The Intercept: New York Times Exposé Lacks Evidence to Claim Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence Oct. 7
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 2, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/1/n ... transcript
We speak with Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim of The Intercept about their exposé of a major New York Times piece into alleged mass rapes committed by Hamas militants on October 7 that raises serious questions about the accuracy of the story. The Times article was headlined “'Screams Without Words': How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7,” and its release in late December helped the Israeli government to justify the ongoing war on Gaza and to paint pro-Palestine supporters abroad as not caring about sexual violence. One of the reporters of the Times piece, Israeli freelancer Anat Schwartz, is being investigated by the Times for her social media activity, which included dehumanizing language and endorsements of violence against Palestinians in Gaza. ”The New York Times has grave, grave mischaracterizations, sins of omission, reliance on people who have no forensic or criminology credentials to be asserting that there was a systematic rape campaign put in place here,” says Scahill, who criticizes the newspaper for not issuing any corrections for their flawed reporting. We also hear from Ryan Grim about how the flawed Times article touched off “extremely intense debate” inside the newsroom. “They’re used to external criticism, but the amount of internal criticism they’re getting has them on the back foot,” he says.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
The New York Times is reportedly conducting an internal investigation to identify the source behind leaked information about its coverage of Israel and Gaza. According to Vanity Fair, the internal investigation follows a report in The Intercept about the Times shelving an episode of its podcast The Daily over doubts regarding the accuracy of a highly controversial blockbuster New York Times article published at the end of December alleging Hamas members committed widespread sexual violence, weaponized it, on October 7th. Vanity Fair reports that in recent weeks management of The New York Times have questioned at least two dozen staffers, including producers of The Daily, the podcast, in an attempt to understand how internal details about the podcast’s editorial process got out.
Democracy Now! asked The New York Times about the internal investigation. The paper’s international editor, Phil Pan, said in a statement, quote, “We aren’t going to comment on internal matters. I can tell you that the work of our newsroom requires trust and collaboration, and we expect all of our colleagues to adhere to these values,” end-quote.
The New York Times article at the center of the controversy was published December 28th. It was headlined “'Screams Without Words': How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.” In it, the Times reported they had found evidence of systematic sexual violence orchestrated by Hamas and that their two-month investigation, quote, “uncovered painful new details, establishing that the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7,” unquote.
However, not long after the highly publicized article was published, major discrepancies began to emerge, including public comments from the family of a major subject of the article, contradictory claims from a key witness, and criticisms over a lack of solid evidence in the overall investigation. Then news emerged last week that one of the three authors of The New York Times piece, named Anat Schwartz, had liked multiple posts on social media advocating for violence against Palestinians, including one that called for turning Gaza into a slaughterhouse. Anat Schwartz is an Israeli filmmaker who had no prior reporting experience before she was assigned by the Times to work on the major investigation along with her relative Adam Sella and veteran Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman.
On Wednesday, The Intercept published another in-depth investigation that further questions the Times article and the reporting process behind it. It’s headlined “'Between the Hammer and the Anvil': The Story Behind the New York Times October 7 Exposé,” and the two Intercept reporters who wrote it join us today. Jeremy Scahill is a senior reporter and correspondent at The Intercept. He’s joining us from Germany. And Ryan Grim is The Intercept’s bureau chief in Washington, D.C., where he joins us from.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Jeremy, let’s begin with you. Can you lay out first the significance of the New York Times article that’s at the center of the controversy, and then talk about your latest piece, that looks into how it all came about?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, Amy, in early December, you had the death toll skyrocketing in Gaza. You had a number of nations, including those that are allies with Israel, starting to speak out about the death toll among women, children, the elderly. And part of a pattern of what we’ve seen throughout the course of these five months of scorched-earth attacks against Gaza is that whenever Israel perceives itself to be losing the narrative war or when it needs to remind the public of its perception that Israel is the only victim in this story, they unload a new round of attacks against a variety of individuals or organizations that are working in Gaza or living in Gaza, human beings. We saw that with the attacks against UNRWA. We saw that with the attacks against Al-Shifa and other hospitals.
And in early December, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government really began an intense propaganda campaign to convince the world that Hamas had engaged in a systematic campaign of rape aimed at Jewish women and girls. And then they launched this fake criticism of feminist organizations, saying that they had all systematically failed to stand up and denounce this systematic rape regime that had been intentionally implemented by Hamas in the October 7th attacks. And on the day that Netanyahu made his most prominent statement about this, President Biden was at a fundraising event in Boston, and he issued — he made a statement at his speech that echoed what Netanyahu said, and said the world, you know, can’t turn away and ignore this.
Well, what was happening at that very moment was that The New York Times, with one of its most prominent international correspondents, Jeffrey Gettleman, he had recently hit the ground in Israel, and he was working — Gettleman enlisted the help of two individuals that were going to work with him there. And Gettleman had proposed three lines of investigation, and one of them was the issue of sexual violence. And the two individuals that Gettleman was working with, one of them is a very young person who’s only recently gotten into journalism, Adam Sella, and he had mostly been like a food journalist and has a background in looking at agricultural issues, etc. He had started to write some freelance pieces that were dipping into the waters of politics and the conflict, but a quite inexperienced reporter. And then, the other was someone with no reporting experience outside of making some documentary films, and that is Anat Schwartz. It’s unclear how Anat Schwartz, in particular, got involved with this project.
And as you mentioned, she had, early on in the Israeli attacks against Gaza, liked a tweet that actually was cited by the International Court of Justice as a potentially — a statement of potential genocidal incitement. She also liked the tweet from the Israeli government promoting the debunked allegation that 40 babies had been beheaded on October 7th, which is entirely false, as well as another tweet that said, “We must just refer to Hamas as ISIS.”
And so, they start off on this investigation, and our understanding from sources is that the overwhelming majority of the interviews and reporting that was being done on the ground was being handled by Anat Schwartz and Adam Sella.
And we discovered a podcast interview with Anat Schwartz in Hebrew that she gave, where she — it’s a shocking podcast in how much detail she offers about the process that they used when they were reporting it. And just to put it in a nutshell, she describes how the first thing that she did was start to call around to what she describes as all of the Israeli hospitals that have facilities that are called Room 4 facilities. These would be the intake places where people who have been victims of sexual crimes, including assault and rape, etc., where they would be examined or their cases would be referred. And she said that not a single one of them reported that they had any reports of sexual assault or rape on October 7th.
She then started calling around to a rape crisis hotline and describes how she had this, what she described as an intense conversation with the manager of the rape crisis hotline in that part of Israel, where she was dumbfounded when he was saying he didn’t have any calls reporting sexual assault or rape. And she’s saying, “How is this possible?”
And then she starts talking — she goes to a holistic therapeutic center that was established at a former high-end retreat center outside of Tel Aviv, where mostly people from the Nova rave, where there were attacks and where a couple of hundred people were killed — it was a place where people could do alternative medicine and yoga, relaxation therapy — I mean, people who were highly traumatized. And she goes there, and her characterization was that she sensed what she called a “conspiracy of silence” among the therapists, because none of them were telling her, “Yes, we’re treating people who were raped or had experienced sexual assault.”
And so, when she went through all the official channels, the places where you would reach out to see, if you’re exploring if there’s a pattern here, what then happened is she starts to look at who’s been interviewed about alleged rapes during the October 7th attacks, and ends up then going and reinterviewing a handful of people who already had made assertions that they witnessed rapes. And some of these people had told varying versions of their stories — which in and of itself does not necessarily mean that they didn’t witness something. I mean, these are people that were in the midst of an incredibly violent episode. But more central to that is that some of the people that The New York Times relied on to assert that there was a systematic, intentional campaign of rape weaponized by Hamas were people that have no forensic credentials, no crime scene credentials. These were people that are not legally permitted in Israel to determine rape, that they relied on these individuals to make this claim that there was a systematic rape regime implemented.
And some of those people, Amy, have well-documented track records of promoting very incendiary narratives about atrocities that occurred on October 7th that were flagrantly false. Just two examples. One of the most prominent or ubiquitous figures that has emerged in Israel’s narrative that Hamas committed systematic rape is an architect from New Jersey named Shari Mendes, who is living in Israel now and is a member of the Israeli Defense Forces rabbinical unit. And she was deployed to prepare women’s bodies for burial in the bases where Hamas attacked military facilities. And she’s been quoted widely saying that they saw widespread evidence of rape and that she personally saw it. She described broken pelvises, not just among, you know, soldiers, but among grandmothers and children. But Shari Mendes also was quoted by the Daily Mail as saying that a pregnant woman had a fetus cut out of her body and that the fetus was beheaded and then the mother was beheaded. This is entirely false. We’ve gone through all of the official records that Israel has put out on people who died that day. There was no pregnant woman killed that day. That’s been thoroughly debunked. She also relied on Yossi Landau, a senior official at Zaka. Zaka has been — it’s an ultra-Orthodox private rescue organization. It’s been exposed by Haaretz, the newspaper in Israel, as one of the leading promoters of false information and also that they contaminated the crime scenes by moving evidence around that actual professionals could have done. They also had promoted the beheaded babies stories, etc.
So, The New York Times, they can’t find anyone who works in the rape crisis centers, at the hospitals, among therapists, that are coming forward and saying, “Yeah, we saw this,” or “We have documentation of this,” so they go to people who already were known to have promoted false information, and then they start relying on their testimony to paint this tapestry, this notion that there was a systematic rape regime. And in the New York Times article, they do not ever disclose that their key witnesses have serious credibility problems. So, this is, at a minimum, we are looking at a New York Times piece that failed to inform its readers about severe credibility issues among some of its premier “witnesses,” quote-unquote, that it put forward in this story.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to part of a podcast interview that Anat Schwartz did on January 3rd, produced by Israel’s Channel 12. It was conducted in Hebrew. Here, Anat talks about the difficulties and pressures in reporting the story.
ANAT SCHWARTZ: [translated] Maybe the standard that we have to meet may not be realistic. Maybe it won’t be this complete big story that is told from beginning to end and is complex and has details and nuances and characters. And maybe we are aiming too high. Then there was the U.N. woman and the silence, and there was a lot of preoccupation with it. So, I said, “We’re missing momentum.” Maybe the U.N. isn’t addressing sexual assault because no outlet will come out with a declaration about what happened there, and that it will no longer be interesting. And at some point, after one of the rewrites, we said, “OK, that’s it.” And then I already informed all the people in the Israeli police who are waiting to see what was going on. What? Was The New York Times not believing there were sexual assaults here? And I’m also in this place. I’m also an Israeli, but I also work for The New York Times. So, all the time, I’m like in this place between the hammer and the anvil.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Anat Schwartz, speaking on a podcast on January 3rd. She said she felt “between the hammer and the anvil,” which, Jeremy, you choose as the title of your piece. Talk about the significance of that and, again, the relationship between Anat Schwartz and other reporter, the young reporter, Adam Sella.
JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, another part of this story is that one of the main victims that was featured in this is referred to as “the woman in the black dress.” Gal Abdush is her name. And, in fact, her family members are the individuals in the feature photo on the piece. And another thing that we’ve learned from Israeli researchers who published this is that when Anat Schwartz and Adam Sella went to a woman that had taken photographs of Gal Abdush that day, they told this photographer that it was her duty under Israeli hasbara to cooperate with The New York Times and let them have all of her photos. And ”hasbara” is the term for public diplomacy, but what it really is is the notion that Israel should engage in externally focused propaganda in order to win over international audiences, primarily Western, the United States and powerful countries, to Israel’s point of view. So, she is using this term, going and trying to encourage someone to cooperate with The New York Times, not because The New York Times is, you know, the most important news organization in the world, but because it’s their duty under Israeli hasbara. So, when she talks about being caught between the hammer and the anvil, what she’s saying is she’s caught between her duty to be honest and a journalist and her duty to serve the agenda of the Israeli state.
And her partner in this, Adam Sella, is the nephew of Anat Schwartz’s partner, and they’re not married. In fact, Amy, The New York Times, they requested a correction from us, because we had initially said that it was her nephew, which I think in the context of America and other countries you would say. If you’re somebody’s longtime life partner, you would say, “Oh, yeah, this is my nephew.” OK, they’re not blood relatives, and they emphasize that she’s not married. Fine, we corrected that.
My question is: Where are the corrections in The New York Times piece? The New York Times has grave, grave mischaracterizations, sins of omission, reliance on people who have no forensic or criminology credentials to be asserting that there was a systematic rape campaign put in place here. And to publish this article at a moment when Israel was intensifying, after that brief pause where captives were exchanged — intensifying its genocidal attack against the people of Gaza, this played a very, very significant role. And the more we learn about this, the more we discover that the reporting tactics that The New York Times used are certainly not up to the standards that the newspaper claims to be promoting. They will not issue any corrections on what has already been documented to be very problematic sins of commission and omission in this piece.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this conversation. We’re talking to Jeremy Scahill, senior reporter at The Intercept. Next up, he’ll be joined by Ryan Grim, who is the Washington bureau chief of The Intercept, and we want to talk to Ryan about what’s happening in The New York Times now in response to this story, and the leak investigation that’s going on, and why a podcast based on their story, their own podcast, The Daily, didn’t air. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “I’m from Here” by Amal Markus. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
We’re speaking with Intercept reporters Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim about their exposé into The New York Times article that was published at the end of December. They published another one in January.
We asked The New York Times for a response to your article, and the international editor, Phil Pan, responded, quote, “Ms. Schwartz was part of a rigorous reporting and editing process. She made valuable contributions and we saw no evidence of bias in her work. We remain confident in the accuracy of our reporting and stand by the team’s investigation. But as we have said, her 'likes' of offensive and opinionated social media posts, predating her work with us, are unacceptable,” end-quote.
Ryan, if you can respond to this and talk about what’s going on internally in the Times, and also talk about this leak investigation that’s going on within the paper of record?
RYAN GRIM: [inaudible] by her own admission, in that podcast interview she had, significant violence, because there are two ways to think about what happened on October 7th. The first way is that it was a day of extraordinary mayhem and violence. The Israeli defenses melted away. Not only did you have several thousand Hamas fighters stream across the fence, but you also had hundreds of civilians, some associated with gangs, come across. And in that context, the idea that there would be no sexual assault is not taken seriously by pretty much anybody who understands kind of war and violence. That’s one way to think about October 7th.
The other way to think about it is that Hamas intentionally and systematically designed a kind of strategy of weaponizing rape and sexual violence. That was what Anat Schwartz and The New York Times kind of believed going into the investigation. And oftentimes as journalists, we have something that we think we’re going to be able to prove, we report it out, and then we can’t quite get it. Like, it just — we just don’t land the story. But what the Times did is they wrote the story anyway.
But that gets you then to The Daily episode. So, this article comes out at the very end of December. As The New York Times always does, its landmark pieces get turned into episodes of their flagship podcast, The Daily. But immediately after the story came out, it started coming under criticism, because, as Jeremy pointed out, a lot of the named subjects of the story have enormous credibility problems. And so this starts getting pointed out. Inside the Times, the producers of The Daily have their own kind of fact-checking process where they go over the stories. And the original script that was produced for that first episode had to be discarded, because the producers there couldn’t stand behind it, so they redrafted a second script, which had a lot of caveats and was closer to the first version that I laid out just now, which is an interesting podcast episode, and it’s something worth exploring. But if they had aired that, it would have raised questions about why they were walking away from the certainty of the original piece.
So, we reported on the kind of machinations inside The New York Times about this, the controversy, the disputes that were going on. And since then, as Vanity Fair reported, The New York Times has — rather than reviewing the kind of journalism that went into this, they are launching a leak investigation to try to figure out who’s talking to us.
AMY GOODMAN: In February, one of the reporters behind The New York Times investigation, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Jeffrey Gettleman, spoke at a conference on conflict-related sexual violence hosted by Columbia University. He talked about the piece.
JEFFREY GETTLEMAN: I did some stories about hostages. And pretty soon, I mean, maybe, I don’t know, within the first few days of this attack, we were hearing reports of rape and mutilations of women. We heard it right away. And I don’t — maybe people in this room remember those videos of the female soldiers being taken away and the body of that one woman, Shani Louk, in the back of a pickup truck half-naked. Right away, it just — it just — there was obviously crimes against women that happened.
So, because, sadly, I have some experience doing this, I began looking to see what we could find out. And I worked with two other colleagues, and we interviewed almost 200 people over the course of two months. And what we found, I don’t want to even use the word “evidence,” because evidence is almost like a legal term that suggests you’re trying to prove an allegation or prove a case in court. That’s not my role. We all have our roles, and my role is to document.
AMY GOODMAN: So, I wanted to get a response to what he is saying there. He’s talking, by the way, to Sheryl Sandberg, the former COO of Meta, Facebook. Jeremy Scahill, if you can talk about what he sees his role as a reporter?
JEREMY SCAHILL: I mean, this is an astonishing comment from Jeffrey Gettleman. I mean, what is he talking about, that it’s not the job of journalists to uncover evidence? If you’re going to have a headline that — by the way, let me just say this. The “Screams Without Words” headline comes from a source named Raz Cohen, who was at the Nova music festival, and he claims to have witnessed a rape of a woman that he said was — and he’s a special forces, Israeli special forces, veteran, and he has been very adamant that the people who he saw committing this crime were not Hamas, that they were ordinary people. And he has said that in numerous interviews. But to have, then — and he’s the one who said it was like “screams without words.” They’re using a headline from a person whose testimony undermines the thesis of their blockbuster story. So, just to put that on the table.
But for Gettleman to say that it’s not the job of journalists to produce evidence, when you’re going to say, in the middle of a war, where civilians are being starved and killed in an operation that is under review now by the International Court of Justice for genocide — if you’re going to then make an allegation that Hamas implemented a systematic rape campaign, and you say it’s not your job to produce evidence, then what is the job of a journalist in a situation like this? Because, honestly, if you really read their piece carefully, much of it is innuendo. Much of it is based on sources who have either credibility issues or lack professional credentials to weigh in on these matters. This is a grave, grave situation. This is one of the most important pieces of journalism that has been produced during this war, and one of the most consequential. And for the lead reporter, who himself has won the Pulitzer and is an experienced war correspondent, to say that it’s not the job of The New York Times to present evidence in an article asserting that Hamas systematically raped women, it’s astonishing. It’s astonishing.
AMY GOODMAN: And also, the prestigious Gorge Polk Award for Foreign Reporting this year was awarded to the staff of The New York Times, the citation reading, in part, quote “for unsurpassed coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas. Times reporters used firsthand accounts to demonstrate how brutal and well planned the Hamas attack was,” end-quote. And this article in question that we’re talking about, “'Screams Without Words,'” was apparently part of the package submitted by The New York Times that won the award. Ryan Grim, if you can talk about that and the dissent within the Times itself?
RYAN GRIM: Before I answer that, I did want to add one thing to what Jeremy was saying. It is remarkable that Sheryl Sandberg was on that panel with Jeffrey Gettleman, because on December 4th — and Jeremy talked about how this campaign was rolled out — on December 4th, Sheryl Sandberg and the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations hosted an event at the U.N. that launched the campaign against these feminist organizations for not standing up and condemning, you know, Hamas’s systematic use of rape. The next day, it was Bibi Netanyahu and then Biden who piled on that campaign. That same day, on December 4th, Sheryl Sandberg penned an op-ed in CNN. She also gave interviews or was quoted in The New York Times on that same day in an article by Jeffrey Gettleman, Anat Schwartz and Adam Sella. So, they were all working together on December 4th to launch this campaign.
The December 4th article in The New York Times had a much softer headline. It said, you know, “What Do We Know About the Use of Sexual Violence” or “About Sexual Violence on October 7th?” And people can go back and read that story. They reported at the time that Israel had enormous amounts of forensic evidence that they were going through that would establish all of the claims that they were making. On December 8th or 9th, they very quietly corrected that story to say, “Correction: Israel does not have forensic evidence to back up these claims. It is relying on eyewitness testimony.” Anat Schwartz had previously reported in the Times that they had, quote, “tens of thousands of eyewitnesses” that they were going to bring forward to make these claims. So, they front-loaded this campaign with these major claims that there was forensic evidence and thousands of witnesses. Then their final article comes out at the end of the month, and, to a casual reader, you would come away from reading it, saying, “Well, they proved it. They made their case. This barbaric terrorist organization did use rape systematically against Israeli women.” And that was used to justify the continuation of the war on Gaza.
But then, as you said, when The Daily tried to look closer at the article, they realized they couldn’t actually stand up the claims that were being made in it. And so, inside the Times, you have this extremely intense debate going on. And I think leaders at the Times have been surprised. They’re used to external criticism, but the amount of internal criticism they’re getting has them on the back foot.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Jeremy, we just have 30 seconds, but even the use of the term “terrorist” within The New York Times and the stepping back of one of the leading editorial directors?
JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of — there’s a lot of concern right now, particularly among reporters who do work on an international level, that there has been a politicization of this war internally within the newsroom that is impacting the coverage. And I think it’s pretty clear. You can see that in some of the journalism. And now The New York Times — The New York Times has —
AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds.
JEREMY SCAHILL: — has ended up walking back the major claim that they made, and now they’re saying hedge words: It may have occurred. That’s one of the most significant things we uncovered here.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim, they are the co-authors of the piece, “'Between the Hammer and the Anvil.'”
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"Between the Hammer and the Anvil": The Story Behind the New York Times October 7 Exposé
by Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim, Daniel Boguslaw
The Intercept
February 28 2024, 11:04 p.m.
https://theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new ... october-7/
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Graffiti marking the surprise attack by Hamas militants on a music festival and at kibbutzim near the border with Gaza, on Oct. 13, 2023, in Tel Aviv, Israel. Photo: Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images
ANAT SCHWARTZ HAD a problem. The Israeli filmmaker and former air force intelligence official had been assigned by the New York Times to work with her partner’s nephew Adam Sella and veteran Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman on an investigation into sexual violence by Hamas on October 7 that could reshape the way the world understood Israel’s ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. By November, global opposition was mounting against Israel’s military campaign, which had already killed thousands of children, women, and the elderly. On her social media feed, which the Times has since said it is reviewing, Schwartz liked a tweet saying that Israel needed to “turn the strip into a slaughterhouse.”
“Violate any norm, on the way to victory,” read the post. “Those in front of us are human animals who do not hesitate to violate minimal rules.”
The New York Times, however, does have rules and norms. Schwartz had no prior reporting experience. Her reporting partner Gettleman explained the basics to her, Schwartz said in a podcast interview on January 3, produced by Israel’s Channel 12 and conducted in Hebrew.
Gettleman, she said, was concerned they “get at least two sources for every detail we put into the article, cross-check information. Do we have forensic evidence? Do we have visual evidence? Apart from telling our reader ‘this happened,’ what can we say? Can we tell what happened to whom?”
Schwartz said she was initially reluctant to take the assignment because she did not want to look at visual images of potential assaults and because she lacked the expertise to conduct such an investigation.
“Victims of sexual assault are women who have experienced something, and then to come and sit in front of such a woman — who am I anyway?” she said. “I have no qualifications.”
Nonetheless, she began working with Gettleman on the story, she explained in the podcast interview. Gettleman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, is an international correspondent, and when he is sent to a bureau, he works with news assistants and freelancers on stories. In this case, several newsroom sources familiar with the process said, Schwartz and Sella did the vast majority of the ground reporting, while Gettleman focused on the framing and writing.
The resulting report, published in late December, was headlined “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.” It was a bombshell and galvanized the Israeli war effort at a time when even some of Israel’s allies were expressing concern over its large-scale killing of civilians in Gaza. Inside the newsroom, the article was met with praise from editorial leaders but skepticism from other Times journalists. The paper’s flagship podcast “The Daily” attempted to turn the article into an episode, but it didn’t manage to get through a fact check, as The Intercept previously reported. (In a statement received after publication, a Times spokesperson said, “No Daily episode was killed due to fact checking failures.”)
The fear among Times staffers who have been critical of the paper’s Gaza coverage is that Schwartz will become a scapegoat for what is a much deeper failure. She may harbor animosity toward Palestinians, lack the experience with investigative journalism, and feel conflicting pressures between being a supporter of Israel’s war effort and a Times reporter, but Schwartz did not commission herself and Sella to report one of the most consequential stories of the war. Senior leadership at the New York Times did.
Schwartz said as much in an interview with Israeli Army Radio on December 31. “The New York Times said, ‘Let’s do an investigation into sexual violence’ — it was more a case of them having to convince me,” she said. Her host cut her off: “It was a proposal of The New York Times, the entire thing?”
“Unequivocally. Unequivocally. Obviously. Of course,” she said. “The paper stood behind us 200 percent and gave us the time, the investment, the resources to go in-depth with this investigation as much as needed.”
Shortly after the war broke out, some editors and reporters complained that Times standards barred them from referring to Hamas as “terrorists.” The rationale from the standards department, run for 14 years by Philip Corbett, had long been that Hamas was the de facto administrator of a specific territory, rather than a stateless terror group. Deliberately killing civilians, went the argument, was not enough to label a group terrorists, as that label could apply quite broadly.
Corbett, after October 7, defended the policy in the face of pressure, newsroom sources said, but he lost. On October 19, an email went out on behalf of Executive Editor Joe Kahn saying that Corbett had asked to step back from his position. “After 14 years as the embodiment of Times standards, Phil Corbett has told us he’d like to step back a bit and let someone else take the leading role in this crucial effort,” Times leadership explained. Three newsroom sources said the move was tied to the pressure he was under to soften coverage in Israel’s favor. One of the social media posts that Schwartz liked, triggering the Times review, made the case that, for Israeli propaganda purposes, Hamas should be likened at all times to the Islamic State. A Times spokesperson told The Intercept, “Your understanding about Phil Corbett is flatly untrue.” In a statement received after publication, “Phil had asked to change roles before Joe Kahn even became executive editor in June 2022. And it had absolutely nothing to do with a dispute over coverage.”
Since the revelations regarding Schwartz’s recent social media activity, her byline has not appeared in the paper and she has not attended editorial meetings. The paper said that a review into her social media “likes” is ongoing. “Those ‘likes’’ are unacceptable violations of our company policy,” said a Times spokesperson.
The bigger scandal may be the reporting itself, the process that allowed it into print, and the life-altering impact the reporting had for thousands of Palestinians whose deaths were justified by the alleged systematic sexual violence orchestrated by Hamas the paper claimed to have exposed.
Another frustrated Times reporter who has also worked as an editor there said, “A lot of focus will understandably, rightfully, be directed at Schwartz but this is most clearly poor editorial decision making that undermines all the other great work being tirelessly done across the paper — both related and completely unrelated to the war — that manages to challenge our readers and meet our standards.”
The Channel 12 podcast interview with Schwartz, which The Intercept translated from Hebrew, opens a window into the reporting process on the controversial story and suggests that The New York Times’s mission was to bolster a predetermined narrative.
In a response to The Intercept’s questions about Schwartz’s podcast interview, a spokesperson for the New York Times walked back the blockbuster article’s framing that evidence shows Hamas had weaponized sexual violence to a softer claim that “there may have been systematic use of sexual assault.”
Times International editor Phil Pan said in a statement that he stands by the work. “Ms. Schwartz was part of a rigorous reporting and editing process,” he said. “She made valuable contributions and we saw no evidence of bias in her work. We remain confident in the accuracy of our reporting and stand by the team’s investigation. But as we have said, her ‘likes’ of offensive and opinionated social media posts, predating her work with us, are unacceptable.”
After this story was published, Schwartz, who did not respond to a request for comment, tweeted to thank the Times for “standing behind the important stories we have published.” She added, “The recent attacks against me will not deter me from continuing my work.” Addressing her social media activity, Schwartz said, “I understand why people who do not know me were offended by the inadvertent ‘like’ I pressed on 10/7 and I apologize for that.” At least three of her “likes” have been the subject of public scrutiny.
In the podcast interview, Schwartz details her extensive efforts to get confirmation from Israeli hospitals, rape crisis centers, trauma recovery facilities, and sex assault hotlines in Israel, as well as her inability to get a single confirmation from any of them. “She was told there had been no complaints made of sexual assaults,” the Times spokesperson acknowledged after The Intercept brought the Channel 12 podcast episode to the paper’s attention. “This however was just the very first step of her research. She then describes the unfolding of evidence, testimonies, and eventual evidence that there may have been systematic use of sexual assault,” the spokesperson asserted. “She details her research steps and emphasizes the Times’s strict standards to corroborate evidence, and meetings with reporters and editors to discuss probing questions and think critically about the story.”
The question has never been whether individual acts of sexual assault may have occurred on October 7. Rape is not uncommon in war, and there were also several hundred civilians who poured into Israel from Gaza that day in a “second wave,” contributing to and participating in the mayhem and violence. The central issue is whether the New York Times presented solid evidence to support its claim that there were newly reported details “establishing that the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7” — a claim stated in the headline that Hamas deliberately deployed sexual violence as a weapon of war.
SCHWARTZ BEGAN HER work on the violence of October 7 where one would expect, by calling around to the designated “Room 4” facilities in 11 Israeli hospitals that examine and treat potential victims of sexual violence, including rape. “First thing I called them all, and they told me, ‘No, no complaint of sexual assault was received,’” she recalled in the podcast interview. “I had a lot of interviews which didn’t lead anywhere. Like, I would go to all kinds of psychiatric hospitals, sit in front of the staff, all of them are fully committed to the mission and no one had met a victim of sexual assault.”
The next step was to call the manager of the sexual assault hotline in Israel’s south, which proved equally fruitless. The manager told her they had no reports of sexual violence. She described the call as a “crazy in-depth conversation” where she pressed for specific cases. “Did anyone call you? Did you hear anything?” she recalled asking. “How could it be that you didn’t?”
As Schwartz began her own efforts to find evidence of sexual assault, the first specific allegations of rape began to emerge. A person identified in anonymous media interviews as a paramedic from the Israeli Air Force medical unit 669 claimed he saw evidence that two teenage girls at Kibbutz Nahal Oz had been raped and murdered in their bedroom. The man made other outrageous claims, however, that called his report into question. He claimed another rescuer “pulled out of the garbage” a baby who’d been stabbed multiple times. He also said he had seen “Arabic sentences that were written on entrances to houses … with the blood of the people that were living in the houses.” No such messages exist, and the story of the baby in the trash can has been debunked. The bigger problem was that no two girls at the kibbutz fit the source’s description. In future interviews, he changed the location to Kibbutz Be’eri. But no victims killed there matched the description either, as Mondoweiss reported.
After seeing these interviews, Schwartz started calling people at Kibbutz Be’eri and other kibbutzim that were targeted on October 7 in an effort to track down the story. “Nothing. There was nothing,” she said. “No one saw or heard anything.”She then reached the unit 669 paramedic who relayed to Schwartz the same story he had told other media outlets, which she says convinced her there was a systematic nature to the sexual violence. “I say, ‘OK, so it happened, one person saw it happen in Be’eri, so it can’t be just one person, because it’s two girls. It’s sisters. It’s in the room. Something about it is systematic, something about it feels to me that it’s not random,” Schwartz concluded on the podcast.
Schwartz said she then began a series of extensive conversations with Israeli officials from Zaka, a private ultra-Orthodox rescue organization that has been documented to have mishandled evidence and spread multiple false stories about the events of October 7, including debunked allegations of Hamas operatives beheading babies and cutting the fetus from a pregnant woman’s body. Its workers are not trained forensic scientists or crime scene experts. “When we go into a house, we use our imagination,” said Yossi Landau, a senior Zaka official, describing the group’s work at the October 7 attack sites. “The bodies were telling us what happened, that’s what happened.” Landau is featured in the Times report, though no mention is made of his well-documented track record of disseminating sensational stories of atrocities that were later proven false. Schwartz said that in her initial interviews, Zaka members did not make any specific allegations of rape, but described the general condition of bodies they said they saw. “They told me, ‘Yes, we saw naked women,’ or ‘We saw a woman without underwear.’ Both naked without underwear, and tied with zip ties. And sometimes not zip ties, sometimes a rope or a string of a hoodie.”
Schwartz continued to look for evidence at various sites of attack and found no witnesses to corroborate stories of rape. “And so I searched a lot in the kibbutzim, and apart from this testimony of [the Israeli military paramedic] and additionally, here and there, Zaka people — the stories, like, didn’t emerge from there,” she said.
As she continued to work the phones with rescue officials, Schwartz then saw interviews that international news channels began airing with Shari Mendes, an American architect who serves in a rabbinical unit of the Israel Defense Forces. Mendes, who was deployed to a morgue to prepare bodies for burial after the October 7 attacks, claimed to have seen voluminous evidence of sexual assaults.
“We saw evidence of rape,” Mendes stated in one interview. “Pelvises were broken, and it probably takes a lot to break a pelvis … and this was also among grandmothers down to small children. This is not just something we saw on the internet, we saw these bodies with our own eyes.” Mendes has been a ubiquitous figure in the Israeli government and major media narratives on sexual violence on October 7, despite the fact that she has no medical or forensic credentials to legally determine rape. She had also spoken about other violence on October 7, telling the Daily Mail in October, “A baby was cut out of a pregnant woman and beheaded and then the mother was beheaded.” No pregnant woman died that day, according to the official Israeli list of those killed in the attacks, and the independent research collective October 7 Fact Check said Mendes’s story was false.
“I kept wondering all the time, whether if I just hear about rape and see rape and think about it, whether that’s just because I’m leading toward that.”
After Schwartz saw interviews with Mendes, she was further convinced that the systematic rape narrative was true. “I’m like — wow, what is this?” she recalled. “And it feels to me like it’s starting to approach a plurality, even if you don’t know which numbers to put on it yet.”
At the same time, Schwartz said that she felt conflicted at times, wondering if she was becoming convinced of the truth of the overarching story precisely because she was looking for evidence to support the claim. “I kept wondering all the time, whether if I just hear about rape and see rape and think about it, whether that’s just because I’m leading toward that,” she said. She pushed those doubts aside. By the time Schwartz interviewed Mendes, the IDF reservist’s story had ricocheted around the world and been conclusively debunked: No baby was cut from a mother and beheaded. Yet Schwartz and the New York Times would go on to rely on Mendes’s testimony, as well as those of other witnesses with track records of making unreliable claims and lacking forensic credentials. No mention was made of questions about Mendes’s credibility.
HOW SCHWARTZ LANDED in such an extraordinary position at a crucial moment in the war is not entirely clear. Prior to joining the Times as a stringer last fall, Sella was a freelance journalist covering stories on issues ranging from “food, photography, and culture to peace efforts, economics, and the occupation,” according to his LinkedIn profile. Sella’s first collaboration with Gettleman, published on October 14, was a look at the trauma experienced by students at a university in southern Israel. For Schwartz, her first byline landed on November 14.
“Israeli police officials shared more evidence on Tuesday of atrocities committed during the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks, saying they had collected testimonies from more than a thousand witnesses and survivors about sexual violence and other abuses,” Schwartz reported. The story went on to quote Israel’s police chief, Kobi Shabtai, explaining a litany of evidence of gruesome killings and sexual assaults on October 7.
“This is the most extensive investigation the State of Israel has ever known,” Shabtai said in the Schwartz article, promising ample evidence would soon be provided.
When the Times later produced its definitive “Screams Without Words” investigation, however, Schwartz and her partners reported that, contrary to Shabtai’s claim, forensic evidence of sexual violence was non-existent. Without acknowledging the past statements by Shabtai in the Times, the paper reported that quick funerals in accordance with Jewish tradition meant evidence was not preserved. Experts told the Times that sexual violence in wars often leaves “limited forensic evidence.”
On the podcast, Schwartz said her next step was to go to a new holistic therapy facility established to address the trauma of October 7 victims, particularly those who endured the carnage at the Nova music festival. Opened a week after the attacks, the facility began welcoming hundreds of survivors where they could seek counseling, do yoga, and receive alternative medicine, as well as acupuncture, sound healing, and reflexology treatments. They called it Merhav Marpe, or Healing Space.
In multiple visits to Merhav Marpe, Schwartz again said in the podcast interview that she found no direct evidence of rapes or sexual violence. She expressed frustration with the therapists and counselors at the facility, saying they engaged in “a conspiracy of silence.” “Everyone, even those who heard these kinds of things from people, they felt very committed to their patients, or even just to people who assisted their patients, not to reveal things,” she said.
In the end, Schwartz came away with only innuendo and general statements from the therapists about how people process trauma, including sexual violence and rape. She said potential victims might be ashamed to speak out, experiencing survivors’ guilt, or were still in shock. “Perhaps also because Israeli society is conservative, there was some inclination to keep silent about this issue of sexual abuse,” Schwartz speculated. “On top of this, there is probably the added dimension of the religious-national aspect, that this was done by a terrorist, by someone from Hamas,” she added. “There were lots and lots of layers that made it so that they didn’t speak.”
According to the published Times article, “Two therapists said they were working with a woman who was gang raped at the rave and was in no condition to talk to investigators or reporters.”
Schwartz said she had focused on the kibbutzim because she had initially determined it was unlikely sexual assaults had occurred at the Nova music festival. “I was very skeptical that it happened at the area of the party, because everyone I spoke to among the survivors told me about a chase, a race, like, about moving from place to place,” she recalled. “How would they [have had the time] to mess with a woman, like — it is impossible. Either you hide, or you — or you die. Also it’s public, the Nova … such an open space.”
SCHWARTZ WATCHED INTERVIEWS given to international media outlets by Raz Cohen, who attended the Nova festival. A veteran of Israel’s special forces, Cohen did multiple interviews about a rape he claimed to have witnessed. A few days after the attacks, he told PBS NewsHour that he had witnessed multiple rapes. “The terrorists, people from Gaza, raped girls. And after they raped them, they killed them, murdered them with knives, or the opposite, killed — and after they raped, they — they did that,” he said. At an appearance on CNN on January 4, he described seeing one rape and said the assailants were “five guys — five civilians from Gaza, normal guys, not soldiers, not Nukhba,” referring to Hamas’s elite commando force. “It was regular people from Gaza with normal clothes.”
In Cohen’s interview with Schwartz for the Times:
He said he then saw five men, wearing civilian clothes, all carrying knives and one carrying a hammer, dragging a woman across the ground. She was young, naked and screaming.
‘They all gather around her,’ Mr. Cohen said. ‘She’s standing up. They start raping her. I saw the men standing in a half circle around her. One penetrates her. She screams. I still remember her voice, screams without words.”
“Then one of them raises a knife,” he said, “and they just slaughtered her.”
It was this interview that gave the Times its title: “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.” That Cohen had described alleged assailants as not being members of Hamas undermines the headline, but it remains unchanged. The Times did not address Cohen’s earlier claims that he witnessed multiple rapes.
Schwartz said in the podcast interview that, since the Times insisted on at least two sources, she asked Cohen to give her the contact information of the other people he was hiding with in the bush, so she could corroborate his story of the rape. She recalled, “Raz hides. In the bush next to him lies his friend Shoam. They get to this bush. There are two other people on the other side looking to the other direction, and another, fifth, person. Five people in the same bush. Only Raz sees all the things he sees, everyone else is looking in a different direction.”
Despite saying on the podcast that only Cohen witnessed the event and the others were looking in different directions, in the Times story Shoam Gueta is presented as a corroborating witness to the rape: “He said he saw at least four men step out of the van and attack the woman, who ended up ‘between their legs.’ He said that they were ‘talking, giggling and shouting,’ and that one of them stabbed her with a knife repeatedly, ‘literally butchering her.’” Gueta did not mention witnessing a rape in an interview he did with NBC News on October 8, a day after the attack, but he did describe seeing a woman murdered with a knife. “We saw terrorists killing people, burning cars, shouting everywhere,” Gueta told NBC. “If you just say something, if you make any noise, you’ll be murdered.” Gueta subsequently deployed to Gaza with the IDF and has posted many videos on TikTok of himself rummaging through Palestinian homes. Cohen and Gueta did not respond to requests for comment.
The independent site October 7 Fact Check, Mondoweiss, and journalists Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada and Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone have flagged numerous inconsistencies and contradictions in the stories told in the Times report, including the account of Cohen, who had initially said “he chose not to look, but he could hear them laughing constantly.”
Under pressure internally to defend the veracity of the story, the Times reassigned Gettleman, Schwartz, and Sella to effectively re-report the story, resulting in an article published on January 29. Cohen declined to speak to them, they reported: “Asked this month why he had not mentioned rape at first, Mr. Cohen cited the stress of his experience, and said in a text message that he had not realized then that he was one of the few surviving witnesses. He declined to be interviewed again, saying he was working to recover from the trauma he suffered.”
In addition to Cohen’s testimony, Schwartz said on the Channel 12 podcast that she also watched video of an interrogation of a Palestinian prisoner taken by the IDF whom she said described “girls” being dragged by Palestinian attackers into the woods near the Nova festival. She was also moved, she said, by a clip of an interview she watched in November at a press conference hosted by Israeli officials, the one that became the focus of her first Times article.
An accountant named Sapir described a lurid scene of rape and mutilation, and Schwartz said she became fully convinced there was a systematic program of sexual violence by Hamas. “Her testimony is crazy, and hair-raising, and huge, and barbaric,” Schwartz said. “And it’s not just rape — it’s rape, and amputation, and … and I realize it’s a bigger story than I imagined, [with] many locations, and then the picture starts to emerge, What is going on here?”
The Times report states they interviewed Sapir for two hours at a cafe in southern Israel, and she described witnessing multiple rapes, including an incident where one attacker rapes a woman as another cuts off her breast with a box cutter.
At the press conference in November, Israeli authorities said they were collecting and examining forensic materials that would confirm Sapir’s specifically detailed accounts. “Police say they are still gathering evidence (DNA etc) from rape victims in addition to eyewitnesses to build the strongest case possible,” said a correspondent who covered the press event. Such a scene would produce significant amounts of physical evidence, yet Israeli officials have, to date, been unable to provide it. “I have circumstantial evidence, but in the end, it’s my duty to find supporting evidence for her story and discover the victims’ identities,” said Superintendent Adi Edri, the Israeli official leading the investigation into sexual violence on October 7, a week after the Times report went online. “At this stage, I have no specific bodies.”
In the Channel 12 podcast, Schwartz is asked if firsthand testimonies of women who survived rape on October 7 exist. “I can’t really speak about this, but the vast majority of women who have been sexually assaulted on October 7 were shot immediately after, and that’s [where] the big numbers [are],” she replied. “The majority are corpses. Some women managed to escape and survive.” She added, “I do know that there is a very significant element of dissociation when it comes to sexual assault. So a lot of times they don’t remember. They don’t remember everything. They remember fragments of the events, and they can’t always describe how they ended up on the road and [how they were] rescued.”
In early December, Israeli officials launched an intensive public campaign, accusing the international community and specifically feminist leaders of standing silent in the face of the widespread, systemic sexual violence of Hamas’s October 7 attack. The PR effort was rolled out at the United Nations on December 4, with an event hosted by the Israeli ambassador and the former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg. The feminist organizations targeted by the pro-Israel figures were caught flat-footed, as charges of sexual violence had not yet circulated widely.
Sandberg was also quoted attacking women’s rights organizations in a December 4 New York Times article, headlined “What We Know About Sexual Violence During the Oct. 7 Attacks on Israel” and whose publication coincided with the launch of the PR campaign at the U.N. The article, also reported by Gettleman, Schwartz, and Sella, relied on claims made by Israeli officials and acknowledged the Times had not yet been able to corroborate the allegations. A revealing correction was subsequently appended to the story: “An earlier version of this article misstated the kind of evidence Israeli police have gathered in investigating accusations of sexual violence committed on Oct. 7 in the attack by Hamas against Israel. The police are relying mainly on witness testimony, not on autopsies or forensic evidence.”
Israel promised it had extraordinary amounts of eyewitness testimony. “Investigators have gathered ‘tens of thousands’ of testimonies of sexual violence committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, according to the Israeli police, including at the site of a music festival that was attacked,” Schwartz, Gettleman, and Stella reported on December 4. Those testimonies never materialized.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hammered on the theme in a December 5 speech in Tel Aviv. “I say to the women’s rights organizations, to the human rights organizations, you’ve heard of the rape of Israeli women, horrible atrocities, sexual mutilation? Where the hell are you?” The same day, President Joe Biden gave a speech in which he said, “The world can’t just look away — what’s going on. It’s on all of us — the government, international organizations, civil society, individual citizens — to forcefully condemn the sexual violence of Hamas terrorists without equivocation — without equivocation, without exception.”
The two-month-long Times investigation was still being edited and revised, Schwartz said in the podcast, when she started to feel concerned about the timing. “So I said, ‘We’re missing momentum. Maybe the U.N. isn’t addressing sexual assault because no [media outlet] will come out with a declaration about what happened there.’” If the Times story doesn’t publish soon, she said, “it may no longer be interesting.” Schwartz said the delay was explained to her internally as, “We don’t want to make people sad before Christmas.”
She also said that Israeli police sources were pressuring her to move quickly to publish. She said they asked her, “What, does the New York Times not believe there were sexual assaults here?” Schwartz felt like she was in the middle.
“I’m also in this place, I’m also an Israeli, but I also work for New York Times,” she said. “So all the time I’m like in this place between the hammer and the anvil.”
THE DECEMBER 28 article “Screams Without Words” opened with the story of Gal Abdush, described by the Times as “the woman in the black dress.” Video of her charred body appeared to show her bottomless. “Israeli police officials said they believed that Ms. Abdush was raped,” the Times reported. The article labeled Abdush “a symbol of the horrors visited upon Israeli women and girls during the October 7 attacks.” The Times report mentions WhatsApp messages from Abdush and her husband to their family, but doesn’t mention that some family members believe that the crucial messages make the Israeli officials’ claims implausible. As Mondoweiss later reported, Abdush texted the family at 6:51 a.m., saying they were in trouble at the border. At 7:00, her husband messaged to say she’d been killed. Her family said the charring came from a grenade.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Abdush’s sister, that in a short timespan “they raped her, slaughtered her, and burned her?” Speaking about the rape allegation, her brother-in-law said: “The media invented it.”
Another relative suggested the family was pressured, under false pretenses, to speak with the reporters. Abdush’s sister wrote on Instagram that the Times reporters “mentioned they want to write a report in memory of Gal, and that’s it. If we knew that the title would be about rape and butchery, we’d never accept that.” In its follow-up story, the Times sought to discredit her initial comment, quoting Abdush’s sister as saying she “had been ‘confused about what happened’ and was trying to ‘protect my sister.’”
The woman who filmed Abdush on October 7 told the Israeli site YNet that Schwartz and Sella had pressured her into giving the paper access to her photos and videos for the purposes of serving Israeli propaganda. “They called me again and again and explained how important it is to Israeli hasbara,” she recalled, using the term for public diplomacy, which in practice refers to Israeli propaganda efforts directed at international audiences.
At every turn, when the New York Times reporters ran into obstacles confirming tips, they turned to anonymous Israeli officials or witnesses who’d already been interviewed repeatedly in the press. Months after setting off on their assignment, the reporters found themselves exactly where they had begun, relying overwhelmingly on the word of Israeli officials, soldiers, and Zaka workers to substantiate their claim that more than 30 bodies of women and girls were discovered with signs of sexual abuse. On the Channel 12 podcast, Schwartz said the last remaining piece she needed for the story was a solid number from the Israeli authorities about any possible survivors of sexual violence. “We have four and we can stand behind that number,” she said she was told by the Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs. No details were provided. The Times story ultimately reported there were “at least three women and one man who were sexually assaulted and survived.”
When the story was finally published on December 28 Schwartz described the flood of emotions and reactions online and in Israel. “First of all, in the paper, we gave it a very, very prominent place, which is, apropos all my fears — there is no greater show of confidence than being put on the front page,” she said. “In Israel, the reactions are amazing. Here I think I was given closure, seeing that all the media treat the article and treat it as something of [a] thank you for putting a number on it. Thank you for saying there were many cases, that it was a pattern. Thank you for giving it a title which suggests that maybe there is some organizing logic behind it, that this is not some isolated act of some person acting on his own initiative.”
Times staffers who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal described the “Screams Without Words” article as the product of the same mistakes that led to the disastrous editor’s note and retraction on Rukmini Callimachi’s podcast “Caliphate” and print series on the Islamic State group. Kahn, the current executive editor, was widely known as a promoter and protector of Callimachi. The reporting, which the Times determined in an internal review was not subjected to sufficient scrutiny by top editors and fell short of the paper’s standards on ensuring accuracy, had been a finalist for a 2019 Pulitzer Prize. That honor, along with other prestigious awards, was rescinded in the wake of the scandal.
Margaret Sullivan, the last public editor for the New York Times to serve a full term before the paper discarded the position in 2017, said that she hopes such an investigation will be launched into the “Screams Without Words” story. “I sometimes joke ‘it’s another good day not to be the New York Times public editor’ but the organization could *really* use one right now to investigate on behalf of the readers,” she wrote.
At some story meetings, Schwartz said on the Channel 12 podcast, editors with Middle East expertise were there to offer probing questions. “We had a weekly meeting, and you bring out the status of your work on your project,” she said. “And Times writers and editors who are concerned with Middle Eastern affairs coming from all kinds of places in the world, they ask you questions that challenge you, and it’s excellent that they do that, because you yourself, all the time, like — you don’t believe yourself for a moment.”
Those questions were challenging to answer, she said: “One of the questions you get asked — and it’s the hardest ones to not be able to answer — if this has happened in so many places, how can it be that there is no forensic evidence? How can it be that there is no documentation? How can it be that there are no records? A report? An Excel spreadsheet? You are telling me about Shari [Mendes]? That’s someone who saw with her own eyes, and is now speaking to you — is there no [written] report to make what she’s saying authoritative?”
The host interjected. “And you went at that stage to those official Israeli authorities, and asked that they give you — something, anything. And how did they respond?”
“‘There is nothing,’” Schwartz said she was told. “‘There was no collection of evidence from the scene.’”
But broadly, she said, the editors were fully behind the project. “There was no skepticism on their part, ever,” she claimed. “It still doesn’t mean I had [the story], because I didn’t have a ‘second source’ for many things.”
A Times spokesperson pointed to this portion of the interview as evidence of the paper’s rigorous process: “We have reviewed the wider transcript and it’s clear you’re persisting in taking quotes out of context. In the portion of the interview you refer to, Anat describes being encouraged by editors to corroborate evidence and sources before we’d publish the investigation. Later, she discusses regular meetings with editors where they would ask ‘hard’ and ‘challenging’ questions, and the time it took to undertake the second and third stages of sourcing. This is all part of a rigorous reporting process and one which we continue to stand behind.”
In her interview with the Channel 12 podcast, Schwartz said she began working with Gettleman soon after October 7. “My job was to help him. He had all kinds of thoughts about things, about articles he wanted to do,” she recalled. “On the first day, there were already three things on [his] lineup, and then I saw that at number three was ‘Sexual Violence.’” Schwartz said that in the initial aftermath of the October 7 attacks, there was not much focus on sexual assaults, but by the time she began working for Gettleman, rumors began spreading that such acts had taken place, most of it based on the commentary of Zaka workers and IDF officials and soldiers.
After the article was published, Gettleman was invited to speak on a panel about sexual violence at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. His efforts were lauded by the panel and its host, Sandberg, the former Facebook executive. Instead of doubling down on reporting that helped win the New York Times a prestigious Polk Award, Gettleman dismissed the need for reporters to provide “evidence.”
“What we found — I don’t want to even use the word ‘evidence,’ because evidence is almost like a legal term that suggests you’re trying to prove an allegation or prove a case in court,” Gettleman told Sandberg. “That’s not my role. We all have our roles. And my role is to document, is to present information, is to give people a voice. And we found information along the entire chain of violence, so of sexual violence.”
Gettleman said his mission was to move people. “It’s really difficult to get this information and then to shape it,” he said. “That’s our job as journalists: to get the information and to share the story in a way that makes people care. Not just to inform, but to move people. And that’s what I’ve been doing for a long time.”[/u]
One Times reporter said colleagues are wondering what a balanced approach might look like: “I am waiting to see if the paper will report in depth, deploying the same kind of resources and means, on the United Nations’ report that documented the horrors committed against Palestinian women.”
Update: February 29, 2024
This story has been updated to include comments tweeted after publication by Anat Schwartz. This story has also been updated to include a statement from the Times, received after publication, that standards editor Phil Corbett planned to leave as of June 2022 and regarding an episode of “The Daily” that never aired.
Correction: February 29, 2024
This story has been corrected to remove an errant reference to unnamed experts in a New York Times article; the Times named one expert. A reference to guests at a Times editorial meeting, made due to a translation error, has been removed; the attendees were editors. This story has been corrected to reflect that Adam Sella is the nephew of Anat Schwartz’s partner, not Schwartz.
CONTACT THE AUTHOR:
Jeremy Scahill
[email protected]
@jeremyscahill
on X
Ryan Grim
[email protected]
@ryangrim
on X
Daniel Boguslaw
[email protected]
@DRBoguslaw
on X
by Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim, Daniel Boguslaw
The Intercept
February 28 2024, 11:04 p.m.
https://theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new ... october-7/
[x]
Graffiti marking the surprise attack by Hamas militants on a music festival and at kibbutzim near the border with Gaza, on Oct. 13, 2023, in Tel Aviv, Israel. Photo: Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images
ANAT SCHWARTZ HAD a problem. The Israeli filmmaker and former air force intelligence official had been assigned by the New York Times to work with her partner’s nephew Adam Sella and veteran Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman on an investigation into sexual violence by Hamas on October 7 that could reshape the way the world understood Israel’s ongoing war in the Gaza Strip. By November, global opposition was mounting against Israel’s military campaign, which had already killed thousands of children, women, and the elderly. On her social media feed, which the Times has since said it is reviewing, Schwartz liked a tweet saying that Israel needed to “turn the strip into a slaughterhouse.”
“Violate any norm, on the way to victory,” read the post. “Those in front of us are human animals who do not hesitate to violate minimal rules.”
The New York Times, however, does have rules and norms. Schwartz had no prior reporting experience. Her reporting partner Gettleman explained the basics to her, Schwartz said in a podcast interview on January 3, produced by Israel’s Channel 12 and conducted in Hebrew.
Gettleman, she said, was concerned they “get at least two sources for every detail we put into the article, cross-check information. Do we have forensic evidence? Do we have visual evidence? Apart from telling our reader ‘this happened,’ what can we say? Can we tell what happened to whom?”
Schwartz said she was initially reluctant to take the assignment because she did not want to look at visual images of potential assaults and because she lacked the expertise to conduct such an investigation.
“Victims of sexual assault are women who have experienced something, and then to come and sit in front of such a woman — who am I anyway?” she said. “I have no qualifications.”
Nonetheless, she began working with Gettleman on the story, she explained in the podcast interview. Gettleman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, is an international correspondent, and when he is sent to a bureau, he works with news assistants and freelancers on stories. In this case, several newsroom sources familiar with the process said, Schwartz and Sella did the vast majority of the ground reporting, while Gettleman focused on the framing and writing.
The resulting report, published in late December, was headlined “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.” It was a bombshell and galvanized the Israeli war effort at a time when even some of Israel’s allies were expressing concern over its large-scale killing of civilians in Gaza. Inside the newsroom, the article was met with praise from editorial leaders but skepticism from other Times journalists. The paper’s flagship podcast “The Daily” attempted to turn the article into an episode, but it didn’t manage to get through a fact check, as The Intercept previously reported. (In a statement received after publication, a Times spokesperson said, “No Daily episode was killed due to fact checking failures.”)
The fear among Times staffers who have been critical of the paper’s Gaza coverage is that Schwartz will become a scapegoat for what is a much deeper failure. She may harbor animosity toward Palestinians, lack the experience with investigative journalism, and feel conflicting pressures between being a supporter of Israel’s war effort and a Times reporter, but Schwartz did not commission herself and Sella to report one of the most consequential stories of the war. Senior leadership at the New York Times did.
Schwartz said as much in an interview with Israeli Army Radio on December 31. “The New York Times said, ‘Let’s do an investigation into sexual violence’ — it was more a case of them having to convince me,” she said. Her host cut her off: “It was a proposal of The New York Times, the entire thing?”
“Unequivocally. Unequivocally. Obviously. Of course,” she said. “The paper stood behind us 200 percent and gave us the time, the investment, the resources to go in-depth with this investigation as much as needed.”
Shortly after the war broke out, some editors and reporters complained that Times standards barred them from referring to Hamas as “terrorists.” The rationale from the standards department, run for 14 years by Philip Corbett, had long been that Hamas was the de facto administrator of a specific territory, rather than a stateless terror group. Deliberately killing civilians, went the argument, was not enough to label a group terrorists, as that label could apply quite broadly.
Corbett, after October 7, defended the policy in the face of pressure, newsroom sources said, but he lost. On October 19, an email went out on behalf of Executive Editor Joe Kahn saying that Corbett had asked to step back from his position. “After 14 years as the embodiment of Times standards, Phil Corbett has told us he’d like to step back a bit and let someone else take the leading role in this crucial effort,” Times leadership explained. Three newsroom sources said the move was tied to the pressure he was under to soften coverage in Israel’s favor. One of the social media posts that Schwartz liked, triggering the Times review, made the case that, for Israeli propaganda purposes, Hamas should be likened at all times to the Islamic State. A Times spokesperson told The Intercept, “Your understanding about Phil Corbett is flatly untrue.” In a statement received after publication, “Phil had asked to change roles before Joe Kahn even became executive editor in June 2022. And it had absolutely nothing to do with a dispute over coverage.”
Since the revelations regarding Schwartz’s recent social media activity, her byline has not appeared in the paper and she has not attended editorial meetings. The paper said that a review into her social media “likes” is ongoing. “Those ‘likes’’ are unacceptable violations of our company policy,” said a Times spokesperson.
The bigger scandal may be the reporting itself, the process that allowed it into print, and the life-altering impact the reporting had for thousands of Palestinians whose deaths were justified by the alleged systematic sexual violence orchestrated by Hamas the paper claimed to have exposed.
Another frustrated Times reporter who has also worked as an editor there said, “A lot of focus will understandably, rightfully, be directed at Schwartz but this is most clearly poor editorial decision making that undermines all the other great work being tirelessly done across the paper — both related and completely unrelated to the war — that manages to challenge our readers and meet our standards.”
“A lot of focus will understandably, rightfully, be directed at Schwartz but this is most clearly poor editorial decision.”
The Channel 12 podcast interview with Schwartz, which The Intercept translated from Hebrew, opens a window into the reporting process on the controversial story and suggests that The New York Times’s mission was to bolster a predetermined narrative.
In a response to The Intercept’s questions about Schwartz’s podcast interview, a spokesperson for the New York Times walked back the blockbuster article’s framing that evidence shows Hamas had weaponized sexual violence to a softer claim that “there may have been systematic use of sexual assault.”
Times International editor Phil Pan said in a statement that he stands by the work. “Ms. Schwartz was part of a rigorous reporting and editing process,” he said. “She made valuable contributions and we saw no evidence of bias in her work. We remain confident in the accuracy of our reporting and stand by the team’s investigation. But as we have said, her ‘likes’ of offensive and opinionated social media posts, predating her work with us, are unacceptable.”
After this story was published, Schwartz, who did not respond to a request for comment, tweeted to thank the Times for “standing behind the important stories we have published.” She added, “The recent attacks against me will not deter me from continuing my work.” Addressing her social media activity, Schwartz said, “I understand why people who do not know me were offended by the inadvertent ‘like’ I pressed on 10/7 and I apologize for that.” At least three of her “likes” have been the subject of public scrutiny.
In the podcast interview, Schwartz details her extensive efforts to get confirmation from Israeli hospitals, rape crisis centers, trauma recovery facilities, and sex assault hotlines in Israel, as well as her inability to get a single confirmation from any of them. “She was told there had been no complaints made of sexual assaults,” the Times spokesperson acknowledged after The Intercept brought the Channel 12 podcast episode to the paper’s attention. “This however was just the very first step of her research. She then describes the unfolding of evidence, testimonies, and eventual evidence that there may have been systematic use of sexual assault,” the spokesperson asserted. “She details her research steps and emphasizes the Times’s strict standards to corroborate evidence, and meetings with reporters and editors to discuss probing questions and think critically about the story.”
The question has never been whether individual acts of sexual assault may have occurred on October 7. Rape is not uncommon in war, and there were also several hundred civilians who poured into Israel from Gaza that day in a “second wave,” contributing to and participating in the mayhem and violence. The central issue is whether the New York Times presented solid evidence to support its claim that there were newly reported details “establishing that the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7” — a claim stated in the headline that Hamas deliberately deployed sexual violence as a weapon of war.
SCHWARTZ BEGAN HER work on the violence of October 7 where one would expect, by calling around to the designated “Room 4” facilities in 11 Israeli hospitals that examine and treat potential victims of sexual violence, including rape. “First thing I called them all, and they told me, ‘No, no complaint of sexual assault was received,’” she recalled in the podcast interview. “I had a lot of interviews which didn’t lead anywhere. Like, I would go to all kinds of psychiatric hospitals, sit in front of the staff, all of them are fully committed to the mission and no one had met a victim of sexual assault.”
The next step was to call the manager of the sexual assault hotline in Israel’s south, which proved equally fruitless. The manager told her they had no reports of sexual violence. She described the call as a “crazy in-depth conversation” where she pressed for specific cases. “Did anyone call you? Did you hear anything?” she recalled asking. “How could it be that you didn’t?”
As Schwartz began her own efforts to find evidence of sexual assault, the first specific allegations of rape began to emerge. A person identified in anonymous media interviews as a paramedic from the Israeli Air Force medical unit 669 claimed he saw evidence that two teenage girls at Kibbutz Nahal Oz had been raped and murdered in their bedroom. The man made other outrageous claims, however, that called his report into question. He claimed another rescuer “pulled out of the garbage” a baby who’d been stabbed multiple times. He also said he had seen “Arabic sentences that were written on entrances to houses … with the blood of the people that were living in the houses.” No such messages exist, and the story of the baby in the trash can has been debunked. The bigger problem was that no two girls at the kibbutz fit the source’s description. In future interviews, he changed the location to Kibbutz Be’eri. But no victims killed there matched the description either, as Mondoweiss reported.
After seeing these interviews, Schwartz started calling people at Kibbutz Be’eri and other kibbutzim that were targeted on October 7 in an effort to track down the story. “Nothing. There was nothing,” she said. “No one saw or heard anything.”She then reached the unit 669 paramedic who relayed to Schwartz the same story he had told other media outlets, which she says convinced her there was a systematic nature to the sexual violence. “I say, ‘OK, so it happened, one person saw it happen in Be’eri, so it can’t be just one person, because it’s two girls. It’s sisters. It’s in the room. Something about it is systematic, something about it feels to me that it’s not random,” Schwartz concluded on the podcast.
Schwartz said she then began a series of extensive conversations with Israeli officials from Zaka, a private ultra-Orthodox rescue organization that has been documented to have mishandled evidence and spread multiple false stories about the events of October 7, including debunked allegations of Hamas operatives beheading babies and cutting the fetus from a pregnant woman’s body. Its workers are not trained forensic scientists or crime scene experts. “When we go into a house, we use our imagination,” said Yossi Landau, a senior Zaka official, describing the group’s work at the October 7 attack sites. “The bodies were telling us what happened, that’s what happened.” Landau is featured in the Times report, though no mention is made of his well-documented track record of disseminating sensational stories of atrocities that were later proven false. Schwartz said that in her initial interviews, Zaka members did not make any specific allegations of rape, but described the general condition of bodies they said they saw. “They told me, ‘Yes, we saw naked women,’ or ‘We saw a woman without underwear.’ Both naked without underwear, and tied with zip ties. And sometimes not zip ties, sometimes a rope or a string of a hoodie.”
Schwartz continued to look for evidence at various sites of attack and found no witnesses to corroborate stories of rape. “And so I searched a lot in the kibbutzim, and apart from this testimony of [the Israeli military paramedic] and additionally, here and there, Zaka people — the stories, like, didn’t emerge from there,” she said.
As she continued to work the phones with rescue officials, Schwartz then saw interviews that international news channels began airing with Shari Mendes, an American architect who serves in a rabbinical unit of the Israel Defense Forces. Mendes, who was deployed to a morgue to prepare bodies for burial after the October 7 attacks, claimed to have seen voluminous evidence of sexual assaults.
“We saw evidence of rape,” Mendes stated in one interview. “Pelvises were broken, and it probably takes a lot to break a pelvis … and this was also among grandmothers down to small children. This is not just something we saw on the internet, we saw these bodies with our own eyes.” Mendes has been a ubiquitous figure in the Israeli government and major media narratives on sexual violence on October 7, despite the fact that she has no medical or forensic credentials to legally determine rape. She had also spoken about other violence on October 7, telling the Daily Mail in October, “A baby was cut out of a pregnant woman and beheaded and then the mother was beheaded.” No pregnant woman died that day, according to the official Israeli list of those killed in the attacks, and the independent research collective October 7 Fact Check said Mendes’s story was false.
“I kept wondering all the time, whether if I just hear about rape and see rape and think about it, whether that’s just because I’m leading toward that.”
After Schwartz saw interviews with Mendes, she was further convinced that the systematic rape narrative was true. “I’m like — wow, what is this?” she recalled. “And it feels to me like it’s starting to approach a plurality, even if you don’t know which numbers to put on it yet.”
At the same time, Schwartz said that she felt conflicted at times, wondering if she was becoming convinced of the truth of the overarching story precisely because she was looking for evidence to support the claim. “I kept wondering all the time, whether if I just hear about rape and see rape and think about it, whether that’s just because I’m leading toward that,” she said. She pushed those doubts aside. By the time Schwartz interviewed Mendes, the IDF reservist’s story had ricocheted around the world and been conclusively debunked: No baby was cut from a mother and beheaded. Yet Schwartz and the New York Times would go on to rely on Mendes’s testimony, as well as those of other witnesses with track records of making unreliable claims and lacking forensic credentials. No mention was made of questions about Mendes’s credibility.
HOW SCHWARTZ LANDED in such an extraordinary position at a crucial moment in the war is not entirely clear. Prior to joining the Times as a stringer last fall, Sella was a freelance journalist covering stories on issues ranging from “food, photography, and culture to peace efforts, economics, and the occupation,” according to his LinkedIn profile. Sella’s first collaboration with Gettleman, published on October 14, was a look at the trauma experienced by students at a university in southern Israel. For Schwartz, her first byline landed on November 14.
“Israeli police officials shared more evidence on Tuesday of atrocities committed during the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks, saying they had collected testimonies from more than a thousand witnesses and survivors about sexual violence and other abuses,” Schwartz reported. The story went on to quote Israel’s police chief, Kobi Shabtai, explaining a litany of evidence of gruesome killings and sexual assaults on October 7.
“This is the most extensive investigation the State of Israel has ever known,” Shabtai said in the Schwartz article, promising ample evidence would soon be provided.
When the Times later produced its definitive “Screams Without Words” investigation, however, Schwartz and her partners reported that, contrary to Shabtai’s claim, forensic evidence of sexual violence was non-existent. Without acknowledging the past statements by Shabtai in the Times, the paper reported that quick funerals in accordance with Jewish tradition meant evidence was not preserved. Experts told the Times that sexual violence in wars often leaves “limited forensic evidence.”
On the podcast, Schwartz said her next step was to go to a new holistic therapy facility established to address the trauma of October 7 victims, particularly those who endured the carnage at the Nova music festival. Opened a week after the attacks, the facility began welcoming hundreds of survivors where they could seek counseling, do yoga, and receive alternative medicine, as well as acupuncture, sound healing, and reflexology treatments. They called it Merhav Marpe, or Healing Space.
In multiple visits to Merhav Marpe, Schwartz again said in the podcast interview that she found no direct evidence of rapes or sexual violence. She expressed frustration with the therapists and counselors at the facility, saying they engaged in “a conspiracy of silence.” “Everyone, even those who heard these kinds of things from people, they felt very committed to their patients, or even just to people who assisted their patients, not to reveal things,” she said.
In the end, Schwartz came away with only innuendo and general statements from the therapists about how people process trauma, including sexual violence and rape. She said potential victims might be ashamed to speak out, experiencing survivors’ guilt, or were still in shock. “Perhaps also because Israeli society is conservative, there was some inclination to keep silent about this issue of sexual abuse,” Schwartz speculated. “On top of this, there is probably the added dimension of the religious-national aspect, that this was done by a terrorist, by someone from Hamas,” she added. “There were lots and lots of layers that made it so that they didn’t speak.”
According to the published Times article, “Two therapists said they were working with a woman who was gang raped at the rave and was in no condition to talk to investigators or reporters.”
Schwartz said she had focused on the kibbutzim because she had initially determined it was unlikely sexual assaults had occurred at the Nova music festival. “I was very skeptical that it happened at the area of the party, because everyone I spoke to among the survivors told me about a chase, a race, like, about moving from place to place,” she recalled. “How would they [have had the time] to mess with a woman, like — it is impossible. Either you hide, or you — or you die. Also it’s public, the Nova … such an open space.”
SCHWARTZ WATCHED INTERVIEWS given to international media outlets by Raz Cohen, who attended the Nova festival. A veteran of Israel’s special forces, Cohen did multiple interviews about a rape he claimed to have witnessed. A few days after the attacks, he told PBS NewsHour that he had witnessed multiple rapes. “The terrorists, people from Gaza, raped girls. And after they raped them, they killed them, murdered them with knives, or the opposite, killed — and after they raped, they — they did that,” he said. At an appearance on CNN on January 4, he described seeing one rape and said the assailants were “five guys — five civilians from Gaza, normal guys, not soldiers, not Nukhba,” referring to Hamas’s elite commando force. “It was regular people from Gaza with normal clothes.”
In Cohen’s interview with Schwartz for the Times:
He said he then saw five men, wearing civilian clothes, all carrying knives and one carrying a hammer, dragging a woman across the ground. She was young, naked and screaming.
‘They all gather around her,’ Mr. Cohen said. ‘She’s standing up. They start raping her. I saw the men standing in a half circle around her. One penetrates her. She screams. I still remember her voice, screams without words.”
“Then one of them raises a knife,” he said, “and they just slaughtered her.”
It was this interview that gave the Times its title: “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.” That Cohen had described alleged assailants as not being members of Hamas undermines the headline, but it remains unchanged. The Times did not address Cohen’s earlier claims that he witnessed multiple rapes.
Schwartz said in the podcast interview that, since the Times insisted on at least two sources, she asked Cohen to give her the contact information of the other people he was hiding with in the bush, so she could corroborate his story of the rape. She recalled, “Raz hides. In the bush next to him lies his friend Shoam. They get to this bush. There are two other people on the other side looking to the other direction, and another, fifth, person. Five people in the same bush. Only Raz sees all the things he sees, everyone else is looking in a different direction.”
Despite saying on the podcast that only Cohen witnessed the event and the others were looking in different directions, in the Times story Shoam Gueta is presented as a corroborating witness to the rape: “He said he saw at least four men step out of the van and attack the woman, who ended up ‘between their legs.’ He said that they were ‘talking, giggling and shouting,’ and that one of them stabbed her with a knife repeatedly, ‘literally butchering her.’” Gueta did not mention witnessing a rape in an interview he did with NBC News on October 8, a day after the attack, but he did describe seeing a woman murdered with a knife. “We saw terrorists killing people, burning cars, shouting everywhere,” Gueta told NBC. “If you just say something, if you make any noise, you’ll be murdered.” Gueta subsequently deployed to Gaza with the IDF and has posted many videos on TikTok of himself rummaging through Palestinian homes. Cohen and Gueta did not respond to requests for comment.
The independent site October 7 Fact Check, Mondoweiss, and journalists Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada and Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone have flagged numerous inconsistencies and contradictions in the stories told in the Times report, including the account of Cohen, who had initially said “he chose not to look, but he could hear them laughing constantly.”
Under pressure internally to defend the veracity of the story, the Times reassigned Gettleman, Schwartz, and Sella to effectively re-report the story, resulting in an article published on January 29. Cohen declined to speak to them, they reported: “Asked this month why he had not mentioned rape at first, Mr. Cohen cited the stress of his experience, and said in a text message that he had not realized then that he was one of the few surviving witnesses. He declined to be interviewed again, saying he was working to recover from the trauma he suffered.”
In addition to Cohen’s testimony, Schwartz said on the Channel 12 podcast that she also watched video of an interrogation of a Palestinian prisoner taken by the IDF whom she said described “girls” being dragged by Palestinian attackers into the woods near the Nova festival. She was also moved, she said, by a clip of an interview she watched in November at a press conference hosted by Israeli officials, the one that became the focus of her first Times article.
An accountant named Sapir described a lurid scene of rape and mutilation, and Schwartz said she became fully convinced there was a systematic program of sexual violence by Hamas. “Her testimony is crazy, and hair-raising, and huge, and barbaric,” Schwartz said. “And it’s not just rape — it’s rape, and amputation, and … and I realize it’s a bigger story than I imagined, [with] many locations, and then the picture starts to emerge, What is going on here?”
The Times report states they interviewed Sapir for two hours at a cafe in southern Israel, and she described witnessing multiple rapes, including an incident where one attacker rapes a woman as another cuts off her breast with a box cutter.
At the press conference in November, Israeli authorities said they were collecting and examining forensic materials that would confirm Sapir’s specifically detailed accounts. “Police say they are still gathering evidence (DNA etc) from rape victims in addition to eyewitnesses to build the strongest case possible,” said a correspondent who covered the press event. Such a scene would produce significant amounts of physical evidence, yet Israeli officials have, to date, been unable to provide it. “I have circumstantial evidence, but in the end, it’s my duty to find supporting evidence for her story and discover the victims’ identities,” said Superintendent Adi Edri, the Israeli official leading the investigation into sexual violence on October 7, a week after the Times report went online. “At this stage, I have no specific bodies.”
In the Channel 12 podcast, Schwartz is asked if firsthand testimonies of women who survived rape on October 7 exist. “I can’t really speak about this, but the vast majority of women who have been sexually assaulted on October 7 were shot immediately after, and that’s [where] the big numbers [are],” she replied. “The majority are corpses. Some women managed to escape and survive.” She added, “I do know that there is a very significant element of dissociation when it comes to sexual assault. So a lot of times they don’t remember. They don’t remember everything. They remember fragments of the events, and they can’t always describe how they ended up on the road and [how they were] rescued.”
In early December, Israeli officials launched an intensive public campaign, accusing the international community and specifically feminist leaders of standing silent in the face of the widespread, systemic sexual violence of Hamas’s October 7 attack. The PR effort was rolled out at the United Nations on December 4, with an event hosted by the Israeli ambassador and the former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg. The feminist organizations targeted by the pro-Israel figures were caught flat-footed, as charges of sexual violence had not yet circulated widely.
Sandberg was also quoted attacking women’s rights organizations in a December 4 New York Times article, headlined “What We Know About Sexual Violence During the Oct. 7 Attacks on Israel” and whose publication coincided with the launch of the PR campaign at the U.N. The article, also reported by Gettleman, Schwartz, and Sella, relied on claims made by Israeli officials and acknowledged the Times had not yet been able to corroborate the allegations. A revealing correction was subsequently appended to the story: “An earlier version of this article misstated the kind of evidence Israeli police have gathered in investigating accusations of sexual violence committed on Oct. 7 in the attack by Hamas against Israel. The police are relying mainly on witness testimony, not on autopsies or forensic evidence.”
Israel promised it had extraordinary amounts of eyewitness testimony. “Investigators have gathered ‘tens of thousands’ of testimonies of sexual violence committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, according to the Israeli police, including at the site of a music festival that was attacked,” Schwartz, Gettleman, and Stella reported on December 4. Those testimonies never materialized.
“I’m also an Israeli, but I also work for New York Times. So all the time I’m like in this place between the hammer and the anvil.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hammered on the theme in a December 5 speech in Tel Aviv. “I say to the women’s rights organizations, to the human rights organizations, you’ve heard of the rape of Israeli women, horrible atrocities, sexual mutilation? Where the hell are you?” The same day, President Joe Biden gave a speech in which he said, “The world can’t just look away — what’s going on. It’s on all of us — the government, international organizations, civil society, individual citizens — to forcefully condemn the sexual violence of Hamas terrorists without equivocation — without equivocation, without exception.”
The two-month-long Times investigation was still being edited and revised, Schwartz said in the podcast, when she started to feel concerned about the timing. “So I said, ‘We’re missing momentum. Maybe the U.N. isn’t addressing sexual assault because no [media outlet] will come out with a declaration about what happened there.’” If the Times story doesn’t publish soon, she said, “it may no longer be interesting.” Schwartz said the delay was explained to her internally as, “We don’t want to make people sad before Christmas.”
She also said that Israeli police sources were pressuring her to move quickly to publish. She said they asked her, “What, does the New York Times not believe there were sexual assaults here?” Schwartz felt like she was in the middle.
“I’m also in this place, I’m also an Israeli, but I also work for New York Times,” she said. “So all the time I’m like in this place between the hammer and the anvil.”
THE DECEMBER 28 article “Screams Without Words” opened with the story of Gal Abdush, described by the Times as “the woman in the black dress.” Video of her charred body appeared to show her bottomless. “Israeli police officials said they believed that Ms. Abdush was raped,” the Times reported. The article labeled Abdush “a symbol of the horrors visited upon Israeli women and girls during the October 7 attacks.” The Times report mentions WhatsApp messages from Abdush and her husband to their family, but doesn’t mention that some family members believe that the crucial messages make the Israeli officials’ claims implausible. As Mondoweiss later reported, Abdush texted the family at 6:51 a.m., saying they were in trouble at the border. At 7:00, her husband messaged to say she’d been killed. Her family said the charring came from a grenade.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Abdush’s sister, that in a short timespan “they raped her, slaughtered her, and burned her?” Speaking about the rape allegation, her brother-in-law said: “The media invented it.”
Another relative suggested the family was pressured, under false pretenses, to speak with the reporters. Abdush’s sister wrote on Instagram that the Times reporters “mentioned they want to write a report in memory of Gal, and that’s it. If we knew that the title would be about rape and butchery, we’d never accept that.” In its follow-up story, the Times sought to discredit her initial comment, quoting Abdush’s sister as saying she “had been ‘confused about what happened’ and was trying to ‘protect my sister.’”
The woman who filmed Abdush on October 7 told the Israeli site YNet that Schwartz and Sella had pressured her into giving the paper access to her photos and videos for the purposes of serving Israeli propaganda. “They called me again and again and explained how important it is to Israeli hasbara,” she recalled, using the term for public diplomacy, which in practice refers to Israeli propaganda efforts directed at international audiences.
At every turn, when the New York Times reporters ran into obstacles confirming tips, they turned to anonymous Israeli officials or witnesses who’d already been interviewed repeatedly in the press. Months after setting off on their assignment, the reporters found themselves exactly where they had begun, relying overwhelmingly on the word of Israeli officials, soldiers, and Zaka workers to substantiate their claim that more than 30 bodies of women and girls were discovered with signs of sexual abuse. On the Channel 12 podcast, Schwartz said the last remaining piece she needed for the story was a solid number from the Israeli authorities about any possible survivors of sexual violence. “We have four and we can stand behind that number,” she said she was told by the Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs. No details were provided. The Times story ultimately reported there were “at least three women and one man who were sexually assaulted and survived.”
When the story was finally published on December 28 Schwartz described the flood of emotions and reactions online and in Israel. “First of all, in the paper, we gave it a very, very prominent place, which is, apropos all my fears — there is no greater show of confidence than being put on the front page,” she said. “In Israel, the reactions are amazing. Here I think I was given closure, seeing that all the media treat the article and treat it as something of [a] thank you for putting a number on it. Thank you for saying there were many cases, that it was a pattern. Thank you for giving it a title which suggests that maybe there is some organizing logic behind it, that this is not some isolated act of some person acting on his own initiative.”
Times staffers who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal described the “Screams Without Words” article as the product of the same mistakes that led to the disastrous editor’s note and retraction on Rukmini Callimachi’s podcast “Caliphate” and print series on the Islamic State group. Kahn, the current executive editor, was widely known as a promoter and protector of Callimachi. The reporting, which the Times determined in an internal review was not subjected to sufficient scrutiny by top editors and fell short of the paper’s standards on ensuring accuracy, had been a finalist for a 2019 Pulitzer Prize. That honor, along with other prestigious awards, was rescinded in the wake of the scandal.
Margaret Sullivan, the last public editor for the New York Times to serve a full term before the paper discarded the position in 2017, said that she hopes such an investigation will be launched into the “Screams Without Words” story. “I sometimes joke ‘it’s another good day not to be the New York Times public editor’ but the organization could *really* use one right now to investigate on behalf of the readers,” she wrote.
At some story meetings, Schwartz said on the Channel 12 podcast, editors with Middle East expertise were there to offer probing questions. “We had a weekly meeting, and you bring out the status of your work on your project,” she said. “And Times writers and editors who are concerned with Middle Eastern affairs coming from all kinds of places in the world, they ask you questions that challenge you, and it’s excellent that they do that, because you yourself, all the time, like — you don’t believe yourself for a moment.”
Those questions were challenging to answer, she said: “One of the questions you get asked — and it’s the hardest ones to not be able to answer — if this has happened in so many places, how can it be that there is no forensic evidence? How can it be that there is no documentation? How can it be that there are no records? A report? An Excel spreadsheet? You are telling me about Shari [Mendes]? That’s someone who saw with her own eyes, and is now speaking to you — is there no [written] report to make what she’s saying authoritative?”
The host interjected. “And you went at that stage to those official Israeli authorities, and asked that they give you — something, anything. And how did they respond?”
“‘There is nothing,’” Schwartz said she was told. “‘There was no collection of evidence from the scene.’”
But broadly, she said, the editors were fully behind the project. “There was no skepticism on their part, ever,” she claimed. “It still doesn’t mean I had [the story], because I didn’t have a ‘second source’ for many things.”
A Times spokesperson pointed to this portion of the interview as evidence of the paper’s rigorous process: “We have reviewed the wider transcript and it’s clear you’re persisting in taking quotes out of context. In the portion of the interview you refer to, Anat describes being encouraged by editors to corroborate evidence and sources before we’d publish the investigation. Later, she discusses regular meetings with editors where they would ask ‘hard’ and ‘challenging’ questions, and the time it took to undertake the second and third stages of sourcing. This is all part of a rigorous reporting process and one which we continue to stand behind.”
In her interview with the Channel 12 podcast, Schwartz said she began working with Gettleman soon after October 7. “My job was to help him. He had all kinds of thoughts about things, about articles he wanted to do,” she recalled. “On the first day, there were already three things on [his] lineup, and then I saw that at number three was ‘Sexual Violence.’” Schwartz said that in the initial aftermath of the October 7 attacks, there was not much focus on sexual assaults, but by the time she began working for Gettleman, rumors began spreading that such acts had taken place, most of it based on the commentary of Zaka workers and IDF officials and soldiers.
After the article was published, Gettleman was invited to speak on a panel about sexual violence at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. His efforts were lauded by the panel and its host, Sandberg, the former Facebook executive. Instead of doubling down on reporting that helped win the New York Times a prestigious Polk Award, Gettleman dismissed the need for reporters to provide “evidence.”
“What we found — I don’t want to even use the word ‘evidence,’ because evidence is almost like a legal term that suggests you’re trying to prove an allegation or prove a case in court,” Gettleman told Sandberg. “That’s not my role. We all have our roles. And my role is to document, is to present information, is to give people a voice. And we found information along the entire chain of violence, so of sexual violence.”
Gettleman said his mission was to move people. “It’s really difficult to get this information and then to shape it,” he said. “That’s our job as journalists: to get the information and to share the story in a way that makes people care. Not just to inform, but to move people. And that’s what I’ve been doing for a long time.”[/u]
One Times reporter said colleagues are wondering what a balanced approach might look like: “I am waiting to see if the paper will report in depth, deploying the same kind of resources and means, on the United Nations’ report that documented the horrors committed against Palestinian women.”
Update: February 29, 2024
This story has been updated to include comments tweeted after publication by Anat Schwartz. This story has also been updated to include a statement from the Times, received after publication, that standards editor Phil Corbett planned to leave as of June 2022 and regarding an episode of “The Daily” that never aired.
Correction: February 29, 2024
This story has been corrected to remove an errant reference to unnamed experts in a New York Times article; the Times named one expert. A reference to guests at a Times editorial meeting, made due to a translation error, has been removed; the attendees were editors. This story has been corrected to reflect that Adam Sella is the nephew of Anat Schwartz’s partner, not Schwartz.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Tue Mar 05, 2024 5:25 am
Report from Rafah: U.S. Airdrops Food to Gaza While Arming Israel to Drop Bombs
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 4, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/4/g ... transcript
The death toll from Israel’s assault on Gaza has surpassed 30,000 as health officials say at least 16 Palestinian children have died in recent days from starvation and dehydration. UNICEF is warning the number of child deaths will likely “rapidly increase” unless the war ends. As Palestinians desperately seek aid being withheld by Israel, officials have accused Israeli forces of attacking crowds gathered to retrieve the little humanitarian supplies entering the besieged territory. Live from Rafah, Gaza-based journalist Akram al-Satarri shares his brother’s account of surviving an Israeli attack while attempting to secure food for his kids. “It looks like the objective is to continue the starvation of the people of Gaza and to kill them when they dare to think that they can secure something to feed their children,” says al-Satarri, who reports that U.S. airdrops of aid are doing little to relieve the suffering of millions in Gaza while U.S. military aid supports Israeli attacks. “In one hand, they are providing people with food, and in the other hand, they are providing people with death.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Gaza, where Palestinian health officials say at least 16 children have died in recent days from starvation and dehydration as Israel’s assault continues. UNICEF warns the number of child deaths will likely “rapidly increase” unless the war ends.
Palestinians in Rafah searched Sunday under the rubble of a family home hit by an Israeli airstrike the night before that killed as many as 14 people, including a father and twin babies born in the last few months.
PALESTINIAN WOMAN: [translated] We want the United States to get away from us. We don’t want anything from them. We don’t want anything from the United States. They are lying and conspiring against us. God is my suffice and the best deputy.
AMY GOODMAN: Here in the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris Sunday called for a ceasefire in Gaza. She made the comments in a speech in Selma, Alabama, marking the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: And given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire, for at least the next six weeks, which is what is currently on the table. This will get the hostages out and get a significant amount of aid in. This would allow us to build something more enduring to ensure Israel is secure and to respect the right of the Palestinian people to dignity, freedom and self-determination. Hamas claims it wants a ceasefire. Well, there is a deal on the table. And as we have said, Hamas needs to agree to that deal. Let’s get a ceasefire. Let’s reunite the hostages with their families. And let’s provide immediate relief to the people of Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: Vice President Harris spoke three days after the United States blocked a U.N. Security Council statement condemning Israel after Israeli soldiers opened fire on Palestinians seeking aid in Gaza City, in a massacre that left at least 118 people dead. On Sunday, officials in Gaza accused Israeli forces of killing and wounding dozens more aid seekers who had gathered at the Kuwaiti roundabout in Gaza City. Facing growing international criticism, President Biden Friday announced the United States would begin airdropping food aid into Gaza.
Negotiations for a temporary ceasefire faced another setback Sunday when Israel boycotted talks in Cairo after Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu accused Hamas of failing to provide a list of all living Israeli hostages.
Meanwhile, Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz is in the U.S. for what’s being described as an unauthorized trip to hold talks with Vice President Harris, Tony Blinken and other top officials. Gantz is seen as a rival to Netanyahu, who reportedly lashed out at Gantz for making the trip without his approval.
All of this comes as the official death toll in Gaza has topped 30,500.
For more, we go to Rafah for an update from Akram al-Satarri, the Gaza-based journalist.
Akram, your brother was at the aid convoy when Israeli soldiers opened fire. What did he explain to you happened, what’s being now called the flour massacre, for the flour that people were coming to get to make bread?
AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Good morning, Amy.
Yes, indeed, my brother was one of the people who were targeted by the Israeli tanks and artillery fire in that area of al-Rashid Street, particularly al-Nabulsi roundabout, when they were trying to seek food for their children. To start with, it is the very personal story of my brother in mind, who was in direct contact with me, seeking to secure any help whatsoever for his children. He was taking that unsafe trip towards al-Nabulsi roundabout. He was waiting there. He was waiting from 3:00 in the afternoon. He was hoping that he would get at least some wheat flour for his children, because they have not eaten bread for around 25 days or even more than 25 days. He saw many people there coming from the Gaza north, as well, in the hope that they can secure some food for their children.
All of a sudden, the bombardment started — not the bombardment; rather, the tanks’ gunfire started. And, of course, the tanks are using 1.5-millimeter caliber guns, and those guns are very lethal. They can split a person into two halves. The fire started. The tanks never stopped shooting at them. And the observation that was — the observation that was made by the people who were there, including my brother, that the number of the tanks that were present in that particular time was [inaudible], in the sense that in the last few days they knew tanks were like there, but not in the large number that was in that particular day. The fire started. The fire never stopped. People were shot. People were falling on the ground. People were running. And some of the wounded people were grabbing the legs of the other people, asking them to save and help them. The ones even whose legs were pulled were shot, as well, and were killed. So, people were crawling. My brother told me that he was crawling for around 1.5 kilometers, from this al-Nabulsi roundabout up to al-Shalihat roundabout, which is an area that is around 1 kilometer or 1.2 kilometers far away from the area that they were in. The firing never stopped.
And to him, it looked like that was preplanned and that the massacre that was planned, according to the description of my brother and any other people, was intentional. And the firing never stopped 'til that very large number of people were killed. And a very large number of people also was injured. Some of them are dying every day. And this specific incident was replicated the day after this massacre took place and the day, three days or even four days after that. So it looks like this is a policy that is followed by the Israeli occupation army, and it looks like the objective is to continue the starvation of the people of Gaza and to kill them when they dare to think that they can secure something to feed their children. So they were killed when they're trying to get the wheat flour. They were killed while they were seeking life.
AMY GOODMAN: So, the Israeli military says it started a preliminary review and that Israeli forces did not attack the convoy, but that most of the fatalities were caused by a stampede. At the same time, the director of the Al-Awda Hospital told the United Nations some 80% of the wounded brought into the hospital had been shot. If you could respond further, Akram?
AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Well, according to the preliminary diagnoses of the hospital and of the people who were there, most of the people who were there were suffering from upper body parts injuries, which is indicative of the gun that was used, of the fire that was used against them. Some were hit also by shrapnel because of the — by artillery fire that was hit at them.
Of course, if I were Israel or if I were the occupation, I would tell the world that I have already started a preliminary investigation, and they might also [inaudible] came from us, and shoot the Palestinians, who were not using any arms and who were seeking to feed their children. That’s typical. That’s normal. This is the Israeli habit. They will say — because they targeted the Baptist Hospital, and they also said that was not them, that was an Islamic Jihad rocket, missile, that hit the people and killed around 600 people. That’s normal.
But the issue now, if the international community is failing to compel Israel to conduct a scrutiny into the things that happened, I think the international community failed before and is still failing to stop the ongoing atrocities and is helping somehow. When they are condoning the ongoing bombardment, they are failing to do justice for the people of Palestine, and they are failing to observe the international humanitarian law coordinates — the international humanitarian law dictates, that asks the government to take whatever precautions are needed to protect the civilian population, civilian population that is living in Gaza, extremely difficult conditions [inaudible] food [inaudible]. They were not [inaudible] in a fire exchange. They were seeking food for their families and for their children and for themselves, and they ended up being killed.
So, Israel will deny. And I wouldn’t be surprised also if Israel said that they were killed by other Palestinians. That is a scenario, I think, that is extremely acceptable for Israel. And Israel allies would buy anything from Israel. So, no need. The ones who were killed are just Palestinians, Palestinians who were treated as second-grade humans, who are still besieged, who are still starving, who are still killed, who are still displaced for around second or six or seven or eight times, and who are expecting more of the misery and the death and displacement.
So, the international community is failing, and I don’t think the Palestinians trust any statements made by the Israeli army about any preliminary investigation, because there were many preliminary investigations to be done, but they were never done, and there was many justice that is expected to be done for the Palestinians but was not done.
AMY GOODMAN: Akram, if you can comment on the United States working with the Jordanian Air Force, dropping 38,000 ready-to-eat meals, largely on the beach in Gaza? If you can respond to — we just played clips of mass protest, that there was protest around the world, but one person in Washington, D.C., commented on the fact that while the U.S. is providing, is dropping this food, they should stop providing Israel with the bombs they drop on Palestinians.
AKRAM AL-SATARRI: The clear analysis of this situation when it comes to the cause-and-effect relationship between Israel and the misery that the Palestinians have been living, the United States and the misery that Palestinians have been living, three C-103 planes were dropping food on the Palestinians, while countless number of F-16s, F-15s, F-22s and F-35s, also with the most advanced technology and with the ammunition that are provided by the United States to the Israel — so, in one hand, they are providing people with food, and in the other hand, they are providing people with death, taking their lives.
I think the United States should be reconsidering its position when it comes to providing Israel with killing ammunitions and thinking that they are providing people in Gaza with around 35,000 or 36,000 meals that are ready to eat. The Palestinians might not be able to eat them. And some of the airdropped assistance that was dropped in Gaza went to the sea. And one of the people that I was talking to, he was joking and mocking the whole situation we are living in. He was saying the fish is very grateful for the American administration because they dropped the food that was sent to Gaza to the fish in the Gaza Sea. And I think a president that is dropping the aid for the Ukrainians while the Gaza is the target is, in a way — needs to reconsider everything about that, and they need to make sure that they provide unhindered access through the recognized crossings of Gaza for the people who are displaced, in the Gaza south and in the Gaza north. So, somehow, it’s — Palestinians find it ridiculous. Palestinians find it a way that needs to be reviewed and changed.
AMY GOODMAN: What word are you getting of ceasefire negotiations? And also, what is happening on the ground where you are, in Rafah, right now? Al Jazeera reporting at least 11 were killed, 50 wounded, after an Israeli air attack on a tent housing displaced people next to an entrance to a hospital in Rafah city, not far from where you are standing.
AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Well, the negotiations are still underway. It looks like Israel has some demands to make. Some of them were not agreed upon in the past, but now they are coming up with them. Palestinians don’t have high expectations when it comes to the negotiation.
Palestinians are extremely busy now trying to survive because of the expansion of the ground operation. In Khan Younis area, they have already targeted — the Israeli occupation targeted Hamad City area and also the al-Qarara area, which is an expansion of the ground operation that has been already starting in Khan Younis for the last — have been already rolling in Khan Younis for the last three months. The Israeli occupation forces targeted a tent by a hospital in the Rafah west area, and they also targeted a home. The number of people who were killed in Rafah for the last 24 hours is more than 50 people in different incidents taking place in different parts of Rafah.
So, the misery is continuous, and the bombardment is continuous. And the number of Palestinians who are killed because of that and the number of people who are displaced because of that is increasing, I would say, by the second, not by the minute.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has the negotiating team boycotting the negotiations now in — the ceasefire negotiations in Cairo, because he says Hamas has refused, as part of the deal, to provide the list of living hostages. Your thoughts on this and where these negotiations stand?
AKRAM AL-SATARRI: As a matter of fact, that — I’ve been following the news about this from the Israeli media sources and from the Palestinian media sources, as well. That specific request was not made by the Israeli security forces, security agencies in the past. Now Netanyahu is inventing something new for the sake of just continuing the delay.
It looks like this delay is taking place for some purely political reasons where Netanyahu is interested in prolonging the war. They have disputes. They have issues. One of the top leaders is now in the U.S.A. Netanyahu is busy calling Blinken and calling other people, telling them that it is an unauthorized trip. It looks like there is something that is internally happening in the Israeli political arena that Netanyahu wants to stop and prevent from happening. And that’s why everything that he wants to do eventually reflects on the Palestinians, now more killing, more displacement, now refusing the request to provide some names — now asking to provide some names.
So, I think we will see a great deal of procrastination like the one that we have been seeing for the past few months. Netanyahu is interested in his personal safety when it comes to his political career, political life, and I think that’s why even the Israeli security forces, that are not being able to end this military confrontation with the Palestinian factions in Gaza, are now trying to, through the political means, to come to, I would say, honorable end for this, but they are failing to do so.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re talking about Benny Gantz being in Washington now to meet with today Kamala Harris, Tony Blinken — she’ll be meeting with — and other officials. I wanted to, finally, ask you about the issue of famine, about the number of children who are dying of hunger and dehydration, and how the Palestinians are dealing with this at this point.
AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Well, according to the statistics that were released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, around 1 million Palestinians have developed some diseases of any kind, be them some diseases that have to do with the digestive system, with the respiratory system, with the upper respiratory system, which is indicative of the quality of life, where quality of life has reached in Gaza, and what is the situation of the public health. When you don’t have water desalination plants, when you destroy the water purification systems, when you destroy the solar panels that are on top of the houses of the people, when you destroy the heavy vehicles that are used by the municipalities to remove the waste, when you are destroying everything that has to do with the life of the Palestinians, this result is normal and is projected, and it will continue to deteriorate.
Now, with the children, 18 children have died in northern Gaza. More children are dying in southern Gaza. People cannot get decent food for their children. When people are drinking the water, the water is polluted, and it causes them some serious public health issues. And now the children are the most vulnerable people within the community. We have 1 million child in Gaza, 1 million child that do not have appropriate shelter, do not have appropriate feeding systems. They don’t have appropriate water systems, and they end up consuming water that is polluted, food that is polluted. They end up exposed. The twins that were killed yesterday, they were just twins. They were children. They were killed with their father. So they were deprived from the right to live, and they are still deprived from the right to access decent water, shelter and food supplies. So this is the situation in Gaza as it is. It is an ongoing suffering because of the fact that the Israeli occupation denied them the right to be treated as humans. This is the whole issue.
AMY GOODMAN: Akram al-Satarri, we want to thank you so much for being with us, a Gaza-based journalist, speaking to us today from Rafah. Please be safe.
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 4, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/4/g ... transcript
The death toll from Israel’s assault on Gaza has surpassed 30,000 as health officials say at least 16 Palestinian children have died in recent days from starvation and dehydration. UNICEF is warning the number of child deaths will likely “rapidly increase” unless the war ends. As Palestinians desperately seek aid being withheld by Israel, officials have accused Israeli forces of attacking crowds gathered to retrieve the little humanitarian supplies entering the besieged territory. Live from Rafah, Gaza-based journalist Akram al-Satarri shares his brother’s account of surviving an Israeli attack while attempting to secure food for his kids. “It looks like the objective is to continue the starvation of the people of Gaza and to kill them when they dare to think that they can secure something to feed their children,” says al-Satarri, who reports that U.S. airdrops of aid are doing little to relieve the suffering of millions in Gaza while U.S. military aid supports Israeli attacks. “In one hand, they are providing people with food, and in the other hand, they are providing people with death.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Gaza, where Palestinian health officials say at least 16 children have died in recent days from starvation and dehydration as Israel’s assault continues. UNICEF warns the number of child deaths will likely “rapidly increase” unless the war ends.
Palestinians in Rafah searched Sunday under the rubble of a family home hit by an Israeli airstrike the night before that killed as many as 14 people, including a father and twin babies born in the last few months.
PALESTINIAN WOMAN: [translated] We want the United States to get away from us. We don’t want anything from them. We don’t want anything from the United States. They are lying and conspiring against us. God is my suffice and the best deputy.
AMY GOODMAN: Here in the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris Sunday called for a ceasefire in Gaza. She made the comments in a speech in Selma, Alabama, marking the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: And given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire, for at least the next six weeks, which is what is currently on the table. This will get the hostages out and get a significant amount of aid in. This would allow us to build something more enduring to ensure Israel is secure and to respect the right of the Palestinian people to dignity, freedom and self-determination. Hamas claims it wants a ceasefire. Well, there is a deal on the table. And as we have said, Hamas needs to agree to that deal. Let’s get a ceasefire. Let’s reunite the hostages with their families. And let’s provide immediate relief to the people of Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: Vice President Harris spoke three days after the United States blocked a U.N. Security Council statement condemning Israel after Israeli soldiers opened fire on Palestinians seeking aid in Gaza City, in a massacre that left at least 118 people dead. On Sunday, officials in Gaza accused Israeli forces of killing and wounding dozens more aid seekers who had gathered at the Kuwaiti roundabout in Gaza City. Facing growing international criticism, President Biden Friday announced the United States would begin airdropping food aid into Gaza.
Negotiations for a temporary ceasefire faced another setback Sunday when Israel boycotted talks in Cairo after Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu accused Hamas of failing to provide a list of all living Israeli hostages.
Meanwhile, Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz is in the U.S. for what’s being described as an unauthorized trip to hold talks with Vice President Harris, Tony Blinken and other top officials. Gantz is seen as a rival to Netanyahu, who reportedly lashed out at Gantz for making the trip without his approval.
All of this comes as the official death toll in Gaza has topped 30,500.
For more, we go to Rafah for an update from Akram al-Satarri, the Gaza-based journalist.
Akram, your brother was at the aid convoy when Israeli soldiers opened fire. What did he explain to you happened, what’s being now called the flour massacre, for the flour that people were coming to get to make bread?
AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Good morning, Amy.
Yes, indeed, my brother was one of the people who were targeted by the Israeli tanks and artillery fire in that area of al-Rashid Street, particularly al-Nabulsi roundabout, when they were trying to seek food for their children. To start with, it is the very personal story of my brother in mind, who was in direct contact with me, seeking to secure any help whatsoever for his children. He was taking that unsafe trip towards al-Nabulsi roundabout. He was waiting there. He was waiting from 3:00 in the afternoon. He was hoping that he would get at least some wheat flour for his children, because they have not eaten bread for around 25 days or even more than 25 days. He saw many people there coming from the Gaza north, as well, in the hope that they can secure some food for their children.
All of a sudden, the bombardment started — not the bombardment; rather, the tanks’ gunfire started. And, of course, the tanks are using 1.5-millimeter caliber guns, and those guns are very lethal. They can split a person into two halves. The fire started. The tanks never stopped shooting at them. And the observation that was — the observation that was made by the people who were there, including my brother, that the number of the tanks that were present in that particular time was [inaudible], in the sense that in the last few days they knew tanks were like there, but not in the large number that was in that particular day. The fire started. The fire never stopped. People were shot. People were falling on the ground. People were running. And some of the wounded people were grabbing the legs of the other people, asking them to save and help them. The ones even whose legs were pulled were shot, as well, and were killed. So, people were crawling. My brother told me that he was crawling for around 1.5 kilometers, from this al-Nabulsi roundabout up to al-Shalihat roundabout, which is an area that is around 1 kilometer or 1.2 kilometers far away from the area that they were in. The firing never stopped.
And to him, it looked like that was preplanned and that the massacre that was planned, according to the description of my brother and any other people, was intentional. And the firing never stopped 'til that very large number of people were killed. And a very large number of people also was injured. Some of them are dying every day. And this specific incident was replicated the day after this massacre took place and the day, three days or even four days after that. So it looks like this is a policy that is followed by the Israeli occupation army, and it looks like the objective is to continue the starvation of the people of Gaza and to kill them when they dare to think that they can secure something to feed their children. So they were killed when they're trying to get the wheat flour. They were killed while they were seeking life.
AMY GOODMAN: So, the Israeli military says it started a preliminary review and that Israeli forces did not attack the convoy, but that most of the fatalities were caused by a stampede. At the same time, the director of the Al-Awda Hospital told the United Nations some 80% of the wounded brought into the hospital had been shot. If you could respond further, Akram?
AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Well, according to the preliminary diagnoses of the hospital and of the people who were there, most of the people who were there were suffering from upper body parts injuries, which is indicative of the gun that was used, of the fire that was used against them. Some were hit also by shrapnel because of the — by artillery fire that was hit at them.
Of course, if I were Israel or if I were the occupation, I would tell the world that I have already started a preliminary investigation, and they might also [inaudible] came from us, and shoot the Palestinians, who were not using any arms and who were seeking to feed their children. That’s typical. That’s normal. This is the Israeli habit. They will say — because they targeted the Baptist Hospital, and they also said that was not them, that was an Islamic Jihad rocket, missile, that hit the people and killed around 600 people. That’s normal.
But the issue now, if the international community is failing to compel Israel to conduct a scrutiny into the things that happened, I think the international community failed before and is still failing to stop the ongoing atrocities and is helping somehow. When they are condoning the ongoing bombardment, they are failing to do justice for the people of Palestine, and they are failing to observe the international humanitarian law coordinates — the international humanitarian law dictates, that asks the government to take whatever precautions are needed to protect the civilian population, civilian population that is living in Gaza, extremely difficult conditions [inaudible] food [inaudible]. They were not [inaudible] in a fire exchange. They were seeking food for their families and for their children and for themselves, and they ended up being killed.
So, Israel will deny. And I wouldn’t be surprised also if Israel said that they were killed by other Palestinians. That is a scenario, I think, that is extremely acceptable for Israel. And Israel allies would buy anything from Israel. So, no need. The ones who were killed are just Palestinians, Palestinians who were treated as second-grade humans, who are still besieged, who are still starving, who are still killed, who are still displaced for around second or six or seven or eight times, and who are expecting more of the misery and the death and displacement.
So, the international community is failing, and I don’t think the Palestinians trust any statements made by the Israeli army about any preliminary investigation, because there were many preliminary investigations to be done, but they were never done, and there was many justice that is expected to be done for the Palestinians but was not done.
AMY GOODMAN: Akram, if you can comment on the United States working with the Jordanian Air Force, dropping 38,000 ready-to-eat meals, largely on the beach in Gaza? If you can respond to — we just played clips of mass protest, that there was protest around the world, but one person in Washington, D.C., commented on the fact that while the U.S. is providing, is dropping this food, they should stop providing Israel with the bombs they drop on Palestinians.
AKRAM AL-SATARRI: The clear analysis of this situation when it comes to the cause-and-effect relationship between Israel and the misery that the Palestinians have been living, the United States and the misery that Palestinians have been living, three C-103 planes were dropping food on the Palestinians, while countless number of F-16s, F-15s, F-22s and F-35s, also with the most advanced technology and with the ammunition that are provided by the United States to the Israel — so, in one hand, they are providing people with food, and in the other hand, they are providing people with death, taking their lives.
I think the United States should be reconsidering its position when it comes to providing Israel with killing ammunitions and thinking that they are providing people in Gaza with around 35,000 or 36,000 meals that are ready to eat. The Palestinians might not be able to eat them. And some of the airdropped assistance that was dropped in Gaza went to the sea. And one of the people that I was talking to, he was joking and mocking the whole situation we are living in. He was saying the fish is very grateful for the American administration because they dropped the food that was sent to Gaza to the fish in the Gaza Sea. And I think a president that is dropping the aid for the Ukrainians while the Gaza is the target is, in a way — needs to reconsider everything about that, and they need to make sure that they provide unhindered access through the recognized crossings of Gaza for the people who are displaced, in the Gaza south and in the Gaza north. So, somehow, it’s — Palestinians find it ridiculous. Palestinians find it a way that needs to be reviewed and changed.
AMY GOODMAN: What word are you getting of ceasefire negotiations? And also, what is happening on the ground where you are, in Rafah, right now? Al Jazeera reporting at least 11 were killed, 50 wounded, after an Israeli air attack on a tent housing displaced people next to an entrance to a hospital in Rafah city, not far from where you are standing.
AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Well, the negotiations are still underway. It looks like Israel has some demands to make. Some of them were not agreed upon in the past, but now they are coming up with them. Palestinians don’t have high expectations when it comes to the negotiation.
Palestinians are extremely busy now trying to survive because of the expansion of the ground operation. In Khan Younis area, they have already targeted — the Israeli occupation targeted Hamad City area and also the al-Qarara area, which is an expansion of the ground operation that has been already starting in Khan Younis for the last — have been already rolling in Khan Younis for the last three months. The Israeli occupation forces targeted a tent by a hospital in the Rafah west area, and they also targeted a home. The number of people who were killed in Rafah for the last 24 hours is more than 50 people in different incidents taking place in different parts of Rafah.
So, the misery is continuous, and the bombardment is continuous. And the number of Palestinians who are killed because of that and the number of people who are displaced because of that is increasing, I would say, by the second, not by the minute.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has the negotiating team boycotting the negotiations now in — the ceasefire negotiations in Cairo, because he says Hamas has refused, as part of the deal, to provide the list of living hostages. Your thoughts on this and where these negotiations stand?
AKRAM AL-SATARRI: As a matter of fact, that — I’ve been following the news about this from the Israeli media sources and from the Palestinian media sources, as well. That specific request was not made by the Israeli security forces, security agencies in the past. Now Netanyahu is inventing something new for the sake of just continuing the delay.
It looks like this delay is taking place for some purely political reasons where Netanyahu is interested in prolonging the war. They have disputes. They have issues. One of the top leaders is now in the U.S.A. Netanyahu is busy calling Blinken and calling other people, telling them that it is an unauthorized trip. It looks like there is something that is internally happening in the Israeli political arena that Netanyahu wants to stop and prevent from happening. And that’s why everything that he wants to do eventually reflects on the Palestinians, now more killing, more displacement, now refusing the request to provide some names — now asking to provide some names.
So, I think we will see a great deal of procrastination like the one that we have been seeing for the past few months. Netanyahu is interested in his personal safety when it comes to his political career, political life, and I think that’s why even the Israeli security forces, that are not being able to end this military confrontation with the Palestinian factions in Gaza, are now trying to, through the political means, to come to, I would say, honorable end for this, but they are failing to do so.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re talking about Benny Gantz being in Washington now to meet with today Kamala Harris, Tony Blinken — she’ll be meeting with — and other officials. I wanted to, finally, ask you about the issue of famine, about the number of children who are dying of hunger and dehydration, and how the Palestinians are dealing with this at this point.
AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Well, according to the statistics that were released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health, around 1 million Palestinians have developed some diseases of any kind, be them some diseases that have to do with the digestive system, with the respiratory system, with the upper respiratory system, which is indicative of the quality of life, where quality of life has reached in Gaza, and what is the situation of the public health. When you don’t have water desalination plants, when you destroy the water purification systems, when you destroy the solar panels that are on top of the houses of the people, when you destroy the heavy vehicles that are used by the municipalities to remove the waste, when you are destroying everything that has to do with the life of the Palestinians, this result is normal and is projected, and it will continue to deteriorate.
Now, with the children, 18 children have died in northern Gaza. More children are dying in southern Gaza. People cannot get decent food for their children. When people are drinking the water, the water is polluted, and it causes them some serious public health issues. And now the children are the most vulnerable people within the community. We have 1 million child in Gaza, 1 million child that do not have appropriate shelter, do not have appropriate feeding systems. They don’t have appropriate water systems, and they end up consuming water that is polluted, food that is polluted. They end up exposed. The twins that were killed yesterday, they were just twins. They were children. They were killed with their father. So they were deprived from the right to live, and they are still deprived from the right to access decent water, shelter and food supplies. So this is the situation in Gaza as it is. It is an ongoing suffering because of the fact that the Israeli occupation denied them the right to be treated as humans. This is the whole issue.
AMY GOODMAN: Akram al-Satarri, we want to thank you so much for being with us, a Gaza-based journalist, speaking to us today from Rafah. Please be safe.
- admin
- Site Admin
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Wed Mar 06, 2024 1:43 am
The DESPERATE Calls From Hostages Before Israeli Troops Killed Them
by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian
Young Turks
Mar 5, 2024
Alon Shamriz and Yotam Haim can be heard crying out for help days before IDF soldiers killed them. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks.
Transcript
new audio from a December IDF operation
in the Gaza Strip captured Israeli
hostages literally begging for help just
days before Israeli forces had mistook
them uh for Hamas Fighters and
tragically and fatally shot them now in
the recording that was released by
Israel's con news on Sunday 26-year-old
Alan samri shamri uh and 28-year-old
yotam Heim uh who being held hostage by
Hamas along with a 22-year-old by the
name of uh Samir Talala uh can be heard
shouting in an attempt to alert the IDF
soldiers to their presence so this story
is just so tragic and now we have you
know some audio as a result of a k9 uh
that the IDF was using the K9 had a
GoPro attached to it and uh they speak
in Hebrew but we'll tell you what
they're yelling out after you hear uh
this recording
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
so the words the men are shouting in
between the gunfire uh reads as follows
uh so We're translating here and it
might not be perfect but they're saying
Help uh we are by the stairs under the
stairs under the stairs please help
hostages and then they say their names
help so they identified themselves and
they're hoping that the IDF soldiers
will come in and help them but the IDF
soldiers were under the impression that
they were really Hamas militants uh
seeking to trick them and they as a
result uh did not end up saving them
they actually did the opposite the most
damning part of this whole incident is
that soldiers had heard shouting of help
and hostages in Hebrew from the building
but they believed it was an attempt by
Hamas to lure them into an ambush
according to an IDF probe they found
signs left by hostages trying to get
soldiers attention also dismissed as
part of a ploy now they heard the
hostages cries with their own ears they
didn't help and the recording was picked
up by a GoPro camera mounted on a dog
from the military's canine unit this is
super tragic as well uh the dog was then
sent um into Gaza at the Gaza City
building during the gun battle the dog
was killed uh allegedly by Hamas
terrorists and the camera was recovered
days later which is why we have this
audio now but by then IDF troops had
already killed uh the three escaped
hostages which is also an incredible
part of the story they were able to
escape their captors and uh they
unfortunately didn't make it out alive
even after being able to do that um so
let's take a look at the uh individuals
who lost their lives as a result of the
IDF um mistaking them as threats and uh
back in December days after the young
men were killed sham R's father a shamri
Spoke out saying the following quote the
IDF abandoned my son on October 7th and
the IDF murdered my son on December 14th
that's what happened it's just really
heartbreaking that's of course an
Israeli citizen saying that um so uh two
interesting parts of the story number
one uh Israel right now is at minus one
hostages recovered by the
IDF they have recovered three and killed
four through their military operations
through their military operations and
those are only the four we know of
because a lot more might have died
through the bombings the massive
indiscriminate bombing they did of
buildings that might have contained
hostages so but as far as we know they
have rescued negative one hostages that
is unbelievable for the and to this day
all the Israeli Defenders say they're
main goal is to they have to keep going
they have to keep killing more
Palestinians because they're trying so
hard to rescue hostages are they cuz it
certainly doesn't look like it I don't
think they trying to rescue hostages at
all it looks a lot more like they're
trying to indiscriminately kill anyone
inside Gaza so now they haven't killed
everyone yes they can congratulations
Israeli supporters they haven't used a
nuke yet to kill every single person
they literally brag about that these
days that's a talking point for them
well we could have killed them all we
didn't kill all every single one of them
congratulations wow you sound really
humanitarian that's how they believe
their debunking allegations of genocide
because their argument is well if we
wanted to do a genocide by just wiping
them all out in one Fell Swoop we could
do that by the way again I've used this
example a hundred times but literally
what the Turks said about the Armenians
they said well we didn't kill the ones
uh on the west side of turkey and in
Istanbul and in the big cities we just
killed the ones in the East see it's not
a genocide that is just wrong
understanding of the word genocide
Holocaust is when you try to kill every
single person in that race okay or
ethnicity or religion genocide is when
you target a group specifically and kill
an enormous number of innocent civilians
and usually has telltale signs like
ethnic cleansing moving people from One
Direction to another uh denying them
food indiscriminate killing of civilians
this is a textbook genocide what's
happening in Gaza right now so and and
what drives me crazy about it and why we
cover it so much is because it's
happening right now and there's nothing
that we're that America is doing about
it other than funding it and making it
more POS and defending it yeah I want to
elaborate it drives me nuts I want to
elaborate on that a little bit more
because I've been noticing this weird
and it might be Bots because it's a
similar Point that's being made over and
over again and it doesn't make any sense
to me so supporters of Joe Biden are
increasingly frustrated by voters
typically Democratic voters who see his
handling of the war in Gaza as so
inhumane that they just can't get
themselves to cast a ballot for him
right and it's not just arab-americans
although arab-americans have been the
most vocal certainly in States like
Michigan so Trump support I'm sorry
Biden supporters foran slip there uh are
arguing well I don't understand there
are far more civilians dying in Ukraine
because of what's happening with Russia
or far more civilians have already died
in Ukraine first of all I haven't fact
checked that but that's what they're
claiming but guys the reason why there
is a moral issue with Israel versus
what's happening in Ukraine is we're not
supporting Putin right like we're not
supporting Putin's Invasion into Ukraine
or the slaughter of civilians in Ukraine
we're doing the opposite right the US
government is helping Ukraine defend
itself against Putin and his illegal
Invasion into their sovereign country
when you look at the Israel Gaza War
it's totally flipped where right now the
side that's carrying out the mass
civilian deaths or killings is the side
that we're funding and supporting and
just today John Kirby had a press
conference and was asked okay well it's
very clear that Israel is continuing the
blockade of humanitarian Aid into the
Gaza Strip and so as a result has the
Biden White House maybe reconsider the
military aid that they want to provide
to Israel and Kirby's like no no we
haven't reconsidered they need defend
themselves now never mind they have the
Iron Dome they have um defense
capabilities and Military capabilities
that Palestinians could only dream of
but you know that's the argument they uh
need the weapons and so no matter what
Israel does even if they're breaking
International laws even if they're
committing war crimes they're our Ally
and we are going to prevent them U
present them with the weapons that they
want so a couple things here um just a a
un controversial unacceptable question
and I'll leave it there so are the
Palestinians allowed to defend
themselves no apparently not or are do
they just sit there and get murdered and
but if they ever fight back it's
obviously
terrorism okay I hear you on that and
I've accepted that many times so isn't
it terrorism when Israel kills 25 30
times more civilians no no they're
angels angels when we murder Palestinian
civilians that's because we're the good
guys and had a right to defend ourselves
nonsense total garbage when you kill 25
times the number of people that Hamas
killed you're not defending yourself
anymore you're just murdering people so
you can say ah no how do you like it we
crushed you and we're going to occupy
you for the rest of your goddamn lives
oh wow you guys seem like real
humanitarians show me when you're going
to end the occupation you Liars everyone
in the right-wing government of Israel
is a bunch of fascist lying religious
zealots okay did I just call them
fascist yes you're goddamn right I did
when you killed this number of civilians
and you do it on purpose and you openly
and brazenly talk about how you're going
to move them out of Gaza how you're
going to take Gaza how you're going to
just crush the spirit the soul to
humanity and the lives of these people
that is exactly what fascists do anyway
now to the casualties by the way I just
looked it up to wow this is a big number
it really is and a little over 2 years
in 25 months
10,582 civilians have been killed in
Ukraine in under 5 months 20% of the
time Israel has killed over 30,000 Jesus
so three times as much I know I know IDF
will say no seven of those were Hamas we
got I think I think I think maybe we got
a couple of Hamas Fighters I mean bombs
bombs bombs buildings schools hospitals
everything we just destroyed entire Gaza
I think we got a couple of Hamas guys
yeah yeah yeah yeah so you did three
times as bad as the Russians when they
invaded Ukraine and and and you did it
in five months as opposed to 25 months
so look you see somebody defending
Israel online on Twitter especially
there's an enormous chance that it's a
IDF troll or bot okay yeah there's some
real people but like 90% of them all
repeat the same talking points we've
seen this movie a thousand times last
thing most important story about the
hostage is is it shows you what the
rules of engagement are in Gaza for the
IDF that is what Military Officers tell
their soldiers hey how do you handle a
situation uh if someone's coming up to
you what do you do do are Etc right and
obviously what they've told them is
don't even look for half a second if
they are males let alone the females let
alone the children right and now you
know tens of thousands of women and
children have been killed but if you see
a male don't look twice shoot kill
murder murder murder murder murder oh no
it was Israelis ah their lives matter
when we killed uh 10 20 100 200 times
2,000 times as many Palestinians no one
even cared Palestinian men who cares
they're all terrorists oh no oh no it
was an Israeli their lives are a billion
times more valuable than Palestinians oh
no if it was Palestinians they would
probably would have celebrated that
night you think they wouldn't have
partied that night if it was
Palestinians so don't tell me that your
Rules of Engagement are to protect
civilians that's a joke it's a horrific
by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian
Young Turks
Mar 5, 2024
Alon Shamriz and Yotam Haim can be heard crying out for help days before IDF soldiers killed them. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks.
Transcript
new audio from a December IDF operation
in the Gaza Strip captured Israeli
hostages literally begging for help just
days before Israeli forces had mistook
them uh for Hamas Fighters and
tragically and fatally shot them now in
the recording that was released by
Israel's con news on Sunday 26-year-old
Alan samri shamri uh and 28-year-old
yotam Heim uh who being held hostage by
Hamas along with a 22-year-old by the
name of uh Samir Talala uh can be heard
shouting in an attempt to alert the IDF
soldiers to their presence so this story
is just so tragic and now we have you
know some audio as a result of a k9 uh
that the IDF was using the K9 had a
GoPro attached to it and uh they speak
in Hebrew but we'll tell you what
they're yelling out after you hear uh
this recording
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
so the words the men are shouting in
between the gunfire uh reads as follows
uh so We're translating here and it
might not be perfect but they're saying
Help uh we are by the stairs under the
stairs under the stairs please help
hostages and then they say their names
help so they identified themselves and
they're hoping that the IDF soldiers
will come in and help them but the IDF
soldiers were under the impression that
they were really Hamas militants uh
seeking to trick them and they as a
result uh did not end up saving them
they actually did the opposite the most
damning part of this whole incident is
that soldiers had heard shouting of help
and hostages in Hebrew from the building
but they believed it was an attempt by
Hamas to lure them into an ambush
according to an IDF probe they found
signs left by hostages trying to get
soldiers attention also dismissed as
part of a ploy now they heard the
hostages cries with their own ears they
didn't help and the recording was picked
up by a GoPro camera mounted on a dog
from the military's canine unit this is
super tragic as well uh the dog was then
sent um into Gaza at the Gaza City
building during the gun battle the dog
was killed uh allegedly by Hamas
terrorists and the camera was recovered
days later which is why we have this
audio now but by then IDF troops had
already killed uh the three escaped
hostages which is also an incredible
part of the story they were able to
escape their captors and uh they
unfortunately didn't make it out alive
even after being able to do that um so
let's take a look at the uh individuals
who lost their lives as a result of the
IDF um mistaking them as threats and uh
back in December days after the young
men were killed sham R's father a shamri
Spoke out saying the following quote the
IDF abandoned my son on October 7th and
the IDF murdered my son on December 14th
that's what happened it's just really
heartbreaking that's of course an
Israeli citizen saying that um so uh two
interesting parts of the story number
one uh Israel right now is at minus one
hostages recovered by the
IDF they have recovered three and killed
four through their military operations
through their military operations and
those are only the four we know of
because a lot more might have died
through the bombings the massive
indiscriminate bombing they did of
buildings that might have contained
hostages so but as far as we know they
have rescued negative one hostages that
is unbelievable for the and to this day
all the Israeli Defenders say they're
main goal is to they have to keep going
they have to keep killing more
Palestinians because they're trying so
hard to rescue hostages are they cuz it
certainly doesn't look like it I don't
think they trying to rescue hostages at
all it looks a lot more like they're
trying to indiscriminately kill anyone
inside Gaza so now they haven't killed
everyone yes they can congratulations
Israeli supporters they haven't used a
nuke yet to kill every single person
they literally brag about that these
days that's a talking point for them
well we could have killed them all we
didn't kill all every single one of them
congratulations wow you sound really
humanitarian that's how they believe
their debunking allegations of genocide
because their argument is well if we
wanted to do a genocide by just wiping
them all out in one Fell Swoop we could
do that by the way again I've used this
example a hundred times but literally
what the Turks said about the Armenians
they said well we didn't kill the ones
uh on the west side of turkey and in
Istanbul and in the big cities we just
killed the ones in the East see it's not
a genocide that is just wrong
understanding of the word genocide
Holocaust is when you try to kill every
single person in that race okay or
ethnicity or religion genocide is when
you target a group specifically and kill
an enormous number of innocent civilians
and usually has telltale signs like
ethnic cleansing moving people from One
Direction to another uh denying them
food indiscriminate killing of civilians
this is a textbook genocide what's
happening in Gaza right now so and and
what drives me crazy about it and why we
cover it so much is because it's
happening right now and there's nothing
that we're that America is doing about
it other than funding it and making it
more POS and defending it yeah I want to
elaborate it drives me nuts I want to
elaborate on that a little bit more
because I've been noticing this weird
and it might be Bots because it's a
similar Point that's being made over and
over again and it doesn't make any sense
to me so supporters of Joe Biden are
increasingly frustrated by voters
typically Democratic voters who see his
handling of the war in Gaza as so
inhumane that they just can't get
themselves to cast a ballot for him
right and it's not just arab-americans
although arab-americans have been the
most vocal certainly in States like
Michigan so Trump support I'm sorry
Biden supporters foran slip there uh are
arguing well I don't understand there
are far more civilians dying in Ukraine
because of what's happening with Russia
or far more civilians have already died
in Ukraine first of all I haven't fact
checked that but that's what they're
claiming but guys the reason why there
is a moral issue with Israel versus
what's happening in Ukraine is we're not
supporting Putin right like we're not
supporting Putin's Invasion into Ukraine
or the slaughter of civilians in Ukraine
we're doing the opposite right the US
government is helping Ukraine defend
itself against Putin and his illegal
Invasion into their sovereign country
when you look at the Israel Gaza War
it's totally flipped where right now the
side that's carrying out the mass
civilian deaths or killings is the side
that we're funding and supporting and
just today John Kirby had a press
conference and was asked okay well it's
very clear that Israel is continuing the
blockade of humanitarian Aid into the
Gaza Strip and so as a result has the
Biden White House maybe reconsider the
military aid that they want to provide
to Israel and Kirby's like no no we
haven't reconsidered they need defend
themselves now never mind they have the
Iron Dome they have um defense
capabilities and Military capabilities
that Palestinians could only dream of
but you know that's the argument they uh
need the weapons and so no matter what
Israel does even if they're breaking
International laws even if they're
committing war crimes they're our Ally
and we are going to prevent them U
present them with the weapons that they
want so a couple things here um just a a
un controversial unacceptable question
and I'll leave it there so are the
Palestinians allowed to defend
themselves no apparently not or are do
they just sit there and get murdered and
but if they ever fight back it's
obviously
terrorism okay I hear you on that and
I've accepted that many times so isn't
it terrorism when Israel kills 25 30
times more civilians no no they're
angels angels when we murder Palestinian
civilians that's because we're the good
guys and had a right to defend ourselves
nonsense total garbage when you kill 25
times the number of people that Hamas
killed you're not defending yourself
anymore you're just murdering people so
you can say ah no how do you like it we
crushed you and we're going to occupy
you for the rest of your goddamn lives
oh wow you guys seem like real
humanitarians show me when you're going
to end the occupation you Liars everyone
in the right-wing government of Israel
is a bunch of fascist lying religious
zealots okay did I just call them
fascist yes you're goddamn right I did
when you killed this number of civilians
and you do it on purpose and you openly
and brazenly talk about how you're going
to move them out of Gaza how you're
going to take Gaza how you're going to
just crush the spirit the soul to
humanity and the lives of these people
that is exactly what fascists do anyway
now to the casualties by the way I just
looked it up to wow this is a big number
it really is and a little over 2 years
in 25 months
10,582 civilians have been killed in
Ukraine in under 5 months 20% of the
time Israel has killed over 30,000 Jesus
so three times as much I know I know IDF
will say no seven of those were Hamas we
got I think I think I think maybe we got
a couple of Hamas Fighters I mean bombs
bombs bombs buildings schools hospitals
everything we just destroyed entire Gaza
I think we got a couple of Hamas guys
yeah yeah yeah yeah so you did three
times as bad as the Russians when they
invaded Ukraine and and and you did it
in five months as opposed to 25 months
so look you see somebody defending
Israel online on Twitter especially
there's an enormous chance that it's a
IDF troll or bot okay yeah there's some
real people but like 90% of them all
repeat the same talking points we've
seen this movie a thousand times last
thing most important story about the
hostage is is it shows you what the
rules of engagement are in Gaza for the
IDF that is what Military Officers tell
their soldiers hey how do you handle a
situation uh if someone's coming up to
you what do you do do are Etc right and
obviously what they've told them is
don't even look for half a second if
they are males let alone the females let
alone the children right and now you
know tens of thousands of women and
children have been killed but if you see
a male don't look twice shoot kill
murder murder murder murder murder oh no
it was Israelis ah their lives matter
when we killed uh 10 20 100 200 times
2,000 times as many Palestinians no one
even cared Palestinian men who cares
they're all terrorists oh no oh no it
was an Israeli their lives are a billion
times more valuable than Palestinians oh
no if it was Palestinians they would
probably would have celebrated that
night you think they wouldn't have
partied that night if it was
Palestinians so don't tell me that your
Rules of Engagement are to protect
civilians that's a joke it's a horrific
- admin
- Site Admin
- Posts: 37523
- Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am
Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Thu Mar 28, 2024 11:13 pm
Jordan’s government struggles to contain unrest as Gaza protests grow
by Sarah Dadouch
The Washington Post
March 28, 2024 at 8:51 a.m. EDT
Jordanian security forces clashed with protesters trying to reach the Israeli embassy in Amman on March 25. (Video: AP)
Hundreds of protesters gathered in the Jordanian capital Tuesday for a third straight night to call for an end to Israel’s war in Gaza, clashing with baton-carrying riot police before tear gas rained down on them.
On Wednesday night, demonstrators were back on the streets. “Open the borders,” they chanted.
Though there have been regular protests in Amman throughout the nearly six-month war, the government has largely managed to contain the situation by aligning itself with public sentiment — harshly criticizing Israel’s conduct of the war and championing the Palestinian cause. But the scenes this week appeared more spontaneous, the crowds larger and the anger more raw, sending shock waves through the country’s powerful security establishment.
“Jordan is in an unenviable position,” said Saud al-Sharafat, a former brigadier general in the Jordanian General Intelligence Directorate and founder of the Sharafat ِCenter for the Study of Globalization and Terrorism. The grinding conflict in Gaza, and the soaring Palestinian death toll, are testing the state’s “ability to maintain the tempo that exists now, so that [things] do not get out of control.”
The Kingdom of Jordan occupies a unique position in the Middle East. It is a close and longtime ally of the United States, receiving more than $1 billion annually in economic and military aid. In 1994, Jordan signed a peace treaty with neighboring Israel. But the mass displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war — known to Arabs as the “nakba,” or catastrophe — forever altered the country’s demographics.
Jordan is home to more than 2 million Palestinian refugees, most of whom have Jordanian citizenship. Analysts estimate that half of the population is of Palestinian descent. For many in the country, geographically and emotionally, the war in Gaza feels very close.
Jordanian authorities — who typically show little tolerance for public demonstrations — have sanctioned weekly protests after Friday prayers.
“It seems, over time, government institutions learned their lessons and started giving space [for people] to relieve tension,” Sharafat said.
Demonstrators carry banners and flags as a flare burns during a protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza, outside al-Kalouti Mosque near the Israeli Embassy in Amman, Jordan, on Wednesday. (Alaa Al-Sukhn/Reuters)
Yet the government has also tried to contain the unrest, forbidding any crowding near, or storming of, the border zone with Israel. Several attempts by protesters in early October to reach the country’s border with the West Bank were thwarted by riot police.
That same month, Jordan’s Public Security Directorate said protesters assaulted and injured public security personnel, threw molotov cocktails and damaged public and private property.
Jordanian lawyers representing detainees told Human Rights Watch this month that hundreds of people have likely been arrested for their involvement in protests or online Palestinian advocacy.
“Jordanian authorities are trampling the right to free expression and assembly in an effort to tamp down Gaza-related activism,” said Lama Fakih, the group’s Middle East director.
The government’s public advocacy for war-battered Gaza has also helped keep a lid on public anger.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi was one of the first Arab officials to say that Israel’s war in Gaza met the “legal definition of genocide,” an accusation Israel called “outrageous.” In November, he announced the cancellation of a controversial economic pact with Israel, under which Jordan would have provided energy to its neighbor in exchange for water.
Such regional projects “will not proceed” while the war continues, he told Al Jazeera at the time, adding that Jordan was focused entirely on ending Israel’s “retaliatory barbarism” in Gaza.
But there are limits to how far the government is willing to go, having “tied its political and economic vision to close relations with the United States and Israel,” said Jillian Schwedler, a professor at Hunter College and author of a book on protests in Jordan. Those ties, she added, “are not easily untangled.”
After a meeting at the White House last month, Jordan’s King Abdullah was blunt: “We cannot stand by and let this continue,” he said, with President Biden at his side. “We need a lasting cease-fire now. This war must end.”
In the six weeks since, multiple rounds of shuttle diplomacy by American, Arab and Israeli officials have failed to produce even a temporary cease-fire.
A demonstration in support of Palestinians in Gaza, near the Israeli Embassy in Amman on Wednesday.
As public discontent grows, Jordan’s security establishment is getting jittery. Unemployment was over 22 percent last year; many young men are out of work. There are fears that the Muslim Brotherhood, a long-suppressed opposition group and a Hamas ally, is playing a role in the protests, hoping to garner support ahead of general elections in August.
“We are your men, Sinwar,” some protesters chanted Tuesday night, a reference to Yehiya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who planned the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and remains at large in Gaza.
On Saturday, Jordan’s Foreign Ministry announced that its embassy in Tel Aviv was following up on reports in Israeli media that two armed men were detained near al-Fasayil village in the West Bank, having allegedly crossed the Jordanian border.
The alarm is palpable among decision-makers in the government, Sharafat said. Regularly dispatching riot police is a financial drain on Jordan’s small and struggling economy, he said. And there is the emotional burden on police themselves, he added, many of whom are also Palestinian. After fasting from sunrise to sunset for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, their nights are now spent clashing with protesters.
As the war has worn on, demonstrators have gotten bolder: The cancellation of the water-for-energy deal was followed by growing public demands for annulling Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel. With the Israeli military now threatening an invasion of Rafah, home to some 1.4 million displaced Palestinians, Sharafat said popular pressure will only increase.
“The Jordanian position is currently in crisis … in figuring out how to deal with the next stage, how to deal with the protests,” he said. “The space the government has to maneuver is very tight.”
Schwedler said she expects “more of the same” — “sharp condemnation of Israel, strained formal diplomatic relations for a while, but little change in policy or ties with Israel.”
*****************
Israel Vs Palestine | Israeli 'Executions’ at Al-Shifa Hospital | Israel Vs Gaza | N18V | News18
CNN-News18
Premiered 5 hours ago #israel #palestine #gaza
The Israeli army reportedly threatened on Saturday to destroy the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza city, despite the presence of hundreds of people inside, according to a statement from the Gaza government media office.
by Sarah Dadouch
The Washington Post
March 28, 2024 at 8:51 a.m. EDT
Thousands of Jordanians continue protests near Israeli embassy in Amman
Associated Press
Mar 27, 2024 #israelhamaswar #israel #jordan
Jordanian security forces dispersed angry demonstrators who again tried to reach the Israeli embassy in Amman on Tuesday evening and during the early hours of Wednesday. Several thousand demonstrators flocked to more than one location close to the embassy for the third day in a row, for an event that activists call the siege of the embassy, in response to the Israeli war on Gaza. #jordan #israel #israelhamaswar
Abu Obaida Posters Near Israeli Embassy, Pro-Palestine Protesters Attacked | Jordan Erupts For Gaza
Hindustan Times
Mar 27, 2024 #occupiedwestbank #alaqsaflood #israelhamaswar
Jordanian anti-riot police beat and arrested dozens of demonstrators trying to march towards the heavily guarded Israeli embassy in the capital Amman, witnesses and residents said on Wednesday. More than two thousand protesters gathered late on Tuesday, the third day of demonstrations which have been marred with clashes, after baton wielding police pushed back hundreds of angry crowds seeking to storm the embassy compound. Many demonstrators chanted slogans in support of the militant Islamist Hamas. Watch.
Jordanian security forces clashed with protesters trying to reach the Israeli embassy in Amman on March 25. (Video: AP)
Hundreds of protesters gathered in the Jordanian capital Tuesday for a third straight night to call for an end to Israel’s war in Gaza, clashing with baton-carrying riot police before tear gas rained down on them.
On Wednesday night, demonstrators were back on the streets. “Open the borders,” they chanted.
Though there have been regular protests in Amman throughout the nearly six-month war, the government has largely managed to contain the situation by aligning itself with public sentiment — harshly criticizing Israel’s conduct of the war and championing the Palestinian cause. But the scenes this week appeared more spontaneous, the crowds larger and the anger more raw, sending shock waves through the country’s powerful security establishment.
“Jordan is in an unenviable position,” said Saud al-Sharafat, a former brigadier general in the Jordanian General Intelligence Directorate and founder of the Sharafat ِCenter for the Study of Globalization and Terrorism. The grinding conflict in Gaza, and the soaring Palestinian death toll, are testing the state’s “ability to maintain the tempo that exists now, so that [things] do not get out of control.”
The Kingdom of Jordan occupies a unique position in the Middle East. It is a close and longtime ally of the United States, receiving more than $1 billion annually in economic and military aid. In 1994, Jordan signed a peace treaty with neighboring Israel. But the mass displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war — known to Arabs as the “nakba,” or catastrophe — forever altered the country’s demographics.
Jordan is home to more than 2 million Palestinian refugees, most of whom have Jordanian citizenship. Analysts estimate that half of the population is of Palestinian descent. For many in the country, geographically and emotionally, the war in Gaza feels very close.
Jordanian authorities — who typically show little tolerance for public demonstrations — have sanctioned weekly protests after Friday prayers.
“It seems, over time, government institutions learned their lessons and started giving space [for people] to relieve tension,” Sharafat said.
Demonstrators carry banners and flags as a flare burns during a protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza, outside al-Kalouti Mosque near the Israeli Embassy in Amman, Jordan, on Wednesday. (Alaa Al-Sukhn/Reuters)
Yet the government has also tried to contain the unrest, forbidding any crowding near, or storming of, the border zone with Israel. Several attempts by protesters in early October to reach the country’s border with the West Bank were thwarted by riot police.
That same month, Jordan’s Public Security Directorate said protesters assaulted and injured public security personnel, threw molotov cocktails and damaged public and private property.
Jordanian lawyers representing detainees told Human Rights Watch this month that hundreds of people have likely been arrested for their involvement in protests or online Palestinian advocacy.
“Jordanian authorities are trampling the right to free expression and assembly in an effort to tamp down Gaza-related activism,” said Lama Fakih, the group’s Middle East director.
The government’s public advocacy for war-battered Gaza has also helped keep a lid on public anger.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi was one of the first Arab officials to say that Israel’s war in Gaza met the “legal definition of genocide,” an accusation Israel called “outrageous.” In November, he announced the cancellation of a controversial economic pact with Israel, under which Jordan would have provided energy to its neighbor in exchange for water.
Such regional projects “will not proceed” while the war continues, he told Al Jazeera at the time, adding that Jordan was focused entirely on ending Israel’s “retaliatory barbarism” in Gaza.
But there are limits to how far the government is willing to go, having “tied its political and economic vision to close relations with the United States and Israel,” said Jillian Schwedler, a professor at Hunter College and author of a book on protests in Jordan. Those ties, she added, “are not easily untangled.”
After a meeting at the White House last month, Jordan’s King Abdullah was blunt: “We cannot stand by and let this continue,” he said, with President Biden at his side. “We need a lasting cease-fire now. This war must end.”
In the six weeks since, multiple rounds of shuttle diplomacy by American, Arab and Israeli officials have failed to produce even a temporary cease-fire.
A demonstration in support of Palestinians in Gaza, near the Israeli Embassy in Amman on Wednesday.
As public discontent grows, Jordan’s security establishment is getting jittery. Unemployment was over 22 percent last year; many young men are out of work. There are fears that the Muslim Brotherhood, a long-suppressed opposition group and a Hamas ally, is playing a role in the protests, hoping to garner support ahead of general elections in August.
“We are your men, Sinwar,” some protesters chanted Tuesday night, a reference to Yehiya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who planned the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and remains at large in Gaza.
On Saturday, Jordan’s Foreign Ministry announced that its embassy in Tel Aviv was following up on reports in Israeli media that two armed men were detained near al-Fasayil village in the West Bank, having allegedly crossed the Jordanian border.
The alarm is palpable among decision-makers in the government, Sharafat said. Regularly dispatching riot police is a financial drain on Jordan’s small and struggling economy, he said. And there is the emotional burden on police themselves, he added, many of whom are also Palestinian. After fasting from sunrise to sunset for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, their nights are now spent clashing with protesters.
As the war has worn on, demonstrators have gotten bolder: The cancellation of the water-for-energy deal was followed by growing public demands for annulling Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel. With the Israeli military now threatening an invasion of Rafah, home to some 1.4 million displaced Palestinians, Sharafat said popular pressure will only increase.
“The Jordanian position is currently in crisis … in figuring out how to deal with the next stage, how to deal with the protests,” he said. “The space the government has to maneuver is very tight.”
Schwedler said she expects “more of the same” — “sharp condemnation of Israel, strained formal diplomatic relations for a while, but little change in policy or ties with Israel.”
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Israel Vs Palestine | Israeli 'Executions’ at Al-Shifa Hospital | Israel Vs Gaza | N18V | News18
CNN-News18
Premiered 5 hours ago #israel #palestine #gaza
The Israeli army reportedly threatened on Saturday to destroy the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza city, despite the presence of hundreds of people inside, according to a statement from the Gaza government media office.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Tue Apr 02, 2024 1:55 am
“Like Lying in a Coffin”: UNICEF Spokesperson Warns of Devastating Toll on Gaza’s Children
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MARCH 29, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/29/ ... transcript
As the death toll in Gaza tops 32,600, we speak with UNICEF spokesperson James Elder in Rafah near the Egyptian border, now home to some 1.5 million Palestinians seeking shelter from the fighting. He says Israel’s continued obstruction of aid into the territory is a “man-made and preventable” crisis of hunger and acute malnutrition that could be ended if Israel just opened access to more aid trucks, especially in northern Gaza, where desperate people could be reached in as little as 10 minutes. “When I’m on the street, every person, the first thing they want to tell me, in English or Arabic, is 'We need food, we need food,'” Elder tells Democracy Now! “They are saying that because their assumption is the world doesn’t know, because how would this be allowed to happen if the world knew?” He also reiterates UNICEF’s call for a full ceasefire and warns against Israel’s planned ground invasion of Rafah, which he describes as “a city of children.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
In Gaza, the death toll has now topped 32,600, including 14,000 children, with over 75,000 people wounded. At least 31 people, including 27 children, have already died of malnutrition and dehydration.
For more, we go to Rafah in Gaza, where we’re joined by James Elder, spokesperson for UNICEF, which stands for the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, James Elder. Thank you so much for joining us as you stand outside a hospital in Rafah. Talk about where you’ve been in Gaza and what’ve you found.
JAMES ELDER: Amy, hi there.
Look, I’ve been south to north, north to south. If we start here in the south, in Rafah, this is a city that’s normally 300,000 people, and it’s now about 1.5 million, so you can imagine the congestion. I’m looking now at a field hospital. The number of times, Amy, well, I’ll walk around and just think this place feels like a war zone. Now, of course, it is a war zone. So, if I’m in a hospital, you’re talking about being in a hospital, and it is absolutely heaving with people. So, the corridors are now no longer corridors. They are tented up, people using blankets, whatever they can, thousands and thousands of people trying to take refuge in hospitals, and, of course, thousands and thousands of people with the wounds of war in hospitals. So, here, Rafah, this is a city of children, Amy. This is where most people from Gaza have now fled, with a very real fear of an offensive here.
When you go further north, to the very north, as I’ve been to Jabaliya and Gaza City, well, first you see the devastation. I’m seeing, Amy, entire cities turned to rubble, more or less, things I’ve never seen before, every street. When I go with people from that city, drivers who — drivers who grew up in that city, and who simply don’t know how to get around anymore, Amy, because they’ve lost those landmarks to direct them. And then you see the nutritional status, those children you spoke about. More children died overnight in the last couple of days, dehydration, malnutrition. I see those families, Amy. I see mothers in tears, crouched over cots with children and babies who are paper thin, thousands of people on the street doing that universal sign: food now.
That’s some sense, north to south. Whatever it is, it’s desperation, and it’s exhaustion. People have done everything. They break their last piece of bread to share if they have four or five families stay with them. But I’ve sat with families this morning that I can speak to. They’re exhausted. And yeah, they’re confused as to why they don’t have the world’s attention.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get your response to the latest news, James Elder.
JAMES ELDER: I’ve got no hearing, guys.
AMY GOODMAN: The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to ensure unhindered aid could get into Gaza. The legally binding order was issued after a request by South Africa, which brought the genocide case to Israel in January. The court noted in its latest order, “Palestinians in Gaza are no longer facing only a risk of famine, but … famine is setting in.” The judges also cited U.N. data which finds at least 31 people, including 27 children, having already died of malnutrition and dehydration. The court is ordering Israel to submit a report within a month showing how it’s implemented the order. The significance of this, as the U.N. warns famine is imminent in northern Gaza? And the number of children who have been affected, James?
JAMES ELDER: Yes. I mean, we saw a report, Amy, almost two weeks ago by the most respected nutrition body in terms of crises on the planet, and it is talking about more people now being in that, what we call catastrophic food insecurity than in their 20 years of reporting. If we look at the north of Gaza, where before this war, less than 1% of children under the age of 5, less than 1%, suffered acute malnutrition. Now if we look at those north, to 2-year-olds, the most vulnerable, Amy, it’s one in three. One in three. This is the speed at which we’ve seen this catastrophic decline.
So, yes, at the United Nations, from my own executive director to the secretary-general, have been calling for months and months for unhindered, safe — sort of very difficult place to work — safe access for aid. Now, that’s road access. The most efficient and effective way to get supplies, lifesaving supplies, food — food, water, medicines, to people is on the road network, not just from the south, because that can be difficult. It’s 30 or 40 — 30 miles, doesn’t sound like a long way. It is a long way when you’ve got tens of thousands of people on the street. Amy, there are crossings that are 10 minutes away from those people who are hand to mouth, from those mothers who are cradling children who are severely malnourished. Ten minutes away.
So, in the same way that this crisis, this nutritional crisis affecting children and civilians in Gaza, is man-made and preventable, it can be turned around. Now, if you want to be a glass half-full, that’s good news. This can be reversed. But we do need those decisions to be made. We need all hindrances gone, all obstructions gone. We need safety. You know, we know that more my United Nations colleagues have been killed in this war than in any war since the creation of the United Nations. We’ve seen those horrendous videos of desperate people, desperate because they see a truck of food once a week — there is no consistency — desperate people being killed accessing food. There are crossings in the north. If those are opened, we can flood the Gaza Strip with aid, and this is solved within a matter of weeks, magic pace that UNICEF has, changes their lives dramatically.
But we’re not seeing that. Instead, UNRWA, the biggest U.N. agency here, the backbone of humanitarian aid on the Gaza Strip, that was sending 50% — Amy, 50% of the food to the north, they’ve been blocked. So we have to be very clear and very, very honest in terms of what the restrictions are. The restrictions currently are why we are seeing this level of malnutrition, particularly among children.
AMY GOODMAN: So, why — what is Israel saying to you, to the international body, the United Nations, to you particularly at UNICEF, why they’re not letting this aid go, and particularly saying they will not work with UNRWA at all in northern Gaza?
JAMES ELDER: Yes. Look, obviously, you know, we function here based on our impartiality, and we talk to anyone. So you’re right to ask. I’m not privy to the exact conversations. Like anyone else, you hear the statements made that there is, you know, limitless access here. The reality on the ground says differently. In the first three weeks of March, one-quarter of aid convoys were denied. As I say, the restrictions on UNRWA are immense.
I can speak to my own experience of the complexities of even getting that food aid to the north, which is why if you come in from the north in those crossings, that’s a game changer. In the same way that the world has focused a little bit on airdrops and ships, obviously, right now the desperation is so great that those people who have been forcibly put into this position will take food aid wherever it comes from. It shouldn’t be the case, when, I mean, in the north, you’re talking about an area that was famed for strawberries — not for malnutrition, for strawberries. But we have to be clear that when a ship comes in, it has the equivalent tonnage of around 12 trucks. There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of trucks, you know, five miles from where I am now. You could get hundreds and hundreds of trucks within 10 minutes, if that border crossing was open in the north, to those people who are cut off. That’s an important thing to remember.
When I was in the north, Amy, those people are cut off. You’re past the last checkpoint when we access those people. When I’m on the street, every person, the first thing they want to tell me, in English or Arabic, is “We need food. We need food.” Now, I know this, of course. This is my work. But of course I listen to them. What was revealing is why they’re saying that. They are saying that because their assumption is the world doesn’t know, because how would this be allowed to happen if the world knew?
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the effects on children of malnutrition? If they don’t die of hunger, the effects of the dehydration and malnutrition that they’re experiencing now?
JAMES ELDER: Yeah, look, in one sense, it’s one of the saddest things you’ll see, because a malnourished child, literally, their body starts to feed on itself in its last desperate acts. As my executive director said when she was — she’s been in malnutrition centers around the world. Remember, in UNICEF, we are serving children around the world, and critical, critical scenarios for children particularly on nutrition, from places from Sudan to Ethiopia. And she spoke of just the silence in a malnutrition ward, because babies do not have the energy to cry.
But what usually kills children with this most severe form of malnutrition is a disease, a simple thing, pneumonia, a simple childhood disease. Children with severe acute malnutrition are 10 times more likely to be killed by that. And that is something that UNICEF has been warning about here for months. Because now Rafah has become a city of children, because the water system and the sanitation system have been devastated, it’s impossible to have the services here that children need. I mean healthcare. Never before in Gaza have so many children needed healthcare. Only one-third, one in three, hospitals are partially functioning. Toilets — toilets, both in terms of dignity but in terms of sanitation, Amy — the global standard in an emergency is one toilet for 20 people. Here we’re looking at about one toilet for 800. For a shower, multiply that by four, one shower for three-and-a-half thousand people. Imagine for a teenage girl, much less, yes, a pregnant woman or a child. So, our great fear, which we are starting to see, is when you have severe malnutrition and you add in disease, this is the perfect storm. This is when this horror show for children becomes just as lethal on the ground as it currently is from the skies.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, of course, this is aside from the — I think the number has topped 14,000 of children who have died, uncounted number of them still in the rubble. If you can talk about this death toll, and also compare Gaza to other conflict zones you’ve been in, James Elder? You’ve been all over the world, to say the least.
JAMES ELDER: Yeah, look, for me, Amy, in a way, I’m loath to make the comparison, simply because, for UNICEF and myself, of course, a child is a child wherever they are. And when you see what’s happened to children, you know, from Ukraine to Afghanistan, it’s horrendous, and that’s why my colleagues are frontline workers in all of these places.
Yes, though, there is something particular here, the intensity of devastation. Obviously, it’s such a big child population in a compact space with, let’s be clear, indiscriminate attacks. The numbers you’re sharing there, it’s unprecedented. And when you see in a hospital those wounds of war to children, Amy, remembering that when there is a missile or a bomb on a family home, it’s not just one injury to a child. It’s the broken bones. It’s the burns. It’s very hard to look, but we must keep looking, the burns on a child. And it’s the shrapnel. These are the images that I turn, every time I turn around in a hospital, and I don’t think I’ve seen that, that consistency.
You have these rare moments, Amy, of clutching onto some hope. And once was a moment in a hospital, a little boy Mohamed, now, he had bad burns, but as I walked in to Mohamed, he made this little effort — it hurt him — to put a little thumbs-up, an unsolicited movement. And I just thought, “Wow! What a character!” And then the adult with him explained that Mohamed was also the best student in his school, showed me photographs of this beautiful little boy receiving awards. And I thought, “This little guy’s going to be OK.” And you hold onto these moments. Then that adult explained to me that when the missile hit Mohamed’s home, it killed everyone. And because families are hunkering down, I mean everyone — mother, father, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. Mohamed didn’t know this yet, but Mohamed is now the last surviving member of his entire family.
These horror stories, Amy, are being normalized here. I didn’t think I’d ever hear such a thing in Gaza, but I’m hearing it time and again, time and again. So, yes, and these wounds of war, I should add, you know, in the last two days, I made a point to go to hospitals since the ceasefire decision, which was a cause of great hope here. Great hope. Well, that hope has been well and truly drowned out right now by bombs. And I saw many children who doctors did not think would still be alive today based on the bombings that have occurred since Monday’s decision.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re standing, James Elder, in Rafah. If you can talk about what’s happening right now in Rafah? You have Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying, absolutely, an invasion, ground invasion, will happen. It’s not a matter of “if,” it’s a matter of “when.” You have talked about a possible ground invasion in Rafah. What would this mean?
JAMES ELDER: The horrors in Gaza do start to outstrip our ability to describe them. And it would be a catastrophe. But, of course, that word has been rightly used many times. But this is a city of children, as I say. This city, Rafah, now has twice the population density of New York City, but — I don’t know what you can see, OK, but that’s as tall as they get. This is ground level. And most people — most people are in tents. They’re in street corners. They’re on beaches. They’re in what was agriculture, what was agriculture. They’re ground level, 600,000 children here.
And what they’ve endured, I mean, we’re in uncharted territory when it comes to the mental health of these children. Amy. Night after night, even for me — and I get to leave this place — for me, I lie in bed, and you hear the bombardments that wake you, and your building shakes, and you lie there feeling like lying in a coffin. Like, what are the chances of waking tomorrow morning? Children here go through that with their families every night. Every night with a mother and child, there’s no lullaby you sing to a child to drown that out.
And so, for those people here, not only are they just holding on, their coping mechanisms at a wit’s end, they have nowhere to go. We have to understand that. It’s not — the social services are devastated. Khan Younis, the city next door, as I say, I’ve never seen that level of annihilation. Gaza City, further north, the same. There’s talk of an area near here, al-Mawasi. It’s a beach. You know, literally, you’d be doubling the population density again. So, it’s a terrifying thought, Amy. I didn’t imagine it would come to this, but, yes, as you rightly say, the conversation is very commonplace now. I just wish people could see the density of people here, could see the exhaustion, could listen to a doctor as I speak to him in a hospital as he’s treating a child with massive head wounds, and the doctor’s in tears, saying, “What did this child do?” Well, we will see that on a scale I don’t think any of us, certainly not me, can imagine.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, what would an immediate ceasefire mean for the children of Gaza, for the whole population there?
JAMES ELDER: You know, I’m glad you end like that, because that gives me a chill. Everyone asks still: Do we have hope? Is there hope? And most people hold on to this idea, Amy, of like, as a mother said, “I’ve lost my — I’ve lost two children. I’ve lost my home. I’ve lost my ability to earn income. I’ve lost my ability to feed my remaining child. All I have is hope.”
Now, a ceasefire is a game changer. Ceasefire. Firstly, let’s get the hostages home. There are children somewhere, after five-and-a-half months. End the torment. End the torment for they and their families. A ceasefire enables us finally to flood the Gaza Strip with aid and bring this nutritional crisis, imminent famine — make no doubt about it, imminent famine. And a ceasefire, Amy, means that those families that I spoke of, who tonight again will endure what I mentioned there, they will go to bed, if there’s a ceasefire, a mother and her child, and they will know, for the first time in months, that they will wake up tomorrow.
AMY GOODMAN: James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson — UNICEF stands for the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund — joining us today from Rafah in the Gaza Strip. Thank you so much, and be safe.
When we come back, we speak with the head of a corporate activist group who was just subpoenaed before Jim Jordan’s House panel. We’ll talk about shareholder and corporate responsibility. Stay with us.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Wed Apr 03, 2024 12:37 am
IDF Drone Bombed World Central Kitchen Aid Convoy Three Times, Targeting Armed Hamas Member Who Wasn't There: The strike on the aid convoy, which travelled along a route approved by the Israeli army, killed seven workers of the World Central Kitchen – but the target, an armed man thought to be a terrorist, never left the warehouse with the cars
by Yaniv Kubovich
Haaretz
Apr 2, 2024 3:03 pm IDT
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/202 ... ff29360000
[x]
One of the vehicles hit in the airstrike near Deir al-Balah, on Tuesday.Credit: Ahmed Zakot/ Reuters
The Israeli strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in the Gaza Strip on Monday night was launched because of suspicion that a terrorist was travelling with the convoy.
An Israeli drone fired three missiles one after the other at a World Central Kitchen aid convoy, that left Monday night to escort an aid truck to a food warehouse in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, according to defense sources familiar with the details.
According to the defense sources, the cars were clearly marked on the roof and sides as belonging to the organization, but the war room of the unit responsible for security of the route that the convoy travelled identified an armed man on the truck and suspected that he was a terrorist.
Until the actions that preceded the strike, carried out by a Hermes 450 drone, were completed, the truck reached the warehouse with the World Central Kitchen's three cars, with seven volunteers in them – two dual-national Palestinians (U.S. and Canada) and five citizens of Australia, the UK, and Poland.
A few minutes later, the three cars left the warehouse without the truck, on which the ostensibly armed man was located. According to the defense sources, that armed man did not leave the warehouse. The cars travelled along a route preapproved and coordinated with the IDF.
At some point, when the convoy was driving along the approved route, the war room of the unit responsible for security of the route ordered the drone operators to attack one of the cars with a missile.
Some of the passengers were seen leaving the car after it was hit and switching to one of the other two cars. They continued to drive and even notified the people responsible that they were attacked, but, seconds later, another missile hit their car.
The third car in the convoy approached, and the passengers began to transfer to it the wounded who had survived the second strike – in order to get them out of danger. But then a third missile struck them. All seven World Central Kitchen volunteers were killed in the strike.
On Tuesday morning, World Central Kitchen executives announced a temporary halt to its operations in Gaza, and that the ship that had departed to Gaza with aid shipments would return to Cyprus.
"It's frustrating," one of the defense sources told Haaretz. "We're trying our hardest to accurately hit terrorists, and utilizing every thread of intelligence, and in the end the units in the field decide to launch attacks without any preparation, in cases that have nothing to do with protecting our forces."
[x]
One of the cars in the convoy that was targeted, with a World Central Kitchen label on its windshield and roof.Credit: Ahmed Zakot/ Reuters
The IDF understands that this is a serious incident that is liable to have far-reaching effects on the continued combat in Gaza, because of deteriorating international legitimacy in recent weeks. The defense establishment is preparing to send representatives to the dead volunteers' countries, to personally present to senior government officials the findings of the investigation that the army announced on Monday night.
The strike is not the first incident in which World Central Kitchen staff were wounded in Gaza. On Saturday, an IDF sniper fired at a car headed to a food warehouse in the Khan Yunis area. He hit the car's windshield, but the volunteer inside was unharmed.
The World Central Kitchen immediately filed a complaint with the IDF after the incident, and demanded the army stop the fire toward its staff, and guarantee their safety when distributing food in the Gaza Strip, which is carried out with full coordination. The IDF did not comment on the organization's inquiry about that incident.
IDF Spokesman rear adm. Daniel Hagari has spoken of the incident on Tuesday, expressing his "sincere sorrow," saying that "as a professional military committed to international law", The IDF is committed to examining its operations "thoroughly and transparently," he said, speaking to foreign press.
Hagari further said he has spoken to WCK founder, Chef Jose Andres, and expressed the IDF's "deepest condolences."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented on the event and said that the incident was a "tragic case of our forces unintentionally hitting innocent people in the Gaza Strip. This happens in war, and we will investigate it to the end. We are in contact with the governments involved, and we will do everything to insure that this does not happen again."
According to Deir al-Balah residents, who were in the area when the convoy was hit, the attack happened near the temporary pier set up to unload goods that reach Gaza by sea, like the shipments organized by WCK from Cyprus.
Some of the residents were skeptical about the army's stance that the event was a mistake and would be investigated, as the cars in the convoy were clearly identified as belonging to the humanitarian organization.
by Yaniv Kubovich
Haaretz
Apr 2, 2024 3:03 pm IDT
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/202 ... ff29360000
[x]
One of the vehicles hit in the airstrike near Deir al-Balah, on Tuesday.Credit: Ahmed Zakot/ Reuters
The Israeli strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in the Gaza Strip on Monday night was launched because of suspicion that a terrorist was travelling with the convoy.
An Israeli drone fired three missiles one after the other at a World Central Kitchen aid convoy, that left Monday night to escort an aid truck to a food warehouse in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, according to defense sources familiar with the details.
According to the defense sources, the cars were clearly marked on the roof and sides as belonging to the organization, but the war room of the unit responsible for security of the route that the convoy travelled identified an armed man on the truck and suspected that he was a terrorist.
[x]
John Hudson @John_Hudson
Munition dropped right through the World Central Kitchen logo
4:01 AM · Apr 2, 2024
Until the actions that preceded the strike, carried out by a Hermes 450 drone, were completed, the truck reached the warehouse with the World Central Kitchen's three cars, with seven volunteers in them – two dual-national Palestinians (U.S. and Canada) and five citizens of Australia, the UK, and Poland.
A few minutes later, the three cars left the warehouse without the truck, on which the ostensibly armed man was located. According to the defense sources, that armed man did not leave the warehouse. The cars travelled along a route preapproved and coordinated with the IDF.
At some point, when the convoy was driving along the approved route, the war room of the unit responsible for security of the route ordered the drone operators to attack one of the cars with a missile.
Some of the passengers were seen leaving the car after it was hit and switching to one of the other two cars. They continued to drive and even notified the people responsible that they were attacked, but, seconds later, another missile hit their car.
The third car in the convoy approached, and the passengers began to transfer to it the wounded who had survived the second strike – in order to get them out of danger. But then a third missile struck them. All seven World Central Kitchen volunteers were killed in the strike.
On Tuesday morning, World Central Kitchen executives announced a temporary halt to its operations in Gaza, and that the ship that had departed to Gaza with aid shipments would return to Cyprus.
"It's frustrating," one of the defense sources told Haaretz. "We're trying our hardest to accurately hit terrorists, and utilizing every thread of intelligence, and in the end the units in the field decide to launch attacks without any preparation, in cases that have nothing to do with protecting our forces."
[x]
One of the cars in the convoy that was targeted, with a World Central Kitchen label on its windshield and roof.Credit: Ahmed Zakot/ Reuters
The IDF understands that this is a serious incident that is liable to have far-reaching effects on the continued combat in Gaza, because of deteriorating international legitimacy in recent weeks. The defense establishment is preparing to send representatives to the dead volunteers' countries, to personally present to senior government officials the findings of the investigation that the army announced on Monday night.
The strike is not the first incident in which World Central Kitchen staff were wounded in Gaza. On Saturday, an IDF sniper fired at a car headed to a food warehouse in the Khan Yunis area. He hit the car's windshield, but the volunteer inside was unharmed.
The World Central Kitchen immediately filed a complaint with the IDF after the incident, and demanded the army stop the fire toward its staff, and guarantee their safety when distributing food in the Gaza Strip, which is carried out with full coordination. The IDF did not comment on the organization's inquiry about that incident.
IDF Spokesman rear adm. Daniel Hagari has spoken of the incident on Tuesday, expressing his "sincere sorrow," saying that "as a professional military committed to international law", The IDF is committed to examining its operations "thoroughly and transparently," he said, speaking to foreign press.
Hagari further said he has spoken to WCK founder, Chef Jose Andres, and expressed the IDF's "deepest condolences."
[x]
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מצורף תרגום:
הלילה התרחש אירוע בעזה שהוביל למותם הטראגי של עובדי המטבח העולמי המרכזי, בעת שהם מילאו את שליחותם החיונית – להביא מזון לזקוקים לכך.
כצבא מקצועי המחויב לחוק הבינלאומי, אנחנו מחוייבים לבחון את פעולותינו באופן מעמיק ושקוף>>
3:22 AM · Apr 2, 2024
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented on the event and said that the incident was a "tragic case of our forces unintentionally hitting innocent people in the Gaza Strip. This happens in war, and we will investigate it to the end. We are in contact with the governments involved, and we will do everything to insure that this does not happen again."
According to Deir al-Balah residents, who were in the area when the convoy was hit, the attack happened near the temporary pier set up to unload goods that reach Gaza by sea, like the shipments organized by WCK from Cyprus.
Some of the residents were skeptical about the army's stance that the event was a mistake and would be investigated, as the cars in the convoy were clearly identified as belonging to the humanitarian organization.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Tue Apr 23, 2024 12:35 am
“The Zone of Interest”: Oscar-Nominated Film Producer on the Holocaust, Gaza & “Walls That Separate Us”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 5, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/5/t ... transcript
Update: During the Oscars ceremony, filmmaker Jonathan Glazer condemned the Israeli occupation after his Holocaust film “The Zone of Interest” won an Oscar for best international film.
Ahead of the 96th Academy Awards, we’re joined by James Wilson, producer of the Oscar-nominated film The Zone of Interest, who raised Israel’s assault on Gaza in his BAFTA Award acceptance speech last month. The film follows the fictionalized family of real-life Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss as they live idyllically next to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Wilson says the film serves as a metaphor for the occlusion of “systemic violence, injustice, oppression, from our lives,” and challenges audiences’ complicity by asking them to identify with Höss and his wife Hedwig. “The idea of this film was to look for the similarities, rather than the differences, between us and the perpetrator,” says Wilson.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We end today’s show with the producer of the Oscar-nominated Holocaust film, Zone of Interest, about the family of Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss living a tranquil life on the opposite side of the wall of the Auschwitz concentration camp. First, this is the film’s trailer.
LINNA HENSEL: [played by Imogen Kogge] [translated] These flowers are so beautiful.
HEDWIG HÖSS: [played by Sandra Hüller] [translated] The azaleas there. There are also vegetables. A few herbs. Rosemary. Beetroot. This is fennel. Sunflowers. And here is kohlrabi. The children love to eat it.
UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: [translated] The heartfelt time we spent in the Höss house will always be among our most beautiful holiday memories. In the east lies our tomorrow. Thanks for you National Socialist hospitality.
AMY GOODMAN: The Zone of Interest just won three BAFTA Awards last month for best sound, best British film and best film not in the English language. During his acceptance speech, producer James Wilson raised Israel’s assault on Gaza.
JAMES WILSON: A friend — a friend wrote me after seeing the film the other day that he couldn’t stop thinking about the walls we construct in our lives, which we choose not to look behind. Those walls aren’t new from before or during or since the Holocaust. And it seems stark right now that we should care about innocent people being killed in Gaza or Yemen in the same way we think about innocent people being killed in Mariupol or in Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by James Wilson, producer of the Oscar-nominated film The Zone of Interest, nominated for best picture, among others. The Oscar ceremony is Sunday — best international picture.
Congratulations, James Wilson, on all the nominations and what you won at the BAFTAs. Talk about that experience and why you related what’s happening now with Israel’s assault on Gaza to this Holocaust film, and talk specifically about that wall that separated the commandant’s home from the Auschwitz concentration camp.
JAMES WILSON: Well, thank you, Amy. Good morning. Thank you for inviting me on the show.
Well, I mean, why I said that? I mean, as you heard in the clip, I mean, I related the film both to the — in the present moment of the Israeli assault on Gaza, but also the innocent victims in Israel on October the 7th. And I mentioned Yemen, and I mentioned Ukraine, too, Mariupol, too. So, the context of that, which felt — it felt organic to the idea of the film, the questions of the film. You know, I know politics in film award speeches can grate sometimes, but this — as I said, this felt very pertinent to what the film is about, which is that — yeah, as you say, the walls that separate us from things that we choose not to look at, just as the friend who had messaged me about the film saying he couldn’t stop thinking about that in his own daily life. And all of that just came together. I was obviously thinking about it beforehand. You know, I felt — you know, it was a nervous moment just to speak in front of a lot of people. I’ve never won an award for a film I’ve worked on. But it felt organic to the idea of the film.
And you mentioned the wall in the film. And, of course, the film stages an absolutely real situation, which is the Höss — the family of, you know, the commandant of Auschwitz and his wife and the family, and the life they led in a nice house and garden that exactly abutted Auschwitz in full operation in the early 1940s. And that wall, which is in the film and in that situation, was absolutely real. It’s of course also a metaphor for, as my friend’s message said, the way we can sort of occlude and tune out systematic violence, injustice, oppression, all sorts of things, from our lives in order that we go on with them. And I suppose the film asks that question: What are the walls in our lives? Do we have walls like that in our life? Are there groups of people whom we care about more than others, as groups of people socially, not as friends and family? And it seems quite clear that that is the case.
And I suppose the other thing about the film is we always wanted it to be — feel modern and feel about the present. Everything about how we made it, how Jon Glaze, the writer/director of the film, wanted to make it, was to make it feel like it was happening in the present and it reflected the present. And that was, you know, through the tools of filmmaking — cinematography, acting, music, sound design — to create this immersive feeling of present tenseness, which was a means to an hopeful end, which was to reflect us in the present.
And Jon has also spoken about how it’s a political film. And one of the things that’s happening in the present is this extraordinary, staggering loss of innocent life and killing of innocent people in Gaza in the Occupied Territories, that is a response to the heinous mass killing of October the 7th. But it just seems very stark in the world that we have, politically, our governments at least, have a different level of care and attitude to those innocent people being killed in Gaza and in Yemen and, of course, in other — you know, this selective empathy, I think, marks hundreds of years of human history — and I mentioned that in the — I spoke to that in the brief speech I was able to make — and isn’t just something that was happening, you know, from 1940 to ’45 in Germany. So, all of those things sort of came together in that moment in that speech.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, James Wilson, you mentioned the commandant of Auschwitz and his family. What was the challenge in getting the audience to identify with these main characters, with this idyllic family, up against this incomprehensible terror and destruction that was happening right — or, that was occurring and he was presiding over?
JAMES WILSON: Well, I mean, in a way, you’ve — I mean, the challenge — the challenge that you identify sort of is the core of the film, I think, the questions of the film. It’s not a polemical film. There’s not like a message where we’re trying to pin it, you know, tie it up with a neat bow. But I think the whole — I think the whole question of the film and the idea, the thinking space of the film, it’s a film, I think, that asks you to — tries to make a space in which you can think, was to lean into some kind of identification with those people, as you say, the commandant of Auschwitz and his partner, his wife, to look for the similarities, not the differences. The typical way the Holocaust is narrated is of a sort of — you know, sort of is of something — it’s the discourse of what’s called Holocaust exceptionalism, right? That the Holocaust stands apart from history, outside of history, as this sort of mythic, almost evil, mystical event. And there’s something apolitical and ahistorical in that idea. So the idea of this film was to look for the similarities, rather than the differences, between us and the perpetrator, which is not —
AMY GOODMAN: And I wanted to go to a clip from your film, when Nazi commandant —
JAMES WILSON: Sure.
AMY GOODMAN: — Rudolf Höss’s wife Hedwig Hensel speaks to her mother.
LINNA HENSEL: [played by Imogen Kogge] [translated] Is that tahe camp wall?
HEDWIG HÖSS: [played by Sandra Hüller] [translated] Yes, that’s the camp wall. We planted more vines at the back to grow and cover it.
LINNA HENSEL: [translated] Maybe Esther Silberman is over there.
HEDWIG HÖSS: [translated] Which one was she?
LINNA HENSEL: [translated] The one I used to clean for.
AMY GOODMAN: James Wilson, 10 seconds to wrap.
JAMES WILSON: Well, I mean, just to pick up that last point, it was to look for all those details and aspects of our lives in terms of our aspirations, our desire for household comfort, the things that motivated and drove them that reflect in different ways our life.
AMY GOODMAN: James Wilson, we’re going to leave it there. Congratulations on your Oscar nominations for international film at the Oscars, The Zone of Interest. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 5, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/5/t ... transcript
Update: During the Oscars ceremony, filmmaker Jonathan Glazer condemned the Israeli occupation after his Holocaust film “The Zone of Interest” won an Oscar for best international film.
Ahead of the 96th Academy Awards, we’re joined by James Wilson, producer of the Oscar-nominated film The Zone of Interest, who raised Israel’s assault on Gaza in his BAFTA Award acceptance speech last month. The film follows the fictionalized family of real-life Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss as they live idyllically next to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Wilson says the film serves as a metaphor for the occlusion of “systemic violence, injustice, oppression, from our lives,” and challenges audiences’ complicity by asking them to identify with Höss and his wife Hedwig. “The idea of this film was to look for the similarities, rather than the differences, between us and the perpetrator,” says Wilson.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We end today’s show with the producer of the Oscar-nominated Holocaust film, Zone of Interest, about the family of Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss living a tranquil life on the opposite side of the wall of the Auschwitz concentration camp. First, this is the film’s trailer.
LINNA HENSEL: [played by Imogen Kogge] [translated] These flowers are so beautiful.
HEDWIG HÖSS: [played by Sandra Hüller] [translated] The azaleas there. There are also vegetables. A few herbs. Rosemary. Beetroot. This is fennel. Sunflowers. And here is kohlrabi. The children love to eat it.
UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: [translated] The heartfelt time we spent in the Höss house will always be among our most beautiful holiday memories. In the east lies our tomorrow. Thanks for you National Socialist hospitality.
AMY GOODMAN: The Zone of Interest just won three BAFTA Awards last month for best sound, best British film and best film not in the English language. During his acceptance speech, producer James Wilson raised Israel’s assault on Gaza.
JAMES WILSON: A friend — a friend wrote me after seeing the film the other day that he couldn’t stop thinking about the walls we construct in our lives, which we choose not to look behind. Those walls aren’t new from before or during or since the Holocaust. And it seems stark right now that we should care about innocent people being killed in Gaza or Yemen in the same way we think about innocent people being killed in Mariupol or in Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by James Wilson, producer of the Oscar-nominated film The Zone of Interest, nominated for best picture, among others. The Oscar ceremony is Sunday — best international picture.
Congratulations, James Wilson, on all the nominations and what you won at the BAFTAs. Talk about that experience and why you related what’s happening now with Israel’s assault on Gaza to this Holocaust film, and talk specifically about that wall that separated the commandant’s home from the Auschwitz concentration camp.
JAMES WILSON: Well, thank you, Amy. Good morning. Thank you for inviting me on the show.
Well, I mean, why I said that? I mean, as you heard in the clip, I mean, I related the film both to the — in the present moment of the Israeli assault on Gaza, but also the innocent victims in Israel on October the 7th. And I mentioned Yemen, and I mentioned Ukraine, too, Mariupol, too. So, the context of that, which felt — it felt organic to the idea of the film, the questions of the film. You know, I know politics in film award speeches can grate sometimes, but this — as I said, this felt very pertinent to what the film is about, which is that — yeah, as you say, the walls that separate us from things that we choose not to look at, just as the friend who had messaged me about the film saying he couldn’t stop thinking about that in his own daily life. And all of that just came together. I was obviously thinking about it beforehand. You know, I felt — you know, it was a nervous moment just to speak in front of a lot of people. I’ve never won an award for a film I’ve worked on. But it felt organic to the idea of the film.
And you mentioned the wall in the film. And, of course, the film stages an absolutely real situation, which is the Höss — the family of, you know, the commandant of Auschwitz and his wife and the family, and the life they led in a nice house and garden that exactly abutted Auschwitz in full operation in the early 1940s. And that wall, which is in the film and in that situation, was absolutely real. It’s of course also a metaphor for, as my friend’s message said, the way we can sort of occlude and tune out systematic violence, injustice, oppression, all sorts of things, from our lives in order that we go on with them. And I suppose the film asks that question: What are the walls in our lives? Do we have walls like that in our life? Are there groups of people whom we care about more than others, as groups of people socially, not as friends and family? And it seems quite clear that that is the case.
And I suppose the other thing about the film is we always wanted it to be — feel modern and feel about the present. Everything about how we made it, how Jon Glaze, the writer/director of the film, wanted to make it, was to make it feel like it was happening in the present and it reflected the present. And that was, you know, through the tools of filmmaking — cinematography, acting, music, sound design — to create this immersive feeling of present tenseness, which was a means to an hopeful end, which was to reflect us in the present.
And Jon has also spoken about how it’s a political film. And one of the things that’s happening in the present is this extraordinary, staggering loss of innocent life and killing of innocent people in Gaza in the Occupied Territories, that is a response to the heinous mass killing of October the 7th. But it just seems very stark in the world that we have, politically, our governments at least, have a different level of care and attitude to those innocent people being killed in Gaza and in Yemen and, of course, in other — you know, this selective empathy, I think, marks hundreds of years of human history — and I mentioned that in the — I spoke to that in the brief speech I was able to make — and isn’t just something that was happening, you know, from 1940 to ’45 in Germany. So, all of those things sort of came together in that moment in that speech.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, James Wilson, you mentioned the commandant of Auschwitz and his family. What was the challenge in getting the audience to identify with these main characters, with this idyllic family, up against this incomprehensible terror and destruction that was happening right — or, that was occurring and he was presiding over?
JAMES WILSON: Well, I mean, in a way, you’ve — I mean, the challenge — the challenge that you identify sort of is the core of the film, I think, the questions of the film. It’s not a polemical film. There’s not like a message where we’re trying to pin it, you know, tie it up with a neat bow. But I think the whole — I think the whole question of the film and the idea, the thinking space of the film, it’s a film, I think, that asks you to — tries to make a space in which you can think, was to lean into some kind of identification with those people, as you say, the commandant of Auschwitz and his partner, his wife, to look for the similarities, not the differences. The typical way the Holocaust is narrated is of a sort of — you know, sort of is of something — it’s the discourse of what’s called Holocaust exceptionalism, right? That the Holocaust stands apart from history, outside of history, as this sort of mythic, almost evil, mystical event. And there’s something apolitical and ahistorical in that idea. So the idea of this film was to look for the similarities, rather than the differences, between us and the perpetrator, which is not —
AMY GOODMAN: And I wanted to go to a clip from your film, when Nazi commandant —
JAMES WILSON: Sure.
AMY GOODMAN: — Rudolf Höss’s wife Hedwig Hensel speaks to her mother.
LINNA HENSEL: [played by Imogen Kogge] [translated] Is that tahe camp wall?
HEDWIG HÖSS: [played by Sandra Hüller] [translated] Yes, that’s the camp wall. We planted more vines at the back to grow and cover it.
LINNA HENSEL: [translated] Maybe Esther Silberman is over there.
HEDWIG HÖSS: [translated] Which one was she?
LINNA HENSEL: [translated] The one I used to clean for.
AMY GOODMAN: James Wilson, 10 seconds to wrap.
JAMES WILSON: Well, I mean, just to pick up that last point, it was to look for all those details and aspects of our lives in terms of our aspirations, our desire for household comfort, the things that motivated and drove them that reflect in different ways our life.
AMY GOODMAN: James Wilson, we’re going to leave it there. Congratulations on your Oscar nominations for international film at the Oscars, The Zone of Interest. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Tue Apr 23, 2024 12:37 am
What I Witnessed in Gaza Is a Holocaust: Palestinian Writer Susan Abulhawa
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 6, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/6/g ... transcript
We speak with Palestinian novelist, poet and activist Susan Abulhawa, who is in Cairo and just returned from two weeks in Gaza. “What’s happening to people isn’t just this death and dismemberment and hunger. It is a total denigration of their personhood, of their whole society,” says Abulhawa. “What I witnessed personally in Rafah and some of the middle areas is incomprehensible, and I will call it a holocaust — and I don’t use that word lightly. But it is absolutely that.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
A U.N. convoy of food trucks trying to bring 200 tons of food into northern Gaza was turned back by the Israeli military today. A convoy of 14 trucks waited for three hours at the Wadi Gaza checkpoint in central Gaza before it was turned away by the Israeli military and later stopped by a large crowd of desperate people who, quote, “looted the food,” according to the World Food Programme. This comes as Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on Palestinians seeking to get aid in northern Gaza, killing at least 119 people in the most deadly attack February 29th.
Hunger has reached catastrophic levels in Gaza. The Palestinian Health Ministry said today the death toll from malnutrition and dehydration has risen to 18, adding, quote, “The famine is deepening and will claim thousands of lives if the aggression is not halted and humanitarian and medical aid is not immediately brought in,” unquote. Children, pregnant women, those with chronic illnesses are most vulnerable.
Meanwhile, the Israeli bombardment continues, with shelling and airstrikes today in cities across the Gaza Strip, including in Rafah, Khan Younis, Deir al-Balah and elsewhere. At least 30,700 Palestinians have been killed, over 72,000 wounded in Gaza over the past five months. Nearly the entire population has been displaced from their homes.
For more, we go to Cairo, Egypt, where we’re joined by Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian novelist, poet and activist, author of several books, best known for her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, an international best-seller translated into 32 languages, considered a classic in Palestinian literature. She’s the founder and co-director of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children’s organization, and the executive director of Palestine Writes Literature Festival. She just returned from Gaza after spending two weeks there, is now in Cairo.
Susan, welcome to Democracy Now! If you can talk about what you saw? You have written, “Some are eating stray cats and dogs, which are themselves starving and sometimes feeding on human remains that litter streets where Israeli snipers picked off people who dared to venture within the sight of their scopes. The old and weak have already died of hunger and thirst.” Describe your trip.
SUSAN ABULHAWA: So, that part of the essay is in the northern region, where nobody really is allowed to go. Trying to venture into the north is a suicide mission. There are tanks and snipers positioned, and anyone trying to get there is basically killed. As you just mentioned, aid trucks are not getting in, either. They are intentionally stopped. And it’s an intentional starvation, basically. I was primarily in the south, in Rafah. I was able to go to Khan Younis and to Nuseirat and a few other places in the middle region, but that became increasingly more dangerous.
I want to say that the reality on the ground is infinitely worse than the worst videos and photos that we’re seeing in the West. There is a — you know, beyond people being buried alive en masse in their homes, their bodies being shredded to pieces, these kinds of videos and images that people are seeing — beyond that, there is this daily massive degradation of life. It is a total denigration of a whole society, that was once high-functioning and proud and has basically been reduced to the most primal of ambitions, you know, being able to get enough water for the day or flour to bake bread. And this is even in Rafah.
And the people in Rafah will tell you that they feel privileged because they’re not starving to death, while their families in the north, the ones that they can reach, because Israel has basically cut off 99% of communication — what remains are basically communications by people who have, you know, set up some ingenious ways to keep internet in the north. But most people in the north have no idea what’s happening. As a matter of fact, at one point — I’m sure you all know Bisan Owda, who is on Facebook. She explained to me she often goes up to the border between Khan Younis and the middle area in the north where you can’t go beyond, and she explained to me that an aid truck, that sort of pushed its way through but was eventually fired on, had — people came up and ran up, thinking that the war was over and people were returning to the north. So, most people in the north are in total darkness and hunger and really have no way of communicating, no way of figuring out where to get food.
And, you know, what we’re hearing on the ground is surreal. It’s dystopic. What I witnessed personally in Rafah and in some of the middle areas is incomprehensible. And I will call it a holocaust — and I don’t use that word lightly. But it is absolutely that.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Susan Abulhawa, I want —
SUSAN ABULHAWA: The stories I heard from people are — sorry, go ahead.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, no, Susan, I wanted to ask you — you write in your article, “At some point, the indignity of filth is inescapable. At some point, you just wait for death, even as you also wait for a ceasefire. But people don’t know what they will do after a ceasefire.” Could you talk about that, even if there is a ceasefire —
SUSAN ABULHAWA: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — the level of destruction that the people face now in terms of being able to rebuild their country?
SUSAN ABULHAWA: I mean, that’s how much people have been reduced. I mean, the ceiling of their hope at this point is for the bombs to stop. And, you know, everybody wants to go back. They talk about pitching a tent on their homes and figuring things out. But a lot of people are trying to leave. There is a brain drain, basically. Those who can afford it, those who can raise the money, those who are able to get jobs elsewhere, who have professional skills, are trying to leave. They have children. All the schools have been destroyed. College students have nowhere to go.
You know, what’s happening to people isn’t just this death and dismemberment and hunger. It’s a total denigration of their personhood, of their whole society. There are no universities left. Israel intentionally bombed schools and blew them up, presumably to ensure that rebuilding could not take place, that reestablishing a society cannot take place without the infrastructure of education, of healthcare, and, basically, foundational structures for buildings.
AMY GOODMAN: Susan, I wanted to follow up on what you said about a holocaust. And you also used the term “genocide.” And you say, “Genocide isn’t just mass murder. It is intentional erasure.” Can you take that from there?
SUSAN ABULHAWA: Exactly. I mean, one of the — like I said, one of the things that Israel has been keen to do in Gaza is to erase remnants of people’s lives. So you have, on an individual level, homes, complete with memories and photos and all the things of living. And I’m sure you know Palestinians typically live in multigenerational homes. We’re not a mobile society. And so, these homes have several generations of the same family completely wiped out. On a societal level, you have — Israel has targeted places of worship — mosques, ancient churches, ancient mosques. They have targeted the museums, cultural centers, any place that — libraries. Any place that has records of people’s lives, has remnants and traces of their roots in the land, have been intentionally wiped away.
You know, it’s really frustrating for us to read Western media talk about, you know, Israel is targeting Hamas and whatnot. They’re not. This has always — and when you’re on the ground, you understand this has always been about displacing Palestinians, taking their place and wiping them off the map. That has been Israel’s stated goal, I mean, even in this instance and before, in 1948. It has always been their aim, to destroy us, remove us, kill us and take our place. And that’s what’s happening now in Gaza. It’s what happened in 1948, in 1967. And every new Nakba, every new escalation, is greater than the one before. And here we now arrive at a moment of genocide and holocaust, because the world has allowed Israel to act with such barbarity with impunity.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I wanted to ask you also — you mentioned the world reaction. More people have died in Gaza in less than five months than have — civilians — than have died in Ukraine in over two years, in the war in Ukraine, and Ukraine has 40 times the population of Gaza. I’m wondering your sense of the failure of the — especially of the Western nations, of Europe and the United States, to act?
SUSAN ABULHAWA: The Western world has lost any semblance of moral authority, if they ever had any. Or, you know, I think that maybe there was an illusion of moral authority previously, but I think — you know, what we have always known is that we are dealing with genocidal colonizers. But I think that is more apparent to the rest of the world at this hour. And I think what’s also happening is that Americans are coming to understand, increasingly, though not nearly enough, that they’re being lied to.
AMY GOODMAN: And we’re going to take up that issue in Part 2 of our discussion, which we’ll post at democracynow.org. Susan Abulhawa, Palestinian novelist, thanks so much.
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 6, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/6/g ... transcript
We speak with Palestinian novelist, poet and activist Susan Abulhawa, who is in Cairo and just returned from two weeks in Gaza. “What’s happening to people isn’t just this death and dismemberment and hunger. It is a total denigration of their personhood, of their whole society,” says Abulhawa. “What I witnessed personally in Rafah and some of the middle areas is incomprehensible, and I will call it a holocaust — and I don’t use that word lightly. But it is absolutely that.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
A U.N. convoy of food trucks trying to bring 200 tons of food into northern Gaza was turned back by the Israeli military today. A convoy of 14 trucks waited for three hours at the Wadi Gaza checkpoint in central Gaza before it was turned away by the Israeli military and later stopped by a large crowd of desperate people who, quote, “looted the food,” according to the World Food Programme. This comes as Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on Palestinians seeking to get aid in northern Gaza, killing at least 119 people in the most deadly attack February 29th.
Hunger has reached catastrophic levels in Gaza. The Palestinian Health Ministry said today the death toll from malnutrition and dehydration has risen to 18, adding, quote, “The famine is deepening and will claim thousands of lives if the aggression is not halted and humanitarian and medical aid is not immediately brought in,” unquote. Children, pregnant women, those with chronic illnesses are most vulnerable.
Meanwhile, the Israeli bombardment continues, with shelling and airstrikes today in cities across the Gaza Strip, including in Rafah, Khan Younis, Deir al-Balah and elsewhere. At least 30,700 Palestinians have been killed, over 72,000 wounded in Gaza over the past five months. Nearly the entire population has been displaced from their homes.
For more, we go to Cairo, Egypt, where we’re joined by Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian novelist, poet and activist, author of several books, best known for her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, an international best-seller translated into 32 languages, considered a classic in Palestinian literature. She’s the founder and co-director of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children’s organization, and the executive director of Palestine Writes Literature Festival. She just returned from Gaza after spending two weeks there, is now in Cairo.
Susan, welcome to Democracy Now! If you can talk about what you saw? You have written, “Some are eating stray cats and dogs, which are themselves starving and sometimes feeding on human remains that litter streets where Israeli snipers picked off people who dared to venture within the sight of their scopes. The old and weak have already died of hunger and thirst.” Describe your trip.
SUSAN ABULHAWA: So, that part of the essay is in the northern region, where nobody really is allowed to go. Trying to venture into the north is a suicide mission. There are tanks and snipers positioned, and anyone trying to get there is basically killed. As you just mentioned, aid trucks are not getting in, either. They are intentionally stopped. And it’s an intentional starvation, basically. I was primarily in the south, in Rafah. I was able to go to Khan Younis and to Nuseirat and a few other places in the middle region, but that became increasingly more dangerous.
I want to say that the reality on the ground is infinitely worse than the worst videos and photos that we’re seeing in the West. There is a — you know, beyond people being buried alive en masse in their homes, their bodies being shredded to pieces, these kinds of videos and images that people are seeing — beyond that, there is this daily massive degradation of life. It is a total denigration of a whole society, that was once high-functioning and proud and has basically been reduced to the most primal of ambitions, you know, being able to get enough water for the day or flour to bake bread. And this is even in Rafah.
And the people in Rafah will tell you that they feel privileged because they’re not starving to death, while their families in the north, the ones that they can reach, because Israel has basically cut off 99% of communication — what remains are basically communications by people who have, you know, set up some ingenious ways to keep internet in the north. But most people in the north have no idea what’s happening. As a matter of fact, at one point — I’m sure you all know Bisan Owda, who is on Facebook. She explained to me she often goes up to the border between Khan Younis and the middle area in the north where you can’t go beyond, and she explained to me that an aid truck, that sort of pushed its way through but was eventually fired on, had — people came up and ran up, thinking that the war was over and people were returning to the north. So, most people in the north are in total darkness and hunger and really have no way of communicating, no way of figuring out where to get food.
And, you know, what we’re hearing on the ground is surreal. It’s dystopic. What I witnessed personally in Rafah and in some of the middle areas is incomprehensible. And I will call it a holocaust — and I don’t use that word lightly. But it is absolutely that.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Susan Abulhawa, I want —
SUSAN ABULHAWA: The stories I heard from people are — sorry, go ahead.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, no, Susan, I wanted to ask you — you write in your article, “At some point, the indignity of filth is inescapable. At some point, you just wait for death, even as you also wait for a ceasefire. But people don’t know what they will do after a ceasefire.” Could you talk about that, even if there is a ceasefire —
SUSAN ABULHAWA: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — the level of destruction that the people face now in terms of being able to rebuild their country?
SUSAN ABULHAWA: I mean, that’s how much people have been reduced. I mean, the ceiling of their hope at this point is for the bombs to stop. And, you know, everybody wants to go back. They talk about pitching a tent on their homes and figuring things out. But a lot of people are trying to leave. There is a brain drain, basically. Those who can afford it, those who can raise the money, those who are able to get jobs elsewhere, who have professional skills, are trying to leave. They have children. All the schools have been destroyed. College students have nowhere to go.
You know, what’s happening to people isn’t just this death and dismemberment and hunger. It’s a total denigration of their personhood, of their whole society. There are no universities left. Israel intentionally bombed schools and blew them up, presumably to ensure that rebuilding could not take place, that reestablishing a society cannot take place without the infrastructure of education, of healthcare, and, basically, foundational structures for buildings.
AMY GOODMAN: Susan, I wanted to follow up on what you said about a holocaust. And you also used the term “genocide.” And you say, “Genocide isn’t just mass murder. It is intentional erasure.” Can you take that from there?
SUSAN ABULHAWA: Exactly. I mean, one of the — like I said, one of the things that Israel has been keen to do in Gaza is to erase remnants of people’s lives. So you have, on an individual level, homes, complete with memories and photos and all the things of living. And I’m sure you know Palestinians typically live in multigenerational homes. We’re not a mobile society. And so, these homes have several generations of the same family completely wiped out. On a societal level, you have — Israel has targeted places of worship — mosques, ancient churches, ancient mosques. They have targeted the museums, cultural centers, any place that — libraries. Any place that has records of people’s lives, has remnants and traces of their roots in the land, have been intentionally wiped away.
You know, it’s really frustrating for us to read Western media talk about, you know, Israel is targeting Hamas and whatnot. They’re not. This has always — and when you’re on the ground, you understand this has always been about displacing Palestinians, taking their place and wiping them off the map. That has been Israel’s stated goal, I mean, even in this instance and before, in 1948. It has always been their aim, to destroy us, remove us, kill us and take our place. And that’s what’s happening now in Gaza. It’s what happened in 1948, in 1967. And every new Nakba, every new escalation, is greater than the one before. And here we now arrive at a moment of genocide and holocaust, because the world has allowed Israel to act with such barbarity with impunity.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I wanted to ask you also — you mentioned the world reaction. More people have died in Gaza in less than five months than have — civilians — than have died in Ukraine in over two years, in the war in Ukraine, and Ukraine has 40 times the population of Gaza. I’m wondering your sense of the failure of the — especially of the Western nations, of Europe and the United States, to act?
SUSAN ABULHAWA: The Western world has lost any semblance of moral authority, if they ever had any. Or, you know, I think that maybe there was an illusion of moral authority previously, but I think — you know, what we have always known is that we are dealing with genocidal colonizers. But I think that is more apparent to the rest of the world at this hour. And I think what’s also happening is that Americans are coming to understand, increasingly, though not nearly enough, that they’re being lied to.
AMY GOODMAN: And we’re going to take up that issue in Part 2 of our discussion, which we’ll post at democracynow.org. Susan Abulhawa, Palestinian novelist, thanks so much.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Tue Apr 23, 2024 12:42 am
Israel’s “Killing Machine”: How U.S. Military Support Is Undercutting Ceasefire Talks, Prolonging War
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 7, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/7/i ... transcript
As Israel continues its relentless bombardment and siege of Gaza, where hunger and dehydration have reached deadly levels, Hamas has accused Israel of “thwarting” efforts to reach a ceasefire deal. A Hamas delegation in Cairo said that Israel has insisted on rejecting elements of a deal for a phased process that would culminate in an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza, as well as ensuring the entry of aid and facilitating the return of displaced Palestinians back to their homes in Gaza. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is pushing Hamas to accept the terms on the table, claiming that a “rational” offer had been made for a six-week truce in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages. The White House statements seem to be “a very politically calculated move so that they can essentially point the blame at Hamas if this fails,” says Tahani Mustafa, senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group. Mustafa also provides updates on UNRWA’s collapsing operations, repression in the West Bank and the utility of international law for Palestine today.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: A Hamas delegation that was in Cairo for ceasefire talks has left Egypt, accusing Israel of, quote, “thwarting” efforts to reach a deal. Talks are expected to resume next week. Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters that Israel is insisting on rejecting elements of a deal for a phased process that would culminate in an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza, as well as ensuring the entry of aid and facilitating the return of displaced Palestinians back to their homes in Gaza.
Negotiators from Hamas, Qatar and Egypt — but not Israel — were in Cairo trying to secure a 40-day ceasefire in time for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins early next week. With the talks at an impasse and only set to resume next week, that unofficial deadline for a deal appears highly unlikely.
AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, President Biden urged Hamas to accept the terms on the table and claimed that a rational offer had been made for a ceasefire in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages. Biden told reporters, “It’s in the hands of Hamas right now. If we get to the circumstance that it continues to Ramadan, it’s going be very dangerous,” Biden said.
As the talks have been underway, Israel has continued its relentless bombardment of Gaza, killing over 80 people in the last 24 hours. The death toll after nearly five months of the assault is at at least 30,800 killed and nearly 73,000 wounded. Meanwhile, hunger has reached catastrophic levels as a result of Israel’s siege. At least 20 Palestinians have died from malnutrition and dehydration, according to the Health Ministry.
For more, we’re joined by Tahani Mustafa, senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group. She’s normally based in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank but is joining us today from Doha, Qatar, where she’s attending a symposium on Palestine organized by Georgetown University.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Tahani. Can you start off by talking about the situation on the ground and these ceasefire talks? Hamas is saying that Israel sabotaged the talks, and Hamas has left Cairo. And then we’re getting word that, actually, some negotiations are still underway.
TAHANI MUSTAFA: So, I think negotiations at the moment are very precarious. We’ve seen that the ceasefire deal, or at least what is being offered by Israel and the U.S., who, by the way, have unilaterally come up with some of these conditions rather than actually effectively engaged with Hamas — it appears to be a very politically calculated move so that they can essentially point the blame at Hamas if this fails. But what we’ve seen in these proposals that have been offered is that they offer very little to both Hamas and Gaza. There is no guarantee in terms of aid, how much aid will be let in. Already Israel is claiming that they are allowing sufficient amounts of aid, contrary to what even human rights organizations are saying, so that we’ve already seen that they are tampering with reality there.
And there’s also the concern, and rightly so, that this will simply — I mean, in terms of what has been offered, is a six-week pause, is what Israel and the U.S. is offering. And so, for Hamas and for Gazans, they basically see that as a pause in the killing machine, essentially, where Hamas hands over those hostages, surrenders all the cards at its disposal, and then the killing machine just resumes.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Tahani, could you explain why — what’s remarkable about the talks, one of the things, is that Israel has, in fact, refused to participate in the talks that were held in Cairo, saying that Hamas must present a list of 40 elderly, sick and female hostages who would be the first to be released as part of a truce. So, could you explain what the obstacles are to revealing such a list and why Hamas is hesitant to do so?
TAHANI MUSTAFA: It’s not necessarily hesitancy. It’s the difficulty in terms of trying to gauge how many hostages are actually alive, especially given that Hamas is not holding all of those hostages. So, you know, there could be — there could very well be hostages being held captive by other groups. Now, given, obviously, the difficulty in terms of movement due to the Israeli onslaught, it’s made it very difficult to gather any concrete numbers, especially in terms of how many of those are actually alive. So, it’s more the logistics of being able to actually provide a proper confirmed list that’s holding Hamas back.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Tahani, what are the risks of an agreement not being reached next week? Because, initially, there were concerns that Israel would then go ahead with its Rafah invasion.
TAHANI MUSTAFA: Next week marks the beginning of Ramadan. You know, for the last couple of years now, we’ve seen that Ramadan has been an incredibly provocative time. May 2021 marked the previous cross-border conflict between Israel and Hamas, and that had nothing to do with events in Gaza and everything to do with provocations we saw in places like East Jerusalem.
If we don’t see — which we’re not, most likely, going to end up seeing — a ceasefire or some kind of pause before Ramadan, given the escalation of violence, given temperatures on the ground, you know, this could be catastrophic, not just for Gaza in terms of what this also then means about a looming invasion of Rafah, which Israeli analysts are warning is not a matter of “if” but “when,” but also in places like the West Bank and even East Jerusalem, where Israel has so far claimed that it’s not going to limit access to places like the Al-Aqsa compound, but we have seen in the past that it has actually done that, and often this has been very arbitrary in terms of the times and conditions that they’ve put in terms of limitations on access, but, more importantly, how that has led, especially in the last two years, to severe escalations of violence.
AMY GOODMAN: In the next segment, we’re going to talk more extensively about this Washington Post exposé that says that the U.S. has flooded Israel quietly with about a hundred weapons transfers, that have not been, most of them, approved by Congress, overwhelmingly. Can you talk about the significance of President Biden saying, “We must get more aid into Gaza. There are no excuses. None,” yet at the same time the thing that’s stopping this, the Israeli bombardment, the stopping of the aid groups, the U.S. has supported when it comes to Gaza, backed up by bombs, missiles and ammunition?
TAHANI MUSTAFA: Well, precisely. I mean, that very much nails it on the head, is that the U.S. has done very little in terms of putting any pressure on Israel to limit some of the violence on the ground, limit the intensity of its military campaign. And at the same time, it’s now complaining that there aren’t any sufficient aid routes.
The U.S. has the leverage to ensure that there are sufficient aid routes. The U.S. has the leverage to ensure that Israel abides by the provisional measures set out by the ICJ when it has claimed that Israel has a case to answer for when it comes to genocide. But it simply hasn’t done that. There is absolutely no red lines, no pressure being put on Israel. And worse yet, we’re seeing things like these sorts of aid drops where even in terms of nutritional value and sufficiency, I mean, they don’t even come close to meeting the needs of most Gazans in the north. I mean, it’s honestly — I mean, it’s more of a kind of posturing of U.S. ineffectual diplomacy more than anything.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Tahani, you’re normally based — apart from what’s going on in Gaza, if you could talk about what the situation in the occupied West Bank has been since October 7th?
TAHANI MUSTAFA: I mean, the situation has been incredibly dire. And, unfortunately, given all the media attention on Gaza, there hasn’t really been much focus in terms of a lot of the violations that have been happening in the West Bank, where we have — in the first month alone, we saw an uptick in Israeli settler violence, where we saw something like 15 Palestinian communities displaced, where we saw the West Bank being put under an economic siege, which has lasted until today, by the way. There have been restrictions on movement, where you’ve had the PA’s administrative capital cut off from the northern part of the West Bank due to the erection of makeshift checkpoints and road closures and roadblocks.
Worse yet, you’ve seen, prior to the 7th of October, I mean, most of the flashpoints in the West Bank were primarily in the north, in places like Jenin and Nablus. Now that has pretty much spread across the board. You’re seeing places where militancy was not an issue prior to the 7th of October pop up, in places like Tubas, in places like Hebron. Worse yet, you are seeing similar images to where you’ve seen the destruction of localities in Gaza, where you’re now seeing those exact same images, but on a smaller scale, in places like Jenin refugee camp, in places like Tulkarm refugee camp, where Israeli soldiers have gone in and razed these localities, these neighborhoods, to the ground, where they have destroyed electricity lines, sanitation, water, cultural centers, which used serve as a form of civic expression and mechanisms for younger Palestinians to vent their frustrations in more peaceful forms, right? But you’ve seen younger generations now being swayed more towards, out of necessity, militancy and armed resistance, and where these neighborhoods have practically become uninhabitable.
So, you know, you’ve seen a significant uptick in terms of the violence, not just from settlers, but Israeli soldiers. From the 7th of October until now, until today, in the West Bank alone, we’ve seen something like 420 Palestinians killed, and the majority of those have been through search-and-arrest operations and targeted assassinations.
AMY GOODMAN: One of the reported parts of the ceasefire are hostages released, as well as Palestinian prisoners. Talk about the number of Palestinians who have been arrested just since October 7th — for example, in the occupied West Bank. Is it something like, well, over 7,000? How many of them are children? How many of them are under 18? And what have they been charged with?
TAHANI MUSTAFA: Well, the majority of those that have been arrested are — something like 7,000 — a significant proportion of those are children, you know, people under the age of 18. And in terms of charge, I mean, that’s the point. They haven’t been charged with anything. This is administrative detention, where they can be held indefinitely without charge or trial. And that can range from any kind of activity, whether it’s liking a Facebook post or simply expressing any kind of solidarity with Gaza. The Israelis don’t really need any legitimate excuse or reasoning to arrest people in the West Bank. These have been very arbitrary arrests. And, I mean, these arrests can range between 50 to 100 a day, are some of the figures we’ve seen, since the start of the 7th of October.
And I think it’s worth reminding your viewers that this is on a population that had nothing to do with the events of the 7th of October. The PA President Mahmoud Abbas came out immediately after the attacks of the 7th of October and condemned both Hamas and armed resistance, claiming that armed resistance was not a means toward self-determination. And yet we have seen the collective punishment upon reaped a population that, as I said, had nothing to do with the events of the 7th of October.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Tahani, could you explain? I mean, there have been a number of Gaza detainees, 27, who have died in custody. If you could explain, you know, how many you know of and who these people are?
TAHANI MUSTAFA: Again, these arrests are incredibly arbitrary. You know, they have been, effectively, arresting men, women, children. We’ve seen Israeli soldiers, quite literally, posting the images and videos of themselves torturing and arresting and withholding, again, young men, women, children on social media accounts like Telegram, TikTok, you know, posting a lot of these, what amount to, effectively, war crimes on social media, which really goes to show the level of impunity that Israel knows that it can get away with.
And as I said, these arrests have been very arbitrary. These people often are not affiliated to Hamas. In fact, if anything, I think a couple of months ago we saw — and this was actually something surprisingly called out by Western media — the way that Israel tried to doctor those images to show that they were militants, when in fact they weren’t. So, many of those that have been arrested are regular Gazan civilians that have absolutely no affiliation to any particular political faction.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about South Africa once again going to the International Court of Justice, taking additional — asking it to take additional emergency measures in Gaza, including ordering a ceasefire. Of course, South Africa brought the genocide case against Israel before the court, but said, “The threat of all-out famine has now materialized. The court needs to act now to stop the imminent tragedy.” Tahani?
TAHANI MUSTAFA: I mean, look, I think, in practice, you know, international law is useless. It’s only as useful as the powerful allow it to be. And, you know, in many ways, the ICJ hearings have been empowering, in the sense that this is the first time where Israel has been held to account in the decadeslong luxury of impunity that it has been able to get away with. But at the same time, we have seen that since the ICJ ordered Israel to take provisional measures, it has failed to do so. And worse yet, there has been absolutely no pressure to ensure that Israel do so. We saw the defunding of organizations like UNRWA, which have been the primary source of things like aid and assistance to those on the ground. We have seen, you know, I think something like over 15,000, if not 20,000, Palestinians killed since the ICJ issuing of provisional measures. And we’ve seen absolutely no pressure on Israel to try and settle for a ceasefire or any kind of pause.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: I want to ask about UNRWA. Canada says it will resume funding to the agency, after it halted support in January following Israeli claims that 12 staff were involved in the October 7th attack. Could you talk about what’s happening with funding for the agency and what the impact has been of so many countries pulling out, including the U.S., which is the largest funder, or was?
TAHANI MUSTAFA: Well, right now UNRWA is holding on by a thread. We have seen some resumption of funding and some extra funding coming in from various other sources, but UNRWA is really holding onto a thread. And the worst part about this is that there is absolutely no organization that is capable of filling that void. You know, there have been attempts to try and get organizations like the World Food Programme, but they simply don’t have the capacity to do what UNRWA does. You know, no organization is as embedded into the civic infrastructure of Gaza the way that UNRWA is. And more importantly, it cannot — it cannot substitute for most of the services that UNRWA provides, something by the WFP’s own admission. So, right now, you know, UNRWA is really holding on by a thread and the consequences of any kind of potential drying up of funds, which hopefully it won’t come to that, but if it does, it will be incredibly catastrophic.
AMY GOODMAN: Tahani, we just have a minute, but we wanted to ask you about Benny Gantz, part of the Israel war cabinet, going — unauthorized, apparently, by Netanyahu — to Washington, meeting with Blinken, meeting with Vice President Harris, Netanyahu telling the Israeli Embassy apparently not to cooperate with this, what he called, unauthorized trip. Are you seeing a split that could take down Netanyahu?
TAHANI MUSTAFA: There certainly has been a split within the Israeli administration. And that has been something that is starting to surface over the last couple of months between the political and military establishment, but even internally within the political establishment. Obviously, the welcoming of Gantz is substantial for Israeli politics. Again, you know, it is a sign of U.S. ineffectual diplomacy, whereby to reiterate their discontent with Netanyahu’s policies, they’re now welcoming and engaging with an opposition politician.
But again, that does nothing to really change the reality on the ground for Palestinians. Nothing came out of that meeting, where Israel was — you know, there were no red lines laid in terms of what Israel can and can’t do in Gaza. There as again no pressure being put on Israel. Simply, you know, reaffirming your discontent with Netanyahu’s strategy at the moment by engaging with an opposition politician isn’t enough to actually change the reality on the ground for Palestinians.
AMY GOODMAN: Tahani Mustafa, we want to thank you for being with us, senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group. She’s normally based in the occupied West Bank in Ramallah but is joining us today from Doha at a symposium that she’s attending on Palestine, organized by Georgetown Qatar.
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Biden Admin Quietly Approves 100+ Arms Sales to Israel While Claiming Concern for Civilians in Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 7, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/7/j ... transcript
While the Biden administration has been publicly voicing reservations over the mounting death toll in Gaza, a Washington Post investigation revealed the administration has quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate weapons sales to Israel over the last five months, amounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters and other lethal aid. Only two approved foreign military sales to Israel have been made public since the launch of Israel’s assault on October 7, which the Biden administration approved using emergency authority to bypass Congress. “It is actually illegal to provide military assistance to a country that is restricting U.S.-funded humanitarian assistance, and we know that this is the case with Israel,” says Josh Paul, a veteran State Department official who worked on arms deals and resigned in protest of a push to increase arms sales to Israel amid its assault on Gaza. Paul describes the “production line”-style sale of weapons to Israel and says increasing internal dissent is putting pressure on Biden to change his “dead-end” policy of unconditional support for Israel. “We have a president and a set of policies … that remain set on this course regardless of the harm it is doing to Israeli security, to American global interests and, of course, to so many Palestinians.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Over the past few weeks, the Biden administration has been publicly voicing reservations over the mounting death toll in Gaza, calling on Israel to protect civilians and allow in humanitarian aid. But behind the scenes, the Biden administration has quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate weapons sales to Israel over the last five months, amounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters and other lethal aid, this according to a new investigation by The Washington Post.
AMY GOODMAN: Only two approved foreign military sales to Israel have been made public since the launch of Israel’s assault on October 7th, amounting to over $250 million worth of tank shells and ammunition, which the administration authorized using emergency authority to bypass Congress. But in the case of the hundred other weapons sales, known as Foreign Military Sales, the arms transfers were made without any public debate, because each fell under a specific dollar amount that requires the executive branch to individually notify Congress.
For more, we’re joined by Josh Paul, a veteran State Department official who worked on arms deals and resigned in protest of a push to increase arms sales to Israel amidst its assault on Gaza. Josh Paul is the former director of congressional and public affairs for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in the State Department, where he worked for 11 years. He’s now a nonresident at DAWN — that’s Democracy for the Arab World Now. He’s joining us from New Haven, Connecticut.
Josh, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you talk about the significance of this Washington Post exposé, what we’ve learned about the U.S. flooding Israel with weapons as President Biden talks about saying he’s putting pressure on Israel to let food aid in?
JOSH PAUL: Thank you, and thank you for having me.
I think what we’ve learned from this story shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. It is that the president continues to facilitate the flow of arms to Israel despite a change in tone. You know, we have certainly heard the administration call for more humanitarian assistance, for, you know, at least a temporary ceasefire. But at the same time, it continues to provide the arms that enable Israel to continue its operations. So, I think that’s pretty consistent, frankly, with what the White House has said, including John Kirby from the podium this week, that this remains U.S. policy.
I think many of your viewers may be shocked to hear that there have been a hundred sales in the last few months since October 7th. But here, I don’t think anyone in the State Department will be particularly moved by this story. Much of the process does, unfortunately, move like a production line when it comes to cases that do not require, under law, congressional notification. So what we really have here is both a policy problem but also a lack of transparency that is built into the system, and which can only be remedied by a change in law.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go to what national security communications adviser John Kirby said. He was questioned at the White House by the journalist Andrew Feinberg, a correspondent for The Independent in Britain.
ANDREW FEINBERG: What is preventing the president from communicating to the Israeli government that if they don’t allow aid, we will not continue supplying weapons? Why is that not a fair trade: no aid, no bombs?
JOHN KIRBY: Because the president still believes that it’s important for Israel to have what it needs to defend itself against a still viable Hamas threat. Maybe some people have forgotten what happened on the 7th of October, but President Biden has not.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Josh Paul, your response, both to the question and to Kirby’s response?
JOSH PAUL: I mean, there you have it. And I think the question could also have noted that under U.S. law, under Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act, it is actually illegal to provide military assistance to a country that is restricting U.S.-funded humanitarian assistance. And we know that this is the case with Israel, because Jake Sullivan himself, the national security adviser, has said that this is a problem, and, of course, we would not be airdropping aid into Gaza, were we leaning on Israel to open the humanitarian aid routes. So, you know, I think there is a clear case to be made here that we are not in accordance with U.S. law, certainly out of step, I think, with international law. And at the same time, the Biden administration position remains: We will continue to provide arms to Israel, whatever it requests and requires.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, if you could explain, Josh: How much does this differ from the procedure that’s been in place regarding U.S. arms transfers to Ukraine? I mean, in this case, as we’ve said, only two approved foreign military sales to Israel have been made public. What about to Ukraine?
JOSH PAUL: Yeah. So, for the most part, the procedures and processes through which we provide arms to Israel versus Ukraine are different. Ukraine requires an authorization under presidential drawdown authority, as well as new and novel funding to, for example, Department of Defense’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. Those have expired. We are out of, essentially, both of those. And so, without additional funding, we will not be able to provide arms to Ukraine.
Israel, on the other hand, is perfectly capable of using its own money to procure weapons through the Foreign Military Sales system, through the direct promotional sales system, which, by the way, The Washington Post didn’t touch on. And it’s quite possible that there’s a hundred more sales through that other channel to Israel that we don’t know about. And, of course, you know, we are providing Israel with military ground assistance, which it can also tap into and knows that it will be able to tap into, because it has a 10-year commitment from us to continue providing billions of dollars a year, unlike Ukraine. So it’s a slightly different situation and much easier, I think, for Israel to continue to receive weapons even in the absence of a supplemental, unlike Ukraine.
AMY GOODMAN: Democratic Colorado Congressmember Jason Crow told The Washington Post the Biden administration should apply, quote, “existing standards” stipulating that the United States, quote, “shouldn’t transfer arms or equipment to places where it’s reasonably likely that those will be used to inflict civilian casualties, or to harm civilian infrastructure.” Crow, a former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, told the Post, “I am concerned that the widespread use of artillery and air power in Gaza — and the resulting level of civilian casualties — is both a strategic and moral error.” Now, Crow is not usually a dove on all of these issues, but it’s very interesting to see him talk about his response, his critical response to the U.S. when it comes to Israel.
And this is particularly interesting on the day of President Biden’s State of the Union address tonight. We don’t know exactly what he’s going to say. We know there are a number of Americans who have family members who are being held hostage in Gaza. We don’t know if the Biden family or the administration will be inviting any Palestinians, and that Biden wanted to be able to announce a ceasefire tonight, which is clear, it looks like, will not be happening. But your response to all of this and how these weapons sales, do you feel, perpetuate the war?
JOSH PAUL: Yeah, I mean, I think that people who have served in the military or worked in the Middle East, people like Representative Crow, also, frankly, like Secretary of Defense Austin, understand that what Israel is doing is not going to lead to success on Israel’s own terms, as Secretary of Defense Austin has said. It will lead to strategic failure. And that is why I think the same is true on the Israeli side, where you have former heads of Mossad, for example, saying that this is a dead-end road, that what they are doing is damaging to their own interests.
But I think that is separate from the political question here. And the political question is one in which we have a president and, you know, a set of policies and, frankly, a Congress, as well, for the most part, that remains set on this course, regardless of the harm it is doing to Israeli security and to American global interests and, of course, to so many Palestinians.
AMY GOODMAN: Josh Paul, you were in the State Department for 11 years, and you were involved with these kind of arms deals. You resigned in protest of a push to increase arms to Israel. But I wanted to ask you: How much does protest on the ground affect what’s going on in the State Department, in the White House? How much do you hear it? I mean, there is a massive amount of protest in the United States. And no matter who wants to insulate Biden from it, almost everywhere he goes he is hearing the chants of “ceasefire.” I mean, tonight, one of his guests will be the UAW President Shawn Fain. The UAW was one of the early unions to call for a ceasefire. How much does it matter?
JOSH PAUL: I think protest is very important, I think particularly protest when it manifests at the ballot box, in terms of, for example, the “uncommitted” vote or the “other” vote that we have seen in states and will continue, I hope, to see in the coming days, because that signals to the Biden administration that they really have a political problem here. And that is really one of the only means we have of getting this administration to change course in the time that it has left. So I think that is very important. I think it’s most important when it manifests directly in the political process, and when it comes with organization. I think there is a momentum around this issue now, and we have to maintain that momentum for the, frankly, months and years ahead, because this is not going to be a long-term pole to shift where American policy is and has been for many years.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, you were inside for years the State Department. Now that you’ve resigned — and we sort of ask you this every time since then — how many people inside the administration have reached out to you? Do you feel that that’s increasing? And how many times do they tell you that they’ve been discussing this with Biden or the inner circle of Biden, and what their views on this are? I mean, Biden was no fan of Netanyahu from the beginning. And so, yet he is embracing him now. What they are saying?
JOSH PAUL: Yeah, I mean, I’m still hearing from people I had not heard from previously, to be clear, who are saying that, you know, “This is not working. I feel sick to my stomach of being involved in this. And, you know, I’m trying to make changes, and it’s just not working.” I had several of those conversations just in the last week with people I’ve not spoken to before on this issue. So I think the internal pressure, the internal disgust, frankly, is still there.
But I think, you know, the White House and the president have surrounded the president with, you know, a council of advisers who are, for the most part, like-minded with him. And I don’t know how much of that dissent is actually breaking through, and, even if it did, how much it would change the president’s decision-making. I think he is where he is. And, you know, absent significant political pressure, that is not going to change, unfortunately.
AMY GOODMAN: Josh Paul, we want to thank you for being with us, veteran State Department official, worked on arms deals, resigned in protest of a push to increase arms sales to Israel and its siege on Gaza. He’s the former director of congressional and public affairs for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in the State Department, where he worked for 11 years, now a nonresident fellow with DAWN — that’s Democracy for the Arab World Now.
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 7, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/7/i ... transcript
As Israel continues its relentless bombardment and siege of Gaza, where hunger and dehydration have reached deadly levels, Hamas has accused Israel of “thwarting” efforts to reach a ceasefire deal. A Hamas delegation in Cairo said that Israel has insisted on rejecting elements of a deal for a phased process that would culminate in an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza, as well as ensuring the entry of aid and facilitating the return of displaced Palestinians back to their homes in Gaza. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is pushing Hamas to accept the terms on the table, claiming that a “rational” offer had been made for a six-week truce in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages. The White House statements seem to be “a very politically calculated move so that they can essentially point the blame at Hamas if this fails,” says Tahani Mustafa, senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group. Mustafa also provides updates on UNRWA’s collapsing operations, repression in the West Bank and the utility of international law for Palestine today.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: A Hamas delegation that was in Cairo for ceasefire talks has left Egypt, accusing Israel of, quote, “thwarting” efforts to reach a deal. Talks are expected to resume next week. Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters that Israel is insisting on rejecting elements of a deal for a phased process that would culminate in an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza, as well as ensuring the entry of aid and facilitating the return of displaced Palestinians back to their homes in Gaza.
Negotiators from Hamas, Qatar and Egypt — but not Israel — were in Cairo trying to secure a 40-day ceasefire in time for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins early next week. With the talks at an impasse and only set to resume next week, that unofficial deadline for a deal appears highly unlikely.
AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, President Biden urged Hamas to accept the terms on the table and claimed that a rational offer had been made for a ceasefire in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages. Biden told reporters, “It’s in the hands of Hamas right now. If we get to the circumstance that it continues to Ramadan, it’s going be very dangerous,” Biden said.
As the talks have been underway, Israel has continued its relentless bombardment of Gaza, killing over 80 people in the last 24 hours. The death toll after nearly five months of the assault is at at least 30,800 killed and nearly 73,000 wounded. Meanwhile, hunger has reached catastrophic levels as a result of Israel’s siege. At least 20 Palestinians have died from malnutrition and dehydration, according to the Health Ministry.
For more, we’re joined by Tahani Mustafa, senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group. She’s normally based in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank but is joining us today from Doha, Qatar, where she’s attending a symposium on Palestine organized by Georgetown University.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Tahani. Can you start off by talking about the situation on the ground and these ceasefire talks? Hamas is saying that Israel sabotaged the talks, and Hamas has left Cairo. And then we’re getting word that, actually, some negotiations are still underway.
TAHANI MUSTAFA: So, I think negotiations at the moment are very precarious. We’ve seen that the ceasefire deal, or at least what is being offered by Israel and the U.S., who, by the way, have unilaterally come up with some of these conditions rather than actually effectively engaged with Hamas — it appears to be a very politically calculated move so that they can essentially point the blame at Hamas if this fails. But what we’ve seen in these proposals that have been offered is that they offer very little to both Hamas and Gaza. There is no guarantee in terms of aid, how much aid will be let in. Already Israel is claiming that they are allowing sufficient amounts of aid, contrary to what even human rights organizations are saying, so that we’ve already seen that they are tampering with reality there.
And there’s also the concern, and rightly so, that this will simply — I mean, in terms of what has been offered, is a six-week pause, is what Israel and the U.S. is offering. And so, for Hamas and for Gazans, they basically see that as a pause in the killing machine, essentially, where Hamas hands over those hostages, surrenders all the cards at its disposal, and then the killing machine just resumes.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Tahani, could you explain why — what’s remarkable about the talks, one of the things, is that Israel has, in fact, refused to participate in the talks that were held in Cairo, saying that Hamas must present a list of 40 elderly, sick and female hostages who would be the first to be released as part of a truce. So, could you explain what the obstacles are to revealing such a list and why Hamas is hesitant to do so?
TAHANI MUSTAFA: It’s not necessarily hesitancy. It’s the difficulty in terms of trying to gauge how many hostages are actually alive, especially given that Hamas is not holding all of those hostages. So, you know, there could be — there could very well be hostages being held captive by other groups. Now, given, obviously, the difficulty in terms of movement due to the Israeli onslaught, it’s made it very difficult to gather any concrete numbers, especially in terms of how many of those are actually alive. So, it’s more the logistics of being able to actually provide a proper confirmed list that’s holding Hamas back.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Tahani, what are the risks of an agreement not being reached next week? Because, initially, there were concerns that Israel would then go ahead with its Rafah invasion.
TAHANI MUSTAFA: Next week marks the beginning of Ramadan. You know, for the last couple of years now, we’ve seen that Ramadan has been an incredibly provocative time. May 2021 marked the previous cross-border conflict between Israel and Hamas, and that had nothing to do with events in Gaza and everything to do with provocations we saw in places like East Jerusalem.
If we don’t see — which we’re not, most likely, going to end up seeing — a ceasefire or some kind of pause before Ramadan, given the escalation of violence, given temperatures on the ground, you know, this could be catastrophic, not just for Gaza in terms of what this also then means about a looming invasion of Rafah, which Israeli analysts are warning is not a matter of “if” but “when,” but also in places like the West Bank and even East Jerusalem, where Israel has so far claimed that it’s not going to limit access to places like the Al-Aqsa compound, but we have seen in the past that it has actually done that, and often this has been very arbitrary in terms of the times and conditions that they’ve put in terms of limitations on access, but, more importantly, how that has led, especially in the last two years, to severe escalations of violence.
AMY GOODMAN: In the next segment, we’re going to talk more extensively about this Washington Post exposé that says that the U.S. has flooded Israel quietly with about a hundred weapons transfers, that have not been, most of them, approved by Congress, overwhelmingly. Can you talk about the significance of President Biden saying, “We must get more aid into Gaza. There are no excuses. None,” yet at the same time the thing that’s stopping this, the Israeli bombardment, the stopping of the aid groups, the U.S. has supported when it comes to Gaza, backed up by bombs, missiles and ammunition?
TAHANI MUSTAFA: Well, precisely. I mean, that very much nails it on the head, is that the U.S. has done very little in terms of putting any pressure on Israel to limit some of the violence on the ground, limit the intensity of its military campaign. And at the same time, it’s now complaining that there aren’t any sufficient aid routes.
The U.S. has the leverage to ensure that there are sufficient aid routes. The U.S. has the leverage to ensure that Israel abides by the provisional measures set out by the ICJ when it has claimed that Israel has a case to answer for when it comes to genocide. But it simply hasn’t done that. There is absolutely no red lines, no pressure being put on Israel. And worse yet, we’re seeing things like these sorts of aid drops where even in terms of nutritional value and sufficiency, I mean, they don’t even come close to meeting the needs of most Gazans in the north. I mean, it’s honestly — I mean, it’s more of a kind of posturing of U.S. ineffectual diplomacy more than anything.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Tahani, you’re normally based — apart from what’s going on in Gaza, if you could talk about what the situation in the occupied West Bank has been since October 7th?
TAHANI MUSTAFA: I mean, the situation has been incredibly dire. And, unfortunately, given all the media attention on Gaza, there hasn’t really been much focus in terms of a lot of the violations that have been happening in the West Bank, where we have — in the first month alone, we saw an uptick in Israeli settler violence, where we saw something like 15 Palestinian communities displaced, where we saw the West Bank being put under an economic siege, which has lasted until today, by the way. There have been restrictions on movement, where you’ve had the PA’s administrative capital cut off from the northern part of the West Bank due to the erection of makeshift checkpoints and road closures and roadblocks.
Worse yet, you’ve seen, prior to the 7th of October, I mean, most of the flashpoints in the West Bank were primarily in the north, in places like Jenin and Nablus. Now that has pretty much spread across the board. You’re seeing places where militancy was not an issue prior to the 7th of October pop up, in places like Tubas, in places like Hebron. Worse yet, you are seeing similar images to where you’ve seen the destruction of localities in Gaza, where you’re now seeing those exact same images, but on a smaller scale, in places like Jenin refugee camp, in places like Tulkarm refugee camp, where Israeli soldiers have gone in and razed these localities, these neighborhoods, to the ground, where they have destroyed electricity lines, sanitation, water, cultural centers, which used serve as a form of civic expression and mechanisms for younger Palestinians to vent their frustrations in more peaceful forms, right? But you’ve seen younger generations now being swayed more towards, out of necessity, militancy and armed resistance, and where these neighborhoods have practically become uninhabitable.
So, you know, you’ve seen a significant uptick in terms of the violence, not just from settlers, but Israeli soldiers. From the 7th of October until now, until today, in the West Bank alone, we’ve seen something like 420 Palestinians killed, and the majority of those have been through search-and-arrest operations and targeted assassinations.
AMY GOODMAN: One of the reported parts of the ceasefire are hostages released, as well as Palestinian prisoners. Talk about the number of Palestinians who have been arrested just since October 7th — for example, in the occupied West Bank. Is it something like, well, over 7,000? How many of them are children? How many of them are under 18? And what have they been charged with?
TAHANI MUSTAFA: Well, the majority of those that have been arrested are — something like 7,000 — a significant proportion of those are children, you know, people under the age of 18. And in terms of charge, I mean, that’s the point. They haven’t been charged with anything. This is administrative detention, where they can be held indefinitely without charge or trial. And that can range from any kind of activity, whether it’s liking a Facebook post or simply expressing any kind of solidarity with Gaza. The Israelis don’t really need any legitimate excuse or reasoning to arrest people in the West Bank. These have been very arbitrary arrests. And, I mean, these arrests can range between 50 to 100 a day, are some of the figures we’ve seen, since the start of the 7th of October.
And I think it’s worth reminding your viewers that this is on a population that had nothing to do with the events of the 7th of October. The PA President Mahmoud Abbas came out immediately after the attacks of the 7th of October and condemned both Hamas and armed resistance, claiming that armed resistance was not a means toward self-determination. And yet we have seen the collective punishment upon reaped a population that, as I said, had nothing to do with the events of the 7th of October.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Tahani, could you explain? I mean, there have been a number of Gaza detainees, 27, who have died in custody. If you could explain, you know, how many you know of and who these people are?
TAHANI MUSTAFA: Again, these arrests are incredibly arbitrary. You know, they have been, effectively, arresting men, women, children. We’ve seen Israeli soldiers, quite literally, posting the images and videos of themselves torturing and arresting and withholding, again, young men, women, children on social media accounts like Telegram, TikTok, you know, posting a lot of these, what amount to, effectively, war crimes on social media, which really goes to show the level of impunity that Israel knows that it can get away with.
And as I said, these arrests have been very arbitrary. These people often are not affiliated to Hamas. In fact, if anything, I think a couple of months ago we saw — and this was actually something surprisingly called out by Western media — the way that Israel tried to doctor those images to show that they were militants, when in fact they weren’t. So, many of those that have been arrested are regular Gazan civilians that have absolutely no affiliation to any particular political faction.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about South Africa once again going to the International Court of Justice, taking additional — asking it to take additional emergency measures in Gaza, including ordering a ceasefire. Of course, South Africa brought the genocide case against Israel before the court, but said, “The threat of all-out famine has now materialized. The court needs to act now to stop the imminent tragedy.” Tahani?
TAHANI MUSTAFA: I mean, look, I think, in practice, you know, international law is useless. It’s only as useful as the powerful allow it to be. And, you know, in many ways, the ICJ hearings have been empowering, in the sense that this is the first time where Israel has been held to account in the decadeslong luxury of impunity that it has been able to get away with. But at the same time, we have seen that since the ICJ ordered Israel to take provisional measures, it has failed to do so. And worse yet, there has been absolutely no pressure to ensure that Israel do so. We saw the defunding of organizations like UNRWA, which have been the primary source of things like aid and assistance to those on the ground. We have seen, you know, I think something like over 15,000, if not 20,000, Palestinians killed since the ICJ issuing of provisional measures. And we’ve seen absolutely no pressure on Israel to try and settle for a ceasefire or any kind of pause.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: I want to ask about UNRWA. Canada says it will resume funding to the agency, after it halted support in January following Israeli claims that 12 staff were involved in the October 7th attack. Could you talk about what’s happening with funding for the agency and what the impact has been of so many countries pulling out, including the U.S., which is the largest funder, or was?
TAHANI MUSTAFA: Well, right now UNRWA is holding on by a thread. We have seen some resumption of funding and some extra funding coming in from various other sources, but UNRWA is really holding onto a thread. And the worst part about this is that there is absolutely no organization that is capable of filling that void. You know, there have been attempts to try and get organizations like the World Food Programme, but they simply don’t have the capacity to do what UNRWA does. You know, no organization is as embedded into the civic infrastructure of Gaza the way that UNRWA is. And more importantly, it cannot — it cannot substitute for most of the services that UNRWA provides, something by the WFP’s own admission. So, right now, you know, UNRWA is really holding on by a thread and the consequences of any kind of potential drying up of funds, which hopefully it won’t come to that, but if it does, it will be incredibly catastrophic.
AMY GOODMAN: Tahani, we just have a minute, but we wanted to ask you about Benny Gantz, part of the Israel war cabinet, going — unauthorized, apparently, by Netanyahu — to Washington, meeting with Blinken, meeting with Vice President Harris, Netanyahu telling the Israeli Embassy apparently not to cooperate with this, what he called, unauthorized trip. Are you seeing a split that could take down Netanyahu?
TAHANI MUSTAFA: There certainly has been a split within the Israeli administration. And that has been something that is starting to surface over the last couple of months between the political and military establishment, but even internally within the political establishment. Obviously, the welcoming of Gantz is substantial for Israeli politics. Again, you know, it is a sign of U.S. ineffectual diplomacy, whereby to reiterate their discontent with Netanyahu’s policies, they’re now welcoming and engaging with an opposition politician.
But again, that does nothing to really change the reality on the ground for Palestinians. Nothing came out of that meeting, where Israel was — you know, there were no red lines laid in terms of what Israel can and can’t do in Gaza. There as again no pressure being put on Israel. Simply, you know, reaffirming your discontent with Netanyahu’s strategy at the moment by engaging with an opposition politician isn’t enough to actually change the reality on the ground for Palestinians.
AMY GOODMAN: Tahani Mustafa, we want to thank you for being with us, senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group. She’s normally based in the occupied West Bank in Ramallah but is joining us today from Doha at a symposium that she’s attending on Palestine, organized by Georgetown Qatar.
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Biden Admin Quietly Approves 100+ Arms Sales to Israel While Claiming Concern for Civilians in Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 7, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/7/j ... transcript
While the Biden administration has been publicly voicing reservations over the mounting death toll in Gaza, a Washington Post investigation revealed the administration has quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate weapons sales to Israel over the last five months, amounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters and other lethal aid. Only two approved foreign military sales to Israel have been made public since the launch of Israel’s assault on October 7, which the Biden administration approved using emergency authority to bypass Congress. “It is actually illegal to provide military assistance to a country that is restricting U.S.-funded humanitarian assistance, and we know that this is the case with Israel,” says Josh Paul, a veteran State Department official who worked on arms deals and resigned in protest of a push to increase arms sales to Israel amid its assault on Gaza. Paul describes the “production line”-style sale of weapons to Israel and says increasing internal dissent is putting pressure on Biden to change his “dead-end” policy of unconditional support for Israel. “We have a president and a set of policies … that remain set on this course regardless of the harm it is doing to Israeli security, to American global interests and, of course, to so many Palestinians.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Over the past few weeks, the Biden administration has been publicly voicing reservations over the mounting death toll in Gaza, calling on Israel to protect civilians and allow in humanitarian aid. But behind the scenes, the Biden administration has quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate weapons sales to Israel over the last five months, amounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters and other lethal aid, this according to a new investigation by The Washington Post.
AMY GOODMAN: Only two approved foreign military sales to Israel have been made public since the launch of Israel’s assault on October 7th, amounting to over $250 million worth of tank shells and ammunition, which the administration authorized using emergency authority to bypass Congress. But in the case of the hundred other weapons sales, known as Foreign Military Sales, the arms transfers were made without any public debate, because each fell under a specific dollar amount that requires the executive branch to individually notify Congress.
For more, we’re joined by Josh Paul, a veteran State Department official who worked on arms deals and resigned in protest of a push to increase arms sales to Israel amidst its assault on Gaza. Josh Paul is the former director of congressional and public affairs for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in the State Department, where he worked for 11 years. He’s now a nonresident at DAWN — that’s Democracy for the Arab World Now. He’s joining us from New Haven, Connecticut.
Josh, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you talk about the significance of this Washington Post exposé, what we’ve learned about the U.S. flooding Israel with weapons as President Biden talks about saying he’s putting pressure on Israel to let food aid in?
JOSH PAUL: Thank you, and thank you for having me.
I think what we’ve learned from this story shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. It is that the president continues to facilitate the flow of arms to Israel despite a change in tone. You know, we have certainly heard the administration call for more humanitarian assistance, for, you know, at least a temporary ceasefire. But at the same time, it continues to provide the arms that enable Israel to continue its operations. So, I think that’s pretty consistent, frankly, with what the White House has said, including John Kirby from the podium this week, that this remains U.S. policy.
I think many of your viewers may be shocked to hear that there have been a hundred sales in the last few months since October 7th. But here, I don’t think anyone in the State Department will be particularly moved by this story. Much of the process does, unfortunately, move like a production line when it comes to cases that do not require, under law, congressional notification. So what we really have here is both a policy problem but also a lack of transparency that is built into the system, and which can only be remedied by a change in law.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go to what national security communications adviser John Kirby said. He was questioned at the White House by the journalist Andrew Feinberg, a correspondent for The Independent in Britain.
ANDREW FEINBERG: What is preventing the president from communicating to the Israeli government that if they don’t allow aid, we will not continue supplying weapons? Why is that not a fair trade: no aid, no bombs?
JOHN KIRBY: Because the president still believes that it’s important for Israel to have what it needs to defend itself against a still viable Hamas threat. Maybe some people have forgotten what happened on the 7th of October, but President Biden has not.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Josh Paul, your response, both to the question and to Kirby’s response?
JOSH PAUL: I mean, there you have it. And I think the question could also have noted that under U.S. law, under Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act, it is actually illegal to provide military assistance to a country that is restricting U.S.-funded humanitarian assistance. And we know that this is the case with Israel, because Jake Sullivan himself, the national security adviser, has said that this is a problem, and, of course, we would not be airdropping aid into Gaza, were we leaning on Israel to open the humanitarian aid routes. So, you know, I think there is a clear case to be made here that we are not in accordance with U.S. law, certainly out of step, I think, with international law. And at the same time, the Biden administration position remains: We will continue to provide arms to Israel, whatever it requests and requires.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, if you could explain, Josh: How much does this differ from the procedure that’s been in place regarding U.S. arms transfers to Ukraine? I mean, in this case, as we’ve said, only two approved foreign military sales to Israel have been made public. What about to Ukraine?
JOSH PAUL: Yeah. So, for the most part, the procedures and processes through which we provide arms to Israel versus Ukraine are different. Ukraine requires an authorization under presidential drawdown authority, as well as new and novel funding to, for example, Department of Defense’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. Those have expired. We are out of, essentially, both of those. And so, without additional funding, we will not be able to provide arms to Ukraine.
Israel, on the other hand, is perfectly capable of using its own money to procure weapons through the Foreign Military Sales system, through the direct promotional sales system, which, by the way, The Washington Post didn’t touch on. And it’s quite possible that there’s a hundred more sales through that other channel to Israel that we don’t know about. And, of course, you know, we are providing Israel with military ground assistance, which it can also tap into and knows that it will be able to tap into, because it has a 10-year commitment from us to continue providing billions of dollars a year, unlike Ukraine. So it’s a slightly different situation and much easier, I think, for Israel to continue to receive weapons even in the absence of a supplemental, unlike Ukraine.
AMY GOODMAN: Democratic Colorado Congressmember Jason Crow told The Washington Post the Biden administration should apply, quote, “existing standards” stipulating that the United States, quote, “shouldn’t transfer arms or equipment to places where it’s reasonably likely that those will be used to inflict civilian casualties, or to harm civilian infrastructure.” Crow, a former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, told the Post, “I am concerned that the widespread use of artillery and air power in Gaza — and the resulting level of civilian casualties — is both a strategic and moral error.” Now, Crow is not usually a dove on all of these issues, but it’s very interesting to see him talk about his response, his critical response to the U.S. when it comes to Israel.
And this is particularly interesting on the day of President Biden’s State of the Union address tonight. We don’t know exactly what he’s going to say. We know there are a number of Americans who have family members who are being held hostage in Gaza. We don’t know if the Biden family or the administration will be inviting any Palestinians, and that Biden wanted to be able to announce a ceasefire tonight, which is clear, it looks like, will not be happening. But your response to all of this and how these weapons sales, do you feel, perpetuate the war?
JOSH PAUL: Yeah, I mean, I think that people who have served in the military or worked in the Middle East, people like Representative Crow, also, frankly, like Secretary of Defense Austin, understand that what Israel is doing is not going to lead to success on Israel’s own terms, as Secretary of Defense Austin has said. It will lead to strategic failure. And that is why I think the same is true on the Israeli side, where you have former heads of Mossad, for example, saying that this is a dead-end road, that what they are doing is damaging to their own interests.
But I think that is separate from the political question here. And the political question is one in which we have a president and, you know, a set of policies and, frankly, a Congress, as well, for the most part, that remains set on this course, regardless of the harm it is doing to Israeli security and to American global interests and, of course, to so many Palestinians.
AMY GOODMAN: Josh Paul, you were in the State Department for 11 years, and you were involved with these kind of arms deals. You resigned in protest of a push to increase arms to Israel. But I wanted to ask you: How much does protest on the ground affect what’s going on in the State Department, in the White House? How much do you hear it? I mean, there is a massive amount of protest in the United States. And no matter who wants to insulate Biden from it, almost everywhere he goes he is hearing the chants of “ceasefire.” I mean, tonight, one of his guests will be the UAW President Shawn Fain. The UAW was one of the early unions to call for a ceasefire. How much does it matter?
JOSH PAUL: I think protest is very important, I think particularly protest when it manifests at the ballot box, in terms of, for example, the “uncommitted” vote or the “other” vote that we have seen in states and will continue, I hope, to see in the coming days, because that signals to the Biden administration that they really have a political problem here. And that is really one of the only means we have of getting this administration to change course in the time that it has left. So I think that is very important. I think it’s most important when it manifests directly in the political process, and when it comes with organization. I think there is a momentum around this issue now, and we have to maintain that momentum for the, frankly, months and years ahead, because this is not going to be a long-term pole to shift where American policy is and has been for many years.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, you were inside for years the State Department. Now that you’ve resigned — and we sort of ask you this every time since then — how many people inside the administration have reached out to you? Do you feel that that’s increasing? And how many times do they tell you that they’ve been discussing this with Biden or the inner circle of Biden, and what their views on this are? I mean, Biden was no fan of Netanyahu from the beginning. And so, yet he is embracing him now. What they are saying?
JOSH PAUL: Yeah, I mean, I’m still hearing from people I had not heard from previously, to be clear, who are saying that, you know, “This is not working. I feel sick to my stomach of being involved in this. And, you know, I’m trying to make changes, and it’s just not working.” I had several of those conversations just in the last week with people I’ve not spoken to before on this issue. So I think the internal pressure, the internal disgust, frankly, is still there.
But I think, you know, the White House and the president have surrounded the president with, you know, a council of advisers who are, for the most part, like-minded with him. And I don’t know how much of that dissent is actually breaking through, and, even if it did, how much it would change the president’s decision-making. I think he is where he is. And, you know, absent significant political pressure, that is not going to change, unfortunately.
AMY GOODMAN: Josh Paul, we want to thank you for being with us, veteran State Department official, worked on arms deals, resigned in protest of a push to increase arms sales to Israel and its siege on Gaza. He’s the former director of congressional and public affairs for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in the State Department, where he worked for 11 years, now a nonresident fellow with DAWN — that’s Democracy for the Arab World Now.
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