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.
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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.”
U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
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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.
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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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
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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.
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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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
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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.
***
“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.
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.
***
“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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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Tue Apr 23, 2024 3:07 am
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.
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.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Tue Apr 23, 2024 3:09 am
“We’re Responsible for This”: American Surgeons Return from Gaza, Call for End of U.S. Culpability in Genocide
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 11, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/11/ ... transcript
We speak with two doctors who’ve just returned after two weeks at the European Hospital in Gaza. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa and Dr. Mark Perlmutter are co-authors of a new piece for Common Dreams titled “As Surgeons, We Have Never Seen Cruelty Like Israel’s Genocide in Gaza.” They describe a hospital “hanging on by a thread,” with the majority of patients being young children, and bombing targeted at Muslim Palestinians “concentrated at the time of evening prayer.” “Genocide was the overwhelming impression that I got,” says Perlmutter. “This is dehumanization. The purpose of this is to kill a population.” He also says, of U.S. responsibility in this genocide, “We’re buying the bullets and the gun for the gunman who’s going to the school and killing the children.” “If our support stops, the occupation stops,” adds Sidhwa, urging other Americans to push political leaders and public discourse against the country’s support of Israel. “We have to raise the domestic cost for these policies.” Dr. Sidhwa and Dr. Perlmutter worked with the Palestinian American Medical Association in collaboration with the World Health Organization in Gaza. Collectively, they have previously volunteered medical assistance in the West Bank, Haiti and Ukraine, and after 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the Boston Marathon bombing.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today’s show in Gaza, where Palestinians marked the end of Ramadan as Israel’s six-month assault continues. In a minute, we’ll speak with two doctors just back from volunteering at the European Hospital in Gaza who co-authored a new piece for Common Dreams headlined “We Have Never Seen Cruelty Like Israel’s Genocide in Gaza.”
In it, they wrote, quote, “As humanitarian trauma surgeons we have both seen incredible suffering. Collectively, we were present at Ground Zero on 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti on the first day of these disasters. We have worked in the deprivation of southern Zimbabwe and the horrors of … the war in Ukraine and attended primary trauma services to those injured in the Boston Marathon. Together we have worked on more than 40 surgical missions in developing countries on three continents in our combined 57 years of volunteering. This long experience taught us that there was no greater pain as a humanitarian surgeon than being unable to provide needed care to a patient.
“But that was before coming to Gaza. Now we know the pain of being unable to properly treat a child who will slowly die, but also alone, because she is the only surviving member of an entire extended family. We have not had the heart to tell these children how their families died: burned until they resembled blistered hotdogs more than human beings, shredded to pieces such that they can only be buried in mass graves, or simply entombed in their former apartment buildings to die slowly of asphyxia and sepsis.”
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by the two surgeons who wrote that piece. In Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Dr. Mark Perlmutter is with us. He’s an orthopedic hand surgery specialist who just returned Monday from volunteering at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza. He worked with the Palestinian American Medical Association in collaboration with the World Health Organization. He’s currently president of the World Surgical Foundation, immediate past president of the International College of Surgeons. And in Salt Lake City, Utah, we’re joined by Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon who’s also just returned from European Hospital. He also worked with the Palestinian American Medical Association in collaboration with the World Health Organization.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! I mean, those words that you wrote in this piece — and we thank you so much for joining us on the day after you finally both got back to the United States. I wanted to just read one more part from your piece and get Dr. Feroze Sidhwa to respond.
As you talked about European Hospital, you said, “We walked through the wards and immediately found evidence of horrifying violence deliberately directed at civilians and even children. A three-year-old boy shot in the head, a 12-year-old girl shot through the chest, an ICU nurse shot through the abdomen, all by some of the best-trained marksmen in the world.”
Dr. Sidhwa, describe your two weeks there in European Hospital and what this meant, how it compares to other work you’ve done around the world.
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Sure. Thanks for having me.
The things that struck me about working at Gaza European Hospital were — there were a few. One was the actual state of the hospital. The infrastructure of the hospital is completely overwhelmed, because the — not only the massive casualties that it’s receiving, and also having to deal with the normal medical problems that this hugely displaced population has coming down from the north, but also the infrastructure is just completely overwhelmed by this humongous displaced persons camp that’s not only outside of the hospital, but actually inside. Every square inch of the hospital, the hallways, even the wards, is taken up with tents that people have constructed from the detritus of their house. And so, it’s just — it’s completely overwhelmed. Sanitation is impossible. Even basic cleanliness is impossible. And the hospital is just barely hanging on by a thread in terms of functionality.
And the other thing that was really causing the hospital major problems is that the staff themselves is extremely not only traumatized, but they haven’t even been paid since October 7th. A hundred percent of the staff are just working on a voluntary basis. And that’s in the middle of still having to provide for their own family’s safety, their own family’s food provisions, sanitation, things that normally are just happening automatically. The medical students displaced from the north all came down and just spontaneously decided to volunteer at Gaza European Hospital. They’re kind of running the emergency room as best they can, while other physicians have been displaced. They’ve been — some of them have been killed. Some of them have been threatened by the Israelis and have left because of that. So it’s a very difficult situation.
The second thing that really struck me was the degree of violence that was being utilized. The magnitude of injury that’s caused by the bombs that — the U.S. bombs that Israel is using is really dramatic. These weapons are — the blast effect is incredible. They throw the environment itself through these patients. And I don’t even just mean large pieces of shrapnel like from the tile floor and the wall, or whatever, being ripped up and thrown into people, which that happens, too, but literally just the dust, the debris, everything is just embedded in the patient’s skin. And again, it makes clean surgical operations just simply impossible. You’d have to rip the person’s — all of their skin off to make them — to sanitize anything.
And then, the third thing was the evidence, like you mentioned, that we wrote, the evidence of the directed violence specifically at children. I mean, you can maybe argue that a bomb went off and a kid just happened to be nearby, but it’s not believable that the best-trained marksmen in the world accidentally shot a 3-year-old boy in the head, accidentally shot a 2-year-old girl twice in the head, accidentally shot — you know, it just goes on and on. And that was — I knew about it before I went, but to see it in person was really pretty shocking.
And I think the last thing that I would say that struck me was the attempt of the Palestinians to maintain their dignity and their humanity even in such really horrifying circumstances. They stayed in family units as much as they could. They tried to continue their traditions of Ramadan. Even though they’re all desperately hungry and thirsty, they would still fast during the day. And it was the maintaining of their culture, maintaining their family units, maintaining their belief that the future can be better. That was really quite dignified, in my opinion, and it was very, very impressive to see.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Mark Perlmutter, you know, you and Dr. Sidhwa sent us a number of extremely graphic videos and photos, some of which we are showing for our television viewers. If you could explain why you think it’s important for American audiences to see these graphic images, and then also explain why you, as an orthopedic hand surgery specialist, why you made the decision to go to Gaza?
DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: Absolutely. First, happy birthday to you again.
I’d like to echo what my newfound best friend Feroze had said. And realistically, what impressed me the most was the overt genocide that I was suspecting was going on. That’s what brought me there. I was involved into a telehealth network providing advice to young orthopedic surgeons providing surgery in Gaza. And when I realized, based on direct feedback, that these very misplaced pins and screws were being performed by trainees without guidance because their attending orthopedic surgeons were killed or captured and imprisoned inside of Israel, and that they were flying without instruction, that I’d make a commitment to go. When I got there, echoing what Feroze had said, genocide was the overwhelming impression that I got.
There are distinct signs of genocide. First of all, the bombs are cluster bombs. We’ve taken small pieces of shrapnel, dozens of pieces of shrapnel, out of toddlers, infants and teenagers. The country is 50% children, if not more. Overwhelmingly, our victims were children. I would say 70-75% of the people that we operated on were elementary school age or younger. The injuries were devastating. As Dr. Sidhwa said, the world’s best marksmen are not going to shoot a kid in the forehead twice and in the abdomen. These are midline shots directly aimed, and that doesn’t happen by accident.
Secondly, the bombing was concentrated at the time of evening prayers. It happened all day long, but it was distinctly, purposefully concentrated when the Muslims were gathered together in tight units, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, praying to God, while they’re being bombed. And the cluster bombs are infinitely more effective when the intended target is concentrated into a smaller location. That defines genocide. The cluster bombs are illegal. The snipers, aimed distinctly at children, are unethical and illegal.
And then, of course, the way that you dehumanize a population is to kill the humans. You deprive them of their medical schools, their clinics, their ambulances. Sure, there was a big American and worldwide — justified — outcry when the World Central Kitchen vans were distinctly and purposely bombed right through the center of their hoods, but prior to that, 200 ambulances were targeted by the red cross — in this case, it’s a red crescent — very prominently displayed on top of an ambulance. They have very modern ambulances. There was no mistaking that they were ambulances that were bombed. Two hundred were destroyed, along with the paramedics. Doctors were distinctly shot. An orthopedic surgeon was shot in his knee while he’s operating on a patient, because the soldier commanded him to leave the operating room and he refused to abandon his patient, quite ethically. He had his knee blown out across the room. He was immediately fixed by his trainees. And two days later, he was imprisoned by Israel for 45 days, according to him, a juice box every other day, blindfolded the entire time, dropped off at a nonroad prison — border to crawl for three kilometers until somebody rescued him, blind in one eye because a rifle butt exploded his right eye. This is dehumanization. This is the — the purpose of this is to kill a population.
Food delivery. When we left, there was tens of miles of incoming food trucks, four lines. The entrance into Gaza and the exit road into Gaza were all lined on both shoulders of the road with tens of miles of food trucks parked bumper to bumper to bumper, trying to get into the country, of course which is limited by the IDF or the Israeli government. Why aren’t they letting the food in, if not for to deprive the population of the substance that they need to survive? This is another definition of genocide. There’s no reason why they can’t let even inspected food trucks in. The product can be inspected. I’m sure it should be inspected. But this is life-sustaining materials. The hospitals, if we didn’t bring our orthopedic implants, if we didn’t bring our dressings, if we didn’t bring medicines, they would be devoid of all of this — another definition of genocide.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Dr. Perlmutter, explain about the photos, the photos and the videos, why you think those are so important for American audiences to see, the ones that you and Dr. Sidhwa sent.
DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: Well, because the American public, and I’m sure the German public, the two societies that are most responsible for sustaining this genocide, their media is being sterilized. If they saw pictures of babies with 10 pieces of shrapnel in its 1-year-old forehead and throughout its face, if they saw a 12-year-old missing all of their limbs and burnt, like we said in our letter, like an ignored hotdog on a grill, if they actually saw the dehumanization, the degree of it, the ubiquitous, widespread nature of it, then they would open their eyes and realize that we’re responsible for this. The big reason why I went is mea culpa. My tax dollars are paying for the bombs that are killing children, and that’s horrible.
You know, we have a lot of school shootings in the United States. If a gunman goes into a school and starts killing children, the American response, the world given response is, a sniper team goes in and tries to take out the offending gunman, regardless of their age. The Israeli response is to drop a bomb on the school to kill the gunman, but also incinerate the hundreds and hundreds of children, perhaps thousands, that could be living in that school, and incinerate them all just to get the single gunman. What America doesn’t understand is that the Hamas soldiers comprise less than one-tenth of 1% of the population of Palestine, of Gaza. The analogy of killing innocent children in a school just to kill the single gunman holds. If an orphanage had an infected rat sneak into it, you don’t incinerate the entire orphanage to get rid of the rat that snuck into the orphanage. But that’s exactly what we’re doing, except that we’re giving the bombs to Israel to bomb the orphanage. We’re buying the bullets and the gun for the gunman who’s going into the school and killing innocent children. We’re responsible.
And we have to open our eyes as a society and realize that it’s not just seven aid workers that unfortunately died, but there were 17,000, 18,000 children that are shredded like paper. They just don’t happen to be white children. And we have to open our eyes and care about them as much as we care about the seven aid workers that very unfortunately died.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask both of you a question, starting with Dr. Perlmutter. I mean, your credentials, you are an orthopedic surgeon. You are head of the World Surgical Foundation, past president of the International College of Surgeons. You’re both American. Dr. Perlmutter, you’re from a Jewish American family. Your twin is an Orthodox Jewish woman. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is Zoroastrian. I wanted to ask you, Dr. Perlmutter — you wrote two emails to the U.S. Embassy in Israel when you went, pleading with them not to attack European Gaza Hospital, saying, “We’re deathly afraid of being bombed again as we were this morning.” What happened to you? And did the U.S. Embassy respond to you?
DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: I sent them two letters, one when the bombs were shaking in the — they were shaking the fillings out of our teeth. It is as if lightning struck inches away from you. That’s how much vibration the hospital ground sustained. The bombs did not actually enter into the walls of the hospital. They completely surrounded the hospital. The entire event occurred specifically to destroy the population outside the hospital. We were in fear of our lives. We were particularly in fear of our lives right after the bombing of the U.N. — I’m sorry, the World Central Kitchen convoy. While we were in full knowledge that doctors were being kidnapped and targeted, almost a hundred journalists were killed, the destruction of multiple ambulances, we felt targeted from the beginning. So, as we were approaching the end of our trip and after we’ve heard that all other hospitals were being thoroughly destroyed and their surgeons being kidnapped, we were in fear of our own lives. More importantly, we were in fear of the tens of thousands of people that sought refuge in that hospital compound, hoping that a hospital would not be targeted.
And so I wrote the American Embassy, to both the Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv offices. They sent me a return email acknowledging receipt of my first email. I’ve received no response from them. I got acknowledgment from the first email that I sent. I sent a second email saying, “This is the day we’re leaving. Could you please inform the IDF that our convoy, just like the World Central Kitchen’s convoy, is leaving at this time, on this date. This is the vans — this is what the vans look like. This is the timing that we’re going to leave.” And I received no response from them, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: You are talking to us from the hospital — you’re in your scrubs — in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. And, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, you’re in Salt Lake City, on your way back to Stockton, California, where you work. I’m looking at your piece again in Common Dreams, Dr. Sidhwa. You write, “No amount of medical care could ever compensate for the damage being inflicted here. … Israel has dropped so much American ordinance on Gaza that it now exceeds the explosive force of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.” Can you talk about what you would say if you got to speak to President Biden? We interviewed Dr. Thaer Ahmad, who had just returned from Gaza. We believe he’s the first doctor on the ground in Gaza to actually directly address the president. He handed him a letter from an 8-year-old Palestinian orphan and then walked out of the White House. He said, “What can be said about what is happening here right now?” It was the day after the attack on the World Central Kitchen. What is your message, and not only to the president, but around the world, Dr. Sidhwa?
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: I don’t think I would say much to Joe Biden. I think he knows exactly what’s going on, and I don’t think it’s important to him. I don’t think he cares if Palestinians are murdered like roaches and ants. But to the rest of Americans who have normal human values, they do care.
And, you know, one of the other things that Mark and I wrote in that piece is that the blood on the trauma bay floor and the operating room floor was dripping from our hands. And that’s — I think that’s accurate. Again, we provide the crucial military, economic and diplomatic support. Your viewers are no surprise to that. And that makes us responsible. If our support stops, the attacks stop. If our support stops, the occupation stops. It’s instant. It’s been proven a hundred times. It’s not hard to see.
And so, that’s what I would say to people, is if you want to stop participating unwittingly in these — in some of the worst crimes that I’ve ever seen in my life, then you need to organize, and you need to raise the cost to people like Joe Biden, because that is the only thing they care about. The U.S. is attempting to manage the Middle East with the system that it put in place since the Arab Spring. And the Palestinians are just kind of an annoyance to that system. They don’t want to — the U.S. doesn’t want Saudi Arabia to have its ruling family shaken, the Jordanian ruling family shaken. These are the — but we have to raise the domestic cost for these policies, which, like Mark said, are really, truly and genuinely genocidal in nature, that it’s dramatic.
So, I would say to people that, you know, you know what’s going on, so stop thinking about it all that much and just start acting. Go to your houses of worship, go to your community centers, go wherever it is that you go, and talk to people and say, “Look, let’s go talk to our congressman in person. Let’s demand a meeting.” If you’re a veteran, put your uniform on and go — I’ve had several veterans reach out to me — put your uniform on and go talk to your congressperson. Film it. Put it online. Do anything you can to embarrass these people and to make it obvious to the world that they are not acting with normal human decency in mind. They’re acting with purely cold, almost Mafia-like political calculations. And the only way that we are going to stop this is by raising the cost to them of doing so. That’s what I would say to people, I think.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Dr. Sidhwa, of course, the justification, the continued justification, for Israel’s assault is the fact that they’re targeting Hamas militants. You treated — we’ve just heard from both of you about the number of children you treated, mostly, as you said, elementary school children or below the age of elementary school. You dealt with numerous mass casualty events while you were at the European Hospital in Khan Younis. How many military-age males did you treat?
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: I can count them on one hand. I think it was probably four or five. And not one of them — you know, obviously, like Mark said, the people who are actually in Hamas or the other Palestinian militant organizations is an extremely small number, even of military-age men, in the Gaza Strip. But we treated a hand — literally a handful, five at the very most, that I can remember, military-age men, while we were there, for any injury at all. And the overwhelming consensus in the hospital was that if actual militants were to come in, they would actually come in with their — I don’t know the technical terms, but with their unit and with their commander, and they would be spirited away from the hospital as soon as they were well, well enough to be taken out of the hospital. That never happened once to anybody, so I seriously doubt that I encountered a single combatant while I was there. It was a 100% civilian — I think the people I cared for were 100% civilians, even including the military-age men that I took care of.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Finally, Dr. Perlmutter, if you could say, you know, what you think the medical needs there are now? I mean, there are no fully functional hospitals left at all. You’ve said that you could operate 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for years, and not make a dent, because the needs are so great. So, what can be done for people in Gaza suffering in this way as this war goes on?
DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: All right, two points. First, I’ve seen more orthopedic injuries in my two weeks there than I have seen in my entire 30-plus years of practicing and the additional 10 years of training before that. If I operated 12 hours a day, seven days a week, it would take me 20 years for me to make a notable dent, a minuscule dent, in the amount of orthopedic-alone pathology that’s there. The extent of damage, of carnage is that widespread.
In order to make a difference, it’s not by supplying supplies. It’s by eliminating the genocide. It’s eliminating — it’s imposing controls on Israel. It’s by reaching out, as Dr. Sidhwa said, to our senators. That letter that you read, I sent a copy of that to every single sitting U.S. senator. I called Chuck Schumer’s office from Gaza while I’m being bombed, and spoke to his secretary and said, “The noises in the background are American bombs being dropped by American warplanes, gifted, essentially, to Israel. And I’m in fear that they’re going to kill me. I’m in bigger fear that it’s going to keep me up all night with another dozen shredded children and women.” As Dr. Sidhwa said, I don’t think I saw one person who would qualify as a military combatant. The victims were civilian, virtually 100%.
I would echo his plea to please contact your state senator and House of Representative and the federal ones, as well. Share with them the knowledge that the sterilized history that they’ve been receiving and the sterilized facts that they have been receiving are, in fact, inaccurate, that there’s true bloodshed that’s going on, at our hands, that we’re paying for. And they need to wake up and realize that it’s not the payoff from the Israeli political action committee that really matters to keep their jobs moving forward and their reelection occurring. What really should matter is the ethical basis of what they’re charged to do, and that’s to maintain the viability of the United States’s image and our leader as a democratic nation supporting perfect ideals, and not advancing their own personal agenda by supporting a state that’s recklessly killing innocent women and children, something that every American should stand against.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Mark Perlmutter, we want to thank you so much for joining us, orthopedics hand surgery specialist, president of the World Surgical Foundation, immediate past president of the International College of Surgeons, speaking to us from now his hospital in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, in his scrubs, and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, trauma surgeon, speaking to us from Salt Lake City, heading back to Stockton, California, where he works. They just returned Monday from volunteering at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza. We’ll link to the piece they co-authored in Common Dreams, “We Have Never Seen Cruelty Like Israel’s Genocide in Gaza.”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 11, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/11/ ... transcript
We speak with two doctors who’ve just returned after two weeks at the European Hospital in Gaza. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa and Dr. Mark Perlmutter are co-authors of a new piece for Common Dreams titled “As Surgeons, We Have Never Seen Cruelty Like Israel’s Genocide in Gaza.” They describe a hospital “hanging on by a thread,” with the majority of patients being young children, and bombing targeted at Muslim Palestinians “concentrated at the time of evening prayer.” “Genocide was the overwhelming impression that I got,” says Perlmutter. “This is dehumanization. The purpose of this is to kill a population.” He also says, of U.S. responsibility in this genocide, “We’re buying the bullets and the gun for the gunman who’s going to the school and killing the children.” “If our support stops, the occupation stops,” adds Sidhwa, urging other Americans to push political leaders and public discourse against the country’s support of Israel. “We have to raise the domestic cost for these policies.” Dr. Sidhwa and Dr. Perlmutter worked with the Palestinian American Medical Association in collaboration with the World Health Organization in Gaza. Collectively, they have previously volunteered medical assistance in the West Bank, Haiti and Ukraine, and after 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the Boston Marathon bombing.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today’s show in Gaza, where Palestinians marked the end of Ramadan as Israel’s six-month assault continues. In a minute, we’ll speak with two doctors just back from volunteering at the European Hospital in Gaza who co-authored a new piece for Common Dreams headlined “We Have Never Seen Cruelty Like Israel’s Genocide in Gaza.”
In it, they wrote, quote, “As humanitarian trauma surgeons we have both seen incredible suffering. Collectively, we were present at Ground Zero on 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti on the first day of these disasters. We have worked in the deprivation of southern Zimbabwe and the horrors of … the war in Ukraine and attended primary trauma services to those injured in the Boston Marathon. Together we have worked on more than 40 surgical missions in developing countries on three continents in our combined 57 years of volunteering. This long experience taught us that there was no greater pain as a humanitarian surgeon than being unable to provide needed care to a patient.
“But that was before coming to Gaza. Now we know the pain of being unable to properly treat a child who will slowly die, but also alone, because she is the only surviving member of an entire extended family. We have not had the heart to tell these children how their families died: burned until they resembled blistered hotdogs more than human beings, shredded to pieces such that they can only be buried in mass graves, or simply entombed in their former apartment buildings to die slowly of asphyxia and sepsis.”
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by the two surgeons who wrote that piece. In Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Dr. Mark Perlmutter is with us. He’s an orthopedic hand surgery specialist who just returned Monday from volunteering at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza. He worked with the Palestinian American Medical Association in collaboration with the World Health Organization. He’s currently president of the World Surgical Foundation, immediate past president of the International College of Surgeons. And in Salt Lake City, Utah, we’re joined by Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon who’s also just returned from European Hospital. He also worked with the Palestinian American Medical Association in collaboration with the World Health Organization.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! I mean, those words that you wrote in this piece — and we thank you so much for joining us on the day after you finally both got back to the United States. I wanted to just read one more part from your piece and get Dr. Feroze Sidhwa to respond.
As you talked about European Hospital, you said, “We walked through the wards and immediately found evidence of horrifying violence deliberately directed at civilians and even children. A three-year-old boy shot in the head, a 12-year-old girl shot through the chest, an ICU nurse shot through the abdomen, all by some of the best-trained marksmen in the world.”
Dr. Sidhwa, describe your two weeks there in European Hospital and what this meant, how it compares to other work you’ve done around the world.
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Sure. Thanks for having me.
The things that struck me about working at Gaza European Hospital were — there were a few. One was the actual state of the hospital. The infrastructure of the hospital is completely overwhelmed, because the — not only the massive casualties that it’s receiving, and also having to deal with the normal medical problems that this hugely displaced population has coming down from the north, but also the infrastructure is just completely overwhelmed by this humongous displaced persons camp that’s not only outside of the hospital, but actually inside. Every square inch of the hospital, the hallways, even the wards, is taken up with tents that people have constructed from the detritus of their house. And so, it’s just — it’s completely overwhelmed. Sanitation is impossible. Even basic cleanliness is impossible. And the hospital is just barely hanging on by a thread in terms of functionality.
And the other thing that was really causing the hospital major problems is that the staff themselves is extremely not only traumatized, but they haven’t even been paid since October 7th. A hundred percent of the staff are just working on a voluntary basis. And that’s in the middle of still having to provide for their own family’s safety, their own family’s food provisions, sanitation, things that normally are just happening automatically. The medical students displaced from the north all came down and just spontaneously decided to volunteer at Gaza European Hospital. They’re kind of running the emergency room as best they can, while other physicians have been displaced. They’ve been — some of them have been killed. Some of them have been threatened by the Israelis and have left because of that. So it’s a very difficult situation.
The second thing that really struck me was the degree of violence that was being utilized. The magnitude of injury that’s caused by the bombs that — the U.S. bombs that Israel is using is really dramatic. These weapons are — the blast effect is incredible. They throw the environment itself through these patients. And I don’t even just mean large pieces of shrapnel like from the tile floor and the wall, or whatever, being ripped up and thrown into people, which that happens, too, but literally just the dust, the debris, everything is just embedded in the patient’s skin. And again, it makes clean surgical operations just simply impossible. You’d have to rip the person’s — all of their skin off to make them — to sanitize anything.
And then, the third thing was the evidence, like you mentioned, that we wrote, the evidence of the directed violence specifically at children. I mean, you can maybe argue that a bomb went off and a kid just happened to be nearby, but it’s not believable that the best-trained marksmen in the world accidentally shot a 3-year-old boy in the head, accidentally shot a 2-year-old girl twice in the head, accidentally shot — you know, it just goes on and on. And that was — I knew about it before I went, but to see it in person was really pretty shocking.
And I think the last thing that I would say that struck me was the attempt of the Palestinians to maintain their dignity and their humanity even in such really horrifying circumstances. They stayed in family units as much as they could. They tried to continue their traditions of Ramadan. Even though they’re all desperately hungry and thirsty, they would still fast during the day. And it was the maintaining of their culture, maintaining their family units, maintaining their belief that the future can be better. That was really quite dignified, in my opinion, and it was very, very impressive to see.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Mark Perlmutter, you know, you and Dr. Sidhwa sent us a number of extremely graphic videos and photos, some of which we are showing for our television viewers. If you could explain why you think it’s important for American audiences to see these graphic images, and then also explain why you, as an orthopedic hand surgery specialist, why you made the decision to go to Gaza?
DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: Absolutely. First, happy birthday to you again.
I’d like to echo what my newfound best friend Feroze had said. And realistically, what impressed me the most was the overt genocide that I was suspecting was going on. That’s what brought me there. I was involved into a telehealth network providing advice to young orthopedic surgeons providing surgery in Gaza. And when I realized, based on direct feedback, that these very misplaced pins and screws were being performed by trainees without guidance because their attending orthopedic surgeons were killed or captured and imprisoned inside of Israel, and that they were flying without instruction, that I’d make a commitment to go. When I got there, echoing what Feroze had said, genocide was the overwhelming impression that I got.
There are distinct signs of genocide. First of all, the bombs are cluster bombs. We’ve taken small pieces of shrapnel, dozens of pieces of shrapnel, out of toddlers, infants and teenagers. The country is 50% children, if not more. Overwhelmingly, our victims were children. I would say 70-75% of the people that we operated on were elementary school age or younger. The injuries were devastating. As Dr. Sidhwa said, the world’s best marksmen are not going to shoot a kid in the forehead twice and in the abdomen. These are midline shots directly aimed, and that doesn’t happen by accident.
Secondly, the bombing was concentrated at the time of evening prayers. It happened all day long, but it was distinctly, purposefully concentrated when the Muslims were gathered together in tight units, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, praying to God, while they’re being bombed. And the cluster bombs are infinitely more effective when the intended target is concentrated into a smaller location. That defines genocide. The cluster bombs are illegal. The snipers, aimed distinctly at children, are unethical and illegal.
And then, of course, the way that you dehumanize a population is to kill the humans. You deprive them of their medical schools, their clinics, their ambulances. Sure, there was a big American and worldwide — justified — outcry when the World Central Kitchen vans were distinctly and purposely bombed right through the center of their hoods, but prior to that, 200 ambulances were targeted by the red cross — in this case, it’s a red crescent — very prominently displayed on top of an ambulance. They have very modern ambulances. There was no mistaking that they were ambulances that were bombed. Two hundred were destroyed, along with the paramedics. Doctors were distinctly shot. An orthopedic surgeon was shot in his knee while he’s operating on a patient, because the soldier commanded him to leave the operating room and he refused to abandon his patient, quite ethically. He had his knee blown out across the room. He was immediately fixed by his trainees. And two days later, he was imprisoned by Israel for 45 days, according to him, a juice box every other day, blindfolded the entire time, dropped off at a nonroad prison — border to crawl for three kilometers until somebody rescued him, blind in one eye because a rifle butt exploded his right eye. This is dehumanization. This is the — the purpose of this is to kill a population.
Food delivery. When we left, there was tens of miles of incoming food trucks, four lines. The entrance into Gaza and the exit road into Gaza were all lined on both shoulders of the road with tens of miles of food trucks parked bumper to bumper to bumper, trying to get into the country, of course which is limited by the IDF or the Israeli government. Why aren’t they letting the food in, if not for to deprive the population of the substance that they need to survive? This is another definition of genocide. There’s no reason why they can’t let even inspected food trucks in. The product can be inspected. I’m sure it should be inspected. But this is life-sustaining materials. The hospitals, if we didn’t bring our orthopedic implants, if we didn’t bring our dressings, if we didn’t bring medicines, they would be devoid of all of this — another definition of genocide.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Dr. Perlmutter, explain about the photos, the photos and the videos, why you think those are so important for American audiences to see, the ones that you and Dr. Sidhwa sent.
DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: Well, because the American public, and I’m sure the German public, the two societies that are most responsible for sustaining this genocide, their media is being sterilized. If they saw pictures of babies with 10 pieces of shrapnel in its 1-year-old forehead and throughout its face, if they saw a 12-year-old missing all of their limbs and burnt, like we said in our letter, like an ignored hotdog on a grill, if they actually saw the dehumanization, the degree of it, the ubiquitous, widespread nature of it, then they would open their eyes and realize that we’re responsible for this. The big reason why I went is mea culpa. My tax dollars are paying for the bombs that are killing children, and that’s horrible.
You know, we have a lot of school shootings in the United States. If a gunman goes into a school and starts killing children, the American response, the world given response is, a sniper team goes in and tries to take out the offending gunman, regardless of their age. The Israeli response is to drop a bomb on the school to kill the gunman, but also incinerate the hundreds and hundreds of children, perhaps thousands, that could be living in that school, and incinerate them all just to get the single gunman. What America doesn’t understand is that the Hamas soldiers comprise less than one-tenth of 1% of the population of Palestine, of Gaza. The analogy of killing innocent children in a school just to kill the single gunman holds. If an orphanage had an infected rat sneak into it, you don’t incinerate the entire orphanage to get rid of the rat that snuck into the orphanage. But that’s exactly what we’re doing, except that we’re giving the bombs to Israel to bomb the orphanage. We’re buying the bullets and the gun for the gunman who’s going into the school and killing innocent children. We’re responsible.
And we have to open our eyes as a society and realize that it’s not just seven aid workers that unfortunately died, but there were 17,000, 18,000 children that are shredded like paper. They just don’t happen to be white children. And we have to open our eyes and care about them as much as we care about the seven aid workers that very unfortunately died.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask both of you a question, starting with Dr. Perlmutter. I mean, your credentials, you are an orthopedic surgeon. You are head of the World Surgical Foundation, past president of the International College of Surgeons. You’re both American. Dr. Perlmutter, you’re from a Jewish American family. Your twin is an Orthodox Jewish woman. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is Zoroastrian. I wanted to ask you, Dr. Perlmutter — you wrote two emails to the U.S. Embassy in Israel when you went, pleading with them not to attack European Gaza Hospital, saying, “We’re deathly afraid of being bombed again as we were this morning.” What happened to you? And did the U.S. Embassy respond to you?
DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: I sent them two letters, one when the bombs were shaking in the — they were shaking the fillings out of our teeth. It is as if lightning struck inches away from you. That’s how much vibration the hospital ground sustained. The bombs did not actually enter into the walls of the hospital. They completely surrounded the hospital. The entire event occurred specifically to destroy the population outside the hospital. We were in fear of our lives. We were particularly in fear of our lives right after the bombing of the U.N. — I’m sorry, the World Central Kitchen convoy. While we were in full knowledge that doctors were being kidnapped and targeted, almost a hundred journalists were killed, the destruction of multiple ambulances, we felt targeted from the beginning. So, as we were approaching the end of our trip and after we’ve heard that all other hospitals were being thoroughly destroyed and their surgeons being kidnapped, we were in fear of our own lives. More importantly, we were in fear of the tens of thousands of people that sought refuge in that hospital compound, hoping that a hospital would not be targeted.
And so I wrote the American Embassy, to both the Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv offices. They sent me a return email acknowledging receipt of my first email. I’ve received no response from them. I got acknowledgment from the first email that I sent. I sent a second email saying, “This is the day we’re leaving. Could you please inform the IDF that our convoy, just like the World Central Kitchen’s convoy, is leaving at this time, on this date. This is the vans — this is what the vans look like. This is the timing that we’re going to leave.” And I received no response from them, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: You are talking to us from the hospital — you’re in your scrubs — in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. And, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, you’re in Salt Lake City, on your way back to Stockton, California, where you work. I’m looking at your piece again in Common Dreams, Dr. Sidhwa. You write, “No amount of medical care could ever compensate for the damage being inflicted here. … Israel has dropped so much American ordinance on Gaza that it now exceeds the explosive force of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.” Can you talk about what you would say if you got to speak to President Biden? We interviewed Dr. Thaer Ahmad, who had just returned from Gaza. We believe he’s the first doctor on the ground in Gaza to actually directly address the president. He handed him a letter from an 8-year-old Palestinian orphan and then walked out of the White House. He said, “What can be said about what is happening here right now?” It was the day after the attack on the World Central Kitchen. What is your message, and not only to the president, but around the world, Dr. Sidhwa?
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: I don’t think I would say much to Joe Biden. I think he knows exactly what’s going on, and I don’t think it’s important to him. I don’t think he cares if Palestinians are murdered like roaches and ants. But to the rest of Americans who have normal human values, they do care.
And, you know, one of the other things that Mark and I wrote in that piece is that the blood on the trauma bay floor and the operating room floor was dripping from our hands. And that’s — I think that’s accurate. Again, we provide the crucial military, economic and diplomatic support. Your viewers are no surprise to that. And that makes us responsible. If our support stops, the attacks stop. If our support stops, the occupation stops. It’s instant. It’s been proven a hundred times. It’s not hard to see.
And so, that’s what I would say to people, is if you want to stop participating unwittingly in these — in some of the worst crimes that I’ve ever seen in my life, then you need to organize, and you need to raise the cost to people like Joe Biden, because that is the only thing they care about. The U.S. is attempting to manage the Middle East with the system that it put in place since the Arab Spring. And the Palestinians are just kind of an annoyance to that system. They don’t want to — the U.S. doesn’t want Saudi Arabia to have its ruling family shaken, the Jordanian ruling family shaken. These are the — but we have to raise the domestic cost for these policies, which, like Mark said, are really, truly and genuinely genocidal in nature, that it’s dramatic.
So, I would say to people that, you know, you know what’s going on, so stop thinking about it all that much and just start acting. Go to your houses of worship, go to your community centers, go wherever it is that you go, and talk to people and say, “Look, let’s go talk to our congressman in person. Let’s demand a meeting.” If you’re a veteran, put your uniform on and go — I’ve had several veterans reach out to me — put your uniform on and go talk to your congressperson. Film it. Put it online. Do anything you can to embarrass these people and to make it obvious to the world that they are not acting with normal human decency in mind. They’re acting with purely cold, almost Mafia-like political calculations. And the only way that we are going to stop this is by raising the cost to them of doing so. That’s what I would say to people, I think.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Dr. Sidhwa, of course, the justification, the continued justification, for Israel’s assault is the fact that they’re targeting Hamas militants. You treated — we’ve just heard from both of you about the number of children you treated, mostly, as you said, elementary school children or below the age of elementary school. You dealt with numerous mass casualty events while you were at the European Hospital in Khan Younis. How many military-age males did you treat?
DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: I can count them on one hand. I think it was probably four or five. And not one of them — you know, obviously, like Mark said, the people who are actually in Hamas or the other Palestinian militant organizations is an extremely small number, even of military-age men, in the Gaza Strip. But we treated a hand — literally a handful, five at the very most, that I can remember, military-age men, while we were there, for any injury at all. And the overwhelming consensus in the hospital was that if actual militants were to come in, they would actually come in with their — I don’t know the technical terms, but with their unit and with their commander, and they would be spirited away from the hospital as soon as they were well, well enough to be taken out of the hospital. That never happened once to anybody, so I seriously doubt that I encountered a single combatant while I was there. It was a 100% civilian — I think the people I cared for were 100% civilians, even including the military-age men that I took care of.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Finally, Dr. Perlmutter, if you could say, you know, what you think the medical needs there are now? I mean, there are no fully functional hospitals left at all. You’ve said that you could operate 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for years, and not make a dent, because the needs are so great. So, what can be done for people in Gaza suffering in this way as this war goes on?
DR. MARK PERLMUTTER: All right, two points. First, I’ve seen more orthopedic injuries in my two weeks there than I have seen in my entire 30-plus years of practicing and the additional 10 years of training before that. If I operated 12 hours a day, seven days a week, it would take me 20 years for me to make a notable dent, a minuscule dent, in the amount of orthopedic-alone pathology that’s there. The extent of damage, of carnage is that widespread.
In order to make a difference, it’s not by supplying supplies. It’s by eliminating the genocide. It’s eliminating — it’s imposing controls on Israel. It’s by reaching out, as Dr. Sidhwa said, to our senators. That letter that you read, I sent a copy of that to every single sitting U.S. senator. I called Chuck Schumer’s office from Gaza while I’m being bombed, and spoke to his secretary and said, “The noises in the background are American bombs being dropped by American warplanes, gifted, essentially, to Israel. And I’m in fear that they’re going to kill me. I’m in bigger fear that it’s going to keep me up all night with another dozen shredded children and women.” As Dr. Sidhwa said, I don’t think I saw one person who would qualify as a military combatant. The victims were civilian, virtually 100%.
I would echo his plea to please contact your state senator and House of Representative and the federal ones, as well. Share with them the knowledge that the sterilized history that they’ve been receiving and the sterilized facts that they have been receiving are, in fact, inaccurate, that there’s true bloodshed that’s going on, at our hands, that we’re paying for. And they need to wake up and realize that it’s not the payoff from the Israeli political action committee that really matters to keep their jobs moving forward and their reelection occurring. What really should matter is the ethical basis of what they’re charged to do, and that’s to maintain the viability of the United States’s image and our leader as a democratic nation supporting perfect ideals, and not advancing their own personal agenda by supporting a state that’s recklessly killing innocent women and children, something that every American should stand against.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Mark Perlmutter, we want to thank you so much for joining us, orthopedics hand surgery specialist, president of the World Surgical Foundation, immediate past president of the International College of Surgeons, speaking to us from now his hospital in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, in his scrubs, and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, trauma surgeon, speaking to us from Salt Lake City, heading back to Stockton, California, where he works. They just returned Monday from volunteering at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza. We’ll link to the piece they co-authored in Common Dreams, “We Have Never Seen Cruelty Like Israel’s Genocide in Gaza.”
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
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Israeli Scholar Neve Gordon on Israeli Mass Surveillance in Gaza & the Use of AI to Kill Palestinians
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 12, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/12/ ... transcript
We go to Part 2 of our conversation with Israeli scholar Neve Gordon, professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London and chair of the Committee on Academic Freedom for British Society of Middle East Studies. Gordon talks about the “massive surveillance apparatus” Israel has imposed on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, the use of artificial intelligence tools to bomb targets despite the high error rate in those systems, and the shock of the October 7 attack by Hamas that killed some 1,200 Israelis. “The state seemed not to be functioning, so most Israelis were in great pain, were in great fear,” he says. “My fear is that most Israelis are still trapped, still stuck in that October 7th moment and unwilling to lift their eyes to see basically the genocide unfolding in the Gaza Strip.”
Watch Part 1 of this interview: Road to Famine: Israeli Law Prof. Neve Gordon on Israel’s History of Weaponizing Food Access in 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.
Israel’s continued aerial and ground assault on Gaza killed dozens of Palestinians today, including in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, in Gaza City and in Rafah, where three-quarters of Gaza’s population have been displaced to. The official death toll in Gaza has topped 33,600, including over 14,000 children, the actual toll expected to be far higher with thousands of people missing and presumed dead under the rubble. More than 76,000 people have been wounded.
For more on Gaza, we turn to Part 2 of our conversation with the Israeli scholar 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, author of a number of books, including Israel’s Occupation, co-author of Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire, co-editor of Torture: Human Rights, Medical Ethics and the Case of Israel. He joined Democracy Now! co-host Nermeen Shaikh and I from London last week. I began by asking him about Israeli surveillance in Gaza.
NEVE GORDON: So, every state needs to impose a massive surveillance apparatus on its society — and its largest manifestation is the Central Bureau of Statistics — because in order to manage a society, you need to know a lot about it. You need to know different patterns of occupation, age, gender, race. You need to know their habits and so forth. And so, when Israel enters the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the first thing, or one of the first things, it does is it begins to monitor and survey the population it is managing, which also tells us a lot about its intentions and the fact that it had no intention of withdrawing from Gaza and the West Bank after the war in 1967, because you don’t put in place such a massive surveillance apparatus, where you look at every letter sent, you look at — you go in and see how many refrigerators people have, how many stoves they have, what kind of crops they’re growing in their agricultural fields, everything like that — you don’t put that in place if you’re planning to leave, but you put it in place if you plan to manage the population.
And Israel managed the Palestinian population until Oslo, where basically the Oslo Accords can be understood as the creation of a subcontractor, Palestinian Authority, that it would take over the management of the daily life of the Palestinians. And the PA then creates its own Central Bureau of Statistics. And Israel changes then the kinds of surveillance that it carries out vis-à-vis the Palestinian population, because it is no longer responsible for the life of the Palestinians — the PA is — but now it is responsible for the security of Israel in relation to the Palestinian body. So it surveys the Palestinian body only insofar as it helps Israel ensure its so-called security. And so we see a change in the surveillance apparatus. And we see what I call in my first book a move from a politics of life, a politics where Israel is planting 200,000 or so trees in the Gaza Strip, versus a politics of death, where Israel is uprooting 200-or-so thousand trees in the Gaza Strip.
Now, over time, technologies develop. The military develops new technologies of surveillance. And one friend who works in the Israeli intelligence basically told me, “We can see almost everything in the Gaza Strip, whether it’s through our Zeppelins, whether it’s through our drones, whether it’s through satellites and different devices.” And Israel monitors every little step in the Gaza Strip. Every SIM card in the Gaza Strip is monitored. A lot of times when they say they’re targeting a person, they’re targeting the SIM card. So, what we have is a whole massive apparatus of surveillance that has existed for years for military use.
But what is new, or relatively new — I think it was first put to use in 2021 — is the use of AI system. It’s the kind of feeding of the data that Israel collects through its surveillance system to a machine that uses algorithms then, basically, to create different kinds of networks and to identify Hamas operative or different Palestinian fighters or other issues, because the bottleneck in the different cycles of violence that Israel has had — and as I mentioned, it had five since 2008 — was always the targets, the kill targets, because it would take an intelligence officer sometimes days or weeks to kind of figure out a target. And here you can put the data into the machine, and the machine — as the article in +972 tells us, the machine, within a limited amount of time, can produce 37,000 human targets. Now, the machine itself, the Israelis itself, are set telling us that there’s a 10% error rate even in that machine, even according to Israel, yet that Israel ignored that 10% error rate, and then it just started using this machine algorithms to bomb people in Gaza, as you said.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Neve Gordon, this is the first time that we’re speaking to you since the October 7th attack, so I want to ask you — you’ve just quoted an Israeli intelligence official who told you that, given the extensive surveillance system that they have in place in Gaza, they can see almost everything that happens there. So, in light of that, could you tell us what your initial response was to the Hamas attack in Israel, and then what’s unfolded since? Of course, you’ve said that, and you say in the piece, that the speed and scale of the devastation of Gaza that’s ensued is “unparalleled in history.” So, if you could talk about that?
NEVE GORDON: So, the October 7th attack, as an Israeli Jew, was both horrific and devastating. A former graduate student of mine was killed on that day. A music teacher from my children’s school was killed on that day. His wife was killed on that day. And a friend that we thought was kidnapped was also — turned out to have been killed on that day. And it was a very, very painful moment for me, and it was a very, very painful moment, I think, for most Israelis. And the audience needs to understand that Israel is a small country, and the degree of separation between either a person that was killed or a person that was kidnapped in Israel, the maximum degree of separation is probably one degree. So everyone knew someone or knew someone that knew someone. And there was this kind of immense pain. And alongside that pain, there was also a major fear, because everything seemed to have collapsed. The major IDF intelligence apparatus was not working. The defense system was not working. The fence was breached without any problems. And the whole apparatus of the state seemed not to be functioning. So, most Israelis were in great pain, were in great fear. But also immediately came this notion of revenge, kind of a sense we have to hit back, we have to hit back hard, and so forth. And my fear is that most Israelis are still trapped, still stuck in that October 7th moment and unwilling to lift their eyes to see, basically, the genocide unfolding in the Gaza Strip.
And that’s what we’ve been seeing in the past six months, is this horrific devastation, massive killings of civilians. We have — I mean, Hamas killed 30 Israeli children on October 7th, and that is horrific. Israel has killed close to 15,000 children, not counting those that are under the rubble, since October 7th. We need to understand that figure: 15,000 children have been killed. We have women — thousands of women have been killed. And thousands of innocent men have been killed. Israel categorizes all the men as terrorists, but thousands of these men were not fighters. They were just men that were in their homes with their wives, with their children, and their homes were bombed. And so, we see the massive displacement of 1.7 million people. We see 70% of the Gaza Strip now in basically rubbles. We see systematic attacks on the healthcare, that the healthcare is now — which is the institution responsible for saving lives. It’s now completely shattered. So, it’s all been very devastating for me, as an Israeli Jew, to watch this kind of horrific violence unfolding in the Gaza Strip, with friends and friends of friends, again, dying. It’s not as if I don’t have friends in the Gaza Strip. And then we see the academia and education system. I mean, all the universities have been bombed in the Gaza Strip. We have almost half the schools are either damaged or destroyed. One-third of these schools are irreparable. So, one-third of the children, even after the war, will not have schools to return to. So, it’s just complete devastation, and it’s beyond words at this point.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m wondering if you can comment on the breaking of the establishment consensus, and if it matters, if you think it will lead to the end of the occupation. You wrote years ago, 15 years ago, a book called Israel’s Occupation. But here you are in London. You have Chef Andrés’s World Central Kitchen, seven people killed — one Palestinian, three British men, some part of the special forces — they were protecting the others, did not succeed in doing that — Australian, a Canadian American. In the United States, you have this odd situation where the president talks about being broken-hearted, and at the same time continues to push for massive amounts of military weapons to go to Israel. You have the mass protests in London, where you are, hundreds of thousands marching, and those calling for an end to military support of Israel. How has this shifted over time? And do you think that this has reached a critical mass, that Palestinians are now becoming full-fledged people in the eyes of the world and the establishment governments, and that Israel is the one being questioned?
NEVE GORDON: Well, we’re not yet where Palestinians have become full-fledged people in the eyes of the world. And we can see that very clearly through the attack on the World Central Kitchen, because, on average, every day, an aid worker has been killed in Gaza since the war began, but it becomes an international issue that all the political elite is discussing only when the aid workers are foreigners. So that shows us the deep-rooted racism that still exists.
However, there is a massive change. I’ve been at it for maybe 40 years now, and there is a massive change. And the massive change is that the Palestinians have managed to globalize their struggle. And civil society, from Sri Lanka and India to the United States through Europe and Africa, is with the Palestinians. And the civil society around the globe are horrified what they’re seeing, and have been now for the past half-year, particularly here in London with these massive demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of people, have been telling the political elite, “Hey, you’re not seeing what’s going on.” And it seems that, finally, after six months of the kind of devastation that I was describing before, this is having some kind of impact on the political elite. And so, we see different — as you mentioned earlier in the program, we see different countries now questioning the weapons trade with Israel. We see that happening in Spain. We saw a ruling in the Netherlands. We see now the law professors and judges in the U.K. protesting the trade and saying that it’s illegal. And we see slowly the political elite changing their voice. But it’s slow. It’s too slow. And what I would suggest is that civil society just needs to continue going out there and creating these thousands of stories of protest every day, until the political elite begins hearing what we have to say.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Neve Gordon, is there any indication of even an incipient change in civil society in Israel? We’ve seen these massive, unprecedented protests, but, of course, those are against Netanyahu, not about a ceasefire in Gaza. But what do you hear about what the situation is on the ground in Israel, how people are thinking of what happened on October 7th and how this war will end?
NEVE GORDON: So, building up to October 7th, there were weekly protests for 35 weeks in a row, with hundreds of thousands of people going to the street against the judicial overhaul and against Netanyahu. That’s about half the Jewish population was against Netanyahu, and half the Jewish population was for Netanyahu. Come October 7th, and the glue that kind of glued these two camps together was revenge. And they wanted revenge against the Palestinian people. And so, the protests dissipated.
We see now the protests reemerging in the past few weeks, with about something around 10,000 people now protesting against Netanyahu. That’s about, I would say, 10% or less than what we saw before October 7th. Then we have protests for the return of the hostages. And so, you’ll get about 2,000, 3,000 people going to those protests. And then the ceasefire protests are sometimes with a hundred or 200 people. And it’s, frankly, often very dangerous to take part in those protests. People can be violent against you in the streets and so forth.
We see at the same time right-wing organizations scanning the different petitions Israelis are signing, looking at what they’re signing, and if an Israeli will sign a petition for a ceasefire or against arms trade with Israel, these right-wing organizations will go — if it’s, let’s say, a lecture in a university, will go to the students and mobilize the students against the lecture, so students ask the university to suspend or fire the professor. And we’ve seen several faculty members across the country being fired. We’ve seen it across the country. Mainly the people that have been targeted are Palestinian citizens of Israel, but also several Jews have lost their jobs due to basically empathy with the Palestinians and call for a ceasefire.
So, the situation in Israel is that the freedom of speech, for example, that I enjoyed when I lived in Israel, has been really curtailed, contracted. And things that people could easily say before October 7th, it’s very difficult to say today, sometimes even very dangerous to say them, and particularly if you’re a Palestinian citizen.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Gordon, I know you have to go soon, but I wanted to ask you about Prime Minister Netanyahu saying he’s going to ban Al Jazeera. Now, it’s not as if Israeli Jews are big aficionados of Al Jazeera, but the significance around the world of what it means? We saw this, you know, at the time, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld talking about Al Jazeera as a terror network. That’s when Al Jazeera was covering the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And we see it again now. You talk about what Israelis see versus what Palestinians are experiencing, the horror of the devastation of Gaza. Yet Al Jazeera is perhaps one of the only global networks that brings the voices of Palestinians and Israeli officials to the Arab world, in a way we do not see in the United States, even with CNN, with MSNBC, rarely interviewing a Palestinian. If you can talk about what the significance of this is?
NEVE GORDON: So, as you said —
AMY GOODMAN: Not to mention how many journalists have been killed in Gaza.
NEVE GORDON: Exactly. So, Israel has killed over a hundred journalists in Gaza. And why are journalists being targeted? Because journalists channel information to the world outside. And the Al Jazeera, since October 7th, has been probably the best global network, the best network, that has managed to cover at least part of the horrors that are taking place in the Gaza Strip, and managed to confront Israeli policymakers and discuss these issues. And Israel does not want the world to see what is going on.
A lot of commentators have said this is the first genocide that the world sees taking — unfolding in front of their very eyes. And I think that is something to think about. And I think that Israel has begun thinking about it. It knows the kind of violence that it’s carrying out. It knows that Al Jazeera has managed to get this violence out there into the world. I’m sure other networks are also looking at what Al Jazeera is doing, and using some of its information. And Israel wants to put a stop to this information so it can carry out the kind of crimes that it’s been carrying out, without it being seen by such a great audience.
So, there is a systematic attack, both inside Israel, in terms of the Facebook, the social media pages of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, that are getting information from Gaza and kind of amplifying it to the world. There is the — we have to remember, there’s the internet blackouts that Israel has put on the Gaza Strip. And there’s the targeting of journalists. And I think the banning of Al Jazeera is just another step in a whole series of steps about how do we manage to restrict the information from getting out of the Gaza Strip so the world won’t see what we’re doing, the kind of — the eliminationist project that we’re carrying out, we, as Israelis, are carrying out in the Gaza Strip.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Gordon, just before we end, if you could tell us how you think this war will come to an end, the status of the negotiations, what’s likely to happen, what will it take for a ceasefire to be declared, for a prisoner exchange to take place?
NEVE GORDON: I think we’re in a major bind here. I think Netanyahu, as many people have already said, has a vested interest in maintaining and sustaining the war, because the minute the war ends, Netanyahu will have to go back to the Israeli public, and they will demand accountability, not only accountability for the three corruption trials that he’s undergoing, but, more importantly, for accountability for October 7th and for the hostages and so forth. So Netanyahu has this kind of vested interest of continuing this war, and maybe even creating a geopolitical crisis that extends far beyond Israel, that goes to Lebanon. We saw the attack on the Iranian Embassy in Syria the other day, and so forth.
I think he will be willing for a short ceasefire to carry out a hostage exchange. And I really, really hope that that happens very soon and that the hostages are released, and that all the Palestinian political prisoners that are being held in Israel are also released.
But if I understood your question correctly, I think you’re also asking about the bigger picture. What about the day after? And I think the problem is not Netanyahu. The problem is the Israeli regime. And I think that if Gantz enters into power or anyone else, not much is going to change under the sun. I think what we need to aspire for is a real change in the regime.
People are chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” So, now, from the river to the sea, there’s millions of Palestinians that are not free. And the way I would imagine the kind of future I would aspire for Israel would be, yes, from the river to the sea, everyone will be free, meaning that we’ll have a state there where both all the Palestinians, the Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, are all citizens of that state, the Jews that are now there will be citizens of that state, and it will be a Jewish — a kind of a state for all its citizens, and not a state, a regime, where Jewish supremacy, as the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem calls it, is the kind of paradigm through which the regime carries out its legislation, its policies and practices.
So, I think a lot will have to be done. There was a great piece in The New York Times the other day by Tareq Baconi, calling on policymakers to abandon the two-state solution. I think Tareq Baconi is right. I think the situation in Israel — and Israel admits to it — that it controls the area from the river to the sea. And so the situation is that there is one state. The one state is a settler-colonial apartheid state. And our project now is how to democratize it.
AMY GOODMAN: Israeli scholar 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 and chair of the Committee on Academic Freedom for British Society. He is the author of several books, including Israel’s Occupation, and co-author of Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire, co-editor of Torture: Human Rights, Medical Ethics and the Case of Israel. To see our full interview with Neve Gordon, you can go to democracynow.org.
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 12, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/12/ ... transcript
We go to Part 2 of our conversation with Israeli scholar Neve Gordon, professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London and chair of the Committee on Academic Freedom for British Society of Middle East Studies. Gordon talks about the “massive surveillance apparatus” Israel has imposed on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, the use of artificial intelligence tools to bomb targets despite the high error rate in those systems, and the shock of the October 7 attack by Hamas that killed some 1,200 Israelis. “The state seemed not to be functioning, so most Israelis were in great pain, were in great fear,” he says. “My fear is that most Israelis are still trapped, still stuck in that October 7th moment and unwilling to lift their eyes to see basically the genocide unfolding in the Gaza Strip.”
Watch Part 1 of this interview: Road to Famine: Israeli Law Prof. Neve Gordon on Israel’s History of Weaponizing Food Access in 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.
Israel’s continued aerial and ground assault on Gaza killed dozens of Palestinians today, including in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, in Gaza City and in Rafah, where three-quarters of Gaza’s population have been displaced to. The official death toll in Gaza has topped 33,600, including over 14,000 children, the actual toll expected to be far higher with thousands of people missing and presumed dead under the rubble. More than 76,000 people have been wounded.
For more on Gaza, we turn to Part 2 of our conversation with the Israeli scholar 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, author of a number of books, including Israel’s Occupation, co-author of Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire, co-editor of Torture: Human Rights, Medical Ethics and the Case of Israel. He joined Democracy Now! co-host Nermeen Shaikh and I from London last week. I began by asking him about Israeli surveillance in Gaza.
NEVE GORDON: So, every state needs to impose a massive surveillance apparatus on its society — and its largest manifestation is the Central Bureau of Statistics — because in order to manage a society, you need to know a lot about it. You need to know different patterns of occupation, age, gender, race. You need to know their habits and so forth. And so, when Israel enters the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the first thing, or one of the first things, it does is it begins to monitor and survey the population it is managing, which also tells us a lot about its intentions and the fact that it had no intention of withdrawing from Gaza and the West Bank after the war in 1967, because you don’t put in place such a massive surveillance apparatus, where you look at every letter sent, you look at — you go in and see how many refrigerators people have, how many stoves they have, what kind of crops they’re growing in their agricultural fields, everything like that — you don’t put that in place if you’re planning to leave, but you put it in place if you plan to manage the population.
And Israel managed the Palestinian population until Oslo, where basically the Oslo Accords can be understood as the creation of a subcontractor, Palestinian Authority, that it would take over the management of the daily life of the Palestinians. And the PA then creates its own Central Bureau of Statistics. And Israel changes then the kinds of surveillance that it carries out vis-à-vis the Palestinian population, because it is no longer responsible for the life of the Palestinians — the PA is — but now it is responsible for the security of Israel in relation to the Palestinian body. So it surveys the Palestinian body only insofar as it helps Israel ensure its so-called security. And so we see a change in the surveillance apparatus. And we see what I call in my first book a move from a politics of life, a politics where Israel is planting 200,000 or so trees in the Gaza Strip, versus a politics of death, where Israel is uprooting 200-or-so thousand trees in the Gaza Strip.
Now, over time, technologies develop. The military develops new technologies of surveillance. And one friend who works in the Israeli intelligence basically told me, “We can see almost everything in the Gaza Strip, whether it’s through our Zeppelins, whether it’s through our drones, whether it’s through satellites and different devices.” And Israel monitors every little step in the Gaza Strip. Every SIM card in the Gaza Strip is monitored. A lot of times when they say they’re targeting a person, they’re targeting the SIM card. So, what we have is a whole massive apparatus of surveillance that has existed for years for military use.
But what is new, or relatively new — I think it was first put to use in 2021 — is the use of AI system. It’s the kind of feeding of the data that Israel collects through its surveillance system to a machine that uses algorithms then, basically, to create different kinds of networks and to identify Hamas operative or different Palestinian fighters or other issues, because the bottleneck in the different cycles of violence that Israel has had — and as I mentioned, it had five since 2008 — was always the targets, the kill targets, because it would take an intelligence officer sometimes days or weeks to kind of figure out a target. And here you can put the data into the machine, and the machine — as the article in +972 tells us, the machine, within a limited amount of time, can produce 37,000 human targets. Now, the machine itself, the Israelis itself, are set telling us that there’s a 10% error rate even in that machine, even according to Israel, yet that Israel ignored that 10% error rate, and then it just started using this machine algorithms to bomb people in Gaza, as you said.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Neve Gordon, this is the first time that we’re speaking to you since the October 7th attack, so I want to ask you — you’ve just quoted an Israeli intelligence official who told you that, given the extensive surveillance system that they have in place in Gaza, they can see almost everything that happens there. So, in light of that, could you tell us what your initial response was to the Hamas attack in Israel, and then what’s unfolded since? Of course, you’ve said that, and you say in the piece, that the speed and scale of the devastation of Gaza that’s ensued is “unparalleled in history.” So, if you could talk about that?
NEVE GORDON: So, the October 7th attack, as an Israeli Jew, was both horrific and devastating. A former graduate student of mine was killed on that day. A music teacher from my children’s school was killed on that day. His wife was killed on that day. And a friend that we thought was kidnapped was also — turned out to have been killed on that day. And it was a very, very painful moment for me, and it was a very, very painful moment, I think, for most Israelis. And the audience needs to understand that Israel is a small country, and the degree of separation between either a person that was killed or a person that was kidnapped in Israel, the maximum degree of separation is probably one degree. So everyone knew someone or knew someone that knew someone. And there was this kind of immense pain. And alongside that pain, there was also a major fear, because everything seemed to have collapsed. The major IDF intelligence apparatus was not working. The defense system was not working. The fence was breached without any problems. And the whole apparatus of the state seemed not to be functioning. So, most Israelis were in great pain, were in great fear. But also immediately came this notion of revenge, kind of a sense we have to hit back, we have to hit back hard, and so forth. And my fear is that most Israelis are still trapped, still stuck in that October 7th moment and unwilling to lift their eyes to see, basically, the genocide unfolding in the Gaza Strip.
And that’s what we’ve been seeing in the past six months, is this horrific devastation, massive killings of civilians. We have — I mean, Hamas killed 30 Israeli children on October 7th, and that is horrific. Israel has killed close to 15,000 children, not counting those that are under the rubble, since October 7th. We need to understand that figure: 15,000 children have been killed. We have women — thousands of women have been killed. And thousands of innocent men have been killed. Israel categorizes all the men as terrorists, but thousands of these men were not fighters. They were just men that were in their homes with their wives, with their children, and their homes were bombed. And so, we see the massive displacement of 1.7 million people. We see 70% of the Gaza Strip now in basically rubbles. We see systematic attacks on the healthcare, that the healthcare is now — which is the institution responsible for saving lives. It’s now completely shattered. So, it’s all been very devastating for me, as an Israeli Jew, to watch this kind of horrific violence unfolding in the Gaza Strip, with friends and friends of friends, again, dying. It’s not as if I don’t have friends in the Gaza Strip. And then we see the academia and education system. I mean, all the universities have been bombed in the Gaza Strip. We have almost half the schools are either damaged or destroyed. One-third of these schools are irreparable. So, one-third of the children, even after the war, will not have schools to return to. So, it’s just complete devastation, and it’s beyond words at this point.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m wondering if you can comment on the breaking of the establishment consensus, and if it matters, if you think it will lead to the end of the occupation. You wrote years ago, 15 years ago, a book called Israel’s Occupation. But here you are in London. You have Chef Andrés’s World Central Kitchen, seven people killed — one Palestinian, three British men, some part of the special forces — they were protecting the others, did not succeed in doing that — Australian, a Canadian American. In the United States, you have this odd situation where the president talks about being broken-hearted, and at the same time continues to push for massive amounts of military weapons to go to Israel. You have the mass protests in London, where you are, hundreds of thousands marching, and those calling for an end to military support of Israel. How has this shifted over time? And do you think that this has reached a critical mass, that Palestinians are now becoming full-fledged people in the eyes of the world and the establishment governments, and that Israel is the one being questioned?
NEVE GORDON: Well, we’re not yet where Palestinians have become full-fledged people in the eyes of the world. And we can see that very clearly through the attack on the World Central Kitchen, because, on average, every day, an aid worker has been killed in Gaza since the war began, but it becomes an international issue that all the political elite is discussing only when the aid workers are foreigners. So that shows us the deep-rooted racism that still exists.
However, there is a massive change. I’ve been at it for maybe 40 years now, and there is a massive change. And the massive change is that the Palestinians have managed to globalize their struggle. And civil society, from Sri Lanka and India to the United States through Europe and Africa, is with the Palestinians. And the civil society around the globe are horrified what they’re seeing, and have been now for the past half-year, particularly here in London with these massive demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of people, have been telling the political elite, “Hey, you’re not seeing what’s going on.” And it seems that, finally, after six months of the kind of devastation that I was describing before, this is having some kind of impact on the political elite. And so, we see different — as you mentioned earlier in the program, we see different countries now questioning the weapons trade with Israel. We see that happening in Spain. We saw a ruling in the Netherlands. We see now the law professors and judges in the U.K. protesting the trade and saying that it’s illegal. And we see slowly the political elite changing their voice. But it’s slow. It’s too slow. And what I would suggest is that civil society just needs to continue going out there and creating these thousands of stories of protest every day, until the political elite begins hearing what we have to say.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Neve Gordon, is there any indication of even an incipient change in civil society in Israel? We’ve seen these massive, unprecedented protests, but, of course, those are against Netanyahu, not about a ceasefire in Gaza. But what do you hear about what the situation is on the ground in Israel, how people are thinking of what happened on October 7th and how this war will end?
NEVE GORDON: So, building up to October 7th, there were weekly protests for 35 weeks in a row, with hundreds of thousands of people going to the street against the judicial overhaul and against Netanyahu. That’s about half the Jewish population was against Netanyahu, and half the Jewish population was for Netanyahu. Come October 7th, and the glue that kind of glued these two camps together was revenge. And they wanted revenge against the Palestinian people. And so, the protests dissipated.
We see now the protests reemerging in the past few weeks, with about something around 10,000 people now protesting against Netanyahu. That’s about, I would say, 10% or less than what we saw before October 7th. Then we have protests for the return of the hostages. And so, you’ll get about 2,000, 3,000 people going to those protests. And then the ceasefire protests are sometimes with a hundred or 200 people. And it’s, frankly, often very dangerous to take part in those protests. People can be violent against you in the streets and so forth.
We see at the same time right-wing organizations scanning the different petitions Israelis are signing, looking at what they’re signing, and if an Israeli will sign a petition for a ceasefire or against arms trade with Israel, these right-wing organizations will go — if it’s, let’s say, a lecture in a university, will go to the students and mobilize the students against the lecture, so students ask the university to suspend or fire the professor. And we’ve seen several faculty members across the country being fired. We’ve seen it across the country. Mainly the people that have been targeted are Palestinian citizens of Israel, but also several Jews have lost their jobs due to basically empathy with the Palestinians and call for a ceasefire.
So, the situation in Israel is that the freedom of speech, for example, that I enjoyed when I lived in Israel, has been really curtailed, contracted. And things that people could easily say before October 7th, it’s very difficult to say today, sometimes even very dangerous to say them, and particularly if you’re a Palestinian citizen.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Gordon, I know you have to go soon, but I wanted to ask you about Prime Minister Netanyahu saying he’s going to ban Al Jazeera. Now, it’s not as if Israeli Jews are big aficionados of Al Jazeera, but the significance around the world of what it means? We saw this, you know, at the time, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld talking about Al Jazeera as a terror network. That’s when Al Jazeera was covering the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And we see it again now. You talk about what Israelis see versus what Palestinians are experiencing, the horror of the devastation of Gaza. Yet Al Jazeera is perhaps one of the only global networks that brings the voices of Palestinians and Israeli officials to the Arab world, in a way we do not see in the United States, even with CNN, with MSNBC, rarely interviewing a Palestinian. If you can talk about what the significance of this is?
NEVE GORDON: So, as you said —
AMY GOODMAN: Not to mention how many journalists have been killed in Gaza.
NEVE GORDON: Exactly. So, Israel has killed over a hundred journalists in Gaza. And why are journalists being targeted? Because journalists channel information to the world outside. And the Al Jazeera, since October 7th, has been probably the best global network, the best network, that has managed to cover at least part of the horrors that are taking place in the Gaza Strip, and managed to confront Israeli policymakers and discuss these issues. And Israel does not want the world to see what is going on.
A lot of commentators have said this is the first genocide that the world sees taking — unfolding in front of their very eyes. And I think that is something to think about. And I think that Israel has begun thinking about it. It knows the kind of violence that it’s carrying out. It knows that Al Jazeera has managed to get this violence out there into the world. I’m sure other networks are also looking at what Al Jazeera is doing, and using some of its information. And Israel wants to put a stop to this information so it can carry out the kind of crimes that it’s been carrying out, without it being seen by such a great audience.
So, there is a systematic attack, both inside Israel, in terms of the Facebook, the social media pages of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, that are getting information from Gaza and kind of amplifying it to the world. There is the — we have to remember, there’s the internet blackouts that Israel has put on the Gaza Strip. And there’s the targeting of journalists. And I think the banning of Al Jazeera is just another step in a whole series of steps about how do we manage to restrict the information from getting out of the Gaza Strip so the world won’t see what we’re doing, the kind of — the eliminationist project that we’re carrying out, we, as Israelis, are carrying out in the Gaza Strip.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Gordon, just before we end, if you could tell us how you think this war will come to an end, the status of the negotiations, what’s likely to happen, what will it take for a ceasefire to be declared, for a prisoner exchange to take place?
NEVE GORDON: I think we’re in a major bind here. I think Netanyahu, as many people have already said, has a vested interest in maintaining and sustaining the war, because the minute the war ends, Netanyahu will have to go back to the Israeli public, and they will demand accountability, not only accountability for the three corruption trials that he’s undergoing, but, more importantly, for accountability for October 7th and for the hostages and so forth. So Netanyahu has this kind of vested interest of continuing this war, and maybe even creating a geopolitical crisis that extends far beyond Israel, that goes to Lebanon. We saw the attack on the Iranian Embassy in Syria the other day, and so forth.
I think he will be willing for a short ceasefire to carry out a hostage exchange. And I really, really hope that that happens very soon and that the hostages are released, and that all the Palestinian political prisoners that are being held in Israel are also released.
But if I understood your question correctly, I think you’re also asking about the bigger picture. What about the day after? And I think the problem is not Netanyahu. The problem is the Israeli regime. And I think that if Gantz enters into power or anyone else, not much is going to change under the sun. I think what we need to aspire for is a real change in the regime.
People are chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” So, now, from the river to the sea, there’s millions of Palestinians that are not free. And the way I would imagine the kind of future I would aspire for Israel would be, yes, from the river to the sea, everyone will be free, meaning that we’ll have a state there where both all the Palestinians, the Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, are all citizens of that state, the Jews that are now there will be citizens of that state, and it will be a Jewish — a kind of a state for all its citizens, and not a state, a regime, where Jewish supremacy, as the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem calls it, is the kind of paradigm through which the regime carries out its legislation, its policies and practices.
So, I think a lot will have to be done. There was a great piece in The New York Times the other day by Tareq Baconi, calling on policymakers to abandon the two-state solution. I think Tareq Baconi is right. I think the situation in Israel — and Israel admits to it — that it controls the area from the river to the sea. And so the situation is that there is one state. The one state is a settler-colonial apartheid state. And our project now is how to democratize it.
AMY GOODMAN: Israeli scholar 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 and chair of the Committee on Academic Freedom for British Society. He is the author of several books, including Israel’s Occupation, and co-author of Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire, co-editor of Torture: Human Rights, Medical Ethics and the Case of Israel. To see our full interview with Neve Gordon, you can go to democracynow.org.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
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Is Regional War at Stake as Israel Weighs Response to Iran? Roundtable from Tehran, Tel Aviv & D.C.
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 15, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/15/ ... transcript
The Middle East is bracing for the possibility of regional war after Iran responded to Israel’s bombing of the Iranian Consulate in Damascus with a major drone and missile attack Saturday. The attack caused little damage inside Israel, as it intercepted nearly all of the drones and missiles with help from the United States, Britain, France and Jordan. Iran’s government described the attack as a defensive maneuver after Israel’s unprovoked strike on its embassy killed some of Iran’s top military brass. This was “a performative operation to send a message,” says journalist Reza Sayah, who joins us from Tehran. But while Iran “does not want to escalate matters,” Israel may be preparing to do just that. Washington, D.C.-based analyst Trita Parsi says that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has been trying to instigate conflict between the U.S. and Iran for “more than two decades,” and given that Biden has demonstrated an unwillingness to “draw any red lines for Israel publicly,” these latest provocations could become a prime “opportunity” for such a war. Crucially, Iranian restraint “cannot last forever,” warns our final roundtable guest, the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who touches on both Iran’s own sovereignty and increasing global pressure for Israel to end its war on Gaza. “Gaza is still starving and bleeding, and we shouldn’t forget it,” says Levy.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: The Middle East is bracing for possible retaliation from Israel after Iran launched 300 drones and missiles at Israel in response to Israel’s recent bombing of the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, Syria. The Iranian attack caused little damage inside Israel, which intercepted nearly all the drones and missiles, with help from the United States, Britain, France and Jordan. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for maximum restraint Sunday at an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting.
SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: The Middle East is on the brink. The people of the region are confronting a real danger of a devastating, full-scale conflict. Now is the time to defuse and deescalate. Now is the time for maximum restraint.
AMY GOODMAN: As we broadcast, Israel’s war cabinet is reconvening to debate how to respond to Iran’s first-ever direct attack. Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz has vowed Israel will retaliate against Iran.
BENNY GANTZ: [translated] In the face of the Iranian threat, we will build a regional coalition and exact the price from Iran in the fashion and timing that is right for us. And most importantly, faced with the desire of our enemies to harm us, we will continue to unite and become stronger.
AMY GOODMAN: President Biden has reiterated his, quote, “ironclad” support for Israel, but he reportedly told Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States will not participate in any retaliatory strikes against Iran.
At the United Nations Sunday, Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Saeid Iravani defended the missile and drone attack on Israel, saying it was done in self-defense.
SAEID IRAVANI: These countries, especially the United States, have shielded Israel from any responsibility for the Gaza massacre. While they have denied Iran’s inherent right to self-defense against the Israeli armed attack on our diplomatic premises, at the same time they shamefully justify the Israeli massacre and genocide against the defenseless Palestinian people under the pretext of self-defense.
AMY GOODMAN: Iran’s attacks on Israel may add new momentum for the U.S. Congress to approve more aid for Israel as the House returns to session today.
For more, we go to Tehran, where we’re joined by Reza Sayah, freelance journalist based in Tehran, where he joins us from. Trita Parsi is executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, joining us from Washington, D.C. And later we’ll speak with Gideon Levy, award-winning Israeli journalist and author in Tel Aviv. He’s columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, a member of its editorial board. His most recent piece is headlined “If Iran Attacks Israel, the Blame Lies on Israel’s Irresponsible Decision-makers.”
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Reza Sayah, let’s begin with you in Tehran. Can you talk about the response there in Iran’s capital after Iran retaliated against Israel for bombing the Iranian Consulate in Damascus?
REZA SAYAH: Well, the people of Iran have had a variety of responses and sentiments. And I think it’s important to remind everyone that neither myself nor any journalist can sit here and tell you that a population, an entire population, has a single feeling, a single voice, a single sentiment, but this is what you hear oftentimes in Western news media, are journalists describing what an entire population is feeling or saying. That’s simply not the case. There are different competing sentiments in every population, and that is the case here in Iran.
There’s a segment of the population here in Iran that are staunch supporters of the clerical establishment, staunch supporters of the supreme leader. They believe that it’s the duty of every Muslim to support and help the oppressed, and they view Gazans and Palestinians as the oppressed. They’re following very closely the events in Gaza over the past six months. They were outraged when Iran’s Consulate was attacked in Syria. And they cheered Iran’s response over the weekend when they fired those rockets and those drones in Israel. That’s one segment of the population.
There’s another segment of the population in Iran that are staunch critics of the government. They have a very different view. They want reform in the government. Some want the government gone. They don’t mind when senior officials of the Revolutionary Guard are assassinated. They don’t mind when the establishment is undermined, when the Revolutionary Guard is undermined. They believe that the Iranian government, instead of funding Hezbollah and Hamas, should help the people. So they were — they are and they remain critical of Iran’s role in this conflict.
But it’s important to point out that most people here in Iran are, remarkably, continuing their lives. Obviously, some people are worried. They see the headlines. They wonder what’s going to happen. But remarkably, they continue their lives. Schools are open. Stores are open. Businesses are open. And I think that speaks to the resilience of the Iranian people, who’ve faced so many challenges over these last 40-plus years — the isolation, a horrible economy, inflation, a lack of jobs. But somehow they continue living while monitoring what’s happening.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about who died in the attack on the Iranian Consulate in Damascus? At least two Iranian generals. Is that right?
REZA SAYAH: Yeah, these were two Iranian generals that had significant roles in Iran’s presence in Syria and the reported operations that Iran has conducted against U.S. targets in the region, in Syria and Iraq. And it’s important to note that many people within the government continue to remind everyone that this was an act of war by Israel, even though Israel has not confirmed that it conducted the attack on the Iranian Consulate. Iran continues to remind the international community — they did it at the U.N. Security Council meeting — that Iran’s attack on Israel was a response to an act of war that Israel carried out against the Iranian Consulate, which is seen as Iranian soil.
It is also important to point out that Iran’s response took two weeks. And that is in line with how Iran has reacted to similar incidents and assassinations in recent years. You’ll recall the assassination of General Soleimani, the top-ranking Revolutionary Guard general, in Iraq in 2020. You’ll recall Iran’s response was to attack a U.S. airbase in Iraq, but just as they did with this attack in Israel, they took a lot of time. It is reported that they even announced what they were going to do. And that’s a clear indication that Iran does not want to escalate matters with Israel and the U.S. and regional allies, that this was, as many say, a performative operation to send a message, and calculated in a way where Iran doesn’t want to escalate matters. And you saw Iranian officials explicitly say that, for them, the matter is over. Now we wait to see if Israel agrees, if it’s over for them, if they retaliate, and what Iran does after that.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, interviewed on CNN.
WOLF BLITZER: Give us your assessment of an appropriate Israeli response to what Iran has now done.
JOHN BOLTON: Well, what Iran did tonight that I think was most significant was the firing of ballistic missiles and cruise missiles from its territory directly at Israel. Almost certainly at this point, none of those missiles contained a nuclear warhead. But you never can tell when the next firing, the next salvo of ballistic missiles might contain a nuclear warhead. So, I think among the many targets Israel should consider, this is the opportunity to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program. And I hope President Biden is not trying to dissuade Prime Minister Netanyahu from doing that.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that was John Bolton speaking on CNN. We’re also joined by Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, speaking to us from Washington, D.C. Trita, can you respond to what Bolton said and also how Washington is responding right now?
TRITA PARSI: Well, I think you saw there, in John Bolton’s response, he used the word “opportunity.” And this is how some of the hawks view this. They see this as an opportunity to materialize the war between the United States and Iran and Israel that they have been seeking for more than 25 years. And that includes Bibi Netanyahu. I think it should not be forgotten that Netanyahu has been trying to start a war between the United States and Iran for more than two decades and has seen him being actually rebuffed by several presidents in a row, who may have been very hawkish on Iran, who may themselves have contemplated the idea of going to war with Iran, but who nevertheless rejected the pressure from Netanyahu to do so on behalf of Israel. But Bolton is reflecting that view, the idea that this is an opportunity to have a much larger war in the Middle East.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about President Biden saying that Israel has the “ironclad” support of the U.S., but telling Netanyahu after this attack that the U.S. would not participate in any kind of retaliation, though the U.S. intercepted, I think they said, how many drones and something like six missiles and 90 drone strikes on the — with the Iranian attack? Jordan also participated, as did Britain and France.
TRITA PARSI: I think what Biden is saying here is quite contradictory, because at the end of the day, there will be no distinction between offensive and defensive measures in the second the war actually breaks out. So, consider this scenario. The United States does not support and does not participate in Israel’s counterstrikes against Iran, and the Israelis may follow Bolton’s advice and try to target Iran’s nuclear facilities. The Iranians then respond in kind with a much larger barrage of missiles. Clearly what they did this time around was choreographed to minimize damage and make sure that there’s no casualties. Next time around, they won’t do that. Once the Iranians have started their counterstrikes, then the United States is dragged into the war, because Biden said that he will participate in the defensive measures. And then, regardless of what the previous measure was by the United States, the U.S. will be at war in the Middle East. And as a result, Netanyahu now has a clear pathway on how to drag the United States into this war. All he needs to do is to escalate further. The U.S. will reject that, but then the U.S. will be there once the Iranians are responding. And at that point, any distinction between offensive and defensive is meaningless.
If Biden instead makes it very, very clear that it does not lie in the U.S.’s interest to have any escalation in the region and draws a red line in front of Iran and in front of Israel, he will then not need to come to the defense of Israel, because there will not be a war to begin with. That would be a much better pathway that serves U.S. interests, that prevents any regional escalation. But so far we have seen that Biden, even though he apparently is frustrated privately, he does not feel comfortable to draw any red lines for Israel publicly. And the ones that he has drawn privately, Netanyahu has systematically ignored for the last seven months.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Trita Parsi, who’s executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, has written several books on Iran and the United States. We’re going to continue with him and Reza Sayah, freelance journalist in Tehran, and we’ll be joined by Gideon Levy, who is Haaretz columnist, on the editorial board of Haaretz, wrote the article “If Iran Attacks Israel, the Blame Lies on Israel’s Irresponsible Decision-makers.” Back in 30 seconds.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Khooneye Ma,” “Our House,” by Marjan Farsad. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
The Middle East is bracing for Israel to retaliate amidst claims — calls for restraint after Iran fired over 350 drones and missiles at Israel in response to Israel’s attack on the Iranian Consulate in Syria that killed two Iranian generals and a number of other military officers. We are joined by guests in Tehran and Washington, D.C., and now to Tel Aviv, where we’re joined by Gideon Levy, an award-winning Israeli journalist and author, columnist for the newspaper Haaretz and a member of its editorial board, his most recent piece headlined “If Iran Attacks Israel, the Blame Lies on Israel’s Irresponsible Decision-makers.”
In it, Gideon writes, quote, “For several years now, Israel has provoked Iran constantly, in Lebanon, Syria and also on Iranian soil, and has not paid any price. It would be foolish to believe that the rope Israel has stretched will not break. That moment may have come.” He ends by writing, “Just don’t say, again, that there was no choice. There was a choice: not to kill. Even if it is deserved, even if it is permitted and even if it is possible. The person who sent the assassins put Israel at risk of war with Iran.”
Gideon Levy, you are joined — you are joining Reza Sayah, a freelance journalist in Tehran, Iran, and Trita Parsi, one of the heads of the Quincy Institute. Can you respond to Iran’s attack and what Israel did to provoke that, the bombing of the Iranian Consulate in Damascus? Did that surprise you?
GIDEON LEVY: Nothing surprised here. The only thing which surprised, really, was the defensive capability of Israel, together with its allies. It was really impressive. But it’s not a guarantee for the future. When I wrote my article, it was before the attack came. And still I thought that the assassination in Damascus was unnecessary. The problem with the Israeli armed forces and intelligence organizations is that whenever they see an opportunity, they take it, without thinking about the consequences, without thinking about the price. And until now it was working for them, because Iran didn’t react ’til now directly on Israel, only through its proxies. But it was very clear that this cannot last forever.
So, those who send the assassinators to assassinate on Iranian soil, on an Iranian diplomatic mission, those two generals and five more, those had to think what will be the next day. And the next day came, and we were attacked. And luckily enough, we didn’t suffer out of this attack. The only conclusion right now should be: No, don’t you dare to retaliate now, because then we will be in a regional war, and that’s a new game.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what Benny Gantz said — as we broadcast right now, the war cabinet, Israel’s war cabinet, has reconvened — what Netanyahu said. Of course, they are competing with each other. If Netanyahu were to go down, it’s perceivable Benny Gantz would become the next prime minister. But talk about what’s happening within that war cabinet.
GIDEON LEVY: Amy, it’s for long time that I claim that those who want to get rid of Netanyahu are obviously right, but the hope that the alternative will be any better on core issues — for many issues it will be much better, but on core issues, like apartheid, the occupation, continuing the war in Gaza, will be very, very disappointed. And here we go. Benny Gantz, who is the alternative, who is the liberal alternative, who is the dovish alternative of Israel, he speaks exactly like Netanyahu and would act exactly like Netanyhau when it comes to core issues or core questions like launching an assassination, like launching a war, like using the military power of Israel. And that’s really very, very depressing that there is no alternative thinking in Israel and no lessons out of the experience. All the assassinations that Israel committed, all of them, never led to anywhere. Nothing good came out of them, except of the ego of the organizations who stood behind it. And here comes this Benny Gantz, the big hope of the liberal Israel, and suggests to continue the war, to make it worse, to go for a regional war with Iran. That’s really, really, very depressing.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned, Gideon Levy, that what’s happening with Iran now is taking attention away from what’s happening in Gaza, where the death toll just continues to mount, over — close to 34,000 people, just the official death toll, is expected to be much higher, and where the resistance was mounting in the United States, for example, on President Biden not to arm Israel, given what’s happening in Gaza, that now the House, which is notoriously divided, is perhaps coming together around giving more aid to Israel?
GIDEON LEVY: It goes without saying, Amy. Not only Gaza is forgotten. Also look what is happening in the West Bank — pogrom after pogrom, and nobody cares anymore. The army collaborates in those pogroms. We have videos from the last days in which the army not only stands aside, but many times take part of those pogroms against the Palestinians. And nobody pays attention to it — not to speak, obviously, about Gaza — because everyone is now concerned about Iran. But Gaza is still starving and bleeding, and we shouldn’t forget it, even not for a moment, like we shouldn’t forget the hostages who are still there. But it seems that now everyone is only concerned about retaliating Iran. This would be such a major, maybe fatal, mistake.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring back in Reza Sayah. You were based in Cairo, Egypt, when you covered the negotiations between Israel and Hamas in 2014 as Israel launched its assault on Gaza then. Can you talk about what unfolded back then and how it compares to the negotiations that are taking place, what, in Doha and Cairo now for a ceasefire?
REZA SAYAH: Well, obviously, back then, what took place, as is taking place right now on a smaller scale, was the killing of lots of innocent civilians. But one thing that sticks out in my mind in 2014, in covering that conflict, was the Israeli government’s flat-out refusal to negotiate. There were so many instances when I was talking to Hamas leaders who were in Cairo. And in these instances, they would tell me that the Israeli officials who were supposed to show up for those negotiations simply would not show up. And this was something that was not widely reported by Western and U.S. media, the Israeli government’s seeming unwillingness to negotiate with Hamas. Eventually, there was negotiations, and that war ended, but in subsequent years leading up to this conflict, the cycle of war continued. But that’s something that sticks out in my mind in that 2014 conflict.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask about Jordan’s position in all of this, Trita Parsi, what role it plays. You had the United States, Britain, Jordan, France all intercepting some of these drones and missiles.
TRITA PARSI: Yes, numerous countries participated in the interception of these missiles. And the only reason they could do so was because the Iranians had given them 72 hours’ heads-up, deliberately, because the entire purpose of this exercise was not to inflict damage but to restore what the Iranians believe is their deterrence and showcase their capability. And as Gideon said, the shooting down of these missiles was quite impressive, but I think we also have to keep in mind that there might be a different scenario in the future in which there is no forewarning of these attacks, and as a result, France, Britain and the United States will not be able to prepare for and participate, in this extent, in the shooting down of the missiles. And then, as a result, it’s not entirely clear to what extent the Israeli air defenses would be capable of handling what would likely be a much larger barrage of missiles shot at Israel. So, I think the Israelis may have also picked up that at the end of the day, a military confrontation, even though Israel, of course, is much stronger than Iran, and certainly the U.S. is, but, nevertheless, will be very, very damaging to Israel, as well. And that, I think, is one of the key messages the Iranians were trying to send.
The Jordanians are, of course, caught in the middle there, because all of these different things are then flying over Jordanian airspace. And the Jordanian position has been that they’re defending their airspace. They are not defending Israel. This is not done in order to necessarily help the Israelis. It’s to make sure that Jordan asserts that no war should be taking place on its territory or in its airspace. That, nevertheless, is a tough position for the Jordanians to take, given the very, very strong sentiments that are now boiling over inside of Jordan because of the population’s frustration with what is happening in Gaza and their perception that the Jordanian government, and the Arab world at large, have been helpless and not done enough to prevent the slaughter.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask Gideon Levy if you’ve been surprised by the amount of conversation going on between Iran and the United States, perhaps not directly. And also I want to put that question to Reza Sayah. But where the result is, you have United States saying they will not participate in Israel’s retaliation, if they retaliate against Iran?
GIDEON LEVY: First of all, I would say we always portray Iran as a crazy state, as an insane state. It might be described like this. But in this case, it was very measured. Very measured. I wish the United States and Iran would have spoken much more. I wish the agreement, the nuclear agreement, would be still valid, and we would be in a much better place and safer place, rather than what both Donald Trump and Netanyhahu arranged us, canceling this agreement, which was the best way to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. The more they speak, the better — under the table, above the table, behind the curtains, any way to talk to them. I still believe that every regime has its own interests, and dialogue is, by the end of the day, the best way, even if it’s the Satan of Iran.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk, as you talked about what’s happening also on the West Bank, if you can talk about the most recent news about the death of one of the most prominent Palestinian prisoners in an Israeli prison, died of cancer, novelist Walid Daqqa, who spent the past 38 years locked up for his involvement in an armed group that abducted and killed an Israeli soldier in 1984, rights groups pressuring Israel to release him, saying he was in dire need of medical attention, Amnesty International calling for his release, saying that since October 7th he had been tortured, humiliated and denied family visits? You’ve written about this.
GIDEON LEVY: I’m following this story for many, many years. I even visited Walid once in jail many years ago. It’s one of those horrible stories which tells you much more than the story itself. Walid Daqqa is an Israeli. He is not a Palestinian from the West Bank. He’s an Israeli Palestinian. He, by the way, didn’t murder. He participated in a group which kidnapped an Israeli soldier and then killed him, some of them. He was not involved in it. But he was charged for murder and everything fined. He sat 37 years for this murder, much more than any murderer in the world — in Israel, not in the world. He, in this period, changed his — declared that he had enough with terror, declared that he regrets any terror actions. He’s exactly the style of leadership that we should look forwards, those Palestinians who change their minds and clear terror as a tool.
But, no, for Israel, no Palestinian is good enough, and here, in the last years, started really a sadistic behavior toward him and his family. No visits. When he started to be ill in cancer, when he got no visits half the year now, they didn’t even inform the family that he’s dying. They didn’t even inform the family he died. And now it’s already 10 days. They don’t even return the body, and don’t let them mourn in their home. I mean, what is more sadistic than this? And what is more the face of this current government of Israel? When it comes to Palestinians, Israeli Palestinians or Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza, sadism is the name of the game.
AMY GOODMAN: And I wanted to give Reza Sayah the last word. In U.S. media, we don’t often hear from people in Tehran. You’re a freelance journalist there in the capital of Iran. You’ve been covering Iran’s relationship with Hamas, particularly in the aftermath of October 7th. Could you expand on this, and what you think it’s most important for people to understand outside of Iran, and particularly here in the United States?
REZA SAYAH: Well, I think, from the people’s standpoint, the people here are resilient. Most of them are peace-loving people who do not want war.
And I want to follow up on Mr. Levy’s thought about how Iran is often portrayed in Western media to the American and Western audience as a radical, reckless, violent government. And I think a lot of thoughtful analysts will tell you that a radical entity, a radical government, would not last for 45 years like the Islamic Republic has. And these analysts will tell you that the reason that they have survived for these 45-plus years is that they’re not reckless, that they’re very calculating and they’re measured.
And they understand, at this very high-stakes juncture, that there are forces that perhaps Israel wants to bait them into a wider war. And I think Iran understands that that would be a mistake. I think many here understand that if they get baited into a wider war, it would be a distraction to what’s happening in Gaza, that has served the establishment here well by getting them a lot of political clout. And it would also potentially galvanize and unite Israel with its Western allies, Western allies that have been critical of Israel in their operation in Gaza.
So, at this hour, they’re waiting to see what Israel does, if Israel retaliates. But history has shown that if Israel retaliates, Iran is going to be aware of what their responses could cost, and they’re going to take a measured response. It’s obviously a very high-stakes chess game, and a lot of people anxious to see what happens in the coming days.
AMY GOODMAN: Reza Sayah, I want to thank you so much for being with us, freelance journalist in Tehran, Iran; Gideon Levy, a Haaretz columnist, member of its editorial board, and we’ll link to your articles; and Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 15, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/15/ ... transcript
The Middle East is bracing for the possibility of regional war after Iran responded to Israel’s bombing of the Iranian Consulate in Damascus with a major drone and missile attack Saturday. The attack caused little damage inside Israel, as it intercepted nearly all of the drones and missiles with help from the United States, Britain, France and Jordan. Iran’s government described the attack as a defensive maneuver after Israel’s unprovoked strike on its embassy killed some of Iran’s top military brass. This was “a performative operation to send a message,” says journalist Reza Sayah, who joins us from Tehran. But while Iran “does not want to escalate matters,” Israel may be preparing to do just that. Washington, D.C.-based analyst Trita Parsi says that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has been trying to instigate conflict between the U.S. and Iran for “more than two decades,” and given that Biden has demonstrated an unwillingness to “draw any red lines for Israel publicly,” these latest provocations could become a prime “opportunity” for such a war. Crucially, Iranian restraint “cannot last forever,” warns our final roundtable guest, the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who touches on both Iran’s own sovereignty and increasing global pressure for Israel to end its war on Gaza. “Gaza is still starving and bleeding, and we shouldn’t forget it,” says Levy.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: The Middle East is bracing for possible retaliation from Israel after Iran launched 300 drones and missiles at Israel in response to Israel’s recent bombing of the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, Syria. The Iranian attack caused little damage inside Israel, which intercepted nearly all the drones and missiles, with help from the United States, Britain, France and Jordan. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for maximum restraint Sunday at an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting.
SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: The Middle East is on the brink. The people of the region are confronting a real danger of a devastating, full-scale conflict. Now is the time to defuse and deescalate. Now is the time for maximum restraint.
AMY GOODMAN: As we broadcast, Israel’s war cabinet is reconvening to debate how to respond to Iran’s first-ever direct attack. Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz has vowed Israel will retaliate against Iran.
BENNY GANTZ: [translated] In the face of the Iranian threat, we will build a regional coalition and exact the price from Iran in the fashion and timing that is right for us. And most importantly, faced with the desire of our enemies to harm us, we will continue to unite and become stronger.
AMY GOODMAN: President Biden has reiterated his, quote, “ironclad” support for Israel, but he reportedly told Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States will not participate in any retaliatory strikes against Iran.
At the United Nations Sunday, Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Saeid Iravani defended the missile and drone attack on Israel, saying it was done in self-defense.
SAEID IRAVANI: These countries, especially the United States, have shielded Israel from any responsibility for the Gaza massacre. While they have denied Iran’s inherent right to self-defense against the Israeli armed attack on our diplomatic premises, at the same time they shamefully justify the Israeli massacre and genocide against the defenseless Palestinian people under the pretext of self-defense.
AMY GOODMAN: Iran’s attacks on Israel may add new momentum for the U.S. Congress to approve more aid for Israel as the House returns to session today.
For more, we go to Tehran, where we’re joined by Reza Sayah, freelance journalist based in Tehran, where he joins us from. Trita Parsi is executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, joining us from Washington, D.C. And later we’ll speak with Gideon Levy, award-winning Israeli journalist and author in Tel Aviv. He’s columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, a member of its editorial board. His most recent piece is headlined “If Iran Attacks Israel, the Blame Lies on Israel’s Irresponsible Decision-makers.”
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Reza Sayah, let’s begin with you in Tehran. Can you talk about the response there in Iran’s capital after Iran retaliated against Israel for bombing the Iranian Consulate in Damascus?
REZA SAYAH: Well, the people of Iran have had a variety of responses and sentiments. And I think it’s important to remind everyone that neither myself nor any journalist can sit here and tell you that a population, an entire population, has a single feeling, a single voice, a single sentiment, but this is what you hear oftentimes in Western news media, are journalists describing what an entire population is feeling or saying. That’s simply not the case. There are different competing sentiments in every population, and that is the case here in Iran.
There’s a segment of the population here in Iran that are staunch supporters of the clerical establishment, staunch supporters of the supreme leader. They believe that it’s the duty of every Muslim to support and help the oppressed, and they view Gazans and Palestinians as the oppressed. They’re following very closely the events in Gaza over the past six months. They were outraged when Iran’s Consulate was attacked in Syria. And they cheered Iran’s response over the weekend when they fired those rockets and those drones in Israel. That’s one segment of the population.
There’s another segment of the population in Iran that are staunch critics of the government. They have a very different view. They want reform in the government. Some want the government gone. They don’t mind when senior officials of the Revolutionary Guard are assassinated. They don’t mind when the establishment is undermined, when the Revolutionary Guard is undermined. They believe that the Iranian government, instead of funding Hezbollah and Hamas, should help the people. So they were — they are and they remain critical of Iran’s role in this conflict.
But it’s important to point out that most people here in Iran are, remarkably, continuing their lives. Obviously, some people are worried. They see the headlines. They wonder what’s going to happen. But remarkably, they continue their lives. Schools are open. Stores are open. Businesses are open. And I think that speaks to the resilience of the Iranian people, who’ve faced so many challenges over these last 40-plus years — the isolation, a horrible economy, inflation, a lack of jobs. But somehow they continue living while monitoring what’s happening.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about who died in the attack on the Iranian Consulate in Damascus? At least two Iranian generals. Is that right?
REZA SAYAH: Yeah, these were two Iranian generals that had significant roles in Iran’s presence in Syria and the reported operations that Iran has conducted against U.S. targets in the region, in Syria and Iraq. And it’s important to note that many people within the government continue to remind everyone that this was an act of war by Israel, even though Israel has not confirmed that it conducted the attack on the Iranian Consulate. Iran continues to remind the international community — they did it at the U.N. Security Council meeting — that Iran’s attack on Israel was a response to an act of war that Israel carried out against the Iranian Consulate, which is seen as Iranian soil.
It is also important to point out that Iran’s response took two weeks. And that is in line with how Iran has reacted to similar incidents and assassinations in recent years. You’ll recall the assassination of General Soleimani, the top-ranking Revolutionary Guard general, in Iraq in 2020. You’ll recall Iran’s response was to attack a U.S. airbase in Iraq, but just as they did with this attack in Israel, they took a lot of time. It is reported that they even announced what they were going to do. And that’s a clear indication that Iran does not want to escalate matters with Israel and the U.S. and regional allies, that this was, as many say, a performative operation to send a message, and calculated in a way where Iran doesn’t want to escalate matters. And you saw Iranian officials explicitly say that, for them, the matter is over. Now we wait to see if Israel agrees, if it’s over for them, if they retaliate, and what Iran does after that.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, interviewed on CNN.
WOLF BLITZER: Give us your assessment of an appropriate Israeli response to what Iran has now done.
JOHN BOLTON: Well, what Iran did tonight that I think was most significant was the firing of ballistic missiles and cruise missiles from its territory directly at Israel. Almost certainly at this point, none of those missiles contained a nuclear warhead. But you never can tell when the next firing, the next salvo of ballistic missiles might contain a nuclear warhead. So, I think among the many targets Israel should consider, this is the opportunity to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program. And I hope President Biden is not trying to dissuade Prime Minister Netanyahu from doing that.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that was John Bolton speaking on CNN. We’re also joined by Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, speaking to us from Washington, D.C. Trita, can you respond to what Bolton said and also how Washington is responding right now?
TRITA PARSI: Well, I think you saw there, in John Bolton’s response, he used the word “opportunity.” And this is how some of the hawks view this. They see this as an opportunity to materialize the war between the United States and Iran and Israel that they have been seeking for more than 25 years. And that includes Bibi Netanyahu. I think it should not be forgotten that Netanyahu has been trying to start a war between the United States and Iran for more than two decades and has seen him being actually rebuffed by several presidents in a row, who may have been very hawkish on Iran, who may themselves have contemplated the idea of going to war with Iran, but who nevertheless rejected the pressure from Netanyahu to do so on behalf of Israel. But Bolton is reflecting that view, the idea that this is an opportunity to have a much larger war in the Middle East.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about President Biden saying that Israel has the “ironclad” support of the U.S., but telling Netanyahu after this attack that the U.S. would not participate in any kind of retaliation, though the U.S. intercepted, I think they said, how many drones and something like six missiles and 90 drone strikes on the — with the Iranian attack? Jordan also participated, as did Britain and France.
TRITA PARSI: I think what Biden is saying here is quite contradictory, because at the end of the day, there will be no distinction between offensive and defensive measures in the second the war actually breaks out. So, consider this scenario. The United States does not support and does not participate in Israel’s counterstrikes against Iran, and the Israelis may follow Bolton’s advice and try to target Iran’s nuclear facilities. The Iranians then respond in kind with a much larger barrage of missiles. Clearly what they did this time around was choreographed to minimize damage and make sure that there’s no casualties. Next time around, they won’t do that. Once the Iranians have started their counterstrikes, then the United States is dragged into the war, because Biden said that he will participate in the defensive measures. And then, regardless of what the previous measure was by the United States, the U.S. will be at war in the Middle East. And as a result, Netanyahu now has a clear pathway on how to drag the United States into this war. All he needs to do is to escalate further. The U.S. will reject that, but then the U.S. will be there once the Iranians are responding. And at that point, any distinction between offensive and defensive is meaningless.
If Biden instead makes it very, very clear that it does not lie in the U.S.’s interest to have any escalation in the region and draws a red line in front of Iran and in front of Israel, he will then not need to come to the defense of Israel, because there will not be a war to begin with. That would be a much better pathway that serves U.S. interests, that prevents any regional escalation. But so far we have seen that Biden, even though he apparently is frustrated privately, he does not feel comfortable to draw any red lines for Israel publicly. And the ones that he has drawn privately, Netanyahu has systematically ignored for the last seven months.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Trita Parsi, who’s executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, has written several books on Iran and the United States. We’re going to continue with him and Reza Sayah, freelance journalist in Tehran, and we’ll be joined by Gideon Levy, who is Haaretz columnist, on the editorial board of Haaretz, wrote the article “If Iran Attacks Israel, the Blame Lies on Israel’s Irresponsible Decision-makers.” Back in 30 seconds.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Khooneye Ma,” “Our House,” by Marjan Farsad. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
The Middle East is bracing for Israel to retaliate amidst claims — calls for restraint after Iran fired over 350 drones and missiles at Israel in response to Israel’s attack on the Iranian Consulate in Syria that killed two Iranian generals and a number of other military officers. We are joined by guests in Tehran and Washington, D.C., and now to Tel Aviv, where we’re joined by Gideon Levy, an award-winning Israeli journalist and author, columnist for the newspaper Haaretz and a member of its editorial board, his most recent piece headlined “If Iran Attacks Israel, the Blame Lies on Israel’s Irresponsible Decision-makers.”
In it, Gideon writes, quote, “For several years now, Israel has provoked Iran constantly, in Lebanon, Syria and also on Iranian soil, and has not paid any price. It would be foolish to believe that the rope Israel has stretched will not break. That moment may have come.” He ends by writing, “Just don’t say, again, that there was no choice. There was a choice: not to kill. Even if it is deserved, even if it is permitted and even if it is possible. The person who sent the assassins put Israel at risk of war with Iran.”
Gideon Levy, you are joined — you are joining Reza Sayah, a freelance journalist in Tehran, Iran, and Trita Parsi, one of the heads of the Quincy Institute. Can you respond to Iran’s attack and what Israel did to provoke that, the bombing of the Iranian Consulate in Damascus? Did that surprise you?
GIDEON LEVY: Nothing surprised here. The only thing which surprised, really, was the defensive capability of Israel, together with its allies. It was really impressive. But it’s not a guarantee for the future. When I wrote my article, it was before the attack came. And still I thought that the assassination in Damascus was unnecessary. The problem with the Israeli armed forces and intelligence organizations is that whenever they see an opportunity, they take it, without thinking about the consequences, without thinking about the price. And until now it was working for them, because Iran didn’t react ’til now directly on Israel, only through its proxies. But it was very clear that this cannot last forever.
So, those who send the assassinators to assassinate on Iranian soil, on an Iranian diplomatic mission, those two generals and five more, those had to think what will be the next day. And the next day came, and we were attacked. And luckily enough, we didn’t suffer out of this attack. The only conclusion right now should be: No, don’t you dare to retaliate now, because then we will be in a regional war, and that’s a new game.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what Benny Gantz said — as we broadcast right now, the war cabinet, Israel’s war cabinet, has reconvened — what Netanyahu said. Of course, they are competing with each other. If Netanyahu were to go down, it’s perceivable Benny Gantz would become the next prime minister. But talk about what’s happening within that war cabinet.
GIDEON LEVY: Amy, it’s for long time that I claim that those who want to get rid of Netanyahu are obviously right, but the hope that the alternative will be any better on core issues — for many issues it will be much better, but on core issues, like apartheid, the occupation, continuing the war in Gaza, will be very, very disappointed. And here we go. Benny Gantz, who is the alternative, who is the liberal alternative, who is the dovish alternative of Israel, he speaks exactly like Netanyahu and would act exactly like Netanyhau when it comes to core issues or core questions like launching an assassination, like launching a war, like using the military power of Israel. And that’s really very, very depressing that there is no alternative thinking in Israel and no lessons out of the experience. All the assassinations that Israel committed, all of them, never led to anywhere. Nothing good came out of them, except of the ego of the organizations who stood behind it. And here comes this Benny Gantz, the big hope of the liberal Israel, and suggests to continue the war, to make it worse, to go for a regional war with Iran. That’s really, really, very depressing.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned, Gideon Levy, that what’s happening with Iran now is taking attention away from what’s happening in Gaza, where the death toll just continues to mount, over — close to 34,000 people, just the official death toll, is expected to be much higher, and where the resistance was mounting in the United States, for example, on President Biden not to arm Israel, given what’s happening in Gaza, that now the House, which is notoriously divided, is perhaps coming together around giving more aid to Israel?
GIDEON LEVY: It goes without saying, Amy. Not only Gaza is forgotten. Also look what is happening in the West Bank — pogrom after pogrom, and nobody cares anymore. The army collaborates in those pogroms. We have videos from the last days in which the army not only stands aside, but many times take part of those pogroms against the Palestinians. And nobody pays attention to it — not to speak, obviously, about Gaza — because everyone is now concerned about Iran. But Gaza is still starving and bleeding, and we shouldn’t forget it, even not for a moment, like we shouldn’t forget the hostages who are still there. But it seems that now everyone is only concerned about retaliating Iran. This would be such a major, maybe fatal, mistake.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring back in Reza Sayah. You were based in Cairo, Egypt, when you covered the negotiations between Israel and Hamas in 2014 as Israel launched its assault on Gaza then. Can you talk about what unfolded back then and how it compares to the negotiations that are taking place, what, in Doha and Cairo now for a ceasefire?
REZA SAYAH: Well, obviously, back then, what took place, as is taking place right now on a smaller scale, was the killing of lots of innocent civilians. But one thing that sticks out in my mind in 2014, in covering that conflict, was the Israeli government’s flat-out refusal to negotiate. There were so many instances when I was talking to Hamas leaders who were in Cairo. And in these instances, they would tell me that the Israeli officials who were supposed to show up for those negotiations simply would not show up. And this was something that was not widely reported by Western and U.S. media, the Israeli government’s seeming unwillingness to negotiate with Hamas. Eventually, there was negotiations, and that war ended, but in subsequent years leading up to this conflict, the cycle of war continued. But that’s something that sticks out in my mind in that 2014 conflict.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask about Jordan’s position in all of this, Trita Parsi, what role it plays. You had the United States, Britain, Jordan, France all intercepting some of these drones and missiles.
TRITA PARSI: Yes, numerous countries participated in the interception of these missiles. And the only reason they could do so was because the Iranians had given them 72 hours’ heads-up, deliberately, because the entire purpose of this exercise was not to inflict damage but to restore what the Iranians believe is their deterrence and showcase their capability. And as Gideon said, the shooting down of these missiles was quite impressive, but I think we also have to keep in mind that there might be a different scenario in the future in which there is no forewarning of these attacks, and as a result, France, Britain and the United States will not be able to prepare for and participate, in this extent, in the shooting down of the missiles. And then, as a result, it’s not entirely clear to what extent the Israeli air defenses would be capable of handling what would likely be a much larger barrage of missiles shot at Israel. So, I think the Israelis may have also picked up that at the end of the day, a military confrontation, even though Israel, of course, is much stronger than Iran, and certainly the U.S. is, but, nevertheless, will be very, very damaging to Israel, as well. And that, I think, is one of the key messages the Iranians were trying to send.
The Jordanians are, of course, caught in the middle there, because all of these different things are then flying over Jordanian airspace. And the Jordanian position has been that they’re defending their airspace. They are not defending Israel. This is not done in order to necessarily help the Israelis. It’s to make sure that Jordan asserts that no war should be taking place on its territory or in its airspace. That, nevertheless, is a tough position for the Jordanians to take, given the very, very strong sentiments that are now boiling over inside of Jordan because of the population’s frustration with what is happening in Gaza and their perception that the Jordanian government, and the Arab world at large, have been helpless and not done enough to prevent the slaughter.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask Gideon Levy if you’ve been surprised by the amount of conversation going on between Iran and the United States, perhaps not directly. And also I want to put that question to Reza Sayah. But where the result is, you have United States saying they will not participate in Israel’s retaliation, if they retaliate against Iran?
GIDEON LEVY: First of all, I would say we always portray Iran as a crazy state, as an insane state. It might be described like this. But in this case, it was very measured. Very measured. I wish the United States and Iran would have spoken much more. I wish the agreement, the nuclear agreement, would be still valid, and we would be in a much better place and safer place, rather than what both Donald Trump and Netanyhahu arranged us, canceling this agreement, which was the best way to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. The more they speak, the better — under the table, above the table, behind the curtains, any way to talk to them. I still believe that every regime has its own interests, and dialogue is, by the end of the day, the best way, even if it’s the Satan of Iran.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk, as you talked about what’s happening also on the West Bank, if you can talk about the most recent news about the death of one of the most prominent Palestinian prisoners in an Israeli prison, died of cancer, novelist Walid Daqqa, who spent the past 38 years locked up for his involvement in an armed group that abducted and killed an Israeli soldier in 1984, rights groups pressuring Israel to release him, saying he was in dire need of medical attention, Amnesty International calling for his release, saying that since October 7th he had been tortured, humiliated and denied family visits? You’ve written about this.
GIDEON LEVY: I’m following this story for many, many years. I even visited Walid once in jail many years ago. It’s one of those horrible stories which tells you much more than the story itself. Walid Daqqa is an Israeli. He is not a Palestinian from the West Bank. He’s an Israeli Palestinian. He, by the way, didn’t murder. He participated in a group which kidnapped an Israeli soldier and then killed him, some of them. He was not involved in it. But he was charged for murder and everything fined. He sat 37 years for this murder, much more than any murderer in the world — in Israel, not in the world. He, in this period, changed his — declared that he had enough with terror, declared that he regrets any terror actions. He’s exactly the style of leadership that we should look forwards, those Palestinians who change their minds and clear terror as a tool.
But, no, for Israel, no Palestinian is good enough, and here, in the last years, started really a sadistic behavior toward him and his family. No visits. When he started to be ill in cancer, when he got no visits half the year now, they didn’t even inform the family that he’s dying. They didn’t even inform the family he died. And now it’s already 10 days. They don’t even return the body, and don’t let them mourn in their home. I mean, what is more sadistic than this? And what is more the face of this current government of Israel? When it comes to Palestinians, Israeli Palestinians or Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza, sadism is the name of the game.
AMY GOODMAN: And I wanted to give Reza Sayah the last word. In U.S. media, we don’t often hear from people in Tehran. You’re a freelance journalist there in the capital of Iran. You’ve been covering Iran’s relationship with Hamas, particularly in the aftermath of October 7th. Could you expand on this, and what you think it’s most important for people to understand outside of Iran, and particularly here in the United States?
REZA SAYAH: Well, I think, from the people’s standpoint, the people here are resilient. Most of them are peace-loving people who do not want war.
And I want to follow up on Mr. Levy’s thought about how Iran is often portrayed in Western media to the American and Western audience as a radical, reckless, violent government. And I think a lot of thoughtful analysts will tell you that a radical entity, a radical government, would not last for 45 years like the Islamic Republic has. And these analysts will tell you that the reason that they have survived for these 45-plus years is that they’re not reckless, that they’re very calculating and they’re measured.
And they understand, at this very high-stakes juncture, that there are forces that perhaps Israel wants to bait them into a wider war. And I think Iran understands that that would be a mistake. I think many here understand that if they get baited into a wider war, it would be a distraction to what’s happening in Gaza, that has served the establishment here well by getting them a lot of political clout. And it would also potentially galvanize and unite Israel with its Western allies, Western allies that have been critical of Israel in their operation in Gaza.
So, at this hour, they’re waiting to see what Israel does, if Israel retaliates. But history has shown that if Israel retaliates, Iran is going to be aware of what their responses could cost, and they’re going to take a measured response. It’s obviously a very high-stakes chess game, and a lot of people anxious to see what happens in the coming days.
AMY GOODMAN: Reza Sayah, I want to thank you so much for being with us, freelance journalist in Tehran, Iran; Gideon Levy, a Haaretz columnist, member of its editorial board, and we’ll link to your articles; and Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
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Yanis Varoufakis Banned from Germany as Berlin Police Raid & Shut Down Palestinian Conference
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 16, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/16/ ... transcript
As Germany intensifies its crackdown on pro-Palestinian voices, we speak with Greek economist and politician Yanis Varoufakis, one of the planned speakers at a conference in Berlin last weekend that was forcibly shut down by police. The Palestine Congress was scheduled to be held for three days, but police stormed the venue as the first panelist spoke. Germany’s Interior Ministry had also banned some conference speakers from even entering the country, including Varoufakis, the Palestinian British surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah and the Palestinian researcher Salman Abu Sitta. “This is not about protecting Jewish lives and Jews from antisemitism. It’s all about protecting the right of Israel to commit any war crime of its choice,” says Varoufakis.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: As the official death toll in Gaza nears 34,000, we begin today’s show looking at Germany’s intensifying crackdown on pro-Palestinian voices. On Friday, police in Berlin shut down a three-day Palestinian conference just moments after it began. In addition, Germany’s Interior Ministry banned several speakers from even entering Germany or addressing the Palestine Congress conference remotely. The Palestinian researcher Salman Abu Sitta opened the conference, but his remarks over a live stream were cut short when Berlin police raided the conference site.
SALMAN ABU SITTA: We have never seen before these daily scenes, one massacre after another, homes demolished over the heads of the occupants, bodies pulled from under the rubble, surviving child with all his family killed. We have never seen before people deliberately denied food and water, children starved to death and killed when rushing to get food. We have never seen before all means of life systematically destroyed — hospitals, clinics, schools, universities, libraries, ancient monuments, mosques, churches, universities, cemeteries, bakeries, apartment build—
CONFERENCE ORGANIZER 1: Live stream, we ask you — so, for all people on the live stream, the police is standing right in front of us, and they ask us to stop the video.
CONFERENCE ORGANIZER 2: They are — they’re even trying to take away this microphone!
AMY GOODMAN: That was a live stream capturing the moment when German police raided and shut down the Palestine Congress conference in Berlin just minutes after it began.
On Friday, German authorities also detained and questioned the Palestinian British surgeon Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, who had flown into Germany to speak at the Palestine Congress. Dr. Abu-Sittah, who is the nephew of Salman Abu Sitta, who we just watched interrupted, spoke to Middle East Eye after he was barred entry.
DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: Upon arrival, I was stopped at the passport office. I was then escorted down to the basement of the airport, where I was questioned for around three-and-a-half hours. At the end of three-and-a-half hours, I was told that I will not be allowed to enter German soil, that I will — and that this ban will last the whole of April. And not just that, that if I were to try to link up my Zoom or FaceTime with the conference, even if I was outside Germany, or I were to send a video of my lecture to the conference in Berlin, then that would constitute a breach of German law and that I would endanger myself to having a fine or even up to a year of prison.
AMY GOODMAN: That was the Palestinian British surgeon Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, who had flown into Germany to speak at the Palestine Congress but was denied entry to Germany. German authorities defended the decision to shut down the Palestinian conference, citing German laws against so-called hate speech. When Dr. Abu-Sittah came out of Gaza, we interviewed him, and you can go to democracynow.org to see that conversation.
We’re joined right now by former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis. He was also banned from entering Germany and barred from engaging in any political activity there. Varoufakis is a leader of the pan-European progressive movement DiEM25, which helped organize the Palestine Congress.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Yanis Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece. His most recent book is Technofeudalism; What Killed Capitalism is the subtitle. Yanis Varoufakis, can you explain what happened in Berlin?
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: To give you a vignette, Amy, of the absurdity, which would have been funny if it wasn’t so tragic, of what went on, during the morning, just before the police burst in, as you described so accurately, there was a young man who — an attendee of the congress, a member of the Jewish Voice for Peace, which together with the MERA25, DiEM25, we co-organized the Palestine Congress. And this young man, as he approached the police cordon — there were two-and-a-half thousand policemen preventing our attendees from attending the congress. Anyway, he was approaching, and he had a little placard that he had written with his own hand, and it read “Jews against genocide.” And for that, he was apprehended, arrested, manhandled. And while the police were manhandling him, he turned around humorfully, or half-jokingly, and said to them, “Would it have been all right with you if it said 'Jews in favor of genocide'?” at which point, of course, they were far more angered and manhandled him even more fiercely. I’m conveying this to you, Amy, and to our listeners and viewers because this shows the absurdity of the whole thing.
The police entered the building, the venue, a few minutes before I was due to deliver my talk via video link. As a result, what I did was I recorded my talk, and I posted it online from Greece, from Athens, where I’m even now. And the next day, I found out that a ban, as you put it, was slapped on me by the German authorities, a ban that harks back to laws against Nazism, a law that has only been used recently for ISIS operatives. That was used against me.
Allow me just to briefly say that the rationale behind this is the Germans’ Staatsräson, the logic or rationale of the German state, to protect Jews, which is of excellent rationale. I wish every state had it, each one of us had it, to protect Jews. Except that this is not about protecting Jewish lives and Jews from antisemitism. It’s all about protecting the right of Israel to commit any war crime of its choice, in the final analysis.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Yanis Varoufakis, the federal interior minister of Germany not only applauded the police action, but she described the event, the conference, as an Islamist conference. What do you think of that characterization of the Palestine Congress?
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Isn’t it remarkably farcical that our Jewish comrades who helped us co-organize, put together this congress have been dismissed as Islamists? Let me be clear: There were no Islamists in this. And in any case, the reason why our congress has been so, let’s say, unpopular with the German political system is because the German political spectrum — and this is not just the government; this is also the opposition, including some members of the left, I say with deep regret, some of my former comrades — they insist on equating acts of terror, atrocities against civilians — which every soundly thinking person in the world should condemn, and I condemn, of course, and so do all the organizers of this congress — equating, however, violence against civilians with a principled resistance to an apartheid state which is part of a project of systematically ethnically cleansing the population of the Palestinians. That is what they do not want.
They do not want a congress like ours, especially one that includes progressive Jews. That is the main thing that they detested, that they were Jewish demonstrators, Jewish activists, Jewish intellectuals, Jewish speakers with us, with one voice, saying one thing, one thing alone: equal political rights, civil liberties, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. I’m neither a Jew nor a Palestinian. I don’t have a view as to how this will be accomplished. But I think every single human person on this planet has an obligation — not a right, an obligation — to demand, from the river to the sea, equal political rights. And the German political establishment does not want to listen to this. They simply want to associate anyone who opposes Netanyahu’s government, or any government in Israel that perpetrates genocide, essentially, to be associated, to be stigmatized as an antisemite, which, by the way, it is the antisemite’s greatest dream come true.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, Germany has also banned the display of the Palestinian flag. How do you think the suppression of pro-Palestinian protest in Germany — has that spread to other countries in Europe? What’s your sense of what’s going on throughout the rest of the continent?
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Not formally. The Palestinian flag has not been banned formally. But I can tell you that even here in Greece, anyone who is sporting the colors of Palestine walking on the street risks — seriously risks — being assaulted by ultrarightists, being arrested, apprehended by police for some pretext. The bourgeois, liberal, democratic rights and principles have all been sacrificed on the altar of enabling Israel to complete the genocide which is carrying out — that it’s carrying out not just in Gaza but, as we heard before in the news bulletin, in East Jerusalem and in the West Bank. In the same way that in the 1930s we all had an obligation, a duty, an ethical commitment — or should have had one — to support Jews and to show our solidarity to the Jewish people who were suffering from the Nazi regime, from the Croat Nazi regime, from the Greek fascists and so on, we have a duty today to end the genocide in ancient Palestine.
AMY GOODMAN: Yanis Varoufakis, as a former finance minister, a vocal critic of austerity, how do you perceive Germany’s position on the war on Gaza in light of its significant arms sales to Israel? I mean, you have Nicaragua taking Germany to the International Court of Justice, saying that by providing weapons for Israel to carry out this war, that it’s engaging in crimes against humanity or war crimes.
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Well, Amy, it’s interesting and, I think, not coincidental that on the Monday before the invasion, the incursion by the German police into our Palestinian Congress in the venue in Berlin, I happened to be in Milano, in Italy, in Milan. And I was giving a speech to a gathering of hundreds of financial analysts, the top, the crème de la crème of European financial experts. And in it, unbeknownst to me of what was going to happen later on that week, I outlined dire prognostications about the long-term damage inflicted upon Germany and Germany’s social economy by decades of austerity, combined with impressive largesse finances, what you call in the United States quantitative easing. And, you know, I was really surprised, because here I am, a lefty, addressing a gathering of hundreds of financial experts. Those hard-nosed financiers actually applauded me. And afterwards, they came to me, and they said that they agree with what I was saying. And I have to tell you that when that happens, I get really worried, because if these hard-nosed financiers, many of them German, came to me and they said that they agreed with my prognosis that the German business model is kaput, is in dire straits, I start feeling very uncomfortable.
So, I think there is a connection, because here you have a political system in Germany which understands in its bones that the economic dominance that the German industrial model had within the European Union for so many decades is now waning. And when such a regime feels threatened, feels that its economic prowess and authority and dominance is waning, it’s really very easy for that to translate itself into movements that essentially fan the flames of increasing, and increasingly farcical, authoritarianism.
***
Under Cover of War in Gaza, Assault on West Bank Intensifies: Palestinian Journalist Dalia Hatuqa
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 16, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/16/ ... transcript
The Western corporate media is failing in its coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza, says Palestinian independent journalist Dalia Hatuqa. “A lot of what’s missing from the bigger portrait … is the Palestinian voice,” says Hatuqa, who applauds local journalists in Gaza for providing the world a crucial window into what’s happening there while international reporters are blocked by Israel from entering the territory. “Nobody knows Gaza better than the Gazan journalists on the ground.” Hatuqa also speaks about her latest piece for The Century Foundation about rising Israeli state and settler violence in the occupied West Bank, which she says can accurately be described as pogroms. “The fog of war has allowed Israel to perpetuate crimes at a very large scale, not only throughout the West Bank, but including occupied East Jerusalem.”
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 Intercept is reporting The New York Times has instructed its reporters to avoid using the terms “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing” and “occupied territory” in its coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza. The Intercept's report is based on an internal memo from the Times. One newsroom source told The Intercept, quote, “I think it's the kind of thing that looks professional and logical if you have no knowledge of the historical context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But if you do know, it will be clear how apologetic it is to Israel,” they said.
Today we’re joined by a Palestinian journalist who’s been highly critical of how the Western media has portrayed Israel’s war in Gaza. Dalia Hatuqa is an independent Palestinian journalist specializing in Israeli-Palestinian affairs, usually based between Amman, Jordan, and Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. She was a close friend and colleague of the Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot dead by an Israeli sniper in the occupied West Bank May 11th, 2022. Dalia’s latest piece for The Century Foundation is headlined “Under Cover of Gaza War, Assault on West Bank Accelerates.” Dalia joins us now in our New York studio after speaking last night at the Columbia Journalism School.
Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. This was also the topic of your panel at the Columbia J School last night, the issue of how the conflict is being covered. What do you think is most important for people to understand, Dalia?
DALIA HATUQA: Well, I think that a lot of what’s missing from the bigger portrait or the puzzle, so to speak, is the Palestinian voice. So, in order to find out what’s going on in Gaza, we need to not just rely on Western journalists coming into Gaza. I know that’s very important, and it’s a demand by a lot of us and by, you know, the Committee to Protect Journalists and other journalism rights groups. But it’s also to amplify Palestinian voices, because, ultimately, nobody knows Gaza better than the Gazan journalists on the ground who are actually doing the work that they’re doing right now. And in a way, these journalists, not only are they fighting for their lives while doing all of this, they’re also resorting to extraordinary measures to be able to cover what’s going on. And speaking to journalists on the ground, they tell us that what we’re seeing from them is only like 10% of what’s happening in Gaza at the moment.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Dalia, I wanted to ask you — the Western press does have the opportunity to cover what is going on in the West Bank, and yet, this — as you wrote in a recent piece, more than 4,000 West Bank Palestinians have been displaced just in 2023, the highest number ever recorded. What is going on in the West Bank, from what you’ve been able to see?
DALIA HATUQA: Basically, in the West Bank, the fog of war has allowed Israel to perpetuate crimes at a very large scale not only throughout the West Bank, but including occupied East Jerusalem. And in the West Bank, we’ve got what a lot of even Israeli officials have admitted are pogroms that are going on by and being perpetrated by Israeli settlers, especially in villages around Nablus, for example, which are in the north, where there are many settlements surrounding villages. We’re not talking about just, you know, the torching of houses and the torching of cars and whatnot. We’re talking about people getting killed by armed settlers.
And while they’re being armed and attacking Palestinians, they’re also being helped or aided by Israeli soldiers, whose job, technically, is to be there to not allow such things to happen, but in a way, you know, sometimes they just sit by idly and not do anything, or they actually participate in these attacks. That’s why when you look at the U.N. figures, a lot of times we see, you know, 10 Palestinians have been killed by settlers, two Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, but then there is a line that says three Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers and/or soldiers. So, we don’t know, because they are part of the system that’s subjugating these Palestinians, that’s, you know, carrying out all this violence against them.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And it’s not just those who are killed, but also the detentions of Palestinians in the West Bank. Could you talk about the conditions that they’re facing in Israeli custody?
DALIA HATUQA: The detentions, honestly, they’re atrocious, and they are the least talked about, even among Western journalists, who actually haven’t been really mentioning this at all. We’re talking about the least amount of, you know, livable situations that can be — that any detainee can live in. So, they get water up to two hours a day now. Sometimes they don’t get to shower. The food that they get is rotten. I’m talking about the detainees in — the 9,000 or so in Israeli prisons. They don’t have access to their families. They don’t have access to lawyers. The people who have come out have come out with — some have had their limbs amputated because of the extended use of handcuffs. So, honestly, the conditions are really harrowing, and there’s not much access.
And right now, as we speak, I was just seeing that there is a detainee who died in, actually, an Israeli hospital a few days ago, and his body is still being withheld. And his family has not been able to put him to rest, because — even though he had already carried out his sentence, 30 or more years, which is, quite frankly, a devastating thing for the family, because they’re unable to get any kind of closure.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re talking, of course, about Walid Daqqa. Human rights groups, everyone had asked for him to be released, as he was there for almost 40 years and he was dying of cancer. Speaking of people who have died, not in prison, but outside, the last time I spoke to you was just after Shireen Abu Akleh was killed May 11th, 2022, as she was a dear friend of yours, the Al Jazeera Arabic reporter, outside the Jenin refugee camp, all laid out now, determined to be an Israeli sniper who killed her. As her colleagues tried to reach her, they shot at them, clearly wearing “press.” It wasn’t in the middle of any kind of skirmish. They were just standing outside. This issue of journalists being killed, that you spoke of before — the memorial for Shireen, outside Jenin, has now been bulldozed over, destroyed by the Israeli military. But even in Gaza — and you took this up last night, you and your colleagues on the panel, of what’s happening to journalists. Even you were surprised, you said, as we spoke before the show, by learning about when David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, asked, “How do you know that journalists are targeted?” Talk about the response.
DALIA HATUQA: Basically, we were very lucky to have a journalist from Gaza who managed to leave the coastal enclave, the besieged coastal enclave, to Qatar. Her name is Ameera Harouda. And she had to leave, obviously, because, you know, for her well-being and her family. She has four kids. Anyways, she was talking about the fact that journalists would get phone calls from Israeli authorities, military authorities, basically questioning them about their work, especially if they worked for Qatar, which is a little strange, considering that Qatar is the go-between, you know, between Israel and Hamas for the talks to reach a ceasefire and to release the hostages. And in the meantime, also CPJ was talking to a few journalists who were released after being detained, and they had been taken away for 33 days, made to sit in squatting positions, in horrific conditions. They came out, you know, having lost 30 kilos or so.
There’s a lot going on in that sense, but also the targeting of journalists. People know because there are UAVs or drones, as we say, constantly hovering in Gaza. It’s so perpetual that people in Gaza, if they don’t hear a UAV, they think something’s wrong. UAVs have been part of the Gaza skyline for years, long before October 7th.
AMY GOODMAN: And even the phone calls from the Israeli military to journalists, threatening them?
DALIA HATUQA: Yes, absolutely. And in the West Bank, they do the same thing. They call them in. They say, “We want to have a chat with you.” And then they don’t come out, because, you know, they take them in. They can put them in administrative detention, which, as you know, is basically when you put people in or Palestinians in prison without any kind of — without any kind of proof or without charging them. And it’s very easy to do that. I mean, right now there’s a young Christian girl who’s a student. She’s in administrative detention for four months. And I know that the archbishop of Canterbury was calling for her release. So, all these things are intertwined. There’s a lot of things going on that don’t — that are far-reaching. It’s not just about journalists.
AMY GOODMAN: And the journalists who are being detained in Gaza are being questioned about their reporting?
DALIA HATUQA: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: Interrogated for hours?
DALIA HATUQA: Absolutely, because what — the questions that they were being asked is, “Why did you write this? Why did you say this? Do you talk to Hamas people?” Of course they talk to Hamas people. It’s their job. It’s like how you talk to Israeli forces. You’re going to — how you talk to Israeli military personnel or government officials. I mean, that’s your job as a journalist. Your job is to talk to people.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I wanted to ask you, Dalia Hatuqa — you’re usually based in Amman, Jordan, or in Ramallah in the West Bank, but you’re here in the United States now. What’s your message to the American public and to the Biden administration, given that this country is the largest supplier of weapons and military aid to Israel?
DALIA HATUQA: I think, honestly, the American public has been very instrumental in working with Palestinians. Large segments of the American public have been working with Palestinians. I’ve seen a lot of support. I’ve seen a lot of support among Israelis, you know, the few Israelis who get it. I’ve seen a lot of support among American Jews, and I believe that they are one of the Palestinians’ biggest allies.
But my message, obviously, to Biden is, I mean, there’s a lot at stake right now. The Biden administration can do so much, and that’s been proven over by the fact that, you know, once Biden put his foot down, several steps were taken by Israel in order to open the border crossings, or some of the border crossings, into Gaza. But I believe that taking this kind of blind support for Netanyahu is leading us nowhere.
And as an American, as well, not only as a Palestinian, I have bigger fears of what’s to come, come November, because if Biden loses the election — and he might, because of the situation, because of what’s going on in Gaza — then we are doomed, basically, to have another four years of a Trump administration. So, in my mind, I’m like, you know, we are doomed in the Middle East, we’re doomed in the U.S. And I know that’s a lot of doom and gloom, but, honestly, these are some of the thoughts that people, especially dual nationals like me — these are some of the thoughts that they have.
AMY GOODMAN: Dalia Hatuqa, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Palestinian independent journalist, usually based between Amman, Jordan, and occupied Ramallah — that’s Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
***
“I’m Jewish, and I’ve Covered Wars. I Know War Crimes When I See Them”: Reporter Peter Maass on Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 16, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/16/ ... transcript
We speak with veteran journalist Peter Maass about the Israeli war on Gaza and his new opinion piece for The Washington Post headlined “I’m Jewish, and I’ve covered wars. I know war crimes when I see them.” Maass, who was a senior editor at The Intercept until earlier this year, has spent decades covering wars, including the Bosnian genocide in the 1990s that killed about 100,000 people over nearly four years. He says many of the same war crimes he reported then are part of Israel’s current assault, including sniper attacks on civilians, bombing of civilian infrastructure, attacks on bread lines and besieging whole populations by preventing food and other aid from entering. “What seems to be unfolding in Gaza is even worse than what I saw in Bosnia,” says Maass.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We end today’s show with journalist Peter Maass, who has written an opinion piece for The Washington Post headlined “I’m Jewish, and I’ve covered wars. I know war crimes when I see them,” unquote. Until recently, Peter was a senior editor at The Intercept. He’s the author of Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War. He covered the Bosnia war for The Washington Post and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq for The New York Times Magazine.
Peter, welcome to Democracy Now! You begin your piece in The Washington Post by saying, “How does it feel to be a war-crimes reporter whose family bankrolled a nation that’s committing war crimes? I can tell you.” Lay it out for us.
PETER MAASS: Well, my great-great-grandfather was Jacob Schiff, who was a financier at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century, one of the wealthiest people in the country probably, who donated a lot of money and organized the movement of Jews, persecuted Jews, from Europe, largely from Russia but also from other countries and Russia, to any safe haven that would have them, including America, but also, significantly, British-controlled Palestine. And then, his son-in-law, my great-grandfather, Felix Warburg, who married Jacob Schiff’s daughter, continued that process of supporting and helping to organize the migration of persecuted Jews from Europe to British-controlled Palestine. This is before World War II, the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: Yet you say they were anti-Zionists. Can you explain?
PETER MAASS: Well, they were non-Zionists, which was actually different, significantly different, from being anti-Zionists. There was a movement amongst American Jews and Jews elsewhere, in Europe, that was called non-Zionism. And for them, the non-Zionists, the point was Jews should be able to go to British-controlled Palestine. They need to go to British-controlled Palestine because they need refuge from the persecution they’re suffering in Europe.
But they were against the establishment of a Jewish state, for two reasons. One is that they were concerned that if there were a Jewish state, then all of the antisemites, in America and elsewhere, would look at Jews who are not living in this Jewish state and say, “Ah, you know, your loyalty is actually to this other country.” And that would kind of increase suspicions of Jews and make them seem lesser citizens in the countries that they were living in. And then, the second concern, which was one that a lot of people had but that non-Zionists also had and pronounced, was they were concerned about violence between Arabs and Jews. They just kind of said, “Look, you know, if one side, the Jews or the Arabs, for that matter, try to exert total control over a state that’s going to be established there” — because, remember, at this time, Palestine was under the control of the British Mandate — “then it’s going to be really violent.” My great-grandfather referred to it as a shooting gallery.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Peter, you also covered the wars in Croatia and in Bosnia. And could you talk about how your journalism there helps inform your perspective of what’s going on? Because many, of course, of our listeners and viewers are not familiar with those wars and the war crimes committed there.
PETER MAASS: In the early 1990s, Yugoslavia, which was a kind of conglomeration of different republics, five or six — I forget the precise number, actually — began to fall apart. And instead of falling apart peacefully, it fell apart violently. And there was first a war when Slovenia, one of the republics, seceded. And then there was an even larger war when Croatia, another one of its constituent republics, seceded. And then, when Bosnia did the same — this was in 1992 — this was, unfortunately, the largest war of all.
There were a significant number of Serbs who lived in Bosnia. And Slobodan Milošević, who was the leader in Belgrade of kind of all Serbs in the country, organized the kind of provisioning of military materiel and soldiers, guerrilla fighters, paramilitaries, to go in and basically fight against the Muslims and Croats in Bosnia who wanted to have an independent state and who voted in a referendum for an independent state. And the war there, which I went to cover, it was not your ordinary war of army against army. It was a war of paramilitaries committing atrocities against defenseless civilians, largely Muslims, some Croats, and it also consisted of sieges against the few cities that were able to resist the onslaught. Sarajevo was one of these cities. Srebrenica was another one of these cities.
And so, I was there covering this war, seeing terrible things happen that are not supposed to happen in war. I mean, wars are violent. Civilians get killed in wars. But it’s not always illegal. In this case, there were civilians right under my window in Sarajevo getting shot by snipers, and I wrote about that. There were civilians whose houses were getting bombed. There were civilians who were standing in bread lines who were getting bombed and killed. There were aid shipments of medicine and food that were being prohibited from entry into these so-called safe areas, because they were supposed to have been protected by the United Nations but were not. And so, I was there reporting on this.
And in 1993, a year after this war began, there was an international criminal tribunal that was set up to investigate war crimes and possible genocide that was occurring at the time in Bosnia. And that tribunal subsequently did hold a number of trials, including of senior Bosnian and Serb leaders — the military leader Ratko Mladić, the political leader Radovan Karadžić and the Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević — in which the charges included genocide. And both Karadžić and Mladić are now in jail for the rest of their lives on charges that include genocide. So I was reporting on this genocide.
AMY GOODMAN: As you compare what you saw in Bosnia to what you saw in Gaza, you write in that piece, “When I reported from besieged Sarajevo, I stayed in a hotel that was smack on the front line, with Serbian snipers routinely firing at civilians walking under my window. … On a spring day in 1993, I heard the familiar crack and whistle of a sniper’s bullet, followed by an awful scream. I went to my window and saw a wounded civilian trying to crawl to safety. Writing in The Post more than three decades ago, I described the man’s desperate shouts as 'a mad howl of a person pushed over the edge. It came from the lungs, from the heart, from the mind,'” you write in The Washington Post. You also write about disturbing video footage from Gaza that shows Hala Khreis walking on a so-called safe route in January with her grandson, 5-year-old Tayem Abdel, who was holding a white flag when she was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper. Talk about the comparisons, or what you call the rhymes.
PETER MAASS: Yeah. I mean, God, I remember those stories so well. This is the most — there are so many disturbing things going on in Gaza now and in the West Bank. But as the Israeli attack began, after the Hamas attack on October 7th against Israel, you know, we began seeing these videos and reports emerging from these very brave journalists in Gaza of what was happening — and, for example, that video of this grandmother being shot, obviously quite intentionally. And everything that I was seeing — flour line massacres in Gaza, for example, airdrops of humanitarian aid that killed some of the people they were intended to help because they landed on top of these people — also happened in Bosnia. I began seeing just the same kinds of incidents, that were the constituent elements in Bosnia of genocide, also happening in Gaza, but — kind of most disturbing in a way — at a scale that was larger than Bosnia. I mean, for example, you know, in Bosnia, over the course of its four-year war, there were something like 7,000 or 8,000 children killed, which is terrible. In Gaza, over the course of just six months, there have been more than 13,000 children killed. So, you know, I just could not help but see not only the parallels, but also how what seems to be unfolding in Gaza is even worse than what I saw in Bosnia.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And we have less than a minute left, but I’m wondering your perspective on how the U.S. media has been covering the war in Gaza.
PETER MAASS: It’s been a real mixed bag. And it was a real mixed bag in Bosnia. And we’re all kind of captives of our experiences. And so, I covered the war in Bosnia, and I also covered other wars. So, you know, I may be talking too much about Bosnia, but I think it is relevant. In Bosnia, there was exceptionally good coverage, I think — and I’m biased on this, but I think — from the journalists who were on the ground, largely foreign journalists, but also a lot of Bosnian journalists — really good coverage of actually what was going on. But then, in the foreign capitals, in Washington, D.C., but also London and France — France and Britain were very important elements of the international community at the time — the reporting was terrible, because it reflected the kind of briefings that the journalists were getting from all their government sources and all the think tank people, and they were just saying, “Oh, it’s a mess there. These people —
AMY GOODMAN: We have 15 seconds, Peter.
PETER MAASS: — “plan to kill each other.” So, we have the same problem now, where there’s a lot of bad coverage coming out of the capitals, such as Washington, although from the ground itself, reporting is quite excellent.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much for being with us, Peter Maass, journalist, former senior editor for The Intercept, author of Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War. We’ll link to your latest piece in The Washington Post. He also covered U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq for The New York Times. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Thanks so much for joining us.
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 16, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/16/ ... transcript
As Germany intensifies its crackdown on pro-Palestinian voices, we speak with Greek economist and politician Yanis Varoufakis, one of the planned speakers at a conference in Berlin last weekend that was forcibly shut down by police. The Palestine Congress was scheduled to be held for three days, but police stormed the venue as the first panelist spoke. Germany’s Interior Ministry had also banned some conference speakers from even entering the country, including Varoufakis, the Palestinian British surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah and the Palestinian researcher Salman Abu Sitta. “This is not about protecting Jewish lives and Jews from antisemitism. It’s all about protecting the right of Israel to commit any war crime of its choice,” says Varoufakis.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: As the official death toll in Gaza nears 34,000, we begin today’s show looking at Germany’s intensifying crackdown on pro-Palestinian voices. On Friday, police in Berlin shut down a three-day Palestinian conference just moments after it began. In addition, Germany’s Interior Ministry banned several speakers from even entering Germany or addressing the Palestine Congress conference remotely. The Palestinian researcher Salman Abu Sitta opened the conference, but his remarks over a live stream were cut short when Berlin police raided the conference site.
SALMAN ABU SITTA: We have never seen before these daily scenes, one massacre after another, homes demolished over the heads of the occupants, bodies pulled from under the rubble, surviving child with all his family killed. We have never seen before people deliberately denied food and water, children starved to death and killed when rushing to get food. We have never seen before all means of life systematically destroyed — hospitals, clinics, schools, universities, libraries, ancient monuments, mosques, churches, universities, cemeteries, bakeries, apartment build—
CONFERENCE ORGANIZER 1: Live stream, we ask you — so, for all people on the live stream, the police is standing right in front of us, and they ask us to stop the video.
CONFERENCE ORGANIZER 2: They are — they’re even trying to take away this microphone!
AMY GOODMAN: That was a live stream capturing the moment when German police raided and shut down the Palestine Congress conference in Berlin just minutes after it began.
On Friday, German authorities also detained and questioned the Palestinian British surgeon Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, who had flown into Germany to speak at the Palestine Congress. Dr. Abu-Sittah, who is the nephew of Salman Abu Sitta, who we just watched interrupted, spoke to Middle East Eye after he was barred entry.
DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: Upon arrival, I was stopped at the passport office. I was then escorted down to the basement of the airport, where I was questioned for around three-and-a-half hours. At the end of three-and-a-half hours, I was told that I will not be allowed to enter German soil, that I will — and that this ban will last the whole of April. And not just that, that if I were to try to link up my Zoom or FaceTime with the conference, even if I was outside Germany, or I were to send a video of my lecture to the conference in Berlin, then that would constitute a breach of German law and that I would endanger myself to having a fine or even up to a year of prison.
AMY GOODMAN: That was the Palestinian British surgeon Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, who had flown into Germany to speak at the Palestine Congress but was denied entry to Germany. German authorities defended the decision to shut down the Palestinian conference, citing German laws against so-called hate speech. When Dr. Abu-Sittah came out of Gaza, we interviewed him, and you can go to democracynow.org to see that conversation.
We’re joined right now by former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis. He was also banned from entering Germany and barred from engaging in any political activity there. Varoufakis is a leader of the pan-European progressive movement DiEM25, which helped organize the Palestine Congress.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Yanis Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece. His most recent book is Technofeudalism; What Killed Capitalism is the subtitle. Yanis Varoufakis, can you explain what happened in Berlin?
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: To give you a vignette, Amy, of the absurdity, which would have been funny if it wasn’t so tragic, of what went on, during the morning, just before the police burst in, as you described so accurately, there was a young man who — an attendee of the congress, a member of the Jewish Voice for Peace, which together with the MERA25, DiEM25, we co-organized the Palestine Congress. And this young man, as he approached the police cordon — there were two-and-a-half thousand policemen preventing our attendees from attending the congress. Anyway, he was approaching, and he had a little placard that he had written with his own hand, and it read “Jews against genocide.” And for that, he was apprehended, arrested, manhandled. And while the police were manhandling him, he turned around humorfully, or half-jokingly, and said to them, “Would it have been all right with you if it said 'Jews in favor of genocide'?” at which point, of course, they were far more angered and manhandled him even more fiercely. I’m conveying this to you, Amy, and to our listeners and viewers because this shows the absurdity of the whole thing.
The police entered the building, the venue, a few minutes before I was due to deliver my talk via video link. As a result, what I did was I recorded my talk, and I posted it online from Greece, from Athens, where I’m even now. And the next day, I found out that a ban, as you put it, was slapped on me by the German authorities, a ban that harks back to laws against Nazism, a law that has only been used recently for ISIS operatives. That was used against me.
Allow me just to briefly say that the rationale behind this is the Germans’ Staatsräson, the logic or rationale of the German state, to protect Jews, which is of excellent rationale. I wish every state had it, each one of us had it, to protect Jews. Except that this is not about protecting Jewish lives and Jews from antisemitism. It’s all about protecting the right of Israel to commit any war crime of its choice, in the final analysis.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Yanis Varoufakis, the federal interior minister of Germany not only applauded the police action, but she described the event, the conference, as an Islamist conference. What do you think of that characterization of the Palestine Congress?
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Isn’t it remarkably farcical that our Jewish comrades who helped us co-organize, put together this congress have been dismissed as Islamists? Let me be clear: There were no Islamists in this. And in any case, the reason why our congress has been so, let’s say, unpopular with the German political system is because the German political spectrum — and this is not just the government; this is also the opposition, including some members of the left, I say with deep regret, some of my former comrades — they insist on equating acts of terror, atrocities against civilians — which every soundly thinking person in the world should condemn, and I condemn, of course, and so do all the organizers of this congress — equating, however, violence against civilians with a principled resistance to an apartheid state which is part of a project of systematically ethnically cleansing the population of the Palestinians. That is what they do not want.
They do not want a congress like ours, especially one that includes progressive Jews. That is the main thing that they detested, that they were Jewish demonstrators, Jewish activists, Jewish intellectuals, Jewish speakers with us, with one voice, saying one thing, one thing alone: equal political rights, civil liberties, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. I’m neither a Jew nor a Palestinian. I don’t have a view as to how this will be accomplished. But I think every single human person on this planet has an obligation — not a right, an obligation — to demand, from the river to the sea, equal political rights. And the German political establishment does not want to listen to this. They simply want to associate anyone who opposes Netanyahu’s government, or any government in Israel that perpetrates genocide, essentially, to be associated, to be stigmatized as an antisemite, which, by the way, it is the antisemite’s greatest dream come true.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, Germany has also banned the display of the Palestinian flag. How do you think the suppression of pro-Palestinian protest in Germany — has that spread to other countries in Europe? What’s your sense of what’s going on throughout the rest of the continent?
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Not formally. The Palestinian flag has not been banned formally. But I can tell you that even here in Greece, anyone who is sporting the colors of Palestine walking on the street risks — seriously risks — being assaulted by ultrarightists, being arrested, apprehended by police for some pretext. The bourgeois, liberal, democratic rights and principles have all been sacrificed on the altar of enabling Israel to complete the genocide which is carrying out — that it’s carrying out not just in Gaza but, as we heard before in the news bulletin, in East Jerusalem and in the West Bank. In the same way that in the 1930s we all had an obligation, a duty, an ethical commitment — or should have had one — to support Jews and to show our solidarity to the Jewish people who were suffering from the Nazi regime, from the Croat Nazi regime, from the Greek fascists and so on, we have a duty today to end the genocide in ancient Palestine.
AMY GOODMAN: Yanis Varoufakis, as a former finance minister, a vocal critic of austerity, how do you perceive Germany’s position on the war on Gaza in light of its significant arms sales to Israel? I mean, you have Nicaragua taking Germany to the International Court of Justice, saying that by providing weapons for Israel to carry out this war, that it’s engaging in crimes against humanity or war crimes.
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Well, Amy, it’s interesting and, I think, not coincidental that on the Monday before the invasion, the incursion by the German police into our Palestinian Congress in the venue in Berlin, I happened to be in Milano, in Italy, in Milan. And I was giving a speech to a gathering of hundreds of financial analysts, the top, the crème de la crème of European financial experts. And in it, unbeknownst to me of what was going to happen later on that week, I outlined dire prognostications about the long-term damage inflicted upon Germany and Germany’s social economy by decades of austerity, combined with impressive largesse finances, what you call in the United States quantitative easing. And, you know, I was really surprised, because here I am, a lefty, addressing a gathering of hundreds of financial experts. Those hard-nosed financiers actually applauded me. And afterwards, they came to me, and they said that they agree with what I was saying. And I have to tell you that when that happens, I get really worried, because if these hard-nosed financiers, many of them German, came to me and they said that they agreed with my prognosis that the German business model is kaput, is in dire straits, I start feeling very uncomfortable.
So, I think there is a connection, because here you have a political system in Germany which understands in its bones that the economic dominance that the German industrial model had within the European Union for so many decades is now waning. And when such a regime feels threatened, feels that its economic prowess and authority and dominance is waning, it’s really very easy for that to translate itself into movements that essentially fan the flames of increasing, and increasingly farcical, authoritarianism.
***
Under Cover of War in Gaza, Assault on West Bank Intensifies: Palestinian Journalist Dalia Hatuqa
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 16, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/16/ ... transcript
The Western corporate media is failing in its coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza, says Palestinian independent journalist Dalia Hatuqa. “A lot of what’s missing from the bigger portrait … is the Palestinian voice,” says Hatuqa, who applauds local journalists in Gaza for providing the world a crucial window into what’s happening there while international reporters are blocked by Israel from entering the territory. “Nobody knows Gaza better than the Gazan journalists on the ground.” Hatuqa also speaks about her latest piece for The Century Foundation about rising Israeli state and settler violence in the occupied West Bank, which she says can accurately be described as pogroms. “The fog of war has allowed Israel to perpetuate crimes at a very large scale, not only throughout the West Bank, but including occupied East Jerusalem.”
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 Intercept is reporting The New York Times has instructed its reporters to avoid using the terms “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing” and “occupied territory” in its coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza. The Intercept's report is based on an internal memo from the Times. One newsroom source told The Intercept, quote, “I think it's the kind of thing that looks professional and logical if you have no knowledge of the historical context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But if you do know, it will be clear how apologetic it is to Israel,” they said.
Today we’re joined by a Palestinian journalist who’s been highly critical of how the Western media has portrayed Israel’s war in Gaza. Dalia Hatuqa is an independent Palestinian journalist specializing in Israeli-Palestinian affairs, usually based between Amman, Jordan, and Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. She was a close friend and colleague of the Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot dead by an Israeli sniper in the occupied West Bank May 11th, 2022. Dalia’s latest piece for The Century Foundation is headlined “Under Cover of Gaza War, Assault on West Bank Accelerates.” Dalia joins us now in our New York studio after speaking last night at the Columbia Journalism School.
Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. This was also the topic of your panel at the Columbia J School last night, the issue of how the conflict is being covered. What do you think is most important for people to understand, Dalia?
DALIA HATUQA: Well, I think that a lot of what’s missing from the bigger portrait or the puzzle, so to speak, is the Palestinian voice. So, in order to find out what’s going on in Gaza, we need to not just rely on Western journalists coming into Gaza. I know that’s very important, and it’s a demand by a lot of us and by, you know, the Committee to Protect Journalists and other journalism rights groups. But it’s also to amplify Palestinian voices, because, ultimately, nobody knows Gaza better than the Gazan journalists on the ground who are actually doing the work that they’re doing right now. And in a way, these journalists, not only are they fighting for their lives while doing all of this, they’re also resorting to extraordinary measures to be able to cover what’s going on. And speaking to journalists on the ground, they tell us that what we’re seeing from them is only like 10% of what’s happening in Gaza at the moment.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Dalia, I wanted to ask you — the Western press does have the opportunity to cover what is going on in the West Bank, and yet, this — as you wrote in a recent piece, more than 4,000 West Bank Palestinians have been displaced just in 2023, the highest number ever recorded. What is going on in the West Bank, from what you’ve been able to see?
DALIA HATUQA: Basically, in the West Bank, the fog of war has allowed Israel to perpetuate crimes at a very large scale not only throughout the West Bank, but including occupied East Jerusalem. And in the West Bank, we’ve got what a lot of even Israeli officials have admitted are pogroms that are going on by and being perpetrated by Israeli settlers, especially in villages around Nablus, for example, which are in the north, where there are many settlements surrounding villages. We’re not talking about just, you know, the torching of houses and the torching of cars and whatnot. We’re talking about people getting killed by armed settlers.
And while they’re being armed and attacking Palestinians, they’re also being helped or aided by Israeli soldiers, whose job, technically, is to be there to not allow such things to happen, but in a way, you know, sometimes they just sit by idly and not do anything, or they actually participate in these attacks. That’s why when you look at the U.N. figures, a lot of times we see, you know, 10 Palestinians have been killed by settlers, two Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, but then there is a line that says three Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers and/or soldiers. So, we don’t know, because they are part of the system that’s subjugating these Palestinians, that’s, you know, carrying out all this violence against them.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And it’s not just those who are killed, but also the detentions of Palestinians in the West Bank. Could you talk about the conditions that they’re facing in Israeli custody?
DALIA HATUQA: The detentions, honestly, they’re atrocious, and they are the least talked about, even among Western journalists, who actually haven’t been really mentioning this at all. We’re talking about the least amount of, you know, livable situations that can be — that any detainee can live in. So, they get water up to two hours a day now. Sometimes they don’t get to shower. The food that they get is rotten. I’m talking about the detainees in — the 9,000 or so in Israeli prisons. They don’t have access to their families. They don’t have access to lawyers. The people who have come out have come out with — some have had their limbs amputated because of the extended use of handcuffs. So, honestly, the conditions are really harrowing, and there’s not much access.
And right now, as we speak, I was just seeing that there is a detainee who died in, actually, an Israeli hospital a few days ago, and his body is still being withheld. And his family has not been able to put him to rest, because — even though he had already carried out his sentence, 30 or more years, which is, quite frankly, a devastating thing for the family, because they’re unable to get any kind of closure.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re talking, of course, about Walid Daqqa. Human rights groups, everyone had asked for him to be released, as he was there for almost 40 years and he was dying of cancer. Speaking of people who have died, not in prison, but outside, the last time I spoke to you was just after Shireen Abu Akleh was killed May 11th, 2022, as she was a dear friend of yours, the Al Jazeera Arabic reporter, outside the Jenin refugee camp, all laid out now, determined to be an Israeli sniper who killed her. As her colleagues tried to reach her, they shot at them, clearly wearing “press.” It wasn’t in the middle of any kind of skirmish. They were just standing outside. This issue of journalists being killed, that you spoke of before — the memorial for Shireen, outside Jenin, has now been bulldozed over, destroyed by the Israeli military. But even in Gaza — and you took this up last night, you and your colleagues on the panel, of what’s happening to journalists. Even you were surprised, you said, as we spoke before the show, by learning about when David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, asked, “How do you know that journalists are targeted?” Talk about the response.
DALIA HATUQA: Basically, we were very lucky to have a journalist from Gaza who managed to leave the coastal enclave, the besieged coastal enclave, to Qatar. Her name is Ameera Harouda. And she had to leave, obviously, because, you know, for her well-being and her family. She has four kids. Anyways, she was talking about the fact that journalists would get phone calls from Israeli authorities, military authorities, basically questioning them about their work, especially if they worked for Qatar, which is a little strange, considering that Qatar is the go-between, you know, between Israel and Hamas for the talks to reach a ceasefire and to release the hostages. And in the meantime, also CPJ was talking to a few journalists who were released after being detained, and they had been taken away for 33 days, made to sit in squatting positions, in horrific conditions. They came out, you know, having lost 30 kilos or so.
There’s a lot going on in that sense, but also the targeting of journalists. People know because there are UAVs or drones, as we say, constantly hovering in Gaza. It’s so perpetual that people in Gaza, if they don’t hear a UAV, they think something’s wrong. UAVs have been part of the Gaza skyline for years, long before October 7th.
AMY GOODMAN: And even the phone calls from the Israeli military to journalists, threatening them?
DALIA HATUQA: Yes, absolutely. And in the West Bank, they do the same thing. They call them in. They say, “We want to have a chat with you.” And then they don’t come out, because, you know, they take them in. They can put them in administrative detention, which, as you know, is basically when you put people in or Palestinians in prison without any kind of — without any kind of proof or without charging them. And it’s very easy to do that. I mean, right now there’s a young Christian girl who’s a student. She’s in administrative detention for four months. And I know that the archbishop of Canterbury was calling for her release. So, all these things are intertwined. There’s a lot of things going on that don’t — that are far-reaching. It’s not just about journalists.
AMY GOODMAN: And the journalists who are being detained in Gaza are being questioned about their reporting?
DALIA HATUQA: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: Interrogated for hours?
DALIA HATUQA: Absolutely, because what — the questions that they were being asked is, “Why did you write this? Why did you say this? Do you talk to Hamas people?” Of course they talk to Hamas people. It’s their job. It’s like how you talk to Israeli forces. You’re going to — how you talk to Israeli military personnel or government officials. I mean, that’s your job as a journalist. Your job is to talk to people.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I wanted to ask you, Dalia Hatuqa — you’re usually based in Amman, Jordan, or in Ramallah in the West Bank, but you’re here in the United States now. What’s your message to the American public and to the Biden administration, given that this country is the largest supplier of weapons and military aid to Israel?
DALIA HATUQA: I think, honestly, the American public has been very instrumental in working with Palestinians. Large segments of the American public have been working with Palestinians. I’ve seen a lot of support. I’ve seen a lot of support among Israelis, you know, the few Israelis who get it. I’ve seen a lot of support among American Jews, and I believe that they are one of the Palestinians’ biggest allies.
But my message, obviously, to Biden is, I mean, there’s a lot at stake right now. The Biden administration can do so much, and that’s been proven over by the fact that, you know, once Biden put his foot down, several steps were taken by Israel in order to open the border crossings, or some of the border crossings, into Gaza. But I believe that taking this kind of blind support for Netanyahu is leading us nowhere.
And as an American, as well, not only as a Palestinian, I have bigger fears of what’s to come, come November, because if Biden loses the election — and he might, because of the situation, because of what’s going on in Gaza — then we are doomed, basically, to have another four years of a Trump administration. So, in my mind, I’m like, you know, we are doomed in the Middle East, we’re doomed in the U.S. And I know that’s a lot of doom and gloom, but, honestly, these are some of the thoughts that people, especially dual nationals like me — these are some of the thoughts that they have.
AMY GOODMAN: Dalia Hatuqa, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Palestinian independent journalist, usually based between Amman, Jordan, and occupied Ramallah — that’s Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
***
“I’m Jewish, and I’ve Covered Wars. I Know War Crimes When I See Them”: Reporter Peter Maass on Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 16, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/16/ ... transcript
We speak with veteran journalist Peter Maass about the Israeli war on Gaza and his new opinion piece for The Washington Post headlined “I’m Jewish, and I’ve covered wars. I know war crimes when I see them.” Maass, who was a senior editor at The Intercept until earlier this year, has spent decades covering wars, including the Bosnian genocide in the 1990s that killed about 100,000 people over nearly four years. He says many of the same war crimes he reported then are part of Israel’s current assault, including sniper attacks on civilians, bombing of civilian infrastructure, attacks on bread lines and besieging whole populations by preventing food and other aid from entering. “What seems to be unfolding in Gaza is even worse than what I saw in Bosnia,” says Maass.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We end today’s show with journalist Peter Maass, who has written an opinion piece for The Washington Post headlined “I’m Jewish, and I’ve covered wars. I know war crimes when I see them,” unquote. Until recently, Peter was a senior editor at The Intercept. He’s the author of Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War. He covered the Bosnia war for The Washington Post and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq for The New York Times Magazine.
Peter, welcome to Democracy Now! You begin your piece in The Washington Post by saying, “How does it feel to be a war-crimes reporter whose family bankrolled a nation that’s committing war crimes? I can tell you.” Lay it out for us.
PETER MAASS: Well, my great-great-grandfather was Jacob Schiff, who was a financier at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century, one of the wealthiest people in the country probably, who donated a lot of money and organized the movement of Jews, persecuted Jews, from Europe, largely from Russia but also from other countries and Russia, to any safe haven that would have them, including America, but also, significantly, British-controlled Palestine. And then, his son-in-law, my great-grandfather, Felix Warburg, who married Jacob Schiff’s daughter, continued that process of supporting and helping to organize the migration of persecuted Jews from Europe to British-controlled Palestine. This is before World War II, the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: Yet you say they were anti-Zionists. Can you explain?
PETER MAASS: Well, they were non-Zionists, which was actually different, significantly different, from being anti-Zionists. There was a movement amongst American Jews and Jews elsewhere, in Europe, that was called non-Zionism. And for them, the non-Zionists, the point was Jews should be able to go to British-controlled Palestine. They need to go to British-controlled Palestine because they need refuge from the persecution they’re suffering in Europe.
But they were against the establishment of a Jewish state, for two reasons. One is that they were concerned that if there were a Jewish state, then all of the antisemites, in America and elsewhere, would look at Jews who are not living in this Jewish state and say, “Ah, you know, your loyalty is actually to this other country.” And that would kind of increase suspicions of Jews and make them seem lesser citizens in the countries that they were living in. And then, the second concern, which was one that a lot of people had but that non-Zionists also had and pronounced, was they were concerned about violence between Arabs and Jews. They just kind of said, “Look, you know, if one side, the Jews or the Arabs, for that matter, try to exert total control over a state that’s going to be established there” — because, remember, at this time, Palestine was under the control of the British Mandate — “then it’s going to be really violent.” My great-grandfather referred to it as a shooting gallery.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Peter, you also covered the wars in Croatia and in Bosnia. And could you talk about how your journalism there helps inform your perspective of what’s going on? Because many, of course, of our listeners and viewers are not familiar with those wars and the war crimes committed there.
PETER MAASS: In the early 1990s, Yugoslavia, which was a kind of conglomeration of different republics, five or six — I forget the precise number, actually — began to fall apart. And instead of falling apart peacefully, it fell apart violently. And there was first a war when Slovenia, one of the republics, seceded. And then there was an even larger war when Croatia, another one of its constituent republics, seceded. And then, when Bosnia did the same — this was in 1992 — this was, unfortunately, the largest war of all.
There were a significant number of Serbs who lived in Bosnia. And Slobodan Milošević, who was the leader in Belgrade of kind of all Serbs in the country, organized the kind of provisioning of military materiel and soldiers, guerrilla fighters, paramilitaries, to go in and basically fight against the Muslims and Croats in Bosnia who wanted to have an independent state and who voted in a referendum for an independent state. And the war there, which I went to cover, it was not your ordinary war of army against army. It was a war of paramilitaries committing atrocities against defenseless civilians, largely Muslims, some Croats, and it also consisted of sieges against the few cities that were able to resist the onslaught. Sarajevo was one of these cities. Srebrenica was another one of these cities.
And so, I was there covering this war, seeing terrible things happen that are not supposed to happen in war. I mean, wars are violent. Civilians get killed in wars. But it’s not always illegal. In this case, there were civilians right under my window in Sarajevo getting shot by snipers, and I wrote about that. There were civilians whose houses were getting bombed. There were civilians who were standing in bread lines who were getting bombed and killed. There were aid shipments of medicine and food that were being prohibited from entry into these so-called safe areas, because they were supposed to have been protected by the United Nations but were not. And so, I was there reporting on this.
And in 1993, a year after this war began, there was an international criminal tribunal that was set up to investigate war crimes and possible genocide that was occurring at the time in Bosnia. And that tribunal subsequently did hold a number of trials, including of senior Bosnian and Serb leaders — the military leader Ratko Mladić, the political leader Radovan Karadžić and the Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević — in which the charges included genocide. And both Karadžić and Mladić are now in jail for the rest of their lives on charges that include genocide. So I was reporting on this genocide.
AMY GOODMAN: As you compare what you saw in Bosnia to what you saw in Gaza, you write in that piece, “When I reported from besieged Sarajevo, I stayed in a hotel that was smack on the front line, with Serbian snipers routinely firing at civilians walking under my window. … On a spring day in 1993, I heard the familiar crack and whistle of a sniper’s bullet, followed by an awful scream. I went to my window and saw a wounded civilian trying to crawl to safety. Writing in The Post more than three decades ago, I described the man’s desperate shouts as 'a mad howl of a person pushed over the edge. It came from the lungs, from the heart, from the mind,'” you write in The Washington Post. You also write about disturbing video footage from Gaza that shows Hala Khreis walking on a so-called safe route in January with her grandson, 5-year-old Tayem Abdel, who was holding a white flag when she was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper. Talk about the comparisons, or what you call the rhymes.
PETER MAASS: Yeah. I mean, God, I remember those stories so well. This is the most — there are so many disturbing things going on in Gaza now and in the West Bank. But as the Israeli attack began, after the Hamas attack on October 7th against Israel, you know, we began seeing these videos and reports emerging from these very brave journalists in Gaza of what was happening — and, for example, that video of this grandmother being shot, obviously quite intentionally. And everything that I was seeing — flour line massacres in Gaza, for example, airdrops of humanitarian aid that killed some of the people they were intended to help because they landed on top of these people — also happened in Bosnia. I began seeing just the same kinds of incidents, that were the constituent elements in Bosnia of genocide, also happening in Gaza, but — kind of most disturbing in a way — at a scale that was larger than Bosnia. I mean, for example, you know, in Bosnia, over the course of its four-year war, there were something like 7,000 or 8,000 children killed, which is terrible. In Gaza, over the course of just six months, there have been more than 13,000 children killed. So, you know, I just could not help but see not only the parallels, but also how what seems to be unfolding in Gaza is even worse than what I saw in Bosnia.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And we have less than a minute left, but I’m wondering your perspective on how the U.S. media has been covering the war in Gaza.
PETER MAASS: It’s been a real mixed bag. And it was a real mixed bag in Bosnia. And we’re all kind of captives of our experiences. And so, I covered the war in Bosnia, and I also covered other wars. So, you know, I may be talking too much about Bosnia, but I think it is relevant. In Bosnia, there was exceptionally good coverage, I think — and I’m biased on this, but I think — from the journalists who were on the ground, largely foreign journalists, but also a lot of Bosnian journalists — really good coverage of actually what was going on. But then, in the foreign capitals, in Washington, D.C., but also London and France — France and Britain were very important elements of the international community at the time — the reporting was terrible, because it reflected the kind of briefings that the journalists were getting from all their government sources and all the think tank people, and they were just saying, “Oh, it’s a mess there. These people —
AMY GOODMAN: We have 15 seconds, Peter.
PETER MAASS: — “plan to kill each other.” So, we have the same problem now, where there’s a lot of bad coverage coming out of the capitals, such as Washington, although from the ground itself, reporting is quite excellent.
AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much for being with us, Peter Maass, journalist, former senior editor for The Intercept, author of Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War. We’ll link to your latest piece in The Washington Post. He also covered U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq for The New York Times. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Thanks so much for joining us.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
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No Tech for Apartheid: Google Workers Arrested for Protesting Company’s $1.2B Contract with Israel
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 17, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/17/ ... transcript
Democracy Now! speaks with two of the Google employees who were arrested staging sit-ins on Tuesday at the company’s offices in New York City and in Sunnyvale, California, to protest the tech giant’s work with the Israeli government. Organized by the group No Tech for Apartheid, the protesters are demanding Google withdraw from Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract to provide cloud computing services to the Israeli military. “Google execs basically chose to arrest workers for speaking out against the use of our technology to power the first AI-powered genocide,” says Google software engineer Mohammad Khatami, who was arrested in New York. Google worker-organizer Ray Westrick, who was arrested occupying CEO Thomas Kurian’s office, says “more people are willing to organize and risk their jobs in order to take a stand against complicity in genocide.” We also speak with No Tech for Apartheid organizer and former Google worker Gabriel Schubiner, who calls on the tech industry to divest from Google and Amazon services. “Technology workers actually have a lot of power to shift this paradigm and to remove technology from this deep complicity with the Israeli occupation,” Schubiner says.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman in New York, with Juan González in Chicago.
Several Google employees, at least nine, were arrested Tuesday evening after staging sit-ins at the company’s offices in New York and in California to protest the tech giant’s work with the Israeli government. The sit-ins, organized by the activist group No Tech for Apartheid, took place at Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office in Sunnyvale, California, and the 10th floor commons of Google’s New York office, which is right around the corner from Democracy Now!
Protesters are calling for Google to withdraw from a $1.2 billion contract to provide cloud computing services to the Israeli government, known as Project Nimbus. Last week, Time magazine reported Google’s work on the project involves providing direct services to the Israeli military.
The sit-ins were accompanied by outdoor protests at the Google offices here in New York and in Sunnyvale, San Francisco and Seattle, Washington. Workers and outside activists have opposed the contract since it was signed in 2021, but protests have ramped up over the past several months since Israel’s latest bombardment of Gaza.
No Tech for Apartheid says Google is enabling and profiting from Israel’s use of artificial intelligence to develop a “kill list” to target Palestinians in Gaza for assassination with little human oversight. The Israeli military is also using Google Photos for facial recognition across Gaza and the West Bank to identify and detain Palestinians en masse.
No Tech for Apartheid has published an open letter, co-signed by 18 other groups, that demands Google and Amazon immediately cancel their work on Project Nimbus. The letter has gathered more than 94,000 signatures from the general public.
For more, we’re joined by two of the arrested Google workers. Ray Westrick is with us. She’s a Google worker-organizer with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign, among the workers who occupied Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office in Sunnyvale, California. She’s joining us from Sunnyvale. And here in New York, we’re joined by Mohammad Khatami, a Google software engineer who was arrested at the sit-in at Google’s office in New York. He’s joining us along with Gabriel Schubiner, a former software engineer at Google Research and an organizer with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign. And before that, he was with Jewish Diaspora in Tech.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Mohammad, let’s begin with you. You were, just hours ago, in the jail —
MOHAMMAD KHATAMI: That’s right.
AMY GOODMAN: — in the local police precinct. Talk about why you were willing to get arrested.
MOHAMMAD KHATAMI: Yeah. Well, rather than, you know, consider the demands that we’ve been raising for years now and listening to workers and considering the things that we’ve been raising, Thomas Kurian and Google execs basically chose to arrest workers for speaking out against the use of our technology to power the first AI-powered genocide. So, we were willing to get arrested for that, because at this point we aren’t willing to be lied to by our higher-ups anymore. We aren’t willing to be disrespected by our higher-ups anymore. And we wanted to take that to the offices and make sure it was understood by them, yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: How do you sense is the support that you have among other Google workers, the degree of the dissatisfaction with the policies of Google?
MOHAMMAD KHATAMI: Yeah. I mean, Google has done a really good job at creating a culture of fear and retaliation against workers in general. But what we noticed was beautiful. So many people came up to our sit-in and basically showed support and felt that they were inspired by the work that we were doing, and felt inspired to speak out, which is exactly what we were going for. We want workers to feel like we have the power to choose where our technology is going and who we’re contributing to. So I felt really happy to see that, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Ray Westrick, you’re on the West Coast. You were arrested in California. Talk about this Project Nimbus and why you were willing to get arrested, and what the response — were you in the offices of the Google Cloud CEO?
RAY WESTRICK: Yes, we sat in at the office of Thomas Kurian, the Google Cloud CEO, to protest Project Nimbus, which is a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government and military between Google and Amazon. We also were demanding the protection of our co-workers, especially our Palestinian, Arab and Muslim co-workers, who have been consistently retaliated against, harassed and doxxed for speaking out about Project Nimbus and, you know, the humanity of Palestinians. So, we were there in solidarity with them. We were there to protest the contract, which is being directly sold — providing technology directly to the Israeli military as it inflicts a genocide on Palestinians in Gaza. And yeah, that is why we chose to sit in Thomas Kurian’s office.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ray, could you — was there any response from the CEO or his office? And are you concerned about losing your job? Why — when did you decide to take this action?
RAY WESTRICK: Yeah. We did not receive any response from the CEO. And I think it’s really telling that they would rather let us sit there for over 10 hours and arrest us for peacefully sitting in his office than have leadership engage in our demands in any way at all. So, we’ve received no response from the CEO, and we were forcibly removed by the police.
And I — working at Google has been, you know, an honor. I really love my team. I love the work I do. But I can’t in good conscience not do anything while Google is a part of this contract, while Google is selling technology to the Israeli military, or any military. And so, it was a risk I was willing to take, and I think it’s a risk a lot of my co-workers are willing to take, because a lot of people are really agitated about this and have consistently made their demands clear and have faced retaliation for it. So, I chose to sit in, knowing the risks, out of care for the use of our technology, out of care for the impact of our technology and care for my co-workers.
AMY GOODMAN: For our radio audience, I wanted to let people know that Ray is wearing a T-shirt that says “Googler against genocide,” with “genocide” in the famous multicolor of “Google,” that it’s so well known for. I wanted to bring Gabriel Schubiner into this conversation, a former software engineer at Google Research, an organizer with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign, and ask you — you know, we had you on more than a year ago — this is before Israel’s latest attack on Gaza — talking about exactly this. And you were with a Jewish organization of Google workers at that time speaking out. Talk about the whole history of Project Nimbus.
GABRIEL SCHUBINER: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: And the resistance against it.
GABRIEL SCHUBINER: Yeah. Thank you so much.
So, Project Nimbus was signed in May of 2021 while bombs were being dropped on Gaza, while Palestinians were being evicted from Sheikh Jarrah and beaten at Al-Aqsa Mosque. That was really a point — when we found out about Project Nimbus, personally, for me, it was a turning point, where I no longer felt able to continue doing my work without engaging and organizing. There was a group of people that felt very similarly, so we started a petition. We were connected, got connected with Amazon workers, with community organizations, Jewish Voice for Peace and MPower Change, and spun a campaign out of that.
I want to be clear: Like, the campaign really is driven by worker concerns and worker needs around the ethical use of our labor, as well as the direct workplace concerns of the, like, health and safety concerns around working at a company that is facilitating genocide. We’ve known for a long time that this project was directly targeted at the military. It’s been reported in press that Google was giving trainings directly to the IOF. We know that Google gave trainings directly to Mossad. We know that the IOF —
AMY GOODMAN: When you say ”IOF,” explain the term.
GABRIEL SCHUBINER: I’m sorry, the — yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Because people are used to hearing ”IDF,” Israeli Defense Forces.
GABRIEL SCHUBINER: Right, yes. Yeah, it’s Israeli occupation forces, just to indicate, so we’re not repeating their messaging that their really aggressive repression of Palestinians is an act of defense. We know that it’s an act of occupation, so we say ”IOF.”
And so, we’ve known for a long time that this project was directly targeted at the Israeli military. But it was only recently, through this last contract that Google signed directly with the IOF, that we recognized that Google was really doubling down, that this contract is directly intended to facilitate military use. And we know that Google was chosen over other companies because of the advanced AI technology that they’re able to offer. So, given that we’ve learned how the IOF is using AI in this war, we really see this as like a really critical campaign for Palestinian liberation.
To speak to your point about the resistance against the project, we’ve been working against this project as workers for — since it was signed three years ago. We have been doing organizing. We have been doing, you know, base building and labor organizing. We’ve had protests externally and internally. We’ve had signed petitions. We’ve done outreach to our executives through internal forums, through chatrooms, through every available means, because, I think — you know, understanding, like, this contract really is — like, it really is an incredible issue for our work, like, all workers’ labor at Google. So many workers’ labor is contributing directly to this project, because all of the technology at Google is like deeply intertwined with each other. So, yeah, so we see this as really important, yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Gabe, I wanted to ask you — the average person, who’s not a Google worker, who might support your stand and who uses Google multiple times a day around the world, what are you calling for them to do?
GABRIEL SCHUBINER: Right. So, I mean, we’re calling for everyone around the world to really, like, help us with awareness, like, help us make it known that Google is a war profiteer. I think Google is so deeply embedded in people’s lives — right? — that it’s hard to ask for a boycott. But I think we’re calling specifically on people in the tech industry to divest from Google and Amazon. Google Cloud services and Amazon Web Services underlie a vast majority of the internet, but there are other options. So, technology workers actually have a lot of power to shift this paradigm and to, like, remove technology from this deep complicity with Israeli occupation.
AMY GOODMAN: Mohammad Khatami, can you talk about your own family background and why you so particularly care right now about what’s going on in Gaza?
MOHAMMAD KHATAMI: Yeah, yes. So, I come from a Muslim family. I was raised Muslim. And it’s really hard to wake up seeing the images of children slaughtered and know that your — you know, the work you’re doing is contributing to this. I’ve lost sleep. It’s just been extremely difficult to focus on work and think that you’re working for something that is contributing to the mass slaughter that’s taking place. And for speaking out against that, I’ve literally been called a supporter of terrorism, which is something that —
AMY GOODMAN: Called by?
MOHAMMAD KHATAMI: You know, by co-workers and HR and people in the company, a supporter of terrorism, which is, you know, something — it’s like a schoolyard insult. It’s something I haven’t heard since middle school. And that’s just an example of the retaliation and the harassment and the hatred that we face just for speaking up against our work being used in this way.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned about losing your job?
MOHAMMAD KHATAMI: Absolutely. But it doesn’t — it’s not even important to me at all compared to working for something that is meaningful and having a good impact on the planet. I don’t want to have any association with this genocide. And I would hope that Google would change their mind about it, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Ray Westrick, where do you see this movement going from here? And can you talk more about the Jewish-Muslim alliance around this among Google workers and former Google workers?
RAY WESTRICK: Yeah. I only see this movement growing and continuing to apply pressure. We received so much support during the sit-in. I’ve received so many personal messages from people, you know, thanking me for being vocal, and asking how they can be more vocal and get more involved. So I think this is absolutely growing. I think Google knows that this will continue, that, you know, workers are very agitated about this and will continue to speak up and apply pressure. And I think that’s why it was important for them to silence us. But this movement is growing, and more people are finding out about this, and more people are willing to organize and risk their jobs in order to take a stand against complicity in genocide.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank —
RAY WESTRICK: And yeah, I think this has been a really unifying campaign for people of all backgrounds. And I know, specifically, a lot of us came together because we were specifically concerned about how Google has treated and retaliated against our Palestinian, Arab and Muslim colleagues, especially, like Mohammad mentioned, a lot of them have experienced harassment and doxxing for speaking out in like the appropriate channels at Google and have been consistently ignored and harassed and retaliated against. And so, we had to come together to say that we can’t let this happen anymore. We have to come together in protection of our co-workers and each other and in protection of, you know, the ethical use of our technology, to make sure that we’re not building technology that’s being used for harm. So, I think it’s been a really unifying campaign that is really grounded in taking care of each other and really grounded in making a positive impact and not facilitating more harm with technology.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you all for being with us. Ray Westrick and Mohammad Khatami are both Google workers who were arrested yesterday, Ray in the offices of the Google Cloud CEO in Sunnyvale, California, and Mohammad here in New York. Also Gabriel Schubiner, a former software engineer at Google Research and an organizer with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign, before that, with Jewish Diaspora in Tech.
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 17, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/17/ ... transcript
Democracy Now! speaks with two of the Google employees who were arrested staging sit-ins on Tuesday at the company’s offices in New York City and in Sunnyvale, California, to protest the tech giant’s work with the Israeli government. Organized by the group No Tech for Apartheid, the protesters are demanding Google withdraw from Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract to provide cloud computing services to the Israeli military. “Google execs basically chose to arrest workers for speaking out against the use of our technology to power the first AI-powered genocide,” says Google software engineer Mohammad Khatami, who was arrested in New York. Google worker-organizer Ray Westrick, who was arrested occupying CEO Thomas Kurian’s office, says “more people are willing to organize and risk their jobs in order to take a stand against complicity in genocide.” We also speak with No Tech for Apartheid organizer and former Google worker Gabriel Schubiner, who calls on the tech industry to divest from Google and Amazon services. “Technology workers actually have a lot of power to shift this paradigm and to remove technology from this deep complicity with the Israeli occupation,” Schubiner says.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman in New York, with Juan González in Chicago.
Several Google employees, at least nine, were arrested Tuesday evening after staging sit-ins at the company’s offices in New York and in California to protest the tech giant’s work with the Israeli government. The sit-ins, organized by the activist group No Tech for Apartheid, took place at Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office in Sunnyvale, California, and the 10th floor commons of Google’s New York office, which is right around the corner from Democracy Now!
Protesters are calling for Google to withdraw from a $1.2 billion contract to provide cloud computing services to the Israeli government, known as Project Nimbus. Last week, Time magazine reported Google’s work on the project involves providing direct services to the Israeli military.
The sit-ins were accompanied by outdoor protests at the Google offices here in New York and in Sunnyvale, San Francisco and Seattle, Washington. Workers and outside activists have opposed the contract since it was signed in 2021, but protests have ramped up over the past several months since Israel’s latest bombardment of Gaza.
No Tech for Apartheid says Google is enabling and profiting from Israel’s use of artificial intelligence to develop a “kill list” to target Palestinians in Gaza for assassination with little human oversight. The Israeli military is also using Google Photos for facial recognition across Gaza and the West Bank to identify and detain Palestinians en masse.
No Tech for Apartheid has published an open letter, co-signed by 18 other groups, that demands Google and Amazon immediately cancel their work on Project Nimbus. The letter has gathered more than 94,000 signatures from the general public.
For more, we’re joined by two of the arrested Google workers. Ray Westrick is with us. She’s a Google worker-organizer with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign, among the workers who occupied Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s office in Sunnyvale, California. She’s joining us from Sunnyvale. And here in New York, we’re joined by Mohammad Khatami, a Google software engineer who was arrested at the sit-in at Google’s office in New York. He’s joining us along with Gabriel Schubiner, a former software engineer at Google Research and an organizer with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign. And before that, he was with Jewish Diaspora in Tech.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Mohammad, let’s begin with you. You were, just hours ago, in the jail —
MOHAMMAD KHATAMI: That’s right.
AMY GOODMAN: — in the local police precinct. Talk about why you were willing to get arrested.
MOHAMMAD KHATAMI: Yeah. Well, rather than, you know, consider the demands that we’ve been raising for years now and listening to workers and considering the things that we’ve been raising, Thomas Kurian and Google execs basically chose to arrest workers for speaking out against the use of our technology to power the first AI-powered genocide. So, we were willing to get arrested for that, because at this point we aren’t willing to be lied to by our higher-ups anymore. We aren’t willing to be disrespected by our higher-ups anymore. And we wanted to take that to the offices and make sure it was understood by them, yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: How do you sense is the support that you have among other Google workers, the degree of the dissatisfaction with the policies of Google?
MOHAMMAD KHATAMI: Yeah. I mean, Google has done a really good job at creating a culture of fear and retaliation against workers in general. But what we noticed was beautiful. So many people came up to our sit-in and basically showed support and felt that they were inspired by the work that we were doing, and felt inspired to speak out, which is exactly what we were going for. We want workers to feel like we have the power to choose where our technology is going and who we’re contributing to. So I felt really happy to see that, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Ray Westrick, you’re on the West Coast. You were arrested in California. Talk about this Project Nimbus and why you were willing to get arrested, and what the response — were you in the offices of the Google Cloud CEO?
RAY WESTRICK: Yes, we sat in at the office of Thomas Kurian, the Google Cloud CEO, to protest Project Nimbus, which is a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government and military between Google and Amazon. We also were demanding the protection of our co-workers, especially our Palestinian, Arab and Muslim co-workers, who have been consistently retaliated against, harassed and doxxed for speaking out about Project Nimbus and, you know, the humanity of Palestinians. So, we were there in solidarity with them. We were there to protest the contract, which is being directly sold — providing technology directly to the Israeli military as it inflicts a genocide on Palestinians in Gaza. And yeah, that is why we chose to sit in Thomas Kurian’s office.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ray, could you — was there any response from the CEO or his office? And are you concerned about losing your job? Why — when did you decide to take this action?
RAY WESTRICK: Yeah. We did not receive any response from the CEO. And I think it’s really telling that they would rather let us sit there for over 10 hours and arrest us for peacefully sitting in his office than have leadership engage in our demands in any way at all. So, we’ve received no response from the CEO, and we were forcibly removed by the police.
And I — working at Google has been, you know, an honor. I really love my team. I love the work I do. But I can’t in good conscience not do anything while Google is a part of this contract, while Google is selling technology to the Israeli military, or any military. And so, it was a risk I was willing to take, and I think it’s a risk a lot of my co-workers are willing to take, because a lot of people are really agitated about this and have consistently made their demands clear and have faced retaliation for it. So, I chose to sit in, knowing the risks, out of care for the use of our technology, out of care for the impact of our technology and care for my co-workers.
AMY GOODMAN: For our radio audience, I wanted to let people know that Ray is wearing a T-shirt that says “Googler against genocide,” with “genocide” in the famous multicolor of “Google,” that it’s so well known for. I wanted to bring Gabriel Schubiner into this conversation, a former software engineer at Google Research, an organizer with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign, and ask you — you know, we had you on more than a year ago — this is before Israel’s latest attack on Gaza — talking about exactly this. And you were with a Jewish organization of Google workers at that time speaking out. Talk about the whole history of Project Nimbus.
GABRIEL SCHUBINER: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: And the resistance against it.
GABRIEL SCHUBINER: Yeah. Thank you so much.
So, Project Nimbus was signed in May of 2021 while bombs were being dropped on Gaza, while Palestinians were being evicted from Sheikh Jarrah and beaten at Al-Aqsa Mosque. That was really a point — when we found out about Project Nimbus, personally, for me, it was a turning point, where I no longer felt able to continue doing my work without engaging and organizing. There was a group of people that felt very similarly, so we started a petition. We were connected, got connected with Amazon workers, with community organizations, Jewish Voice for Peace and MPower Change, and spun a campaign out of that.
I want to be clear: Like, the campaign really is driven by worker concerns and worker needs around the ethical use of our labor, as well as the direct workplace concerns of the, like, health and safety concerns around working at a company that is facilitating genocide. We’ve known for a long time that this project was directly targeted at the military. It’s been reported in press that Google was giving trainings directly to the IOF. We know that Google gave trainings directly to Mossad. We know that the IOF —
AMY GOODMAN: When you say ”IOF,” explain the term.
GABRIEL SCHUBINER: I’m sorry, the — yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Because people are used to hearing ”IDF,” Israeli Defense Forces.
GABRIEL SCHUBINER: Right, yes. Yeah, it’s Israeli occupation forces, just to indicate, so we’re not repeating their messaging that their really aggressive repression of Palestinians is an act of defense. We know that it’s an act of occupation, so we say ”IOF.”
And so, we’ve known for a long time that this project was directly targeted at the Israeli military. But it was only recently, through this last contract that Google signed directly with the IOF, that we recognized that Google was really doubling down, that this contract is directly intended to facilitate military use. And we know that Google was chosen over other companies because of the advanced AI technology that they’re able to offer. So, given that we’ve learned how the IOF is using AI in this war, we really see this as like a really critical campaign for Palestinian liberation.
To speak to your point about the resistance against the project, we’ve been working against this project as workers for — since it was signed three years ago. We have been doing organizing. We have been doing, you know, base building and labor organizing. We’ve had protests externally and internally. We’ve had signed petitions. We’ve done outreach to our executives through internal forums, through chatrooms, through every available means, because, I think — you know, understanding, like, this contract really is — like, it really is an incredible issue for our work, like, all workers’ labor at Google. So many workers’ labor is contributing directly to this project, because all of the technology at Google is like deeply intertwined with each other. So, yeah, so we see this as really important, yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Gabe, I wanted to ask you — the average person, who’s not a Google worker, who might support your stand and who uses Google multiple times a day around the world, what are you calling for them to do?
GABRIEL SCHUBINER: Right. So, I mean, we’re calling for everyone around the world to really, like, help us with awareness, like, help us make it known that Google is a war profiteer. I think Google is so deeply embedded in people’s lives — right? — that it’s hard to ask for a boycott. But I think we’re calling specifically on people in the tech industry to divest from Google and Amazon. Google Cloud services and Amazon Web Services underlie a vast majority of the internet, but there are other options. So, technology workers actually have a lot of power to shift this paradigm and to, like, remove technology from this deep complicity with Israeli occupation.
AMY GOODMAN: Mohammad Khatami, can you talk about your own family background and why you so particularly care right now about what’s going on in Gaza?
MOHAMMAD KHATAMI: Yeah, yes. So, I come from a Muslim family. I was raised Muslim. And it’s really hard to wake up seeing the images of children slaughtered and know that your — you know, the work you’re doing is contributing to this. I’ve lost sleep. It’s just been extremely difficult to focus on work and think that you’re working for something that is contributing to the mass slaughter that’s taking place. And for speaking out against that, I’ve literally been called a supporter of terrorism, which is something that —
AMY GOODMAN: Called by?
MOHAMMAD KHATAMI: You know, by co-workers and HR and people in the company, a supporter of terrorism, which is, you know, something — it’s like a schoolyard insult. It’s something I haven’t heard since middle school. And that’s just an example of the retaliation and the harassment and the hatred that we face just for speaking up against our work being used in this way.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned about losing your job?
MOHAMMAD KHATAMI: Absolutely. But it doesn’t — it’s not even important to me at all compared to working for something that is meaningful and having a good impact on the planet. I don’t want to have any association with this genocide. And I would hope that Google would change their mind about it, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Ray Westrick, where do you see this movement going from here? And can you talk more about the Jewish-Muslim alliance around this among Google workers and former Google workers?
RAY WESTRICK: Yeah. I only see this movement growing and continuing to apply pressure. We received so much support during the sit-in. I’ve received so many personal messages from people, you know, thanking me for being vocal, and asking how they can be more vocal and get more involved. So I think this is absolutely growing. I think Google knows that this will continue, that, you know, workers are very agitated about this and will continue to speak up and apply pressure. And I think that’s why it was important for them to silence us. But this movement is growing, and more people are finding out about this, and more people are willing to organize and risk their jobs in order to take a stand against complicity in genocide.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank —
RAY WESTRICK: And yeah, I think this has been a really unifying campaign for people of all backgrounds. And I know, specifically, a lot of us came together because we were specifically concerned about how Google has treated and retaliated against our Palestinian, Arab and Muslim colleagues, especially, like Mohammad mentioned, a lot of them have experienced harassment and doxxing for speaking out in like the appropriate channels at Google and have been consistently ignored and harassed and retaliated against. And so, we had to come together to say that we can’t let this happen anymore. We have to come together in protection of our co-workers and each other and in protection of, you know, the ethical use of our technology, to make sure that we’re not building technology that’s being used for harm. So, I think it’s been a really unifying campaign that is really grounded in taking care of each other and really grounded in making a positive impact and not facilitating more harm with technology.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you all for being with us. Ray Westrick and Mohammad Khatami are both Google workers who were arrested yesterday, Ray in the offices of the Google Cloud CEO in Sunnyvale, California, and Mohammad here in New York. Also Gabriel Schubiner, a former software engineer at Google Research and an organizer with the No Tech for Apartheid campaign, before that, with Jewish Diaspora in Tech.
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