UPDATE: I wrote this early on December 5, shortly thereafter the video was banned, then shortly after that it was restored! I can only assume that the rapid response from so many people caused YouTube to take a second look and ascertain that the video was not promoting hate, but just the opposite. So kudos to YouTube! Tami Jackson
I recently received the text and email associated with another great Dennis Prager “Prager University” video titled “Born to Hate Jews.” PU videos are marvelous and worth watching, so I quickly clicked on the link, intending to share the video and transcript here.
But alas, when the page loaded I found this:
What in the world? A radical Muslim telling his story of abandoning hatred of Jews and becoming an activist supporter of the Jews and Israel is hate speech?
And what made this even more ludicrous? Concurrently on Fox News’ Happening Now with Jon Scott and Jenna Lee, Judge Andrew Napolitano was discussing why the hate-filled videos of radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki were still on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/VqhrlThLyy8?t=28s
Jenna Lee started the segment, digging into deceased al-Awlaki inciting rogue Islamic terror attacks:
Well right now concurring questions on why the propaganda videos of a radical Islamic cleric are still up on YouTube. It’s been more than five years since a U.S. drone strike in Yemen took out Anwar al-Awlaki. But his message is being felt beyond the grave. Investigators point to eleven incidents since 2009 that Awlaki may have inspired. YouTube says it’s vigilant in tracking down terrorist videos, “YouTube has clear policies prohibiting terrorist recruitment and content intending to incite violence, and we quickly remove videos violating these policies when flagged by our users.”
The reason we’re taking a look at this is because, last we at this time we had the Ohio State University attack. We had the one year anniversary of the San Bernardino attack. You have the alleged terrorist in New York planting on the street in the Chelsea district here. Also potentially a reference to Anwar al-Awlaki.
So we were curious. We were googling Anwar al-Awlaki, and there he is, all over YouTube!
Judge Napolitano tried to explain the reasoning:
There he is, just as if he were alive. He is almost from the grave a common thread as having inspired all these people who you just talked about. So the short answer is, his videos are still out there because, like flag burning, they are protected speech. Even though they are hateful. Even though they advocate violence. Even though they are profoundly un-American, they are protected speech. Protected from the government: no one can be prosecuted for playing them or listening to them. But not protected from YouTube which is not the government.
So the First Amendment says the government shall not interfere with free speech, but YouTube could take them down in a flash just because it doesn’t want this stuff being propagated on its platform.
So YouTube, in its omniscient wisdom, will censor a Prager University video featuring Kasim Hafeez, but allow the videos of a radical cleric inciting hate and violence. The Prager U video, “Born to Hate Jews,” tells the story of a British born, devout Muslim, with Pakistani parents, taught to hate Jews form the youngest age. But then Kasim stumbled upon a book, The Case for Israel by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, which prompted his personal journey to prove Dershowitz wrong.
Hafeez’s story is powerful as a lifetime of hateful indoctrination is destroyed by the truth. Though the video was removed from YouTube, the transcript was intact. In response to YouTube’s action, a new link was texted (while I was writing this article) from Prager U linking to the video which was downloaded on Facebook:
I was born to hate Jews. It was part of my life. I never questioned it. I was not born in Iran or Syria. I was born in England. My parents moved there from Pakistan. Theirs was the typical immigrant story: Move to the West in the hope of making a better life for themselves and their children.
We were a devout Muslim family, but not extremist or radical in any way. We only wished the best for everyone — everyone except the Jews. The Jews, we believed, were aliens living in stolen Muslim land, occupiers who were engaged in a genocide against the Palestinian people. Our hatred, therefore, was justified and righteous. And it made me and my friends vulnerable to the arguments of radical extremists. If the Jews were as evil as we had always believed, mustn’t those who support them – Christians, Americans, and others in the West – be just as evil?
Beginning in the 1990s, speakers and teachers at mosques and in schools began to endlessly repeat this theme: We were not Western. We were not British. We were Muslims, first and only. Our loyalty was to our religion and to our fellow Muslims. We owed nothing to the Western nations that welcomed us. As Westerners, they were our enemies.
All of this had its desired effect. At least, it did on me. It changed the way that I saw the world. I began to see the suffering of Muslims, including in Britain, as the fault of Western imperialism. The West was at war with us, and the Jews controlled the West. My experience at university in Britain only enhanced my increasingly radical beliefs. Hating Israel was a badge of honor. Stage an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian rally and you were sure to draw a large, approving crowd.
While at university I decided the protests and propaganda against Israel were not enough. True jihad demanded violence. So I made plans to join the real fight. I would leave college and join a terrorist training camp in Pakistan. But, fortunately for me, fate intervened – in a bookstore.
I came across a book called The Case for Israel by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. The case for Israel? What case could there be? The title itself made me furious, and I began to read the pages almost as an act of defiance. How ill-informed, how stupid, could this guy be to defend the indefensible? Well, he was a Jew. That had to be the answer. Still, I read. And what I read challenged all of my dogmas about Israel and the Jews: I read that it wasn’t Israel that created the Palestinian refugee crisis; it was the Arab countries, the United Nations, and the corrupt Palestinian leadership. I read that Jews didn’t exploit the Holocaust to create the state of Israel; the movement to create a modern Jewish state dated back to the 19th century, and ultimately to the beginnings of the Jewish people almost 4,000 years ago. And I read that Israel is not engaged in genocide against the Palestinians. On the contrary, the Palestinian population has actually doubled in just twenty years.
All this did was make me angrier. I needed to prove Dershowitz wrong, to see with my own eyes how racist and oppressive Israel really was. So I bought a plane ticket. I would travel to Israel, the home of my enemy. And that’s when everything changed. Everything.
What I saw with my own eyes was even more challenging than what Dershowitz had written. Instead of apartheid, I saw Muslims, Christians and Jews coexisting. Instead of hate, I saw acceptance, even compassion. I saw a raucous, modern, liberal democracy, full of flaws, certainly, but fundamentally decent. I saw a country that wanted nothing more than to live in peace with its neighbors. I saw my hatred melting before my eyes. I knew right then what I had to do.
Too many people on this planet are consumed with the same hatred that consumed me. They have been taught to despise the Jewish State – many Muslims by their religion; many others by their college professors or student groups.
So here is my challenge to anyone who feels this way: do what I did – seek out the truth for yourself. If the truth can change me, it can change anyone.
I’m Kasim Hafeez for Prager University.
What a marvelous story of truth demolishing hate.
The question remains, why would YouTube allow vitriolic videos preaching Islamic radicalism, and yet censor a video featuring one man’s conversion from a ideology and worldview of hatred of Jews, to one of love and support of Jews and Israel?
I have my suspicions. It is becoming all too apparent that with The Left, with the supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islam in general, there is zero tolerance for Evangelicals, Jews, and those who support Israel. And the consequences of this intolerance?
Americans would be wise to remember the admonition of God, concerning the nation and people of Israel, written by Moses in the book of Genesis:
And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
© 2016 TAMI JACKSON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
