On Day 7 of the pro-Palestinian protests on the Columbia University campus, Osama Abuirshaid stopped by the student encampment.
The executive director of American Muslims for Palestine walked through the tent city, then made a fiery speech to the gathered crowd.
“This is not only a genocide that is being committed in Gaza,” Abuirshaid said. “This is also a war on us here in America.”
Forty-eight hours later, Abuirshaid appeared at another campus — George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he delivered another speech.
These sort of attempts to discredit the movement won’t work while Israel is conducting a fucking genocide.
There’s unfortunately more to it than that. It is on peaceful protestors to make sure they’re not supporting violent organizations. Just because I say something, and someone else says the same thing I say, does not make that person automatically my friend and ally.
Everyone who fights against some evil is not automatically a good person. It’s just not that simple in real life. Evil fights other evil all the time, look at gang wars and cartel violence.
There’s more to this than a simple smear campaign, and if we just try to brush it away as one, we are only hurting our own cause.
edit: We don’t want to be the equivalent of a “good cop” that covers for other corrupt cops, just because they’re “on the same side”. It’s hard, but we have to be better than that.
Agreed.
I’m reminded of Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” quote, in response to the Charlottesville protests where Proud Boys chanted “Jews will not replace us.”