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Write to the Burkle Center at UCLA to cancel their event with Bari Weiss!
<[link removed]>Send a letter! <[link removed]>
Dear John,
Do you remember Refaat Al Areer? I will never forget the words of his poem If I Must Die. And, I will never forget how he died. He was targeted by the Israeli military after a smear campaign led by Bari Weiss on Twitter. One of his last tweets read, “If I get killed by Israeli bombs or my family is harmed, I blame Bari Weiss and her likes. Many maniacal Israeli soldiers already bombing Gaza take these lies and smears seriously and act upon them.” Shortly after, Refaat was killed by an Israeli airstrike in 2023, and his poem was circulated widely, profoundly impacting people across the world.
Refaat is the type of person who deserves praise and accolades, but in a society like ours, compliance and corruption are more often rewarded. For example, there are so-called “prestigious” institutions, such as the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations,that hand out awards to people like Bari Weiss. They’re bringing her in to give a speech titled “The Future of Journalism,” and they’re awarding her for “contributing original analyses or constructive approaches to problems of international concern.”
Tell the UCLA Burkle Center to cancel this event instead of platforming a genocide denier! <[link removed]>
Do they think Weiss’s Zionist propaganda amounts to “original analysis” of the deaths of thousands in Gaza? Has her coverage on Palestine, all of which is antagonistic and laced with negative implications about the Palestinian liberation movement, provided a constructive approach to a problem of international concern?
The evidence is clear. Look what comes up when you search “Palestine” on her outlet’s website.
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Let’s not forget Bari Weiss’s history. She is so unpopular that her promotion to Editor-in-Chief at CBS caused their evening news program to lose a quarter of its viewership, and for good reason. This is someone who broke away from the New York Times and created her own “outlet” where she could post her edgy takes without consequence.
This is someone who targeted and slandered Refaat Al Alareer online so vehemently that he felt certain it would lead to his murder. This is someone who recently decided to censor a 60 Minutes segment* on the CECOT torture center in El Salvador, where Venezuelan migrants are being sent, pulling it from broadcast altogether.
Demand that the Burkle Center hold Bari Weiss accountable and revoke her award! <[link removed]>
If you can call Bari Weiss a “journalist,” her trademark “angle” seems to involve denouncing and diminishing the voices of the oppressed in various contexts. Somehow, she’s the one being praised by prestigious institutions — instead of the 200+ journalists who Israel has killed, plus the remaining journalists who risk their lives daily, show us what Gaza has become. These are the genuine truth-tellers of our generation, the ones who actually offered “original analysis and constructive approaches,” all the while being targeted for it.
In times like these, we need real journalists to tell us what's actually happening in the world, not spineless bloggers who pander to Israeli and U.S. genocidaires for approval. We need real journalism, especially right now when the U.S. is threatening to start a regime-change war in Iran, and western media outlets are rushing to manufacture consent for it. Iranians risk injury or death by protesting the dire economic conditions in Iran, and any journalist with integrity would make the obvious connection between the political upheaval in Iran and the brutal U.S. sanctions that have strangled Iran for decades – but many journalists in the West won’t mention the sanctions. Instead, they promote bombing the people of Iran while claiming to care about their lives.
Figures like Weiss and corporate news media at large disseminate the idea that Western influence is the only way to bring stability to regions like Iran, Venezuela, and Palestine — as if they weren’t destabilized by the West in the first place. Simply put, this is terrible reporting. We must put pressure on the Burkle Center to cancel the event that promotes a type of journalism that rationalizes war and brutality. The longer we keep figures like Weiss on high platforms, the more rigorously they will manufacture consent.
Let us uplift the academics and creatives that actually matter, like Refaat. When I visited Belfast last year, I spotted his very words on a mural painted across the British-made separation wall. It was surreal to be standing in the north of Ireland, staring at an apartheid wall that so closely resembled those I’d seen in the West Bank. Refaat’s legacy is a testament to what it truly means to leave a positive mark on the world: the ability to connect people from all over, uniting them in their struggle for liberation. Let’s keep telling Bari and her supporters that we will not stand for her attempts to claim the narrative, that she does not deserve it, and that the true storytellers will always prevail.
👉 Here are more ways to engage:
- Support CODEPINK's work in 2026! <[link removed]>
- Register for our Palestine Working Group! <[link removed]>
- Read our latest articles on Substack! <[link removed]>
Until Liberation,
Jenin and the entire CODEPINK team
P.S. Check out our fresh new arrivals at our CODEPINK Store! <[link removed]>
Watch the censored 60 Minutes segment here! <[link removed]>
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