Omar Suleiman: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah. And when people say, “If you vote for Donald Trump,” and I’m not planning to vote for Donald Trump either, but, “if you don’t vote for Joe Biden, then you are destroying democracy.” I’m like a democracy that’s given us a choice between Donald Trump. And Joe Biden is already a failed democracy, and so he never had the hearts and minds of the Muslim community. People always saw past his rhetoric. He always has had a terrible disposition towards Palestine. He’s always had a terrible disposition towards the Muslim world. His segregationist past comes out sometimes when he starts talking about the Muslim world, and you can hear the racism in his voice and you can hear the way that he talks about Palestinian life in such devalued fashion. So he lost us a long time ago, but he’s definitely not getting us back after this in any way. And I can’t speak for all Muslims, but I think that come November, he and all of those politicians, especially in swing states that have turned their back on the Muslim community, and not just the Muslim community, by the way. 67% of this country wants a ceasefire. Three-fourths of Democratic voters want a ceasefire. Half of Republican voters want a ceasefire. It’s not just the Muslim community. This is not some radical opinion to call for a ceasefire, and every single politician that has refused to hear us is going to pay a price at the polls, as they should. That doesn’t mean that we’re under any illusion that the other side promises us anything better. In fact, it feels like Republicans have simply rushed to out-racist the Democrats, to outpace them in terms of talking about how they’re going to be more unapologetic in supporting Israel unconditionally. It’s been pathetic, but something has to change, and I think that Americans of conscience have to look at how this failed political system has hurt people here and abroad and talk about how to transcend that with just more humanity. Again, when you have 67% of the American public that wants a ceasefire, but only a handful of congressmen out of over 500 can muster up the courage in the face of these super PACs to say that we should stop the genocide, what are you asking for here? You’re asking for the genocide to stop. You’re asking for Israeli hostages to be brought home. You’re asking for Palestinian prisoners to be released. You’re asking for peace and to start carving the path out to end this once and for all in the most ambiguous way possible, by the way, because there aren’t many radical American politicians. It’s the way that the system is. In the most ambiguous, bare way possible, and you can’t even bring yourself to do that. This is already a failed democracy then. All the while, again, it always boggles my mind, if you’re from the America First crew, what’s America First about? Funneling billions and billions and billions of dollars to Israel while it carries out this genocide while people are starving here. if you’re from the America First crew, what’s America First about? Funneling billions and billions and billions of dollars to Israel while it carries out this genocide while people are starving here. And if you’re part of the human rights crew and progressive crew, they have a term called progressive except Palestine, right? PeP, Progressive except Palestine. Where are all your notions of social justice? You talk about policing here, but you don’t talk about who trains our police departments in many major cities and the type of brutality that’s being carried out there. You talk about human rights at the border here, but you don’t talk about the assault on people at the border there. You talk about all of these things here, but you somehow use the exact same framings against the people there. So it’s exposed, I think, the moral bankruptcy of both political polar opposites that exist in this country right now and hopefully, evoked a greater societal sentiment to say this is ridiculous. One of the things that is happening is that more people are getting their news outside of legacy media outlets. You can’t hide that many dead babies anymore. You just can’t. More people have woken up to the Palestinian plight now than ever before. More people are outraged that this has been our American foreign policy all throughout Democratic and Republican administrations. This is what we’ve been paying for? This is what we’ve been excusing? And Israeli leaders literally spit in the faces of whoever the American president is and says, “Yeah, we don’t care what they tell us to do.” American leadership says, “We’re pushing Israel to minimize the casualties, to get less indiscriminate with its bombing, to manage the crisis, get a few more humanitarian corridors in, to make sure that Gaza is not evacuated and not ethnically cleansed, to make sure Palestinians can come back.” And Netanyahu comes on TV and says, “From the river to the sea,” how ironic is that? From the river to the sea, and that is his policy. “We’re going to make sure that Israel controls from the river to the sea, and we’re going to push Palestinians into Sinai and Muslim countries need to take them in.” You have Israeli ministers, national defense ministers saying things openly like, “We want to thin out the population,” i.e. ethnic cleansing. “We want to remove people, and the Muslim world needs to step up and take in these refugees.” And the American administration or the American President says, or an American Secretary of State says, “We’re talking to them and we’re making sure that that’s not going to happen.” And if one of their ministers says something, Blinken maybe tweets out something about how that’s not going to happen, but then it happens anyway, and then we still write them the checks. So I think most of the American public is probably going to get sick of this at some point, and just people of decency and people of conscience are going to say, “Yeah, this is not something we want to be a part of anymore.”…

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