

405
00:20:43,540 --> 00:20:46,380
But it felt like it was something I needed to do as an NYU student.

406
00:20:46,380 --> 00:20:49,900
I said, I can't imagine another NYU student going through what I went through over the

407
00:20:49,900 --> 00:20:51,500
last four years.

408
00:20:51,500 --> 00:20:54,740
So I made the decision to file.

409
00:20:54,780 --> 00:20:59,060
How did you feel when they told you that what you're doing could be a cornerstone of American

410
00:20:59,060 --> 00:21:00,060
Judaism history?

411
00:21:00,060 --> 00:21:03,860
I mean, that's a big thing for a 21-year-old to be told.

412
00:21:03,860 --> 00:21:04,860
It's a big thing.

413
00:21:04,860 --> 00:21:05,860
It's a big thing.

414
00:21:05,860 --> 00:21:09,880
I mean, they explained that they had other cases in the past, that each one moved the

415
00:21:09,880 --> 00:21:11,780
needle a little bit more.

416
00:21:11,780 --> 00:21:16,040
But the way that Title VI works is that you have to have discrimination, university knowledge

417
00:21:16,040 --> 00:21:22,420
of discrimination, and then lack of action or actions that actually exacerbate the discrimination.

418
00:21:22,420 --> 00:21:26,740
And with us, you had discrimination, university knowledge, discrimination, university knowledge,

419
00:21:26,740 --> 00:21:32,660
flag burning, assault, battery, NYPD arrests, university knowledge, award, right?

420
00:21:32,660 --> 00:21:37,660
It was just such a clear timeline that had this happened against any other group of people,

421
00:21:37,660 --> 00:21:40,300
it would inherently be a Title VI violation, right?

422
00:21:40,300 --> 00:21:45,660
Because we're talking, I'm Mexican, I'm not a US citizen, and I say this all the time.

423
00:21:45,660 --> 00:21:49,380
You can burn a flag if you so desire as free speech.

424
00:21:49,380 --> 00:21:50,380
It's legal.

425
00:21:50,380 --> 00:21:51,380
You can.

426
00:21:51,380 --> 00:21:53,700
But at the same time, you're at a university.

427
00:21:53,700 --> 00:21:58,340
And if you would have burned a Mexican flag, not against Mexicans, but as a stance politically

428
00:21:58,340 --> 00:22:04,540
against immigration, you're telling me your university isn't, you know, making a statement

429
00:22:04,540 --> 00:22:06,220
about that, right?

430
00:22:06,220 --> 00:22:09,260
And if you want to say the same thing, you know, a group of people, identity, I identify

431
00:22:09,260 --> 00:22:10,260
as a Zionist.

432
00:22:10,260 --> 00:22:14,820
If someone would have burned an LGBTQ pride flag, I doubt NYU is giving an award to the

433
00:22:14,820 --> 00:22:15,820
group that burned it.

434
00:22:15,820 --> 00:22:19,620
And if you want to take all identity and all politics out of it, I come from Greek life.

435
00:22:19,620 --> 00:22:24,380
I was vice president of my sorority, if you could not tell by my frightly attitude.

436
00:22:24,380 --> 00:22:25,380
Not president?

437
00:22:25,380 --> 00:22:26,380
No, not president.

438
00:22:26,380 --> 00:22:27,940
I was president of too many things.

439
00:22:27,940 --> 00:22:30,820
I said I can only take on a VP role, please.

440
00:22:30,820 --> 00:22:32,980
But I was vice president of my sorority.

441
00:22:32,980 --> 00:22:37,900
And you know, if a fraternity burned the flag of another and then assaulted one of their

442
00:22:37,900 --> 00:22:42,580
members and got arrested for it, I know for a fact that fraternity is getting kicked off

443
00:22:42,580 --> 00:22:45,340
of campus and won't be allowed to recruit the next semester.

444
00:22:45,340 --> 00:22:50,980
So why is it that when you burn a Jewish flag, an Israeli flag, you get an award, right?

445
00:22:50,980 --> 00:22:54,140
It's not only not alarming, it's being celebrated.

446
00:22:54,140 --> 00:22:55,620
And it's the only group I could think of.

447
00:22:55,620 --> 00:22:58,780
Because in that moment, NYU was saying, want to know how to become an award winning group

448
00:22:58,780 --> 00:22:59,860
at NYU?

449
00:22:59,860 --> 00:23:01,540
You're going to pick a minority community.

450
00:23:01,540 --> 00:23:05,060
You're going to assault their members, burn their flags, harass them for two years.

451
00:23:05,060 --> 00:23:07,700
And if that group is Jewish, you'll receive an award.

452
00:23:07,700 --> 00:23:10,700
I cannot imagine that happening from the other end.

453
00:23:10,700 --> 00:23:13,980
And everyone always tells me, you know, well, well, what about, you know, Palestinian flags?

454
00:23:14,020 --> 00:23:18,380
I'll be fully honest, I have never seen ever a Jewish student on a campus burn a Palestinian

455
00:23:18,380 --> 00:23:20,940
flag. And if they did, I would be mortified.

456
00:23:20,940 --> 00:23:24,460
I would be mortified and I would reach out to any affected student and say, that's not

457
00:23:24,460 --> 00:23:25,500
the stance of my community.

458
00:23:25,500 --> 00:23:27,060
We're sorry you had to go through this.

459
00:23:27,060 --> 00:23:28,380
Please let us know how we can help.

460
00:23:28,380 --> 00:23:31,580
Maybe I'd even invite them to do a unity Shabbat and uplift their voices.

461
00:23:33,020 --> 00:23:37,340
But alas, you know, end of the day, when I see the NYU is because there were certain

462
00:23:37,340 --> 00:23:42,620
conduct issues that were being not only allowed, but celebrated because of the politics

463
00:23:42,620 --> 00:23:43,540
behind it.

464
00:23:43,540 --> 00:23:46,020
But I was asking for equal treatment under the law.

465
00:23:46,020 --> 00:23:49,780
I was asking for equal treatment when it comes to student conduct.

466
00:23:49,780 --> 00:23:53,300
Again, if a fraternity burned a flag and assaulted a member, I know what would happen.

467
00:23:53,300 --> 00:23:56,620
Same thing, social media. They said, well, we can't extend NYU policy to social media

468
00:23:56,620 --> 00:24:00,820
posts, except if a fraternity posts alcohol, that fraternity gets suspended.

469
00:24:00,820 --> 00:24:04,940
But when, you know, Students for Justice in Palestine post a picture of an assault rifle

470
00:24:04,940 --> 00:24:07,700
with the quote revolt for you have nothing to lose but your chains.

471
00:24:07,700 --> 00:24:11,340
And then the next day they go and revolt, quote unquote, and assault a Jewish girl and

472
00:24:11,340 --> 00:24:12,700
burn an Israeli flag.

473
00:24:12,700 --> 00:24:14,780
NYU has a social media policy.

474
00:24:14,780 --> 00:24:15,980
I'm sorry.

475
00:24:15,980 --> 00:24:16,540
I'm sorry.

476
00:24:18,460 --> 00:24:19,580
Double standard.

477
00:24:19,580 --> 00:24:20,300
Double standard.

478
00:24:21,820 --> 00:24:24,060
So how did your case move to the court system?

479
00:24:24,060 --> 00:24:27,900
And what practical effect did the legal decision have for Jewish students facing antisemitism?

480
00:24:28,940 --> 00:24:32,460
So this is getting a little bit ahead because end of the day, when I filed,

481
00:24:32,460 --> 00:24:33,900
the law did not protect us, right?

482
00:24:33,900 --> 00:24:36,940
Title VI only protected nationality, ethnicity, and race.

483
00:24:37,580 --> 00:24:42,220
And ultimately, you know, my lawyers told me your case will be a PR case.

484
00:24:42,220 --> 00:24:44,940
It's going to move the needle in the PR direction.

485
00:24:44,940 --> 00:24:48,060
Hopefully, maybe it'll have some sort of policy impact.

486
00:24:48,060 --> 00:24:49,980
But that wasn't really the goal of my case.

487
00:24:49,980 --> 00:24:55,500
The goal of my case is for the headlines to read, Jewish student sues NYU for antisemitism,

488
00:24:55,500 --> 00:24:58,860
for me to speak at every single conference and for me to make it clear that the law is

489
00:24:58,860 --> 00:25:02,700
deficient in protecting religious minorities, which is insane.

490
00:25:03,340 --> 00:25:06,220
How can you have a law that protects discrimination against minorities,

491
00:25:06,220 --> 00:25:09,420
but you choose which minorities are worthy of protections and which are not?

492
00:25:09,980 --> 00:25:11,580
So that was the point of my case.

493
00:25:11,580 --> 00:25:14,620
And I spent six months making as much publicity as I could

494
00:25:14,620 --> 00:25:16,460
until one day I got a call from the White House.

495
00:25:17,100 --> 00:25:18,220
It was 2019.

496
00:25:18,220 --> 00:25:19,900
At the time, it was President Trump.

497
00:25:19,900 --> 00:25:21,580
And they told me he heard about my case.

498
00:25:21,580 --> 00:25:24,780
And he asked if I'd speak along his side at a conference in Miami.

499
00:25:24,780 --> 00:25:25,580
And I agreed.

500
00:25:25,580 --> 00:25:30,060
I decided to take the platform, which I'm happy to walk you through my thought process.

501
00:25:30,060 --> 00:25:31,340
But I took the platform.

502
00:25:31,340 --> 00:25:34,860
And three days after that conference, where I spoke about my lawsuit with arguably the

503
00:25:34,860 --> 00:25:39,820
most powerful man in the world at the time, standing right behind me, uplifting my voice.

504
00:25:39,820 --> 00:25:43,340
Three days later, he signed the executive order against antisemitism,

505
00:25:43,340 --> 00:25:48,940
which officially expanded the definition of Judaism to include ethno-religious protections,

506
00:25:48,940 --> 00:25:51,260
thereby falling under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

507
00:25:51,820 --> 00:25:55,420
So legally, my case, when I sued, I had no teeth.

508
00:25:55,420 --> 00:26:01,420
After the executive order, even though I filed my case before, NYU got nervous.

509
00:26:01,420 --> 00:26:04,300
So when I sued, I didn't sue for any dollar amount.

510
00:26:04,300 --> 00:26:07,100
I actually asked for $0 in damages.

511
00:26:07,100 --> 00:26:11,820
The only thing I asked for was for policy change and for them to create a clear pathway

512
00:26:11,820 --> 00:26:14,860
for, number one, defining antisemitism, and number two,

513
00:26:14,860 --> 00:26:17,740
what to do when confronted with antisemitism in a school.

514
00:26:17,740 --> 00:26:19,740
I don't think that administrators are antisemitic.

515
00:26:19,740 --> 00:26:21,820
I think they're honestly lazy.

516
00:26:21,820 --> 00:26:25,660
So if they see antisemitism and they say, well, I don't know what this is,

517
00:26:26,700 --> 00:26:28,140
they can wash their hands.

518
00:26:28,140 --> 00:26:29,420
Instead, we give them a definition.

519
00:26:29,420 --> 00:26:31,900
If it matches the definition, great, that's antisemitism.

520
00:26:31,900 --> 00:26:34,540
And then even if they could identify it, they say, okay, that's antisemitism,

521
00:26:34,540 --> 00:26:37,260
but we have no policy when it comes to antisemitism.

522
00:26:37,260 --> 00:26:40,940
All I asked for them was then to include antisemitism

523
00:26:40,940 --> 00:26:44,540
as a form of discrimination under their existing discrimination policy,

524
00:26:45,660 --> 00:26:47,180
which is really asking for the floor.

525
00:26:47,180 --> 00:26:53,580
So NYU, after the executive order, after the national and international attention of my case,

526
00:26:54,140 --> 00:26:55,740
they decided to settle.

527
00:26:55,740 --> 00:26:58,380
And again, I settled for purely policy change.

528
00:26:58,380 --> 00:27:01,980
Now, the issue is that we settled my case in 2020.

529
00:27:01,980 --> 00:27:03,660
You know what happened in March of 2020?

530
00:27:04,780 --> 00:27:08,540
Unfortunately, we hit COVID and we hit a pandemic and campus goes online.

531
00:27:08,540 --> 00:27:12,220
So any change that NYU promised that they would implement, I noticed.

532
00:27:13,260 --> 00:27:15,100
They didn't have to implement any policy change.

533
00:27:15,100 --> 00:27:17,660
They didn't have to deal with any student protests or any pushback.

534
00:27:17,660 --> 00:27:19,580
They didn't have to deal with anything.

535
00:27:19,580 --> 00:27:22,620
So lo and behold, two years later, the observation period

536
00:27:22,620 --> 00:27:24,460
from the Office of Civil Rights expires.

537
00:27:24,460 --> 00:27:27,820
I petitioned the Office of Civil Rights at that point under a new administration

538
00:27:27,820 --> 00:27:32,380
to extend the observation period to make sure NYU complies with the terms of my settlement.

539
00:27:32,380 --> 00:27:35,100
And the Office of Civil Rights refused to do so.

540
00:27:35,100 --> 00:27:39,500
So I actually didn't get to see a change at NYU almost at all when it came to my case.

541
00:27:39,500 --> 00:27:44,220
But my case did set the groundwork for the way that Title VI would be treated post-October 7th.

542
00:27:44,220 --> 00:27:48,220
That executive order that my case helped contribute to is the executive order

543
00:27:48,220 --> 00:27:52,460
that students use to sue their schools for antisemitism after October 7th.

544
00:27:52,460 --> 00:27:55,100
So it really became a full circle moment.

545
00:27:55,100 --> 00:27:59,980
And the NYU case, because I had filed my case six years before,

546
00:27:59,980 --> 00:28:03,580
they couldn't argue that they were not on notice that antisemitism

547
00:28:03,580 --> 00:28:05,820
and protests were possible on their campus.

548
00:28:05,820 --> 00:28:09,740
So NYU had to settle their case before any of the other cases settled.

549
00:28:09,740 --> 00:28:14,460
And in their settlement, they had to include an explicit Zionism discrimination policy,

550
00:28:14,460 --> 00:28:18,380
saying that you cannot use Zionist to keep yourself from discriminating against Jews.

551
00:28:18,380 --> 00:28:20,060
You cannot have litmus tests for Zionists.

552
00:28:20,060 --> 00:28:22,780
You cannot exclude Zionists from spaces on campus.

553
00:28:22,780 --> 00:28:24,300
That is a huge victory.

554
00:28:24,300 --> 00:28:26,700
And that's one victory building over another.

555
00:28:26,700 --> 00:28:28,140
And that's the way that the law works.

556
00:28:28,140 --> 00:28:29,340
Unfortunately, it's incremental.

557
00:28:30,460 --> 00:28:33,420
I mean, this is a lot for a 20 and 21-year-old,

558
00:28:33,420 --> 00:28:35,580
and 22 as you're going through the case, to deal with.

559
00:28:36,780 --> 00:28:40,380
What was the most difficult part or moment of standing up against antisemitism at NYU?

560
00:28:41,660 --> 00:28:44,140
I think there were a couple of very difficult moments.

561
00:28:44,140 --> 00:28:48,620
First off, a lot of the time, I felt I was alone, even though I knew I wasn't.

562
00:28:48,620 --> 00:28:50,780
I had the whole community by my side.

563
00:28:50,780 --> 00:28:54,060
And the hard thing is that the community took a much harder stance than I did, right?

564
00:28:54,060 --> 00:28:56,860
I continuously kept trusting the school to act,

565
00:28:56,860 --> 00:28:59,340
and the school continuously kept falling short.

566
00:28:59,340 --> 00:29:02,140
So on one hand, I felt like I was letting my community down,

567
00:29:02,140 --> 00:29:03,660
and they were calling me a weak leader.

568
00:29:03,660 --> 00:29:08,460
But on the other hand, I still felt that if I did anything, I'd be an alarmist, right?

569
00:29:08,460 --> 00:29:09,820
So it was walking that line,

570
00:29:11,260 --> 00:29:14,220
a feeling like everyone was behind me, but I was the one taking the brunt.

571
00:29:14,940 --> 00:29:18,780
And another difficulty is also, you know, when you think about your future.

572
00:29:19,580 --> 00:29:22,780
21, 22 years old, about to graduate from college.

573
00:29:22,780 --> 00:29:25,420
If I file this case, and I'm public about it,

574
00:29:25,420 --> 00:29:27,340
because the whole point was going to be the publicity,

575
00:29:27,900 --> 00:29:30,940
what effect can that have on my future career?

576
00:29:30,940 --> 00:29:33,900
And lo and behold, you know, when I applied for law schools,

577
00:29:33,900 --> 00:29:37,340
I was waitlisted to all of the top 14,

578
00:29:37,340 --> 00:29:39,740
except for two schools that outright rejected me.

579
00:29:39,740 --> 00:29:42,620
One of them was Yale, which I understand is Yale.

580
00:29:42,620 --> 00:29:44,140
The other one was NYU.

581
00:29:44,780 --> 00:29:49,260
So Harvard, Cornell, UChicago, Columbia, they're all waitlisting me.

582
00:29:49,260 --> 00:29:52,460
But NYU is saying that they don't want me.

583
00:29:52,460 --> 00:29:57,260
So end of the day, Yeshiva University, Benjamin Cardozo School of Law,

584
00:29:57,260 --> 00:29:59,340
saw me as an investment, not as a threat.

585
00:29:59,340 --> 00:30:01,500
And they gave me a phenomenal scholarship.

586
00:30:01,500 --> 00:30:03,740
And they also gave me the opportunity to pursue a law degree

587
00:30:03,740 --> 00:30:07,420
without having to feel like I was fighting my administration every step of the way.

588
00:30:07,980 --> 00:30:10,540
So I think that's one of the hardest things at NYU.

589
00:30:11,180 --> 00:30:13,580
Of course, emotionally, it took a toll.

590
00:30:13,580 --> 00:30:14,940
It really did take a toll.

591
00:30:14,940 --> 00:30:17,100
I developed unhealthy habits, eating habits,

592
00:30:17,100 --> 00:30:20,540
which were later exploited by the New York Post.

593
00:30:20,540 --> 00:30:21,740
And they page-sixed me.

594
00:30:21,740 --> 00:30:24,060
And that was not very fun.

595
00:30:24,060 --> 00:30:27,500
But I actually had to take some time off my internship.

596
00:30:27,500 --> 00:30:29,340
I was interning for Congressman Nadler.

597
00:30:29,340 --> 00:30:33,100
And I had to take two weeks to go to a wellness center in South Carolina

598
00:30:33,100 --> 00:30:35,260
because I, as a 21-year-old, was dealing with things

599
00:30:35,260 --> 00:30:36,860
that a 21-year-old should not be dealing with.

600
00:30:38,380 --> 00:30:40,780
So after everything you went through at NYU undergrad,

601
00:30:41,900 --> 00:30:43,500
you decided to apply there for law school?

602
00:30:44,060 --> 00:30:44,620
Absolutely.

603
00:30:44,620 --> 00:30:46,060
And it was my number one choice.

604
00:30:46,780 --> 00:30:48,140
It was my number one choice.

605
00:30:48,140 --> 00:30:50,780
If I would have gotten into Harvard and NYU,

606
00:30:50,780 --> 00:30:52,460
I would have gone to NYU hands down.

607
00:30:53,020 --> 00:30:53,500
Hands down.

608
00:30:53,500 --> 00:30:56,540
But I understand why they didn't accept me as my application essay

609
00:30:56,540 --> 00:30:58,060
said something along the lines of,

610
00:30:58,060 --> 00:30:58,700
I sued you.

611
00:30:58,700 --> 00:30:59,580
Here's why.

612
00:30:59,580 --> 00:31:00,140
Be better.

613
00:31:01,100 --> 00:31:02,380
So I understand.

614
00:31:02,380 --> 00:31:05,180
But it would have been a really great moment for NYU

615
00:31:05,180 --> 00:31:06,860
to put their money where their mouth is and say,

616
00:31:06,860 --> 00:31:07,660
you know what?

617
00:31:07,660 --> 00:31:08,620
We were horrible.

618
00:31:08,620 --> 00:31:10,300
How about we bring you in full circle?

619
00:31:10,300 --> 00:31:11,020
Train me.

620
00:31:11,020 --> 00:31:13,100
And in my essay, I said something along the lines of like,

621
00:31:13,100 --> 00:31:15,900
please train me to be the advocate that NYU so deserves, right?

622
00:31:16,220 --> 00:31:18,700
But they didn't see it that way.

623
00:31:18,700 --> 00:31:19,260
And that's OK.

624
00:31:19,820 --> 00:31:20,540
That's OK.

625
00:31:20,540 --> 00:31:21,740
But yes, I did go to NYU.

626
00:31:21,740 --> 00:31:25,260
And actually, fun fact, both of my sisters are currently students at NYU.

627
00:31:25,260 --> 00:31:28,220
I have one sister there undergrad and another one doing their master's.

628
00:31:28,220 --> 00:31:30,940
When both of them chose to apply, my mom just did not understand.

629
00:31:30,940 --> 00:31:33,420
She sat down and she said, have you learned nothing?

630
00:31:33,420 --> 00:31:35,420
And my sister said, I want to go to NYU.

631
00:31:35,420 --> 00:31:37,900
And I looked at my mom and I said, I'm sorry.

632
00:31:37,900 --> 00:31:39,340
But it's what they want.

633
00:31:39,340 --> 00:31:40,700
I'm not making decisions for them.

634
00:31:42,460 --> 00:31:45,660
What advice would you give to students facing anti-Semitism on campus today?

635
00:31:46,860 --> 00:31:49,900
I, to students who are on campus today, first off,

636
00:31:49,900 --> 00:31:51,500
I want to say I'm extremely impressed.

637
00:31:51,500 --> 00:31:53,580
They're a lot stronger than I was.

638
00:31:53,580 --> 00:31:56,620
You know, after October 7th, I got a ton of calls.

639
00:31:56,620 --> 00:31:59,980
And most students asked me a series of two questions.

640
00:31:59,980 --> 00:32:02,300
The first one was, do I hide my mug in David?

641
00:32:02,300 --> 00:32:03,980
Do I take off my yarmulke?

642
00:32:03,980 --> 00:32:06,540
And the second question they asked me was, how do I see my school?

643
00:32:07,180 --> 00:32:12,540
And I saw these two sides of Jewish life fighting with each other.

644
00:32:12,540 --> 00:32:17,420
These two Jewish questions battling, which is, do I hide my identity or do I stand my ground?

645
00:32:18,780 --> 00:32:21,100
And they stood their ground.

646
00:32:21,900 --> 00:32:26,300
I consulted with so many students who wanted to sue their schools, right?

647
00:32:26,300 --> 00:32:30,300
Like after October 7th, it was just lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit.

648
00:32:30,300 --> 00:32:32,860
When I sued NYU, I was one student against one school.

649
00:32:32,860 --> 00:32:34,780
Right now, every school has a lawsuit.

650
00:32:34,780 --> 00:32:37,580
And not only is it a lawsuit, every student, you know, plaintiff,

651
00:32:37,580 --> 00:32:39,420
there's four or five, six plaintiffs per case.

652
00:32:39,420 --> 00:32:42,140
Columbia has a class action, 140 plaintiffs.

653
00:32:42,140 --> 00:32:42,780
That's amazing.

654
00:32:42,780 --> 00:32:44,460
That's a generation who woke up.

655
00:32:44,460 --> 00:32:47,660
And it's a shame it took October 7th for us to actually wake up.

656
00:32:47,660 --> 00:32:49,260
But that was the inflection point.

657
00:32:49,260 --> 00:32:52,220
October 7th said, do you want to be the Jew that hides?

658
00:32:52,220 --> 00:32:53,820
Or do you want to be the Jew that stands up?

659
00:32:54,460 --> 00:32:57,580
And this generation said that they're the Jews that stand up.

660
00:32:57,580 --> 00:33:00,940
So if you're a student on campus today, I would say, first off, document everything.

661
00:33:01,580 --> 00:33:02,700
No matter how small.

662
00:33:02,700 --> 00:33:05,580
You're walking by your door and you see a protest, you take a picture.

663
00:33:05,580 --> 00:33:07,420
You document absolutely everything.

664
00:33:07,420 --> 00:33:11,020
You start a case with your school, with your Office of Student Conduct.

665
00:33:11,100 --> 00:33:13,580
And you do not jump to legal action.

666
00:33:13,580 --> 00:33:15,500
You actually approach the school by saying,

667
00:33:15,500 --> 00:33:18,220
I feel safe at this school and I want to make sure it stays that way.

668
00:33:18,220 --> 00:33:20,620
How about we ensure protections for Jewish students?

669
00:33:20,620 --> 00:33:22,940
That's the advice I would get every single student.

670
00:33:22,940 --> 00:33:26,380
Do not wait until they burn a flag on your campus for you to wake up.

671
00:33:26,380 --> 00:33:27,420
Lay the groundwork.

672
00:33:27,420 --> 00:33:29,100
Ask for the protections beforehand.

673
00:33:29,100 --> 00:33:31,020
And you're not asking for any sort of special protection.

674
00:33:31,020 --> 00:33:34,060
You're asking for equal protection under their existing policies.

675
00:33:34,060 --> 00:33:35,260
That's the advice I would give.

676
00:33:35,260 --> 00:33:38,540
Second, I would say that you're standing on the shoulders of giants.

677
00:33:38,540 --> 00:33:41,500
Not me, but every student who decided to file their cases.

678
00:33:41,500 --> 00:33:44,380
When I was on campus, the law did not exist to protect us.

679
00:33:44,940 --> 00:33:45,900
It was not on the books.

680
00:33:46,460 --> 00:33:47,740
You're starting already ahead.

681
00:33:47,740 --> 00:33:49,660
You're starting way further ahead than I did.

682
00:33:49,660 --> 00:33:51,340
You have a law that protects you.

683
00:33:51,340 --> 00:33:52,780
Don't be afraid to use it.

684
00:33:52,780 --> 00:33:55,820
When I sued NYU, I did it so no NYU student would go through what I went through.

685
00:33:55,820 --> 00:33:58,460
I had no idea I'd have a national impact.

686
00:33:58,460 --> 00:34:01,500
And now that national impact is something that every student has to feel.

687
00:34:01,500 --> 00:34:02,620
You're a Jewish student on the campus.

688
00:34:02,620 --> 00:34:03,420
You're protected.

689
00:34:03,420 --> 00:34:04,700
You use your rights as a student.

690
00:34:04,700 --> 00:34:06,300
You use your rights as an American.

691
00:34:06,300 --> 00:34:09,100
Don't think that because you're Jewish or Zionist, you deserve less than the rights

692
00:34:09,100 --> 00:34:09,980
that are provided to you.

693
00:34:12,300 --> 00:34:13,420
First of all, I'm not sure how tall you are.

694
00:34:13,420 --> 00:34:16,460
I can't tell from your screen here, but you are a giant in my eyes.

695
00:34:16,460 --> 00:34:18,620
So I want to say that for the record.

696
00:34:19,340 --> 00:34:21,260
You've mentioned October 7th a couple of times.

697
00:34:22,140 --> 00:34:23,340
We all know what happened that day.

698
00:34:24,700 --> 00:34:27,980
Anti-Semitism is the highest level it's been since Hitler.

699
00:34:29,180 --> 00:34:31,820
And it seems like the gasoline on the fire was October 7th.

700
00:34:31,820 --> 00:34:35,500
And then obviously your situation, what you went through was leading up to that.

701
00:34:35,500 --> 00:34:38,780
But now there's a Wall Street Journal article, let me use your last week of the week before,

702
00:34:38,780 --> 00:34:41,580
roughly 50% of the world is anti-Semitic.

703
00:34:42,380 --> 00:34:43,420
First of all, that's disgusting.

704
00:34:44,780 --> 00:34:51,020
And second of all, if you know the answer, and it's a very deep question, how and why

705
00:34:51,020 --> 00:34:51,740
did we get here?

706
00:34:52,300 --> 00:34:56,780
And maybe part two of that is, was October 7th that spark to ignite that?

707
00:34:56,780 --> 00:34:59,580
Or is this something that's been percolating for years or decades?

708
00:35:00,780 --> 00:35:04,780
And just someone obviously naive in terms of being Christian, not having to go through

709
00:35:04,780 --> 00:35:07,260
this, I just want to get your insights on that.

710
00:35:08,060 --> 00:35:10,460
Yeah, I think that this is always something that's been percolating.

711
00:35:10,460 --> 00:35:16,620
I think that what we've seen about anti-Semitism is that it morphs and evolves into whatever

712
00:35:16,620 --> 00:35:19,180
the hatred is of the time, right?

713
00:35:19,180 --> 00:35:21,900
If you're in a communist society, the Jew is a capitalist.

714
00:35:21,900 --> 00:35:24,620
If you're in a capitalist society, the Jew is a communist.

715
00:35:24,620 --> 00:35:29,980
And it's just very easy to morph the Jew into the idea that you don't want them to be, right?

716
00:35:30,700 --> 00:35:32,060
They're different from us.

717
00:35:32,060 --> 00:35:36,860
That's how you scapegoat something and you turn it into a perpetual evolving target.

718
00:35:36,860 --> 00:35:40,540
The issue is that there's only 16 million Jews in the world, which is a very small number

719
00:35:40,540 --> 00:35:41,980
when you actually stop to think about it.

720
00:35:43,020 --> 00:35:47,260
The example I always love to use, especially when I speak to college students, is that

721
00:35:47,260 --> 00:35:51,500
if every single Jew in the world followed one Instagram account, from grandmothers to

722
00:35:51,500 --> 00:35:54,780
babies, we would have 16 million followers, right?

723
00:35:55,900 --> 00:35:59,900
A single Kardashian has at least 350 million followers.

724
00:35:59,900 --> 00:36:02,860
I mean, if every Jew in the world followed one Instagram account, we wouldn't even have

725
00:36:02,860 --> 00:36:05,340
10% of the following of one Kardashian.

726
00:36:06,060 --> 00:36:07,740
That's a very small number, right?

727
00:36:08,300 --> 00:36:11,420
So when you really look at it, it becomes kind of this idea where people say, well,

728
00:36:11,420 --> 00:36:13,180
why is anti-Semitism so special?

729
00:36:13,180 --> 00:36:16,220
In a way, it's not because when people want to hate, they hate.

730
00:36:16,220 --> 00:36:19,180
But in a way, it is because it's something that really shouldn't live at the forefront

731
00:36:19,180 --> 00:36:20,780
of anyone's minds, right?

732
00:36:20,780 --> 00:36:27,020
Where 16 million people, why is 53% of the world anti-Semitic, right?

733
00:36:27,020 --> 00:36:30,940
And then it gets into the anti-Semitic trope of, well, if you've been kicked out of 109

734
00:36:30,940 --> 00:36:34,300
countries, maybe the problem's with you, not with the countries.

735
00:36:34,300 --> 00:36:34,940
Sure.

736
00:36:34,940 --> 00:36:35,580
Sure.

737
00:36:35,580 --> 00:36:36,140
Maybe.

738
00:36:36,140 --> 00:36:37,260
Whatever you want to say.

739
00:36:37,260 --> 00:36:40,140
But at the end of the day, I think that the issue with Judaism is that we're too apologetic.

740
00:36:41,020 --> 00:36:41,900
We're too apologetic.

741
00:36:42,460 --> 00:36:46,140
A lot of people ask me, why are Jews failing at telling their story?

742
00:36:46,140 --> 00:36:49,260
And I say it's because we haven't been telling our entire story, and we've actually been

743
00:36:49,260 --> 00:36:50,380
stopping short.

744
00:36:50,380 --> 00:36:51,340
We were oppressed.

745
00:36:51,340 --> 00:36:53,500
We have gone through migrations.

746
00:36:53,500 --> 00:36:56,460
My family in the Middle East, the Holocaust, we've come from all this.

747
00:36:56,460 --> 00:36:57,500
But we're not victims.

748
00:36:58,060 --> 00:37:00,540
We were victims, and we progressed, right?

749
00:37:00,540 --> 00:37:04,220
We came to this country, and we said, how can we work our way up, and how can we build

750
00:37:04,220 --> 00:37:05,500
ourselves as a community?

751
00:37:05,500 --> 00:37:06,380
And we did.

752
00:37:06,380 --> 00:37:10,220
We've been in the process of community building for generations and generations, because we've

753
00:37:10,220 --> 00:37:11,420
been perpetual wanderers.

754
00:37:11,420 --> 00:37:15,020
If you look at the Middle East, all the countries in the Middle East, quote unquote, were created

755
00:37:15,020 --> 00:37:16,140
at the same time, right?

756
00:37:16,140 --> 00:37:18,540
They were all created via treaty by the United Nations.

757
00:37:18,540 --> 00:37:22,460
And if you look at the Middle East, they've all either become autocracies, or they're

758
00:37:22,460 --> 00:37:25,180
falling into shambles, except for the state of Israel.

759
00:37:25,180 --> 00:37:26,220
And the question is, why?

760
00:37:26,220 --> 00:37:30,220
And it's because the Jews have been in the practice of community building for generations,

761
00:37:30,220 --> 00:37:31,740
because that's what we've had to do.

762
00:37:31,740 --> 00:37:33,260
It's something that's already been ingrained in us.

763
00:37:33,260 --> 00:37:35,820
How do we get to a new place and start from scratch?

764
00:37:35,820 --> 00:37:37,260
That's what we've been doing.

765
00:37:37,260 --> 00:37:39,820
So I think that this has been lying dormant.

766
00:37:39,820 --> 00:37:43,420
I think it's very easy to awaken a beast, and October 7th woke it up, right?

767
00:37:43,420 --> 00:37:46,060
I always say October 7th was, it happened in Israel, right?

768
00:37:46,060 --> 00:37:49,580
But in Gaza, the Gaza envelope, you felt the effects in Tel Aviv.

769
00:37:49,580 --> 00:37:51,340
People were hiding the Nova Festival.

770
00:37:51,340 --> 00:37:52,460
That happened in Israel.

771
00:37:53,020 --> 00:37:58,220
But immediately after, immediately, October 8th, you saw protests in LA, you saw in New

772
00:37:58,220 --> 00:38:03,980
York, you saw in Paris, you saw two Israeli tourists in Egypt walking around speaking

773
00:38:03,980 --> 00:38:07,420
Hebrew that were shot point blank in the middle of broad daylight.

774
00:38:08,220 --> 00:38:09,820
That became a global effect.

775
00:38:10,380 --> 00:38:11,100
That's insane.

776
00:38:11,100 --> 00:38:14,060
So October 7th happened in Israel, but it was felt everywhere.

777
00:38:14,060 --> 00:38:15,100
And every Jew was hiding.

778
00:38:15,100 --> 00:38:19,340
I was actually, I was in Dubai on October 7th, and I went to Turkey shortly after October

779
00:38:19,340 --> 00:38:19,900
10th.

780
00:38:19,900 --> 00:38:23,180
And when my friends were calling me, asking me if I was safe, I said, all I had to do

781
00:38:23,180 --> 00:38:25,900
was hide my mug and speak Spanish and pretend I'm Catholic.

782
00:38:25,900 --> 00:38:27,020
I'm doing fine.

783
00:38:27,020 --> 00:38:29,660
I said, but end of the day, day of rage is coming this Friday.

784
00:38:29,660 --> 00:38:30,620
I'm going to be in Turkey.

785
00:38:30,620 --> 00:38:33,340
I know I'll be safe because I'm going to stay in my hotel room.

786
00:38:33,340 --> 00:38:34,700
Are you safe in New York?

787
00:38:36,060 --> 00:38:37,500
That became a scary point.

788
00:38:38,060 --> 00:38:41,260
But I was telling my friends in New York, hey, Friday, don't go outside.

789
00:38:42,540 --> 00:38:44,940
And I suddenly felt safer in Turkey than in New York.

790
00:38:45,900 --> 00:38:47,180
That's insanity.

791
00:38:47,180 --> 00:38:48,460
It's insanity.

792
00:38:48,460 --> 00:38:49,900
And I wish I had a solution.

793
00:38:49,900 --> 00:38:50,380
I really don't.

794
00:38:50,380 --> 00:38:53,820
Whenever I speak to Jewish people, I tell them that the only solution is education and

795
00:38:53,820 --> 00:38:55,660
existing as in and of the society.

796
00:38:55,660 --> 00:38:58,860
You know, it's very easy to hate something that you do not know anything about.

797
00:38:58,860 --> 00:39:00,700
It's easy to hate something that you don't know.

798
00:39:00,700 --> 00:39:04,700
So if you present yourself as a Jew, as a practicing Jew in every space you enter, don't

799
00:39:04,700 --> 00:39:09,180
check your identity at the door, as we love to say, then maybe that's the way for people

800
00:39:09,180 --> 00:39:12,380
to say, well, at least I have one Jewish friend, because maybe otherwise they wouldn't.

801
00:39:14,780 --> 00:39:16,060
I'm still trying to comprehend all this.

802
00:39:16,220 --> 00:39:20,860
This is just a lot for a middle-aged, 54-year-old guy to digest.

803
00:39:22,140 --> 00:39:25,580
I've been struck by something you said about the prevailing attitude on college campuses.

804
00:39:26,300 --> 00:39:29,500
Speaking about many of your peers, you said, quote, we're getting to the point where no

805
00:39:29,500 --> 00:39:30,220
one does the work.

806
00:39:30,780 --> 00:39:33,420
Gen Z will fight you on the meaning of a book that they didn't even read.

807
00:39:33,980 --> 00:39:35,020
Everything is soundbites.

808
00:39:35,020 --> 00:39:36,220
Everything is summaries.

809
00:39:36,220 --> 00:39:40,460
Everything is chat GPT-AI to the point that no one's actually learning or critical thinking.

810
00:39:41,420 --> 00:39:42,700
Where did that attitude come from?

811
00:39:42,700 --> 00:39:44,380
And more importantly, how do we fix it?

812
00:39:44,780 --> 00:39:49,900
So I see it in a fun tongue-in-cheek way with my two younger sisters, who are very different.

813
00:39:49,900 --> 00:39:51,580
They're two very different sides of Gen Z.

814
00:39:52,140 --> 00:39:54,380
One is very left-leaning.

815
00:39:54,380 --> 00:39:56,220
She's scared of her own shadow.

816
00:39:56,220 --> 00:39:59,980
She is all about communication and love and rainbows and globalism.

817
00:39:59,980 --> 00:40:00,540
That's her.

818
00:40:01,100 --> 00:40:05,180
My other younger sister is the other side of Gen Z, which is the attitude, the one who

819
00:40:05,180 --> 00:40:06,060
will fight you.

820
00:40:06,060 --> 00:40:07,420
She happens to lean conservative.

821
00:40:07,980 --> 00:40:13,180
But looking at both of them, both of them, I hate to say, don't really put in the work.

822
00:40:13,260 --> 00:40:16,540
They won't really look to understand something.

823
00:40:16,540 --> 00:40:19,340
And I think it's because it's very easy when you have an easier way out.

824
00:40:19,900 --> 00:40:24,060
So just from conversations with my sisters and their friends and just seeing how everything's

825
00:40:24,060 --> 00:40:27,420
a snap judgment, I say, well, how did we get here?

826
00:40:27,420 --> 00:40:30,620
And then you look at college and you realize that they're not actually teaching you to

827
00:40:30,620 --> 00:40:31,180
think.

828
00:40:31,180 --> 00:40:34,460
They're teaching you to regurgitate and take it one step further.

829
00:40:34,460 --> 00:40:39,980
So for example, if you read an essay about how women are oppressed, the essay you have

830
00:40:40,140 --> 00:40:43,740
to write is about how women have always been oppressed, right?

831
00:40:43,740 --> 00:40:47,420
So everything is just taking it one step further, one step further.

832
00:40:47,420 --> 00:40:49,500
And that's what academia likes to see.

833
00:40:49,500 --> 00:40:51,340
They like to see extremism.

834
00:40:51,900 --> 00:40:53,900
They like to see that they bring in some students.

835
00:40:53,900 --> 00:40:56,780
For example, I took a class in Latin American modernities, right?

836
00:40:56,780 --> 00:41:02,460
And it was all about how Latin America was shaped by the years of turmoil and postcolonialism.

837
00:41:03,020 --> 00:41:03,580
True.

838
00:41:03,580 --> 00:41:05,260
Yes, absolutely.

839
00:41:05,260 --> 00:41:09,100
But then every essay that we were asked to write was essentially writing about how women

840
00:41:09,180 --> 00:41:09,740
were oppressed.

841
00:41:09,740 --> 00:41:15,180
It was essentially writing about how all those effects are still being felt today.

842
00:41:15,180 --> 00:41:20,060
And that's the reason for, and then essentially pick an ill in society and blame it on colonialism.

843
00:41:20,060 --> 00:41:25,500
I took a personal essay class, personal essay called The Art of Personal Essay.

844
00:41:25,500 --> 00:41:28,940
And the final essay we had to write was called The Political is Personal.

845
00:41:28,940 --> 00:41:33,100
And it was all about personalizing politics and essentially placing yourself in a victimhood

846
00:41:33,100 --> 00:41:33,580
narrative.

847
00:41:33,580 --> 00:41:38,780
I think that academia is training students to write themselves into history as victims

848
00:41:39,340 --> 00:41:42,780
without actually understanding what the world looks like.

849
00:41:44,220 --> 00:41:45,340
And that's just something I've been seeing.

850
00:41:45,340 --> 00:41:50,140
And I know that we're going to get more into the academia issue, but I think that right

851
00:41:50,140 --> 00:41:51,340
now everything is soundbites.

852
00:41:51,340 --> 00:41:54,220
And I think that students are so afraid of not fitting in.

853
00:41:54,220 --> 00:41:56,860
Like even you see this, for example, with anti-Zionist Jews.

854
00:41:56,860 --> 00:41:58,700
People always ask me the anti-Zionist Jewish question.

855
00:41:58,700 --> 00:42:01,100
They always say, well, what do you do about anti-Zionist Jews?

856
00:42:01,100 --> 00:42:02,300
And I'm very clear with them.

857
00:42:02,460 --> 00:42:04,140
Have you spoken to an anti-Zionist Jew?

858
00:42:04,140 --> 00:42:04,860
Have you seen them?

859
00:42:05,500 --> 00:42:08,380
For the most part, they're people who are already disenfranchised.

860
00:42:08,380 --> 00:42:12,220
I see anti-Zionist Jews as a failure of the Jewish community to be accepting.

861
00:42:12,220 --> 00:42:15,340
And suddenly you show up into a world where all you have to do is say you hate Israel

862
00:42:15,340 --> 00:42:17,180
and you're going to be propped up on a pedestal.

863
00:42:17,180 --> 00:42:18,220
It's the only thing you need to do.

864
00:42:19,100 --> 00:42:24,540
And most of the people who are falling into the free Palestine camp and were chanting

865
00:42:24,540 --> 00:42:29,740
death to America are people who are disenfranchised, but shouldn't have been, right?

866
00:42:29,820 --> 00:42:33,100
Because they're safe in America and they have no qualms in the world.

867
00:42:33,100 --> 00:42:36,380
But they're being told that the only way to be valid is to be oppressed.

868
00:42:36,380 --> 00:42:41,420
So they have to find a way to either become oppressed or show so much grandstanding that

869
00:42:41,420 --> 00:42:44,140
they're standing against the oppression that they're part of the system.

870
00:42:44,140 --> 00:42:45,340
And this is a long time coming.

871
00:42:45,340 --> 00:42:46,700
It's something that we see in our social media.

872
00:42:46,700 --> 00:42:48,460
It's something that we see in our education system.

873
00:42:48,460 --> 00:42:51,180
And it's something that we saw, unfortunately, play out post-October 7th.

874
00:42:51,180 --> 00:42:55,900
I actually use October 7th as an inflection moment, not for Jews when it comes to anti-Semitism,

875
00:42:55,900 --> 00:42:59,100
but for the West, for when it comes to the ideologies that we've been allowing

876
00:42:59,100 --> 00:43:00,700
to seep into our education system.

877
00:43:02,700 --> 00:43:06,380
You mentioned a moment ago, you speak often to groups of college and high school students.

878
00:43:07,100 --> 00:43:10,620
I've heard college students who are conservative say that they've actually written papers that

879
00:43:10,620 --> 00:43:14,140
are completely the opposite of what they believe to appease liberal professors,

880
00:43:14,140 --> 00:43:16,780
avoid the anger of classmates, and avoid getting a bad grade in class.

881
00:43:17,740 --> 00:43:18,780
Have you heard the same thing?

882
00:43:18,780 --> 00:43:19,740
Does that really happen?

883
00:43:20,700 --> 00:43:21,820
Absolutely.

884
00:43:21,820 --> 00:43:23,340
Absolutely, absolutely.

885
00:43:23,340 --> 00:43:24,940
Every single step of the way.

886
00:43:24,940 --> 00:43:28,540
And for me, I felt it a lot with the Israel side because I was a Middle Eastern studies

887
00:43:28,540 --> 00:43:33,260
major, but conservative students cannot speak freely on campuses at all.

888
00:43:33,260 --> 00:43:35,500
Actually, I love to talk about my Middle Eastern studies class.

889
00:43:35,500 --> 00:43:39,900
I took a modern Middle East class, and I looked at the syllabus, and I saw the last two weeks

890
00:43:39,900 --> 00:43:41,340
were Israel and Palestine.

891
00:43:41,340 --> 00:43:45,260
And I said, great, I'm going to become public enemy number one, at least at the end of the

892
00:43:45,260 --> 00:43:46,380
semester, right?

893
00:43:46,380 --> 00:43:47,260
But here's the thing.

894
00:43:47,260 --> 00:43:51,100
I did not have to wait until the last two weeks of the semester, because week number

895
00:43:51,100 --> 00:43:53,900
three, we did a unit on Osama Bin Laden and 9-11.

896
00:43:53,900 --> 00:43:56,700
And the readings that we had were called the Jihadists Next Door.

897
00:43:56,700 --> 00:44:00,220
And essentially, we're making the case for why Osama Bin Laden was a freedom fighter

898
00:44:00,220 --> 00:44:04,060
who was actually using religion to mobilize the masses to fight for social justice.

899
00:44:04,620 --> 00:44:11,260
And I read this at home, and I said, but he was a terrorist, right?

900
00:44:11,820 --> 00:44:16,460
So I said, surely, I will get to class, and they will talk about how dangerous it is when

901
00:44:16,460 --> 00:44:21,020
people mobilize the masses using religious ideology for terror.

902
00:44:21,020 --> 00:44:25,180
And instead, my professor just sat there and essentially praised Osama Bin Laden.

903
00:44:25,180 --> 00:44:29,180
And again, like we said, NYU, yes, it's right near the United Nations, but it's also less

904
00:44:29,180 --> 00:44:31,660
than 50 blocks from One World Trade.

905
00:44:31,660 --> 00:44:34,540
So I sat there in class, honest to God, confused.

906
00:44:34,540 --> 00:44:38,220
And I, honest to God, raised my hand to ask an honest to God question.

907
00:44:38,220 --> 00:44:41,740
And I said, but he's a terrorist, right?

908
00:44:42,860 --> 00:44:45,740
And at this point, my classmates started scoffing.

909
00:44:45,740 --> 00:44:50,060
My professor crossed his arms and rolled his eyes, and he said, I'm sure some would call

910
00:44:50,060 --> 00:44:50,540
him that.

911
00:44:51,340 --> 00:44:56,140
And at that point, I outed myself as a crazy conservative in class, which is insane, because

912
00:44:56,140 --> 00:44:59,500
all I did was ask whether Osama Bin Laden was a terrorist.

913
00:44:59,500 --> 00:45:02,620
And that's when I said, it doesn't matter about the Israel-Palestine unit.

914
00:45:02,620 --> 00:45:04,540
That is the least of my problems.

915
00:45:04,540 --> 00:45:05,900
This is the class that I'm in.

916
00:45:06,700 --> 00:45:10,140
For that class, want to know how I got around to writing my final paper requirement?

917
00:45:10,140 --> 00:45:13,660
Instead of actually writing about something of substance, I wrote something called an

918
00:45:13,660 --> 00:45:15,260
interview with a Likudist.

919
00:45:15,260 --> 00:45:19,420
And I wrote a mock interview with someone from the Likud party in Israel, which for

920
00:45:19,420 --> 00:45:22,380
those who aren't familiar is the right-wing party that's currently in power.

921
00:45:23,260 --> 00:45:27,340
And that way, they couldn't give me a bad grade, because I wrote a paper that was an

922
00:45:27,340 --> 00:45:28,940
interview with a Likudist.

923
00:45:29,660 --> 00:45:31,340
Because what else were you supposed to do?

924
00:45:31,900 --> 00:45:35,020
But I wasn't always, I hate to say, I wasn't always this person, right?

925
00:45:35,020 --> 00:45:38,140
For my first two years at NYU, I really did drink the Kool-Aid.

926
00:45:38,140 --> 00:45:43,020
I took a class, and it was all about regimes of truth and how we create realities for

927
00:45:43,020 --> 00:45:47,820
ourselves and how the government is controlling all of us, essentially, something like that.

928
00:45:47,820 --> 00:45:49,100
And it was a Middle Eastern studies class.

929
00:45:49,340 --> 00:45:52,220
It was based on Turkey and Erdogan, et cetera.

930
00:45:52,220 --> 00:45:57,660
And for my final paper, I wrote an essay using Michel Foucault's regime of truth, about

931
00:45:57,660 --> 00:46:02,300
how the Syrian Jewish community controls the welfare system, the education system, the

932
00:46:02,300 --> 00:46:06,220
religious institutions, and essentially is its own regime of truth that keeps women in

933
00:46:06,220 --> 00:46:07,340
a downtrodden state.

934
00:46:08,300 --> 00:46:12,060
And I wrote this paper, and I was proud of it, and my teacher loved it.

935
00:46:12,060 --> 00:46:15,980
And she said, I'd love to publish this, maybe on one of NYU's journals.

936
00:46:15,980 --> 00:46:17,660
And I said, oh my gosh, I would be honored.

937
00:46:17,660 --> 00:46:18,380
I call my mom.

938
00:46:18,380 --> 00:46:20,380
I tell her, mom, they want to publish my paper.

939
00:46:20,380 --> 00:46:21,660
She says, oh my God, that's amazing.

940
00:46:21,660 --> 00:46:22,380
What's it about?

941
00:46:22,380 --> 00:46:23,740
I said, the Syrian Jewish community.

942
00:46:23,740 --> 00:46:25,580
She said, wow, I'd love to read it.

943
00:46:25,580 --> 00:46:27,180
And I said, no.

944
00:46:28,220 --> 00:46:28,940
I said, no.

945
00:46:29,500 --> 00:46:31,820
And then I realized I had this moment of cognitive dissonance.

946
00:46:31,820 --> 00:46:35,500
How did I write a paper I'm so proud of in one setting and I'm so ashamed of in another

947
00:46:35,500 --> 00:46:37,100
that I can't even have my mother read?

948
00:46:37,820 --> 00:46:41,180
Oh, because I'm being taught something against my own existence.

949
00:46:41,180 --> 00:46:42,780
I've never been oppressed as a woman.

950
00:46:42,780 --> 00:46:46,140
I grew up in a community where women might have not had certain opportunities, or maybe

951
00:46:46,140 --> 00:46:47,180
they didn't push us to.

952
00:46:47,260 --> 00:46:49,020
I would never use the word oppression.

953
00:46:49,020 --> 00:46:52,940
I come from Mexico, Syria, and Lebanon, where women literally do not have rights.

954
00:46:53,580 --> 00:46:57,900
And I have the audacity to say I was oppressed because I grew up in Deal, New Jersey.

955
00:46:58,780 --> 00:47:00,220
What is this?

956
00:47:00,220 --> 00:47:03,900
And that was kind of that moment that I said, how did I get to this point?

957
00:47:03,900 --> 00:47:06,300
And after that, I started seeing it in everything.

958
00:47:06,300 --> 00:47:09,980
In every single class I took, I realized that everything was pushing towards something.

959
00:47:09,980 --> 00:47:12,540
Personal essay, political is personal, right?

960
00:47:12,540 --> 00:47:15,900
Everything was pushing you to this narrative of woe is me.

961
00:47:15,900 --> 00:47:19,500
I'm part of a system that downtrods women, downtrods minorities.

962
00:47:20,380 --> 00:47:24,220
And if I don't acknowledge that I'm part of the system or any benefit I might potentially

963
00:47:24,220 --> 00:47:26,380
reap, then I am part of the problem.

964
00:47:26,380 --> 00:47:29,980
So yes, conservative students very much have to keep their head down and write the paper

965
00:47:29,980 --> 00:47:33,820
that gets them an A, because as soon as you speak up, you're going to have consequences

966
00:47:33,820 --> 00:47:35,740
and the consequences might not look so pretty.

967
00:47:35,740 --> 00:47:37,900
What I tell students is that they're going to have that moment.

968
00:47:37,900 --> 00:47:39,740
I said, I guarantee you'll have that moment.

969
00:47:39,740 --> 00:47:41,420
And I'm asking them to stand up.

970
00:47:41,420 --> 00:47:45,180
I think that right now we're also at an inflection point where the institutions that used to

971
00:47:45,180 --> 00:47:49,980
hold so much weight in our minds, you know, the Harvard, MIT's, Columbia's of the world,

972
00:47:49,980 --> 00:47:53,820
we're taking a step back and seeing this institution as a joke, right?

973
00:47:53,820 --> 00:47:57,980
After Trump's election, the second term around, the first term as well, first term, they canceled

974
00:47:57,980 --> 00:48:00,300
classes at NYU and they had wellness sessions.

975
00:48:00,300 --> 00:48:03,660
Here the second time around, someone sent me an email from Columbia and from Harvard

976
00:48:03,660 --> 00:48:07,180
and they were giving out mental health cookies and giving out mental health days and wellness

977
00:48:07,180 --> 00:48:07,580
circles.

978
00:48:08,300 --> 00:48:09,980
How are the high and mighty among us?

979
00:48:09,980 --> 00:48:12,140
How are the most intelligent among us?

980
00:48:12,140 --> 00:48:15,740
We're going to be the leaders of tomorrow sitting on our Supreme courts and in our Congress,

981
00:48:16,380 --> 00:48:20,140
in our executive boards for all of our major corporations.

982
00:48:20,140 --> 00:48:22,700
How do they need a mental health cookie after an election?

983
00:48:23,340 --> 00:48:24,220
Who are we raising?

984
00:48:24,220 --> 00:48:25,980
What are we raising them to become?

985
00:48:25,980 --> 00:48:29,260
So I think that people are starting to realize then that the new class of Ivy Leagues, the

986
00:48:29,260 --> 00:48:33,100
new class of elite institutions are those that actually have been focusing on education

987
00:48:33,100 --> 00:48:33,820
through and through.

988
00:48:33,820 --> 00:48:36,140
And those are the schools, I hate to say it, the schools of the South.

989
00:48:36,140 --> 00:48:38,940
Those are the UT Austin's, that's the University of Florida's.

990
00:48:38,940 --> 00:48:45,580
Those are the institutions that have not caved into privileging activism over academics.

991
00:48:47,420 --> 00:48:48,940
Couldn't have said it better than myself.

992
00:48:48,940 --> 00:48:53,180
I want to go back to what you touched on regarding sympathy for Osama Bin Laden.

993
00:48:54,220 --> 00:49:00,060
So around that same time of your class, there was also a report done by Pew Research, which

994
00:49:00,060 --> 00:49:02,300
is a very reputable nonpartisan think tank.

995
00:49:03,100 --> 00:49:10,060
And same thing, it was one in five Gen Zers ages 18 to 29 had a sympathetic or a positive

996
00:49:10,060 --> 00:49:11,660
view towards Osama Bin Laden.

997
00:49:13,020 --> 00:49:15,820
Now my viewers and listeners know that I was at ground zero on 9-11.

998
00:49:15,820 --> 00:49:19,500
It took me 17 years to go back, even though I worked three blocks from there, self-diagnosed

999
00:49:19,500 --> 00:49:20,460
myself with PTSD.

1000
00:49:21,100 --> 00:49:24,860
And you're going to tell me you have sympathy for somebody that killed 2,977 people that

1001
00:49:24,860 --> 00:49:27,740
day and thousands of lives after that.

1002
00:49:29,340 --> 00:49:30,700
For lack of a better word, that's disgusting.

1003
00:49:32,300 --> 00:49:33,500
I appreciate you raising that.

1004
00:49:33,500 --> 00:49:38,060
I cannot believe somebody at NYU said that to your point, just north of ground zero.

1005
00:49:38,940 --> 00:49:40,780
And part of my French were satellite, not cable.

1006
00:49:40,780 --> 00:49:41,660
So I can say that's bullshit.

1007
00:49:43,020 --> 00:49:47,020
So I'm glad you raised that point and made it on air as well.

1008
00:49:48,540 --> 00:49:50,460
Let's talk about the plight of the people of Gaza.

1009
00:49:51,100 --> 00:49:54,140
What do you feel for the citizens, excuse me, civilians of the Gaza Strip?

1010
00:49:54,140 --> 00:49:56,700
And what's the solution for them to rebuild their lives and live in peace?

1011
00:49:57,420 --> 00:49:57,900
Absolutely.

1012
00:49:57,900 --> 00:49:59,900
My heart entirely breaks.

1013
00:50:00,620 --> 00:50:01,980
My heart breaks.

1014
00:50:01,980 --> 00:50:04,460
And every night I pray for the people of Gaza.

1015
00:50:05,580 --> 00:50:06,300
Every night.

1016
00:50:06,300 --> 00:50:09,180
And by the way, that's the difference between one side and the other.

1017
00:50:09,180 --> 00:50:14,620
Because when they see pictures of Israelis who were murdered, they say, we'll do it again

1018
00:50:14,620 --> 00:50:15,580
and again and again.

1019
00:50:15,580 --> 00:50:19,420
And every day will be October 8th, because every day is a day after October 7th.

1020
00:50:20,060 --> 00:50:24,220
When you speak to anyone on our side, we pray for the Palestinians to have a leadership

1021
00:50:24,220 --> 00:50:27,180
that puts their people first before they are ideology.

1022
00:50:27,740 --> 00:50:29,420
And that's what I say always.

1023
00:50:29,500 --> 00:50:30,140
Always, always.

1024
00:50:30,140 --> 00:50:31,420
I pray for the people of Gaza.

1025
00:50:31,420 --> 00:50:37,420
May God send them a leader who rises and starts standing up for their rights to live as humans

1026
00:50:37,420 --> 00:50:40,860
on this planet instead of fighting for an ideological war that they will never win.

1027
00:50:41,660 --> 00:50:48,060
Whenever I speak to people who tell me, you know, well, you know, the Israelis are this

1028
00:50:48,060 --> 00:50:55,500
and that, I actually spoke about this with, I don't know if you're familiar with, his

1029
00:50:55,500 --> 00:50:56,460
name just escaped me.

1030
00:50:56,460 --> 00:50:57,980
I had it in my head just now.

1031
00:50:57,980 --> 00:51:04,620
But either way, what I always say is if you had the keys to the world, if the United Nations,

1032
00:51:04,620 --> 00:51:08,540
the United States, Israel, the Palestinians, if everyone came to the table and said, I'm

1033
00:51:08,540 --> 00:51:10,620
going to give you the keys to the world.

1034
00:51:10,620 --> 00:51:12,060
What is your solution?

1035
00:51:12,060 --> 00:51:13,500
What are you crafting?

1036
00:51:13,500 --> 00:51:16,060
They'll hit one of two pathways.

1037
00:51:16,060 --> 00:51:17,900
The first one is a one state solution.

1038
00:51:17,900 --> 00:51:19,900
And you say, great, a one state solution.

1039
00:51:19,900 --> 00:51:22,620
Like everything becomes Palestine, sure.

1040
00:51:22,620 --> 00:51:25,020
What happens to the Jews that live in the country?

1041
00:51:25,020 --> 00:51:26,780
And they say, well, they can become equal citizens.

1042
00:51:26,780 --> 00:51:27,420
And you say, great.

1043
00:51:28,060 --> 00:51:29,100
And they become Palestinian.

1044
00:51:29,100 --> 00:51:29,500
Yes, sure.

1045
00:51:29,500 --> 00:51:30,460
You say, OK, great.

1046
00:51:30,460 --> 00:51:34,780
What if we called that country Israel and all the Palestinians accepted Israeli citizenship

1047
00:51:34,780 --> 00:51:36,220
and suddenly it becomes a different question?

1048
00:51:36,220 --> 00:51:37,340
No, God forbid.

1049
00:51:37,340 --> 00:51:37,580
Sure.

1050
00:51:37,580 --> 00:51:40,940
The second answer that they'll get to is a two state solution, right?

1051
00:51:40,940 --> 00:51:45,980
And the two state solution, you say, OK, great, great.

1052
00:51:45,980 --> 00:51:48,620
There's been six two state solutions that have been proposed in the future.

1053
00:51:48,620 --> 00:51:49,820
Sorry, in the past.

1054
00:51:49,820 --> 00:51:51,020
Where do we go from here?

1055
00:51:51,020 --> 00:51:52,220
Two state solution.

1056
00:51:52,220 --> 00:51:55,900
And I ask them, tell me what that two state solution looks like.

1057
00:51:55,900 --> 00:51:59,580
And usually they'll say something like a secular democratic state, right?

1058
00:51:59,580 --> 00:52:03,100
A secular democratic state, either one state or two state.

1059
00:52:03,100 --> 00:52:05,260
But it becomes a secular democratic state.

1060
00:52:05,260 --> 00:52:06,380
And I say, great, guess what?

1061
00:52:07,180 --> 00:52:10,700
If you approached Israelis and you say for your safety and security, you will live in

1062
00:52:10,700 --> 00:52:11,900
a secular democratic state.

1063
00:52:12,460 --> 00:52:14,060
Nine out of ten will say yes.

1064
00:52:14,060 --> 00:52:16,220
Nine out of ten will say absolutely yes.

1065
00:52:16,940 --> 00:52:19,660
But if you approach Hamas and you say, hey, guess what, Hamas?

1066
00:52:19,660 --> 00:52:21,020
I solved the conflict for you.

1067
00:52:21,740 --> 00:52:23,420
And here's the solution I came up with.

1068
00:52:23,420 --> 00:52:26,220
You're going to live in a secular democratic state.

1069
00:52:27,100 --> 00:52:31,660
Hamas will spit in your face because Hamas is not fighting for a secular democratic state.

1070
00:52:31,660 --> 00:52:34,460
They're not fighting for anyone to live as equals under one roof.

1071
00:52:34,460 --> 00:52:35,580
That is not what they're fighting for.

1072
00:52:35,580 --> 00:52:37,100
That's not what they've ever fought for.

1073
00:52:37,100 --> 00:52:39,980
They say from the river to the sea, they say we don't want no 48.

1074
00:52:39,980 --> 00:52:40,940
We want all of it.

1075
00:52:40,940 --> 00:52:42,780
That's what they've been chanting from the beginning.

1076
00:52:42,780 --> 00:52:44,300
We did not ask for October 7th.

1077
00:52:44,300 --> 00:52:48,140
Actually, if you ask all Israelis, we would prefer it have not happened.

1078
00:52:48,140 --> 00:52:50,940
We in no way are celebrating October 7th.

1079
00:52:50,940 --> 00:52:54,380
The only side that's still celebrating it as a victory, even though they're lying in rubble,

1080
00:52:54,940 --> 00:52:56,860
is Hamas, right?

1081
00:52:57,900 --> 00:53:01,660
When your victory looks the way that Gaza looks today, that's not victory.

1082
00:53:01,660 --> 00:53:02,620
That's not.

1083
00:53:02,620 --> 00:53:05,340
So you really have to take a step back and say, who am I fighting for?

1084
00:53:05,340 --> 00:53:10,860
When my views of a secular democratic state don't align with the party that I supposedly

1085
00:53:10,860 --> 00:53:12,140
support, Hamas, right?

1086
00:53:12,140 --> 00:53:15,180
You ask college students, you say, hey, secular democratic state, you support that?

1087
00:53:15,180 --> 00:53:16,060
College students will say yes.

1088
00:53:16,060 --> 00:53:17,340
You say, you know, Hamas doesn't.

1089
00:53:17,340 --> 00:53:18,380
They can't fathom that.

1090
00:53:18,380 --> 00:53:19,740
They can't wrap their head around it.

1091
00:53:20,380 --> 00:53:21,340
They can't.

1092
00:53:21,340 --> 00:53:23,900
So where do I see the path here for the civilians in Gaza?

1093
00:53:23,900 --> 00:53:24,780
I honestly don't know.

1094
00:53:25,420 --> 00:53:26,300
I honestly don't know.

1095
00:53:26,300 --> 00:53:27,900
I think that they're tired.

1096
00:53:27,900 --> 00:53:29,660
I think that there's fighting reports.

1097
00:53:29,660 --> 00:53:33,980
Whenever I speak to people, half of them say, well, did you know that the majority of Gazans

1098
00:53:33,980 --> 00:53:35,820
don't support Hamas and they just want to rebuild?

1099
00:53:35,820 --> 00:53:38,940
And then other people tell me, did you know that the majority of Gazans are still celebrating

1100
00:53:38,940 --> 00:53:41,020
October 7th as if it was yesterday?

1101
00:53:41,020 --> 00:53:41,500
I don't know.

1102
00:53:41,500 --> 00:53:42,780
I'm not on the ground.

1103
00:53:42,780 --> 00:53:46,220
But what I can tell you is that what happens is a tragedy, but it's a tragedy that could

1104
00:53:46,220 --> 00:53:50,380
have ended had Hamas returned the hostages on October 9th or 10th or 11th or 12th.

1105
00:53:51,020 --> 00:53:52,540
And that's the reality.

1106
00:53:52,540 --> 00:53:55,100
Whenever people said ceasefire now, I say, absolutely.

1107
00:53:55,100 --> 00:53:57,340
And as part of that, you have to return all hostages.

1108
00:53:57,340 --> 00:53:59,980
Hostages and ceasefire, that's something I could get behind.

1109
00:53:59,980 --> 00:54:01,500
But unfortunately, that's not how they see it.

1110
00:54:02,300 --> 00:54:04,540
Dela Cohab, thank you so much for being with us today.

1111
00:54:04,540 --> 00:54:05,580
It was an absolute pleasure and honor.

1112
00:54:05,580 --> 00:54:07,660
I really appreciate your time and your insights.

1113
00:54:07,660 --> 00:54:08,140
Absolutely.

1114
00:54:08,140 --> 00:54:08,940
Thank you.

1115
00:54:08,940 --> 00:54:09,820
I'm Chris Meek.

1116
00:54:09,820 --> 00:54:10,380
We're out of time.

1117
00:54:10,380 --> 00:54:11,020
We'll see you next week.

1118
00:54:11,020 --> 00:54:12,140
Same time, same place.

1119
00:54:12,140 --> 00:54:15,180
Until then, stay safe and keep taking your next steps forward.

1120
00:54:20,140 --> 00:54:23,100
Thanks for tuning in to Next Steps Forward.

1121
00:54:23,100 --> 00:54:28,380
Be sure to join Chris Meek for another great show next Tuesday at 10 a.m. Pacific Time

1122
00:54:28,380 --> 00:54:33,100
and 1 p.m. Eastern Time on The Voice America Empowerment Channel.

1123
00:54:33,100 --> 00:54:38,060
This week, make things happen in your life.