DrALJONES

Interview: "Canceled over Palestine"

Rutgers disinvited Rami Elghandour, a producer of Oscar-nominated The Voice of Hind Rajab, as a graduation speaker after "complaints about his social media posts on Israel & Palestine".

Elghandour says the silencing of anti-genocide speech stems from a “false equivalency between pro-Israel & pro-Palestine voices. There are two sides, but they couldn’t be more historically different.”

https://www.democracynow.org/2026/5/11/rami_elghandour_rutgers_hind_rajab_convocation

#GazaGenocide #news #USPol #EUPol #Rutgers .

Canceled over Palestine: Biotech CEO Rami Elghandour on Rutgers Disinviting Him as Graduation Speaker

Two weeks before Rami Elghandour was expected to address newly minted engineering graduates at his alma mater Rutgers University, the CEO of biotech firm Arcellx received a shocking call from school administrators. Citing “vague” complaints about his social media posts on Israel and Palestine, the school abruptly withdrew its convocation invitation. We speak to Rami Elghandour about the decision, which he tells Democracy Now! he finds not only “heartbreaking,” but also illogical. “Having a different point of view is not harming these students in any way to lead to this sort of outcome,” he says. Elghandour, an executive producer of the Oscar-nominated film The Voice of Hind Rajab, adds that the silencing of pro-Palestine speech stems from a “false equivalency” between pro-Israel and pro-Palestine voices. “There are two sides, but they couldn’t be more historically different.”

Democracy Now!
May 13 at 2:04amWeb
Show threadDavid EspositoMay 13
@DrALJONES yeah it is crazy how much the U.S. is owned or tied to Israel and no amount of looking into that nation makes you think "hmm this was a smart idea" and yeah they are two sides just one has a nation state with billions in funding by western hegemon and a army and the other dosent have a state or an army and then people complain about hamas getting mad. like bro...do you even ya know...do math or history.
Show threadDrALJONESMay 13

@David_Esposito

Re "crazy how much the U.S. is owned or tied to Israel"

The Zionist entity is & always has been a product of western imperialist states (from 1917).

Israel is the golden-haired child that looks after US interests in West Asia. It also has its own regional-imperialist agenda.

The US can put a stop to anything it doesn't want. Israel can do little to nothing without free US arms.

Re "two sides"

Bothsidesism is just handy hasbara. Fascism can't exist without its Big Lies.

Show threadDavid EspositoMay 13
@DrALJONES fascism is also a rough evolutionary strategy to the collective action problem. the meta problem of our species. homo sapiens so you got the Fortress people who put boxes around everything, have high disgust sensitivity, orderliness, and intolerance of ambiguity and larger right amygdala's for threat detection of outgroups etc. then you got the kujgic space ship builders who out of the trauma of being a curious , higher big 5 openness' trait, larger anterior cingulate gyrus which tends to question or see connections and be like "this doesn't make sense..but WHY???" and these people when you listen to the more developed ones are always trying to build a procedure (proceduralism) a rule set, a regulation system, a worldview and strategy that could carry the species through time, that could reduce the harm of existence, that could integrate more of us beings into the world unlight the fortress hierarchy ones who use hierarchy as a defense mechanism for holding on to what is perceived as scarce resources. then you got racism which frustratingly so is also a disease avoidance mechanism especially in higher disgust sensitive people with low self esteem. its like an artifact from before our species understood what germs where. after all most of the american Indians died from disease, not hand to hand combat. but that can be purposely helped, the same way sanctions have killed 38 million people in the middle east. Since we are at our core a thermodynamic-existential primate, if you cut a countries energy, you don't see the violence deaths, but the systems their naturally have no other direction to go. it's no different than if our country had our oil cut off and our nitrogen cut off for farmers but for decades. like 54% of us war debt is just war costs due to racism or elites hating the idea of sharing with those they view as inferior.
Show threadDrALJONESMay 13

@David_Esposito

Idk that this responds to the main thrust of my response.

PS with respect, I'm not sure if you realise that if one side of a dialogue looks like a series of monologues, it's unlikely to be a dialogue.

Show threadDavid EspositoMay 13
then start with collective action problem. what i basically strung together there was how the physics, biological, neurological, personality trait dynamics of politics all connect up into a existential sort of strategy within the collective action problem. the collective action problem is the top level theory to look up.
Show threadDrALJONESMay 13

@David_Esposito

Sorry to have to say, but i don't think you're getting what I'm saying.

It doesn't matter, but, as you're a newbie, I thought it was worth a try.

Diaglogue requires responding to the key point/s made by the other person. Without noting, thinking, & responding, it's not dialogue. It's something else.

Anyway, as I say, no matter 🙂

Show threadDavid EspositoMay 19
@DrALJONES if you look at who the heritage foundation puts on their board for project ester an effort to stop anti semitism supposedly its all Christian nationalist its not jewish people. and yeah thermodynamics and energy and material wise if i measure it like yah they are just a colony of the US. its the edge of the petro-military dominance empire. the borders are just abstractions to hold scared primate identities like a warm existential hug.