crisis devastating wars, terrorism, the israeli lobby, crackdown, diplomacy, silencing pro-palestinian voices. of

four months past since these ready genocide at palestinians in gaza and washington has been there for tel aviv all along directly involved in the deadly war. people around the world including many in the united states have taken to the streets slamming the ethnic cleansing the palestinians of the palestinians and washington's role in those crimes. still the bite administration has gone even further. not only does it not heat the demands of the public. to force israel to stop the genocide, it also threatens and stifles voices of descent inside america. now let's take out the reasons why this is with our guests in this episode of the spotlight. welcome to the show, i'm your host. let me introduce our guests. charles simmons, american professor of law and journalism with eastern michigan university joining from detroit. i'll... so with us tonight is shabir

risvy, he is a political commentator out of chicago. welcome to the show, both gentlemen. now let me begin uh with charles if i may. first question i want to ask you, you know, the us administration, as you know charles has defied all international outcries and stood by israel in its genocide of palestinians and gaza. it's not just supporting the apartite regime, it's actually involved in the war by providing. with money, intelligence, sendcom is given to military advice, weapons and bombs and you name it, so let our viewers know what vested interests washington has in doing so? well, thank you for inviting me, sure, um, i think the all there is a correct emphasis upon the the genocidal activity of israel, but we are, not in

really getting the depth of understanding about the us intention of genocide in order to control the resources of the middle east so that even though it doesn't need it, we don't need it here, but we want to be able to control the politics and policies of the allies as well as the people who are considered, competitors or enemies, so israel is doing the work of american. and it has done the dirty work for the united states for for decades and it always pretends to be neutral or pretends to be trying to put pressure on israel, design its positions, but the united states has generally supported the most right-wing elements in israel historically, and all of the wars, of course we financed all of the wars there and the oppression and the genocide, and it's important to know about us history. that this

has been a this has been the policy of american history from the beginning uh genocide uh policies begin here and continue to this day right and shabir the harvard university students complaining about being prevented from voicing support for palestinians what's wrong with that i mean what's become of freedom of expression in america why don't they uh do the same thing if somebody supports ukrainian? i mean, freedom of expression in the united states was always limited from the very start, these this is the declaration that was written by wealthy property owners that they themselves own slaves. what it comes down to today in of the united states is your freedom of your freedom of speech assembly and expression only goes so far as um the state allows it to, if it's really going to disrupt uh their imperious policy, if it's really going to disrupt their economic motivations then..."

'all that stuff goes right out the window, as we've seen from time and time again, especially in the case of protesting against israel, that only do they use violent suppression such as, arresting people'. uh in order to suppress protesters, but they also use this name and shame campaign where protesters that are arrested are then you know kind of um shown in the media, the media parades their face around everywhere, their employers see it uh, their schools see it, and then they're essentially blacklisted and then those uh people are used as examples to show other people that hey, if you go against the if you go against our foreign policy, this is what we're going to do to you, if you dare disrupt uh traffic, for example, or if you dare disrupt our economy in the name of palestine, in the name of justice, uh, we will go ahead and blacklist you, um, take it from someone uh, myself uh, that has been arrested before, um, the one thing that you know they're going to try to do is going,

they're going to try to stop you and prevent you from coming back and doing it again, they'll make you sign, they'll attempt to make you sign some sort of clause or some contract or get you to get into a settlement - in order for you do not come back out, but that's essentially what they're trying to do, the they'll throw money at it, they'll throw away their own uh so-called principles to make sure that you stay in line and that you do not go against uh whatever policy it is that they're enacting that might be very unpopular um but it doesn't matter because it's at the end of the day their foreign policy uh charles washington is not tolerant of voices opposing the policies uh you know visa v crimes that del aviv regime is committing against palestinians. especially these days, let me site you some examples, like we had a philadelphia sports writer who was fired after tweeting solidarity with palestine, we have a professor at the university of california, berkeley, he was fired of course as an editing chief uh after he retweed an article in which it calls out

indifference to the lives of palestinian civilians, and there was a long list of such instances. your comment on that? well, the palestinian um... focus of the censorship and repression is a, it fits into the the overall framework of us foreign policy, which is always been a genocidal policy. now the world is surprised that the us has has not responded to the horrors that are implemented on the palestinians, but that is what the united states has been doing everywhere. we can't, we have to remember what u.s. history is. i mean, going back from the beginning, we... "we murdered folks in uh all throughout the 17 and 1800, stole the land, committed genocide on native americans, uh, the pretense of democracy in the us uh is is something that the world has been fooled by, the the democracy has not been applied to

most african-americans, most people color who are working class, now the elites get some some type of justice, but people of the working classes. among black folks have never had justice and so what's happening with the palestinians just fits into the normal spectrum of what the united states have done you know we had if you think you remember when jimmy carter president jimmy carter wrote the book about a party in in the united palestine um they they gave him hell he could hardly get on they would hardly let him on television and uh they they reviewed the book once or twice and tried to ban it now when jimmy carter was uh ambassador at the united nations, he had a meeting, secret meeting, they said it was secret meeting with yasa arapat, palestiny liberation organization, and he was fired as us ambassador, the israelis to the apec lobbious organization right now are trying are have hundred million

dollars that they're going to spend that they are currently spending to disrupt us elections to prevent the voices of black folks, people of color. women who are expressing their ideas, simply critical thinking, but anybody who speaks up about justice is in trouble in the united states and that has been the case from the beginning, right? now shabir, american academics, i also worried while they're you know uh posting these anti israel stuff on social media, they've cited uh being stocked, they've they're been threatened, they've been fired from their jobs, as it was reported by a correspondent. chicago for instance, i want to ask you, what makes the us administration so erky when it comes to israel in instead? well, israel is essentially the 51st uh state the united states, but more so importantly, it's an outpost for military expansion, it's an outpost for imperialist conquest, and it's

the loan, it's really the loan outpost out there, you have all these us military bases across the region, don't get me wrong, but israel is the one that is ideologically lined up uh with the united states, so when people... for israel, they're essentially coming for the united states, they're coming for the united states foreign policy and therefore, imperialism as a whole, so generation after generation is waking up to the fact that the israeli entity is an illegitimate is an illegitimate entity, it should not be there, it's an aberation, and more importantly, it's an occupation an apartite state, it's continuing an ongoing ethnic cleansing that has lasted for over 75 years now, and each what they're saying, even the apec people are saying is that they're not afraid of the left-wing or the right-wing divide, they're afraid of of the young and old divide, and that especially comes with um these academic activists with these high school activists as actually as we speak

right now in chicago uh thousands of high school students are walking out uh in support the palestinian college but you will not hear about it on the news because these people are deathly afraid of the popularity of palestine to point where they're suppressing the news and they're suppressing the academics themselves with threats whether that's threats of violence whether that's financial threats anything they can to keep this in the can. and so you're going to see this um, i think mutate even more exponentially, and uh, the united states is going to get desperate in order to um kind of control this entire narrative. one last thing on this topic, um, very recently, um, i, i remember being on the show, and we talked about how congress passed um, this, basically, this, it's not a law, but basically, you know, an opinion that says that zen that anti-semitism is anti-zionism, through that they can now control any... publicly funded universities to say, if you are allowing these anti-zionist protests on

your campus, we can withdraw funding, so now there's seeing that, they can't control this a social level, so they're trying to go, they're trying to stop the palestinian movement a systemic level completely. yeah, you mentioned anti-semitism so uh, charles, there are some educational standards in the us, i'm sure you're aware of them, they are told to even remove what what they call anti-semitic content in their curriculum, of course, much of the material is not. believe to be anti-semitic in a way. i mean, you can criticize anybody and anything in america except jews. i mean, is the administration allergic to it or what? i mean, muslim sanctities for instance, and their prophet are insulted in europe, and the us calls that freedom of speech. no, even hypocrisy cannot describe this properly, can it? well, there, there are a confluence of forces that contributed to this. hypocrisy you have the uh um the long history of the evangelicals

who are who opposregation, they you know they oppose the anti-aparatite movement and they a strong force in the uh imperialist colonial policies of the united states especially in in the trump organization but also in the biden organization um i think it's important just pointed and that's something that we have to those of us who believe in peace and justice have to strongly support these young people and uh

encourage citizen to citizen diplomacy, citizen to citizen outreach uh between people in the in the west and and in the middle east and the global south, i don't think the solution can come from the top, i think the solution is going to have to come from the grassroots from the bottom, from working class people, from students uh from ordinary people in the streets who who are seeing their own economic situations in the west and globally deteriorate as a result of these on these continuous wars in the united that the united states promotes, because this war is not only against the peoples of in the global south, but it is also against the working classes in the united states, the middle classes in the united states and in the west also, we see the people throughout the west, the streets fighting for peace, fighting to get uh um the end of the war, sease fires and

the governments are not listening anywhere, so we have to stand up and support the young people and the people who are fighting for peace and justice and bring us closer, we have to buill a united front of unity for justice around the world, and this is going to be, we have to take on these governments our supporting injustice because it benefits to... multinational corporations, industries are the ones, they making trillions of dollars a year while the peop

where there not in israel, the united states of america would have to invent in israel to protect her interests in the region, the united states would have to go out and event in israel, this is what joe biden said, decades before he made his way into the oval office, it was like 441, like 30 years ago, so what does this signify, what interest was he alluding to? yeah, i believe that quote was from 1986 on the senate floor, if i remember correctly, um, like i said previously, is... is a is a military outpost for the united states imperialist interests, if there wasn't in israel uh they would make one because they need one, they need to have um an outpost in order to conduct imperialist missions worldwide. um, for example, if it wasn't israel, they would maybe put it somewhere near north africa, they need this, they need a control trade route and they need

a control route in order for them to deploy military operations in order to secure key economic channels, which we see right now is being very much threatened, as you see with unsatra law uh, combatting the us and the british and and such and such in the red sea. now we're actually seeing why israel is so important to the united states ruling class, as my colleague and comrad here said, uh, specifically a ruling class of multinational corporations, they desperately need these trade routes and these they need these trade routes to be secured, they need them to be secured by military personnel, and that is... that is the very purpose that israel serves, and so when you have these trade routs threatened, when you have people fighting back against the united states military, when you have people fighting back against israel, that threatens the united states, uh, and and the way it's threatened, it's out, it's um, you know, attacking people aggressively, it's committing a genocide, it's committing ethnic

cleansing, and there is the danger uh with the united states, because as more and more young people are waking up, they are beginning to understand um, especially young americans, their role in the world, they are, americans are living in the belly of the beast, lot of people are coming to this realization because of the cruel foreign policy of the united states, especially in relation to israel, where we are giving israel unfettered amounts of weapons and money in order to conduct this genocide, young person has to ask, if i have two options coming november and both of them are a in a competition to see who can ' israel more, what does the united states really stand for? and this has the potential to create cataclysmic sequence of events that threatens the ruling classes grip entirely. now charles, uh, all us presidents have uh proved as israel's allies and stunch allies, yet the biden administration seems to have gone up further its block seas fire

resolution at the un security council. you know, it's even bypass congress. to increase weapon sales to israel, so this is pushing many observers and analysts to argue that he's gone out of his way in support of tel aviv, do you agree? it it appears that he is doing more, but i think that it is the it has been the trend in us foreign policy uh to to become uh more and more desperate as it uh maybe as it witnesses a global decline and i think that... "there's just more of incentive right now because of the dedollarization movement, the bricks, the geopolitical uh developments that are not favorable to the west in general, and i think that makes it it more of, it encourages the leadership, whoever they happen to be to try to fight tooth and nail to maintain this dominance, and it's a losing uh proposition, but they're

going to become more and more vicious in within the western countries ' against the working classes because the their prophets are shrinking and and they're going to be exploiting us more and more at home. um, but again i want emphasize we have to uh thinking of remedies, we got to think in the long-term how we can lift up these young voices everywhere who are fighting for justice and peace and uh and our trade union movements, we got to build unity and united fronts of the activists in all of all of our countries to work together to build unity that... is our weakness, the more unity we have, we can challenge successfully all all of these wars of oppression, right? now shabir, one last question, "now us has been talking about that uh too many uh lives innocent lives have been lost in gaza, but still in practice uh they give israel whatever it needs in terms of money, weapons and you name it, so given the

role that washington has played in this genocide of palestinians in gaza, in apparently it's vested interest in continuation of the carnage, so could it be trusted as a disinterested party to be able to help and put an end to this israely palestinian conflict in a just manner? no, absolutely not. united states should have all of its powers, especially in the unsc revoked. i believe they can use article 4 to do this, if i'm not mistaken, essentially the united states has threatened peace uh at every single turn within this process, it has threatened peace uh in the region since the very criminal creation of israel, the longer the united states has any legitimacy, and by the way, this is legitimacy that it itself has established through its own appendages that is made uh through international organs such as the unsc, um no, there will be no progress on earth, humanity will always come to some uh some very bleek crossroad where they have to pick between death and destruction, so long as the united states has

any sort of legitimacy within these within these tools. i think in order for humanity and the world to move forward, it has to look, it has to take a deep hard look at how the current order of things is ran uh, this hegemonic control that the united states has over the world is is an imperial. is hajaman, it's it's threatening the world every day, we are more closer to nuclear war than we have ever been, we are seeing an ongoing ethnic genocide being, ethnic cleansing and genocide being conducted before our very eyes and the united states is basically willing to uh arrest protesters, beat them and silence them and and do whatever horrific thing it can in order to make people look the other way, this is not a country that can be trusted, it is uh solely motivated by profit and it's solely motivated by profit for maybe few hundred people that that compose of the united states ruling class uh as long as they are at the

top of the equation, the united states can never have any sort of legitimacy, it can never be trusted and i think the world should start looking at other options such as relying on economic alliances such as bricks to conduct uh whatever business it can in order to render any sort of organ that the united states has as useless, inefficient, and uh just basically outdated. okay, on that note we come to the end of uh this episode of the spotlight. let me thank my guest charles simmons in detroit and shabir risby in chicago. and thank you for watching this episode to the spotlight. i've been your host behrus. i'll see you next time.

when palestinian journalist shirin abule was killed byan israel sniper on may 11, 2022.

"the israel is meant to get across a clear message, that they don't want any narrative other than their own and the decades old occupation of palestinian lands and their aggression. it wasn't the first time israeli sought to put gag on the alternative narrative, and every time it has failed. watch the history of the israeli measures and..." palestinian counter measures in this documentary.

is ready forces to storm a major hospital south of gaza, asking displaced people and crew to evacuate at gun point. the hamas political bureau chief says the palestinian's priority is to stop the brutal aggression against gaza and the full pull out of occupation forces. the us president says has decided unresponse to a recent deadly drone a strike a us base in jordan, but doesn't want a wider war in the middle east.