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.
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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.