Activist at Michigan Gaza fundraiser calls for end of America

"The message for the people of Gaza," he said, heavily accenting Gaza but otherwise speaking in a clear American accent, "is going to be more of the message that should be sent to the people here, in that they have achieved victory. We haven't done anywhere near enough. And the people here—I promise you—we do feel ashamed. We do feel like we're not doing enough. We do feel like change needs to come, because change must come."

"And in the form that it must come is that this empire, the American empire, that's been hurting our people since the beginning, the imperial western powers that have been hurting our people since the beginning, they must fall."

"And inshallah, inshallah, they will fall. And my message to people of Gaza and oppressed people across the world is that there are people here, both young and old, who are going to be willing to fight and are willing to put their lives and everything they can on the line to bring these empires down. Because they must come down."

The video was taken at a Dearborn Heights Fundraiser for the Middle East Children's Alliance on March 19, 2025. The fundraiser was for the "Gaza Emergency." The group writes "During 18 months of brutal attacks on Gaza, MECA team and partners are providing emergency assistance to children and families to help them survive."

The group provides "direct aid" in the Middle East, including to those in Gaza. They say that they have helped to build and install "water purification units in schools and preschools throughout Gaza" and have been doing so since 1988.

They have an additional goal to "educate North Americans about children in the region and the brutal impact of US foreign policy on their lives." They have held training sessions for American teachers, called the "Teach Palestine Project," encouraging K-12 educators to teach "recent history and current reality" in the Gaza strip, claiming that teachers have been "silent."

"That silence feeds demonization of Palestinians. lack of understanding of their struggle for human rights and Islamophobia," they say. They held a training session in Oakland shortly after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023 massacre in Israel.

Donors to MECA for Peace include the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the George Soros-backed Open Society Foundation. The group is headquartered in Berkeley, California and is led by Zeiad Abbas Shamrouch who advocates for the view that Israelis seek to "replace the Palestinians, not to live them," and that this goes back to 1878 and compares Jews to Nazis. This is a presentation he gives to high schools and universities.