LONDONS OPINION OF ISRAEL - OPINION CHANGED？
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
193.90523
Summary
In this episode of the podcast, I am joined by a group of students who are protesting against the Israeli occupation of Palestine. In this episode, we discuss the impact of social media on the protest, the role of the mainstream media, and the dangers of anti-Semitism in modern society.
Transcript
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never had before how you doing you're right yeah i'm fine thanks what's your name i'm iver
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marvin iver iver my name is ali um i'm gonna say a few words i want you to tell me what comes to your
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mind yeah um when i mention the word israel what comes to your mind first i mean dodgy steak why
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it just abuse their power don't know yeah from what you guys have seen what sort of things have
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you seen and how has it made you feel i saw um a photo on twitter i think it was two days ago
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of the baby boy and he had like not bullet shots but it was like the plastic bullets
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yeah it's really upsetting and i don't understand why no one's like no big influences that i've
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followed and there should be more awareness on such a topic that's just shocking so many
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victims people using their platforms for the wrong reasons
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what has been happening to the palestinian people for so long yes yeah and what do you think
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and the fact that palestinian people are standing up now that's what makes the difference to me
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is not saying they weren't standing up before but yeah of course of course march and protest and not be
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supported by the west is wrong you know we need to those of us who live here should you know make the
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effort you know at the very least to come out and to show our support the false conflation right
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between anti-semitism on the one hand which everyone will agree is abhorrent and there's
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no place for it in modern society and anti-israel sentiment where you're criticizing the government
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action which we can do with any country in the world yeah so this kind of israeli exceptionalism is
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in fact a racist concept in and of itself because why is it that we don't you know exactly yeah the
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thing is is imagine imagine i think this is example tell me if i'm wrong yeah imagine isis
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they're muslims they're bad imagine isis says that if anyone speaks out against us they're islamophobes
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can you can imagine can you imagine isis saying you're islamophobe if you talk about what we're
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doing how are you islamophobe you're you know what i'm trying to say
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people are demonstrating outside illbit have you guys ever heard of illbit no i haven't heard of
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so do you see did you know that it was located here in the uk
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i didn't know that yeah i didn't know it's mad isn't it if i'm beating you up if i said that's
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a clash don't get involved there's a big problem i think you'll call the police right yeah okay what if
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the police don't do nothing about it and they said oh you're just clashing that's wrong that's not fair
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yeah i agree i agree okay do you assess that maybe social media has had an impact on
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the mainstream media yeah i would say so yeah yeah yeah that's right i mean i think
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people in general so many many people you know look at the horror of what's happening
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and don't have a complication of knowing which side to be on there on the side of the oppressed
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who having bombs sent and tanks sent at them and guns pointed at them so that's not complicated
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so the mass media who are much more interested in supporting the interests of the powerful have
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to listen sometimes a bit and so when they hear social media saying support palestinian rights they
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have to give some space to that if i was to ask you guess what's the percentage of arms that go from
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america to israel what would you guess wild guess 40 40 yeah it's 70 percent do you see it's mad it's
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mad isn't it yeah yeah um so i study a masters in post-colonial uh studies and theory and uh we see
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israel as a modern apartheid state and um we my uni goldsmiths gives money to fund arms in uh to give
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arms to israel so my course have produced we've um sent a letter as a course to the university to
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and we're striking and not paying our tuition fees to in protest against some of this extremely commendable
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i think what you're doing is you're acting as a student shield in your university and obviously
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you're a very intelligent and articulate person hopefully we're able to put forward a narrative
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okay against this apartheid state against the state that it knows when it bombs the most densely
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populated place in the world that there's going to be 80 to 90 percent casualties from civilians
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and yet it continues to do so you know gg hadith and bella hadith yeah i think bella hadith
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has been very vocal about it yeah she has yeah i've seen that she has been and i think it's so
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for like a young girl considering admiring that someone with such a big platform is using that
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for good cause because the majority of them don't use that at all so what's very interesting is you
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know uh israel they've got their own twitter page as well so they posted that bella hadith has been
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anti-semitic because she's speaking up did you hear that oh i haven't heard that i did see that i do
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think that as a social media it must be so hard to advocate your own views when you're not actually sure
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on the issue yourself that's how i feel i don't know how to talk about such an issue because
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you don't want to say the wrong thing you don't miss that you don't want to say something that's
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gonna insult somebody else but i do feel like raising awareness upon such a destructive issue
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it's just important in itself rather than being afraid of saying the wrong thing or something that's
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going to insult somebody else you should just be advocating something that's wrong it should be so
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much more black and white than it already is it's right and much wrong do you remember this video
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have you seen this video okay that video is of a um a jewish settler and sianist settler yeah
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and he's basically going and stealing the property of a muslim and they're trying to stop him and he
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uses this is what he says he says if i don't steal it someone else will steal it does that justify
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stealing it like imagine if i came and said to you i'm gonna steal your bike if i don't do it he's gonna
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do it would that justify it no not at all and i think also that people are becoming a bit more
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emboldened now by in their labeling of the uh israeli state as apartheid state um as a terrorist state
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even what what are your views on that that that is that it's correct to do so you know it is it's a
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state that um you know excludes and um and uh discriminates and wages war against um a people
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who lived there for hundreds of years if not longer you know i do think things are changing i
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think that previously if you spoke up for palestine as a mp or in the media like you could lose your
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job or like things like that and this is a massive shift in the opinion and that now it's sort of
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it's okay to like stand proud and say free palestine exactly that's how it should be you know that
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the fourth largest arms dealer to israel fourth or fifth is the uk did you know that yeah you did
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yeah and did you know that the country that gave legitimacy to israel was the uk because of the
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balfour declaration have you heard that balfour yeah i saw something about you heard that yeah
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how old are you i'm 14. it's quite impressive you know people are too scared to say the wrong thing
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feel so they don't say anything at all because it gets pulled up a lot when people say but you
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don't know because you come from such a privileged background and you you're not in that environment
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yourself and i think people just instantly shut down about it and they don't they don't want to
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say the wrong thing but to be honest anyone that's an advocate for such a such a treacherous issue
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you can't advocate the wrong thing because if you're raising awareness for something that's wrong
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how can that go either way if i asked you or if you both got in a fight yeah okay because this
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man can be a bit aggressive here if you go into a fight and he's starting to hit you yeah okay um
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and if if you came and said can you help me and i said well you guys are just clashing how would you
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feel i'd feel that was unfair because it wasn't a fair fight really imagine you went to the authorities
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you call to the police and the police comes and says what's wrong madam and you're like this man has
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been punching my face and was all you guys are crashing it's okay how would you how would you
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guys feel so uh taken advantage of yeah exactly and that's that's exactly what's going because if
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you look at if you look at what's going on you've got little kids with rocks and you've got rockets are
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flying in and blowing these kids into pieces and always all the bbc is using is there's clashes it's
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unfair i'm going to use some words and you tell me what comes to your mind okay and when i say israel
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what's the first thing that comes to your mind flag what's that flag flag okay uh is that the only
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thing you remember israel with uh with what's happening in palestine yeah that's what i meant
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it can't be a political thing it's a thing for everyone everyone that's walking down the street
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as you've just like if it happened to me like it's out of our control it's out of their people
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what are they supposed to do they can't voice it all they can pray on is that the media
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voice it and they haven't yeah and they haven't i mean i've seen some pretty bad stuff i mean like
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when i flick onto my instagram and stuff like that yeah you see like some of the things and like all
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videos had to get censored and things like because like some of the things that are happening are pretty
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terrible like the media representation has been disgraceful it puts it as a fair battle and it's not
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it's bombing innocent civilians as you said like i just think even even some of the left media like
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the independent and the guardian and the bbc it's just not not covering it at all fairly your
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understanding of of the reality why do you think this may be overlooked compared to other issues because
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i think it's more about like where it's also happening because if it happened here or something
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it'd be like one of the biggest things that ever happened just because it's not here if it's not like
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in america or in a european country they're kind of overlooking it showing us that you can't rely
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taken down now and it's just like the the people that disagree with your post will never see them
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because that's how the ai algorithms work so you can't yeah you can't really rely on don't worry we're