Actress and activist Emma Watson took to Instagram to show
solidarity with Palestinians here is her post,
which unfortunately led to quite a bit of backlash.
She not only tweeted or
I should say, posted that photo that says solidarity is a verb.
The caption also says solidarity does not assume that our
struggles are the same struggles or that our pain is the same pain or
that our hope is for the same future.
Solidarity involves commitment and
work as well as the recognition that even if we do not have the same feelings or
the same lives or the same bodies, we do live on common ground.
And she's quoting Sara Ahmed there.
And since it had to do with Palestinians as I think most people who
follow these types of stories can expect she got smeared as an anti Semite.
So I have a ton of these ridiculous comments in response to Emma Watson,
but before we get to them, why don't I open the floor John for
you to jump in and share your thoughts on this?
>> Yeah, it's hardly surprising.
She is a high profile celebrity who's been an activist for years and years and
years, this is entirely consistent with not only her seeming worldview but
her social media activity.
And because she's popular and well liked and respected and
has I believe been involved in some ways with the UN previously.
They're gonna hate if she does something even as benign
as what she did the post and with the image and the quotes are great.
They're also not highly specific,
It's talking about sort of it's literally solidarity in a very vague sense.
I have no idea what specifically she wants politically done.
But she's also not making any specific political demands.
She's not making any specific political criticisms of the current
Israeli government or specific military actions they've taken.
She's not doing any of those things.
All she's saying is these are humans like any humans.
We should feel some sort of kinship and solidarity for them.
And even that is too much for some people because she might inspire one of her
millions and millions and millions of followers to similarly think,
well, this is the people that I don't necessarily know.
I may never have been to Palestine.
I might not know any Palestinians.
I've never really thought about it before, but she is right.
We all are humans and they cannot take that stimulus to even basic human decency.
>> Well, let's get to the various people who have smeared her as
an anti-Semite for that you're right, John vague post.
>> I'm not saying vague in a critical way.
>> No, no, I know, I know what you're saying, yeah.
>> She's doing everything to not open herself up to exactly this sort
of nonsensical attack.
>> Exactly.
>> And it still comes anyway.
>> Yeah it's not like she's mentioning the settlements in East Jerusalem.
She's not talking about the open air prison the Palestinians are living in.
She's not talking about this apartheid state.
She's not talking about any of that specificity.
It's just a general post meant to show solidarity with the Palestinian people.
And this is the kind of response that she got.
Here's Ambassador Gilad Erdogan who says,
fiction may work in harry potter, but it does not work in reality.
If it did, the magic used in the wizarding world, could eliminate the evils of Hamas,
which oppresses women and seeks the annihilation of Israel and
the PA which supports terror I would be in favor of that.
But what about the Palestinian people who are being evicted from
their homes in East Jerusalem, so they can then be taken up by Israeli citizens?
What about the Palestinians living in an open air prison, who are being
denied humanitarian aid, especially during the coronavirus pandemic?
What about all those human rights abuses?
Because it's easy to point to Hamas and obviously,
there are huge issues with Hamas.
I'm not trying to be an apologist for them at all.
But a lot of the brutal behavior of the Palestinian government
has been directed toward the Palestinian people.
The brutal behavior of the Israeli government toward the Palestinian people.
>> Yeah. And that gets kinda lost in the smears
toward Emma Watson and the smears toward anyone, by the way,
who just calls for a little more humanity.
>> Yeah.
>> In the treatment of the Palestinian people.
>> Yeah, well, and she's not saying that she supports either of those
organizations, let alone specific things that they do.
The conflating of every single Palestinian with whatever the worst
thing some other Palestinian did is obviously on its face insane.
And he would never allow it if you were to take the most barbaric,
warmongering, bloodthirsty actions of military or
political leaders in various Israeli regime's over the past 50 years.
And then apply them to literally every single Israeli citizen.
He'd never accept that.
And we shouldn't accept it in this case either, nor
should we accept the insanely condescending, infantilizing.
And I would argue at least mildly misogynistic attempt to take Emma Watson,
who has literally been an activist for
more years than she ever acted in the Harry Potter movies.
And reduced her to just being someone who was involved with Harry Potter as he did
in his statement.
>> Yeah, that's a great point.
I wanna get too graphic six here, this is Blake Flayton, and
I think his tweet, his criticism is among the most insane,
just in case you need an example of how disproportionate a hatred.
A hatred anti Zionism is Emma Watson just shared a solidarity
with Palestine post on Instagram, where she has 64 million followers,
okay, four times the amount of Jews on planet earth.
Okay, but sure, their state is the problem.
She never said that the existence of Israel is a problem,
like she never said that, ever, ever, ever.
But let's actually.
>> The existence of brain worms is a problem.
And that person who posted that has a serious case of it.
>> And I wanna get to some of the numbers because here's what the reality is on
the ground whenever the violence erupts.
Okay, so in 2021, Israeli security forces killed 313 Palestinians,
including 71 minors, children, 236 in the Gaza Strip, 232 of them,
during Operation Guardian of the walls and 77 in the West Bank.
Israeli forces also destroyed record numbers of Palestinian homes and
infrastructure in 2021.
So I think that those are legitimate criticisms,
that's not a criticism of Jewish people of Jewish religion.
It is a criticism of the behavior specifically of the Israeli
government toward the Palestinian people.
And this tactic of immediately smearing anyone who wants to be critical of
Israel's government as anti-Semitic, it's not really working anymore.
People can see what's happening, they know what's happening.
And I'm glad to see that the smears aren't discouraging people like Emma Watson
from speaking out,
even if it lacks the specificity that we would have here on this show.
So keep watching.
>> Yeah. >> The the young Turks cuz we'll keep
talking about it.