U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim

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“The Worst of What Humanity Is Capable Of”: Pediatrician Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan on What She Saw in Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 28, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/28/gaza_msf

Almost six months into Israel’s assault, Gaza’s health sector has been completely decimated. Before October 7, Gaza had 36 hospitals. Now only two are minimally functional, and 10 are partially functional, according to the United Nations. The rest have shut down completely after either being shelled, besieged and raided by Israeli troops, or running out of fuel and medicine. Israel’s assault has killed over 32,500 Palestinians, including over 14,000 children, and wounded nearly 75,000. We speak with Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care physician who just spent two weeks volunteering and living at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza, about what she witnessed and the conditions of healthcare in the beleaguered and devastated territory. “This is not a humanitarian crisis. This is the worst of what humanity is capable of, and it’s entirely all man-made,” says Haj-Hassan. “This is an utter and complete failure of humanity, and, to be frank, I feel ashamed to be an American citizen. I feel ashamed to be part of a society that has allowed this to continue.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Nearly six months into Israel’s assault on Gaza, the health sector has been completely decimated. Before October 7th, Gaza had 36 hospitals. Nearly six months later, only two are minimally functional, and 10 are partially functional, according to the United Nations. The rest have shut down completely after either being shelled, besieged and raided by Israeli troops, or running out of fuel and medicine.

The death toll from the Israeli assault has topped 32,500, including over 14,000 children, with nearly 75,000 wounded. The entire population of Gaza is facing high or catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity, and famine is imminent in the north. At least 27 people, mostly children, have died of malnutrition and dehydration.

AMY GOODMAN: In Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the largest hospital in Gaza, an Israeli raid is continuing for the 10th day. Israeli forces there have killed at least 200 people and detained over 400.

Meanwhile, the U.N. reports that as of Tuesday, Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis has ceased functioning. That leaves the remaining hospitals in Gaza that are able to partially function completely overwhelmed. One of those is the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. Our next guest just spent two weeks volunteering at and living there with a team of international doctors.

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan is a pediatric intensive care physician who works with Doctors Without Borders. She’s co-founder of the social media account @GazaMedicVoices, which shares firsthand accounts from healthcare professionals in Gaza. She just left Gaza yesterday. She’s joining us now from Amman, Jordan.

Tanya, welcome back to Democracy Now! I know you’re absolutely exhausted. Can you just share your experiences of the last two weeks, what you feel it’s most important for people around the world to understand?

DR. TANYA HAJ-HASSAN: Yeah, certainly. Thank you. Just to clarify, I was in Gaza with a charity called Medical Aid for Palestinians UK, MAP UK.

It’s really difficult to describe in words the horrors that we saw in our two weeks there. You know, you watch the news, you have some idea of what you’re going to see. But experiencing in real time entire family structures collapsing, entire families being wiped off the civil registry, having to tell a father or a mother that their entire family, their lifelong partner and all of their children, have just been killed and you weren’t able to resuscitate them, is something that was very difficult to experience and something that I hope I never have to experience again. And frankly, it’s something that I just feel ashamed that we’re still talking about, you know, seven months into this. It just is such a stark representation of our failure, of our failure as humanity. This is not a humanitarian crisis. This is the worst of what humanity is capable of, and it’s entirely all man-made. And when you witness it firsthand, it’s an unbearable injustice.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, thank you for that account. If you could also talk about some of the nurses with whom you worked? For our television viewers, you’ve seen some of the images that Tanya sent to us. And if you could speak specifically about a nurse whose name you cannot reveal for security reasons, who holds in his hand an infant, which we’ll show now on screen? If you could talk about the story of what happened with this nurse and the child in his hands?

DR. TANYA HAJ-HASSAN: Yeah, certainly. I think this photo is very representative of the utter exhaustion and yet ongoing determination of the healthcare staff there. Healthcare workers in general have been targeted since day one, as have health facilities. Al-Aqsa Hospital is a smaller hospital in the scheme of Gazan hospitals. The largest two hospitals are, first, Al-Shifa Hospital and, then, Al-Nasser Hospital. And as you mentioned in your introduction, both of them have been directly besieged. They’ve been targeted, bombed, deprived of resources. Their healthcare staff have been forced to flee. Many of the healthcare workers are arrested. They describe — they describe changing out of their scrubs or being told by civilians to change out of their scrubs when they’re fleeing. We’ve had civilians give healthcare workers their own clothes so that they’re not seen wearing scrubs, because we know that healthcare workers have been systematically targeted in this particular — in this particular war. So, I think I wanted to start by saying healthcare workers are under an enormous amount of pressure. They’re directly targeted. These healthcare workers evacuate, travel a very long way, and then, ultimately, are back at work, work extremely hard, do all that they can to keep patients alive.

And in this particular photo, this particular nurse, one of the most hard-working nurses that I worked with, had come to the end of a 24-hour shift, had tried very hard to resuscitate this infant, and unfortunately was unable to, and then just passed out, out of exhaustion, onto the stretcher in front of him, carrying the now-dead child. A lot of times we can’t even tell the parents that their child has been killed, because there are no parents to be found. And that’s, unfortunately, a very common occurrence.

In many of the other photos that you’ll see in front of you — I’m not sure which photos, Democracy Now!, you’re sharing; I can’t see them on my end — but you can see the carnage, the very difficult circumstances under which the emergency room department is trying to operate. A lot of the senior doctors have fled. Junior doctors, who are straight out of medical school, are on call overnight, receiving mass casualties, mass casualties with stories I can share with you, but stories that are very difficult and unbearable to experience, let alone talk about. But I’m happy to share more.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about where you stayed; if you slept, where you slept?

DR. TANYA HAJ-HASSAN: Yeah, we slept in a room in the hospital. They had the female healthcare workers in one room on mats, and the male healthcare workers in another room. And we basically worked day and night. We had a surgical team with us that operated through most of the night just so that we can get through the very large backload of cases. I mean, this is a very small hospital that has a capacity of about 200 patients and is running with over 700 patients at the moment, and then there are thousands of internally displaced people there, as well. So they have a backlog of patients that require medical attention, that require surgical procedures, to prevent their wounds from becoming infected, to stabilize fractures. And, unfortunately, they don’t have the surgical space or workforce to get those cases done. So our team was just trying to offload some of that work. The teams there are also just utterly exhausted. I mean, they’ve been doing this for over 170 days. We did it for two weeks, and we’re exhausted. I cannot begin to fathom what it feels like for them.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, if you could — you mentioned, in the image that you sent us and that we showed of the child in the nurse’s hands — you said that there were no parents or family members to whom you could convey the information of what happened to this child. The last time we had you on, you spoke about this new acronym, “wounded child, no surviving family.” Obviously, this child was among those. If you could talk about the number of children who were coming in, either on their own or who were left on their own?

DR. TANYA HAJ-HASSAN: Yeah, certainly. In fact, there are a number of them that are living in the hospital at the moment and being cared for by strangers or relatives. Often what happens is we’ll receive children, dead or still alive. We’ll attempt to resuscitate them, and we’ll start asking around, “Does anybody know if there’s family for this child in the hospital that have come in with the same mass casualty?” And we’ll have a distant relative look at us and say, like, “They’ve unfortunately been martyred,” or “They’ve been killed.” And so, it was a very common occurrence to have a child that we were resuscitating and not know if any of their family were alive, or be told that their family had been killed, or be told that that other woman that we’re resuscitating simultaneously on the floor is the child’s mother.

I remember one incident where we received a young boy who the side of his face had been blown off, and we were providing care for him while providing care for his sister in the adjacent bed. His sister had 96% of her body burned. Their parents and all of their other siblings had been killed in the same attack. And he kept asking for his family, and he had a distant cousin who was at his bedside, who kept saying, “They’re fine. They’re fine. They’re injured. They’re going to be fine.” And he kept saying, “Where’s my sister?” He could see the patient next to him. He just couldn’t recognize her, because she was so badly burned. But that was his sister. She unfortunately died despite our efforts. A 96% body surface area burn is essentially a death sentence, particularly under those resource circumstances. She died a couple days later in the intensive care unit. And he is still in the hospital receiving reconstructive surgery for his neck and face. But as of the moment I left, his distant relatives hadn’t had the heart to tell him that they had all died. He was suspecting it. So, when I would pass by to check on him, he would say, “I have a feeling my family has been martyred. I wish I had been martyred, too.” So I think he knows. But it’s utterly unbearable.

There’s another child that has an external fixator, so rods in his leg after some complex fractures, that, you know, lives in the hospital at the moment for ongoing care and is cared for by strangers because he doesn’t have any relatives in the hospital. And his car was bombed as they were trying to flee. And his family was killed, but he still thinks his family is in the north.

Other children know that their family has been killed, and are being cared for by extended relatives. Fortunately, their faith is strong, and they are able to rationalize, in whatever way this is — you’re able to rationalize these atrocities. I find them very difficult, if not impossible, to rationalize. This is an utter and complete failure of humanity, and, to be frank, I feel ashamed to be an American citizen. I feel ashamed to be part of a society that has allowed this to continue. And I am very much hoping and looking forward to the moment where we decide to take a courageous stance and put an end to this massacre.

AMY GOODMAN: Why did you go back, Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan? You have been there a number of times.

DR. TANYA HAJ-HASSAN: So, I had been there over the last 10 years to teach. This is an area that’s been besieged for 16 years. And you have healthcare providers that are working under unimaginable circumstances before October 2023. And I think witnessing what was happening from a distance thereafter, witnessing the injustice, witnessing the immense pressure under which our colleagues were working, I found it unbearable not to be there with them. And, in fact, I probably felt most at ease in the last — since October, the moment I arrived in Gaza and knew that I could now actually join them in solidarity, in providing care for their patients, because they’re doing exactly — exactly — what we signed up to do in our Hippocratic Oath. And they’re doing it with a level of commitment and determination that is incomprehensible. It is so impressive. And yet they’re being attacked and directly targeted. And I think most healthcare workers that I know that are aware of what’s happening feel the same way I do and cannot wait to be there in person to provide solidarity, or are providing that solidarity in different ways from a distance.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And as you were treating — Dr. Haj-Hassan, as you were treating children, people with such horrific injuries, if you could talk about the kind of equipment you had to work with? There are reports of aid trucks being denied entry because there were basic medical supplies, scalpels, scissors. Explain what doctors there have to work with as they confront these absolutely unimaginable injuries.

DR. TANYA HAJ-HASSAN: So, there’s certainly a shortage of a lot of things we need to work. And I think, at a very basic level, there’s just shortage of space. So, you can imagine, when we resuscitate a single patient that arrives into an emergency department, we put them in a resuscitation bed in a bay surrounded by equipment. That is not at all what’s happening in these hospitals. When you receive a mass casualty, the most critical cases get moved into this red area. There are three beds in the red area. And then the rest we resuscitate on the floor in the red area or the yellow zone. And so, we’ll have amputations that we do on the floor of the yellow zone of an emergency department.

And, you know, basic things that we take for granted are just not available — sterile suture kits. Ketamine, I have to beg for. It’s a drug that we use to provide pain relief and sedation when we do basic procedures. But, you know, I tend to use it on most pediatric cases when we need to do painful procedures in the emergency department, but they’re short on supplies, so you have to pick and choose which patients you provide it to and how much you provide, because you know that, you know, it’s opportunity cost for another patient. And that’s a very hard reality, and it’s not one that I’ve had to deal with before in my career, despite working in humanitarian medicine for a long time. We often have to think about resource limitations, but these particular resource limitations are very difficult to bear.

And I should mention that Al-Aqsa Hospital is better off than so many of the other health facilities throughout the Gaza Strip, that have either been destroyed or are completely cut off. I mean, you think about the north, Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital, and how cut off it’s been from the very beginning, or Al-Nasser Hospital, that was besieged for so long, and the healthcare staff inside those institutions not having access to food or water for several days and sometimes weeks. That is a much more extreme situation than that which I’m describing to you at Al-Aqsa Hospital, where, despite me describing severe resource shortages, we were still better off than many of the other areas in the Gaza Strip.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, we want to thank you so much for being with us, pediatric intensive care physician, was in Gaza for two weeks with Medical Aid for Palestinians. She just left on Wednesday, co-founder of the social media account @GazaMedicVoices, which shares firsthand accounts from healthcare professionals in Gaza, speaking to us from Amman, Jordan.

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I Could Not Stay Silent: Annelle Sheline Resigns from State Dept. over U.S. Gaza Policy
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 28, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/28/ ... transcript

A State Department official working on human rights issues in the Middle East resigned Wednesday in protest of U.S. support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. Annelle Sheline, who worked as a foreign affairs officer in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, was not planning on publicly resigning, but her colleagues asked her to “please speak out” against the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israel. “At the end of the day, many people inside [the State Department] know that this is a horrific policy, and can’t believe that the United States government is engaged in such actions that contravene American values so directly, but the leadership is not listening,” says Sheline. “I’m trying to speak on behalf of those many, many people who feel so betrayed by our government’s stance.” Sheline describes being moved by the words of Aaron Bushnell, the active-duty U.S. airman who set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in protest of the war on Gaza, who implored everyone to take a stand against genocide. “I have a young daughter, and I thought about, in the future, if she were to ask me, 'What were you doing when this was happening? You were at the State Department.' I want to be able to tell her that I didn’t stay silent.”

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: A State Department official working on human rights issues in the Middle East resigned Wednesday in protest against U.S. support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. Annelle Sheline worked as a foreign affairs officer in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor for a year, before publicly resigning.

In an op-ed published in CNN, she wrote, quote, “For the past year, I worked for the office devoted to promoting human rights in the Middle East. I believe strongly in the mission and in the important work of that office. However, as a representative of a government that is directly enabling what the International Court of Justice has said could plausibly be a genocide in Gaza, such work has become almost impossible. Unable to serve an administration that enables such atrocities, I have decided to resign from my position at the Department of State,” she wrote.

AMY GOODMAN: Annelle Sheline is the most significant protest resignation over U.S. support for Israel’s assault on Gaza since the resignation in October of Josh Paul, the senior State Department official involved in arms transfers to foreign governments.

Annelle Sheline joins us now from Washington, D.C.

Annelle, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you tell us further about the decision you made?

ANNELLE SHELINE: Thanks so much for having me and for your coverage of this issue.

I hadn’t initially planned to resign publicly. I hadn’t been at State for very long, and I didn’t think it would necessarily matter. But I decided to go public because when I started to tell colleagues that I was planning to resign over Gaza, so many people’s response was, “Please speak out. Please speak for us.” Many people are not in a position where they feel they could resign, or they are trying to do what they can on the inside. There’s still a lot of important, crucial work the State Department does. And so I decided I would go ahead and go public.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, you told — Annelle, you told The Washington Post that you tried to raise concerns internally with dissent cables and at staff forums. So, what was the result of that? And how are other people within State, as you said, trying to speak out within the State Department to change policy?

ANNELLE SHELINE: Yes, many people are extremely horrified by the U.S. government’s position on this horrific conflict and the actions of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments. There is the dissent channel inside the State Department. I was in — I co-wrote a cable and signed other cables. There have been forums for State Department employees to speak out. I spoke with supervisors. I was able to speak with a senior official about my resignation. I think, at the end of the day, many people inside State know that this is a horrific policy and can’t believe that the United States government is engaged in such actions that contravene American values so directly. But the leadership is not listening.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to the State Department spokesperson Matt Miller being questioned by a reporter about the internal dissent channel within the State Department and employees raising concerns over the policies.

HUMEYRA PAMUK: What is the point of the whole channel? And, like, I mean, the secretary listens, and we’ve all reported about various listening sessions between mid-level or, like, more senior officials with the secretary, more junior officials. If it’s not — if it’s being heard, but if it’s not taken into account in the policy at all —

MATTHEW MILLER: So —

HUMEYRA PAMUK: — then don’t you think it’s a little bit pointless?

MATTHEW MILLER: So, I would disagree with that completely. It is taken into account in the policy-making process. The secretary has heard things in those meetings that he takes on board and that he — that influence his thinking and that he brings to bear in making policy decisions. Now, if what you mean is, are we going to execute a complete reversal of the policy that —

HUMEYRA PAMUK: No, that’s not what I mean. That’s not what I mean.

MATTHEW MILLER: — hold on — we implemented, or are you going to — are we going to implement exactly some of the policies that the people in these meetings have called for —

HUMEYRA PAMUK: No, not at all.

MATTHEW MILLER: — that’s not how —

HUMEYRA PAMUK: That’s —

MATTHEW MILLER: Hold on. That’s not how this process works. That’s not how government works. And that’s —

HUMEYRA PAMUK: No, I don’t think that’s anyone’s expectation.

MATTHEW MILLER: And that’s — let me just say, that’s not how any organization works. I daresay any of the media organizations in this room, if reporters go to their bosses and offer feedback, and the bosses say, “Well, that’s a good point. We’re going to take that to bear. But on the larger policy, this is the decision that we have made,” that’s how — that’s how leadership —

HUMEYRA PAMUK: You’re doing a long rant about something that I didn’t suggest.

MATTHEW MILLER: That is how leadership works.

HUMEYRA PAMUK: But do you have any examples on, you know, any changes —

MATTHEW MILLER: Yeah. I will — I will say —

HUMEYRA PAMUK: Like, I’m genuinely curious.

MATTHEW MILLER: I will say, with respect to any number of issues, with respect to the delivery of humanitarian assistance, we have heard good ideas from people inside the building who have come and offered constructive feedback, and we have implemented those.

HUMEYRA PAMUK: So —

MATTHEW MILLER: Now — now, there are people that when you say if — like, if the idea is that — to the United States to cut off support for Israel, that’s just a fundamental policy disagreement. So, when you see people who offer interviews that say, “We want the United States to stop supporting Israel’s right to defend itself,” that’s not something the secretary agrees with, it’s not something the president agrees with, and ultimately they are the ones who have the responsibility of making those decisions.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Annelle Sheline, if you can respond to the State Department spokesperson Matt Miller?

ANNELLE SHELINE: You know, I think American law is quite clear here, in terms of the Leahy laws, for example, that when a foreign military is credibly accused of gross human rights violations, the law is that the U.S. will no longer provide weapons to those units, or 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act, that a government that is blocking American humanitarian aid is no longer eligible for U.S. military assistance. These laws are not being applied.

So, I think this is not only having a horrific effect on the people of Gaza, but in terms of America’s standing in the rest of the world, this administration came in pledging to reestablish American moral leadership, reengagement with the international community, uphold the law and the so-called rules-based liberal international order, and I think it’s just become clear that this administration is not, in fact, conducting — carrying out any of those pledges. And, you know, my work was on human rights, which is very important work that the State Department does. But I think, on this issue in particular, the political calculus has been that U.S. support for Israel is a better political move. But I think what the administration may be starting to see is they may have made the wrong decision on that politically.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Annelle, can you explain whether there’s any distinction made — there’s a blanket statement about U.S. support for Israel. But is there no distinction within discussions at the State Department between different forms of U.S. support for Israel? So, for instance, obviously, in this instance, the most important question is that of military aid to Israel at this moment.

ANNELLE SHELINE: There, I should be clear that, you know, my area of focus, I was not — Israel and Palestine were not part of my portfolio. I was focusing primarily on North Africa, so I can’t speak directly to some of those conversations. I do think, you know, at the end of the day, the U.S.-Israel relationship is considered of such political importance that decisions regarding it are made at the very top. And so, while there are other processes and certainly discussions going on inside State, inside other parts of the government about some of those nuances you were discussing, I don’t think we’re likely to see any public shift on any of that until those decisions come from the top that they’re ready to reimagine the U.S.-Israel relationship.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to another clip of the State Department spokesperson Matt Miller, saying the Biden administration has not found Israel’s actions in Gaza to be a violation of international law. This is some of what he said.

MATTHEW MILLER: We have not found them to be in violation of international humanitarian law, either when it comes to the conduct of the war or when it comes to the provision of humanitarian assistance.

AMY GOODMAN: That was this week, Annelle Sheline, either violation of international law or when it comes to providing humanitarian assistance. And yet President Biden says he is building a port because the Palestinians cannot get enough aid.

ANNELLE SHELINE: Exactly. I think that the evidence speaks for itself. We’ve had, you know, not only the ICJ’s ruling, not only the U.N. Security Council ruling. Clearly, the administration is unwilling to admit to reality. And again, I just want to reiterate, I think this is not only obviously devastating for the lives of people in Gaza, but is doing incredible damage to America’s standing on the international stage. It is incredibly demoralizing for people inside the State Department, many of whom believe very deeply in what America says it stands for. So, I’m trying to speak on behalf of those many, many people who feel so betrayed by our government’s stance.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Annelle, could you explain the effect that the massive protests across the United States have had within the State Department, what discussion there was of them, and then, of course, the “uncommitted” vote?

ANNELLE SHELINE: So, within the State Department, you know, civil servants are very committed to their role of being nonpolitical, of following the instruction that they receive. You know, within State, people are aware of what’s going on outside. But, you know, this is not the first time that people have been involved or had to carry out policies they perhaps did not agree with, and it is something that many of these people have signed up for. This is the role of carrying out America’s foreign policy.

On this issue, I think, because it has been so horrific and because we are seeing such growing political pushback from the American public, people are increasingly frustrated. You know, many other people with whom I spoke said they’re considering resigning. But again, it is challenging for someone to — you know, it’s not easy to not have a job in this country.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to quote further what you’ve said in explanation of why you’re resigning. You said you’re “haunted by the final social media post of Aaron Bushnell, the 25-year-old US Air Force serviceman who self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington on February 25.” You quote him: “Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.” If you can explain what that meant to you and how people have responded to you?

ANNELLE SHELINE: Sorry. You know, that post, I think, spoke to me and many people, who had to really look at what they were doing and whether — you know, for me, I have a young daughter. And I thought about, in the future, if she were to ask me, you know, “What were you doing when this was happening? You were at the State Department.” I want to be able to tell her that I didn’t stay silent. And I know many people who are deeply affected by those words that Aaron Bushnell posted. And I do think people are trying to do what they can. There is still very important work being done inside the State Department. But I do think, until our top levels of leadership are ready to make a change, there’s very little that the rank and file are able to do.

AMY GOODMAN: Annelle Sheline, we want to thank you so much for being with us. Annelle has just resigned from the State Department in protest of U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza. She worked as foreign affairs officer in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. She’s also the first State Department official to publicly resign since Josh Paul did months ago.

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As Gaza Faces Famine, Israel Cuts Ties with UNRWA and U.S. Halts Funding for Critical Aid Agency
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 28, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/28/unrwa#transcript

Despite a U.N.-backed report sounding the alarm on imminent famine in northern Gaza, Israeli authorities announced Sunday they will no longer approve the passage of any UNRWA food convoys into northern Gaza. “Our ability to adequately continue saving lives is really being obstructed,” says UNRWA spokesperson Tamara Alrifai. “What’s going to happen to UNRWA if we can no longer truly operate?” The decision came as President Biden signed a $1.2 trillion appropriations bill that strips funding to UNRWA for the next year. The U.S. first suspended aid to UNRWA in late January, when the Israeli government claimed 12 of the agency’s 30,000 employees were involved in Hamas’s attacks on October 7. The unsubstantiated allegation prompted top donors to cut funding to UNRWA, though many of them have resumed funding as the agency welcomes new donor countries and an unprecedented number of civil society donations. Seeing the U.S., the agency’s largest donor, “withhold funding … is a huge blow to us,” says Alrifai. “Stripping UNRWA of funding not only shrinks its ability to respond to the looming famine in Gaza, but also puts at risk the schools, the access of kids to proper education, the vaccines, the mother and child care — everything across the region.”

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: Despite a U.N.-backed report that found famine is imminent in northern Gaza, Israeli authorities informed the United Nations on Sunday that it will no longer approve the passage of any UNRWA food convoys into northern Gaza. This is Israeli spokesperson David Mencer speaking to reporters on Monday.

DAVID MENCER: UNRWA are part of the problem, and we will now stop working with them. We are phasing — we are actively phasing out the use of UNRWA, because they perpetuate the conflict rather than try and alleviate the conflict.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: In response to the news, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini wrote in a social media post, quote, “This is outrageous & makes it intentional to obstruct lifesaving assistance during a man made famine. These restrictions must be lifted. UNRWA is the largest organisation with the highest reach to displaced communities in Gaza. By preventing UNRWA to fulfill its mandate in Gaza, the clock will tick faster towards famine & many more will die of hunger, dehydration + lack of shelter,” he wrote.

AMY GOODMAN: The decision came as President Biden signed a $1.2 trillion appropriations bill that strips funding to UNRWA for the next year. The U.S. first suspended aid to UNRWA in late January when the Israeli government leveled allegations that 12 of the agency’s 30,000 employees were involved in the Hamas attacks of October 7th. The unsubstantiated allegation prompted other top donors, such as Germany, the European Union and Sweden, to cut funding to UNRWA, although a number of countries have recently announced their intention to resume funding.

For more, we go to Amman, Jordan, where we’re joined by Tamara Alrifai. She’s spokesperson for the U.N. Palestinian agency, UNRWA.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Tamara. If you can start off by talking about the significance of what the U.S. has done? President Biden signed off on a bipartisan law that dealt with a lot of issues, but among them, cutting off aid to UNRWA for the next year, and the U.S. is by far the largest funder of this U.N. Palestinian relief agency.

TAMARA ALRIFAI: Thanks, Amy. And thanks, as always, for giving UNRWA this platform.

The decision by Congress, and consequently by the U.S. government, to stop funding to UNRWA this year is a huge blow. There is no sugarcoating. The impact on our finances is huge, and also the impact on the politics around UNRWA. Seeing our largest donor, and many times our closest partner, withhold funding, which means withhold trust to UNRWA, is a huge blow to us.

However, I also want to say that, in parallel, several governments, European and non-European, have either much increased their funding to UNRWA or have given us money for the first time. Also, we are getting overwhelming individual support, donations from $10 to $20,000, to our campaigns and our drives. And that speaks for a sentiment that is also galvanizing around UNRWA around its role, and mostly around the fact that it is not possible to just decide to pull the plug on a U.N. agency. Any change to the way a U.N. agency works, especially as UNRWA gets its mandate from the U.N. General Assembly, should be discussed at the General Assembly. It is not about one or two U.N. member states to decide whether UNRWA can continue working or not. This is a global decision, and the General Assembly is where we get an overwhelming vote of support. And that is where such a conversation should take place.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Tamara, could you talk about the countries that had previously rescinded funding to UNRWA and may now — have either resumed it or intend to resume it?

TAMARA ALRIFAI: Yes, I can talk about a few countries that just over the last few days made their contributions to UNRWA — Germany, for example, which, by the way, had not really suspended its funding. It just took a little bit of a pause to think. And they just announced — Germany just announced $45 million in income to UNRWA just in the last few days. The same, Canada, Australia, Sweden and a number of other countries that had initially withheld their funding to UNRWA following these allegations around 12 of 13,000 staff members in Gaza, now are releasing their funding.

But I also want to talk about the role of Ireland or Spain, both of them having much increased their funding to UNRWA and also their political support. The European Union, our second-largest donor as a group, did release the large part of its funding to UNRWA. And also, countries like Qatar, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and, just today, Kuwait, all of them are supporting UNRWA. And again, income from private sources, from individuals and foundations, has skyrocketed since the beginning of this year, especially now during Ramadan, where many Muslims around the world are looking for a zakat-friendly way, so a way to donate as per Islamic Sharia law. We have this mechanism, and many, many Muslims from around the world, from Malaysia to Indonesia to Singapore, are donating to UNRWA.

AMY GOODMAN: Canada, as well, hasn’t it, said it’s restoring UNRWA aid?

TAMARA ALRIFAI: Sweden, you said? I couldn’t hear you.

AMY GOODMAN: Canada?

TAMARA ALRIFAI: Oh, yes, Canada did restore its funding. Yes.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, if you could say — also speak, Tamara, about the fact that Israel has now said it will no longer approve any UNRWA food convoys to the north? What are the implications of that?

TAMARA ALRIFAI: The implications are huge. In the last few days alone, we received five denials to our requests to move food from the south of the Gaza Strip in Rafah to the north. Now, we’ve also — so, we consider this to be a ban on UNRWA’s food distribution in the north. The commissioner-general of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, was also denied access to Gaza two weeks ago, despite having followed the usual procedures to ask for him and his delegation to go into Gaza.

What we’re truly seeing here is the space around UNRWA in Gaza is really shrinking, and our ability to adequately continue saving lives is really being obstructed. We’re talking here about food distribution to an entire population that is food insecure. “Food insecure,” in layman, laywoman terms, means people are hungry. Half of that population no longer has access to any food. There’s nothing in their pantries. Seventy-five percent or more of the population is displaced. Most of these people displaced are now in Rafah, which has witnessed a sixfold increase in the population. Many of these people are in UNRWA shelters, where they do receive food, vaccines and medical treatment. And many, many of them are in tents in Rafah. When I last was in Gaza, what I saw in Rafah was an immense tented community out in the open. Many people have gathered around UNRWA shelters, hoping they would receive some of the aid that UNRWA distributes. What’s going to happen to UNRWA if we can no longer truly operate?

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play a clip of independent Senator Bernie Sanders. You know, this was a $1.2 trillion appropriations bill that keeps the government open through October, but it includes stripping funding to UNRWA. The bill vote, 74 to 24. Bernie Sanders voted “no” because of the stripping of funding to UNRWA.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Tens of thousands of people are starving. UNRWA is trying to feed them. And the Israeli government and its allies, like AIPAC, spend much of their time lobbying to defund UNRWA, the major organization which is feeding starving people. Sadly, tragically, many members of Congress seem to be happy to be part of this starvation caucus.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Tamara Alrifai, if you can respond? And also the fact that the 30,000-member agency UNRWA is not just supporting the people who face famine in Gaza, but also throughout the Middle East. We’re talking about Lebanon and Jordan.

TAMARA ALRIFAI: That’s a great —

AMY GOODMAN: We have 30 seconds.

TAMARA ALRIFAI: — point. That’s a great point, Amy, to remind that UNRWA is the agency that is fully in charge of Palestine refugees, from registering them and their descendants, to offering a very sturdy education system to them through 700 schools, to offering all primary healthcare. So, stripping UNRWA of funding not only shrinks its ability to respond to the looming famine in Gaza, but also puts at risk the schools, the access of kids to proper education, the vaccines, the mother and child care — everything, across the region — Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you, Tamara Alrifai, spokesperson for UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees.

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Protesters Disrupt Record $25 Million Biden Fundraiser in NYC as Thousands March Against Gaza War
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 29, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/29/ ... transcript

Pro-Palestine protesters disrupted the largest one-night fundraiser in presidential campaign history on Thursday. The event at Radio City Music Hall in New York City included numerous celebrities and featured President Biden alongside former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, raising a record $25 million for Biden’s reelection campaign. The main event was an onstage conversation with the three U.S. presidents moderated by late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert, but people began disrupting it just 10 minutes into their conversation, as Biden was talking, with protesters calling on the president to stop arming Israel and to enforce a ceasefire in Gaza. Meanwhile, thousands of protesters were also massed outside the venue to protest the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. We play voices from inside and outside the event.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

Pro-Palestine protesters disrupted the largest one-night fundraiser in presidential campaign history here in New York yesterday. The star-studded event at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan featured President Biden alongside former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, raised a record $25 million for Biden’s reelection campaign. More than 5,000 people paid to attend, with tickets costing up to half a million dollars each. For $100,000, guests could get a picture with the three U.S. presidents taken by renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz. Celebrities in attendance included Queen Latifah, Mindy Kaling and Lizzo.

The main event was an onstage conversation with the three U.S. presidents moderated by late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert. But just 10 minutes into their conversation — Biden was talking — protesters began disrupting the event, calling on the president to stop arming Israel and to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: We had no president on January the 6th. [inaudible] There was an insurrection.

PROTESTER 1: Shame on you, Joe Biden! Shame on you! Shame on you! You are supporting genocide in Palestine! And no amount of false concern that you do will change the billions that you are doing!

SECURITY GUARD: Out the door.

PROTESTER 1: You have blood on your hands! Blood on your hands!

BILL CLINTON: They create the policies. But I do believe —

STEPHEN COLBERT: For people watching at home —

BILL CLINTON: Do you want to say anything?

STEPHEN COLBERT: Excuse me. Excuse me, Mr. President.

PROTESTER 2: You are all complicit in genocide!

STEPHEN COLBERT: The people who are watching, who are watching at home on TV, may not be able to hear the protesters here, who — hold on a second here.

PROTESTER 2: You have killed 32,000 Palestinian people!

PROTESTER 3: How dare you talk about the innocent death of Palestinians! How dare you talk about the innocent death of Palestinians! Palestinians are dying right now because of your actions! Palestinians are dying right now because of your actions!

PROTESTER 4: Shame!

PROTESTER 3: Because of what you’re doing! Because of the things that you’re doing! Blood is on your hands!

PROTESTER 4: Shame! Shame! Stop brutalizing him!

PROTESTER 3: Blood is on your hands!

PROTESTER 4: Stop brutalizing him!

AMY GOODMAN: The protesters were all physically escorted outside. The event disruption was organized by a coalition including Adalah Justice Project, Palestinian Youth Movement and Jewish Voice for Peace and the Sunrise Movement.

Meanwhile, outside the event, thousands took to the streets to protest President Biden’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. Protesters gathered at Bryant Park and marched up to Radio City Music Hall. Democracy Now! was there and spoke to some of the protesters about why they were there.

PROTESTERS: From the belly of the beast, hands off the Middle East!

PROTESTER 5: Currently we are working on the Leave It Blank New York campaign for the upcoming primary happening April 2nd, on Tuesday. We are asking people to leave it blank, because there is no “committed” or “uncommitted” option in New York City. So, we, rather, tell them to scan their ballot as is, and that will then count as “uncommitted,” to show Genocide Joe that we are not going to stand while we watch our brothers and sisters being genocided.

JENNA: My name is Jenna. I am a first-generation American Palestinian. And we have had enough. My family has voted Democrat for as long as we’ve lived in the U.S. It’s heartbreaking. We feel guilty, and we feel awful. I feel like I voted for my own people’s genocide. And I’m done letting Democrats get away with it just because we’re scared of the alternative.

KARINA GARCIA: My name is Karina Garcia. I’m running for vice president of the United States with my comrade Claudia De la Cruz. And we’re running with the Party for Socialism and Liberation. And we’re here today, as we’ve been through all of these protests for Palestine, because we understand that our government is orchestrating this genocide, that without their support, without their financing, Israel could not be doing what they’re doing to the Palestinian people. And it’s important for us to come together and not allow these war criminals, like Biden or Clinton or Obama, to just use these moments to be in New York City to raise money. The people are waking up, and they’re seeing that the Democratic Party is where hope goes to die, and that the people have to build a new government for the working class, for the people of this country, that we cannot allow them to drag us into the 1800s, drag us into a nuclear war.

PROTESTER 6: You know, the fact that we had access to watching a genocide in real time and we were able to see for ourselves that these people are liars, that everything that they have told us about Palestine and about the Middle East has been a lie, means that we are able to make — and also we’re able to make the connections — young people are able to make the connections between what’s happening in Palestine, what’s happening to migrants in the U.S., what’s happening to queer and trans people in the U.S. And we are saying, “Free Palestine. People over profit. And an end to U.S. imperialism everywhere.”

PROTESTER 7: Anybody who sees this, no matter where you come from, no matter who you are, you have to take part in this. You cannot be silent. Everyone must become involved. There are lives being lost. There are pregnant women being run over by tanks. This is abominable. We cannot learn about the Holocaust and watch movies about the Holocaust and then say, “Oh, well, you know, I would have done something then.” You have to do it now. It’s like Aaron Bushnell said, “What would you be doing during those times? You’re doing it now.” So, if you don’t like what you’re doing, if it’s not enough, change it.

AMY GOODMAN: Voices from outside Radio City Music Hall, where presidents Biden, Obama and Clinton spoke inside in the largest single-night fundraiser in U.S. presidential campaign history. More than $25 million was raised.

***

“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.

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“Genocidal Machine”: Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah on Israel’s Destruction of Gaza’s Hospitals
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 1, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/1/g ... transcript

Israeli forces withdrew from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City today after a two-week raid that has left most of the medical complex in ruins. Since October, Gaza’s health sector has been completely decimated, leaving only a dozen hospitals partially functional as the entire medical infrastructure is relentlessly shelled, besieged and raided. We speak to British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah, who spent over a month treating patients at Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli Baptist hospitals. He pays tribute to Dr. Ahmad Maqadmeh, a fellow surgeon who was found killed today alongside his mother at Al-Shifa. “I blame the Western journalists, who perpetuated the narrative that militarized the hospital as a justifiable and acceptable target,” says Abu-Sittah about Maqadmeh’s death. “This was a war Israel declared on Palestinian children,” he later concludes, “because Palestinian children represent the Palestinian tomorrow that is incompatible with the Zionist settler-colonial project.” Plus, we hear from a trauma surgeon currently volunteering at the European Hospital in Khan Younis. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa describes the scene at the hospital as a squalid shelter for thousands of refugees. “There’s no privacy, no dignity for any of these people,” he says.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, today after a two-week raid that’s left most of the medical complex in ruins, with dead bodies on the ground and a wasteland of charred and destroyed buildings. The government media office in Gaza said over 400 Palestinians were killed and over 1,000 homes in the area of Al-Shifa destroyed. Army bulldozers also plowed over a makeshift cemetery in the hospital courtyard. The World Health Organization said at least 21 patients died since the raid began March 18th.

Built in 1946, Shifa was once the flagship medical facility in Gaza. Since October, Gaza’s health sector has been completely decimated. Only two hospitals are minimally functional and 10 partially functional, according to the United Nations. The rest have shut down completely after being shelled, besieged and raided by Israeli troops, or running out of fuel and medicine.

On Sunday, an Israeli airstrike hit a tent encampment outside of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. The attack killed two Palestinians and injured seven journalists.

The death toll in Gaza is nearly 33,000, including 14,000 children. Many thousands of others are missing under the rubble and presumed dead. The number of wounded has topped 75,000.

For more, we’re joined by Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon. He worked in Gaza for over a month as a volunteer with Doctors Without Borders treating patients at both Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli Baptist hospitals. He’s joining us from London.

Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. So, you have heard the news, Dr. Abu-Sittah, Al-Shifa destroyed, the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip. Can you talk about its significance and then talk about your experiences when you were in Gaza?

DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: First of all, if you’ll allow me, Amy, I’d like to start by paying tribute to my friend and colleague, Dr. Ahmad Maqadmeh, a young, brilliant plastic surgeon with whom I had worked at Shifa during this war and at Al-Ahli Hospital. And I had worked with him before during the '21 war and during the Marches of Return. His body, alongside that of his mother, were found today when the Israeli troops withdrew, and they had been executed by the Israeli army while trying to escape Shifa. Dr. Ahmad was a brilliant and dedicated young surgeon who had won the humanitarian fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. And it's critical that we remember their names and we remember their stories. And today I want to send my love to his wife and to his children, both under the age of 5, who are now left without a husband and a father. Along with so many of my colleagues who we’ve lost, this is the second plastic surgeon who I had worked with at Shifa who has been killed by the Israelis, and over 345 doctors and nurses and paramedics who have been killed by the Israelis, intentionally targeted.

Now, with regards to Shifa, Shifa was 30% of the capacity of the health system in Gaza. And so, the destruction of Shifa, the wanton destruction of Shifa, is a critical component of Israel’s plan to genocidally make sure that Gaza becomes an uninhabitable place even after a ceasefire happens. By destroying Shifa and making sure that it is irreparable, the Israelis are trying to make sure that, for years to come, Gaza does not have a functioning health system. Shifa now needs to be completely demolished, and a new building and a new hospital built, which means you’re looking at three to five years once the building starts. This is part of the genocidal machine.

But for me, as someone who has — you know, I went, I reached Shifa Hospital on the 10th of October, on the morning of the Tuesday, and was in Shifa on and off throughout my whole 43 days in Gaza. It is not just the Israeli soldiers and the Israeli leaders, the genocidal tip of the iceberg, that I blame. I blame the Western journalists, who perpetuated the narrative that militarized the hospital as a justifiable and an acceptable target to the Israelis. These genocide enablers, these Western journalists, from the very beginning, peddled these stories that the Israelis were feeding them about Shifa being on top of this massive complex of a command-and-control center. And their job was to enable the genocide to take place. And the genocide can only take place if the health system is destroyed. And so, they have the blood of my friend — the blood of Ahmad Maqadmeh is on the hands of the CNN journalists and the BBC journalists and the ITV journalists, who, from the very beginning, were peddling this narrative.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m looking at a comment right now from Raed al-Nims, a representative for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, who said many departments at Al-Shifa Hospital were “set on fire.” “Many bodies” are lying around the ground. Al-Nims told Al Jazeera, “The situation is dire, the medical staff, some of them were killed, others tortured, others detained, and above all, they have been besieged for two weeks without any medical supplies or even food or water.” “Shifa” itself means “healing.” It’s a house of healing. Also, a thousand houses in the area were also destroyed as the Israeli military destroyed the hospital. Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, as you worked there, can you talk about, especially since you are a reconstructive surgeon, the child amputees and what they face, in there and the other hospitals you worked in?

DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, from the very beginning, it was obvious that half of the wounded were children. And, you know, on a daily basis, my operating list would be between eight and 12 surgeries, and half of them were children. And the sheer ferocity of the bombing, the fact that the Israelis were targeting people’s homes, meant that a lot of these children, either their limbs were blown right off at the explosion or were crushed beyond repair as a result of the debris and the collapsing buildings that they were taken from underneath. As the war progressed, as the health system became so overwhelmed, previously reconstructable limbs became unrestrictable and required amputation to save the patients’ lives from gangrene and infection.

And so, what we have is a process by which these children — and my estimate is that they are now probably around 4,000 to 5,000 — these children are now left with disabilities that will change the course of their lives. We know from the medical literature that each child with a lower limb prosthetic will need a new prosthetic every six months, because their body outgrows the length of the prosthesis, and will need between eight and 12 surgeries by the time they’re of adult age, because the bone grows faster than the soft tissues, or the nerves attach themselves to the skin and they can’t wear the prosthesis. And so, this is a lifelong trajectory of surgery and of disability and of mental health scarring as a result of the deformity.

Take into account, in addition to that, that a lot of these children are orphaned. You know, there are 17,000 children in Gaza who have lost their parents, and many of these are wounded children. And so, to go through all of this with no family to look after you is just — the legacy will be the legacy of this war. And this is a war — from the very beginning, this was a war Israel declared on Palestinian children. You know, Israel wants to wipe out Palestinian children, because Palestinian children represent the Palestinian tomorrow that is incompatible with the Zionist settler-colonial project. Zionists cannot envision a Palestinian tomorrow and were targeting Palestinian children.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to quote from The New Yorker, that quotes you extensively, Doctor, as you talk about this is the biggest cohort of pediatric amputees in history. Eliza Griswold writes, “To mark the gravity of these procedures, and to mourn, Abu-Sittah and other medical staff placed the severed limbs of children in small cardboard boxes. They labelled the boxes with masking tape, on which they wrote a name and body part, and buried them.” Talk more about what you did.

DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: There was one night when I was in Ahli Hospital when the Israelis had targeted a mosque which had been used by the internally displaced, where, by 5:00 that morning, I had performed amputations on six children. And such is the aim, to dehumanize these children, the aim of the settler-colonialist genocidal war, to dehumanize these children, that my colleagues and I wanted to maintain their dignity and wanted to not just bear witness but to hold on to anything that makes us and them human in the face of this dehumanizing war machine. And so we insisted that whenever there was a limb that was amputated, that it gets the right burial and that this child’s name is on that amputated limb and that we maintain the dignity of our patient to the extent that we can.

AMY GOODMAN: Doctor, The Washington Post is reporting the Biden administration just authorized the transfer of billions of dollars in bombs and fighter jets to Israel, the arms package including more than 1,800 MK-84 2,000-pound bombs, which can be used to level entire city blocks, U.S. also sending 500 MK-82 500-pound bombs and 25 F-35 fighter jets. I’m wondering if you can comment on this, especially in light of recently being elected rector of the University of Glasgow, your alma mater. It was a position once held by Winnie Mandela. You won by a wide majority, running on a pro-Palestinian solidarity platform and urging divestment from the arms trade. Can you talk about this?

DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, one of the things you do realize when you leave this death world in Gaza and you come out to the outside world is that you come to realize that Israel is just the tip of genocidal iceberg, that the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, all of these NATO countries represent the remainder of the genocidal project. And these countries are not just supporting Israel. They are supporting Israel’s genocidal project, because, as the Colombian president said, they want to send the message to any other troublesome Native who considers changing the rules of the global game by rebelling.

And so, when we talk about the genocide, we should not just talk about the Israelis as the perpetrators of the genocide. We should talk about the “Axis of Genocide,” these countries, these governments that are perpetuating this genocide. And we know just not just this article. There’s also been another article showing how much intelligence information has been passed on to the Israelis that ensured the Israelis are able to carry out these massacres. And so, when we talk about the genocide, it’s an American, British, French, European genocide against the Palestinian people, of which Israel is the spearhead but not just the sole perpetrator.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, there were perhaps as many as 200,000 people protesting in London alone this weekend. That’s where you’re speaking from, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah. Talk about the significance of this and if this is making a difference. Wasn’t there also a letter from something like 150 British MPs who wrote a letter demanding stopping the arming of Israel?

DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: Since the International Court of Justice produced its interim ruling that this is plausibly a genocidal war — and I think there’s no one that has any doubt about it — the British government is now legally complicit in the act of genocide. The universities that hold shares in BAE Systems, the arms manufacturer that has continued to supply weapons to Israel, are also complicit. And this is one of the things that we ran on as part of the campaign for rector of Glasgow University. If you own shares in an arms company that has sent parts or complete weapons to the Israelis in this genocidal war, you are complicit, under international law, in genocide.

All of this highlights the fact that this is a genocidal project that extends from Tel Aviv to London to Washington to Paris to Rome — to all of these countries. These are genocidal partners, complicit in an attempt to wipe out the Palestinian people. The 200,000, hundreds of thousands of people who are coming out every weekend, be it in Europe or North America, are basically saying, “Not in our name.” They will not be complicit in the acts of genocide that their governments are perpetrating. These people want to absolve themselves from what their governments are doing, by refusing to be part of a genocidal war in the 21st century.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to end with Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon who’s currently volunteering at European Hospital in Khan Younis, in Gaza right now. We’ve been trying to reach him nonstop for the show today, but in case we couldn’t, which we can’t — he can almost never do live communication; it just doesn’t work — he sent us this voice message. He’s working with the Palestinian American Medical Association in collaboration with the World Health Organization. On Sunday, Dr. Sidhwa sent this update as he walked from his living quarters to the European Hospital.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: The hospital itself is basically a displaced persons camp. I just walked out of my — I live in a little building called the Midan at the end of the square. It’s a kind of an outlying area of the hospital. And yeah, just walking, walking into the hospital. It’s only about a five-minute walk. It’s just squalor everywhere, the kids running around without shoes, kids running around with sores, people actually wheeling their family members around in a hospital bed sometimes, a bunch of cars that can’t move anywhere because there’s no gasoline. They’re using them as beds and shelters sometimes. But, you know, you can see there’s no privacy, no dignity for any of these people.

But they somehow maintain their humanity. It’s pretty impressive to see, actually. I’m walking by the four latrines that people share here. I’m told there’s 20,000 people on the hospital grounds, and they share four latrines. It’s ridiculous. You can imagine the smell. And it’s literally right in front of the hospital main entrance, which is also a giant tent city. But yeah, no, you know, the way these people attempt to maintain some of their own dignity and humanity, you know, they’re maintaining their custom of Ramadan. They’re still staying in family units despite the fact that they have been displaced multiple times each. A lot of them, this is their — you know, leaving aside the 1948 or 1967 displacements, some of them have been displaced three or four times just from this war. Half of the medical students, their families are dead. They were displaced.

CHILD: Hello!

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Hello. Half of them were displaced from — the kids love to say hello to anybody that they’ve figured out is a foreigner. And, you know, half the medical students, their families — they have family members who died. And still, you know, they’re not even in medical school down here, but they go, they come down here, and they just came to Gaza European Hospital to volunteer. And they actually run the emergency room, for the most part, right now.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Dr. Feroze Sidhwa at European Hospital in Khan Younis Sunday. Final words to Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, who is recently out of Gaza, British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon. Your final thoughts?

DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: You know, today, as we grieve for our friend, one tries to maintain a level of hope. And so we end with the words of the immortal Bobby Sands: We will defeat them with the laughter of our children.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, I want to thank you so much for being with us, British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon, worked in Gaza for over a month as a volunteer with Doctors Without Borders, treating patients at both Al-Shifa, which has now been almost totally destroyed, and Al-Ahli Baptist hospitals.

***

“Dying Slowly While the World Is Watching”: Bethlehem Reverend on Israel’s War on Palestinian Christians
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 1, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/1/e ... transcript

As Christians around the world celebrated Easter Sunday, Palestinian Christians from the occupied West Bank were prevented from reaching Jerusalem for Good Friday to walk the Via Dolorosa, the path Jesus is said to have followed on the way to his crucifixion more than 2,000 years ago. Meanwhile, Jesus’s birthplace of Bethlehem is uncharacteristically empty of tourists this year as Israel’s assault on Gaza and crackdown on the West Bank escalate. “Nothing can wash the blood from your hands,” said the Reverend Munther Isaac at an Easter vigil for Gaza on Saturday, about Western complicity in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. Isaac is a Palestinian Christian theologian and the pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. He joins Democracy Now! to discuss the history of Palestinian Christians in Gaza, Israel’s occupation of Bethlehem and its strangling of freedoms in the West Bank, U.S. Christians’ support of Israel and more.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

As Christians around the world celebrated Easter Sunday, Palestinians faced severe restrictions on entering the Old City in Jerusalem. Palestinian Christians from the occupied West Bank were prevented from reaching Jerusalem for Good Friday to walk the Via Dolorosa, the path Jesus is said to have followed on the way to his crucifixion more than 2,000 years ago. Even before October, Palestinian Christians had to seek permission to visit the Old City. In Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, the wall separating Israel from the West Bank cuts through the city, largely empty of tourists this weekend.

The Reverend Munther Isaac, who is the pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, participated in an Easter vigil for Gaza on Saturday. This is some of what he said.

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Today we have entered a new phase of the war of genocide, in which the people of Gaza are being killed by hunger, thirst and disease. They are starved to death. It is a slow death. They are hanging between heaven and Earth, dying slowly while the world is watching. They have no form or majesty, that we should look at them, from whom men hide their faces.

It took more than five months and 32,000 people killed, including 13,000 children, for the U.N. Security Council to finally pass a ceasefire. But nothing has changed on the ground. Since when does Israel care about U.N. resolutions? Israel has never been held accountable or even condemned by Western leaders. This remains the single biggest problem today. Right now we are pleading for aid and food to enter. We gave up on a ceasefire. Just bring food, water and medicine. Lord, have mercy.

Friends, a genocide has been normalized. And as people of faith, if we truly claim to follow a crucified savior, we can never be OK with this. We should never accept the normalization of a genocide. We should never be OK with children dying from starvation, not because of drought or famine, but starvation, man-made catastrophe, because of the empire. A genocide has been normalized, just as apartheid was normalized in Palestine and, before that, in South Africa, just as slavery and the caste system were normalized. It has been firmly established to us that the leaders of the superpowers and those who benefit from the modern colonialism do not look at us as equals. They created the narrative to normalize genocide. They have a theology for it. A genocide has been normalized. This is racism at its worst.

And the very same political and church leaders who lined up in October, one after the other, to give the green light for this genocide, giving it the cover of self-defense, cannot even bring themselves to condemn the obvious war crimes being committed by Israel. They are good at raising their concern, make statements that they are “troubled” by the killing of our children. We’re sorry that the killing of our children by your weapons, actually, troubled you. They want to convince us that they actually care. So, their response? They are silent during the genocide and then show up afterwards with charity to say that they care. Can we really accept this?

Many countries rushed to suspend their funding of UNRWA based on mere allegations that were not fully proven, yet did nothing with regards to the clear findings of the ICJ. The amount of hypocrisy is incomprehensible, and the level of racism involved for such hypocrisy is appalling. And now some politicians claim that their patience with Israel is ending. And we say nothing can wash the blood from your hands.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the Reverend Munther Isaac — Isaac in English — pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, speaking in Bethlehem at an Easter vigil for Gaza Saturday, joining us now from Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.

Reverend Isaac, thank you for joining Democracy Now! again. You joined us at Christmas time after you had made that famous “Christ in the Rubble.” I’m wondering if you can share a description of what’s happening in Bethlehem today, in the occupied West Bank, and also talk about what happened on Good Friday.

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Thank you for having me.

Bethlehem, like the rest of Palestinian cities in the West Bank, continue to be almost completely isolated since the war began. And when I say “isolated,” I’m not just referring to the fact that we cannot go to Jerusalem, but even a trip to other Palestinian towns and cities right now is a big hassle. It’s a risky trip because of the potential of settler violence on the roads that Israel control between all the Palestinian towns and cities, and the delays that the checkpoints are causing. Sometimes you could wait up two to three hours just on the checkpoint with no movement. It’s all part of Intimidation and control.

And as I said, here in Bethlehem, we’re also completely now isolated from Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a 15-, 20-minute drive from where I’m speaking from. Jerusalem, you know, we used to be considered like another neighborhood in Jerusalem, like two twin cities. But right now, for the first time in history, we are completely isolated as Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

AMY GOODMAN: And again, if you could talk about what happened on Good Friday, the procession in the Old City?

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Well, it was not the normal procession. I mean, at least in previous years, some Palestinian Christians from the West Bank were given those permits by the Israeli military to cross to Jerusalem and attend whether the Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem, or, you know, visit Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, during the holy week. Permits are not available these days. The normal processions and prayers that take place in the Old City with many faithful were missing. And you could see that very small numbers took part in these prayers.

And let’s be clear: The idea that we need a permit is ridiculous, to begin with. That’s the problem. The problem is not that Israel is not giving us permits. The problem is that we need permits, to begin with, as Palestinian Christians from Bethlehem or Ramallah, that we need those permits to go to Jerusalem. This is the real scandal here.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe the wall through Bethlehem, for people to understand who haven’t been there?

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Yes, it’s a really ugly concrete barrier that’s taller even than the Berlin Wall, that cuts deep into some of our neighborhoods. It’s very visible from very many places in Bethlehem. It gives the impression that we live in a big prison. And this is not just an impression, because all it takes for Israel right now is to close two checkpoints, and then we’re completely isolated in Bethlehem. The wall speaks volumes. I mean, it’s the message that it’s sending, that we are not wanted, that we are as if dangerous. There is a psychological effect to it, again, because it’s very visible.

And the route of the wall is very indicative. As I said, it cuts deep into Palestinian neighborhoods in Bethlehem, and it basically confiscated all the land surrounding Bethlehem area. By that, I mean the agricultural land and land that would have been the space for natural expansion. That’s why Bethlehem is very crowded right now. And when we say it confiscated Palestinian land, please understand I’m not just making a political statement as if to say this is Palestinian land. This is land owned and farmed by Palestinian families, including Palestinian Christian families, for generations. But the wall has completely isolated us from these, from our lands.

AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Munther Isaac, if you can talk about Gaza now? How many Christians, Palestinian Christians, are there? Why didn’t most Christians leave Gaza City to go to Rafah?

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Yes, there is around anything between 800 to 900 Palestinian Christians left in the Gaza Strip. And as you said, most of them preferred to stay in Gaza in the city, and they preferred to take refuge in one of the two churches, the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church, with the Catholic Church now hosting the majority because it has a bigger compound with a school.

The decision was made, from what they told us, by everyone involved. They met, and they decided that they don’t want to go to the unknown. They don’t want to end up in tents in Egypt maybe or in the desert. Don’t forget that many still carry the memories of 1948, the Nakba. So they don’t want to leave their homes again. And the message they told us is they’d rather die in the church rather than leave to the unknown and end up somewhere that they don’t know. So they chose to be together. They chose to be in the two churches.

And at times, it was very difficult. The Shifa Hospital is from walking distance from the two churches. So you could imagine the amount of trauma and fear they experienced. Many were killed in this war already, whether by bombardment or by snipers or from diseases. You know, the problem right now is, if you get sick in Gaza, chances are very high you don’t survive, because there is no medical care at all.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you two questions, one about the pope giving his Easter sermon at the Vatican, calling for a ceasefire. While he called for peace, a Republican member of the U.S. Congress publicly suggested Gaza should be bombed, quote, “like Nagasaki and Hiroshima.” It was Michigan Congressmember Tim Walberg, who himself is an ordained pastor, who made the comment during a recent town hall. Listen carefully. It’s a little off mic.

REP. TIM WALBERG: We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid. It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick.

AMY GOODMAN: Your thoughts? Shouldn’t be spending a dime of humanitarian aid, and it should be dealt with like the U.S. dealt with Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: I’m angry. It really makes me angry. And I’ve heard these comments, and I couldn’t believe it. I really couldn’t believe it. It makes me angry as a Christian, makes me furious as a Christian, for the lack of mercy and compassion. This is definitely not Jesus’ way. I can’t understand which Bible are they reading. And then, when I search about this congressman, only to discover that he went to prestigious and influential evangelical seminaries — he was a pastor — I couldn’t — I couldn’t believe it. I mean, this is a stain on the credibility of the Christian witness. And the idea that he brings those two cities as a positive example, it’s beyond my comprehension. He brings the example of two cities that were completely destroyed, with hundreds of thousands killed, as a positive example? I couldn’t believe it.

I couldn’t believe that, you know, he would think of that, only to think that the real scary part of all of this is that Israel could actually do it and get away with it, because of people like him providing the political and theological cover to execute such a genocide, just as we’ve been witnessing for the last five to six months. This is the scary part, that he thinks of it as a possibility, and that we know that if it happens, there are those who will continue to defend it. I’m horrified by this. As a pastor, I’m appalled and I’m angry, because this is not a Christian witness.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally —

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: And we need more calls for ceasefire. We need stronger calls for a ceasefire, like the one Pope Francis made. We need those church leaders to come to the Holy Land, come and demand a ceasefire. It’s beyond tragic. We need to be very forceful in our demand right now for a ceasefire.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, in a moment, we’re going to be talking about the mass protests in Tel Aviv around calling for — it used to be the resignation of Prime Minister Netanyahu, now it’s for the overthrow of the government. Your thoughts?

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: Well, I think Netanyahu should have resigned on October 7th. He led us to this mess. And I’m not just saying that because of his negligence. But his policies, this current Israeli government’s policies, their policies with regard to continuing the split between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, empowering one of the other, even bringing cash money, the fact that they intentionally killed the two-state solution, all of that led us — I mean, these are all the policies that led us to this mess. And we’ve been saying that things are about to explode. We’ve been warning for that. So, to me, he should have resigned — if he had any integrity, he should have resigned immediately after October 7th for causing the death of so many innocent Palestinians and Israeli civilians, as we are witnessing right now.

AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Munther —

REV. MUNTHER ISAAC: We definitely need —

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you so much for being with us, Reverend Munther Isaac, Palestinian Christian theologian, pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. He addressed Easter vigil for Gaza on Saturday.

***

Israeli Protesters Accuse Netanyahu of Delaying Hostage Deal for His Own Political Survival
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 1, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/1/i ... transcript

On Sunday, tens of thousands rallied across Israel calling for the return of hostages and the removal of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the largest nationwide protests since the October 7 attacks. From Tel Aviv, we’re joined by Oren Ziv, a reporter and photographer for +972 Magazine who has been covering the Israeli protests. Ziv says the majority of Israelis generally support the war on Gaza but are increasingly turning against Netanyahu’s far-right government, whose refusal to entertain a ceasefire is seen as an obstacle to the return of Israeli hostages.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.

On Sunday, tens of thousands rallied across Israel calling for the ouster of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the largest protest since the October 7th attacks. In Jerusalem, police fired skunk spray at demonstrators blocking a major highway. The protesters called for a ceasefire and the release of all hostages. As calls mount for his resignation, Benjamin Netanyahu is now recovering after undergoing hernia surgery Sunday night.

For more, we go to Tel Aviv to speak with Oren Ziv, reporter and photographer for +972 Magazine, who’s been covering the protests, joining us from Tel Aviv.

Oren, welcome back to Democracy Now! It seems that the demands have changed over the last half-year, from the resignation of Benjamin Netanyahu now to his overthrow, to his ouster. Can you talk about — describe these protests across Israel and what people are calling for.

OREN ZIV: Thank you for having me.

We’ve seen those protests before October 7, hundreds of thousands of Israelis against Netanyahu and his government and the legal changes they were leading. After October 7, of course, the Israeli public, the vast majority of it, was in shock and trauma. And many of the center-left protesters were focusing in civilian help inside Israel and also in the struggle to release the hostages. But with the weeks and the months passing, more people felt that even during time of war — and I’m talking from the Israeli mainstream perspective — Netanyahu is just dealing with his own survival, with internal politics, and also he doesn’t want eventually to release the hostages, with delaying the deal. And the common idea among the protesters that I spoke to, dozens of them, is that Netanyahu is delaying the war and dragging the war to save himself politically, that he doesn’t really want to pay the political price to release the hostages, meaning to release Palestinian political prisoners, and therefore, more people are going out.

Secondly, and very interesting, while the mainstream — like, the vast majority of the families of hostages, that have relatives who are held in Gaza, in the beginning they were trying to be nice and polite and have kind of apolitical protests and not to annoy the government so much, because they needed the government to agree on a deal. With time, and as we’ve seen that Netanyahu himself and, for sure, the more extreme ministers declared that releasing the hostages is not more important than defeating or destroying Hamas, more and more families realize that they have to go out to the streets and to protest not just for a general deal or negotiation, but specifically against Netanyahu. They see Netanyahu, and, of course, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, as the obstacles to release their relatives from Gaza. And this is why on Saturday we saw that the forum that unites many of the hostages’ families declared that they will not make any vigil or quiet gatherings, and they will join the more active families that were blocking roads, lighting fires and doing more direct actions.

And one of the reasons that this is happening is because Netanyahu and the people around him — in general, the right — was inciting against these families, saying that they should be silent, saying they’re serving Hamas by protesting, connecting between them and the anti-government protesters, although not all of them were center-left. But with this incitement against them, Netanyahu actually pushed them to unite with the anti-government protests.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk about what the protesters are saying about the future of the occupation? And also, we rarely hear that there’s been this vigil outside of the military intelligence headquarters in Tel Aviv, led by the hostage families, demanding that their loved ones be released and that the Israeli government work towards that and prioritize that.

OREN ZIV: So, yes, from the beginning of the war, from days after the war began, you had a small group of radical left-wing activists protest against the war, for ceasefire, saying this, the massacre against Palestinians, cannot continue, and also mentioning, of course, that in order to release the hostages, the war has to end and there has to be a ceasefire and a deal. This is a few hundreds of people that have been attacked and arrested by the police, while the mainstream public, their opinion is more complicated. Many of them support the war generally, but think that now the only way to release the hostages is a deal. But with time, more and more of them understand that also Netanyahu doesn’t have a plan for the day after, regardless the horrific things, the killings in Gaza and the massacre. Netanyahu doesn’t want to plan anything ahead. He doesn’t want Hamas to be there. He doesn’t want the PA to be there. He doesn’t want any kind of a Palestinian authority in Gaza.

And with that understanding, many people understand that Netanyahu just wants to stay in this status of war maybe forever. Then he doesn’t have to bring the hostages. To release the hostages, he has to pay a political price, to release Palestinian prisoners. This can endanger his coalition with Ben-Gvir and Smotrich and the other extreme-right-wing figures who oppose any release of Palestinian political prisoners. So, with time, you do hear — so, people are calling for ceasefire and for a deal, but from an internal Israeli perspective of releasing the hostages and thinking about the day after, unless from the perspective we’re seeing abroad, of just calling to end the massacre in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, we just have about 30 seconds. We last talked to you where that thousands of Israelis gathering, with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir calling for Jewish settlements in Gaza, etc. Do you see a growing group of people opposing that in Israel?

OREN ZIV: Yes, definitely. The group that was calling to settle in Gaza, among with the activists who are blocking the aid, are confronted by the Israeli mainstream public, that thinks that this is, A, irrelevant and cannot be done, and also thinks that, again, from an Israeli —

AMY GOODMAN: Oren Ziv, we’re going to have to leave it there, but I thank you so much for being with us, reporter and photographer for +972 Magazine. That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman.

[admin]

Israel Kills 6 Int’l Aid Workers & Gazan Driver in Attack on Chef Andrés’s World Central Kitchen Convoy
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 2, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/2/a ... transcript

Israel is facing global condemnation after killing several international aid workers in Gaza. The workers with charity group World Central Kitchen were killed by an Israeli airstrike after unloading more than 100 tons of food aid carried by ship from Cyprus into Gaza. The charity staff, including three British nationals, an Australian, a Polish national and an American-Canadian dual citizen, and their Palestinian driver were struck while traveling in a clearly marked convoy branded with the charity’s logo. World Central Kitchen said the attack occurred after the workers left a warehouse in Deir al-Balah, even though the charity had coordinated in advance about the convoy with the Israeli military. “Every single humanitarian aid worker … is already recognized by the Israeli army,” says journalist Akram al-Satarri, reporting live from Rafah. “It’s the full responsibility of the Israeli government now to clarify and … demystify the circumstances that led to that catastrophic incident.” Al-Satarri also reports on Israel’s move to ban the outlet Al Jazeera and on his experience living in Gaza right now, where food and medical supplies are scarce under Israel’s strict blockade. “The famine is not looming. The famine is already taking place.”

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: The World Central Kitchen has suspended aid operations in Gaza after an Israeli airstrike killed six international workers from the charity and their Palestinian driver. The aid workers were struck after they left a warehouse in Deir al-Balah where it had unloaded more than 100 tons of food aid that they had brought into Gaza by ship from Cyprus to help avert a looming famine. The aid workers were driving in a clearly marked convoy branded with the charity’s logo. World Central Kitchen said the attack occurred even though the charity had coordinated in advance about the convoy with the Israeli military. The killed aid workers include three British nationals, an Australian, a Polish national and an American-Canadian dual citizen.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned the attack.

PRIME MINISTER ANTHONY ALBANESE: We certainly have already contacted the Israeli government directly. We are contacting the Israeli ambassador to ask for accountability here. The truth is that this is beyond — beyond any reasonable circumstance, that someone going about providing aid and humanitarian assistance should lose their life. And there were four aid workers, as well as Palestinian driver, in this vehicle. This is a human tragedy that should never have occurred, that is completely unacceptable.

AMY GOODMAN: Earlier today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to acknowledge Israel carried out the attack, saying, quote, “Unfortunately over the last day there was a tragic incident of an unintended strike of our forces on innocent people in the Gaza Strip,” unquote.

The United Nations aid coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Jamie McGoldrick, said, quote, “This is not an isolated incident. As of [March 20], at least 196 humanitarians had been killed in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since October 2023. This is nearly three times the death toll recorded in any single conflict in a year,” they said.

We begin today’s show in Rafah, Gaza, where we’re joined by the Gaza-based journalist Akram al-Satarri.

Akram, thanks so much for joining us again. What do you understand took place? Talk about Chef José Andrés’s charity workers who were killed, and their driver, what they were doing.

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: They were helping people. They were trying to secure the food aid for the people in Gaza, whom they were in touch with, whom they were eating with, whom they were in solidarity with, whom they were thinking. They deserved to be treated as humans, and they deserved to be safe, and they deserved to be secured. However, they themselves, the ones who were there extending the helping hand, ended up being killed by an Israeli attack, the circumstances of which are not clear yet, neither to the government of Israel, that apparently ordered the attack, no matter what the circumstances are, nor to the Palestinians who have been seeing at least foreigners there with them extending a helping hand and trying to secure a lifeline while their lives were taken by that Israeli attack.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Akram, how does this happen, when, reportedly, World Central Kitchen was coordinating its efforts and was informing the Israelis of where its aid workers were?

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Well, this is the fact that shocked everyone. And as a matter of fact, many other international aid workers and some UNRWA workers also were affected by the ongoing bombardment. UNRWA made a specific statement about the number of UNRWA staff who were killed, which is around 166 UNRWA staff who were killed while they are on job, while they’re moving from their places to their duty stations and when they’re back from their duty stations to their homes or even when they are still conducting their job in their duty station, extending a helping hand to the people.

The coordinates are very well clear for the Israeli army. This is a protocol that has been followed ever since the war has started. Every single humanitarian aid worker that is extending a helping hand in Gaza, that is coordinating or helping or distributing food or doing anything, is already recognized by the Israeli army, and the incident took place. And I think it’s the full responsibility of the Israeli government now to clarify and to provide — to provide justification, and not in the sense that justification of the killing itself, but, rather, demystify the circumstances that led to that catastrophic incident, given that it is not unprecedented, a unprecedented event, where many others lost their lives because of the way Israeli army has been dealing with the general population in Gaza and with the facilities that are supposed to be protected.

As you have just said, the car was marked as a World Central Kitchen car. The staff who are there were already recognized by the Israeli army. And they are very well aware that they’re moving while the Israeli army is aware of their very movement. The coordinates of the warehouse that they were entering and leaving in Deir al-Balah is also well known for the Israelis. The place they were unloading the goods and the food items for the people of Gaza are also well known by the Israeli army. However, the incident took place. And I think it’s upon the Israeli government to explain to the world and to the different countries, including Canada, U.S.A., Poland and also — Poland and, I think, U.K., for how this happened and why this happened.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And has there been any improvement in the last week or two of supplies coming into Gaza, especially food and medical supplies?

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Well, the food and medical supplies are still like very scarce in the Gaza Strip. The different U.N. figures have been voicing their concern over the fact that Israel is limiting all the supplies that are entering Gaza. Even more, Israel is being selective about what enters Gaza and what doesn’t enter Gaza. The Palestinian health system at large sustained a very big blow, a very big strike, when the Al-Shifa Hospital was totally destroyed. It lost 800 beds. It lost 100 dialysis machines. And it also lost one-third of the therapeutic services throughout the Gaza Strip. So, the situation is dire, and it continues to get even worse. And Israel is not willing or is not able to allow more food supplies and medical supplies into the Gaza Strip.

Not far away from us is Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah. The hospital is suffering because of the fact they have access to very limited supplies. And they have been calling for the international community, they have been calling for the world, they have been calling even for Israel, to allow unhindered access of the medical supplies and food supplies to help the people. They have a place for the people with dialysis, that need dialysis machines and whose people need — have some nutritional need, and those needs are not met. And if the situation continues the way it is, even the urgent and immediate medical needs of those people are not going to be met, which compromises their whole life.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to talk about this in the context of the looming famine, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians pushed to the brink of famine right now. AP is reporting Cyprus, which has played a key role in trying to establish a sea route to bring food into the territory, said ships that recently arrived were turning back with some 240 tons of undelivered aid. The World [Central] Kitchen, Chef José Andrés’s food charity, was the first to get massive amount of food into Gaza, and now we see what has happened to them. I’m wondering, Akram, are you hungry? Is your family hungry?

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: This is a very critical question. For you to understand, I am a Gazan. Gazan means I am living the very same circumstances that my people are living. Sometimes we — it’s Ramadan time, and sometimes we eat one meal a day. Sometimes the meal is not as decent as you imagine for someone who’s fasting for around 16 hours. This is the situation for most of the people in the Gaza.

But to make a difference, people in the south of Gaza are living a little bit better life than the ones who are living in the northern Gaza. The World Central Bank organized that trip with an intention of delivering the 200 tons of food that were delivered initially in the very first pilot trip to Gaza north and Gaza City, where 700,000 Palestinians are besieged and are denied any access whatsoever, except for very limited quantities since one month and a half up to this particular moment. Now the 1,000 tons that were allowed into — the 200 tons and the 1,000 tons were not allowed into Gaza north and Gaza City, where 700,000 people are waiting for the food.

The famine is not looming. The famine is already taking place. We have around 34 Palestinians, adult and young, who died from the starvation. We have many more people who are complaining about the significant loss of their weight. We have people and children who are eager to eat anything whatsoever. Anything whatsoever. People in the north ate the grass, ate whatever they can eat. They eat also the animal Feed. They are sorting it out. They’re cleaining it. They’re grinding it. They’re making bread out of it. And even when the taste and the smell is not what you expect as a human, they still have to eat it, because they don’t have any other option. That situation continues to be very dire, and that situation continues to deteriorate.

Now some people organized and formed some special committees for the sake of just receiving the food that is allowed, the minimum food that is allowed, from the road between Rafah, Khan Younis and Gaza, Salah al-Din Road, and those people ended up being targeted. Seventy of them were killed. And more than 500 Palestinians were killed in different incidents targeting the people around al-Kuwait Roundabout and al-Nabulsi Roundabout when they’re waiting for the food, when they’re waiting for to eat — 20 different incidents of targeting that took the life of 500 Palestinians and 70 of those who are working to organize everything. The way that is now done — the way that this targeting is done indicates that Israel is willing to deprive those people from any hope and any life whatsoever.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about the Israeli prime minister saying he will ban the award-winning TV network Al Jazeera, this after the Israeli lawmakers, the Knesset, passed a bill allowing for the temporary banning of foreign broadcasters deemed to be a national security threat. Of course, Al Jazeera is the most widely viewed network in the Arab world, one of the few outlets to have reporters inside Gaza, the way the Arab world sees what’s happening in Gaza, and, through Al Jazeera English, the way the rest of the world sees, as well. Your thoughts on what this means? I should also add a number of Al Jazeera reporters have been killed.

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Yes, the issue is that even the Knesset gave that law the name of “Al Jazeera law,” Al Jazeera law, which means that this is an exclusive decision that has been taken for the sake of stopping Al Jazeera from covering, on the grounds of accusation that Al Jazeera is compromising and threatening the Israeli national security. Al Jazeera has reporters inside Palestine, in Gaza Strip, and inside the Israeli territory, and they have been covering the news about the situation.

And I think it is the way they have been doing things that provoked the Israeli Knesset members and the Israeli government, because, number one, the military ground is not — the military ground operation is not going the way they want it to go on, and it’s now the sixth month that they have been facing significant obstacles achieving what they have been achieved. They have warned the Palestinians of an imminent transfer into the Egyptian side. They have been conducting some of the incidents that were described as genocidal behavior by the experts. And some of the footage that was provided by Al Jazeera was used also by South Africa when South Africa was wording and filing and providing the evidences about the ongoing situation in Gaza Strip. And that’s why now Israel is defining Al Jazeera as an enemy and is trying also to chase any other news outlets that might be thinking of providing as comprehensive coverage as the one that Al Jazeera is providing and which is so recognized by the global community and by the people in Palestine and different areas of the Middle East.

So, they are trying to stop Al Jazeera, but I don’t think that they have the power. And when I say “the power,” because now we are shifting. When it comes to the media, we have the media of the citizen, we have the social media, and we have many different platforms. The performance that was conducted by Al Jazeera, I don’t think is going to be stopped by any plan that Israel develops. The only issue and problem for Israel is that now when they are developing and accepting that law, they are making themselves a mockery, because there is no way to stop any voice from saying what they think is right, as long as we have all the alternative media, we have the social media, and we have the citizens’ media. And I think they will continue doing what they can do from Gaza, and sometimes they would have alternative sources from inside Israel, and they will continue their message, and they will continue their mission.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Akram al-Satarri, we want to thank you for being with us, speaking to us from Rafah in Gaza.

And we have this latest news from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. It’s just reported new details about the deadly strike on Chef Andrés’s World Central Kitchen aid workers. The newspaper writes, quote, “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.” That, again, Haaretz reporting the Israeli military ordered the drone strikes, mistakenly thinking a member of Hamas was part of the aid convoy.

***

State Dept. Whistleblower: Biden Is Skirting U.S. Law by Rushing More Bombs & Warplanes to Israel
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 2, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/2/b ... transcript

The Washington Post reports the Biden administration has recently authorized the transfer of billions of dollars in bombs and fighter jets to Israel. The arms package includes more than 1,800 MK-84 2,000-pound bombs, which can be used to level entire city blocks. The U.S. is also sending 500 MK-82 500-pound bombs and 25 F-35 fighter jets. “It has been doing this on a weekly basis since the conflict began, just an open tab of arms,” says Josh Paul, former State Department official who worked on arms transfers before resigning in October to protest increasing arms sales to Israel. “These are the arms that Israel is using to kill not only thousands of civilians but hundreds of aid workers, as well.”

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.

The deadly attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy comes as the Biden administration continues to send massive amounts of arms to Israel. Reuters is reporting the Biden administration is considering a new $18 billion arms package for Israel that would include dozens of F-15 fighter jets. This is in addition to the recent U.S. approval of 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 500 500-pound bombs, as well as 25 F-35 fighter jets.

We’re joined now 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 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 at DAWN — that’s Democracy for the Arab World Now.

Josh, thanks so much for joining us again. I mean, in light of what we are talking about right now, the World Central Kitchen suspending its operations in Gaza after their six workers and their Palestinian driver were hit by airstrikes, Israeli airstrikes, can you talk about this latest news — first The Washington Post exposed the sale of the F-35 fighter jets and other bombs, and now Reuters talking about additional weapon sales to Israel — what this means, how they’re used by Israel?

JOSH PAUL: Thank you for having me.

And perhaps I’ll start with that latter point, because I think this is important context. The strike on the World Central Kitchen comes on the same day that Israel wrapped up its operations in Al-Shifa Hospital, that has left the ground littered with decaying body parts, and nor is it by any means the first strike on humanitarian aid workers. In February, Israel murdered U.S. citizen Mousa Shawwa, logistics coordinator for the charity Anera. In November, it murdered three doctors from Médecins Sans Frontières, Doctors Without Borders. And in December, it murdered Reem Abu Lebdeh, who was a board member of MSF UK. And, of course, in February, after having given direct permission for an ambulance to retrieve 6-year-old Hind Rajab from the car, where she sat with the bodies of her dead parents, Israel struck that ambulance, killing the medics who were on their way to save her.

So, you know, this is a continuing pattern. And in that context, as you note, last week, the U.S. authorized the transfer of over 2,000 more bombs to Israel. This week, I anticipate it will authorize the transfer of a thousand more. It has been doing this on a weekly basis since the conflict began, just an open tap of arms. And these are the arms that Israel is using to kill not only thousands of civilians but hundreds of aid workers, as well.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Josh Paul, this use of U.S. weapons in this way by Israel, we’re talking about not only the killing of aid workers, but the attack on consular offices this week in Syria, of the diplomatic offices of Iran, and the banning of Al Jazeera. What does U.S. law say about how weapons can be used by states that receive them from the United States, when it comes to violations of human rights?

JOSH PAUL: Well, that’s a very good question. There are a variety of laws that should, in theory, apply here, ranging from the requirement that U.S.-provided arms be used in accordance with international law to more specific laws, that, for example, U.S. assistance cannot be provided to a country that is restricting the delivery of U.S.-funded humanitarian assistance. We have seen many examples of Israel restricting, if not striking, the delivery of humanitarian assistance.

So, I think these laws all need to be questioned — called into question, you know, and the important thing here is that that’s not what is happening. In fact, the Biden administration has on purpose not — in seeking legal opinions on whether the arms we are providing to Israel are being used in accordance with the law, it has also not been seeking assessments from the intelligence community of Israel’s actions using U.S. weapons. It is essentially sticking its fingers in its ears and, you know, covering its eyes and saying, you know, “We don’t know what’s going on.” It is making a purposeful decision to not know what is going on. And I have never seen anything like it in my time in government.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Is it even possible, when you’re dealing with 2,000-pound bombs, to talk about protecting civilian life, as Israel continues to do?

JOSH PAUL: Not in the context of a place like Gaza. This is an area, you know, the size of metro Cleveland, basically. And it has dropped thousands of these bombs in that space. It is impossible in that circumstance to talk about the principles of discrimination and proportionality that are central to the laws of armed conflict and international humanitarian law.

AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, journalists questioned U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller about the latest U.S. arms transfer to Israel.

HUMEYRA PAMUK: I understand the fulfilling can take years, but are you basically saying that the authorization of the transfer coming in these recent weeks was a coincidence?

MATTHEW MILLER: So, I’m not saying it’s a coincidence. Israel has been engaged in a military conflict. And, of course, when you are engaged in a military conflict, you deplete your military stocks, and you need to —

HUMEYRA PAMUK: So there was a request in recent weeks for the —

MATTHEW MILLER: And you need to see those — I’m not going to —

HUMEYRA PAMUK: — for the additional fulfilled — for the fulfillment of these particular —

MATTHEW MILLER: So, I’m not going to get into —

HUMEYRA PAMUK: — weapons.

MATTHEW MILLER: I’m not going to get — as is always the case, I’m not going to get into the timings of exact requests from here.

HUMEYRA PAMUK: OK. My final —

MATTHEW MILLER: Let me just — I’ll be quick. That’s a — but this is a process that we keep Congress fully apprised of, our relevant committees.

HUMEYRA PAMUK: OK.

MATTHEW MILLER: But when you see these types of requests and when they get publicly reported — and you have to remember that Israel is in an armed conflict and is expending a great deal of defense materiel, and some of that needs to be replenished for Israel’s long-term security.

HUMEYRA PAMUK: Right. And my final thing on this is, like, the secretary and a lot of senior officials from this administration basically said far too many Palestinians have been killed. But when you go and make the — and we know that the administration’s policy hasn’t changed: It is not conditioning weapons to Israel. But when you go and make such an authorization of the transfer in recent weeks, even if the actual weapons transfer has been approved years ago, don’t you think that is going to damage the weight of your word, your credibility, and basically your sincerity in saying that far too many Palestinians have been killed?

MATTHEW MILLER: So, I do not agree with that at all. We have been very clear that we want to see Israel do everything it can to minimize civilian casualties. We have made clear that they need to do every — that they need to operate at all times in full compliance with international humanitarian law. At the same time, we are committed to Israel’s right to self-defense. …

REPORTER: Just to follow up, a 2,000-pound bomb is self-defensive, in your opinion?

MATTHEW MILLER: It is a — it is a — so, they need to have the ability to defend themself against a very well-armed adversary, like I said, Iran, Hezbollah, which has thousands and thousands of fighters and quite sophisticated materiel and quite sophisticated weaponry, as we’ve seen them deploy — excuse me — against Israel in the last few days. So, yes, they do need the modern military equipment to defend themselves against those adversaries.

REPORTER: Yeah, but they’ve been those in Gaza before, beginning in Gaza.

MATTHEW MILLER: And we have made clear to them that when — that whatever — whatever weapon they use in Gaza, be it a bomb, be it a tank round, be it anything, that we expect them to use those weapons in full compliance with international humanitarian law. And we have said it — we have had very frank conversations with them about the fact that far too many civilians have died through their operations and that they need to do better in taking into account the need to minimize civilian harm. And we’ll continue to do that.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller just last week.

MATTHEW MILLER: We have not found them to be in violation of international humanitarian law, either when it comes to the conduct of the war or when it comes to the provision of humanitarian assistance.

AMY GOODMAN: I assume, Josh Paul, that you know Matthew Miller well. You worked at the State Department for 11 years. Your response?

JOSH PAUL: So, I think there’s a lot to unpack there. Just going back to his last point, again, the point here is that they have not found Israel to not be in compliance with international law, because they have not asked their own lawyers whether that is the case or not. So, for as long as they do not ask the question, they do not get the answer that they do not want.

He also noted, and the reporter who was interviewing him noted, that, you know, this was a case formerly approved by Congress. This was a — for the F-35s. This was a case for F-35s approved by Congress in 2008. That was before the first Iron — Cast Lead, the first significant Israel-Hamas exchange of fire in 2009. And, you know, it comes now in the context of an immediate and ongoing conflict. So, the idea that you can take an authorization that Congress gave in a peacetime context, in a completely different context, and say that this gives us the approval to move forward with these arms transfers now in this new context is very questionable.

And, of course, you know, as was also noted, Israel is continuing to use these bombs — regardless of what Matt said, you know, that it may be able to use them against Hezbollah or against Iran, it is using them in Gaza. And by continuing to provide these arms at the rate that we are doing so, what we are essentially doing is letting Israel choose wherever it wishes to use them, rather than forcing it to make the hard choice of what is actually the threat for which it needs these weapons.

***

Active-Duty U.S. Airman, Inspired by Aaron Bushnell, on Hunger Strike Outside White House over Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 2, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/2/h ... transcript

Democracy Now! speaks with an active-duty soldier in the U.S. Air Force on hunger strike to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Senior Airman Larry Hebert is on day three of his hunger strike outside the White House, where he has been holding a sign that reads “Active Duty Airman Refuses to Eat While Gaza Starves.” “It’s just completely wrong and immoral for civilians to be starved and bombed and targeted in any manner,” says Hebert. “I’m hoping that other active-duty members will be more public with their concern over the atrocities happening in Gaza.” Hebert was inspired by the actions of Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force who set himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., in February to demand a Gaza ceasefire. “What really infuriated me was the silence thereafter. … I don’t know a single member of our government or leaders in the military that really spoke on Aaron, even uttered his name,” says Hebert, who is now looking to leave the military after learning more about U.S. foreign policy. “I can’t see myself continuing service.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We turn now to an active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force who started a hunger strike Sunday outside the White House to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Senior Airman Larry Hebert has been been holding a sign that reads “Active Duty Airman Refuses to Eat While Gaza Starves.” He’s on day three of his hunger strike while on leave from his duty station in Spain. Larry says he was inspired in part by the actions of Aaron Bushnell, the 25-year-old active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force who set himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., in February to demand a Gaza ceasefire. He died.

Senior Airman Larry Hebert joins us now from Washington, D.C., where he’s also hoping to meet with members of Congress. He’s a member of Veterans for Peace.

Larry, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you explain your hunger strike in front of the White House?

LARRY HEBERT: Yes. Thank you. And thank you for having me on, Ma’am. I appreciate it.

So, my hunger strike is obviously in solidarity with the civilians in Gaza. You know, it’s just completely wrong and immoral for civilians to be starved and bombed and targeted in any manner. So, that’s what the hunger strike is specifically for.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Larry, you took authorized leave from your assignment at your naval station in Spain to do this protest. How did you get the permission, and what’s been the response of your superiors?

LARRY HEBERT: Well, to take authorized leave, that’s earned just through, you know, continuing my service, so there’s no specifics on what I have to provide them as far as what I’ll be doing on leave, just that I am taking leave and where, roughly, I’m going.

AMY GOODMAN: Have you gotten response from them, given what you’re doing as you stand in front of the White House conducting your hunger strike?

LARRY HEBERT: I’ve had a couple members from my command reach out. And I expect to speak to my commander fairly soon, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: You want to become a conscientious objector?

LARRY HEBERT: Yes. I mean, I think that’s one of the routes that can be taken. While that process is going, if my command wants to work with me and work out a deal where I’m in either a reassignment or possibly some sort of mutual discharge, I would accept that, as well.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you’ve mentioned the tragedy of Aaron Bushnell and how that affected your outlook and decision. Could you talk about that a little more?

LARRY HEBERT: Yeah. So, what Aaron did was courageous and emotional for me. It really resonated, because what he was feeling was exactly how I was feeling. And obviously, I’m not going to that extent. I don’t think anyone needs to. I think what he did was unique and, you know, was effective.

But what really infuriated me was the silence thereafter his actions. I don’t know a single member of our government or leaders in the military that really spoke on Aaron, even uttered his name. But I had seen people in Yemen and in Gaza, you know, holding up his picture and sending their condolences. And I even saw the official statement from Hamas, who is a deliberate enemy of our military and our government. They issued an official statement sending their condolences to Aaron and his family. So, it really broadened my perspective to see, you know, even our adversaries speaking out and sending their condolences to our own military members.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you have a message, Larry, for other members of the military in the United States or other militaries around what’s going on right now in Gaza? And as you stand in front of the White House and hope to speak to congressmembers in Washington, D.C., what is your message?

LARRY HEBERT: I hope, firstly, that with Aaron’s actions and the members of the State Department that spoke out recently and myself, I’m hoping that other active-duty members will be more public with their concern over the atrocities happening in Gaza. It’s not even — it’s not even a political issue at this point. It’s civilian lives that are on the line, and they are being bombed, shot, raped and starved. There is a mass starving going on, and it’s unconscionable, and it shouldn’t be allowed. And it breaks international law, as well as our own laws.

And I don’t think — I know a lot of active-duty members may be afraid to speak out, but the truth is, is that the military is supposed to be — or at least in the U.S., is supposed to be held to the highest of standards. And what’s happening in Gaza is not the highest of standards. And people need to recognize that and be more public about it.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Larry, you talk about violations of federal law. Veterans for Peace, that you belong to, recently called on the U.S. inspector general to investigate illegal shipments of weapons to Israel. Could you talk about what those violations that you believe are?

LARRY HEBERT: Right. So, I haven’t gone into the logistics of the law itself. I’m not an expert matter on law. But, I mean, you can speak to the experts. Like, we just had on Democracy Now! the woman from the State Department who spoke out and referenced specific laws that were in breach. Veterans for Peace, who I just recently joined, they have the very specific details that they can issue and speak more on.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Larry, you were there in front of the White House as families went onto the White House lawn to engage in the egg hunt, the Easter egg hunt. They were reading your sign. You have two small children. Can you talk about, as we wrap up, why you joined the U.S. military?

LARRY HEBERT: Yeah. So, my reason for joining was I met a lot of veterans when I was working in Oklahoma. And I met retired marine — or, Marines, retired Air Force, retired Army. I met a lot of different backgrounds. And they all told me that joining the Air Force would set me up for life, through education, through housing, through, you know, just the basic pay. And while that was true, there is an element that I realize that I didn’t understand the entirety of, you know, our foreign policy. So, that was my reason for joining. And I don’t entirely regret my time in the military, but now that I’m more aware of our foreign policy and what’s going on, I definitely — I can’t see myself continuing service.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for being with us. I know this is one of the first TV interviews you’ve done, and you are on the third day of your hunger strike. Larry Hebert, active-duty Air Force senior airman, on hunger strike for a ceasefire in Gaza, member of Veterans for Peace, speaking to us from Washington, D.C.

***

Israel “Risking a Two-Front War, Maybe a Three-Front War,” After Latest Strike Against Iran in Syria
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 2, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/2/i ... transcript

Iran has vowed to retaliate after Israel bombed the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, Syria, killing at least seven people, including three senior Iranian commanders and at least four other Iranian officers. Among the dead is senior commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the highest-ranking Iranian military officer to be killed since the U.S. assassinated General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad in 2020. While Israel sees strikes on foreign soil as “part of their self-defense strategy,” Iran feels it must respond to this “breaching serious diplomatic norms,” says Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost, who reports the pace and audacity of Israel’s international attacks have escalated since October. “While Israel is receiving huge amounts of American support, while Gaza is suffering and Israel is pummeling that Strip, we now see them risking a two-front war, maybe a three-front war.”

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.

Iran has vowed to retaliate after Israel bombed the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, Syria, killing at least seven people, including three senior Iranian commanders and at least four other Iranian officers. The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the death toll could be as high as 11. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in the al-Quds Force, is dead. He’s said to be the highest-ranking Iranian military officer to be killed since the U.S. assassinated General Qassem Soleimani under Trump in Baghdad in 2020.

Iran’s Ambassador to Syria Hossen Akbari condemned Israel for striking a diplomatic building. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, quote, “We will make them regretful about the crime and similar acts,” unquote. The Arab League condemned the strike and accused Israel of trying to, quote, “expand the war and push the region to chaos,” unquote. The New York Times described Monday’s attack as among the deadliest in a “yearslong shadow war between Israel and Iran.” The attack in Syria also came a day after Israel assassinated a Hezbollah leader in Lebanon.

We’re joined now by Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost.

Can you talk about the significance of this strike and who died, Akbar?

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Sure, Amy. So, Zahedi, the commander who was killed, was sort of the connective tissue between Iran and a lot of its proxies, specifically Hezbollah in Lebanon, but also folks he worked with in Syria. So this is someone extremely valuable, extremely important to Iran.

And part of the significance is not just who he is, it’s also where he was killed. Right? This is Israel choosing to target a diplomatic facility. Iran has now said that both Zahedi and other people who were targeted had diplomatic passports. So, from their point of view, this is Israel breaching serious diplomatic norms. And the anxiety today is that because Israel has chosen to go after such a senior high-profile person, there cannot not be a response — right? — either from Iran or from some of its allies. So, what does that look like? And what’s the spiral of violence and escalation we’re now on?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Akbar, could you talk about this? It’s been decades now that Israel has used this policy of assassinations and often attacks in other countries on people that it determines to be immediate enemies of itself. How has the international community allowed this and basically turned away from looking at these consistent acts of what can only be called terror?

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: So, Juan, the Israelis see this as part of their self-defense strategy, right? They do a very effective job of convincing lawmakers, U.S. officials, European officials, that they need to do this, or they’ll be at risk. What’s really different now, after October 7th, is the pace of these strikes and the audacity. Right? While Israel is receiving huge amounts of American support, while Gaza is suffering and Israel is pummeling that Strip, we now see them risking a two-front war, maybe a three-front war. And that’s where — yes, there’s a decades-old pattern of them doing this. That’s where we’re in a totally different, more dangerous phase right now. And I think while the U.S. has quietly sort of conveyed its message to Iran — “We don’t want this to escalate, we weren’t involved, we’re not responsible” — it’s really hard to avoid miscalculations on all sides. And again, from the Iranian point of view, they can’t let this go unresponded to.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Akbar, if you can talk about why you think this has happened right now, and what you think this means? We have response from all over. Ali Vaez, Iran analyst for the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera Israel may be pushing to expand the war in what would be a, quote, “win-win situation” for Israel. Why?

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Sure. So, this is so much about the political calculus of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And that’s very much the assessment not just here in Washington among a lot of U.S. officials who are really worried about where this is going. It’s also the assessment of a lot of Israelis — right? — that Netanyahu sees this as a moment to create a rally-around-the-flag effect. And timing wise, I think it’s important to remember, six months into their war on Gaza, they haven’t gotten the scalp that they wanted to, of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza. They haven’t brought home the hostages, the Israelis they wanted to bring home. So it’s a distraction — right? — for Netanyahu.

I think, in terms of the significance, too, we cannot help but think about the most horrifying aspect of this — right? — which is the N-word, the “nuclear” word. Because of President Donald Trump withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, which was working, Iran is now closer to developing a nuclear weapon than it ever has been before, right? That’s a Trump decision. Now, if Iran assesses they need to establish deterrence and confidence and send a signal to Israel, will they go down that path? And that’s where the U.S. starts to risk being involved, too.

So, what I’m hearing a lot from my sources across kind of U.S. government and intelligence is there’s a lot of alarm bells going off right now, saying the Israelis seem to want to suck us, as Americans, into a broader war, potentially in Lebanon, potentially with Iran. And what’s really striking is that the highest levels of the Biden administration, whether that’s the White House, the State Department, don’t seem yet to be managing those risks. There are quiet diplomatic channels, but there’s no guarantee. And what you have on the U.S. side is rhetoric, saying, “We don’t want to see a regional war,” but you don’t have actual action. Right? You don’t see the U.S. saying, “We won’t send Israel fighter jets, bombs, etc., etc., because of the risk of war.” And I think that’s what’s lacking right now.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you mentioned the domestic problems that Netanyahu faces. As the protests, and massive protests, calling for his resignation grow, is it your sense that the extremism of the actions of the Netanyahu government will also grow, sort of as a means of deflecting — not distracting, but really deflecting — the opposition he faces internally?

AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: It’s a real risk, Juan. And I think there’s a few factors there, right? So, of course, Hezbollah, which is the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon, Hezbollah has indisputably hit Israelis, right? There is a lot of fear among Israelis, tens of thousands of whom have left northern Israel for fear of an October 7th-style attack by Hezbollah. So, Netanyahu can tap into that fear.

And the added layer of this is that there’s Netanyahu’s political survival, and then there’s the question of who comes after Netanyahu if he does fall. And at a moment where upwards of 70% of the Israeli public are in a sort of pro-war mood — right? — are still feeling under attack, into retaliation, there’s also a benefit for other politicians to seem hawkish, so that means Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who has kind of led the threats against Lebanon. It could also mean some of the candidates who the U.S. really has talked about as alternatives to Netanyahu, like Benny Gantz. There isn’t really an anti-hawkish narrative inside the Israeli body politic right now. There’s an anti-Netanyahu one. So the actual risk of war, I think, is only growing.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much for being with us, Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost. We’ll link to your articles at democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

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“A War Machine Out of Control”: Israel Keeps Attacking Aid Workers as Gaza Faces Famine
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 3, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/3/i ... transcript

We speak with Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, about Israel’s ongoing attacks against aid workers in the Gaza Strip. Israel has admitted it killed seven volunteers with World Central Kitchen on Monday after repeatedly bombing their clearly marked vehicle convoy, leading the humanitarian relief group to suspend its operations in Gaza and further restricting distribution of badly needed food amid a growing famine in the territory. Other aid groups have followed suit, citing the lack of safety. This comes after Israel had earlier banned UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, from bringing aid into northern Gaza, where the need is greatest. Egeland says even Israel’s international backers need to rein in “a war machine out of control” that is causing so much death and destruction. “If you have a conflict where there is a world record in killing protected categories of personnel, then the law is broken to pieces. There’s no other way to see it.” He also calls for an end to international arms sales to Israel and resumed funding and support for UNRWA.

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.

Israel is facing global condemnation over the killing of seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen who had brought food into Gaza by ship to feed starving Palestinians. The aid workers were killed when an Israeli drone fired three missiles at the group’s clearly marked convoy, even though the charity had coordinated the convoy’s route with the Israeli military. At the United Nations, Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the Israeli attack.

SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: The devastating Israeli airstrikes that killed World Central Kitchen personnel yesterday bring the number of aid workers killed in this conflict to 196, including more than 175 members of our own U.N. staff. This is unconscionable, but it is an inevitable result of the way the war is being conducted.

AMY GOODMAN: The killed aid workers included three British nationals, an Australian, a Polish national, an American-Canadian dual citizen and a Palestinian. In a video address, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed Israel attacked the convoy.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] Unfortunately, in the last day there was a tragic case of our forces unintentionally hitting innocent people in the Gaza Strip. This happens in wartime. We are thoroughly looking into it, are in contact with the foreign governments of those killed, and will do everything to ensure it does not happen again.

AMY GOODMAN: “This happens in wartime.” Meanwhile, President Biden said he was, quote, “outraged and heartbroken” over the deaths, but at a White House press briefing, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby refused to say if Israel had broken international law.

NIALL STANAGE: Is firing a missile at people delivering food and killing them not a violation of international humanitarian law?

JOHN KIRBY: Well, the Israelis have already admitted that this was a mistake that they made. They’re doing an investigation. They’ll get to the bottom of this. Let’s not get ahead of that. … The State Department has a process in place. And to date, as you and I are speaking, they have not found any incidents where the Israelis have violated international humanitarian law.

AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, Chef José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen and at least two other groups said they would pause operations in Gaza after the attack. Meanwhile, HuffPost reports a group of U.S. officials at USAID have privately warned the Biden administration the spread of hunger and malnutrition in Gaza is unprecedented in modern history and that parts of Gaza are already experiencing famine.

For more, we go to Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, speaking to us from Oslo, Norway.

Jan, thanks for joining us again. Can you start off by responding to the Israeli airstrike on the three-car convoy that killed seven international aid workers?

JAN EGELAND: It was horrific. And remember, this was targeted. It was repeated attacks — first one car, then the next car, then the third car, and a couple of the cars were targeted several times. It’s not likely that the Israelis wanted to kill the colleagues from World Central Kitchen. World Central Kitchen had worked closely with the Israeli forces to get out support to Palestinians in northern Gaza. But they surely hit cars that they did not know what was inside. And that’s the story of this war.

So, when the State Department is saying, “We cannot see any violations of humanitarian law,” they haven’t read the humanitarian law, because there has to be precaution, there has to be distinction between military and civilians, and there has to be proportionality. And after thousands of dead children, thousands of dead women — all completely innocent of the 7th of October — hundreds of doctors, hundreds of nurses, hundreds of teachers and 200 humanitarian workers, before the international workers were killed, it’s very clear that this has been a disproportionate response to what happened, the horrors of the 7th of October, in violation of international law, every day, basically, since mid-October.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Jan Egeland, in that vein, I’d like to ask you — excuse me — about a recent report in The Observer over the weekend, in England, that a member of Parliament, Alicia Kearns, a Conservative Party member and the chair of the House of Commons select committee, was at a fundraiser, and there was a leaked tape of her remarks there. And she said, in that leaked tape, that the British Foreign Office has received official legal advice that Israel has broken international humanitarian law, but that the government has not announced it and has kept it quiet. I’m wondering, especially in view of the fact that three British nationals were killed in this latest attack, your response to the fact that the British government is hiding the fact its own lawyers have said Israel is violating international law.

JAN EGELAND: Well, I just met Alicia Kearns in London, and she’s a very fine politician. She went to Rafah. She saw all of the trucks that were lining up, not able to go into Gaza. She wrote letters about that to both the U.K. government, and she approached the Israelis. I mean, she is really engaged on this, as so many others have become as they see the injustice in what’s happening to the population of Gaza. Whether the U.K. government is concealing advice on this, I cannot say. But the facts speak for themselves. If you have a conflict where there is a world record in killing protected categories of personnel, then the law is broken, you know, to pieces. There’s no other way to see it.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to a tweet where you said, “The US, the UN, the EU and the rest of the world agree that we are at the brink of famine in Northern Gaza. Still, only 159 trucks were allowed into Gaza yesterday and Israel blocks all food convoys from UNRWA to reach North Gaza. There must be accountability for this.” Then you go on in another tweet to say, “The horrific, targeted, repeated attack that killed 7 WCK aid workers follow nearly 200 Palestinian humanitarians killed by Israel’s military campaign. Now — FINALLY — Western govts providing arms to the killing say 'enough.' … Immediate ceasefire ending the killing of civilians–A protection scheme that guarantees safety for humanitarian work–Opening of land crossings for massive aid to the North–ending chaotic air & sea delivery–No military invasion of the world’s largest refugee camp: Rafah.” You tweeted that.

In the United States, President Biden talked about being heartbroken, but, as The New York Times reports, Biden administration is pressing Congress on $18 billion sale of F-15 jets to Israel. This follows the deal made with F-35 jets and many 2,000-pound bombs and 500-pound bombs. Can you respond to the U.S. and other countries supplying these weapons at this point to Israel?

JAN EGELAND: Well, my own country, Norway, a NATO country, has refrained from sending arms to Israel for quite some time. So has many other countries. It is really mind-boggling if the U.S. now sends these large bombs, that are by nature indiscriminate, to a place with so many thousands of dead children. Are they not thinking of the consequences for their moral authority in the rest of the world? What does this mean for the West’s arguments in Ukraine? If it is wrong, as it is, for Russia to occupy Ukrainian territory, kill Ukrainian civilians, target Ukrainian infrastructure, how could it possibly be correct when the Israelis do the same to the Palestinians, and with U.S. arms?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jan Egeland, I’d like to ask you, the — your organization, like others, that provide assistance in Gaza, have to coordinate your activities, obviously, with the Israeli military. What does this latest attack mean for those future efforts, when, clearly, even organizations that coordinate closely with the military so that they’re not attacked end up being still attacked?

JAN EGELAND: Well, we have coordinated with Israel now for many years. I was myself in Gaza to travel to Rafah and traveled around in Rafah. And we sought permission, as we have to, by Israel. Israel controls everything going in and everyone going into Gaza. And we also coordinated my movements there. Nothing happened to me. Nothing really has happened to our NRC convoys, aid operations. But we are largely in the southern third of Gaza, where the majority of the Palestinians are.

I think the whole thing shows the horrific killing of seven of my colleagues in the World Central Kitchen, that I know well. I saw their good operations. I ate one of their meals when I was in Rafah. It was a very good meal. And the Palestinians, whom they feed millions of meals every day, rely on this. I think what’s happened will lead to a reboot of the system for protection for humanitarian work. The U.S., U.K., Germany and others cannot live with a war machine out of control that is sort of targeting cars without knowing what’s inside, as they did in this case and in multiple other cases. So I think there will be a new and better deconfliction or notification system, coordination system — there are many names for them — even in the northern parts of Gaza, where it has been most dangerous.

AMY GOODMAN: The World Central Kitchen boat still had 240 tons of food on board the boat. It left Gaza Tuesday. The WCK says they’re suspending operations. Other groups say that. What about the Norwegian Refugee Council? And can you talk about this in conjunction with the defunding of UNRWA, the kind of umbrella that facilitates all of this, what this means as the region descends, the Strip descends into famine?

JAN EGELAND: Yeah, the World Central Kitchen is withdrawing. So are some other groups, which is terrible, because they were important for our collected efforts to avoid famine in Gaza. NRC, my own Norwegian Refugee Council, we are not leaving. We are continuing to work today and tomorrow. We have, however, suspended some of our movements, and we’re not going north for the time being, because it’s considered too difficult, too dangerous. Israel is not allowing conditions for that. And it’s in the north, the remaining population there, that is engulfed in the worst famine.

UNRWA is the backbone, really, of social services for the Palestinians. It was created by the United States and the other original members of the United Nations when Israel was created and it led to the Nakba and hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees. UNRWA was created by all of us to take care of the Palestinians that were suffering because of the Holocaust in Europe and the creation of Israel. Since then, UNRWA has become essential in Gaza. They are much bigger than all of the others combined — NRC, the other U.N. agencies, World Central Kitchen, etc., etc., etc. We’re not even half of what UNRWA is. So, when the U.S. Congress and the Biden administration says, “We’re not going to give you money,” and so are — so was a number of other donors, because of allegations — no evidence provided — allegations that some of these 13,000 staff, a dozen, dirty dozen, perhaps participated in the horrors of the 7th of October, you can’t believe that our very own donors make it difficult for us to help the Palestinian population. UNRWA is essential. UNRWA needs to be funded. Stop the games with politicizing aid to children.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think the U.S. should stop weapons sales and weapons transfers to Israel?

JAN EGELAND: I cannot see any nation giving arms to any war where there are these kind of casualties among children, women, aid workers, journalists. Colleagues of you, Amy, are killed en masse in Gaza. No, yeah, of course they shouldn’t give arms to that. They could have their fingerprints all over a crime scene.

AMY GOODMAN: Jan Egeland, we want to thank you for being with us, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

***

Israel Moves to Ban Al Jazeera in Latest Attack on Journalists Who Expose Horrors of War & Occupation
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 3, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/3/i ... transcript

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel says he will “act immediately” to ban Al Jazeera in the country after the Knesset passed a law Monday that allows the government to shut down foreign news networks deemed to be threats to national security. Al Jazeera, one of the few outlets with local reporters in Gaza, denounced the move and said it was part of a pattern of Israeli attacks on the Qatar-based network, including targeting its journalists in Gaza since October 7 and the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh in the occupied West Bank in 2022. For more, we speak with Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and president of the U.S./Middle East Project, who says Netanyahu’s move to ban Al Jazeera is “red meat to his own base … in a situation in which the war is not going particularly well for Israel. He’s looking for distractions.”

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.

Press freedom groups are denouncing plans by Israel to ban the award-winning TV network Al Jazeera. On Monday, Israeli lawmakers passed a bill allowing for the temporary banning of foreign broadcasters they deem to be a national security threat. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on social media, quote, “Al Jazeera harmed Israel’s security, actively participated in the Oct. 7 massacre, and incited against Israeli soldiers. It is time to remove the bullhorn of Hamas from our country,” he tweeted.

Al Jazeera, which is funded by the Qatari government, is the most widely viewed network in the Arab world, is one of the few outlets to have reporters inside Gaza. Mohamed Moawad, the managing editor for Al Jazeera’s Arabic channel, denounced Israel’s move to ban the network.

MOHAMED MOAWAD: This move alleging Al Jazeera of siding with terrorists is baseless. It’s alarming. Our work is — we uphold the highest standards of journalistic professionalism. Al Jazeera has been there in Israel and in the Palestinian Territories covering the war from both sides. Our work is corroborated and has been corroborated by so many outlets around the world. … The fact that we are on the ground covering from the field, giving voice to the voiceless, bringing this account which is not available on any other outlet, having correspondents covering from north Gaza, reporting on the starvation there, is very important. And I think the Israeli government is feeling pressure by our coverage. But what we are doing is try to give voice to the voiceless and try and make sure that the suffering of civilians on the ground is heard by the entire world.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Mohamed Moawad, the managing editor for Al Jazeera’s Arabic channel.

For more, we go to London. We’re joined by Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project, former Israeli peace negotiator under Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin.

Thanks so much for joining us again, Daniel. Start off by responding to what this means and what Netanyahu is threatening.

DANIEL LEVY: Netanyahu has passed a law — it’s now law in Israel — that Al Jazeera cannot broadcast. How that is implemented is equipment taken, our people arrested, our vendors who work with Al Jazeera unable to do so. That has not played out yet, Amy. That applies to Israel-occupied East Jerusalem, occupied West Bank. Gaza, which is a war zone, the Al Jazeera work was not in any way dealing with Israeli vendors or the Israeli system, of course. And we’re seeing at this stage still Al Jazeera reports coming out of both spaces.

But Netanyahu has passed this law. It’s important to note that not a single Zionist member of the Knesset voted against the law. If we remember before October 7th, there were these big protests: Save Israeli democracy from Netanyahu. Well, none of the opposition parties that are Zionist chose to oppose this law, which the Association for Civil Rights in Israel has called political, not security-related, and a dangerous challenge to freedom of the press and freedom of expression. The two parties representing Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel did vote against in that parliamentary vote.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Daniel Levy, what evidence is there, if any, that — as the government says, that Al Jazeera actively participated in the October 7th attack?

DANIEL LEVY: Well, there is none whatsoever. Israel has not presented any evidence. It hasn’t really intended to do so. What’s going on here? Prime Minister Netanyahu, in part, is playing to a domestic political audience. He has set Qatar, he has set Al Jazeera up to be a figure of hate. Israelis are not being shown in their own media a whole different world of problems, the level of censorship and self-censorship inside the Israeli media. So, this is red meat to his own base, to the domestic politics, in a situation in which the war is not going particularly well for Israelis, looking for distractions.

I think other things that are going on here is, of course, that he doesn’t want these images and this message to come out. We saw that in May 2021 Israel bombed the media tower in Gaza, the al-Jalaa tower, where Al Jazeera and AP and others had their offices. We remember, just under two years ago, Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by the Israeli forces. We know that approximately a hundred journalists, the family of the major Al Jazeera correspondent Wael Dahdouh, himself injured, his family killed — so, these people have been killed.

And I think another piece of this is Netanyahu going not just against Al Jazeera, but trying to push back, and it’s part of his effort against Qatar. The Israelis run an aggressive campaign against Qatar in the U.S. and elsewhere. Qatar is mediating these talks. They’ve met with members of the families of the hostages. They are involved with the head of the CIA and with the head of the Israeli Mossad. But Netanyahu has systematically and frequently tried to undercut and undermine these negotiations. And this is another example of him doing so.

And how can he get away with this? It’s the same as the story of World Central Kitchen. It’s the same as how come this has created the worst hunger crisis anywhere in the world, according to the U.N. secretary-general, the number of Palestinian civilian deaths, U.N. workers, aid workers. Because he can get away with it, because the United States, his major backer and defender, continues to provide the arms and the weapons, the latest including 2,000-pound bombs.

***

Ex-Israeli Negotiator Slams U.S. Arming of Israel Following Aid Convoy Attack & Iran Consulate Bombing
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 3, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/3/i ... transcript

As Benjamin Netanyahu faces mass protests at home and increasing diplomatic pressure abroad, we speak with Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and president of the U.S./Middle East Project. He says Netanyahu is desperate to save his political prospects, primarily by continuing the war on Gaza for as long as possible and undercutting ceasefire talks. “Prime Minister Netanyahu needs this war to continue and is willing and has already gone to extreme lengths to do so,” says Levy, who faults the Biden administration for not applying any real pressure on him. “Stop telling me that Netanyahu is a problem. You’re the problem, because you’re the enabler, you’re the facilitator.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: So, your comment on this? Do you think the U.S. should cut off the arms flow to Israel? I mean, this is very significant coming from you. You were an adviser to past prime ministers. You’re a peace negotiator under two prime ministers of Israel. Do you think the U.S. should cut off the arms flow?

DANIEL LEVY: I think it depends, Amy. If the administration want to continue to see civilian deaths at an astronomical scale, a humanitarian catastrophe unparalleled, more than three times the number of children, according to Save the Children, killed in this conflict in Gaza as are killed in every conflict around the world in an entire year, if they want to continue to see that level of destruction, if they want to continue to see U.S. complicity in that, the U.S. violating the provisional measures of the International Court of Justice, the U.S. being the prime violator of international law rather than its upholder, then go ahead and continue to provide those offensive, destructive, horrific weapons.

If, by contrast, the U.S. wants to be within the law and wants to end this war, and, by the way, to successfully advance the negotiations to get a ceasefire and to get the hostages out, if that’s the goal of the Biden administration, stop telling me you’re heartbroken. Stop telling me, “This is so sad. We’re talking to the Israelis. They should do it differently. Let’s work out how to do Rafah.” Stop telling me that Netanyahu is a problem. You’re the problem, because you’re the enabler, you’re the facilitator, every single day that you continue to back this horrendous war, which is tragic for Palestinians and, I would argue, doing nothing to advance Israeli security, either — in fact, quite the opposite — and which now risks a broader regional escalation and conflagration after the latest provocation in Syria by Israel.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Daniel Levy, I wanted to ask you about that. We have only about a minute. But this latest provocation that you talked about, the attack in Syria, do you sense that Netanyahu, given the deep unpopularity that he has and the massive protests against him, is even willing to escalate this conflict more to be able to maintain his power?

DANIEL LEVY: It’s a crucial question, and I don’t see how we can’t take that very seriously. We have to take that seriously. He has bombed a diplomatic compound. He has done something which was clearly escalatory and a new level of provocation. Will Iran, Hezbollah maintain the kind of strategic patience that they’ve shown? Will there be pressure on this? There’s clearly not pressure to save Palestinian civilians, but is this where there might be pressure? I think we have to take very seriously that Prime Minister Netanyahu needs this war to continue and is willing and has already gone to extreme lengths to do so. There is a protest movement in Israel, not, unfortunately, against the war, but to prioritize getting a deal for the hostage release. We need everyone to lean into that, which requires real leverage and a real cost for Israel for continuing on this devastating path.

AMY GOODMAN: Daniel Levy, we want to thank you for being with us, president of the U.S./Middle East Project, former Israeli peace negotiator under Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin.

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Palestinian American Dr. Walks Out of Biden Meeting, Hands Him Letter from 8-Year-Old Orphan in Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 4, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/4/d ... transcript

This week the White House canceled a planned Ramadan dinner after many Muslim American leaders refused to attend as the Biden administration indicates it plans to continue arming Israel. Instead, Biden held a scaled-back meeting Tuesday with Muslim American community figures. The curtailed meeting was itself met with protests, including from Palestinian American emergency room physician Dr. Thaer Ahmad, who walked out after handing Biden a letter from an 8-year-old orphaned Palestinian girl named Hadeel that read, “I beg you, President Biden, stop them from entering Rafah.” Ahmad tells Democracy Now! that he also told Biden, “Make no mistake about it. It’s going to be a bloodbath,” before walking out. Ahmad is a board member for MedGlobal who recently spent three weeks in Gaza volunteering at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. He joins us today to discuss the meeting with Biden, in which Ahmad, the only Palestinian American in attendance, was told he and other attendees would be the first people who had actually been in Gaza after October 7 to directly brief the president. “This meeting was not going to be impactful,” says Ahmad, who shares how Biden’s continued backing of Israel, even after its attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy left an American citizen dead, indicates that “nobody is safe” in the Gaza Strip.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: President Biden is scheduled to speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today for the first time since Israeli forces sparked international outrage by killing seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen. The organization’s founder, Chef José Andrés, has accused Israel of systematically targeting the aid workers, who went to Gaza with a shipload of aid to feed starving Palestinians.

While Biden has said he was outraged by the killings, the White House has indicated it plans to keep arming Israel, even as the death toll in Gaza tops 33,000. The Biden administration is preparing to approve a new $18 billion arms deal for Israel that includes as many as 50 American-made F-15 fighter jets. The U.S. also recently approved sending 1,800 2,000-pound bombs, which can be used to level entire city blocks, as well 500 more 500-pound bombs.

AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this week, the White House was forced to cancel its planned Ramadan dinner after many Muslim American leaders refused to go to protest Biden’s Gaza policy. Instead of a dinner, Biden held a scaled-back meeting Tuesday with Muslim American community figures, but that, too, was met with protests.

The Palestinian American emergency room physician Thaer Ahmad walked out of the White House meeting. Before leaving, he gave President Biden a letter from an 8-year-old orphaned Palestinian girl named Hadeel that read, “I beg you, President Biden, stop them from entering Rafah.”

Dr. Thaer Ahmad is a board member for MedGlobal, which has an office in Gaza and is working with the World Health Organization. He recently volunteered at Al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, in Gaza. Dr. Thaer Ahmad joins us now from Chicago.

Dr. Ahmad, thanks so much for being with us. Can you describe that meeting? I mean, it was hours after we learned of the killing of the seven aid workers in Gaza. Talk about how the meeting — the dinner was canceled, who was at the meeting, and what you did there in meeting President Biden.

DR. THAER AHMAD: You know, this meeting, we first started to hear about it a week prior to its schedule, and it was pitched as a working dinner. It was in lieu of the annual Ramadan iftar that the White House does. But this, given the circumstances and the famine that was in Gaza, they wanted to do a working dinner with the president. Well, the few members of the Muslim American community really pushed back on that, and they said it didn’t feel appropriate to be eating and talking about a famine. It actually came off as quite distasteful. And it was changed to a working meeting with the president, where it would just be direct, intimate conversation with the president of the United States, the vice president and other members of his administration.

And I was the only Palestinian American doctor there, but there was also going to be other medical professionals. And we were told that we were going to be the first people to brief the president about the situation on the ground who had actually been in Gaza after October 7th. And so, you know, leading up to this meeting, we thought this might be an opportunity to really relay the message, even though it was quite surprising to hear that the president had not really spoken with anybody who had been working on the ground directly. His other staff members have, but President Biden himself had not heard from people who had been on the ground.

But as you had mentioned in the lead-up here, there were so many different incidents that took place over the past week, that really, you know, suggested that this meeting was not going to be impactful, and, in fact, it may have been better to just not attend this meeting. And I think the World Central Kitchen thing was the last, was the final event, when you saw seven aid workers get assassinated. I just want to remind people, these were three separate missiles, three different vehicles, as a part of the World Central Kitchen convoy, and they were hit multiple times. I mean, when José Andrés says this is targeted, he’s justified in suggesting that. And it’s also important to know that despite the famine that’s in the north, World Central Kitchen was one of the few organizations that was consistently coordinating with the Israeli military to be able to access the north. And so, this came on the heels of the weapons deals, of the bombs that are being transferred. And so, even if there’s a change in the rhetoric with the Biden administration, the actions of that week really upset all of the people who were attending.

And when we finally sat in the meeting and the president began with his remarks just saying, “We want hear from you guys. This is a listening session,” I ultimately had to excuse myself, after telling him that, you know, Rafah needs to be a red line. Under no circumstance can there be an Israeli invasion into Rafah, given everything that we’ve heard about how the Israelis operate. And anybody that’s trying to convince the president or his staff or the administration that it can be done in a safe manner is not telling you the truth. It cannot be done. You cannot evacuate Palestinians out of Rafah and treat them like sheep, assuming they can be herded around anywhere, and assume everything is going to go fine. I said, “Make no mistake about it. It’s going to be a bloodbath.” And then I got up and handed him that letter from Hadeel, the orphan, and excused myself and walked out of the meeting.

AMY GOODMAN: And what did Biden say?

DR. THAER AHMAD: He just looked at the letter, and he said he understood, because I let him know that, you know, the community that I hail from, the Palestinian diaspora, it’s reeling. We’re grieving. We feel like for six months we’ve been totally ignored. And with all of the decisions that were made over the past couple of weeks alone, it suggested that we still were not going to have a voice, that we still were not going to have a seat at the table and be able to share our concerns, and for those concerns to be met with serious deliberation and to be acknowledged at the very minimum.

And, you know, the U.N. Security Council passed a ceasefire resolution that the U.S. abstained from. Why then do we hear, at the very next moment, the State Department undermining that resolution and saying, “Oh, it’s nonbinding”? Why are we hearing about, you know, all of the fighter jets? And somebody made to say, “Oh, you know, this $18 billion worth of fighter jets and ammunition, it’s years away.” But it’s literally — it’s what it means. It suggests that the United States is going to continue Israel with military aid, and it suggests also that they’re comfortable with how they’re prosecuting the war. And, you know, for every single person that’s interested in this — Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, progressive, human rights defender, humanitarian — everybody is totally against how this war has been prosecuted and the incredible amount of suffering that has taken place, you know, famine in the north, invasion in the south, and infrastructure devastated everywhere. You know, I was in Nasser Hospital. Nasser is just one of the many different hospitals that has been systematically targeted. If we lose all of the hospital infrastructure and healthcare system and healthcare workers, if this invasion happens in Rafah, where are they supposed to go? Where are they supposed to get treatment if there are somehow casualties? Netanyahu suggested that in war — after the World Central Kitchen convoy’s attack, initially he said, “War, sometimes, you know, this is what happens. It’s unfortunate or tragic.” Well, what about the 1.7 million Palestinians in Rafah, if they’re just mistakenly hit? Is that just tragic because they’re going to die in the street, because the healthcare system can’t afford to treat them? And so, these were some of the concerns that we had when we were approaching this meeting, and it’s the concern of the entire international NGO community.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I want to turn, Dr. Ahmad, to Wednesday’s press briefing at the White House, where Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, took questions about Tuesday’s meeting.

NANCY CORDES: Was last night the president’s first opportunity to speak face to face with someone who had been on the ground providing aid in Gaza?

PRESS SECRETARY KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: So, look, I can’t speak to the different — the different leaders who have been in this meeting. It is a private meeting. …

ASMA KHALID: If I can also go back to something that was asked earlier —

PRESS SECRETARY KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: Yeah.

ASMA KHALID: — about the president meeting with any aid workers or anybody who’s been inside of Gaza since October 7th? It is a question I’ve also privately posed to —

PRESS SECRETARY KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: Yeah.

ASMA KHALID: — some of your colleagues. And it feels like a yes-or-no question, whether or not he’s actually met with somebody who’s been inside. And the reason I’m asking is, a number of people at the meeting said, to their knowledge, this was the first time the president had actually —

PRESS SECRETARY KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: Yeah.

ASMA KHALID: — spoken to anybody who’s been inside of Gaza since October 7th, and I just wanted to confirm that.

PRESS SECRETARY KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: Well, here’s what I can tell you. He’s met with community leaders who are, obviously, from the Muslim community, the Arab community, Palestinian community. I would let them speak for themselves on if they’ve been to Gaza.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Dr. Ahmad, your response to what Jean-Pierre said?

DR. THAER AHMAD: Yeah, I mean, it’s clear that she doesn’t want to answer the question, because it was the first time that the president would be in front of somebody. And, you know, they may — it may be that the president is well briefed on the situation, has all of the numbers, has all the facts and figures. And I’m sure that they’re, you know, aware of what’s happening with respect to the Gaza Strip. But the level of detail that you can get with people who have been on the ground, I think, is vital information. And I also know that we’re talking about Israeli counterparts who are probably briefing the entire administration far more regularly than anybody from the Palestinian community, from the Muslim community, from aid organizations that are on the ground. And it’s important for the president to hear some of the concerns of people who were on the ground, who actually interacted with the people that are suffering, who were in different hospitals. A lof of this is important because so much of the rhetoric surrounding some of the healthcare system attacks or the aid convoy attacks or kind of what is taking place in the streets of Palestine and Gaza, so much of that rhetoric is dominated only by the Israelis. You don’t hear about what’s going on from the Palestinian perspective on the ground. They’re not able to share with you that 10,000 families were sheltering in Nasser Hospital prior to it being raided. They can’t tell you that at Shifa Hospital complex, after it was raided and shut down in November, that it was slowly coming up to speed and that people who were sheltering had returned there. The emergency department started to see patients again. You don’t get to hear that aspect of it. And I think that’s truly tragic, considering it’s been six months of this conflict, and this would be the first time that the president had been able to do that.

The other thing I want to mention, too, is, you know, with respect to the World Central Kitchen, the president did say that he was outraged about this. I know he’s going to have a phone call with Prime Minister Netanyahu with respect to this. But it’d be important also if the president got to hear from other aid organizations that had also been hit. You know, Medical Aid for Palestine, back in January, they have a compound with International Rescue Committee that was hit. Thankfully, nobody died. But it’s important to figure out why did the Israeli military strike that compound with a missile. Doctors Without Borders, they’ve had two people being killed in an airstrike, as well. It’s important to hear from them. Why did that happen? You know, this is a systematic thing that’s taken place with respect to targeting aid convoys, healthcare workers, healthcare institutions, civilian infrastructure. And so, for people who actually were on the ground, directly affected by this, I think it’s important for the president to hear about this.

And so, you know, the other thing is, there’s something that I think the Biden administration should hear loud and clear. It’s people want to be able to contribute and engage and share their opinions. They want a voice. They want a seat at the table. But it’s got to be meaningful. It’s got to be impactful. People have been talking for six months about what’s important to happen in the Gaza Strip. And that’s a ceasefire, and that’s getting aid in. And there’s been no concrete steps towards that. In fact, it’s been the opposite. It’s only been a blank check given to the Israelis and just diplomatic cover with every single horrific thing that emerges out of the Gaza Strip. And I think that’s why people are [inaudible] the meeting. That’s why people want to engage with the president and the vice president, but are not going to do so until they see something changes with respect to policy and action.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Ahmad, also to say what you mentioned, that there have been as many as 190 aid workers killed before this week’s attack and death of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers. But I want to go now to National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby being questioned Tuesday.

NIALL STANAGE: Is firing a missile at people delivering food and killing them not a violation of international humanitarian law?

JOHN KIRBY: Well, the Israelis have already admitted that this was a mistake that they made. They’re doing an investigation. They’ll get to the bottom of this. Let’s not get ahead of that. … The State Department has a process in place. And to date, as you and I are speaking, they have not found any incidents where the Israelis have violated international humanitarian law.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Dr. Ahmad, that Israel has not violated international humanitarian law, your response?

DR. THAER AHMAD: Yeah, I mean, I would say if you were to ask John Kirby if any civilian or innocent person has died in this war, I guarantee you he’d probably give you a very vague answer and say, “We have not found anything to suggest that in any of our investigations.” I mean, he is totally — it’s totally ridiculous and outrageous for that to be the response, especially this is in the setting of the World Central Kitchen tragedy of seven people being killed, this is the sort of response that you get. And I think, for me, that’s part of the problem here, is the messaging that we’re hearing, especially from somebody like John Kirby. It’s something that is totally unacceptable.

We are hearing about violation after violation. I’m not a lawyer, but it’s kind of strange to hear that the entire community of people who have been looking at international humanitarian law, all of the experts, the eyewitnesses, are suggesting that there is some serious violations taking place here, and it’s happening multiple times over the course of six months, that, in fact, it starts to suggest that there’s a pattern of behavior in place here, and then, instead, you get a response saying, “Be patient. Watch out. We’ve got to look into investigation. Everything we’ve seen so far has suggested that there isn’t anything there.” I mean, there’s 33,000 dead Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. How did that happen? I mean, John Kirby wouldn’t be able to answer that question, based on the tone that he’s taken.

And I think that’s, again, highlighting what we’re talking about when we say it seems like this sort of support, this diplomatic cover for the Biden administration is unwavering. Even though the rhetoric or tone may change here and there with respect to acknowledging the human suffering that’s taking place and the humanitarian catastrophe, all of these other comments sort of support the broader theme of what’s taking place in Gaza over the last six months. And it’s that the United States is fully supporting what the Israeli military is doing. And so, what I would say is, when President Biden has that call with Prime Minister Netanyahu, I would say that it’s important for him to draw a red line, for him to make a demand and to suggest that there are consequences if things don’t change with respect to what’s happening in the Gaza Strip.

AMY GOODMAN: Doctor, I wanted to go to the founder of the World Central Kitchen, the world-renowned Chef José Andrés, who accused Israel of systematically targeting the seven aid workers who were killed Monday night in that series of drone strikes in Gaza. Chef Andrés spoke to Reuters Wednesday.

JOSÉ ANDRÉS: At the end, it’s what we know, what everybody knows, that seven team members between the specialty security people we have — three British individuals and three international crew, plus one Palestinian — that they were targeted systematically, car by car. They attacked the first car. We are still trying to get all the information on what happened on the first car. We have a feeling they were able to escape safely, because it was an armored vehicle. This was only the third day we had armored vehicles, within six months trying to bring them in. But the first armored vehicle was hit. They were able to, it seems, escape. We still don’t know all the details on the events in terms of people injured or people even dead. They were able to move in the second one. Again, this one was hit. They were able to move in the third one. In the process, we know, they were trying to call. But in the chaos of the moment, whatever happened, they — to try to be telling IDF that — why are they doing that? They were targeting us, in a deconfliction zone, in an area controlled by IDF, them knowing that it was our teams moving on that route with two armored — with three cars. And then they hit the third one, and then we saw the consequences of that continuous targeting attack: seven people dead. But they are seven on top of at least of more than another 190 humanitarian workers that they’ve been killed over the last six months.

JEFF MASON: Israel and the United States have said that the attacks were not deliberate. Do you accept that?

JOSÉ ANDRÉS: Well, totally, initially, I would say, categorically, no. … Even if we were not in coordination with the IDF, not democratic country and not military can be targeting civilians and humanitarians, especially when the technology today allows you to know things in ways not too long ago was not possible. Those drones have eyes on everything that moves in Gaza. I’ve been there. This is drones nonstop flying above you. It’s nothing that moves that IDF doesn’t know.

AMY GOODMAN: Clearly, Dr. Ahmad, the establishment consensus has now broken. I’ve seen Democratic senator after senator starting to question U.S. military aid to Israel. President Biden knows Chef José Andrés. Now, the seven people who were killed — the three British nationals, the Polish national, the Canadian-American national — we have not heard the Canadian prime minister or the president name that person — the Australian — these are six international aid workers, plus a Palestinian aid worker. Clearly, that’s what’s changing that conversation, because, as you pointed out, almost 200 aid workers have been killed in the last months. You’re planning to go back to Gaza? You are Palestinian American. Are you concerned you, too, like so many of your colleagues, could be targeted, as a doctor, as a nurse, as a medical aid worker in Gaza?

DR. THAER AHMAD: I mean, of course. That’s always a primary concern. And I think it’s because we have the same realization that most other agencies and organizations and relief workers have, and that’s there’s no place that’s safe in the Gaza Strip. Again, World Central Kitchen, when José Andrés is saying that route was deconflicted, he’s saying that the coordinates and the movement were shared in real time with the Israeli military. And this is an organization that has an excellent relationship with the IDF. And the fact that their convoy was hit three separate times despite them trying to reach out, nobody is safe. I mean, you know, there’s about 200 aid workers that have been killed, but also 400 healthcare workers. You know, this is — journalists, over a hundred journalists have been killed in this process. There is nobody that’s safe.

And I think one comment that I want to make that, really, that Chef José had really mentioned is “anything that moves.” And that’s such an important thing for people to recognize in the Gaza Strip, there are areas where there is total control by the Israeli military, and if there’s any sort of movement, those people come under fire and are killed. And there is the footage just from last week of two Palestinians on the beach waving the white flag. We can clearly see that they’re unarmed, and them being killed and then buried with a bulldozer on the beach in Gaza. I mean, that’s the kind of landscape that you’re talking about. There’s so many different areas in the Gaza Strip where you cannot walk around — does not matter, man, woman or child — and you are under the threat of attack.

And so, it’s everybody. It’s all parts of society — aid workers, healthcare workers. So it’s important for people to recognize and understand the counternarrative here to anything that would suggest that there are armed people or militants that are being targeted. Every single person in the Gaza Strip is not safe. And if they’re moving at the wrong place at the wrong time, they will be killed. There’s no other conclusion or outcome of that scenario.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Thaer Ahmad, we want to thank you for being with us, emergency room physician who spent three weeks in Gaza volunteering at Al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, board member for MedGlobal, which has an office in Gaza, is working with the World Health Organization. He walked out of a White House meeting with President Biden this week.

***

Road to Famine: Israeli Law Prof. Neve Gordon on Israel’s History of Weaponizing Food Access in Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 4, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/4/n ... transcript

As the world reels from the World Central Kitchen attack in which seven aid workers in Gaza were struck and killed by three separate Israeli missiles while delivering aid for starving Palestinians, we speak with prominent Israeli scholar Neve Gordon about Israel’s history of weaponizing food access in the Gaza Strip via the destruction of Palestinian agricultural land, labor restrictions and blockade, “controlling and managing the population through food insecurity.” Neve Gordon is a professor of human rights law and author of multiple books on Israel’s occupation of Palestine whose latest essay for The New York Review of Books is titled “The Road to Famine in Gaza.” Now as aid deliveries dry up amid fears of further attacks on humanitarian workers, Gordon emphasizes that “Israel has been controlling the food basket and using it as a weapon since the beginning of the occupation until today.”

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: A group of U.S. officials at USAID have privately warned the Biden administration that the spread of hunger and malnutrition in Gaza is, quote, “unprecedented in modern history” and that parts of Gaza are already experiencing famine. This comes as several aid groups are suspending work in Gaza after Israel killed seven aid workers with World Central Kitchen earlier this week. In a moment, we’ll speak to prominent law Israeli professor Neve Gordon about the famine in Gaza, but we begin with the words of two Palestinian mothers. This is Khuloud al-Masri, speaking at the al-Awda health center in Rafah, where her children are being treated.

KHULOUD AL-MASRI: [translated] I feel like my children will die in front of my eyes. What can I say? I don’t know what I am to do. I can feel them dying before my eyes. This is my daughter. It’s been five days she is without food or drink. I don’t know what to do for her. I am suffering. Sitting with my children, I am tired with them. It’s two of them, not just one. There’s not food or milk available. The girl is suffering from malnutrition. She is tired. The situation is so difficult. … I am tired. I swear, I am very tired. Their condition is very bad. My daughter is suffering in front of me, and I don’t know what to do for them. … I am unable to provide them with milk or Pampers or food. I don’t know what to do for them. The two of them are so unwell. This one, my daughter, has been like this for five or six days.

AMY GOODMAN: That was a Palestinian mother named Khuloud al-Masri. And this is another mother, named Reem al-Qadi, who spoke as she held her crying baby.

REEM AL-QADI: [translated] My daughter is ill, and she is suffering from malnutrition, and her blood is weak. We, of course, in the hospital are suffering from a catastrophic situation, a catastrophic health situation, very bad. There is no drinking water at all. The hospital is suffering and unable to provide water for us to give to our children. Our children have come here, not to get better and healthier, but their health situations have gotten worse. Most medications are not available. Healthy food is not available for our children. Healthy water is not available for our children. On one bed, they put three and four cases, which result in the children infecting each other and making their situations worse than before. … Of course, all of this is because of the Israeli occupation, the situation which we are in. They bombed hospitals. They tell us a hospital is a safe space. The hospital now is not a safe space. Most hospitals are no longer in service. All the sick are now being treated in one or two hospitals in the whole of the Gaza Strip. This is really a difficult situation. And we ask all countries, the world, to take our side and relieve us of the situation. It’s enough. Our children are dying in front of us, and we are unable to do anything for them.

AMY GOODMAN: That was a Palestinian mother named Reem al-Qadi, speaking at a hospital in Rafah.

We go now to London, where we’re joined by Neve Gordon, professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London, chair of the Committee on Academic Freedom for British Society of Middle East Studies. He’s the author of several books, including Israel’s Occupation, and co-author of Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire. He’s co-editor of Torture: Human Rights, Medical Ethics and the Case of Israel. And he just wrote a piece in The New York Review of Books. It’s headlined “The Road to Famine in Gaza.”

Professor Gordon, thanks so much for being with us. Why don’t you take us on that journey? Tell us the antecedents to what we’re seeing today, the issue of famine in Gaza.

NEVE GORDON: So, perhaps I’ll begin with what we’re seeing, and then move back. We’re seeing destruction, and we’re seeing massive displacement, in an area that’s already food-insecure. And then we’re seeing Israel obstructing aid from entering Gaza. So, on average, in the past six months, 112 trucks have been entering per day, while before October 7th, 500 trucks were entering each day. We’re seeing consistent attacks on aid workers, as you mentioned in the previous item, with, on average, one aid worker being killed every day. And we’re seeing the destruction of one-third of the agricultural land in the Gaza Strip, 20% of the greenhouses and 70% of the fishing vessels in the Gaza Strip, so no internal food can be produced in the Gaza Strip. And as you mentioned earlier, what we’re witnessing, and what Reem and Khuloud have just expressed, is the most horrific situation a parent can experience, is their children dying in front of them of famine.

Now, what we wrote, Muna Haddad and me, is about the history of using food as a weapon in the Gaza Strip. So, if in 1967 Israel occupies the Gaza Strip, its approach is very different in the beginning. It surveys the Gaza Strip. It counts the agricultural land. It looks what the Palestinians are planting. And in the beginning, what it does is it actually plants trees and provides the Palestinians with better varieties of seeds, and it monitors the food basket of the Palestinians. And in its reports, it tells us that the food basket in 1966 was 2,400 calories per person, and after four years of occupation, it’s now 2,700, basically boasting about the improvement in the food basket. But what we see already then is that Israel is controlling the Palestinian food basket. And in the beginning, it wants to kind of increase the productive energies of the Palestinians so they can work in Israel as cheap laborers and extract their labor for Israel’s use.

Everything begins to change in the First Palestinian Intifada in December 1987, where Israel begins imposing restrictions on the Gaza Strip, first by creating magnetic cards that monitor the entrance of laborers into Israel and restricts the entrance of laborers to Israel. It also, a few years later, creates a fence and fences the Gaza Strip so that — and creates only four or five crossings. And later on, with the Second Intifada, we see a total reversal of the approach after 1967. We see Israel destroying agricultural land. We see it creating a buffer zone around the fence so that Palestinian farmers cannot get near the fence. We see it destroying fishing vessels. And see it limiting further the Palestinian food basket.

Then comes 2005, Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the movement of its soldiers to the fence, the beginning use of the drones over the Gaza skies. And after Hamas wins in democratic elections in the Gaza Strip, we see the implementation of a blockade, where Israel basically blocks the Gaza Strip and monitors very carefully what enters and what exits. It further destroys more agricultural land. And then it creates — the Ministry of Defense, with the Ministry of Health, creates lists of items that can enter the Gaza Strip and items that cannot enter. So, flour and baby formula can enter, but chocolate and certain kinds of pastas cannot enter. And Israel begins to monitor the calorie intake of the population and creates what’s called — it called a “humanitarian minimum.” “We will allow,” Israel says, “a humanitarian minimum to aid to enter the Gaza Strip,” leaving the population regularly in a situation of food insecurity and controlling and managing the population through food insecurity. And every time there is a cycle of violence — and there’s been five major cycle of violence since 2008 until today — Israel closes off all of the borders, and what had been a food insecurity before the cycle of violence drops dramatically, and we see incidents of malnutrition and so forth.

And so, this is kind of the background of what we’ve been seeing. And when this war begins — so, we see that everything you’ve been describing earlier is intentional, because Israel has been controlling the food basket and using it as a weapon since the beginning of the occupation until today.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Professor Neve Gordon, you make the case in your article that — and this is perhaps one of the most surprising things — that Israel has made no attempt to conceal its policy of restricting food to Gaza. You cite Sara Roy’s earlier piece in The New York Review of Books, quoting her citation of a cable sent from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to the secretary of state on November 3rd, 2008. The cable reads, “As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to [embassy officials] on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge.” So, if you could elaborate on that and what you understand the justification of that to be, and why they were so — why they would be so disclosive about it to the Americans?

NEVE GORDON: So, what we see is we see a process from Oslo where Oslo was sold to the public as a peace process that will bring economic dividends for Israel and the Palestinians. And if you remember at the time, Gaza was described as the new Singapore, and we will make Gaza thrive, and there will be a Singapore in the Middle East.

Now, what we see in the years immediately after the Oslo Accords were signed, that, indeed, Israel was enjoying the economic dividends in the Gaza — from the Oslo Accords, but the Palestinians, both in the West Bank and in Gaza, and particularly in Gaza, the economic situation drops because Israel is basically strangling the Palestinian economy. And if you mention Sara Roy, then I will use her concept of de-development. Israel de-develops the Gaza Strip, destroying the agricultural land, destroying the factories.

And it is not shy in doing so. It is basically asserting its control and letting the Palestinians in Gaza know who is the lord of the land, and letting the American counterparts also know who is the lord of the land. And through this, we see a situation where the economics — the major reason for the food insecurity in the Gaza Strip before this war was indeed the blockade. But the blockade, what it does, it strangles the Gaza Strip economically. So, a year before the war, we have a GDP per capita in the Gaza Strip of about $1,000 per person, while in Israel it’s $52,000. An hour away — this is before the war. An hour away from my apartment in Be’er Sheva, where I used to live, and Gaza Strip, that’s the distance between the two regions, yet in the Gaza Strip a newborn is seven times more likely to die than in Be’er Sheva, because the social detriments of health, because the economic strangulation, because of the lack of healthcare and so forth.

And the message was clear from the beginning: “We control you. If you do not bow down, then we will hit you harder.” And that’s what Israel has been doing for years in the Gaza Strip. And that’s what it’s been — and the Americans have been watching. Americans have been seeing this happen. And the Americans have not said anything to Israel in this sense and not stopped Israel’s actions. And then we have October 7th, and we’ve seen what’s happened since then.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Professor Neve Gordon, we have to break here, but we want to ask you to stay after the show so we can continue this conversation, and we’ll post it online at democracynow.org. Professor Gordon teaches international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London. We’ll link to your piece in The New York Review of Books headlined “The Road to Famine in Gaza.”

[admin]

Lavender & Where’s Daddy: How Israel Used AI to Form Kill Lists & Bomb Palestinians in Their Homes
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 5, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/5/i ... transcript

The Israeli publications +972 and Local Call have exposed how the Israeli military used an artificial intelligence program known as Lavender to develop a “kill list” in Gaza that includes as many as 37,000 Palestinians who were targeted for assassination with little human oversight. A second AI system known as “Where’s Daddy?” tracked Palestinians on the kill list and was purposely designed to help Israel target individuals when they were at home at night with their families. The targeting systems, combined with an “extremely permissive” bombing policy in the Israeli military, led to “entire Palestinian families being wiped out inside their houses,” says Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist who broke the story after speaking with members of the Israeli military who were “shocked by committing atrocities.” Abraham previously exposed Israel for using an AI system called “The Gospel” to intentionally destroy civilian infrastructure in Gaza, including apartment complexes, universities and banks, in an effort to exert “civil pressure” on Hamas. These artificial intelligence military systems are “a danger to humanity,” says Abraham. “AI-based warfare allows people to escape accountability.”

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 Israeli publications +972 Magazine and Local Call have exposed how the Israeli military used an artificial intelligence known as “Lavender” to develop a “kill list” in Gaza that includes as many as 37,000 Palestinians who were targeted for assassination with little human oversight. The report is based in part on interviews with six Israeli intelligence officers who had firsthand involvement with the AI system.

+972 reports, quote, “Lavender has played a central role in the unprecedented bombing of Palestinians, especially during the early stages of the war. In fact, according to the sources, its influence on the military’s operations was such that they essentially treated the outputs of the AI machine 'as if it were a human decision.'”

A second AI system known as “Where’s Daddy?” tracked Palestinian men on the kill list. It was purposely designed to help Israel target individuals when they were at home at night with their families. One intelligence officer told the publications, quote, “We were not interested in killing operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity. On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations,” they said.

Today we spend the hour with the Israeli investigative journalist Yuval Abraham, who broke this story for +972 and Local Call. It’s headlined “'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza.” I spoke with Yuval Abraham yesterday and began by asking him to lay out what he found.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: Yeah. Thank you for having me again, Amy.

It is a very long piece. It’s 8,000 words. And we divided it into six different steps. And each step represents a process in the highly automated way in which the military marks targets since October. And the first finding is Lavender. So, Lavender was designed by the military. Its purpose was, when it was being designed, to mark the low-ranking operatives in the Hamas and Islamic Jihad military wings. That was the intention, because, you know, Israel estimates that there are between 30,000 to 40,000 Hamas operatives, and it’s a very, very large number. And they understood that the only way for them to mark these people is by relying on artificial intelligence. And that was the intention.

Now, what sources told me is that after October 7th, the military basically made a decision that all of these tens of thousands of people are now people that could potentially be bombed inside their houses, meaning not only killing them but everybody who’s in the building — the children, the families. And they understood that in order to try to attempt to do that, they are going to have to rely on this AI machine called Lavender with very minimal human supervision. I mean, one source said that he felt he was acting as a rubber stamp on the machine’s decisions.

Now, what Lavender does is it scans information on probably 90% of the population of Gaza. So we’re talking about, you know, more than a million people. And it gives each individual a rating between one to 100, a rating that is an expression of the likelihood that the machine thinks, based on a list of small features — and we can get to that later — that that individual is a member of the Hamas or Islamic Jihad military wings. Sources told me that the military knew, because they checked — they took a random sampling and checked one by one — the military knew that approximately 10% of the people that the machine was marking to be killed were not Hamas militants. They were not — some of them had a loose connection to Hamas. Others had completely no connection to Hamas. I mean, one source said how the machine would bring people who had the exact same name and nickname as a Hamas operative, or people who had similar communication profiles. Like, these could be civil defense workers, police officers in Gaza. And they implemented, again, minimal supervision on the machine. One source said that he spent 20 seconds per target before authorizing the bombing of the alleged low-ranking Hamas militant — often it also could have been a civilian — killing those people inside their houses.

And I think this, the reliance on artificial intelligence here to mark those targets, and basically the deadly way in which the officers spoke about how they were using the machine, could very well be part of the reason why in the first, you know, six weeks after October 7th, like one of the main characteristics of the policies that were in place were entire Palestinian families being wiped out inside their houses. I mean, if you look at U.N. statistics, more than 50% of the casualties, more than 6,000 people at that time, came from a smaller group of families. It’s an expression of, you know, the family unit being destroyed. And I think that machine and the way it was used led to that.

AMY GOODMAN: You talk about the choosing of targets, and you talk about the so-called high-value targets, Hamas commanders, and then the lower-level fighters. And as you said, many of them, in the end, it wasn’t either. But explain the buildings that were targeted and the bombs that were used to target them.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: Yeah, yeah. It’s a good question. So, what sources told me is that during those first weeks after October, for the low-ranking militants in Hamas, many of whom were marked by Lavender, so we can say “alleged militants” that were marked by the machine, they had a predetermined, what they call, “collateral damage degree.” And this means that the military’s international law departments told these intelligence officers that for each low-ranking target that Lavender marks, when bombing that target, they are allowed to kill — one source said the number was up to 20 civilians, again, for any Hamas operative, regardless of rank, regardless of importance, regardless of age. One source said that there were also minors being marked — not many of them, but he said that was a possibility, that there was no age limit. Another source said that the limit was up to 15 civilians for the low-ranking militants. The sources said that for senior commanders of Hamas — so it could be, you know, commanders of brigades or divisions or battalions — the numbers were, for the first time in the IDF’s history, in the triple digits, according to sources.

So, for example, Ayman Nofal, who was the Hamas commander of the Central Brigade, a source that took part in the strike against that person said that the military authorized to kill alongside that person 300 Palestinian civilians. And we’ve spoken at +972 and Local Call with Palestinians who were witnesses of that strike, and they speak about, you know, four quite large residential buildings being bombed on that day, you know, entire apartments filled with families being bombed and killed. And that source told me that this is not, you know, some mistake, like the amount of civilians, of this 300 civilians, it was known beforehand to the Israeli military. And sources described that to me, and they said that — I mean, one source said that during those weeks at the beginning, effectively, the principle of proportionality, as they call it under international law, quote, “did not exist.”

AMY GOODMAN: So, there’s two programs. There’s Lavender, and there’s Where’s Daddy? How did they even know where these men were, innocent or not?

YUVAL ABRAHAM: Yeah, so, the way the system was designed is, there is this concept, in general, in systems of mass surveillance called linking. When you want to automate these systems, you want to be able to very quickly — you know, you get, for example, an ID of a person, and you want to have a computer be very quickly able to link that ID to other stuff. And what sources told me is that since everybody in Gaza has a home, has a house — or at least that was the case in the past — the system was designed to be able to automatically link between individuals and houses. And in the majority of cases, these households that are linked to the individuals that Lavender is marking as low-ranking militants are not places where there is active military action taking place, according to sources. Yet the way the system was designed, and programs like Where’s Daddy?, which were designed to search for these low-ranking militants when they enter houses — specifically, it sends an alert to the intelligence officers when these AI-marked suspects enter their houses. The system was designed in a way that allowed the Israeli military to carry out massive strikes against Palestinians, sometimes militants, sometimes alleged militants, who we don’t know, when they were in these spaces in these houses.

And the sources said — you know, CNN reported in December that 45% of the munitions, according to U.S. intelligence assessments, that Israel dropped on Gaza were unguided, so-called dumb bombs, that have, you know, a larger damage to civilians. They destroy the entire structure. And sources said that for these low-ranking operatives in Hamas, they were only using the dumb munitions, meaning they were collapsing the houses on everybody inside. And when you ask intelligence officers why, one explanation they give is that these people were, quote, “unimportant.” They were not important enough, from a military perspective, that the Israeli army would, one source said, waste expensive munitions, meaning more guided floor bombs that could have maybe taken just a particular floor in the building.

And to me, that was very striking, because, you know, you’re dropping a bomb on a house and killing entire families, yet the target that you are aiming to assassinate by doing so is not considered important enough to, quote, “waste” an expensive bomb on. And I think it’s a very rare reflection of sort of the way — you know, the way the Israeli military measures the value of Palestinian lives in relation to expected military gain, which is the principle of proportionality. And I think one thing that was very, very clear from all the sources that I spoke with is that, you know, this was — they said it was psychologically shocking even for them, you know, like it was — yeah.

So, that’s the combination between Lavender and Where’s Daddy? The Lavender lists are fed into Where’s Daddy? And these systems track the suspects and wait for the moments that they enter houses, usually family houses or households where no military action takes place, according to several sources who did this, who spoke to me about this. And these houses are bombed using unguided missiles. This was a main characteristic of the Israeli policy in Gaza, at least for the first weeks.

AMY GOODMAN: You write that they said they didn’t have as many smart bombs. They were more expensive, so they didn’t want to waste them, so they used the dumb bombs —

YUVAL ABRAHAM: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — which kill so many more.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: Yeah, exactly. Exactly, that’s what they said. But then I say, if the person, you know, is not important enough for you to waste ammunition on, but you’re willing to kill 15 civilians, a family?

AMY GOODMAN: Yuval Abraham, I wanted to read from the Israeli military statement, the IDF statement, in response to your report.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: Please.

AMY GOODMAN: They say, quote, “The process of identifying military targets in the IDF consists of various types of tools and methods, including information management tools, which are used in order to help the intelligence analysts to gather and optimally analyze the intelligence, obtained from a variety of sources. Contrary to claims, the IDF did not use an artificial intelligence system that identifies terrorist operatives or tries to predict whether a person is a terrorist. Information systems are merely tools for analysts in the target identification process.” Again, that’s the IDF response, Yuval Abraham, to your report. Your response?

YUVAL ABRAHAM: I read this response to some of the sources, and they said that they’re lying, that it’s not true. And I was surprised that they were — you know, usually they’re not so, you know, blatant in saying something that is false.

I think this can very easily be disproven, because, you know, a senior-ranking Israeli military official, the head of the 8200 unit’s AI center, gave a public lecture in last year, in 2023, in Tel Aviv University — you can google it, anybody who’s listening to us — where he spoke about, quote — I’m quoting him in that lecture — “an AI system that the Israeli military used in 2021 to find terrorists.” That’s what he said. So, to have that on record, to have — I have the presentation slides showing how the system is rating the people — and then to get a comment from the IDF spokesperson saying, “We do not have a system that uses AI to…” I really don’t know. Like, I almost thought, “Do I put this in the piece or not?” Because, you know, like, I know — in the end, you know, I gave them the space in the piece to make those claims, like I think I tried to be as dry as possible in the way that I was reporting. But, really, like, I am very, very confident in those findings. They are verified from from numerous sources that I’ve spoken with.

And I think that people who read the full investigation, read the depth of it — the commander of the 8200 unit wrote a book in 2021, titled Human-Machine Teams: How Synergy Between AI and Human Beings Can Revolutionize the World. And in the book, he’s talking about how militaries should rely on artificial intelligence to, quote, “solve the problem of the human bottleneck” in creating new targets and in the decision-making to approve new targets. And he wrote in that book, he said — and this is another quote from him — he says that “no matter how many intelligence officers you have tasked with producing targets during the war, they still will not be able to produce enough targets per day.” And he gives a guide in that book as to how to build these AI systems. Now, I want to emphasize, you know, he writes in the book very, very clearly that these systems are not supposed to replace human judgment. He calls it, you know, a mutual learning between humans and artificial intelligence. And he says — and the IDF still maintains this — they say it is intelligence officers who look at the results and make a decision.

From what I heard from numerous sources, after October 7th, that stopped being the cases, at least in some parts of the IDF, where, again, Amy, as I said before, sources were told that if they check that the target is a man, they can accept Lavender’s recommendations without thoroughly looking at them, without checking why the machine made the decision that it made.

And I think, you know, when speaking with sources, like, just to describe — like, many of these sources, you know, they were drafted to the military after October 7th. Many of them were shocked by atrocities that happened on October 7th, their families, their friends. Some of them did not think they would be drafted to the military again. They said, “OK, we have to go now.” There was this sense that — and gradually, when they realized what they were being asked to do, the things that they are involved in, not — I wouldn’t say that all six are like this, but at least some of them felt, again, shocked by committing atrocities and by being involved in things and killing families, and they felt it’s unjustifiable. And they felt a responsibility, I think. And I felt this also in the previous piece that I wrote, “'A mass assassination factory,'” which spoke about another AI machine called The Gospel. They felt a need to share this information with the world, out of a sense that people are not getting it. You know, they’re hearing the military spokesperson and all of these narratives that we’ve been hearing for the past six months, and they do not reflect the reality on the ground.

And I really believe, I really believe — you know, there’s a looming attack now on Rafah — these systems could be used there again to kill Palestinians in massive numbers, these attacks, and, you know, it’s placing the Israeli hostages in danger who are still unjustifiably held in Gaza and need to be released. There needs to be a ceasefire. It cannot go on. And I hope that this investigation, that exposes things so clearly, will help more people all around the world call for a ceasefire, call to release the hostages and end the occupation and move towards a political solution there. For me, there is no — there is no other way forward.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask if U.S. military, if U.S. technology is playing a role in Israeli AI, artificial intelligence.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: So, I don’t know. And there is some information that I cannot fully share, like, at this moment. I’m investigating, like, you know, who is involved in developing these systems.

What I can tell you is, you know, based on previous experience of the 2014 war and the 2021 war, when the wars end, these systems are then sold to militaries all over the world. And I think, regardless of, you know, the horrific results and consequences of these systems in Gaza, alongside that, I really think there is a danger to humanity. Like, this AI-based warfare allows people to escape accountability. It allows to generate targets, really, on a massive — you know, thousands, 37,000 people marked for potential assassination. And it allows to do that and maintain a sort of aesthetic of international law, because you have a machine that makes you a target file with, you know, commander or, like, target, collateral damage, but it loses all meaning.

I mean, take the principle of distinction under international law. When you design a system that marks 37,000 people, and you check, and you know that 10% of them are actually not militants — right? — they’re loosely related to Hamas or they’re not related at all — and you still authorize to use that system without any meaningful supervision for weeks, I mean, isn’t that a breach of that principle? When you authorize to kill, you know, up to 15 or up to 20 civilians for targets that you consider, from a military point of view, not especially important, isn’t that a clear breach of the principle of proportionality? You know, and I don’t know, like, I think international law really is in a crisis right now. And I think these AI-based systems are making that crisis even worse. They are draining all of these terms from meaning.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me play for you a clip of National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby being questioned on Tuesday about Israel’s killing of seven aid workers in three cars from Chef Andrés’s World Central Kitchen. This is Kirby.

NIALL STANAGE: Is firing a missile at people delivering food and killing them not a violation of international humanitarian law?

JOHN KIRBY: Well, the Israelis have already admitted that this was a mistake that they made. They’re doing an investigation. They’ll get to the bottom of this. Let’s not get ahead of that. … The State Department has a process in place. And to date, as you and I are speaking, they have not found any incidents where the Israelis have violated international humanitarian law.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the U.S. top spokesperson, John Kirby, saying Israel has never broken international law so far since October 7th. And again, this is in response to a question about the killing of the seven aid workers, one Palestinian and six international aid workers. Can you talk about your response to this attack, three different missiles hitting all three cars, and then what Kirby said?

YUVAL ABRAHAM: Yeah. Wow! It’s quite shocking, in my mind, I mean, what he said, you know, based on the evidence that exists. The first thought that popped up to my mind when he was talking about, you know, Israel is investigating it, since I know the statistics — so, if you take the 2014 bombing and war in Gaza, so, you know, 512 Palestinian children were killed. Israel said that it will investigate. There were like hundreds of claims for war crimes. Like, only one file the Israeli military actually prosecuted a soldier about, and it was about looting of like 1,000 shekels. Everything was closed. This happens, you know, 2018, 2019. Two hundred thirty Palestinians are shot dead at the border. Again, tens of — one file prosecuted. Like, to claim that because Israel is having an investigation, it somehow means that they are getting to the bottom of this and changing something, it’s just mocking our intelligence, I think.

The second thing that I would say is that it’s true that the state of Israel has apologized for it. But if you actually look at the track record of people being killed around aid trucks, this has happened over and over again for Palestinians. I mean, in the beginning of March, 112 Palestinians were killed around the flour aid truck. The Guardian reported at the time that 14 such cases happened, like in February and January. So it’s clear to me that the Israeli military is apologizing not because of the crime, but because of the identity of the people who were killed in the crime. And I think that’s really hypocrisy.

And to answer the question about my findings, I mean, I don’t know if artificial intelligence was involved in that strike. I don’t want to say something that I’m not, you know, 100% sure of. But what I have learned from Israeli intelligence officers makes me not be surprised that this strike took place, because the firing policy is completely permissive. And we’re seeing it. I mean, we’re seeing, you know, unarmed civilians being bombed to death. We saw that video of four people walking and being bombed to death. We have doctors, you know, talking about how in hospitals they’re seeing young children, like, with bullet holes, like The Guardian investigation who spoke to nine doctors that spoke about that. So, this extreme permissiveness is not surprising to me.

AMY GOODMAN: Your piece doesn’t talk about drones, but, Yuval, can you talk about how the AI systems interact with unmanned attack drones?

YUVAL ABRAHAM: Yeah, so, you know, I said this last time, Amy. Like, I can’t speak about everything, also because we are sort of — always have to think of the military censor in Israel. As Israeli journalists, we’re very much, you know, binded by that.

But the systems interact. And, you know, if somebody is marked to be killed by Lavender, then that person could be killed by a warplane, they could be killed by a drone, and they could be killed by a tank that’s on the ground. Like, there is like a sort of policy of sharing intelligence between different — yeah, different units and different weapon operators.

Like, I wouldn’t be surprised if — because Israel said, you know, there was a target, like somebody that we suspected. Of course, the aid workers and — like, they completely rejected that. But, like, I wouldn’t be surprised if the flagging, you know, that the Israeli system received was somehow related to a faulty automated mechanism that is, you know, mass surveilling the area and picked up on something and had, you know, not the highest precision rate. Again, from what I’m hearing from sources, this is the atmosphere. This is the case.

AMY GOODMAN: Investigative reporter Yuval Abraham on his latest piece for +972 Magazine and Local Call headlined “'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza.” He’s speaking to us from Jerusalem.

***

“No Other Land”: Israeli Director Slams Claims of Antisemitism for Apartheid Comment at Berlinale
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 5, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/5/n ... transcript

We continue our conversation with Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham about the award-winning new documentary No Other Land, which he co-directed with Palestinian activist Basel Adra, about land dispossession in Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank. While accepting the audience award for best documentary at the Berlinale, Abraham said Israel was practicing apartheid, a comment for which he later received death threats. “You have German politicians who are not Jewish who labeled me as an antisemite. For what? For calling for a ceasefire? For calling for equality between Israelis and Palestinians? For using the word 'apartheid,' which should be common sense to describe these parallel systems of inequality?” says Abraham, who calls for an end to the “apartheid reality” in Israel and Palestine. “If there is no full political equality and really full freedom to everybody who lives in this land, then there can be no future here. We are going to continue to fight to change this.”

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, as we continue our conversation with Yuval Abraham, the Israeli investigative reporter for +972 Magazine. Yuval is also the co-director of the film No Other Land, a documentary produced by a Palestinian-Israeli collective that looks at Israel’s mass expulsion of Palestinians living in Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank. This is the trailer.

BASEL ADRA: [translated] You think they’ll come to our home?

MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 1: [translated] Is the army down there?

NEWS ANCHOR: A thousand Palestinians face one of the single biggest expulsion decisions since the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories began.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: [translated] Basel, come here! Come fast!

BASEL ADRA: [translated] This is a story about power.

My name is Basel. I grew up in a small community called Masafer Yatta. I started to film when we started to end.

They have bulldozers?

I’m filming you.

MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 2: [translated] I need air. Oh my God!

MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 3: [translated] Don’t worry.

MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 2: [translated] I don’t want them to take our home.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: [translated] You’re Basel?

BASEL ADRA: [translated] Yes.

MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 4: [translated] You are Palestinian?

YUVAL ABRAHAM: [translated] No, I’m Jewish.

MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 5: [translated] He’s a journalist.

MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 4: [translated] You’re Israeli?

MASAFER YATTA RESIDENT 5: [translated] Seriously?

BASEL ADRA: [translated] We have to raise our voices, not being silent as if — as if no human beings live here.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: [translated] What? The army is here?

BASEL ADRA: This is what’s happening in my village now. Soldiers are everywhere.

IDF SOLDIER: [translated] Who do you think you’re filming, you son of a whore?

YUVAL ABRAHAM: [translated] It would be so nice with stability one day. Then you’ll come visit me, not always me visiting you. Right?

BASEL ADRA: [translated] Maybe. What do you think? If you were in my place, what would you do?

AMY GOODMAN: The trailer for No Other Land, co-directed by Israeli Yuval Abraham and Palestinian filmmaker Basel Adra. The film won the prize for best documentary at the Berlin film festival, the Berlinale, in Germany. This is a part of Yuval’s acceptance speech.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: In two days, we will go back to a land where we are not equal. I am living under a civilian law, and Basel is under military law. We live 30 minutes from one another, but I have voting rights, and Basel is not having voting rights. I am free to move where I want in this land. Basel is, like millions of Palestinians, locked in the occupied West Bank. This situation of apartheid between us, this inequality, it has to end.

AMY GOODMAN: Yuval Abraham received death threats for those comments. I asked him about the film winning the top prize at the Berlinale and what happened afterwards.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: So, you know, we got this award for the film, and we were very, very happy, me and Basel, after we’ve been filming, me and Basel and Rachel and Hamdan — they’re also co-directors — you know, for many years. And it was like a moment of recognition, and we felt that we got the audience award and the audiences were very moved by it.

And the next day, I wanted to fly back, back home, and I took a connection flight in Greece. And then I opened my phone in Greece, and I see that I’m receiving like dozens of death threats for the speech. And I saw that German politicians, including the mayor of Berlin, were dubbing it as like antisemitism, and generally the speeches. Yeah, and this — I decided to stay in Athens, because I was hesitant to go back. And the next day, like, a group of people came to my parents’ house and threatened them. My mother was really scared from it, and she had to leave. She went to sleep with my sister in Jerusalem. And it was very, very scary.

And I felt many things, but, like, one of the things that I felt outraged by was that you have, you know, German politicians, who are not Jewish, who labeled me as an antisemite. For what? For calling for a ceasefire? For calling for equality between Israelis and Palestinians? For using the word “apartheid,” which should be common sense to describe these, you know, parallel systems of inequality? And I felt — I was thinking of my grandparents. You know, my grandmother, she was born in a concentration camp in Libya called Giado. Her father was murdered by Italy, who were working — the fascist Italy, were working with the Nazis. Most of my grandfather’s family in Romania were murdered by Germans. And, like, who are you to label me as an antisemite? And I feel that, you know, this term is very dangerous, because, on the one hand, it’s very, very clearly being weaponized to silence legitimate criticism of the state of Israel, of Israel’s policies, and that’s a big danger. On the other hand, for me, as Israeli, as a Jewish person, you know, if you are labeling everything as antisemitism, you’re emptying it out of meaning. And I think, especially now, when there is a rise in antisemitism, and we are seeing more and more cases of antisemitism, you know, happening everywhere — on the extreme right, on the left, like, we’re seeing it — for me, is even worse that Germany is emptying that term out of meaning like that. And I think that people, you know, like, it’s completely legitimate to label Israel as apartheid. It’s completely legitimate to call for a ceasefire. And it was absurd. And it was — I hope things have changed since. I don’t think they have, but, you know.

AMY GOODMAN: Your co-director, Palestinian Basel Adra, called for the stopping of arming of Israel.

BASEL ADRA: Good evening, everybody. We are glad to be here and grateful. It’s our first movie since many years my community, my family has been filming our community being erased by this brutal occupation. I am here celebrating the award, but also very hard for me to celebrate when there are tens of thousands of my people being slaughtered and massacred by Israel in Gaza. Masafer Yatta, my community, is being also razed by Israeli bulldozers. I ask one thing: for Germany, as I am in Berlin here, to respect the U.N. calls and stop sending weapons to Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Yuval Abraham, that’s your co-director — you’re an Israeli-Palestinian team — Basel Adra accepting the award for best international documentary. Can you talk more about what he said?

YUVAL ABRAHAM: Yes. Basel called for Germany to respect U.N. resolutions and to stop the arming of Israel. And he spoke about, you know, the tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza who were killed, and called for a ceasefire.

And just, you know, I want to say one last thing maybe. When I got back home to Jerusalem, I remembered, you know, when we were working on the film, me and Basel, like, Basel told me that when he was a young boy, like, he would always sleep with his shoes on, because he knew that the army can, you know, knock down the door at anytime and arrest him and take his family. And he was so used to it as a child, that he would have shoes on all the time, so he will be ready to run if soldiers enter the village. And when we were sleeping in Masafer Yatta, working on the film, we would always have shoes on, because the army entered and, you know, took the computer from the house and confiscated equipment.

And my house in Jerusalem, after all of these things happening, I was thinking, “You know, I don’t have to sleep with shoes on. There is no chance that a foreign military is going to enter to my home and arrest me and take me.” And I think, again, I felt this apartheid reality, this completely inequal reality, when we are under two systems of law, where only one people in this land have sovereignty and the other people do not. And I think, going forward, again, like, this has to change. We cannot continue to live here like this. If there is no full political equality and really full freedom to everybody who lives in this land, then there can be — there can be no future here. And we are going to continue to fight to change this. And I hope people watch our film, No Other Land, when it comes out in the States.

AMY GOODMAN: And the showing of your film in the occupied West Bank area of Masafer Yatta, the subject of your award-winning documentary, No Other Land, what was it like?

YUVAL ABRAHAM: Yeah, so, you know, people came, and these are people who are living — it’s a community of villages, Masafer Yatta. And every week, you know, Israeli bulldozers come, they pick a house of a family, and they destroy it. And settlers constantly attack this community. Like, there’s a lot of violence that is being placed on by the state to evac — to kick out, to forcibly transfer this community, to erase it from the map. And I was worried. You know, these people are coming to see, you know, quite traumatic events that are happening to them. And what will they think?

And in the end, it was — I think it was a very inspiring, inspiring night. Like, this community, especially Masafer Yatta, is so inspirational, because, you know, these are people that, really against all odds, against really colonial policies and oppression and violence, they are staying on their lands and, like, living, you know, living their lives and raising families, and then going to see the film, you know, and looking at the old archive footage that we have and, you know, laughing at how they were children, actually, 20 years ago. And look, I don’t know. It was a very inspirational night. And, you know, there was a lot of — a big community. There were Israeli activists and international activists and Palestinian activists and a lot of people who are united in, you know, being completely against this occupation and this forced transfer. And yeah, we’re going to have to continue to fight to make a change.

AMY GOODMAN: Yuval Abraham, he co-directed the film No Other Land with Palestinian activist Basel Adra, part of an Israeli-Palestinian collective. They won best documentary at the Berlin film festival, the Berlinale. He’s also an investigative journalist with +972 Magazine and Local Call. We’ll link to his latest piece, an explosive exposé headlined “'Lavender': The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza,” which looks at how the Israeli military used artificial intelligence to develop a “kill list” in Gaza of tens of thousands of Palestinians who were targeted for assassination with little human oversight. He looks at Lavender, as well as another AI program called “Where’s Daddy?” We’ll also link to Yuval Abraham’s other appearances on democracynow.org.

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“Killing People Around the Clock”: Dr. Mustafa Barghouti & Muhammad Shehada on 6 Months of War on Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 8, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/8/g ... transcript

Israel’s war on Gaza hit the six-month mark on Sunday, a grim milestone. Over 33,100 Palestinians have been killed, including 14,000 children. Nearly 76,000 have been injured, and tens of thousands are missing. About 1.7 million people have been displaced, and the United Nations is warning that famine is imminent. Meanwhile, Palestinians are returning to Khan Younis after the Israeli military announced it had withdrawn its ground troops from the area four months after invading it, leaving Gaza’s second-largest city almost unrecognizable, with much of it turned to rubble. Israel is also still vowing to invade Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, which is sheltering more than half of Gaza’s population. Speaking from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian physician and politician Dr. Mustafa Barghouti says growing outrage against Israel, including among some Western leaders, is largely due to regular people who have been protesting in solidarity with Palestinians. “We have to thank the people of these countries,” says Barghouti. We also speak with writer Muhammad Shehada, chief of communications at Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor and a columnist at The Forward. He says the last six months have exposed the Israeli military’s “complete disregard for human life,” with routine evidence of summary executions, torture and other crimes that rarely get reported in corporate Western media. “They’re not even trying to hide it,” says Shehada.

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.

Palestinians in Gaza have been making their way into Khan Younis today, a day after the Israeli military announced it had withdrawn its ground troops from the area. Israel first invaded Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city, in December. Four months later, the city is almost unrecognizable. Scores of buildings are destroyed or damaged. Streets have been bulldozed. Piles of rubble have replaced where schools and shops once stood. The withdrawal brought Israeli troop levels in Gaza to one of the lowest since the war began, yet Israel is still vowing to invade Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, which is sheltering some 1.4 million people — more than half of Gaza’s population.

Meanwhile, talks over a ceasefire and the release of hostages are continuing in Cairo, but there are conflicting reports on how much progress has been made.

This all comes as Israel’s war on Gaza hit the six-month mark on Sunday, a grim milestone. Over 33,100 Palestinians have been killed, including over 14,000 children. Nearly 76,000 people have been injured. Tens of thousands are missing. About 1.7 million people have been displaced. The United Nations is warning that famine is imminent.

To mark the six months of the war, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on social media platform X, quote, “The deaths and grievous injuries of thousands of children in Gaza will remain a stain on all of humanity. This assault on present and future generations must end. The denial of basic needs — food, fuel, sanitation, shelter, security and healthcare — is inhumane and intolerable,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, the International Court of Justice began two days of hearings today to consider Nicaragua’s request that emergency measures be imposed on Germany over its support for Israel’s war on Gaza. Nicaragua is accusing Germany of facilitating the commission of genocide in Gaza.

For more, we’re joined by two guests. Muhammad Shehada is with us, a writer and analyst from Gaza, chief of communications at Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, a columnist at The Forward newspaper, a Jewish weekly in New York. He’s joining us from Copenhagen. And joining us from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank is Dr. Mustafa Barghouti. He’s a Palestinian physician, activist and politician, who serves as general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Dr. Barghouti, we want to start with you in Ramallah. Can you explain what you understand has happened in Gaza at this point, the six-month mark, and also the significance of Israeli troops pulling out of southern Gaza but saying they are doing that in preparation for an assault on Rafah?

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Well, I think you have a combination of two factors here. The first one is that Israel has created a terrible devastation of all of Gaza Strip. We thought that the destruction in the north of Gaza and in Gaza City was the biggest, but now we discover that the destruction they’ve caused in Khan Younis is even bigger. Probably more than 80% of all homes and houses have been destroyed, partially or completely. They are trying to make Gaza uninhabitable. They’ve destroyed totally the infrastructure. More than 405 schools and universities have been destroyed. Thirty-three hospitals our of 36 have been completely damaged. And they have been killing people around the clock. We are talking, in six months, actually, the number of people killed is no less than 40,000 people, if we include 7,000 who are still missing under the rubble and who have no chance of being alive, in addition to, as you said, to more than 76,000 people. To make it clear to people, this is more than 5% of the population of Gaza Strip. And if that had happened proportionally in the United States of America, you would be talking about more than 12 million people killed or injured in six months. It’s a horrible devastation. I mean, the suffering of children, in particular, hurts, breaks my heart, when you know that 1,000 children have lost their limbs. As one child asked his father — he’s 5 years old, and he lost both of his hands, and he was asking his father, “Father, will my hands grow again when I grow up?” This is the kind of severity of what’s happening there.

But that’s one side of the issue. The other side of the issue is that Israel has failed drastically in achieving any of their goals. Their goal, their main goal, was ethnic cleansing of Gaza. The heroic Palestinian population remained in Gaza, did not leave. Seven hundred thousand people still are in Gaza City and in the north, regardless of the bombardment, of the killing, of everything. And people do not want to leave their homeland again, as has happened in 1948. But also Israel has failed in destroying the resistance. They have failed in bringing back the Israeli prisoners by force. And they have failed to impose their control in the area. And that’s why, practically, wherever their tanks remain, they are subjected to also resistance from the Palestinian side. That’s why they are withdrawing, but that doesn’t mean they’re not going to come back. The risk of what they are doing is that they’re taking back their tanks and their infantry and allowing the airstrikes to continue in the most possibly severe way, which is very devastating, because people in Gaza have nothing to defend themselves with against the airstrikes.

Also, it is clear that Netanyahu is maneuvering. He is pressured severely by the whole world now to stop this terrible genocide. But he wants to continue because his own political survival depends on the continuation of this war. He knows very well that once the war stops, he will be investigated for his failure on the 7th of October, his failure in this war, and he will be, of course, tried for four cases of corruption, each of which could take him to prison. So he wants even to expand the war if he can.

But the reality is that Israel is killing Palestinians now in three ways. It is killing Palestinians with bombardment. They have used more than 70,000 tons of explosives. By the way, about 30,000 of that was given by the United States of America. It is like 30 kilograms of explosives for each man, woman and child in Gaza. It is more than the double — more than double the explosive power of the two nuclear bombs that were thrown on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Second World War. But that’s not all. They use bombardment to kill people. They use hunger to kill people. We have 700,000 people practically starving in the north of Gaza. And they use diseases. We have now up — we have 35 medical teams from Palestinian Medical Relief Society working now in Gaza, and they report to us that about 1 million people in Gaza today are sick with different diseases, skin diseases, infections. And there are certain epidemics that already started. We have an outbreak of infectious hepatitis. We anticipate more outbreaks of epidemics, because children have not received vaccinations for more than 184 days.

It’s a devastating situation, but that’s why the whole world must stand up now with Palestinians and tell Israel, “Enough is enough, and genocide must stop, and it will not stop unless there is immediate and complete and permanent ceasefire.”

AMY GOODMAN: So, what do you think is happening with the pullout of the troops? Ben-Gvir said on X today, the security minister, “If the prime minister decides to end the war without a broad attack on Rafah in order to defeat Hamas, he will not have a mandate to continue serving as prime minister.” Of course, the extremist Ben-Gvir and — if they pull out of the government coalition, Netanyahu will no longer be the prime minister, if Ben-Gvir and Smotrich do that.

But also, you have the conversation that Netanyahu had with President Biden. Of course, we don’t know everything they’ve said. There’s been massive protest in the United States demanding that Biden demand an immediate ceasefire, end arms sales to Israel. This latest news: 40 Democratic members of Congress, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have written Biden urging him to halt news arms transfers to Israel, following Israel’s killing of seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen, this horrific attack that took place this week. But it must also be galling to politicians — to Palestinians that it took this, this horrific act this week, to call attention to the, what, close to 200 other humanitarian workers who are Palestinian who were killed, 400 medical staff — overall, of course, over 33,000, if not much more, Palestinians killed in Gaza over this six months. But this international attack, since there were people from Australia, Britain, Poland, the United States, Canada, all killed together, put enormous pressure on President Biden. What do you think the U.S. is doing, and what does it need to do, Dr. Barghouti?

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Well, first of all, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are not extremists. They are fascists. And this whole Israeli government does have now a fascist nature. If you look at what they are doing to our prisoners in jail or what they are doing to the people of Gaza or even the West Bank, where more than 460 people have been killed also, it’s a fascist approach. And these guys want Netanyahu to continue the war. And he wants to continue the war.

But if we have to thank anybody for the increasing solidarity with the Palestinian people and the change in the political situation also in the United States, we have to thank the people of these countries, the people of the United States, the people of Europe, the people of many, many countries in the world, who are now in an actual uprising in support of Palestinian people and against this terrible genocide that has exceeded anything before. And I think this public pressure is the main reason why Biden had to change his position, because he knows very well that he will lose elections if he continues like that. I think the vast majority — you know the figures better than me, but I think the vast majority, the majority of the American public, now are against the policy of Biden when it comes to supporting Israel in this terrible genocide.

And unfortunately, if the United States wanted, they don’t need to waste time. They can immediately force Israel to stop this war. Netanyahu and his fascist government and the Israeli government cannot continue this war without American supplies of weapons, of bombs — which continue, by the way, up ’til now — and the planes and the political support in the United Nations Security Council and in other places.

Now the United States government itself is under pressure because also of another factor, which is the fact that ICJ, International Court of Justice, will most probably decide that what’s happening and what happened is genocide. They say it’s a “plausible genocide.” This will hold the United States also responsible for committing a war crime.

So, I think all these factors are there, but we need even more pressure. And I really salute all the American honest and noble people, including the American Jewish people, who are demonstrating against this terrible genocide and preserving the human values of humanity and pressuring Biden. They should continue this pressure, because Netanyahu did not give up, and he is still trying to maneuver. He will try to make the negotiations in Cairo fail and use that as a justification for a new attack on Rafah. We know they are preparing for a new attack on Rafah. We know that Netanyahu even tries to escalate in the north and have a military confrontation with Iran and with Lebanon, if he can. And that explains why he went and attacked a consulate, a diplomatic consulate of Iran, violating every norm of international law. So, in reality, we are facing here a group of aggressors who would like to continue this war and even expand it, who are very angry at their failure. And by the way, I think part of the American administration anger at Netanyahu is that they really gave him so much time, six months, beyond any expectations, and he still failed to fulfill his military goals and failed to achieve what he promised he would do.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Muhammad Shehada into this conversation, writer and analyst, communications chief at Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. Double the explosive power of the bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been used on Gaza. I wanted to ask what these six months have meant for your family and friends in Gaza — you are from there — and about a report that you all put out, a report that Euro-Med Monitor put out, about killing starving Palestinians, targeting aid trucks, etc.

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Well, basically, by now, every single person I know in Gaza was exposed to the scene of decomposing bodies. And virtually everyone I know heard the noises of their neighbors, friends down from underneath the rubble, and they couldn’t do anything about it. It’s even too dangerous to try to rescue people. And everybody I know, at least almost everyone in my family, had their homes bombed. It expands to my circle of friends. At my work with Euro-Med Monitor, we lost at least five team members. One of our team members found his mother executed at Al-Shifa Hospital. He saw her decomposing body lying there on the ground.

And it’s not just the mass killing that is the problem. It’s the deliberate, intentional targeting of civilians, the disregard, complete disregard, for human life that we’re seeing on full display, and the cruelty of the killing itself. We see bodies flattened by Israeli tanks, turned into — literally turned into mush, crushed by Israeli tanks and armored vehicles. We see people hacked into pieces by Israeli missiles and shells. And we see people having their arms bound, their eyes blindfolded, and then executed, especially at Al-Shifa Hospital. So, the nature of the cruelty of the killing is very striking in that sense, especially that it’s very open — they’re not even trying to hide it — and that it’s incredibly underreported on. It doesn’t make it to any mainstream media, basically.

The other dimension that we see there is the people, the amount of people, the hidden iceberg of about 70,000 to 80,000 people who have been maimed or burned severely or wounded critically, without basically any appropriate medical treatment or the possibility to go out of Gaza and seek medical treatment. At the moment, it’s only very, very meager, very minor numbers of people that are allowed outside Gaza to get medical treatment. And hospitals in Gaza, the majority of them, have been fully compromised by Israel surgically, one after the other, in broad daylight, without any sort of condemnation from the U.S. or the European Union.

We see also the mass destruction, as you alluded, twice the amount of bombs that were used in Hiroshima, as an estimate that it’s about 70,000 tons of bombs that were dropped on Gaza. And we recently see Israeli officials admitting in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, saying that “We could have achieved the same military objectives with about 10% of the damage,” but, quote, “cruelty was the point.” There’s an attempt to make a message here. There’s also the unethical, extremely insane use of artificial intelligence in targeting people.

There is also the very bizarre notion that the Israeli soldiers or Israeli troops, commanders, they set up virtual, quote, “extermination areas” in Gaza. Any person that crosses that area or happens to be in that area is executed on the spot or detained and tortured at the Sde Teiman Israeli military base, where thousands of Palestinians are being held at that black spot, away from any sort of legal purview, without being charged or put on trial. And they are subjected to daily torture in every sense of the word, in the most unimaginable ways possible. They’re being electrocuted, burned with cigarettes, urinated upon, spat upon. They have their arms and legs tied at all times. They are forced to squat down and sit blindfolded, tied again, arms and legs, for weeks. They are sleep deprived. If they try to sleep or speak to one another, they get beaten up by soldiers immediately. And we recently saw a report from Israeli doctors last week, in Haaretz again. A doctor, one dissenting doctor, wrote a letter to Israeli ministers warning that “we’re all complicit” in grave violations of the law, because Israeli Palestinian detainees, who are even political hostages at this point — they’re mass arrested as a bargaining chip, therefore political prisoners or hostages — they had — some of them are routinely, quote, “having their legs amputated” from wounds of being handcuffed, both arms and legs, for weeks and weeks and months.

And then there is the last dimension of the engineered, systematic starvation throughout Gaza, but most prominently and most severely in the north, where, as Dr. Mustafa said earlier, we have about half a million to 700,000 people stuck in the north of Gaza, refusing to leave. Israel is continuing a process of ethnic cleansing in the north up until now. They continue to drop leaflets on people, telling them to move south if they want food, if they want safety, although the south is just as ravaged and compromised and devastated as the north. And we see Israel not just preventing aid from going to the north, but targeting anybody — literally anybody — that tries to secure the aid trucks coming through, prevent looting and ensure fair distribution. Around the time that Israel invaded Al-Shifa, in fact, one of the reasons why they invaded Al-Shifa is the civil government in Gaza was operating from there after virtually all government facilities around the north of Gaza were destroyed and razed. They had only Al-Shifa to operate from there, because there was electricity and access to people, and they can organize from there an emergency committee that can be in charge of securing the delivery of aid and its fair distribution. It worked out on the 16th and 17th of March very well. That was the first time since the war started, in about 170 days at the time, that aid made it all the way to Jabaliya and was distributed to people without any destruction, without any looting, without any chaos. The day after, on Monday, that’s when Israel started invading Al-Shifa and assassinated, targeted assassinations against key figures that were responsible for securing the aid.

So, we see this very deliberate, very engineered starvation process of people in northern Gaza to ethnically cleanse it and force them out, but also to sustain chaos in the entirety of the Gaza Strip, to sustain the loss of civil order and to bring about a societal collapse, in whole or in part, to push it to the deepest conscience of people in Gaza, to the deepest of their minds, the idea of leaving, that it should be their only ticket to survival, to achieve the Israeli goal of population transfer, what they refer to as “thinning the population.” They call it “voluntary migration,” but in fact it’s ethnic cleansing. And we see that process still on full display. And we see a very systematic, deliberate, conscious effort to make Gaza uninhabitable for decades to come.

***

Imprisoned Palestinian Writer Walid Daqqa Dies of Cancer After 38 Years in Israeli Jails
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 8, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/8/w ... transcript

Walid Daqqa, one of the most prominent Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody, has died from cancer. The novelist had spent the past 38 years locked up for his involvement with an armed group that abducted and killed an Israeli soldier in 1984. Rights groups had been pressuring Israel to release Daqqa, who had already finished serving his prison term, saying he was in dire need of medical attention. Last month Amnesty International called for his release, saying that since October 7, he had been tortured, humiliated and denied family visits. “Walid Daqqa suffered from medical negligence for years,” says Palestinian politician Dr. Mustafa Barghouti. “The most inhuman behavior was the fact that they did not allow his wife and his daughter, his only daughter, to visit him since the 7th of October, and while knowing he was in terminal stage, just about to die.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Before we end, Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, I wanted to ask you about one of the most prominent Palestinian prisoners who has been jailed. He’s died from cancer in an Israeli prison. The novelist Walid Daqqa had spent the past 38 years locked up for his involvement with an armed group that abducted and killed an Israeli soldier in 1984. Rights groups had been pressuring Israel to release him, saying he was in dire need of medical attention. Last month, Amnesty International called for his release, saying that since October 7th, he had been tortured, humiliated and denied family visits. Can you tell us about Walid Daqqa and the effect of his death in prison?

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Well, Walid Daqqa is a 14th prisoner who dies in jail, in Israeli prison, since 7th of October. The 13 others were beaten to death. In this case, Walid died because of cancer. But Walid Daqqa suffered from medical negligence for years, not only recently, but especially recently. Walid Daqqa finished his term, by the way. He was — the ruling was that he would be in jail for 37 years, and that period finished, but they wouldn’t release him. They kept him through new military orders, knowing that he’s having cancer and that he needs urgent treatment and he needs to be with his family.

But the most inhuman behavior was the fact that they did not allow his wife and his daughter, his only daughter, to visit him since the 7th of October. And while knowing that he was in terminal stage, just about to die, they refused to let them even come to his prison and say goodbye to him and see him for the last time. That kind of behavior is selfish. And I think that’s the nature of the treatment.

And to add insult to injury, Ben-Gvir, this fascist minister of interior security, who is in charge of prisons, Israeli prisons, declared that he is sorry that Walid Daqqa, this famous novelist and writer, and who especially wrote for children, he said that he’s — Ben-Gvir said he was sorry that Walid Daqqa died because of cancer and was not executed by the Israeli military. This is the kind of mentality we have to deal with.

And by the way, I mean, while we are talking, I have to really mention, I’ve just been recently able to visit some of the injured people from Gaza who are being treated in other countries. And these are not just numbers, when we say 75,000 people injured. There are 11,000 people in need to be treated outside because there is no treatment for them in Gaza, like the 10,000 cases of cancer. But the people who got out, I met some of them. One of them was a woman who lost her hand, lost her leg, lost her husband, lost her two children — three children, actually. And now she’s left alone. Another one lost her sight. A third one is now paraplegic because she was hit in the back. And so on and so forth. It’s a terrible situation.

And, you know, what hurts me a lot is that when six white people, from Poland, Australia and Britain, were killed by the same Israeli army — and, of course, we are absolutely shocked that they were killed while they were trying to provide humanitarian aid — but because these six people who are internationals are not Palestinians, the whole world was up in arms, and the United States was criticizing Israel. But we didn’t see the same reaction to the 40,000 Palestinians killed so far, including almost 15,000 children — and including, by the way, the seventh person from this international group who was a Palestinian.

I think this kind of discrimination and racism is something we should all stand up against, because at the end of the day, what Palestinians want is very simple. We want freedom. We want self-determination. We want to be equal to everybody. We want to be treated as equal human beings. And it is the duty and responsibility of every person in this world who believes in humanity to be on the side of the Palestinian people. This is not a time to be neutral or to ignore this terrible genocide that is taking place against the population of Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, I want to thank you for being with us, physician and politician, general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, and Muhammad Shehada, writer and analyst, communications chief at Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, speaking to us from Copenhagen, Dr. Barghouti speaking to us from Ramallah. And I should add that Ben-Gvir, the cabinet minister, who is threatening to pull out of the government if Netanyahu doesn’t have the Israeli troops invade Rafah, was himself convicted of inciting anti-Arab racism and hatred and supporting a terrorist group.

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“A Sea of Misery”: Gaza Is Unlike Anything I’ve Ever Seen, Says NGO Head/Ex-CNN Journalist Arwa Damon
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 9, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/9/a ... transcript

Award-winning journalist Arwa Damon has just returned from a humanitarian trip to Gaza in her capacity as the founder of INARA, the International Network for Aid Relief and Assistance, a nonprofit currently providing medical and mental healthcare to children. Damon describes the overwhelming need for aid under Israel’s siege of the territory. “Nothing goes in and out of Gaza without Israel’s approval. That includes aid, and that includes people,” she says, calling the Israeli military’s rules for what is allowed in “illogical” and arbitrary. “The zone needs to be flooded, not only with aid … but also with humanitarian workers,” concludes Damon. We also discuss the mental health crisis gripping the population, U.S. military assistance to Israel and how anti-Arab racism and fearmongering in Western media coverage has and hasn’t changed in the post-9/11 era.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Israeli warplanes bombed areas across northern Gaza today while ground troops conducted raids as the assault on the territory entered its seventh month. Forensic experts from Gaza’s Health Ministry are still removing bodies from the yard of Shifa Hospital, once the largest medical facility in Gaza, that was burned down and destroyed by Israeli forces. Health officials say the number of dead following Israel’s raid on Shifa is still not known, but is in the hundreds.

Meanwhile, in the south, Palestinians who tried to return to Khan Younis, Gaza’a second-largest city, following the withdrawal of Israeli troops Sunday, say it is now unlivable. An estimated 55% of the buildings in the Khan Younis area, around 45,000 buildings, have been destroyed or damaged, according to two mapping experts at City University of New York and Oregon State University who have been using satellite imagery to track destruction.

This comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has escalated his pledge to invade Rafah, where more than 1.4 million Palestinians — well over half of Gaza’s population — are sheltering. In a video statement Monday, Netanyahu said, quote, “It will happen. There’s a date,” he said, without elaborating. He spoke as Israeli negotiators were in Cairo discussing international efforts to broker a ceasefire deal with Hamas.

The official death toll has now topped 33,300, including over 14,000 children. That number does not include thousands missing under the rubble and presumed dead. Nearly 76,000 people have been wounded.

Israel has been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, where the spread of hunger and malnutrition has been described as unprecedented, with famine setting in.

For more, we’re joined by Arwa Damon. She just returned yesterday from a humanitarian trip to Gaza. She’s an award-winning journalist and the founder of INARA, the International Network for Aid Relief and Assistance, a nonprofit currently providing medical and mental healthcare to children in Gaza. Arwa Damon is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. She previously spent 18 years at CNN, including as a senior international correspondent. Arwa Damon joins us now from Istanbul, Turkey.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Arwa. Can you start off by talking about what you saw in Gaza and what you think needs to be done?

ARWA DAMON: You know, on the one hand, that would seem like a simple question. And yet, on the other hand, it’s so extraordinarily difficult to actually put what I witnessed into words. In fact, Gazans themselves can’t actually grasp the fact that this has become their reality.

In Rafah, in the southern area of Gaza, where you have a crush of about 1.5 million people, it feels as if you’re moving through a sea of misery. There is no empty space left. Tents are spilling out of both U.N. shelters and other makeshift shelters that have emerged. They’re spilling out onto the sidewalks. There’s stalls that have been set up. The movement of people clogs the streets. You have people having to move around on donkey carts because there’s not enough fuel or diesel to power vehicles. And then you just have the sheer need of this entire mass of humanity that is — to a certain degree, feels as if it’s absolutely suffocating, because they need everything. They are reliant on others for just about everything, from food to water to medicine to baby formula to diapers.

We stepped out in this one area called Mawasi, which is sort of a beachy area. It was Gaza’s beachfront. And there, it’s just tent after tent after tent in the sand. There’s no sewage systems, and so sewage is sort of running along these makeshift canals. There’s no proper toilets. There’s no nothing. And all of the mothers there are just shoving these emaciated babies at you, you know, begging for proper formula, begging for proper care. They’re begging for medicine for children who are epileptic. You walk into a tent, and with each step your foot takes, a cloud of mosquitoes and flies just swarms up. I mean, it’s inexplicable.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Arwa, Israel has in recent days said that it’s opening up new entry points into Gaza for aid. Could you talk about the aid that you saw coming in, which still has not reached the level, the number of trucks per day, before the war even started?

ARWA DAMON: Right, and there’s a number of things that I think everyone would be best served to understand about aid and distribution. So, yes, if more aid is able to get in, absolutely that is going to help. However, when it comes to getting aid to those who need it, it is beyond just opening up additional crossings. The aid trucks that come into Gaza all get searched by Israel, and that is a process that can take around two to three weeks to begin with. You do see aid being distributed. The problem is that the quantity of the aid is insufficient.

Additionally, it’s important to note that once the aid gets inside Gaza, getting it distributed within this, you know, tiny little space, yet at the same time extraordinarily difficult to navigate area, poses great and additional challenges. There’s a process that’s called deconfliction — this exists in all war zones — whereby which aid organizations wanting to reach a certain area will notify warring parties about their intent and will secure permissions to be able to safely move to that area. This is a process that has not and does not work inside Gaza. And the tragic, horrific strike that we saw on the World Central Kitchen convoy is clear evidence of that. And that really sent huge shockwaves within the humanitarian community, because the World Central Kitchen has some of the best deconfliction mechanisms, has some of the best lines of communication to the Israeli side.

And so, you have these additional layers upon layers of challenges. Add to all of it, the lack of aid has created a very understandable level of panic among the population. What that means is that whenever aid arrives to a certain area, there is chaos and there is panic. And this is why you keep hearing people speaking about the need to flood the zone. The zone needs to be flooded not only with aid, so that people can stop panicking and have a certain measure of confidence that they will be getting a stable supply to food, water and other basic necessities, but also the zone needs to be flooded with humanitarian workers, people who know how to address this level of a humanitarian crisis.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you talk, as well, about the impact of this war, the mental health impact, especially on the children of Gaza, that you have spoken so eloquently about in recent days?

ARWA DAMON: I’ll give you one example. A mother came up to me, and she was — she had heard about the fact that, you know, we do work with mental health, specifically with children. It’s also important to note that, you know, when an area, a population is still in crisis, is still in an emergency, all you can really provide is basic mental health, especially for children. And what does that actually look like? It really just looks like a distraction, so creating activities and ways for them to express themselves that can sort of help them distract themselves from all of the horror and the nightmare that they’re going through. But this mother comes up to me, and she says, “I don’t know what to do with my 7-year-old right now, because every single night he screams at the top of his lungs, and he goes into what look like convulsion and seizures.” And he started doing this after he saw his sister’s head blown off during a strike that hit their home, that also wounded other siblings.

You know, you walk around Gaza — and I’m talking specifically about the children right now, but you see this also very deeply in the adults. And you know that sparkle that’s normally supposed to exist in a child’s eye? It’s not there anymore. That’s not to say it can’t come back and it can’t be brought back with these activities. You know, there are these beautiful, heartwarming moments where you are able to create a scenario for a child to be able to laugh and smile, albeit briefly.

But you really feel as if you are walking through a population that is — they’re ghosts. And they describe themselves as ghosts. They’re ghosts of their past. They’re the ghosts of who they used to be. And they’re constantly haunted by the ghosts of everything that they have lost. And the trauma doesn’t end. It comes at them from multiple different directions every single day. The mental health impact of this is unlike anything that I personally have ever seen 20 years working in war zones, just the immediacy of the need, the speed with which this all happened. And even people in Gaza, when you talk to them right now, you know, despite having lived through this for six, seven months, they still tell you that they feel as if this can’t be real. Right? Like, this can’t have happened. This has to be a nightmare from which one day they’re going to wake up.

AMY GOODMAN: Arwa, you have said — you’ve pointed out that what’s happening in Gaza right now is absolutely egregious, that the Western world, the ones providing the weapons, cannot pressure Israel into allowing more aid and medical staff. Can you talk more about that? I mean, this isn’t, you know, a natural disaster, where an earthquake happened and people can’t get to the people. Explain exactly Israel’s role in preventing this aid from getting to those in need.

ARWA DAMON: So, nothing goes in and out of Gaza without Israel’s approval. Nothing. That includes aid, and that includes people. There’s a whole process for that. And this is a process that actually existed before October 7th. It is, since October 7th, extraordinarily and excruciatingly long. In addition to that, since 2008, there has been a list of items that are banned entry to Gaza. This list also exists to the West Bank. Now, since October 7th, there have been additional items, that are not part of this list, that have been rejected. There is no formality to this rejection. We in the humanitarian space end up finding out about items being repeatedly rejected, and, as such, there’s no point of trying to send them in, because of repeat rejections. These items range from things like solar panels to wheelchairs to certain kinds of medicine to sleeping bags in some cases — anything that the Israelis say can be deemed to be dual-use. But the problem is that it feels very illogical, and, again, there’s no formality to it, so you don’t know if an item is going to get rejected until you actually try to send it in. Some organizations have even had children’s toys be rejected. You know, you try to put together these hygiene kits for families, and the nail clippers in them get rejected, and, as such, the entire truck gets completely turned around. And so, it’s extraordinarily difficult to try to navigate that kind of a situation. And, obviously, this creates an even greater and more desperate need inside Gaza itself.

Now, what is very difficult to comprehend, as you were saying there, is the fact that Israel is an ally to the United States and other very powerful Western nations. Is this the first time that we’ve seen an area under siege? Absolutely not. Look, I covered Syria very extensively. The regime of Bashar al-Assad, a dictatorship, along with their Russian allies, did, yes, put entire neighborhoods and areas in Syria under siege. But there we were talking about a dictatorship with Russia as its ally. We saw ISIS besiege entire areas in both Syria and Iraq. But we’re talking about ISIS. We’re not talking about a democratically elected nation-state that is an ally of the United States. And that is what makes it so difficult for anyone inside Gaza to comprehend how it is that the United States is allowing Israel to continue to besiege the Strip in such a way. And remember, it was on day one that Israel cut off electricity, water and basically vowed to cut off any form of assistance. They cannot comprehend this. They cannot comprehend how it is that this is being allowed to happen to them — on top of that, happening to them, and the United States is still continuing to fund the war effort.

AMY GOODMAN: Arwa Damon, I want to ask you about the journalists killed, estimates between 90 and 130, 140 journalists killed by Israel in Gaza alone. You were an award-winning journalist for CNN for 18 years, covered the U.S. attack on Iraq. I wish we saw your reporting more. You mainly did it for CNN International, which would show the picture of the statue of Saddam Hussein coming down in a split screen with the casualties of war, whereas CNN domestic would just show the statue of Saddam Hussein coming down hundreds of times. But your reporting was extremely important. I want to talk about seeing the images of casualties on the ground in Gaza. Right now Israel doesn’t allow international journalists in, and domestic journalists in Gaza, so many of them, have been killed. Can you talk about the significance of this? Because that leads to people around the world caring, to put more pressure.

ARWA DAMON: You know, this is the first time, I would argue, that Gazans have control over the way that their story is being told. And that has made, to a certain degree, the understanding that the Western world has about what’s actually happening in Gaza and the toll of all of it shift slightly, because the Western media does not control Gaza’s story anymore. Gazans do.

I have to say, I mean, I have so much respect and admiration for all of Gaza’s journalists, because, you know, when we go into a war zone, wherever it is, as journalists, there comes a point when we get to rotate out. Right? You can tap out. You can say, like, “I need a break. Send in the next crew.” They have not been able to tap out for six months. And they’re not reporting on something that is happening to a different population. They’re reporting on their own people, what’s happening to their own families and to their own loved ones.

This ongoing effort, however, it would most certainly seem, to try to silence Gaza’s journalists is extraordinarily disturbing. But it is, sadly, part of this whole overarching desire to control the narrative. And right now, though, it’s not working, because Gaza’s journalists and Gazans, they’re not going to stop. And they deserve to be commended for that and for the awareness that they’re actually raising about what is happening to them.

And it’s very, very disturbing, but to a certain degree makes sense from a PR perspective, that Israel is not allowing Western journalists in, because if the scenes that Gazans are witnessing every single day were part of the regular broadcasts that are happening, there would be a much bigger and stronger outcry than what — than anything that we’re seeing right now.

I mean, you know, I went into the European Hospital, which is basically southern Gaza’s currently largest and only really remaining, you know, significantly functioning hospital. You walk into the hospital courtyard, the outdoor pathways, and it’s streams of tents, and there’s sewage lines running next to the tents. And this is inside a hospital. And people have crammed themselves into the hospital corridors themselves. You have bed after a bed of injured and the injured children with amputations, with horrific burns. I walked into the ICU, and there, there was a 10-year-old boy, and the ICU nurse said he’s a gunshot victim. He took a gunshot bullet straight to the head. It’s just —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Arwa, I wanted to ask you —

ARWA DAMON: I mean —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We only have about a minute for this segment, but I wanted to ask you — we’ve mentioned that you were a CNN reporter for 18 years, covered many conflict zones. How do you look at the coverage of CNN since October 7th and the degree to which not only CNN but most Western media outlets are always deferring to Israel to make sure that Israel gets a chance to comment on every single story that they write or that they produce?

ARWA DAMON: You know, October 7th happened, and then the coverage began, and I immediately was catapulted back to the post-9/11 era. And I was in New York when 9/11 happened. And I just — my hair stood on end, because it was the same level of, you know, dehumanization that we saw back then. It was the same sort of panicked, kind of one-sided, to certain degree, reporting that we saw back then. And it was extremely upsetting, because one would hope that, you know, we, the journalism world, the Western journalism space, would have learned the lessons of post-9/11 and that we wouldn’t sort of default into this whole dehumanization of the other.

And I think it’s really important that all journalists are cognizant and should know — you know, we go all over the world. You know, there’s a basic fact that we should all know, and that is that people, we’re the same. We love the same. We laugh the same. We live the same. We feel pain in the same way. And yet there was this default back into this dehumanizing rhetoric, this sort of “us against them” issue. And it was absolutely devastating and gutting and heartbreaking to witness and see that we defaulted back into sort of that same rhetoric and that same dehumanization of a population, that perhaps, you know, for very superficial reasons, we don’t perceive as being like us, and this desire to sort of inflict collective punishment on an entire people.

AMY GOODMAN: Arwa Damon, I want to thank you for being with us, just returned from a humanitarian trip to Gaza, award-winning journalist with CNN but now founder of INARA, a nonprofit currently providing medical and mental healthcare to children, also nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, spent 18 years at CNN as a senior international correspondent.

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“Empty Words”: Kenneth Roth on Biden’s Criticism of Israel While U.S. Keeps Weapons Flowing
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 9, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/9/k ... transcript

Lawyers representing Germany at the International Court of Justice delivered their concluding remarks at The Hague today in a case brought by Nicaragua, which has accused Germany of facilitating the commission of genocide in Gaza by providing military and financial aid to Israel. Germany is Israel’s second-largest arms supplier, and Nicaragua has asked the United Nations’ top court for emergency measures to halt its material support to Israel. While the United States is the leading arms supplier to Israel, it “has a much more limited acceptance” of the ICJ’s jurisdiction, according to our guest Kenneth Roth. A visiting professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and formerly the longtime executive director of Human Rights Watch, Roth details Nicaragua’s case against Germany, as well as the U.S. government’s stance toward Israel. Despite President Biden’s public condemnation of the recent World Central Kitchen aid convoy attack and the “huge leverage” of ongoing U.S. military assistance, the administration’s warnings to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are “empty words,” says Roth. “Joe Biden never backs them up with consequences,” and his reelection campaign is taking progressive voters for granted as domestic dissent grows in the lead-up to the 2024 election, Roth adds.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

As we continue on Gaza, lawyers representing Germany at the International Court of Justice delivered their concluding remarks at The Hague today in a case brought by Nicaragua, which has accused Germany of facilitating the commission of genocide in Gaza by providing military and financial aid to Israel. Nicaragua has asked the U.N.'s top court for emergency measures ordering the German government to halt its support to Israel. Germany is Israel's second-largest arms supplier after the U.S. In 2023, Germany approved arms exports to Israel valued at over $353 million, roughly 10 times the sum approved the previous year.

For more, we’re joined by Kenneth Roth, visiting professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, served for nearly 30 years as the executive director of Human Rights Watch. He’s joining us now in New York.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Ken. It’s great to have you with us. Can you explain why Nicaragua is simply taking on Germany, and the significance of this case, another case being brought to the U.N.’s top court?

KENNETH ROTH: Obviously, the United States would have been the ideal target. The U.S. is the principal armer of the Israeli military. But the U.S. has a much more limited acceptance of the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. It basically has to consent to every suit. And it was not going to consent to this suit. Germany has a much more open-ended acceptance of the jurisdiction, so Germany being the second-largest armer of the Israeli military, it was the target.

Now, in terms of the significance, the court has already found that this is a plausible case of genocide. And Nicaragua is saying, “Germany, you are arming potential genocide.” They also have added that Germany is arming actual war crimes, violations of international humanitarian law, which it clearly is. Now, there is a precedent for this. If you remember back to Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, he was convicted of aiding and abetting war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone, and is actually currently serving a 50-year prison term in Britain for that crime. So, the International Court of Justice is a civil court. It’s not a criminal court. But Nicaragua is basically pursuing the same theory, saying, you know, “This is at least war crimes. It’s plausible genocide. You’re arming it. That’s aiding and abetting. You should stop.” That’s the essence of the case.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you, Kenneth — there were 40 Democratic members of Congress, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who have written to President Biden, urging him to halt new arms transfers to Israel in the wake of the killing of the World Central Kitchen aid workers. What’s your sense of the prospects for possibly halting or at least significantly reducing U.S. arms shipments to Israel?

KENNETH ROTH: Well, you know, Juan, that has been the line that Joe Biden has been unwilling to cross. He has spoken, at this point quite eloquently, pushing Israel to stop bombing civilians, to allow more food and humanitarian aid into Gaza. But these, from Netanyahu’s perspective, are just empty words, because Joe Biden never backs them up with consequences. And the obvious consequence, the obvious huge leverage that the U.S. government has, is the $3.8 billion in annual military aid it gives Israel and the regular shipment of arms, you know, almost every week in the course of this conflict. And Biden has not been willing to explicitly condition those, that aid, those arms sales, on ending the bombing and starving of Palestinian civilians.

Now, we heard last week that in the private phone call with Netanyahu, Biden suggested that at some point in the future this might be conditioned, you know, that U.S. relations will depend on how Israel responds. But it was all very vague. And, of course, Netanyahu responded with equal vagueness. He says, “OK, at some point I’ll open up the new crossing into northern Gaza to allow more food aid in, but that will take a few weeks, and I’m not saying anything about whether I’ll impose the same kind of obstructions in the north as I’ve imposed in the south. And I won’t say anything about Israel’s shooting at Palestinian police officers so that there’s chaos when you try to distribute the food. You know, none of that is on the table.”

So, in essence, Biden is not using this huge leverage, despite the pleas of an increasing number of lawmakers in Washington, you know, despite rapidly changing U.S. opinion polls saying Americans are tired of the U.S. actively supporting these war crimes, this plausible genocide in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Why is he doing this? I mean, it is amazing to see the split in the Democratic establishment. I’m not just talking about the protesters on the streets, who definitely are driving this split. But, you know, you have now Senator Warren of Massachusetts saying she believes Israel’s assault on Gaza meets the legal definition of genocide. You have Christopher Coons, who I consider a Biden whisperer, who is now talking about halting weapons sales to Israel. But you have Biden resisting, though he has talked about a ceasefire. Why is this so difficult for him? What do you think it would take, especially now that you have Netanyahu saying that he’s set the date certain for an invasion of Rafah?

KENNETH ROTH: He just won’t tell us what that date is, yes. Amy, that’s the big psychoanalytic question, and we just don’t know. I mean, part of it, I think, is that Joe Biden, you know, who is an older man, as we know, thinks of Israel back in 1967, when it was the David surrounded by the Goliath of all the Arab states attacking Israel. He doesn’t think of Israel today, the regional superpower, a nuclear-armed state, a state that has been occupying Palestinian territory for decades and is imposing apartheid. You know, that’s just not in his mind.

More to the point, he seems to be making a political calculation. And he’s always been focused on the movable middle, the handful of independent voters who could go either way in the six swing states. And what he seems to be discounting is the progressives. And clearly, the Michigan primary was a bit of a wake-up call, suddenly the large number of “uncommitted” votes in a swing state. And so, we’ve seen him being more attentive. But I think he still calculates that progressives have no place to go. They’re not going to vote for Trump, and abstaining is effectively a vote for Trump, so when push comes to shove in November, they’re going to have to hold their nose and vote for Biden. And that seems to be what is pushing him at this stage.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Ken Roth, I want to ask you to stay with us as we continue our discussion about U.S.’s foreign policy, visiting professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, served for nearly 30 years as executive director of Human Rights Watch.

When we come back, Rwanda marks 30 years after the 1994 genocide. We’ll speak with a survivor, and we’ll look, with Ken Roth, at how the U.S., France and other nations stood by, refusing to say the word “genocide,” afraid it would trigger, force the use of the Genocide Convention. Stay with us. Back in 20 seconds.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “The Meaning of Death” by the Rwandan gospel singer Kizito Mihigo, a survivor of the 1994 genocide. In 2020, he was found dead in his cell in Rwanda after being arrested days earlier. The song was released a decade ago, banned in Rwanda.

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Israel’s Ultimate Goal Is to Make Gaza Unfit for Human Habitation: Middle East Analyst Mouin Rabbani
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 10, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/10/ ... transcript

President Biden called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza a “mistake” and urged Israel to call for a temporary ceasefire to allow in more aid in a televised interview on Tuesday. While Israel has pledged to open new aid crossings, the U.N. said on Tuesday that there has been “no significant change in the volume of humanitarian supplies entering Gaza,” and the Biden administration has not actually changed its policies or withheld any arms transfers to Israel. “Words are cheap, and statements are a dime a dozen,” says Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani, who explains Israel can safely ignore statements if policy remains unchanged. “What really matters is not what these people say, but what they do.” Rabbani also speaks about the United Nations considering Palestinian statehood, ongoing negotiations over a Gaza ceasefire, and Israel attacking the Iranian Consulate in Syria.

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 New York, with Juan González in Chicago.

President Biden called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza a “mistake” and urged Israel to call for a temporary ceasefire to allow in more aid. Biden’s comments came in an interview that aired Tuesday on the Spanish-language TV network Univision. In his remarks, Biden highlighted the Israeli airstrike last week on an aid convoy that killed seven workers with the food charity World Central Kitchen, six of those aid workers international.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I think what he’s doing is a mistake. I don’t agree with his approach. I think it’s outrageous that those four — or, three vehicles were hit by drones and taken out on a highway, where it wasn’t like it was along the shore. It wasn’t like it was a convoy moving there, etc. So, what I’m calling for is for the Israelis to just call for a ceasefire, allow for the next six, eight weeks a total access to all food and medicine going into the country. I’ve spoken with everyone, from the Saudis to the Jordanians to the Egyptians. They’re prepared to move in. They’re prepared to move this food in. And I think there’s no excuse to not provide for the medical and the food needs of those people. And it should be done now.

AMY GOODMAN: Following the airstrike on the World Central Kitchen convoy last week, Biden called Netanyahu and warned for the first time the U.S. would be forced to change its policy if Israel did not change its policies on Gaza. Israel responded by pledging to open new aid crossings. However, the U.N. said Tuesday there’s been, quote, “no significant change in the volume of humanitarian supplies entering Gaza,” unquote, and the Biden administration has not actually changed its policies or withheld any arms transfers to Israel.

This comes as Human Rights Watch is calling on governments to impose targeted sanctions on Israel and suspend arms transfers, to press the Israeli government to ensure access to humanitarian aid. The rights group has accused the Israeli government of using starvation as a weapon of war. At least 32 people, including 28 children, have died of malnutrition and dehydration in northern Gaza, where famine is setting in. In the south, at least 5% of children under age 2 were found to be acutely malnourished.

Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes continue across Gaza, including dozens of strikes in Gaza City, as well as in central Gaza, where an airstrike hit a home in the Nuseirat refugee camp today, killing at least 14 people, including five children.

For more, we’re joined by Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani. He’s an editor of Jadaliyya and host of the Connections podcast. He’s a contributor to the new book, Deluge: Gaza and Israel from Crisis to Cataclysm. He was previously a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group.

Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us —

MOUIN RABBANI: Good to be with you.

AMY GOODMAN: — here in studio in New York. I wanted to start off with a clip yesterday. Foreign minister — British Foreign Minister David Cameron stood with Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a news conference. They were at the State Department. Cameron said Britain’s position on arms sales to Israel was unchanged.

DAVID CAMERON: The latest assessment leaves our position on export licenses unchanged. This is consistent with the advice that I and other ministers have received. And as ever, we will keep the position under review. Let me be clear, though: We continue to have grave concerns around the humanitarian access issue in Gaza, both for the period that was assessed and subsequently.

AMY GOODMAN: And then you have Blinken and Cameron shaking hands. Can you talk about what President Biden is saying, what’s happening on the ground in Gaza, and why what the U.S. does matters, not to mention Britain saying they’re continuing arms sales?

MOUIN RABBANI: Well, President Biden referred to Israeli policy towards the Gaza Strip as a “mistake.” I mean, a mistake is when you take a wrong turn at a traffic light or perhaps when a surgeon removes the wrong kidney. But when over the course of six months, half a year, you kill tens of thousands of people, with perhaps additional tens of thousands buried under the rubble and decomposing, that’s not a mistake. That’s a deliberate policy. And that’s why Israel has been hauled in front of the International Court of Justice on charges of genocide.

I think the second issue here is that words are cheap, and statements are a dime a dozen. And Israel, over the decades, has learned that it can safely ignore statements, whether by U.S. or European decision-makers, that are essentially playing to the gallery. Because what really matters is not what these people say, but what they do. And when the United States, United Kingdom, the European Union indicate that there is not going to be any consequences, that Israel will continue to be allowed to act with impunity, that there will be no consequences for Israel’s actions, then Israel’s leaders, whether Netanyahu or any of his predecessors, know that they can safely ignore statements such as the ones we’ve been hearing.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Mouin Rabbani, I wanted to ask you — the U.N. Security Council is going to make a formal decision on Palestine’s bid for full U.N. membership this month. But the U.S. will likely veto this if it is approved, and the U.S. is saying that Palestine needs to negotiate statehood with Israel before it is granted statehood by the U.N. Your response to this, since, obviously, when Israel was admitted into the U.N., the Palestinians were not asked to first negotiate Israel’s statehood?

MOUIN RABBANI: Well, I think the U.S., despite several statements over the years to the contrary, has had a consistent position against Palestinian self-determination, against Palestinian statehood. It has recently voted against several resolutions in the U.N. General Assembly reaffirming the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination. And essentially, what the U.S. government is saying is that it will not support Palestinian statehood unless Israel does so. And Israel’s position is crystal clear on this matter. It rejects Palestinian statehood. So, in other words, the U.S. is subcontracting its position on Palestinian statehood to Israel and adopting it as its own.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I also wanted to ask you about Prime Minister Netanyahu claiming that the date is set for the attack on Rafah, but at the same time Palestinians are being allowed to return to Khan Younis after Israel basically destroyed that city. Your response to that?

MOUIN RABBANI: I think that’s a situation that is a little unclear, because both the United States and the Europeans have come out against an Israeli ground operation in Rafah. Netanyahu has claimed the date for that operation has already been set. His defense minister, Yoav Gallant, has said that no such date has been set. Netanyahu has also been saying that if Israel does not enter Rafah, it will not be able to win this war. And this may be a maneuver by Netanyahu to essentially claim that it is because of the United States and it is because of the Europeans and their opposition to an operation in Rafah that Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip has failed, and then also to use these differences with the U.S. for domestic political reasons.

AMY GOODMAN: Mouin Rabbani, can you talk about what’s going on in Cairo right now, the negotiations between Hamas and Israel? Can you talk about the prisoners and the hostages? I know that’s being debated. I mean, I think in the West Bank it’s something like 8,000 people have been taken prisoner, many of them children, since October 7th. And you have something like 130 hostages, Israeli and other foreign nationals, taken by Hamas and other groups on October 7th. And then the whole issue of a ceasefire and letting aid in?

MOUIN RABBANI: Yes, there are a number of issues that are being negotiated. One of them is an exchange of captives. Another is — and for that, formulas are being discussed about how many captives, how many Palestinian captives Israel will release in exchange for the Palestinians releasing the Israeli and other captives in the Gaza Strip.

A second concerns a ceasefire, whether it will be temporary or permanent. And Hamas and Palestinians are, of course, insisting that a temporary pause in fighting, during which there’s an exchange of captives, and then this genocidal assault resumes, doesn’t really make sense.

A third issue is an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

And a fourth, and apparently the most important sticking point, is whether or not Palestinians who have been displaced, primarily from the northern Gaza Strip, many of whom are now in the Rafah region, will be allowed to return to whatever is left of their former homes. And, in fact, it is on this issue that, according to reports, Israel is proving the most obstinate. It has stated that it would allow women and children, but not military-aged men, to return to the northern Gaza Strip. The Palestinians are insisting that such return be unrestricted. And there’s apparently now a proposal where Israel would withdraw from this barrier that it established to bisect the Gaza Strip and that it would be manned by Egyptian forces to ensure that no armed men would go from the southern to the northern Gaza Strip. Whether this is something that will be accepted by both parties remains to be seen. But it’s interesting that of all these issues we’ve been hearing about, it is actually Israeli opposition to the return of displaced refugees to the northern Gaza Strip that is proving to be the main sticking point.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s Israel’s goal in all of this?

MOUIN RABBANI: I believe it’s to make the Gaza Strip unfit for human habitation. Of course, Israel entered this war hoping and intending to eradicate and eliminate Hamas as a government that is an armed force, and thought it could do so within a matter of weeks, if not a few months. That has proven to be an abject failure. But I think there’s a wider objective here, that it had an almost insatiable lust for revenge after October 7th. It wanted to make an example out of the Gaza Strip in order to deter Palestinians or any of its surrounding adversaries from ever considering an attack on Israel like this again. And I think it also has a long-standing issue with the presence of so many Palestinians, particularly Palestinian refugees from 1948, on its border — this is a policy that goes back to the 1950s — and has seen in this crisis, and, more importantly, in the unconditional Western support it has received since October 7th, to resolve its Gaza problem, if you will, to either displace the Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip or to make it unfit for human habitation.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Mouin, I wanted to ask you — there’s a lead story in today’s New York Times that’s claiming that Iran has been flooding the West Bank with weapons in an effort to basically stoke an uprising of Palestinians on the West Bank. I’m wondering your sense of that, because the report doesn’t talk much about all of the repression and attacks and killings of Palestinians that have been occurring in the West Bank, especially since the October 7th attack by Hamas.

MOUIN RABBANI: Well, there’s a reason people refer to The New York Times as American Pravda. I mean, in this particular report, there’s virtually no evidence of any significant Iranian arms deliveries to the West Bank. And when you consider how limited Iranian arms deliveries to the Gaza Strip have been, it doesn’t really make sense to believe that there are significantly more weapons being delivered to a territory that is under much more intensive Israeli control.

And again, you know, there’s been this decadeslong attempt to seek to show the Palestinians as somehow not having any legitimate grievances of their own, as always acting on behalf of someone else’s agenda rather than on behalf of their own rights and interests. You know, it used to be they used to be Soviet proxies. Then they became jihadists. Now they’re Iranian proxies. Who knows what they’ll be tomorrow? But even if Iran didn’t exist, this conflict and this Palestinian struggle for freedom and liberation would essentially be undiminished. And, you know, this particular article makes a lot of claims, but provides virtually no evidence to substantiate those claims.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what Israel did in Damascus, bombing the Iranian Consulate. Now they’ve reopened one there.

MOUIN RABBANI: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And what exactly is going on? We’re hearing all kinds of reports that Iran and the U.S. have made a deal, that if the U.S. gets its ceasefire in Gaza, that Iran won’t attack U.S., which is arming Israel. We hear GPS is turned off in Israel so that Iran can’t attack Israel.

MOUIN RABBANI: Yes. Well, in contrast to many previous Israeli attacks on Iranian targets in Syria, this one targeted the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, which is sovereign Iranian territory. And the Iranians have indicated that, from their point of view, the response would need to be direct, rather than through, for example, allied militias, and that, from their point of view, they would launch an attack directly from Iranian territory onto Israeli territory.

Apparently, according to news reports, the Iranians have made an offer to the Americans, which is that if the Americans impose a permanent ceasefire and put an end to this genocidal Israeli assault of the Gaza Strip, that will be considered a closure of the file, also because I think the Iranians and many others, for that matter, believe that it’s an Israeli ambition to further escalate this war regionally and seek to draw the Americans into a direct confrontation with Iran. It’s a little unclear. I mean, we’ve seen indications from the Americans that this is something they’re considering. But thus far, at least, we haven’t seen confirmation that they are actually going to act on this proposal and impose a ceasefire.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I wanted to get back for a moment to the negotiations over a ceasefire. We keep hearing in the U.S. press that the holdup is Hamas not agreeing to the conditions of a deal that’s already on the table. I’m wondering your thoughts about this, because it seems to me that it’s much more in the interest of Israel to continue not having a ceasefire while it continues to conduct its operations, rather than Hamas.

MOUIN RABBANI: That’s correct. And I think we also need to recognize that when we hear the term “American proposal,” what we’re really talking about is an American proposal that has been closely coordinated and approved by Israel, so it’s essentially an American-communicated Israeli proposal.

And as we were discussing previously, there are fundamental elements of this proposal that are unacceptable, not only to Hamas, but to Palestinians generally. The idea that you would have a six-to-eight-week pause in fighting, and then this genocidal assault would resume in full force, is, I think, completely nonsensical. The idea of Palestinian men not being allowed to return to their former homes in the Gaza Strip, that Israel would still continue to have control over the delivery of aid to the Gaza Strip. And so, these are all issues that are under discussion.

But as we’ve seen in the aftermath of the Israeli killings of the World Central Kitchen staff, it literally takes only a phone call from the White House to resolve these issues. And so, I think it’s fair to assume that if the United States really wanted a ceasefire, it would only take another phone call. And the absence of that phone call, I think, is also a policy statement from Washington.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to that Lloyd Austin hearing in the Senate —

MOUIN RABBANI: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — where the conservative Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton was questioning the U.S. defense secretary, this as protesters were being taken out of the room, calling for ceasefire. I think something like 50 people were arrested in the Senate cafeteria calling for a ceasefire. This is Cotton questioning Austin.

SEN. TOM COTTON: I want to address what the protesters raised earlier. Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza?

DEFENSE SECRETARY LLOYD AUSTIN: Senator Cotton, we don’t have any evidence of genocide being created.

SEN. TOM COTTON: So, that’s a — that’s a “no,” Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza?

DEFENSE SECRETARY LLOYD AUSTIN: We don’t have evidence of that, to my knowledge, yeah.

SEN. TOM COTTON: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: “We don’t have evidence of” Israel committing genocide in Gaza. Your final response, as we begin to wrap up?

MOUIN RABBANI: Well, Cotton had a similar incident with CIA Director William Burns a few weeks ago, and he failed to get a clear response from Burns. Here, of course, you have secretary of defense essentially not wanting to implicate himself and his department, so it was kind of an obvious answer for Lloyd Austin to give.

AMY GOODMAN: Mouin Rabbani, we want to thank you so much for being with us —

MOUIN RABBANI: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: — Middle East analyst, co-editor of Jadaliyya, host of the Connections podcast, contributor to the new book, Deluge: Gaza and Israel from Crisis to Cataclysm. Mouin Rabbani was previously senior analyst for the International Crisis Group.

***

Breaking the Silence: Israeli Army Veterans Tour U.S. & Canada to Speak Out Against Occupation
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 10, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/10/ ... transcript

Democracy Now! speaks with two former Israeli soldiers who are members of Breaking the Silence, an anti-occupation group of Israeli army veterans. The group’s education director, Tal Sagi, describes growing up in a settlement and joining the military without understanding what occupation was. “We’ve been told that this is security and we have to control millions of lives and we don’t have other options,” says Sagi, who says Israeli society is not open to ending the occupation. “We’re trying to say that there are other options.” We also speak with Breaking the Silence deputy director Nadav Weiman about why the group is touring U.S. colleges and calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. “We stood in checkpoints. We raided homes. We attacked Gaza from the air. We fought from the ground,” says Weiman. “So, when you bring reality, you bring real conversation about the occupation, and you bring real conversation about Gaza.”

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 New York, with Juan González in Chicago.

The official death toll in Gaza has topped 33,400, including over 14,000 children, with over 76,000 people wounded. Over 1.7 million Palestinians have been displaced, around 70% of Gaza’s population, while famine is setting in. The International Court of Justice has ruled there’s plausible case Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Meanwhile, violence by Israeli soldiers and settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank has also exploded, with over 450 Palestinians killed in the last six months and at least 14 villages and towns forcibly depopulated.

Among those speaking out against the violence are Israeli soldiers themselves. Breaking the Silence is an anti-occupation group led by veterans of the Israeli army. The group was founded in 2004, 20 years ago, in the aftermath of the Second Intifada.

We’re joined right now by two members of Breaking the Silence. Nadav Weiman is the group’s deputy director. He served in the West Bank and Gaza from 2005 to 2008. And Tal Sagi is the group’s education director. She served as a soldier in Hebron, one of the largest cities in the West Bank.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Nadav, let’s begin with you. Why are you in the United States and then headed to Canada? And your reaction as you listen to these numbers mounting in Gaza, where you were an Israeli soldier, though albeit many years ago, over 33,000 Palestinians dead?

NADAV WEIMAN: Yeah. So, we are over here to speak about what is happening in Gaza and in the West Bank, because we believe that what is happening in the West Bank, it’s not a secret that belongs to us as soldiers. It’s something that the international community should know, because the international community is a part of it. And we saw the discourse happening over here in the States about what is happening in Israel and Palestine, and that’s why we did a campus tour the last two weeks — Tal was here with me — spoke in a lot of campuses all around, met a lot of students, because the conversation about the occupation happens everywhere, right? And we, as former soldiers, we want to be a part of it and saying supporting Israel, it’s not supporting the occupation. Supporting Israel is supporting peace for Israelis and Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Tal, talk about your experience in the military and why you chose to be a part of Breaking the Silence. And how many former Israeli soldiers, or even current ones, do you feel, share your point of view? Occupation, I have to say, in the U.S. media, is actually rarely talked about right now.

TAL SAGI: So, it’s not only here. We are not talking about it, either. And, actually, I grew up in a settlement in the West Bank, and I served in Hebron in the West Bank. And while serving, I was a tour guide. I used to take groups of soldiers for tours in the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. And I didn’t know what occupation is, while taking these tours in this huge Palestinian city, surrounded by soldiers, and there are settlements in the middle of the city. And I didn’t know that the city is under military control, while I’m taking part of this military control, while I’m a settler myself. I didn’t know where is the Green Line or what is the Green Line or anything about these things. So, it took me a lot of time to realize that.

But the fact that I didn’t know that is not a mistake. We don’t know these things. As Israelis, we are not — we’re never taught these things, because, you know, it’s something that for years we’re taking part of and we’re doing, and we don’t want to stop controlling millions of lives of Palestinians for so many — we’re doing it for so many years, and we don’t want to stop, because we want to make sure that we have the control over the land. And we see now also how we don’t have any other future. That’s all we get. We have been told that this is security and we have to control millions of lives and we don’t have other options. And we’re trying to say that there are other options. But it’s really hard to say to the Israeli society, because we don’t know that there are other options.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tal, you said that you didn’t know that you were participating in the occupation. What were you taught in school in Israel about the Arabs and the Palestinians around you?

TAL SAGI: So, I knew Palestinians from the other side of the fence. The settlement that I grew up in was surrounded by fences separating the settlement from the Palestinian villages around us. And I know — I knew that they’re not allowed to go into the settlement. I knew that I can go into the Palestinian village. And we never had any interaction, even though we lived so close to one another, and I could see everything that is happening in the other side of the fence and hear everything that is happening there. And I knew that they are my enemies. I knew that they all want to kill us. That was the only thing I knew about Palestinians. And also we called them Arabs, like they’re all one big Arabs and like one big enemy. So that was the only thing I knew about them.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Nadav Weiman, I wanted to ask you: What’s been a reception that you’ve received on the — especially on the college campuses, given the fact that any discussions about Israel and Palestine have been so charged in recent months, not only the reception from the students, but from the administrations at these various colleges?

AMY GOODMAN: You know, Nadav couldn’t hear you, Juan, but Juan’s question to you was: What is the reception of the students and the administrators in all the college campuses? You’ve organized this with J Street. Talk about what kind of reception you’ve gotten.

NADAV WEIMAN: Yeah. So, it was quite interesting, because our lecture managed to bring together Israeli students that came to study here in the U.S., Jewish American students and also Palestinian Americans. And I think that when you speak about the reality firsthand — right? We did it. We stood in checkpoints. We raided homes. We attacked Gaza from the air. We fought from the ground. So, when you bring reality, you bring real conversation about the occupation, and you bring real conversation about Gaza.

So, the responses were quite amazing. There was really in-depth question and very interesting conversation around what is happening now, but what the future holds for us, and also, very important, what the U.S. can do to stop the war at the moment and to release all hostages and to enter as much humanitarian aid as possible to stop the humanitarian crisis and the starvation in Gaza at the moment. So the responses was very, very good, I’ve got to say.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let me ask you about what has been the response since October 7th to Breaking the Silence, your group of former soldiers in Israel, speaking out on behalf of both Palestinians and those who are anti-occupation within Israel?

NADAV WEIMAN: So, from the very beginning of after October 7th — I’ve got say, October 7th, for an Israeli activist against the occupation, was very hard. You know, yes, I ran with my children and my wife to the shelter in Tel Aviv. But immediately, we started call to all of our testifiers, activists, donors in the Gaza envelope. And eventually, some of them didn’t answer. And two of them were murdered on October 7th, and one of them was a very good friend of mine. And this is how we started, right? You know, the blood was boiling. Everybody was angry.

But then, on October 8th, we became a revenge army, and we started to do — and we started the airstrikes in Gaza. And, of course, that we in Breaking the Silence, we know how it works, right? We know how airstrike looks like. We know how fighting in Gaza looks like. So, after a couple of weeks, we and other NGOs in Israel, we called for ceasefire, to release all hostages, to enter humanitarian aid into Gaza. And obviously, obviously, the right wing in Israel is against it, because the right wing in Israel believes that we need to continue fighting. And I don’t even understand the goals of the fighting now in Gaza. I think the number one goal is to release all hostages. So, yes, there was some aggression against Breaking the Silence. But in couple of months, we will publish our report with hundreds of testifiers that would come to us. Then we expect another wave of violence.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to Tal Mitnick. In January, the 18-year-old, who refused Israeli military service, was sentenced to 30 days in a military prison. Democracy Now! spoke with Tal after he was released about what he witnessed while incarcerated. He then went right back into prison.

TAL MITNICK: Actually, inside prison, the only source of news that we got was one newspaper called Israel Hayom. And every day on the newspaper, there will be pictures of the soldiers that died. And I remember feeling like — I feel sad, very sad for the soldiers and the families that have to take this great burden of losing someone close to them, but I know that while seeing soldiers dying, I know that this means that there are much more Palestinian civilians dying, which we don’t see in the newspaper.

AMY GOODMAN: Who else are you serving time with in that prison? Who else is there?

TAL MITNICK: Sadly, a lot of the other people there don’t — they are deserters, which means that they served time in the military, and then at some point, for some reason, they went back home and did not come back. Most of these people desert because of socioeconomic reasons, if it’s having to take care of their siblings or go work for their family. And when they come back and turn themselves in, we’re now seeing a very heavy sentencing of those deserters as a part of the fascist persecution and the fog of war. People that went to work for three months to feed their family are now being sentenced to half a year in military prison.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Tal Mitnick, 18 years old, has been sentenced and sentenced again to military prison. How common is it for a soldier to say no, a refusenik, as you call them?

NADAV WEIMAN: Not common at all. I served in the Israeli special forces. We were 12 in my team. I served in a snipers’ team. And standing in front of your friends in mid-operation or before operation and say, “Hey, no, we have to stop, because it’s against the Fourth Geneva Convention, or it’s against international human law,” it really doesn’t happen, because a unit — doesn’t matter if it’s a platoon, a company or a team — it’s a family. And standing in front of your family members, your brothers, saying “no,” it is very hard. This young man, that did it before his army service, I think it’s quite unique in the Israeli society. We have a couple of those each year, but the general soldiers and general public, they go to the army as they were requested by the state of Israel.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Nadav Weiman, you served in the IDF in both Gaza and the West Bank. Could you talk about your experiences there and how that shaped your views of the occupation?

NADAV WEIMAN: Yeah. So, I served between 2005 to 2008 in a special forces unit. And me and my team served just after the Second Intifada, but when the IDF really pressured the Palestinian population like we are in the Second Intifada. So we arrested a lot of people. We searched for all kinds of things. But mainly we did sniping operations.

You know, when you want to do sniping operations inside Palestinian cities or villages, you don’t have a hill or a forest to take cover in. So, what we used to do is something that is called “straw widow.” It’s a codename in the IDF of taking a private Palestinian family’s house and turning it into a military post. You choose a house that looks best for you. Maybe it’s tall. Maybe it has big windows. Then you call the Shin Bet. You make sure that every one of the family members are innocent, are not connected to terror. And then, in the middle of the night, you come. You sneak into the neighborhood. You break the door down. You grab everybody from their beds, because then they cannot really resist you, put them in one room, and then use one of the rooms — the parents’ bedroom, for example — as our sniping post. We put our sniping rifles. And after that, if one of the family members wants to eat, they want to drink, they want to take medicine, they want to pray, they need authorization from us, because it’s our house. It’s not their house anymore. And then you shoot from their houses. The minute you do that, the armed convoy come, and you go back to the base. But that’s the West Bank.

In Gaza, when I did the same thing, “straw widows” in Gaza, in 2008, you don’t infiltrate. You don’t do it quietly in the middle of the night. When we approached the houses, the fenced-off houses of Gaza, after cutting the fence and walking over there, a tank came and rammed one of the walls of the house and knocked it down, because they told us that every house in Gaza is booby-trapped. And then, when we got inside the house, we took all of the men, from 16 years old until 80 years old, and we put them on a truck, drove them back to Israel for interrogation. And then, when we put our sniping rifles on the rooftop, we saw there was lots of new greenhouses that we didn’t see in the aerial photograph. So we called the D9 bulldozer, that smashed everything down so we will have a clean line of fire. And I think that’s the difference between the ongoing occupation with settlements and checkpoints in the West Bank and the occupation by siege that we have in Gaza since 2007 and the level of brutality or firepower that we use over there.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, there’s clearly a lot to talk about here, and we’re going to ask you to stay for a few minutes for a post-show. Nadav Weiman is deputy director of Breaking the Silence. Tal Sagi is education director. They’re on a tour on college campuses around the United States and Canada and making their way to the Canadian Parliament.