This video is a response from Students and Faculty for Justice in Palestine at the U of Hawai’i and KOA Futures (Cancel Rimpac Coalition) to the censoring by Zoom, with complicity from the University of Hawai‘i, of the event “We Will Not Be Silenced: The Case of Khaled and Solidarity from Hawai’i to Palestine.”

Watch the video:

Cosponsored by the UHM departments of Ethnic Studies and Political Science, our event was to be part of an Oct. 23 US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel We Will Not Be Silenced: Day of Action Against Criminalization and Censorship of Political Speech to protest the lockstep censorship on Sept. 23 by Facebook, Zoom, YouTube, and Instagram of an Open Classroom organized by Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi and Tomomi Kinukawa at SFSU.

With complicity from SFSU, they shut the event down because Leila Khaled was participating in it. In response to pressure from Zionist groups and individuals, Zoom also canceled our event, which was to feature Kaleikoa Ka‘eo, Ma’an Odah, and Joy Enomoto, on the basis of Khaled’s participation.

The UH administration has done nothing to protect our rights of free speech and academic freedom. Since the presence of Leila Khaled, an international iconic figure of resistance, led to the censoring of our event, this video features UH faculty members reading her words. We and the students and community members who made this video do so with awareness that it is our voices that could be censored next. We will not be silenced!