Hands Off” What?
Last Saturday, thousands of Americans rallied across the country in one of the biggest anti-Trump protests in his second term. People with their signs and chants marched through streets, public squares, parks, and to the capitols. In Minnesota, where I live, over 80,000 people gathered at the state capitol in St. Paul, where one of the main speakers, Amy Klobuchar, who supported the Genocide in Gaza, blocked Senator Sanders’s resolution to stop sending weapons to Israel.
The protests were widely covered by major media and amplified across social media, with the unifying theme: “Hands Off.” But hands off what, exactly? When I first heard about the “Hands Off” protest that so many organizations and activist groups organized, I thought it was hands-off Gaza or Palestine which has been under ethnic cleansing for almost two years now. Protesters, however, called for Trump to keep his hands off democracy, but isn’t democracy what brought Trump to the white house in the first place, not once but twice? Demonstrators brought their signs, kids and dogs mocking Trump and his administration, with slogans like “Lock Him Up,” “Make America Merciful Again,” “Hands Off Our Democracy,” “Dogs Against DOGE,” and “Elon Musk is the Immigrant Who Took Your Job,”. a jab at Elon Musk’s crypto antics and his complicities with the administration. Michael Moore, one of the organizers, wrote on his website, “You are not alone. We are not alone. There are more of us than there are of them. Build your communities. Find your people. Organize, Organize, Organize. And fight back. In little ways and big ways. This is the French Resistance. This is up to us.” A few thousand Americans marched to American capitals for a few hours, where the biggest conversation after the march was what restaurant, we should go to for dinner, according to Mr. Moore, this amounts to a French revolution. While much of the national coverage spotlighted these large-scale, anti-Trump rallies—especially in major cities like New York, D.C., and Chicago— it was a one-woman march that went largely unnoticed by mainstream media but an instant sensation and superhero in the Arab /Muslim world. On Friday, during Microsoft’s 50th-anniversary celebration in Redmond, Washington, a Moroccan engineer and a Microsoft employee Ibtihal Aboussad interrupted the event with a powerful protest against the tech giant’s involvement in the ongoing Genocide in Gaza. As AI chief Mustafa Suleyman addressed an audience that included Bill Gates, Aboussad stood and shouted, “You are a war profiteer. Stop using AI for genocide.” Suleyman, a Syrian-American and the head of Microsoft’s AI division, despite his cool, casual dress, was visibly shaken and uncool. “Mustafa, shame on you,” Ms. Aboussad called on him as she was walking toward the stage., “Thank you for your protest, I hear you,” Suleyman responded, trying to keep his cool. “Fifty thousand people have died, and Microsoft powers this genocide in our region,” she fired back as security escorted her out, leaving the audience stunned. Aboussad wasn’t worried about losing her hefty, prestigious job at Microsoft, and she didn’t bring a sign or her dog, she brought her humanity and courage. Her protest underscores the growing concern over the role of U.S. tech companies in the Gaza genocide. A report by Over 972 Magazine earlier this year revealed Microsoft’s increasing involvement in Israeli military operations, noting a surge in the sale of cloud and AI services to the Israeli army since the escalation in Gaza. Ms. Abousaad became a social media sensation in the Arab and Muslim world, “she is better than over 100 men; one posted on X in Arabic, then another increased it to over 1000 men, “She is worth more than a million men.” Top it another, increasing the courage measuring unit of men in Arab countries, of course, where their Arab Zionist leaders banned any support rallies for the Palestinians. While the “Hands Off” protests rightfully called out Trump’s authoritarianism aptitude and incompetence in running the country. Trump did not create the structural decay of the American empire—he merely exposed it. At the “Hands Off” protest, there weren’t signs criticizing the Biden administration; the only American president who visited Israel during a war, Biden, has supplied Israel with the most devastating 500Lb bombs, technologically advanced weapons, funding, and political cover during a campaign that human rights organizations have labeled as ethnic cleansing, where over 100,000 Palestinians have been killed mostly civilians, women, and children. Ms. Aboussad protest shed light on a fact that was lost in most media analyses and pundits, If Nazim used science and new technology of gas chambers to exterminate millions of people in Europe, The Apartheid state of Israel and the West are now using technology with more advanced—artificial intelligence, algorism surveillance, and cloud computing repurposed for war and genocide. This isn’t science fiction; it’s the reality that Palestinians live every day. At the Hands Off” rally, no mention of the Bush wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that caused the death of millions, Obama, the champion of democracy and liberals, as Aljazeera explained in his secrete “Kill lists,” was “Barack Obama’s blind spot He opposes the death penalty in the US after lengthy trials but issued kill orders for Muslims overseas with no trial at all.” Turning the “Kill Lists” to a form of American secular fatwa. The same technological marvels once promised to unite and uplift us are being used to target and eliminate entire populations. What we are witnessing is a modern form of techno-fascism—technology-powered authoritarianism—that bears a frightening resemblance to history’s darkest chapters., As Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman explained, monstrous atrocities are not always done by monsters… “They are done by ordinary people like you and me”. He marveled; so if the victims were the Jews, with Nazim, now they are the Palestinians with Zionism.
Ahmed Tharwat
Host and Producer of Arab American TV show BelAhdan
follow him on Twitter/Ahmediatv
Lives in Minnetonka, MN
