Watch the Uncensored Version of the Gaza–Israel Speech That’s Waking and Shaking the World

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today is December 22, 2024—just three days before Christmas. Yesterday morning, I was filled with happiness after wrapping presents for two of my granddaughters, ages 9 and 12, who will be spending Christmas Day with me. I couldn’t help but imagine their excited faces as they tore open their gifts, and that vision left me grinning from ear to ear. Little did I know how quickly my joyful mood would evaporate—and how soon I’d find myself in tears over the plight of the Palestinians.

After lunch, YouTube recommended a video that sent me down a rabbit hole. I ended up binge-watching footage that exposes the genocide Israel is waging against the Palestinians. That one particular video—Susan Abulhawa’s November 28, 2024, presentation at the Oxford Union Debate—is embedded below. It’s a deeply moving and crucial speech—one I believe every adult should watch and share. Although I was already acutely aware of the crimes against humanity taking place in Gaza, Susan’s words touched me in a deep way I hadn’t experienced before.

If you’re short on time, feel free to scroll down and watch Susan’s speech right now—be sure to stay until the end for a powerful conclusion you likely haven’t heard before. Otherwise, keep reading to explore some relevant supporting information. The following topics are covered:

Antisemitism
The comedy video that motivated me to write this article
What Was Debated at the Oxford Union?
Susan Abulhawa’s speech was partially censored by the Oxford Union
A Hero’s 5-Minute Summary of Israel’s Brutality and Immunity
Israel’s Right to Defend Itself
The October 7 attack was ALLOWED by Israel so they could retaliate
Israel Has Committed Multiple Acts Prohibited by the Genocide Convention of 1948 | Amnesty International
Proof that Israel INTENTIONALLY targets children
Many more Palestinians have died than we have been told
The ICC Issues Arrest Warrants for War Crimes
U.S. support for Israel will likely increase under Trump
The Palestinian man the media doesn't want you to know exists
Empathy is the glue that makes us stand united as humanity
Does silence make us complicit?
Susan Abulhawa’s speech at the Oxford Union debate
Transcript of Susan Abulhawa’s speech

Antisemitism

To be clear, I am NOT antisemitic. I genuinely hope Jewish people everywhere can have happy lives and live peacefully alongside all communities. WATCH THIS INTERVIEW from 2002 on Democracy Now with former Israeli government minister, Shulamit Aloni, in which she explains that antisemitism allegations are used as a trick to silence critics of Israel.

The Comedy Video that Motivated Me to Write This Article

During my binge-watching session yesterday, I came across this video: “Israel Has The Right To Defend Itself | Stand-up Comedy by Daniel Fernandes.” In the video, Daniel Fernandes highlights that today’s children will grow up, see the evidence and footage of this genocide—fully backed by the U.S.—and wonder how we could have stayed silent. They’ll ask why we didn’t care enough to speak out.

What Was Debated at the Oxford Union?

On November 28, 2024, the Oxford Union held a debate on the resolution, “This house believes that Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide.” Susan Abulhawa was one of eight speakers—four on each side. You can watch the other seven speakers HERE (along with the edited version of Susan’s speech). In the end, the motion passed by a wide margin: 278 to 59.

Susan Abulhawa’s Speech Was Partially Censored

It turns out that the Oxford Union originally posted Susan’s full speech on their YouTube channel, where it had over a million views, but then removed it and uploaded an edited version with parts of Susan’s speech removed – the parts the Zionists did NOT want you to hear. You can watch Susan discuss the parts of her speech that were removed and why it matters in THIS brilliant interview with Katie Halper (who happens to be Jewish).

A Hero’s 5-Minute Summary of Israel’s Brutality and Immunity

Watch UN Rapporteur Francesca Albanese address Israel’s actions in Palestine, focusing on its impunity and the international community’s inaction. Speaking at the UN headquarters in Geneva, she calls out the lack of sanctions on Israel despite its brutality and barbarism against Palestinians. Albanese's powerful remarks highlight the growing global frustration. This woman is a hero in my book and should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. WATCH HERE.

Israel’s Right to Defend Itself

The title of Daniel Fernandes' comedy video caught my attention because at the very beginning of a new documentary titled “Occupied”, there is a clip of Benjamin Netanyahu in 2001 saying that Israel needed to “strike them, not once, but several times, so painfully that the price they pay will be unbearable. So far, the price tag is not unbearable. A large scale attack on the Palestinian authority, causing them to fear that everything is about to collapse – this is what we’ll bring them to.”

To which a woman replies: “Hold on, then the world will again say that we’re occupiers!”

Netanyahu then said: “No. The world will say nothing. The world will say that we are defending oursleves… America is something you can easily maneuver.”

The phrase, “Israel has the right to defend themselves,” is the exact phrase now uttered by many of our government officials – including several that I previously held in high regard. How did Netanyahu know they would say this? The sad truth is that a group that David Icke calls a Sabbatean Cult (aka Deep State) has controlled the U.S. government for nearly 200 years (see proof HERE).

The October 7 Attack Was Allowed by Israel

I have been very aware of Israel’s mission to remove the Palestinians from their land ever since posting THIS VIDEO by David Icke on the day after October 7, 2023 attack. In the video, Icke presented compelling evidence that the attack was NOT a surprise. On the contrary, it was ALLOWED by Israel so that they could then retaliate a thousand fold. Icke predicted pretty much everything that has happened since the attack.

Below is a quote from Icke’s video regarding the Sabbatean cult that was mentioned above:

“They don't care about you, Jewish people of Israel and the wider world. The Sabbatean cult has infiltrated you. It does not care about you, and that's why it's allowed this to happen for ulterior motives we will get into. And at the same time, this global cult, as I call it, is behind Hamas. If you want to bring two groups of people into conflict with each other, they control both sides… So Hamas is hanging the Palestinian civilians out to dry, and the same is happening with the government of Israel and Israeli civilians.”

Israel Has Committed Multiple Acts Prohibited by the Genocide Convention of 1948 | Amnesty International

In addition to the overwhelming agreement regarding genocide in the vote taken after the Oxford Union debate, WATCH how Amnesty International arrived at the same conclusion through evidence and analyis. The first treaty to explicitly define and criminalize genocide in international law was adopted by the United Nations in 1948 in response to the atrocities of World War II. To prove genocide has taken place you need to show that ONE or more of the five acts prohibited by the genocide convention was carried out. In this video, Amnesty International provides evidence that 3 of the 5 prohibited acts have been committed by Israel:

Israel's Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza Revealed Through Evidence and Analysis | Amnesty International

Amnesty International: For the genocide to end—governments must come together and take resolute action.  They must use every legal avenue to bring perpetrators to justice, stop arms transfers and urgently work to dismantle Israel’s unlawful occupation and apartheid regime.

Proof that Israel INTENTIONALLY Targets Children

In the documentary “Occupied”, Israeli soldiers unequivocally state that they kill Palestinian children to prevent them from growing up to become their enemies in the future. In the following two videos, doctors who volunteered in Palestine share harrowing first-hand accounts that reveal children were deliberately targeted:

In these two videos, several other doctors also describe the horrific situations they witnessed firsthand:

Many More Palestinians Have Died Than We Have Been Told

During Susan Abulhawa’s speech at the Oxford Union, she provided some of the reasons why the Palestinian death count is much higher than we’ve been told – likely to be at least 300,000. Earlier this year, she published an article about the death toll in Gaza that goes into much greater detail. Check Susan’s article out HERE.

Note that “The Lancet” published an article a few weeks after Susan in which they came to a simliar conclusion. The Lancet article includes the following text:

“The total death toll is expected to be large given the intensity of this conflict; destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the population's inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to UNRWA, one of the very few humanitarian organisations still active in the Gaza Strip.

“In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.”

READ MORE HERE

ICC Issues Arrest Warrants for War Crimes

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes in Gaza. It's also issued warrants for Hamas leader Mohammed Deif. However, politicians in Israel and the U.S. have attempted to intimidate the ICC to withdraw the warrants:

U.S. support for Israel Will Likely Increase Under Trump

“Forget Russia, the real threat to America comes from Israel and the Israel Lobby.” ~Julian Assange

Below are a few key examples showing Donald Trump’s steadfast support for Israel and his hostility toward Palestine—including his push to penalize those who criticize Israel:

The Palestinian Man The Media Doesn't Want You To Know Exists

Our media and most of our government officials, including Trump, want us to believe that all Palestinian men are terrorists who must be eliminated. This is similar to Trump’s assertion that all illegal immigrants are criminals, rapists, and murderers. Of course, both of those notions are ridiculous. WATCH THIS powerful message.

Empathy Is the Glue that Makes Us Stand United As Humanity

UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, asked members of the United Nations: “Is it possible that after 42,000 people killed, you cannot empathize with the Palestinians?” In that same video, Francesca went on to say that “empathy is the glue that makes us stand united as humanity.” Will our children one day ask us: where was your empathy, your humanity?

Does Silence Make Us Complicit?

Philosophers and human rights advocates argue that when people remain silent in the face of genocide, they effectively enable or approve of the perpetrators’ actions. Refusing to speak out, despite being aware of what’s happening, is considered a form of moral complicity, even if the silent party isn’t personally carrying out the violence.

By publishing this article, I’m finally breaking my silence. I wish I’d done it sooner. Please feel free to share it broadly, and add your own insights if you’d like—there are countless other articles and videos that shed even more light on this urgent issue.

Susan Abulhawa’s Speech at the Oxford Union Debate

Transcript of Susan Abulhawa’s Speech

I will not take questions until I’m finished speaking; so please refrain from interrupting me.

Addressing the challenge of what to do about the indigenous inhabitants of the land Chaim Weizman, a Russian Jew, said to the World Zionist Congress in 1921 that Palestinians were akin to “the rocks of Judea, obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path.”

David Gruen, a Polish Jew, who changed his name to David Ben Gurion (1886-1973) to sound relevant to the region, said. “We must expel Arabs and take their places.”

There are thousands of such conversations among the early zionists who plotted and implemented the violent colonization of Palestine and the annihilation of her native people.

But they were only partially successful, murdering or ethnically cleansing 80% of Palestinians. This meant that 20% of us remained, an enduring obstacle to their colonial fantasies, which became the subject of their obsessions in the decades that followed, especially after conquering what remained of Palestine in 1967.

Zionists lamented our presence and they debated publicly in all circles—political, academic, social, and cultural — what to do with us; what to do about the Palestinian birth rate, about our babies, which they dub a “demographic threat.”

Benny Morris, who was originally meant to be here, once expressed regret that Ben Gurion “did not finish the job” of getting rid of us all, which would have obviated what they refer to as the “Arab problem.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, a Polish Jew whose real name is Benjamin Mileikowsky, once bemoaned a missed opportunity during the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising to expel large swaths of the Palestinian population “while world attention was focused on China.”

Some of their articulated solutions to the nuisance of our existence include a “break their bones” policy in the ’80s and ’90s, ordered by Yitzhak Rubitzov, a Ukrainian Jew who changed his name to Yitzhak Rabin (for the same reasons).

That horrific policy crippling generations of Palestinians did not succeed in making us leave. And, frustrated by Palestinian resilience, a new discourse arose, especially after a massive natural gas field was discovered off the coast of Northern Gaza, worth trillions of dollars.

This new discourse is echoed in the words of Colonel Efraim Eitan, who said in 2004, “we have to kill them all.”

Aaron Sofer, an Israeli so-called intellectual and political advisor, insisted in 2018 that “we have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.”

When I was in Gaza, I saw a little boy no more than nine years old whose hands and part of his face had been blown off from a booby-trapped can of food that soldiers had left behind for Gaza’s starving children. I later learned that they had also left poisoned food for people in Shujaiyya, and in the 1980s and ’90s, Israeli soldiers had left booby-trapped toys in southern Lebanon that exploded when excited children picked them up.

The harm they do is diabolical, and yet they expect you to believe they are the victims. Invoking Europe’s Holocaust and screaming antisemitism, they expect you to suspend fundamental human reason to believe that the daily sniping of children with so-called “kill shots” and the bombing of entire neighborhoods that bury families alive and wipe out whole bloodlines is self-defense.

They want you to believe that a man who had not eaten a thing in over 72 hours, who kept fighting even when all he had was one functioning arm, that this man was motivated by some innate savagery and irrational hatred or jealousy of Jews, rather than the indomitable yearning to see his people free in their own homeland.

It’s clear to me that we’re not here to debate whether Israel is an apartheid or genocidal state. This debate is ultimately about the worth of Palestinian lives; about the worth of our schools, research centers, books, art, and dreams; about the worth of the homes we worked all our lives to build and which contain the memories of generations; about the worth of our humanity and our agency; the worth of our bodies and ambitions.

Because if the roles were reversed — if Palestinians had spent the last eight decades stealing Jewish homes, expelling, oppressing, imprisoning, poisoning, torturing, raping and killing Jews; if Palestinians had killed an estimated 300,000 Jews in one year, targeted their journalists, their thinkers, their healthcare workers, their athletes, their artists, bombed every Israeli hospital, university, library, museum, cultural center, synagogue, and simultaneously set up an observation platform where people came to watch their slaughter as if a tourist attraction;

if Palestinians had corralled Jews by the hundreds of thousands into flimsy tents, bombed them in so-called safe zones, burned them alive, cut off their food, water, and medicine;

if Palestinians made Jewish children wander barefoot with empty pots; made them gather the flesh of their parents into plastic bags; made them bury their siblings, cousins, and friends; made them sneak out from their tents in the middle of the night to sleep on their parents’ graves; made them pray for death just to join their families and not be alone in this terrible world anymore, and terrorized them so utterly that their children lose their hair, lose their memory, lose their minds, and made those as young as four and five years old die of heart attacks;

if we mercilessly forced their NICU babies to die, alone in hospital beds, crying until they could cry no more, dead and decomposed in the same spot;

if Palestinians used wheat-flour aid trucks to lure starving Jews, then opened fire on them when they gathered to collect a day’s bread; if Palestinians finally allowed a food delivery into a shelter with hungry Jews, then set fire to the entire shelter and the aid truck before anyone could taste the food;

if a Palestinian sniper bragged about blowing out 42 Jewish kneecaps in one day as one Israeli soldier did in 2019; if a Palestinian admitted to CNN that he ran over hundreds of Jews with his tank, their squished flesh lingering in the tank treads;

if Palestinians were systematically raping Jewish doctors, patients, and other captives with hot metal rods, jagged and electrified sticks, and fire extinguishers, sometimes raping to death, as happened with Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh and others;

if Jewish women were forced to give birth in filth, get C-sections or leg amputations without anesthesia; if we destroyed their children then decorated our tanks with their toys; if we killed or displaced their women then posed in their lingerie…

if the world were watching the livestreamed, systematic annihilation of Jews in real time, there would be no debating whether that constituted terrorism or genocide.

And yet two Palestinians — myself and Mohammad el-Kurd — showed up here to do just that, enduring the indignity of debating those who think our only life choices should be to leave our homeland, submit to their supremacy, or die politely and quietly.

But you would be wrong to think that I came to convince you of anything. The house resolution, though well-meaning and appreciated, is of little consequence in the midst of this holocaust of our time.

I came in the spirit of Malcolm X and Jimmy Baldwin, both of whom stood here and in Cambridge before I was born, facing finely dressed, well-spoken monsters who harbored the same supremacist ideologies as Zionism — these notions of entitlement and privilege, of being divinely favored, blessed, or chosen.

I’m here for the sake of history. To speak to generations not yet born and for the chronicles of this extraordinary time where the carpet bombing of defenseless indigenous societies is legitimized.

I’m here for my grandmothers, both of whom died as penniless refugees while foreign Jews lived in their stolen homes.

And I also came to speak directly to zionists here and everywhere.

We let you into our homes when your own countries tried to murder you and everyone else turned you away. We fed and clothed you, gave you shelter, and we shared the bounty of our land with you, and when the time was ripe, you kicked us out of our own homes and homeland, then you killed and robbed and burned and looted our lives.

You carved out our hearts because it is clear you do not know how to live in the world without dominating others.

You have crossed all lines and nurtured the most vile of human impulses, but the world is finally glimpsing the terror we have endured at your hands for so long, and they are seeing the reality of who you are, who you’ve always been. They watch in utter astonishment the sadism, the glee, the joy, and pleasure with which you conduct, watch, and cheer the daily details of breaking our bodies, our minds, our future, our past.

But no matter what happens from here, no matter what fairytales you tell yourself and tell the world, you will never truly belong to that land. You will never understand the sacredness of the olive trees, which you’ve been cutting down and burning for decades just to spite us and to break our hearts a little more. No one native to that land would dare do such a thing to the olives. No one who belongs to that region would ever bomb or destroy such ancient heritage as Baalbak or Bittir, or destroy ancient cemeteries as you destroy ours, like the Anglican cemetery in Jerusalem or the resting place of ancient Muslim scholars and warriors in Maamanillah. Those who come from that land do not desecrate the dead; that’s why my family for centuries were the caretakers of the Jewish cemetery in the Mount of Olives, as labors of faith and care, for what we know is part of our ancestry and story.

Your ancestors will always be buried in your actual homelands of Poland, Ukraine, and elsewhere around the world from whence you came. The mythos and folklore of the land will always be alien to you.

You will never be literate in the sartorial language of the thobes we wear, that sprang from the land through our foremothers over centuries—every motif, design, and pattern speaking to the secrets of local lore, flora, birds, rivers, and wildlife.

What your real estate agents call in their high-priced listings “old Arab home” will always hold in their stones the stories and memories of our ancestors who built them. The ancient photos and paintings of the land will never contain you.

You will never know how it feels to be loved and supported by those who have nothing to gain from you, and in fact, everything to lose. You will never know the feeling of masses all over the world pouring into the streets and stadiums to chant and sing for your freedom; and it is not because you are Jewish, as you try to make the world believe, but because you are depraved violent colonizers who think your Jewishness entitles you to the home my grandfather and his brothers built with their own hands on lands that had been in our family for centuries. It is because Zionism is a blight onto Judaism and indeed onto humanity.

You can change your names to sound more relevant to the region and you can pretend falafel and hummus and zaatar are your ancient cuisines, but in the recesses of your being, you will always feel the sting of this epic forgery and theft. That’s why even the drawings of our children, hung on walls at the UN or in a hospital ward, send your leaders and lawyers into hysteric meltdowns.

You will not erase us, no matter how many of us you kill and kill and kill, all day every day. We are not the rocks Chaim Weizmann thought you could clear from the land. We are its very soil. We are her rivers and her trees and her stories, because all of that was nurtured by our bodies and our lives over millennia of continuous, uninterrupted habitation of that patch of earth between the Jordan and Mediterranean waters. From our Canaanite, our Hebrew, our Philistine, and our Phoenician ancestors, to every conqueror or pilgrim who came and went, who married or raped, loved, enslaved, converted between religions, settled or prayed in our land, leaving pieces of themselves in our bodies and our heritage, the fabled, tumultuous stories of that land are quite literally in our DNA. You cannot kill or propagandize that away, no matter what death technology you use or what Hollywood and corporate media arsenals you deploy.

Someday, your impunity and arrogance will end. Palestine will be free; she will be restored to her multi-religious, multi-ethnic pluralistic glory; we will restore and expand the trains that run from Cairo to Gaza to Jerusalem, Haifa, Tripoli, Beirut, Damascus, Amman, Kuwait, Sanaa, and so on; we will put an end to the zionist American war machine of domination, expansion, extraction, pollution, and looting.

. . .And you will either leave, or you will finally learn to live with others as equals.