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Pro-Palestinian Campus Encampments Spread Nationwide Amid Mass Arrests at Columbia, NYU & Yale
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 23, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/23/ ... transcript

Palestinian solidarity protests and encampments are appearing on college campuses from Massachusetts to California to protest Israel’s attacks on Gaza and to call for divestment from Israeli apartheid. This week, police have raided encampments and arrested students at Yale and New York University. Palestinian American scholar and New York University professor Helga Tawil-Souri describes forming a faculty buffer to protect students, negotiating with police, and the ensuing crackdown that led to over 100 arrests Monday night. Uptown in New York City, the encampment at Columbia University is entering its seventh day despite mass arrests of protesters last week. “In my opinion, the NYPD were called in under false pretenses by the president of the university,” says Joseph Slaughter, professor at Columbia University. “The university is being run as a sort of ad-hocracy at this point, the senior administration making up policies and procedures and prohibitions on the fly, changing them in the middle of the night.”

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: As Israel’s assault on Gaza enters its 200th day, Palestinian solidarity protests and encampments are spreading on college campuses across the United States, inspired by the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University. Here in New York, police raided a student encampment at New York University Monday night. Police arrested more than 150 people, including students and 20 faculty members. Earlier on Monday, police at Yale University arrested 60 protesters, including 47 students who had set up an encampment to demand the school divest from weapons manufacturers.

At Columbia, the student encampment has entered its seventh day. On Monday night, about 100 Columbia student protesters and faculty took part in a Gaza Liberation Seder to mark the start of the Jewish holiday of Passover, or Pesach. On Monday, hundreds of Columbia professors held a mass walkout. This is Columbia history professor Christopher Brown.

CHRISTOPHER BROWN: Thursday, April 18, 2024, will be remembered as a shameful day in Columbia’s history.

PROTESTERS: Shame!

CHRISTOPHER BROWN: The president’s decision to send riot police to pick up peaceful protesters on our campus was unprecedented, unjustified, disproportionate, divisive and dangerous.

PROTESTER 1: Yes!

PROTESTER 2: Shame on her!

AMY GOODMAN: Student encampments are now in place at numerous other schools, including University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; University of California, Berkeley; University of Maryland; MIT and Emerson College in Boston.

We’re joined now by two professors. Joseph Slaughter is associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. He is the executive director of the Institute for the Study of Human Rights, which put out a public statement condemning the repression of student protests at Columbia and the calling in of the New York police, who made over a hundred arrests. Also with us, New York University professor Helga Tawil-Souri. She’s a leading Palestinian American scholar of media, culture and communication, co-editor of the book Gaza as Metaphor.

OK, we’re going to begin with New York University, with professor Tawil-Souri. You have been at the encampment since it began at NYU Monday morning at 4:00, and you just came from jail support, where, what, over 140 people, including 20 of your peers, NYU professors, were arrested. Can you explain what’s going on at NYU?

HELGA TAWIL-SOURI: Yeah, sure. So, the students decided to start an encampment yesterday early in the morning in support of Gaza, in support of Palestine, also kind of in support, obviously, of other students, at Columbia and otherwise. And very early on already, from the very beginning of the first tents being set up, the NYU security guards came and NYPD came. But quickly, kind of a sort of deescalation, if you want, kind of took place between faculty members and security guards, and NYPD left. And it was peaceful all day long. And, you know, there was a lot of sort of negotiation back and forth between the faculty and the security guards on behalf of the students.

And at some point in the afternoon, kind of, you know, things — like, police presence was kind of escalating, and the negotiations kind of stopped. And at some point, the NYU security guards were like, “All right, well, we’re just” — they made it pretty clear that NYPD presence was just sort of imminent at that point and kind of started coming up with all kinds of reasons as to why they were going to show up and so on, kind of kept pushing the bar in different directions. And then the NYPD came.

Faculty kind of had made a sort of frontline kind of buffer zone at the very beginning. They were arrested very quickly, and then the police force kind of forcing their way into the sort of plaza where the students had their tents set up, and extremely violently kind of took down all the tents, were throwing chairs around, and then arrested all of the students that were there, and then also had a third wave of arrests of other people that were kind of still in that area, as well. So, yeah, 20 faculty members ended up in prison — or, sorry, were arrested. And I think the number of total arrests was around 140, 145.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor Tawil-Souri, at any time were the students in any way disrupting the classes in the university or the business of the university?

HELGA TAWIL-SOURI: I mean, not really, I mean, in the sense that, you know, they got there pretty early in the morning, and very quickly NYU security guards decided to kind of barricade that area. So, if anybody was disrupting, it was actually NYU security and not the students, because they’re the ones who kind of set up all the barriers and would forbid students from — students, whether they were coming for the encampment or just trying to get to class — would not actually let them access that way, so they had to kind of go all the way around and so on. And so, there was very little movement in terms of letting people in or out of the encampment. And we had to sort of negotiate, like for bathroom breaks and stuff like that.

And, you know, the disruption — I mean, we’re told that, “Oh, the disruption was part of the protest — right? — and the chanting and the singing.” But, you know, it’s New York City. It’s really loud. There was construction right across the street, so it’s really hard for me to understand that that was a sort of disruption. So, really, the disruption, I think, was much more on the part of the security guards who really sort of blocked off that entire area.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And to your knowledge, did the administration or the president have any discussions with the NYU faculty before calling in the police?

HELGA TAWIL-SOURI: So, I, myself, and a number of my colleagues, in terms of like NYU faculty, sort of went back and forth numerous times with a couple of the deans and a couple — and the head of NYU security, and so kind of negotiated sort of back and forth about, you know: Can we let the kids out to the bathroom? Can we come in? Can we go out? Can we bring more people in? Can we bring more people out? But not directly with the president of the university, but just mostly the head of security, and a couple of times with the NYPD, certainly early in the morning.

And, you know, I mean, one of the things that, you know, I mean, we’ve seen sort of the — we’ve seen the response of the president of the university, saying that, “Oh, there was a breach in the barrier.” And, I mean, I can tell you — I was there all day — that breach in the barrier was really not a breach in that sense. I mean, there were a couple of students who sort of went in. I think the concern was as to whether or not we could control whether the people that were going onto the plaza were NYU students. And so we offered numerous times, like, “Well, we’re happy to go around and kind of ask all the students for their ID cards.” And at some point, the security guards said, “OK, fine, we’ll do this.” And then, suddenly they said no, and they sort of came up with all sorts of reasons as to why we weren’t kind of following rules, and, ultimately, you know, claimed that we were trespassing on our own campus, right? I mean, it was a presumably private part of the university, and it was NYU students and NYU faculty that are then charged with trespassing and then violently kind of thrown out from that space.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring professor Joseph Slaughter into this conversation. You’re at Columbia. You’re associate professor of English and comparative literature there, and you’re the executive director of the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University. It was your president, President Minouche Shafik, who called out the New York Police Department. This was a day after she testified before Congress. Can you talk about your response to the encampment and then the arrest of over a hundred students?

JOSEPH SLAUGHTER: Thank you, Amy. I certainly can.

So, the response that we had at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights was that we immediately recognized the infringement of student rights to protest peacefully and freedoms of speech on campus and the threat, the dramatic threat, it raised, that the bringing in the police, the university president calling in the police, raised immediately, of course, the specter of '68, which I'm glad you’ll be talking about — you’ll be talking about a minute later.

There are a number of things I would like to say about the bringing in of the police. We have, actually, in the wake of 1968, a very strong set of university statutes that include things like protections for speech and protest on campus. They effectively are the constitution of Columbia University. They are the product of — the good product of 1968, establishing systems of shared governance between faculty, students and the administration. And there are emergency powers that the president has to protect faculty, students, the Columbia community, in the case of imminent threats to people and property on campus that are spelled out in the — loosely in the university statutes.

The president, however, has an absolute obligation — it’s spelled out very clearly — to consult with the Executive Committee of the University Senate, which includes students and faculty, before bringing any police — external police forces onto campus. In this case, she approached, on the very first day of the Columbia encampment, which was a peaceful, nonviolent protest, not disturbing, in my opinion, the Columbia environment, the Columbia campus, and certainly posing no threat to persons or property. She approached the Executive Committee of the University Senate, asking for their permission to invite the NYPD in to shut down, to squelch the protest. The Executive Committee — the faculty and the students on the Executive Committee voted unanimously to reject her request to bring in New York police. She did it anyway, thus violating not only the statutes, in my opinion, certainly the long traditions of shared governance, the long traditions of protest and protections of speech on campus, as well as the compact between students, faculty and the administration, to act unilaterally, essentially throwing out the rulebook and throwing out the constitution, the statutes of the university.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor Slaughter, this whole issue of within 24 hours students receiving notices of suspensions? What kind of due process occurred here?

JOSEPH SLAUGHTER: That’s a great question, and I think it’s something that’s extremely important for people to understand. In the letter that President Shafik sent the NYPD, the chief of police, asking them for their intervention, she claimed that the students were being suspended for violations of the university policies and that, therefore, they were trespassing on Columbia property. The students, the 108 students who were arrested, were charged with trespassing. However, in fact, the vast majority of those students — there were a number of exceptions from Barnard, apparently, but the vast majority of those students were in fact not suspended until 24 hours after the arrests. The suspension notices that the students received now cite the arrests themselves as part of the cause for suspension. In other words, the logic was circular. They called in the New York Police Department on the premise that the students were trespassing, when they hadn’t yet been suspended. And they are now suspended on the premise that they had violated trespassing — New York trespassing laws, and therefore needed to be suspended and were guilty. In my opinion, the NYPD were called in under false pretenses by the president of the university.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get your response to the New York police chief. John Chell said that President Shafik identified the demonstration as a “clear and present danger,” but that officers found the students to be peaceful and cooperative.

JOSEPH SLAUGHTER: I think this is also something that’s absolutely important for people to know. In fact, John Chell, the chief of patrol, said that the — disavowed the language of “clear and present danger.” The president had used the language, in the exact language taken from the university statutes, of “clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the university.” She did not, however, say that the students posed a clear and present danger to persons and property, which are the two primary criteria for bringing in police onto campus to protect the Columbia community. In other words, at the moment in which she was making a speech for which she could be held legally responsible — that is, writing to the police department to call in the police department — she refused to use the — to say that the students were a clear and present danger to Columbia faculty and persons and property. In other words, while she was sending messaging out, while the university administration was sending messaging out through all of its channels, by email and public announcements, saying that these students posed a danger, that’s not the language they used to talk to the — to invite the police in. The chief of patrol said, in fact, that the students posed no danger, disavowed the language of clear and present danger, saying that’s President Shafik’s words, not his, and that the students were protesting peacefully, saying what they wanted to say peacefully, and in no way resisted arrest.

AMY GOODMAN: What happened yesterday? Talk about the — you have the student encampment on the South Lawn, and then you have the professors going into Low Library for a meeting.

JOSEPH SLAUGHTER: So, the university is being run as a sort of ad-hocracy at this point, the senior administration making up policies and procedures and prohibitions on the fly, changing them in the middle of the night. One of those prohibitions was that no protest could take place on the steps of Low Library. I assume you will be showing images later about protests in 1968 of Low Library. The faculty, in response — a broad coalition of faculty, in response to the student arrests and to the bringing of police onto campus, chose yesterday to walk out at 2 p.m., in full regalia for many of us, to stand on the steps of Low Library in front of the statue of Alma Mater, a heralded tradition of protest on campus, to defend our students, to defend the rights of students, to denounce the police actions and the president’s sanctioning of the police actions, to call for the immediate repeal of the suspension of our students, the restoration of all of their rights, the expungement of their records, and to submit an appeal for a vote of censure in the University Senate of Minouche Shafik and her senior administration.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor Slaughter, not only at Columbia, but at universities across the country, we are repeatedly hearing that these protests in support of the Palestinians who are being attacked in Gaza, that this is making life unsafe, these protests are making life unsafe for Jewish students on these campuses. What’s your response to that?

JOSEPH SLAUGHTER: So, I have multiple responses. The messaging out of Columbia has consistently emphasized the dangers of these protests in particular to Jewish and Israeli and pro-Israeli students. In fact, the messaging has been one of fear towards those students explicitly. The messaging, at the same time, has been one of fear to students — to pro-Palestinian students, to anti-Zionist Jewish students, to other students who want to think about and talk about and discuss the questions of Palestine, the questions of Israel, which is the duty of a university to think about these hard problems. The message to those students have been — is also fear, but a fear by omission, the university not ever acknowledging any of the fears, the Islamaphobic actions that are taking place on campus, any of the attacks that have taken place on campus. And so, in some ways, the university itself, it seems to me, in its public messaging since October has ginned up fear both among Jewish students and pro-Palestinian students.

The campus, in fact — the kind of impromptu and improvised policies that the administration has unilaterally imposed, without consultation from the University Senate, without the traditions of shared governance, have, in fact, in my opinion, chilled speech, not just of pro-Palestinian protesters, but also of pro-Israeli protesters, and has absolutely chilled speech in classrooms and in other kind of forums on campus to be able to even talk about the problems that lie at the bottom of all of this — that is, Palestinian rights to self-determination, Israeli rights to security.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor Tawil-Souri, what do you see happening in the coming days at NYU?

HELGA TAWIL-SOURI: Well, it’s hard to say. But maybe, quickly, if I could just add one thing? I mean, you know, a lot of the students and the faculty at NYU who were part of the encampment, and in general are part of sort of, like, SJP and FJP and so on, are actually Jewish, right? So, that’s number one.

The other thing that I think is — you know, I mean, I don’t know how much news has sort of come out since yesterday about what happened, but when the NYPD finally came in and sort of broke the encampment apart, it was in the middle of Muslim Maghrib prayers, like the evening prayers, right? So I think that kind of speaks a little bit to what you’re saying — right? — in terms like the way that it’s not really about sort of one group or the other, but also how different groups are kind of treated.

In terms of what happens at NYU from this point on, I mean, I can tell you the students feel very sort of spirited, in the sense of, like, they want to kind of continue. You know, for them, it’s about, “OK, fine, you took us down, but we’re going to continue. We have the right to protest. We have the right to academic speech. We have the right to free speech. And we have the right to kind of stand up for our pro-Palestinian voices, basically.” I’m not quite sure — I mean, I can’t sort of say how the university is going to respond, but, you know, I think the students are going to sort of have to figure out, like, how are they going to be able to protest. So, unlike Columbia, NYU is this kind of a somewhat urban kind of campus, right? So there is no lawn, if you want, to kind of go and protest on. And so I think that’s part of what we saw yesterday, is this plaza where the encampment took place is private property, but, you know, the moment you step off of the steps, it becomes New York City property, right? So, there’s a very sort of blurry line as to where does the NYPD kind of sort of stop its sort of jurisdiction, if you want to call it that, versus where does campus security stop. So I think that’s a little bit different in terms of NYU, and I think that’s a sort of challenge, if you want, that is faced by the students. But I think the students kind of are very resolved, in the sense of, like, “We’re going to keep going with this.”

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Tawil-Souri, The New York Times subheadline was “Dozens were arrested on Monday at N.Y.U. and Yale, but officials there and at campuses across the U.S. are running out of options to corral protests,” they said. What are the options that officials have at these universities, besides arrests and suspensions?

HELGA TAWIL-SOURI: That’s a great question. I mean, maybe first to kind of have a discussion, right? Like kind of, you know, be sort of very open about, like, “All right, well, let’s sort of sit down and talk about these things. Let’s host a number of different events. Let’s host a number of different speakers. Let’s allow for these kind of speakers and events to happen.” I think what we see is also a sort of shutdown of certain kinds of things, right? Let’s allow for whether it’s classes or teach-ins or all of that.

And in terms of the protesters, I mean, yesterday there was a sort of — you know, I think part of what happened, certainly at NYU, is that there was a kind of compression, if you will, right? So, people in support were coming to sort of demonstrate and speak with the students and so on, but couldn’t kind of access, right? So they bleed into the streets, and the students can’t get out. And so it’s sort of a bit of a sort of pressure cooker, in the sense that, you know, of course you’re creating this kind of barricade that becomes very difficult to manage, but it’s also becoming a way that the barrier itself is actually creating part of the problem, right? So, I think if you kind of have a way to kind of figure out how to sort of allow people to move around, to not necessarily prevent them from moving, I think a lot of problems would kind of not exist to begin with.

AMY GOODMAN: Same question, Professor Slaughter.

JOSEPH SLAUGHTER: Thank you. One of the things that President Shafik said in response to a question at Congress last week that I found most disturbing that hasn’t been commented on at all is that what she’s learned over this last six months is that our rules weren’t made for this moment. And this justifies in some ways the administration throwing out the rulebook and coming up with impromptu policies on how to police speech.

In fact, the rules were made exactly for this moment. They were made for 1968 — they were made from 1968 and to prevent a repeat of 1968. We have an extremely robust rules for the protections of speech and protest on campus. We have an extremely robust system for protecting due process rights for students when they have violated or are accused of having violated those protections. If this administration had chosen to lean into the statutes of the university and the rules that have kept our community together for 50 years, we would be in a much better place, with faculty and students on board.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I’m glad you went back in history, because that’s where we’re going right now, Professor Slaughter of Columbia University and Professor Helga Tawil-Souri of New York University.

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Juan González Reflects on Historic 1968 Columbia Protests & Crackdown on Gaza Solidarity Encampment
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 23, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/23/ ... transcript

Fifty-six years ago today, hundreds of students at Columbia University in New York started a revolt on campus, occupying school buildings and disrupting class to protest the school’s ties to the Vietnam War and racism in New York. Democracy Now! co-host Juan González, who participated in the 1968 protests when hundreds of students were injured by police and arrested, speaks about the rebellion and how it compares to Columbia’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters occupying campus today. “What really strikes me about this response is the total flouting of any kind of democratic process by the current administration compared to what happened in 1968,” says González. “These students are protesting a genocide that is occurring before the eyes of the entire world and that is being funded by U.S. arms. And if anyone has the right to rebel and to stand up against injustice, these students do.”

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.

Fifty-six years ago today, hundreds of students at Columbia University here in New York started a revolt on campus. They occupied five buildings, including the President’s Office in Low Library. The students barricaded themselves inside the buildings for a week. They were protesting Columbia’s ties to military research and plans to build a university gymnasium in a public park in Harlem. The protests began less than three weeks after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. The 1968 Columbia uprising led to one of the largest mass arrests in New York City history. A week into the strike, April 30th, New York City police stormed the campus of Columbia University. Hundreds of students were injured, 700 arrested. Images of the police assault were broadcast around the country. This is a clip from Columbia Revolt by Third World Newsreel.

STUDENT STRIKER 1: They got over 700 of us on charges of criminal trespass, resisting arrest, all kinds of other [bleep], some of which was real and some of which was completely fake.

STUDENT STRIKER 2: I know of nurses and doctors that pleaded with the police not to proceed, to please let these men alone. And they would say, “No, no. Get away. This is our job.”

STUDENT STRIKER 3: I was arrested. They would not allow me to see a doctor. I had broken ribs. My face was cut. I got hit with a pistol under the eye and was bleeding there. And I wasn’t allowed to see a doctor 'til I got out of court, which was approximately 10 hours later. But I was awarded a fellowship for next year. What the hell does — I'm sorry. What does it mean? I’m going to strike. I hope every — I don’t see how any teacher, I don’t see how any student can attend this school anymore. And I was completely liberal about the whole thing. But this bust has radicalized everybody, and me very personally.

STUDENT: I was a nonviolent student. I was completely passive. I didn’t care what happened. I was completely neutral. I’m not neutral any longer. I’ll occupy buildings tomorrow.

AMY GOODMAN: The 1968 Columbia uprising inspired student protests across the country. This is Democracy Now!’s Juan González, then a Columbia student, speaking during the strike.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now we want to go into the dorms with all of you, with some of you who may not — who may not agree with a lot of what we’ve been saying here, who have questions, who support us, who want to know more. Let’s go to the dorms. Let’s talk quietly, in small groups. We’ll be there, and everyone in Livingston — in Livingston lobby, in Furnald lobby, in Carman lobby. We’ll be there, and we’ll talk about the issues involved, and we’ll talk about where this country is going and where this university is going and what it’s doing in the society and what we would like you to do and what we would — and how we would like to exchange with you our ideas over it. Come join us now.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Juan González, courtesy of the Pacifica Radio Archives. And Juan is here now, courtesy of Democracy Now!, co-host of Democracy Now! Juan, talk about that moment. We’re talking about 56 years ago. Talk about then and what you see as the echoes of today.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Amy, I think the important thing to understand is that the Columbia strike unfolded over several weeks. The first week was the week of the occupation, but because of the brutality of the attacks by the police — as you said, more than 150 people were hospitalized the night of April 30th — it led to a massive strike of the entire university. Over 10,000 students shut the university down for the rest of the semester.

And I think what is really unusual about this process is that here the university moved in very quickly, and also these students were not disrupting classes. We occupied buildings. We did not allow classes to go forward in 1968. But classes were going forward. The students were camped out peacefully on the lawn. So, the disproportionate nature of the response of the university, the quickness with which it responded, without even consulting or listening to the faculty, is really astounding.

And the other aspect of it is that when we were suspended — and there were many of us suspended — before we were suspended, we were allowed to appear before a tribunal to plead our cause. There was at least the rudiments of due process. Here, there is no due process. The university is already, within 24 hours, saying that the students are suspended, even though there is yet no legal proof that any of these students knowingly participated in illegal actions. So, I think that what really strikes me about this response is the total flouting of any kind of democratic process by the current administration compared to what happened in 1968.

And, of course, I think the other aspect of it is we were fighting at the time against the racism of the university toward Harlem and against the Vietnam War. These students are protesting a genocide that is occurring before the eyes of the entire world and that is being funded by U.S. arms. And if anyone has the right to rebel and to stand up against injustice, these students do. And actually, I personally only wish that more students would follow their example across the country and continue to disrupt the process that is occurring right now, to at least allow the people of Palestine to understand that the American people are not united behind this genocide.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Juan, do you have messages for the college presidents, from your experience 56 years ago with the mass arrests of 700 students, which only provoked more protest?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I have to say that President Shafik, who, as I understand, is a baroness — she was knighted during her time in England — that the baroness has very little time left as president of Columbia University. I don’t see how she survives in office, given the enormous resistance to her of not only the students, but the faculty. And I think that the universities across America have to realize that the young people of this country do not support the constant wars that our — imperial wars that our government is either participating in or funding, and that something has to change.

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“Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel”: 100s Arrested at Jewish-Led Protest Near Schumer’s Home
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 24, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/24/ ... transcript

Hundreds of protesters were arrested in Brooklyn on Tuesday when Jewish New Yorkers and allies gathered for what they called a “Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel” on the second night of Passover. The demonstration, held one block away from the home of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, came just hours before the Senate overwhelmingly approved a $95 billion foreign aid package that includes about $17 billion in arms and security funding to Israel. “At the core of the Passover story is that we cannot be free until all people are free,” Beth Miller, the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace, told Democracy Now! “The Israeli government and the United States government are carrying out a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, over 34,000 people killed in six months in the name of Jewish safety, in the false name of Jewish freedom.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: As many as 300 protesters were arrested in Brooklyn on Tuesday night, where thousands of mostly Jewish New Yorkers gathered for a “Seder in the Streets” to stop arming Israel, they said, this on the second night of Passover. The demonstration was held at Grand Army Plaza, one block away from the home of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. It came just hours before the Senate overwhelmingly approved a $95 billion foreign aid package that includes some $14 billion in arms and security funding to Israel.

A series of speakers addressed the rally, including journalist and author Naomi Klein, Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour and several Jewish students suspended from Columbia University, where students have held a Gaza Solidarity Encampment. These are some of the voices of the demonstrators yesterday speaking at the Seder in the Streets.

BETH MILLER: Tonight’s Seder in the Streets, which will be happening on the second night of Passover, which is a holiday we observe every year that is all about liberation and how our liberations are intertwined with one another, is coming just hours ahead of a likely Senate vote on $14 billion in military funding and weapons to Israel. So we’re here to tell Senator Schumer that this is enough and we need to end U.S. complicity in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. And at the core of the Passover story is that we cannot be free until all people are free. And right now what we’re seeing is that the Israeli government and the United States government are carrying out a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, over 34,000 people killed in six months, in the name of Jewish safety, in the false name of Jewish freedom.

PROTESTERS: Let Gaza live! Let Gaza live! Let Gaza live! Let Gaza live!

EVA BORGWARDT: Today the most meaningful way we could possibly celebrate a holiday for Jewish liberation is in the streets protesting this genocide, because our liberation is tied together with Palestinian liberation. And honestly, I am more moved than I have been in months, watching young Jews get arrested alongside Jewish elders, saying, “Not in our name,” as we have been for six months. And the Senate is still about to pass this massive funding package?

PROTESTER: Happy Passover. Free Palestine.

PROTESTERS: Let Gaza live! Let Gaza live! Let Gaza live! Let Gaza live!

You’re all the same! NYPD, KKK, IOF, you’re all the same!

UNA OSATO: And now we are hundreds in the streets. People are taking arrest, saying business as usual not go on. We are here at the doorstep of Senator Chuck Schumer. To the people in Palestine: We love you. We are with you. We are going to stop this U.S. funding, so that you can fight for your own liberation.

POLICE OFFICER: If you do not move, you will be arrested.

AMY GOODMAN: Some of the voices at the “Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel” that was held at Grand Army Plaza on Tuesday on the second night of Passover.

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Naomi Klein: Jews Must Raise Their Voices for Palestine, Oppose the “False Idol of Zionism”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
April 24, 2024

Thousands of Jewish Americans and allies gathered in Brooklyn on Tuesday for a “Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel” on the second night of Passover, held just a block from the home of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, to protest ongoing U.S. support for the Israeli assault on Gaza. “Too many of our people are worshiping a false idol,” said award-winning author and activist Naomi Klein, one of several speakers at Tuesday’s rally. “They are enraptured by it. They are drunk on it. They are profaned by it. And that false idol is called Zionism.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: Among those who addressed the crowd during the seder was award-winning author and activist Naomi Klein. This is some of what she had to say.

NAOMI KLEIN: My friends, I’ve been thinking about Moses and his rage when he came down from the mount to find the Israelites worshiping a golden calf. The ecofeminist in me has always been uneasy about this story. What kind of god is jealous of animals? What kind of god wants to hoard all the sacredness of the Earth for himself? But there is, of course, a less literal way of understanding this story. It is a lesson about false idols, about the human tendency to worship the profane and shining, to look to the small and material rather than the large and transcendent.

What I want to say to you this evening at this revolutionary and historic Seder in the Streets is that too many of our people are worshiping a false idol once again. They are enraptured by it. They are drunk on it. They are profaned by it. And that false idol is called Zionism.

It is a false idol that takes our most profound biblical stories of justice and emancipation from slavery, the story of Passover itself, and turns them into brutalist weapons of colonial land theft, roadmaps for ethnic cleansing and genocide. It is a false idol that has taken the transcendent idea of the Promised Land, a metaphor for human liberation that has traveled across faiths to every corner of this globe, and dared to turn it into a deed of sale for a militarist ethnostate.

Political Zionism’s version of liberation is itself profane. From the start, it required the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and ancestral lands in the Nakba. From the start, it has been at war with collective dreams of liberation. At a seder, it is worth remembering that this includes the dreams of liberation and self-determination of the Egyptian people. This false idol of Zionism has long equated Israeli safety with Egyptian dictatorship and unfreedom and client state. From the start, it has produced an ugly kind of freedom that saw Palestinian children not as human beings, but as demographic threats, much as the Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus feared the growing population of Israelites and thus ordered the death of their sons. And as we know, Moses was saved from that by being put in a basket and adopted by an Egyptian woman.

Zionism has brought us to our present moment of cataclysm, and it is time that we say clearly it has always been leading us here. It is a false idol that has led far too many of our own people down a deeply immoral path that now has them justifying the shredding of core commandments — “Thou shall not kill,” “Thou shall not steal,” “Thou shall not covet” — the commandments brought down from the mount. It is a false idol that equates Jewish freedom with cluster bombs that kill and maim Palestinian children.

Zionism is a false idol that has betrayed every Jewish value, including the value that we place on questioning a practice embedded in the seder itself with its four questions asked by the youngest child. It also betrays the love that we have as a people for text and for education. Today this false idol dares to justify the bombing of every single university in Gaza, the destruction of countless schools, of archives, of printing presses, the killing of hundreds of academics, scholars, journalists, poets, essayists. This is what Palestinians call scholasticide, the killing of the infrastructure and the means of education.

Meanwhile, in this city, the universities call the NYPD and barricade themselves against the grave threat posed by their own students asking them —

CROWD: Shame!

NAOMI KLEIN: — students embodying the spirit of the seder, asking the most basic question, asking questions like “How can you claim to believe in anything at all, least of all us, while you enable, invest in and collaborate with this genocide?”

The false idol of Zionism has been allowed to grow unchecked for far too long. So tonight we say it ends here. Our Judaism cannot be contained by an ethnostate, for our Judaism is internationalist by its very nature. Our Judaism cannot be protected by the rampaging military of that ethnostate, for all that military does is sow sorrow and reap hatred, including hatred against us as Jews. Our Judaism is not threatened by people raising their voices in solidarity with Palestine across lines of race, ethnicity, physical ability, gender identity and generations. Our Judaism is one of those voices and knows that in this chorus lies both our safety and our collective liberation.

Our Judaism is the Judaism of the Passover Seder, the gathering in ceremony to share food and wine with loved ones and strangers alike. This ritual, light enough to carry on our backs, in need of nothing but one another, even with — we don’t need walls. We need no temple, no rabbi. And there is a role for everyone, including especially the smallest child. The seder is portable, a diaspora technology if ever there was one. It is made to hold our collective grieving, our contemplation, our questioning, our remembering, and our reviving and rekindling of the revolutionary spirit.

So, tonight — so, look around. This here is our Judaism. As waters rise and forests burn and nothing is certain, we pray at the altar of solidarity and mutual aid, no matter the cost. We don’t need or want the false idol of Zionism. We want freedom from the project that commits genocide in our name. We want freedom from the ideology that has no plan for peace, except for deals with the murderous, theocratic petrostates next door, while selling the technologies of robo-assassinations to the world. We seek to liberate Judaism from an ethnostate that wants Jews to be perennially afraid, that wants our children afraid, that wants us to believe that the world is against us so that we go running to its fortress, or at least keep sending the weapons and the donations.

That is a false idol. And it’s not just Netanyahu. It’s the world he made and the world that made him. It’s Zionism. What are we? We, in these streets for months and months, we are the exodus, the exodus from Zionism. So, to the Chuck Schumers of this world, we do not say, “Let our people go.” We say, “We have already gone, and your kids, they are with us now.”

AMY GOODMAN: Award-winning journalist and author Naomi Klein, speaking at what was called the “Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel” on Tuesday at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, a block from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s home. Special thanks to Hana Elias, Eric Halvarson and Ishmael Daro of Democracy Now!

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Months Ago State Dept. Panel Exposed Israeli Units’ Rights Abuses, But U.S. Arms Keep Flowing
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 24, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/24/ ... transcript

Months ago, a State Department panel urged the Biden administration to disqualify multiple Israeli military and police units from receiving U.S. aid over serious human rights abuses, including rape and torture. According to ProPublica, Secretary of State Blinken received the recommendation in December but has still not taken any action. “[Israeli] Prime Minister Netanyahu, Benny Gantz, they have been publicly and fiercely lobbying against any proposed sanctions,” says ProPublica reporter Brett Murphy. “Gantz said he called Blinken personally and they talked about it. They want him to reverse course.”

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.

Months ago, a State Department panel urged the Biden administration to disqualify multiple Israeli military and police units from receiving U.S. aid over serious human rights abuses, including rape and torture. That’s according to an article in ProPublica which reports that Secretary of State Blinken received the recommendation in December but has still not taken any action.

We’re joined now by Brett Murphy, reporter for ProPublica, where his latest pieces are ”Netanyahu Resists U.S. Plan to Cut Off Aid to Israeli Military Unit” and ”Blinken Is Sitting on Staff Recommendations to Sanction Israeli Military Units Linked to Killings or Rapes.”

Brett, welcome back to Democracy Now! So, this latest piece, lay out what is this State Department panel that made this recommendation, and talk about what Blinken has done since.

BRETT MURPHY: Yeah, it’s a very special panel. It’s unique to Israel. Other countries do not have this sort of consideration. And what it’s supposed to do is review allegations, allegations of a gross human rights violation. That could be an extrajudicial killing. That could be a rape. And they look at public reports, and then they see if the Israeli government has held the individual perpetrators accountable. If they haven’t, if they haven’t held them accountable, then they’re supposed to make a recommendation, make a recommendation to either stop giving aid to that specific unit or to continue allowing aid to go to that unit.

This has never happened in the history of Israel. Almost every other country where we give foreign assistance to, they have units who are disqualified from that type of aid, but not Israel. Finally this happened in December for the first time ever. Recommendations went up to Blinken to sanction specific units inside of the Israeli military. But for months now he has not done anything with those recommendations.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Brett, could you talk about one of those units, Netzah Yehuda, the country’s all-male, ultra-Orthodox battalion?

BRETT MURPHY: Yeah. So, Juan, there has been some reporting over the weekend that one of the units that went to Blinken was Netzah Yehuda. This is an ultra-Orthodox, all-male battalion. It had been operating largely in the West Bank for years. It was founded around 1999. And for years it’s been accused of human rights abuses, shooting civilians, beating civilians, so much so that a few years ago it was actually removed by the government of Israel from the West Bank and relocated to the Golan Heights.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And also, could you, for those who are not familiar with the Leahy Amendment, the 1997 law that requires the United States to cut off financial aid to — or, military aid to units that are accused, credibly accused, of human rights violations?

BRETT MURPHY: Sure. So, the Leahy Law was developed specifically to address specific units inside of any foreign government. There are other laws on the books that are much broader, much more general, but they’ve never been implemented in a systematic way, so the Leahy Law wanted to address that. Senator Leahy and others thought if the State Department could identify specific units inside of these governments and then disqualify them from receiving aid, then that would have, you know, more of a salutary effect than they had been seeing with previous laws.

Like I was saying before, most other countries have to apply for aid on a unit-by-unit basis, so they will first ask the State Department if they can use American financing for equipment, arms, training, that sort of thing, and then the State Department will review that unit, see if they’re on the no-fly list, if they’ve been disqualified. But for Israel, Egypt, it’s different. They receive so much aid, so much financing, that the State Department has been largely blind to what specific units are using that aid. That’s why they came up with this forum, this amendment in 2019. This forum was meant to kind of look back and address specifically which units should be disqualified, and then we would give that list over to the governments of Israel and Egypt.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, just to be clear, Brett, we’ve heard in the last days that Biden is cutting off aid to the ultra-Orthodox unit. Talk about — was there a meeting between Blinken and Benny Gantz? Is this aid being cut off?

BRETT MURPHY: So, he’s been asked — Secretary Blinken has been asked several times, as well as his spokespersons, what’s the status of those cases. And he has so far punted. And we know over the weekend Prime Minister Netanyahu, Benny Gantz, they have been publicly and fiercely lobbying against any proposed sanctions. Benny Gantz said he called Blinken personally and they talked about it. They want him to reverse course.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Brett Murphy, reporter for ProPublica, where his latest pieces are ”Netanyahu Resists U.S. Plan to Cut Off Aid to Israeli Military Unit” and ”Blinken Is Sitting on Staff Recommendations to Sanction Israeli Military Units Linked to Killings or Rapes.”

[admin]

Bodies Recovered at Mass Graves in Nasser Hospital Bear Signs of Torture, Mutilation & Execution
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 25, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/25/ ... transcript

Bergen-Belsen 1945.
George Rodger The LIFE Picture Collection

At least 320 bodies have been discovered buried in a mass grave at the destroyed Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, just weeks after a similar mass grave containing up to 400 bodies was discovered amid the ruins of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Some of the bodies, which include children, medical staff and patients, appear to have been executed or buried alive. Meanwhile, Israel continues its bombardment of Gaza as its assault of the beleaguered enclave surpasses 200 days. “Every single body that is being unearthed, you find tens of people rushing for the sake of identifying whether those are their relatives,” says Akram al-Satarri, a journalist based in Gaza. “Some of the people were tied. Some of the people had medical accessories on their hands, like the cannulas. And when they were unearthed from the ground, it was apparent that they were buried alive. Some people were tortured. Some of the bodies were extremely mutilated, which means that those bodies, some of their organs were taken by the Israeli occupation.”

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: In Gaza, medics and Civil Defense workers are still recovering bodies from mass graves found at the Nasser Medical Complex for the sixth day in a row following Israel’s siege on the hospital. Over 320 bodies have so far been discovered, including women, children, patients and medical staff, according to Al Jazeera. Another mass grave with up to 400 bodies was discovered weeks earlier at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Civil Defense officials have said bodies were found stacked together and showed indications of field executions or being buried alive. The United Nations and the European Union have called for an independent probe into the mass graves, and the White House on Wednesday also called for an investigation.

This comes as Israel continues its bombardment of Gaza, with at least 43 people killed over the last 24 hours, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. At least five of them were killed in the southern city of Rafah, where Israel has conducted near-daily airstrikes as it prepares for an offensive in the city.

AMY GOODMAN: A spokesperson for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government told Reuters Israel is moving ahead with a ground operation in Rafah, but gave no timeline. An unnamed Israeli defense official said Israel had bought 40,000 tents, each able to hold between 10 and 12 people, to house Palestinians evacuated from Rafah ahead of its assault on the city. Israeli news outlets report Israel will forcibly evacuate civilians to the nearby city of Khan Younis, which has been virtually destroyed by Israeli forces. Over 1.3 million Palestinians are seeking shelter in Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza.

We go now to Rafah, in Gaza, where we’re joined by Akram al-Satarri, a journalist based in Gaza.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Akram. Just moments ago, Palestinian officials held a press conference in Rafah regarding the mass graves at the Nasser Medical Complex. Can you tell us the latest? I know there’s a delay in the broadcast.

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Good morning, Amy, to you and all the viewers.

I have just come back from Khan Younis area. I was at Nasser Hospital. I spoke to the Civil Defense official who’s now giving this press conference about the situation in Nasser Hospital and about the number of the people who were killed, the way they were killed, and an account of the potential suffering they had been seeing even before they did.

It looks like the mass graves, the three different mass graves, are containing around 700 bodies. Up to this particular moment, around 400 bodies were unearthed and discovered. Around 300 bodies or even more are still in the ground. The bulldozer — one bulldozer, because of the very limited resources, working — is working there for the sake of just digging out the bodies.

Family members are lined up there. Family members are trying and rushing with passion and with great deal of sorrow to identify the bodies of their dears. Some of them managed to identify the bodies. Then you hear the outcry. You hear the people screaming, crying and mourning the death of their dears. But at the very same time, they feel a little bit relief, because they finally found the body of their dears.

I spoke to a mother who’s around 42, 43 years old. She was trying to identify her son. And then she found the body of her son. She was crying. The sister also, her daughter, was crying. And they were calling for the family to come and join them in the burial, because in our culture as Muslims and Arabs, we find a burial as the best fitting homage for the people who are dead.

People are continuously digging out the bodies. People are continuously — and this is very ironic — they’re trying to save the dead. People, when they die, are supposed to be resting in peace. And I was saying that people in Gaza, when they die, they’re neither resting nor in peace. The bodies, those bodies, were collected twice by the Israeli occupation forces. They were taken for some forensic investigation. They were returned to Nasser Hospital. They’re stockpiled in this very big hall, three different halls. And then they were buried. And then, a second time, the Israeli occupation forces came back to Nasser Hospital. They invaded all different departments of the hospital. They targeted the specialized surgery department, the reception and emergency. And they once again unearthed those hundreds of bodies and took them once again. And then they returned them to this mass grave or mass graves. So, the suffering even for the dead people in Gaza is still continuous.

And the heartache for their families is nonstop. Every single body that is being unearthed, you find tens of people rushing for the sake of identifying whether those are their relatives or otherwise. You see also many families looking into these individual graves in the Nasser Hospital area. You see written on the tombstone that “This guy is a tall guy. He has long hair. He’s wearing a gray shirt. And this is all we know.” And then it’s up to the family to try and to find and for people to recall what their dears were wearing the day they were parting from them, what were they wearing the day they were killed. So, a very emotionally draining process.

The numbers are quite shocking. But the account of the loss and the death that led to that eventual mass grave is extremely shocking, where some of the people — like you have just said, some of the people were tied. Some of the people had medical accessories on their hands, like the cannulas. And when they were unearthed from the ground, it was apparent that they were buried alive. Some people were tortured. Some of the bodies were extremely mutilated, which means that those bodies, some of their organs were taken by the Israeli occupation. Some lost their eyes. I could see some bodies with no eyes. I could see some bodies with no liver, with no kidney, some bodies that are — you see them, like the outer skin is just covering the skeleton, and that’s it. So, the account of that experience is quite heart-wrenching.

The families that have been suffering for the sake of just identifying their dears are also broken. They have been crying. But at least they say, “We feel comfortable because we found our dear.” So, it gives you an insight, a glimpse, into the suffering people of Gaza have been living. It gives you a glimpse into the bereavement the women, men, children and girls in Gaza have been experiencing for the last six months also.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Akram al-Satarri, just for our audience to know, you know, whenever we speak to you, we have — there’s this constant noise around you, and those are drones, of course, flying overhead, as they have been for months now. But if you could respond? You know, the European Union, the United Nations and now also the United States have called for an independent investigation into these mass graves. So, your response to that? And we’re speaking to you in Rafah. If you could also describe what conditions there are on the ground?

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Well, as to the independent scrutiny or investigation committee that needs to be developed, I’ve been working in journalism for around 16 years now. I have been hearing about the independent committees, commissions, inquiries, fact-finding committees and international reports and tribunals about the situation in Gaza, looking into the particular details of the incidents that were taking place, investigating the death of several people in mass killing incidents, including the war in 2008, the war in 2014 and the war in 2021. I have been hearing a book about Gaza and the war in Gaza from 2014, and I was reading the exact words that I’m going to say now: “Palestinians struggle to dig out the bodies.” So, this is something that happened in 2014. This is something that happened in 2008. This is something that happened in ’21, ’22 and is still happening throughout 2023 and 2024.

The international community has failed to preserve and — to preserve and observe the dictates of the international humanitarian law. The humanity at large is facing a challenge. All the political systems worldwide are asked now and expected to do something tangible for the sake of just saving the Gaza Strip. Rhetoric is no longer needed. Rhetoric is no longer satisfactory. We need them to do something tangible to stop the things that are happening in Gaza.

Some of the things that Gazans are suggesting, the no-fly zone to protect the civilians in Gaza. Some of the things that Gazans are suggesting, that Israel should be held accountable for what they call crimes that were committed against the humanity, against people, against civilians. The international humanitarian law is rich with terms and vocab that are related to the, what they call the civil objects, civil objects that are protected, journalists that are protected, medical teams that are supposed to be protected, medical facilities that are supposed also to be protected. But when you review the shocking numbers about the way that the journalists are being killed, for instance, the medical teams are being killed, for instance, you conclude that the international community is failing so far to do something tangible, rather than the statements, the condemnations, the calls for independent inquiries or commissions to look into the investigation. We need something tangible. And that something tangible has not been achieved so far. And Gazans have been dying constantly because of that.

Something should be done. Something swift should be done. Otherwise, the death would continue. Now in Gaza today, 79 people were killed. And an average number of around 65 to 79 is killed every day. And if nothing is done, this means the international community accepts the killing of Gazans and accepts the justification of Israel to continue that killing. [coughs] Sorry.

And when it comes to the situation in Rafah, in Rafah, around 1.4 to 1.2 million, because of the influx of people from Rafah in the last few days. People are so scared because of the looming ground operation. They understand that the Israeli occupation is going to target them, and they understand that death would be chasing them. So some of them moved from Rafah. Around 150,000 Gazans have already left Rafah and moved to the area in al-Mawasi, a buffer zone between Rafah and Khan Younis, in the hope that they would survive. The ones who are in Rafah and the ones who are in Khan Younis and the ones in Gaza, at the entirety of Gaza, are all IDPs, around 2.1 million IDPs, because of the destruction of the infrastructure, the destruction of the homes, the destruction of the streets, and because of the continuous bombardment that has been taking their life. And those people are living in areas that have no infrastructure. No infrastructure means that they don’t have water supplies that are regular. They don’t have sewage systems. They don’t have food. They don’t have even drinkable water with which they can cook the food. They don’t have houses. They’re living in tents. And today is a very hot day. Today and yesterday were very hot days in this specific season. And now people in the tents are struggling. They are sweating all day. The children that have respiratory — even the adults that have some respiratory disorders are suffering more than any other people, and this suffering is continuous.

And this situation, when it comes to the humanitarian situation in Gaza, is unbearable, unimaginable and unacceptable. When I tell you the situation is unimaginable, because, for me, some parts of Gaza and some part of those camps that I have seen, the suffering of the people is unimaginable. You will see them living just by the minimum, and even there is no minimum. And they have no other choice to continue living and waiting and hoping some solution would be developed or concluded sometime soon. This is the truth about the situation, something I have never seen in my life, let alone someone who’s living thousands of miles away from Gaza.

People are buried in the streets. People are buried on the pavement. People are buried everywhere, in their homes. And some of the bodies, around 10,000 bodies, are in Gaza, are still under the rubble, and they have not been retrieved so far. You walk down the streets, and you smell death everywhere. You go to the hospital, that is supposed to be the temple of protection and humanity, you find the hospital totally devastated by death. You find the patients, who were supposed to be receiving the medical treatments, buried within the hospital. And you smell their decomposed bodies after the bodies were desecrated and unearthed. And wherever you turn your face, you see the children, you see the adults, you see the women and the men, the girls and the boys, suffering from that unjust situation that is still continuous. And no one single international power could stop that or bring an end to that ongoing suffering and misery.

AMY GOODMAN: Akram al-Satarri, we want to thank you so much for being with us. Be safe. Akram is a Gaza-based journalist, speaking to us from Rafah.

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Amnesty International: Global Breakdown of Int’l Law Amid Flagrant War Crimes in Gaza & Beyond
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 25, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/25/ ... transcript

Amnesty International has released its annual report assessing human rights in 155 countries. The report highlights Israel’s assault on Gaza with evidence of war crimes continuing to mount, as well as U.S. failures to denounce rights violations committed by Israel. It also points to Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine, and the rise of authoritarianism and massive rights violations in Sudan, Ethiopia and Myanmar. We speak to Agnès Callamard, the organization’s secretary general, who warns “the international system is on the brink of collapse” and decries the failure of rights mechanisms and Israel’s top ally, the United States, to rein in its “unprecedented” assault on 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, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: “The world is reaping a harvest of terrifying consequences from escalating conflict and the near breakdown of international law,” Amnesty International said yesterday as it launched its annual report on human rights in 155 countries. The report highlights Israel’s assault on Gaza with evidence of war crimes continuing to mount, as well as U.S. failures to denounce rights violations committed by Israel. It also called out Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine and pointed to the rise of authoritarianism and massive rights violations in Sudan, Ethiopia and Myanmar.

AMY GOODMAN: Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard said, quote, “Israel’s flagrant disregard for international law is compounded by the failures of its allies to stop the indescribable civilian bloodshed meted out in Gaza. Many of those allies were the very architects of that post-World War II system of law,” end-quote. Well, Agnès Callamard joins us now from London.

Welcome to Democracy Now! We so appreciate you being on with us. If you can start off by talking about the situation in Gaza right now? You just heard in our previous segment the Gaza-based journalist describing the discovery of the hundreds of bodies in a mass grave at the Nasser Medical Complex following Israel’s siege of the hospital. What are you calling for right now?

AGNÈS CALLAMARD: Thank you very much for welcoming me on your program.

You know, I have listened to the journalist, and what can we — what can I add more? Since October 7, we have been documented a plethora of violations committed, first by Hamas and then by the Israeli authorities. But in particular, the Israeli authorities have been — you know, have committed an extraordinary amount of violations of international law, the indiscriminate and targeted bombing of civilians. We know now that there is at least 30,000 of them that have been killed. Seventy percent of the infrastructure of Gaza have been destroyed. I’m talking civilian infrastructure — schools, hospitals, cemeteries, cultural institutions. We know that there has been the highest number of journalists killed in any conflict, the highest number of humanitarian workers killed in any conflict. We know that famine is being used as a weapon of war. We know that collective punishment has been waged against the Palestinian people. And we also know of, you know, clear evidence of extrajudicial killings, as highlighted by the discovery of those mass graves, that are coming on top of all the detentions and use of torture and ill-treatment. So, the scale of the violations committed over the last six months is unprecedented. And I want to insist on that. It is unprecedented. The harm to civilians is unprecedented.

And what is making matters worse is that this is all broadcasted every day in front of our very eyes, and yet nothing — nothing — is being done to prevent that bloodshed. The United States has been using its right of veto at the Security Council to prevent any kind of meaningful intervention. It has shielded Israel from the denunciation that was required. It has protected them. It has pretended for the longest period of time that no violations were committed.

This is why Amnesty International is concluding that the international system is on the brink of collapse right now. International law is not just violated. People who are violating international law are justifying their violations. And that means they are pretending that international law either has no meaning or does not apply to them. But whatever intention they have, the outcome is the emptying out of international law, the emptying out of the Geneva Convention, that was supposed to regulate war, the emptying out of the Genocide Convention, the emptying out of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the completely uselessness of the Security Council. We have an International Court of Justice that could play a role, and yet its rulings are being ignored. So, all in all, coming on the heels of Russia’s aggression of Ukraine, the only conclusion that we can reach is that the international system is collapsing and that the world is being plunged back to where we were promised will happen again.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Agnès Callamard, we want to go to U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who on Wednesday called for an investigation into the mass graves at Nasser Hospital.

JAKE SULLIVAN: We have been in touch at multiple levels with the Israeli government. We want answers. We want to understand exactly what happened. You have seen some public commentary from the IDF on that, but we want to know the specifics of what the circumstances of this were. And we want to see this thoroughly and transparently investigated, so that the whole world can have a comprehensive answer, and we, the United States, can, as well.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, that’s Jake Sullivan speaking Wednesday. If you could respond to that, and what kind of investigation you believe needs to happen? And who should conduct this investigation?

AGNÈS CALLAMARD: Well, first and foremost, Amnesty International and others have been calling for those investigations for a very long time. The journalist that was speaking before me pointed out that those investigations have been called on since 2014, and nothing has ever happened. You cannot rely on the Israeli authorities to deliver any kind of meaningful investigation.

Right now no one can enter Gaza. No one can provide the expertise required for this investigation. We have mass graves. People are looking — and that’s absolutely humane — are looking for their loved ones, which means that the crime scene itself is going to be meaningless within a few hours or a few days. There are absolutely nobody there who can protect the crime scene, who can provide the necessary expertise so that at least we have a sense of how people died, when did they die, and the kind of violations that have been perpetrated against them. So, yes, we want an investigation, but I don’t think this is a genuine demand for an investigation. People know that mass graves are extremely fragile. And right now there are probably no crime scene left to be investigated effectively.

But we don’t need that investigation to conclude that Israel has been committing war crimes after war crimes after war crimes. We have plenty of evidence since October 7 of many of those violations. We at Amnesty International have documented, with good evidence, indiscriminate shelling of civilians. We know from people on the ground that almost all civilians’ infrastructures have been destroyed. And this cannot be justified just by the notion of military objective, of military necessity. We have the evidence required to conclude that Israel has, you know, repeatedly, repeatedly, to an extent unprecedented, unprecedented extent, violated international law.

It is now time for the United States, more than time — it’s too late, in fact — for the United States to take a stand, to denounce Israel’s violations, to stop arming Israel — because that’s what they are still doing — and to do everything in their power to put an end to this bloodshed, to the killings of the Palestinians that we are all witnessing, that we are all made to witness.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk, Dr. Callamard, about the U.S. disconnect of the Biden administration, on the one hand calling vaguely for a ceasefire and saying, from Blinken to President Biden, their hearts are broken when it comes to Palestinian casualties, but on the other hand continuing to supply the weapons?

AGNÈS CALLAMARD: It’s not a disconnect. I think it’s very well organized and very well scripted. You know, they are making some sound that they feel they have to make, but that has absolutely no impact on their actions. We are now middle of April. A month ago, finally, the United States agreed to a ceasefire, adding, though, that it was nonbinding. So, you know, that also shows that their heart was not really into the ceasefire.

AMY GOODMAN: The last one, the U.S. abstained.

AGNÈS CALLAMARD: Yes, and insisting that the ceasefire was actually not — that the resolution was nonbinding. They have had plenty of opportunities since October 7 to demand a ceasefire, but they use their right of veto to stop it — and let me add, and as well as the release of all hostages. So, you know, it’s not a disconnect. I think it’s a very well-planned, very well-scripted commitment to support Israel all the way, including to a possible genocide, because let’s recall that the International Court of Justice has concluded that the risks of genocide were extremely high. And we have every evidence in front of us of those risks. Indeed, some eminent legal scholars have concluded that genocide was already occurring.

So the United States is providing support to a country that is violating international law repeatedly, that is justifying those violations in the name of going after Hamas, without due respect for the proportionality and the discrimination that should accompany their actions. By so doing, the United States is making itself complicit to some of the worst possible crimes being committed right now.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Dr. Agnès Callamard, if you could put this in the wider context of what your report finds? You’ve said that the world is facing the demise of the 1948 international order created after the Second World War —

AGNÈS CALLAMARD: Yeah.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: — amid both the conflict in Gaza and in Ukraine. If you could elaborate on your conclusions?

AGNÈS CALLAMARD: Sure. So, I’ve already highlighted what’s happening in Gaza and how Israel is violating international law and is justifying those violations. This is coming hot on the heels of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, itself a violation of the U.N. Charter. Russia, too, is justifying its violation of international law. It’s justifying its violation of the U.N. Charter in the name of some kind of vision of its own security. Russia, too, has been justifying its repeated violations of international Geneva Convention through its bombardment of Ukrainians, through the forced transfer of populations. So, over the last 14 — 24 months, we have seen some of the main superpowers in this world claiming that the international legal system that was established after World War II does not apply to them. We have seen Russia doing that. We have seen Israel doing that. And we have seen the United States doing that by proxy through its support to Israel.

Those institutions that were established after World War II, including the Security Council and, later on, the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, these are the backbone of preventing the very worst happening to the world. And those institutions have been rendered, you know, useless, really. The Security Council cannot do anything for peace and security because of the abuse of the veto power. The International Court of Justice is delivering very strong rulings that everyone is ignoring. The International Criminal Court is delivering warrants, including against President Putin, that most people are ignoring. So, those institutions, that are supposed to protect us all, are not protecting us anymore.

And the international legal framework, the international normative framework, is being progressively emptied out through those actions and through the justification of those violations. When Israel is saying, “International law does not apply to us because we have a well-founded military objective and military necessity,” they are pretending that this military necessity takes precedence over everything. That is not the case. That is not the case. When Russia is saying, “International U.N. Charter does not apply to us because of whatever NATO may be doing,” they are also emptying out the U.N. Charter. That is not the purpose of the U.N. Charter. That is not there to be violated by Russia in that way.

So, the entire legal normative framework right now is at risk of completely collapsing. And what do we have instead? Nothing. We have the power of the arms, the weapons. And, you know, we are basically going back to our pre-1940 situation. We are back to where we were supposed not to ever, ever again go back to.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And if you could also talk about, you know, a number of places that the report highlights that receive very little media attention, Myanmar and Sudan? If you could talk about the massive rights violations going on there?

AGNÈS CALLAMARD: Yes, absolutely. And that, too, I should have mentioned. These are the so-called forgotten crises. They are characterized by massive violations by parties to that conflict. Sudan, in particular, has seen thousands of people dead over the last 12 months, the largest number of people, refugees, abroad in a very short period of time, the massive use of sexual violence, ethnic violence. And finally, when the Security Council took action — it took them almost a year — their resolution has been completely ignored. So, the suffering in Sudan is falling off the international agenda, and yet it is extremely, extremely heartbreaking.

In Myanmar, there, the military government has been protected by China. We finally saw the Security Council a year and a half ago taking a resolution, that was quite timid but a first step. But, meanwhile, the militaries have been armed by China. They have continued their indiscriminate or even targeted attacks on civilians throughout the territory. Hundreds of people have been arrested, tortured. Even political prisoners have been condemned to death and sentenced to death and killed. That’s the situation in Myanmar.

I’m not mentioning the Democratic Republic of Congo, that has completely fallen the agenda for the last 20, 30 years, and yet it is probably the longest-ever crisis, again, where no one is taking action or the kind of action that is being required.

So, the forgotten crises around the world are multiplying. They are increasing, in fact. According to the experts, we are witnessing an increase in the number of armed conflicts around the world — a reflection of a very unstable international system, a reflection of the conflict between the three superpowers vying for hegemony — the United States, Russia and China. And the multiplication of those conflicts by proxy, I will say, between them, is costed in human lives, in hundreds and thousands, millions of human lives around the world.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Agnès Callamard, if you can talk about the alarm that you’re sounding in this report on artificial intelligence and its role in furthering racism, discrimination, division during public elections? You note the dominance of Big Tech risks a “supercharging” of human rights violations. Talk about what you see as the dangers.

AGNÈS CALLAMARD: Absolutely. So, we know that over the last 12 months we have seen generative artificial intelligence coming into our almost daily reality. It is a technology that no one really fully understands, certainly not politicians and policymakers. It is one that is completely unregulated as of now. And if what has happened with artificial intelligence, nongenerative one, is to be the benchmark by which to assess what is going to happen in the future, then we need to be very worried.

Over the last few years, Amnesty International has been monitoring how artificial intelligence, you know, through, for instance, platforms, social media platforms, in facial recognitions, through the spywares, all of those technologies have had a disastrous impact on human rights. Over the last 12 months in Facebook, for instance, platforms have been used to launch and to spread ethnic violence in Ethiopia. In Serbia, we have documented that semiautomated algorithms have been used, particularly in the context of the provision of public social assistance, in ways that has discriminated against Roma people and people with disability.

Spywares, that were denounced, that have been denounced since 2020, 2021, with the Pegasus Project, well, guess what: In 2023, we found more evidence of Pegasus being used in many countries around the world, including India, where we’re going to have elections coming up. So, the control of the spyware is not happening. In addition to Pegasus, that continue to be used around the world, we have monitored this year the use of the Predator Files, which is EU, European-based. And that, too, has been used and sold around the world, including against journalists, activists, human rights defenders.

So, abusive facial recognition, abusive mass surveillance, abusive use of spyware, all of those things are extremely dangerous for human rights, including in a context where there is a multiplication of armed conflict. And they should be the object of moratorium. We are calling, as well, on those Big Tech companies, whose business model is feeding the multiplication of data, of certain kind of data — we are calling on them, as well, A, to be much better regulated than they are now, but also to take action to regulate their own content.

But it’s the Wild West. It’s the Wild West in a context of the collapse of the international system. This is why we are sounding the alarm. I mean, you know, as of today, we have the international system on the brink of collapse. We have an industrial revolution, a revolution of information technology, that no one is regulating effectively and that has the potential to run, you know, a major disaster for societies. It is more than time — more than time — to wake up to the reality that we are confronting, if we want to deliver to our children and grandchildren a safer planet. I haven’t even mentioned the climate crisis in the midst of it all. So, I’m sorry if I’m being very apocalyptic here, but I think people need to wake up to that, to the reality that we are really, really facing an incredibly serious, dangerous situation for all of us.

AMY GOODMAN: Agnès Callamard, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Amnesty International secretary general, speaking to us from London.

***

Hundreds Arrested: Students Across U.S. Protest for Palestine as Campus Crackdown Intensifies
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 25, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/25/ ... transcript

Student protests calling for university divestment from Israel and the U.S. arms industry have rocked campuses from coast to coast. The nonviolent protests, which have been characterized as “antisemitic” for their criticism of Israel, have been met with an intensifying police crackdown as university administrators threaten academic discipline and arrests. On Wednesday, local and state troopers violently arrested dozens at the University of Texas at Austin. Meanwhile, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson visited Columbia University in New York City, the site of a high-profile student encampment and one of the first to be met with police action, where he called on university president Minouche Shafik to resign. We hear from two Jewish students involved in protests at their schools. Joshua Sklar, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin and an organizer with Jewish Voice of Peace Austin, says concern over campus antisemitism is insincere, and that, in fact, “The people who are being targeted are Muslim students, Arab students, and especially Palestinian students.” Sklar and Sarah King, a member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest who was arrested at the campus’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment, also point out that a large percentage of protesters are Jewish anti-Zionists concerned about their safety from state repression. “The threat is really coming from Columbia University, which has set the police on hundreds of its students who are entrusted to its care,” says King.

Transcript

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

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza have rocked campuses from coast to coast over the past week amid an intensifying police crackdown. At the University of Texas in Austin, school officials called in local and state police, including some on horseback, who violently broke up a student encampment on campus. At least 50 people were arrested, including at least one journalist. Some faculty at UT Austin are going on strike today to protest the police crackdown.

Meanwhile, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University continues a week after over a hundred students were arrested in a failed attempt by the university administration to clear the demonstration. University President Minouche Shafik had said on Tuesday — had set on Tuesday a midnight deadline to reach an agreement on clearing an encampment, but the school extended negotiations for another 48 hours. On a visit to campus Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson called on Shafik to resign.

SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: I am here today joining my colleagues in calling on President Shafik to resign if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos. As speaker of the House, I am committing today that the Congress will not be silent as Jewish students are expected to run for their lives and stay home from their classes, hiding in fear.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined in New York by Sarah King, member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest. She is Jewish, one of the students arrested at the encampment last week who’s now suspended. We’re also joined by Joshua Sklar, a graduate student at University of Texas Austin, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace Austin, who was at Wednesday’s protest.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Josh, there were more than 50 arrests at UT Austin. If you can respond to the House speaker, who’s saying that these encampments around the country are antisemitic and pro-Hamas?

JOSHUA SKLAR: It’s absolutely ridiculous. I was there with a contingent of Jewish students, and we were received very warmly. There were even Jewish Zionists there, and they were not harassed at all. In fact, I would say that they probably felt safer than the majority of protesters.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Sarah King, if you could describe what’s happening now at Columbia University and your own position? You were suspended?

SARAH KING: Yes, I was one of the over 100 students who was arrested as part of a peaceful protest in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, and I’m one of the student who’s been suspended, as well, so I’m currently not allowed to be on campus. And I have to say it’s — the camp itself is very beautiful. It’s been a real place of interfaith celebration and solidarity, in support of the people of Gaza, who are now at over 200 days of genocide. But, you know, the threat is really coming from Columbia University, which has sent the police on hundreds of its students who are entrusted to its care.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk, Sarah, about what’s happened, how you got suspended and your treatment? I’ve been talking to a number of Columbia and Barnard students who said that some of them were given 15 minutes to get out of their dorm, and your meal card canceled, as you’re banned from campus, as well.

SARAH KING: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I’m one of the lucky ones, because I live off campus. But many students live in Columbia housing, and so they were evicted from their homes or locked out from their homes, probably illegally in many cases. We’re looking into it. And they lost access to their normal food. I had an undergraduate who is low-income and was staying with me, because she was evicted with no notice and lost access to her meal plan.

And it’s really very concerning the way Columbia uses the threat of — initially it was just — “just,” quote-unquote — the threat of housing, the threat of loss of food to try to — you know, as a cudgel to get students into the correct political line that is best for its pocketbook, its investment portfolio. And now they’re threatening to set the National Guard on us, risking another Jackson State, another Kent State, where students have been killed because the National Guard were set on students. And they’re willing to risk the threat of violence at their hands because we’re not, you know, consistent with what’s best for their board of trustees or for their portfolios.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Sarah, what about your response to Mike Johnson being invited to speak at Columbia University on campus yesterday?

SARAH KING: Yeah. I mean, first, I think it’s shameful that he was allowed there. Like, I myself am not allowed on campus. I’m, you know, one of many talented and promising students with bright futures who have been banned from campus, but Mike Johnson, who is an open racist and white supremacist, along with people like Gavin McInnes, the head of the Proud Boys, they were welcomed on campus yesterday.

And to me, that really tells the story of what’s at stake here, which is that, you know, the students fighting for Palestinian liberation are part of an interracial coalition — so many Jewish students, Muslim students, Black, Brown, Arab students — working together for the cause of freedom, on one side, and then, on the other side, you have political opportunists, like the House speaker, who, you know, will take any excuse they can get to come after that kind of interfaith, multigenerational coalition fighting for freedom. And right now it happens to be under the guise of something like antisemitism. But, you know, there’s no substance to it at all. And I think anybody who came to campus and saw, the worst prosecution that the Jewish students on campus are facing is from Columbia University. We were disproportionately banned by Columbia because so many of us are part of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment trying to prevent a genocide in our name.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Joshua Sklar, wrote a piece in The Austin Chronicle. “We need a ceasefire now,” it was called, the subtitle, “Anti-Palestinian violence is not 'on the other side of the globe.' It’s here in Austin, too.” If you can talk about that and how protesters were treated yesterday? You had riot police on horseback?

JOSHUA SKLAR: Yeah. I think that there’s been this narrative that there’s been rampant antisemitism. And this simply is not the case. The people who are being targeted are Muslim students, Arab students, and especially Palestinian students. Police came in on horseback, and they attacked protesters. I heard from other students that during an earlier part of the protest, they were clearly targeting Brown people and women. I wasn’t there personally, but this is what I heard.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask Sarah King a final question. We have 10 seconds. And that is, 48-hour extension goes ’til tonight. What are the plans? Ten seconds, Sarah.

SARAH KING: You know, I think most of the people at the encampment have already agreed to risk arrest, and they won’t move unless moved by force or until Columbia concedes to our demands, which are for divestment, amnesty and financial transparency.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you both for being with us, Sarah King, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and Joshua Sklar at UT Austin. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

[admin]

Gaza Freedom Flotilla: Activists Blocked from Sailing to Gaza But Vow to Keep Trying to Break Siege
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
APRIL 29, 2024

Transcript

Hundreds of activists aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla were blocked in Turkey on Saturday as they attempted to set sail for the besieged Palestinian territory with 5,500 tons of aid. Organizers say Guinea-Bissau withdrew its flagged ships under pressure from Israel and the United States. The Gaza Freedom Flotilla brings together a “cross-section of humanity” in hundreds of community leaders from all walks of life to raise awareness of Israel’s blockade of Gaza and rally support for its end. “We are determined to stop this by direct action” where international governments “have sadly failed,” says one of the organizers of the Freedom Flotilla, the Palestinian American human rights attorney Huwaida Arraf. “This is not the end. We are pursuing this legally and politically,” she says about this latest “minor setback.” Arraf was part of the previous iteration of the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla, in which 10 participants were killed in an attack from the Israeli Navy when it raided the ships in international waters.


Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: As the official death toll in Gaza nears 35,000, ceasefire talks are continuing this week with Hamas officials in Cairo, Egypt, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Saudi Arabia before he heads to Jordan and Israel. Meanwhile, Israel’s military’s chief of staff has approved the continuation of war, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to call off the expected ground invasion of Rafah.

This comes as the International Criminal Court could reportedly issue arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, over the war on Gaza and for Israel’s blocking of humanitarian aid. Israel has also targeted humanitarian workers in deadly attacks. Hundreds of aid workers have been killed by Israel since October 7th, including seven members of the international organization World Central Kitchen, which is resuming food distribution in Gaza today, nearly four weeks after its convoy came under attack.

Amidst the mounting humanitarian disaster in Gaza, hundreds of activists aboard the Freedom Flotilla were blocked in Turkey Saturday as they attempted to set sail for the besieged Palestinian territory. Organizers say Guinea-Bissau withdrew its flagged ships under pressure from Israel, but vowed to overcome this latest challenge.

A group of U.N. experts called for safe passage of the vessels, writing, quote, “The Flotilla is a material manifestation of international support for the ongoing Palestinian struggle for freedom and self-determination, and the internationally recognized right to receive humanitarian aid without interference or hindrance. Support for the Palestinian people’s human rights is acute under the current conditions of genocide, domicide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity,” they said.

For more, we’re joined in Istanbul by Huwaida Arraf, Palestinian American human rights attorney, organizer with the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. She was also part of the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which Israel attacked, killing 10 activists on the Mavi Marmara.

Welcome to Democracy Now! again, Huwaida. If you can talk about what this Freedom Flotilla is and the obstacles it has faced leaving Turkey?

HUWAIDA ARRAF: Thank you. It’s good to be with you, Amy.

The Freedom Flotilla is a continuation of the effort of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition to confront and challenge and, indeed, break Israel’s unlawful siege on Gaza. It has been in place since 2007. It is a form of collective punishment, which is not only unlawful, it is a war crime, and yet our governments have not been doing anything about it. And, in fact, the very fact that for decades our governments have been allowing Israel impunity is what has brought us to this point where Israel for seven months can commit live-streamed genocide and the world doesn’t — the “world” meaning our governments; of course, people are mobilizing, but we’re not stopping it, because Israel is so used to this impunity.

We have come together, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, and announced that we are going to sail an emergency flotilla in light of the dire situation in Gaza, which includes mass starvation and now famine that has set in — again, war crimes, but our governments aren’t doing anything about it. What do they do? Pay lip service to Palestinian human rights, airdrop food or talk about a maritime corridor which leaves Israel in control of what, if any, aid at all gets to a people trying to survive a genocide. It’s absolutely obnoxious. And one of the things that the U.N. special rapporteurs, that you mentioned, in their statement said, that our Freedom Flotilla is legitimately challenging Israel’s control over the entry of aid, which no government is doing. And that’s what needs to be done. How can we be in the state where a country that has been found to be plausibly committing a genocide by the World Court is allowed to control what, if any, aid gets to a people trying to survive a genocide? It is unconscionable.

And so we have come together. We are now, and have been, in Istanbul, Turkey, Türkiye. We have ships ready to go. We have one cargo ship loaded with over 5,000 tons of humanitarian aid, largely food, clean water, medicines, baby formula, nutrition for children, diapers. That was all ready to go. Hundreds of activists from 40 countries were here, knowing that Israel has killed activists before in such a mission, and yet still willing to risk it to do what no government has done. And yet, instead of our governments supporting our efforts, they have conspired to actually block us.

And so, what happened on Friday is we received a surprise communiqué from the Guinea-Bissau International Ship Registry saying that they have withdrawn their flag from two of our ships — the cargo ship and the main passenger vessel. Now, we cannot sail without a flag. It was clear to us that the withdrawal of this flag was under pressure, likely from the United States and Israel, because the way that they communicated to us was highly unusual, if not unprecedented. In their communication to us, they specifically referenced our trip to Gaza, and they had demanded from us a number of things, which were impossible to meet in the two-hour timeframe that they gave us, which some of those things included a complete manifesto of our cargo, all of the ports we were going to sail in, a letter from the receiving port where we were going to arrive saying that our arrival and carry of humanitarian aid is welcome. They gave us a two-hour window. This is never done. It’s like when you go to register your car at the DMV, they don’t ask you everywhere you’re going and who is going to be in your car. I don’t know of a situation where this has been done before. And yet, because we did not meet these and were not able to submit all of this information within a two-hour window, they informed us that our flag has been withdrawn. This is not the end.

AMY GOODMAN: What made you believe that Israel put —

HUWAIDA ARRAF: We are pursuing this legally and politically —

AMY GOODMAN: What made you believe that Israel had put pressure on Guinea-Bissau to remove its flags?

HUWAIDA ARRAF: Again, because the demands that they made of us specifically referencing our planned trip to confront Israel’s siege and our intent to arrive in Gaza, and giving us a two-hour window to submit all of this documentation about our journey, and knowing that Israel has done this before. It has tried all kinds of methods in order to sabotage our missions. It has sabotaged our boats before. It has attempted to get various — and succeeded, in getting various countries to block us from leaving port. And it was being reported that the United States specifically was putting pressure on Türkiye, the government here, to block us from leaving. But we were sure we were going to be able to leave from Türkiye, because the support here is so great.

So, Israel has tried all of these efforts. It actually boasts about these efforts. But if Israel thinks that this is the end of our effort to break the unlawful siege of Gaza, they are sadly mistaken. A lot of the activists who were here are fired up. They are determined. They are going back home at this point, until we can reflag our ships, which will hopefully be in the coming weeks, and coming back with even more people and more determination. So this is a minor setback, but it’s certainly not the end. And we will not —

AMY GOODMAN: Huwaida Arraf —

HUWAIDA ARRAF: We will not stop in our efforts —

AMY GOODMAN: Huwaida —

HUWAIDA ARRAF: — to break the siege —

AMY GOODMAN: If you can tell us —

HUWAIDA ARRAF: — and get to the people of Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: — who the activists are, the doctors, the nurses, the lawyers, who are on board this ship?

HUWAIDA ARRAF: I would love to. They are amazing people from all over the world, who have left their families, who have left their jobs, who have left the comforts of their own home to undertake a mission where we could not guarantee their safety. So, we had doctors coming from as far as New Zealand. We’ve had activists from South Africa. We had truck drivers from Ireland. We have mental health and social workers from the United States, students, professors, retired U.S. military, retired U.S. active combat, former FBI agents. We had parliamentarians, the former mayor of Barcelona, European parliamentarians, Algerian and Jordanian parliamentarians — really, a cross-section of humanity that is sick and tired of our governments allowing the ongoing persecution and now genocide of the Palestinian people.

And we are determined to stop this by direct action, which is — of course, goes along with all of the other efforts that have been taking place all around the world. And we also want to send our respect, admiration and solidarity with the student movement across the United States and now spreading across the world. This is what’s needed. We are going to bring about the change our governments have sadly failed. They only pay lip service to democracy, freedom and human rights.

AMY GOODMAN: Among the high-profile activists —

HUWAIDA ARRAF: The people are going to force this to happen.

AMY GOODMAN: — that are part of the Freedom Flotilla is Nkosi “Mandla” Mandela, South African member of Parliament and the grandson of Nelson Mandela. He spoke to Al Jazeera last week.

NKOSI ZWELIVELILE ”MANDLA” MANDELA: I am a living example of the efforts of the International Solidarity Movement. I am free. South Africa is free. We were able to defeat apartheid South Africa because of the support that we had from the international community. And therefore we want to thank them for taking this stand and for ensuring that they will not be complicit, they will no longer be silent, they will be the voice for the Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, in the summer of 2010, the Israeli military attacked a Gaza Freedom Flotilla, killing 10 people, including an American citizen. It was the Mavi Marmara that they attacked, the ship. The Vice President Joe Biden defended the raid in an interview on PBS shortly afterward.

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: You can argue whether Israel should have dropped people onto that ship or not and the rest, but the truth of the matter is, Israel has a right to know. They’re at war with Hamas, has a right to know whether or not arms are being smuggled in. And up to now, Charlie, what’s happened? They’ve said, “Here we go. You’re in the Mediterranean. This ship, if you divert — divert slightly north, you can unload it, and we’ll get the stuff into Gaza.” So, what’s the big deal here? What’s the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza?

AMY GOODMAN: [Vice] President Joe Biden in 2010. Huwaida Arraf, this shows the stakes. Ten people were killed. Yet you’re willing to go on this ship to try to challenge the Gaza blockade. As we wrap up, you have 30 seconds. Talk about that risk.

HUWAIDA ARRAF: Yeah. First of all, I need to say that Joe Biden is absolutely mistaken. Israel has no right — had no right to intercept and attack our ships, because it has no right to place the Palestinian people under collective punishment. Again, it is a war crime, and a U.N. panel, an independent investigation, found the very same thing.

Amy, it’s a sad thing that people — it has to be a life-or-death situation to deliver food to people who are being deliberately starved. But that is what we have here, because our governments have continued to allow Israel to do this. I left my two kids at home, and I promised them that I would come back. I know they need their mother. And I hoped to be able to fulfill my promise to come back, but I didn’t know. I don’t know. But what I do know is that I can’t leave to them a world where this can happen, where people can be slaughtered for months on end, oppressed for years, and the world does nothing. So, my action here, and a lot of the activists that have joined us, and the many, many more who want to join us now, do it with the same conviction that we have to act to change the world that we went to live in and that we want to pass on to generations to come, and we are willing to risk our lives to do that.

AMY GOODMAN: Huwaida Arraf, Palestinian American human rights attorney, one of the organizers of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, speaking to us from Istanbul, Turkey.

**********************

Rabbi Alissa Wise & Israeli-Born Novelist Ayelet Waldman Arrested Trying to Bring Food to Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
APRIL 29, 2024

Transcript

Israeli police arrested seven rabbis and Israeli activists Friday at the Gaza border during an action that accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinians. The delegation of Rabbis for Ceasefire carried bags of food to the Erez crossing between Israel and northern Gaza amid reports that famine is imminent for more than 1 million Palestinians in Gaza. “It is incredibly important that those of us who have privilege use that privilege to call attention to this ongoing catastrophe,” says Ayelet Waldman, one of the seven people arrested Friday. Waldman emphasizes that her “mildly uncomfortable” arrest pales in comparison to the violence and repression encountered daily by Palestinian detainees. “Right now what matters is stopping the starvation and murder of millions of people in Gaza,” she says. The action was planned to mark the tradition of Passover, which celebrates the Jewish exodus from slavery in biblical Egypt. “What does it mean to sit around a table and celebrate freedom when in our names a forced starvation and a mass murder is taking place?” asks our other guest, Rabbi Alissa Wise, a founder and organizer with Rabbis for Ceasefire and the former co-executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace.

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.

Israeli police arrested seven rabbis and Israeli activists Friday at the Gaza border during an action that accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinians. The delegation of Rabbis for Ceasefire carried bags of food to the Erez crossing between Israel and northern Gaza amidst reports that famine is imminent for more than a million Palestinians in Gaza. Among those who were joining the protest was Rabbi Avi Dabush, who is a survivor of the October 7th Hamas attack on Kibbutz Nirim.

RABBI AVI DABUSH: I’m really proud of it, you know, being here in the name of Jewish values, being here in the name of Jewish discourse in the Torah and talking about human rights for all people here. Of course, I can’t forget the Israelis. I was in Kibbutz Nirim on October 7th and can’t forget the hostages. But, then again, I can’t forget also our people, you know, human beings in Gaza, that are starving, got killed by thousands and have devastating wounds.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Rabbi Alissa Wise. She’s now in Philadelphia after her release and return to the United States, founder and organizer with Rabbis for Ceasefire, former co-executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, where she was also the founding co-chair of JVP’s Rabbinical Council. She’s now back in Philadelphia. And joining us from Tel Aviv is Ayelet Waldman, the Israeli American novelist and writer, who was arrested alongside Rabbi Wise and six others. Her husband, Michael Chabon, is also the noted novelist, the Pulitzer Prize winner, who expressed deep concern about Ayelet’s status on Instagram, writing, “She was there in the company of a group of American rabbis, #rabbis4ceasefire, to show the world, the people of Gaza, and their fellow Jews in Israel and around the world that Judaism teaches: justice, lovingkindness, peace, mercy, liberation,” Chabon wrote.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Why don’t we start with Ayelet Waldman, the noted Israeli American author, novelist, in Tel Aviv right now? Ayelet, why did you go to the Erez crossing? Explain what it is. And what happened?

AYELET WALDMAN: The Erez crossing is the crossing in — before the latest calamity, where you could cross in and out of Gaza, of course, very restricted. Now it is something else entirely. We approached — I want to be very clear: We approached the Erez crossing as close as we could get, but obviously it’s blocked off.

Why I went? I think it is incredibly important that those of us who have privilege use that privilege to call attention to this ongoing catastrophe. So, I want to be very clear. My husband was worried about me. It’s sweet. I had an uncomfortable nine-and-a-half hours. I had a mildly unpleasant nine-and-a-half hours. When a Palestinian here is arrested and goes into one of the many military prisons, their experience is horrible. They can be held without charges. There are children who are held without charges. When an Israeli Jewish activist — they have been arrested over and over again. They put their bodies on the line. They put their reputations on the line in terms of their community. What we experienced was very minor. But I think — I can only speak for myself, to say that it felt critical to me to use whatever small platform I have to draw attention to this crisis and to say that as a human being, and as a human being born in this country, I have to use my voice to say that this kind of horrific violence, this starving of children, this mass bombing, is completely unacceptable. It is not just unjust. It’s horrific.

And I also — I don’t deny that what happened on October 7th was an atrocity. It broke my heart. I don’t deny that what’s being experienced by the Israeli hostages now in Gaza is horrible, truly horrible. And my heart breaks for the families of the hostages. But we are seeing right now the mass starvation of an entire people. We are seeing an area where millions lived being reduced to dust. And people of good conscience simply cannot stand by and ignore or, you know, cluck our teeth and say, you know, “It’s really a shame, but Hamas, they’re so terrible.” Yeah, they’re terrible. But it doesn’t matter. And right now what matters is stopping the starvation and the murder of millions of people in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Rabbi Alissa Wise into this conversation. You’ve just left the Erez border crossing, and you’re now in Philadelphia. You’re founder of Rabbis for Ceasefire. Talk about why you went there. Israel has said they were opening that border to get aid in.

RABBI ALISSA WISE: Yeah. So, we came during the holiday of Passover, which is actually ending today and tomorrow. Passover is known as Z’man Cheiruteinu, the season of our freedom. And if that is going to be anything, it must mean that we work for the freedom of all people. It doesn’t work that one people is free and another is captive. And Israel has — as your other guests have highlighted, is enacting a siege on the people of Gaza where now people are on the verge of death through a policy of forced starvation, that is in the wake of decades of an Israeli policy of forced displacement, occupation, apartheid and Nakba, Catastrophe, that began in 1948.

So, for us, as rabbis, when we came to think about what are we going to do this Pesach, this Passover, when we know that so many Jews are struggling with what does it mean to sit around a table and celebrate freedom when in our names a forced starvation and a mass murder is taking place, and it felt critical to us that we do literally whatever we possibly could to support the people of Gaza. So we came to the Erez crossing. And as we marched towards it, we chanted the words that begin the Magid section of the Passover Seder, which is the time in the Passover Seder where we tell the story of our people’s liberation. And it begins with, ”Kol dichfin yeitei v’yeichol,” “Let all who are hungry come and eat.”

And what does our tradition mean if not our ability and, actually, our mandate to speak out against Israel, a state that is speaking in our name? And I think it’s doubly important because it kind of betrays the lie that Israel is a Jewish state. Israel is a state that is acting in its own interests, that has actually nothing to do with Jewish tradition or Jewish values. Jewish values teach that all people are made b’tselem elohim, in the image of the divine. And this is not how you treat the divine.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain why you were arrested on Friday at the Erez border crossing?

RABBI ALISSA WISE: So, when we got to the crossing, you know, we anticipated that we would be stopped, but it felt urgent that we try. So, we were at the border, and the police were insistent on pushing us back. You know, they actually did physically push us. And, you know, to us American activists, it felt really intense and violent. And later, some of the veteran Israeli activists that were with us were like, “Oh, they were actually being really light with you.” And we were like, “Wow, I can’t imagine what it looks like” — I mean, I can imagine what it looks like, you know, for them to be even more violent.

So, you know, they were insisting that we were in a closed military zone, which is — you know, we were freely walking down the road, so it wasn’t — there was nothing visible at where we were that we were in a closed military zone, though I know from other years of activism in the West Bank that that’s often what they say, is, “This is a closed military zone, and you can’t enter.” And so, they began arresting us and then forcibly removing everyone else who had come. So, we had parked our cars down the road and attempted to go on foot, and they pushed everybody back to their cars.

So, you know, then we were taken to two different police stations. And Ayelet and I and another rabbi were held for nine-and-a-half hours, during which we each kind of underwent an interrogation. And actually, when I sat down for my interrogation, the police officer said to me, you know, “You’re being detained here because you tried to bring food to the people of Gaza.”

AMY GOODMAN: It’s particularly interesting, Ayelet Waldman, that Rabbi Avi Dabush was there. He survived the Hamas attack on his kibbutz. He’s executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights. If you can talk about that, and then, before we end, talk not only about what’s happening in Gaza and why you were trying to get aid there, but what is less reported, and that is what is happening in the West Bank? Ayelet Waldman?

AYELET WALDMAN: Hi. One of the things that is important to know, I think, is that the kibbutzim that were on the south in what they call the Gaza envelope, the area of Israel that surrounds Gaza, many of the people in those kibbutzim were leftists. Many of them did things like escort people from Gaza to medical facilities in Israel. They worked — you know, Vivian Silver is someone that many of you know, a woman who devoted herself to coexistence, to peace. So, many people who were attacked — and again, I will not deny the brutality and the horror of those attacks — they were themselves people who had worked for peace.

But what I think boggles my mind, and I hope that I would have the personal courage, is when you see someone like the rabbi, someone like the siblings of people who were killed, holding true to their values, managing to keep their compasses pointed true north and to say that what happened to me and what happened to my people is not a reason for the kind of revenge that we are seeing now, and that revenge does not end in anything other than more revenge and this horrific cycle of violence.

You know, one of the reasons that I did what I did — which, again, I want to keep saying how small it is compared to what, you know, this flotilla was bringing, compared to what the Palestinian activists go through every day, compared to what the Israeli Jewish activists go through every day. But still, one of the reasons that I did what I did — and I can’t speak for Rabbi Alissa, but — is because I wanted to show the people who I love, Palestinians in the West Bank who I know, that they are not alone.

And it is so important to understand that weapons provided by American money have been distributed to settlers in the West Bank. Now, settlements in the West Bank are in violation of international law, all of them. If you were to look at a settlement, it would look to you like, you know, a beautiful town in Orange County, California. That is an illegal settlement. There are also fringe outposts that are even more — these are actually in violation of Israeli law, though you wouldn’t note that because they are protected by the Israeli government. And so, these settlers have been issued even more weapons than they already have. Many of them are now wearing uniforms, military uniforms. And they are carrying out a series of attacks on Palestinian individuals and communities in the West Bank.

So, for example, small Palestinian towns, people have been pushed out of their towns. People have been killed. People have been abused. People have been beaten up. And all eyes are on Gaza, as they should be, but the oppression and the violence being experienced by the Palestinians in the West Bank has not just continued, but the volume of it has been turned up immeasurably. And I think it’s critically important that we do not forget these people. And, you know, I just want to say, like — I want to tell one almost ridiculous story. So —

AMY GOODMAN: We have 30 seconds.

AYELET WALDMAN: Thirty seconds. There’s a village — and this is happening all over the Hebron Hills. There’s a village with shepherds, Palestinian shepherds. And what do the settlers do? They go, they take pictures of the sheep, and then they go to the police, the Israeli police, and they say, “They stole our sheep. And look, I have a picture of my sheep.” And then the Israeli police go, and they steal the shepherds’ sheep and give it to the settlers. I mean, think about that, the ridiculousness of stealing — and these are people who live hand to mouth. They live on the cheese they make from the milk they get from these sheep. And we’re seeing people being murdered, and we’re seeing people whose livelihoods are being stolen. And they’re even taking their animals. I mean, that’s the kind of absurdity that’s going on under cover of darkness while eyes are on the horror of Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us. Ayelet Waldman is an Israeli American novelist and writer, among her books, the series, the “Mommy-Track” mysteries, as well as her autobiographical essays about motherhood. She’s speaking to us from Tel Aviv. And Rabbi Alissa Wise is founder and organizer with Rabbis for Ceasefire. She’s just back in Philadelphia. Both were arrested along with five others at the Erez crossing trying to get food into Gaza.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, a new sci-fi documentary depicts the Palestinian city of Lyd, both with and without the Nakba in 1948. Sounds puzzling? Stay tuned.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Roger Waters performing “We Shall Overcome” in our Democracy Now! studios in 2016, accompanied by at the time the high school cellist Alexander Rohatyn. Waters is one of the executive producers of the film we’re going to be talking about, Lyd.


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“Lyd”: Palestinian & Jewish Directors of New Sci-Fi Doc on How 1948 Nakba Devastated Palestinian City
by Amy Goodman
DemmocracyNow!
APRIL 29, 2024

Transcript

A new film about the once-thriving Palestinian city of Lyd, now known as the Israeli city Lod and home to Ben Gurion Airport, has begun screening in the United States. The film is a “science fiction documentary” that depicts the Palestinian city both with and without the 1948 Nakba, when over 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and villages. In Lyd, Israeli soldiers massacred hundreds of Palestinians in Dahmash Mosque during their takeover of the city. “We use the story of Lyd to symbolize the story of the Nakba, the Palestinian Nakba, the demolition and expulsion of over 600 villages all across Palestine,” explains Rami Younis, a descendant of Nakba survivors from Lyd. Younis and Sarah Ema Friedland, the co-directors of Lyd, join Democracy Now! to share excerpts from their film and discuss the vision behind their project.

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.

We end today’s show with a new film about the once-thriving Palestinian city of Lyd. It’s a science fiction documentary that depicts the Palestinian city both with and without the Nakba in 1948, when over 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and villages, their property confiscated, 15,000 killed. When Lyd became part of Israel, its Palestinian residents were killed or exiled. Lyd is now known as Lod. The city is home to Ben Gurion Airport. The film examines the Lyd’s history and also presents an alternate reality in which the residents were not expelled in 1948. This is the trailer.

LYD RESIDENT: [translated] This tree has lemons, oranges and grenades! Every day they would throw something at us. And we kept it as a reminder of what we went through. I don’t want to go through a second Nakba.

LYD: [translated] I am thousands of years old. Everything changes. I’m not saying I want to be a utopia, a perfect city. I just want my exiled sons and daughters back. I want to prosper again. The story of Lyd is the story of Palestine.

AMY GOODMAN: The trailer for the new sci-fi documentary feature film Lyd. On Friday, I spoke to Palestinian writer and activist Rami Younis, who’s co-director of Lyd. He is originally from Lyd. We also were joined by his co-director Sarah Ema Friedland. I began by asking Rami to talk about Lyd and why he made the sci-fi documentary.

RAMI YOUNIS: Lyd was occupied in 1948. It was a city that once connected Palestine to the world. It had the Palestinian International Airport there. Also, due to its geographical location, it was a very important Palestinian bustling city. And then the occupation happened, and the city was almost completely demolished. And unfortunately, the story of that place hasn’t been fully told, so we decided to tell it.

However, how do you tell a story that’s been told so many times before? I mean, it’s the story of the Nakba, essentially. So we wanted to have a special twist. We wanted to do something that’s a bit outside the box. And we figured, “OK, let’s imagine an alternate reality in which that occupation and the atrocities of 1948 never happened in that place.” I mean, how would the reality be like if it weren’t for these atrocities? So, we decided to go a bit crazy and do something that’s a bit unusual in the Palestinian film landscape. And fortunately, I had a co-director that believed in the same idea, and we clicked. And there we are, having our New York premiere.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to a scene from the film Lyd with city planner Orwa Switat.

ORWA SWITAT: [translated] In Lyd, as opposed to Haifa, Acre or Jaffa, history was completely erased. They used bulldozers and tractors to completely clear the historic Palestinian structures. The Israeli planning policy, from the occupation of 1948 to this day, erases historic Palestinian space and imposes their own history of this place, starting with the important historical moment, which isn’t called “the 1948 occupation of Lyd,” it’s called “the 1948 liberation of Lyd.”

This entire Zionist narrative does not only exist in private, but also in public space. As a Palestinian, you can walk around your neighborhoods and see that the street you live on is called “Tsahal [Israeli Army] Street.” The roundabout that you drive through is called “Palmach,” where the massacre happened in 1948. Names in public space, landmarks, these symbols deliver a clear message to us Palestinians, natives of this land, that this not our land. You are not indigenous to this land. You are not owners of your homeland. You are vistors.

AMY GOODMAN: Sarah Ema Friedland, talk about that massacre that he’s referring to in 1948. And tell us where Lyd is.

SARAH EMA FRIEDLAND: So, Lyd is the present-day city of Lod in Israel. It’s 15 kilometers from Tel Aviv. It’s where Ben Gurion Airport is now. During historical Palestine, as Rami said, it was the city that connected Palestine to the world. But now it is devastated and disinvested and divided by the Israeli occupation.

So, the massacre that happened in 1948 happened in a central mosque in Lyd called Dahmash Mosque. And there were — Lyd was one of the last cities to fall during the Nakba. There were like 50,000 people in Lyd in that moment, because lots of people from different towns that had already been conquered by the Israeli state had come to Lyd and were defending the city. And so, when the Palmach soldiers came in, there was a lot of resistance in Lyd. And some of this resistance was coming from Dahmash Mosque, but there were also civilians — women, children, men, everybody — in the mosque. And so, the Israeli soldiers, the Palmach soldiers —

AMY GOODMAN: And why are they called Palmach?

SARAH EMA FRIEDLAND: So, Palmach is one of the brigades, the kind of militias, that was pre-Israeli occupation forces, before the state of Israel that was founded. And so, these different militias during the Nakba were responsible for conquering many, many different towns and cities throughout historic Palestine.

So, when they came to Lyd, there were many different atrocities that were committed in Lyd, but the one we focus on is in this mosque. And so, a Palmach soldier fired a anti-tank missile into the mosque and killed around 200 people. Of course, we don’t know, because, you know, as we know, the records are kept by the people in power. And so this was a really devastating moment, because when Lyd fell, that was kind of almost like a symbol of the end of the resistance. And so, after that, there was an expulsion from Lyd where about 50,000 people were expelled from the city, and a thousand people were kept in Lyd in a ghetto by the Israeli state in order to keep the infrastructure of the city going.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to the scene from the film Lyd where the Nakba survivor Eissa Fanous recounts being held captive by Israeli soldiers as a child.

EISSA FANOUS: [translated] This is me here. This is Sameer Al-Aboudi. He was with me when the Israeli army took us to Dahmash Mosque to remove the dead bodies. The decomposed bodies smelled really bad, dreadful. A week or two after the massacre, they took us in the Israeli army vehicles — me, Samir Aboudi, Rasheed Fanous, Khalil Abu Judoub — no, Khalil al-Belleh — to Lyd. We weren’t captives. We were children, like me, maybe a little older. I was probably the youngest. They took us there, dropped us off. “Take out the bodies.” Pulling, the bodies were falling apart, rotted. The smell was horrendous. We’d take the bodies out, and Israeli soldiers would burn them. At the end of the day, they would drive us back home. They took us two days in a row.

AMY GOODMAN: A 1948 Nakba survivor — of course, 1948 is the time of the founding of the state of Israel — speaking about what happened in Lyd. And this is personal for you, Rami. This is your family. You had ancestors, you had relatives who survived and didn’t survive 1948?

RAMI YOUNIS: So, yeah, I’m a third generation of, you know, Nakba survivors. Like Sarah said, only, well, less than 1,000 Palestinians were allowed to remain in Lyd. And we use the story of Lyd to symbolize the story of the Nakba, the Palestinian Nakba, the demolition and expulsion of over 600 villages all across Palestine. So, in a way, the story of Lyd is the story of Palestine.

And to us, you know, working on this film, Sarah and I, when we were shooting, not just Eissa Fanous, the person we just showed, who unfortunately has died before we were able to finish the film, so also we’re paying tribute to him by mentioning his name and showing this clip. So, filming this, filming them, was also our way of documenting what happened in 1948 for the ages, because we want to show that what happened in the past, you know, is still affecting what’s happening today, and what happened in the past, what started in the past, in 1948, is still ongoing. So, by telling these stories of these people, by documenting them, by capturing their accounts and showing them to people nowadays, maybe, we’re hoping, people will get a wider perspective of what’s happening in Israel-Palestine. And maybe they’ll be a kind and nice reminder that, unlike some people would like us to think, the world did not start on October 7th.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s go to this Palmach soldier. This is quite amazing. This is another scene with a member of Palmach, the Israeli militia group in 1948, but this is what? 1989, it’s decades later, when he is interviewed. And if you can set that up for us, Sarah? If you can set up why you have footage of a soldier from 1989 describing what he did in 1948?

SARAH EMA FRIEDLAND: Yeah. So, we were able to access this footage from the Palmach military archive in Israel. I had read about these clips, and Rami and I talked about it. And the Palmach, you know, in 1989, decided to make a TV documentary about all of the battles that happened during 1948, all the invasions. And so they took these soldiers back to the places where they committed their war crimes, and they filmed with them, because for the state of Israel, this is not anything to be ashamed of. You know, they are —

RAMI YOUNIS: Oh yeah, they wanted to celebrate their [inaudible], yeah.

SARAH EMA FRIEDLAND: They are proud of this history.

RAMI YOUNIS: Yeah.

SARAH EMA FRIEDLAND: Right? So —

AMY GOODMAN: But this is one soldier who wasn’t proud.

EZRA GREENBOIM: [translated] I want to describe what I saw inside the mosque. There were women, men and children in there. Some, a few, were injured, and I don’t know from what. I don’t know from what. A few were injured. Many were sitting against the wall, terrified, but looking at me. I remember that a small girl was sitting next to the wall, around 12 years old. She was holding her younger sister in her arms. She hugged her and was waving her other hand like a pendulum. With spread fingers, as if to say, “Don’t shoot.” And I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t know anything. I remember this sight, and I stormed outside.

Then, in front of the mosque’s door, there was a wall, and in the corner sat a local Palestinian person. I remember his face. He had a round face. He was very injured. I don’t know from what. That was the first time I was that close. And I saw his eyes. Terrified, confused, I have no words. I was confused, but it appeared that in his eyes, I was — I was a murderer. That’s what he saw in my eyes. Then he looks at me and says in Yiddish — Yiddish! — “Hob Rachmones. Hob Rachmones,” meaning in Hebrew, “Have mercy on me.” It reminded me of everything that we faced in exile, the pleas of mercy from Jews throughout generations. And I stormed outside. I stormed outside. And I don’t know what happened inside the mosque afterwards.

AMY GOODMAN: That was a Palmach soldier recounting what he did, in 1989, back in 1948. Rami Younis, as you watch this, your thoughts? He is no longer alive.

RAMI YOUNIS: As a Palestinian watching these, you know, soldiers describing what happened, and before that, and if you watch the film, you see other soldiers who are actually proud of what they did — I mean, you know, they look at the filmmakers, they look at the filmmaker, they look at the camera, and they described how they fired an anti-tank missile into a mosque and then went in with a grenade. And one of the soldiers even said, “And what the anti-tank missile didn’t take care of, the grenades took care of after that.” So, it’s like as if it’s a game to them, as if they’re not killing human beings. And this is the danger of allowing them to keep doing that. And we need to keep talking about that, and we need to show that what happened in 1948 is still happening.

AMY GOODMAN: And what is the state of Lyd today?

RAMI YOUNIS: Not good. Not good. We have a population of around 30,000 Palestinians there. And if you come and see the city, if you have a tour in the city, you will see the stark differences between how Jewish people live there, Jewish Israelis live there, and how Palestinian citizens of Israel live in Lyd. Poverty. It’s a city infested with crime. Almost every week, there are a few murders, unfortunately. And we’ve all been a victim of this, of this crime, and police are not doing anything about it, as you can imagine.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Rami, you are a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship.

RAMI YOUNIS: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what you face? Can you talk about the discrimination Palestinians with Israeli citizenship face? Amnesty International and other human rights groups have recently concluded that — what Palestinians have been saying for decades — this is a system of apartheid.

RAMI YOUNIS: Oh yeah. And if you want to truly understand what it’s like to be a Palestinian citizen of Israel, look no further than what happened after October 7th. We’ve been silent for months, because we were unable to speak up. I mean, people claim — Israelis claim that Israel is a democracy, but it’s not. I mean, if you look at what happened after October 7th — I’m a journalist Amy. You know, I made a career out of being critical and outspoken. I was white. After October 7th, I wasn’t able — I was afraid to even like the wrong post on my social media. People were arrested for sharing the wrong thing, for like liking the wrong thing. And again, I say “the wrong thing.” So, freedom of speech is really impaired. And it’s been like that. And after October 7th, it’s just been insane.

I’m going to give you one more example. The Israeli chief of police said that if people in Israel wanted to demonstrate or show empathy to the people of Gaza, he will take them there himself. Now, this is a public servant admitting that he is willing to commit an illegal act by shipping Israeli citizens into Gaza if they practice their right to demonstrate. If you look at Arab towns and if you look at Israeli Jewish towns, you will see the differences of how people live there. There are a lot of marginalized communities, I would say, within Palestinian citizens of Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: So, this film comes out this year, and then October 7th happens. You were planning to have all sorts of premieres. What happened, Sarah?

SARAH EMA FRIEDLAND: Yeah. So, we premiered the film in August at the Amman Film Festival. It was amazing. They were packed theaters. Seventy percent of the population of Jordan is Palestinian. And so the audiences were so excited to see themselves in the film, to see themselves represented, but also to see, you know, this alternate reality that — where the occupation never happens, right? And so, it was incredible. They had to add another screening. We won two awards. And all these things came into place.

And then October 7th happens. And, you know, the world — everything changes, obviously. Things are not entirely safe for Rami. Also, festivals are being shut down. We were supposed to premiere in Palestine at Palestine Days of Cinema. That festival was canceled. We were going to have our theatrical run, which is starting this week in New York, but we had to pull that, as well. So, it was like a really — it was a very tough time, because it was like we really wanted to share the film. It speaks to this moment. It provides extremely important context. But it just wasn’t.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Rami, it provides a view of the future. This is a sci-fi documentary. What does it mean to say Lyd when there was a Nakba and when there wasn’t?

RAMI YOUNIS: Essentially, this is the way we see it. It’s an exercise in imagination as a basic human right. And if we don’t imagine a different reality, we are just doomed to live in a reality that was created by someone else’s imagination. Now, Amy, if there’s one thing the occupier or the oppressor — I mean, you name it — can take away from us, it’s our ability to imagine or reimagine. So, in our film, we just wanted to create this space in which what happened in 1948 never happened.

Now, when we premiered the film in the Amman International Film Festival, we actually chose Amman, to premiere the film there, because we knew there will be Palestinians there. To our — not to our surprise, actually, we were hoping that they would show up, but Lydian refugees, refugees from Lyd from 1948, showed up and came to watch the film. You know, seeing how profound this was for them, seeing how they were moved by, you know, seeing the place they heard about so much — they dream about going back to that place — and seeing that place without what had happened in 1948 was truly profound to them. And to us, it was very satisfying to see that, you know, this job is needed.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you, finally, talk about the animation in this film? I mean, just the structure of the film is so unusual.

RAMI YOUNIS: So, yeah, we have animation in the film. The alternate reality was created through animation. And the good thing about animation is that you can just run wild with your imagination. You can do whatever you want.

And yeah, so — and we have characters. For example, we have a character from Balata refugee camp, which is a refugee camp in the West Bank. The guy is a welder. He’s always dreamed of becoming a lawyer. But because of the occupation, because he was from a refugee camp, it wasn’t possible. In the alternate reality, we have him as a lawyer in a university in Lyd. Now, Lyd doesn’t have a university. In the alternate reality, it has a university.

And by the way, we also — like, the same characters we have in the documentary part of the film, they dub their own voices. They dub their own avatars, so they were part of the creative process. So, they dub their own avatars in the alternate reality. So, the whole thing was just a lot of fun to work on, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, you talk about the difficulty of expressing yourself in Israel. What about coming here as you release this film in the United States, Sarah?

SARAH EMA FRIEDLAND: Yeah. So, I’m a professor of documentary filmmaking. And, you know, we see across the country just extreme repression happening in our universities, you know, from students to faculty to staff who have spoken out against the genocide in Gaza being suspended. I mean, the encampments that are happening are absolutely incredible. But there are real consequences for all of us, as well. And we’re seeing that happen more and more. But I think that what’s amazing is that people are not afraid. I feel like this is a real turning point in how U.S. people are engaging with what has been happening in Palestine for over 70 years. Yeah, so, I’m curious how it feels for you being here in this moment.

RAMI YOUNIS: It feels — I mean, it feels awesome, to be honest. It feels like I can breathe, I can breathe again. There are a couple of things that are very wrong with nowadays Israel. People don’t understand it. But even the reports on what’s happening on U.S. college campuses at the moment, some Israeli outlets are reporting that Jewish students are being arrested for just being Jewish. However, in reality, we know that Jewish students were arrested because they protested against the genocide in Gaza. So, to the Israeli — the average Israeli is a victim, by the way. The average Israeli is a victim of their own media. They don’t know what’s happening. They don’t know what’s happening across the world and how, like, young Americans are perceiving Israel. So, to me, being out here feels like I can speak my mind. I can — I even got a text from my mom yesterday. It’s like, “Be careful. Be careful.”

SARAH EMA FRIEDLAND: “Don’t post.”

RAMI YOUNIS: Yeah, “Don’t post stuff on your social media.” So, I don’t think she got used to the fact that her son is a journalist and I do that every now and then. But, I mean, it feels — I know we have a lot of criticism on American democracy. And I think the current administration will go down in history — unless things change, the current administration will go down in history as the administration that ended American democracy maybe. But it’s much better — the situation in here is much better than in Israel. And I feel like being on TV here, doing interviews, talking to just people on the street, people are willing to listen. And finally, people are willing to listen, but, unfortunately, it took a genocide so that people show interest in what’s happening in Palestine.

AMY GOODMAN: Palestinian writer and activist Rami Younis, co-director of Lyd, originally from the city of Lyd. We were also joined by his co-director, Sarah Ema Friedland. Lyd is currently playing at the DCTV Firehouse Cinema in New York, showings followed by Q&A with the filmmakers. The film will also be shown around the country and around the world, including the Houston Palestine Film Festival next month, the Chicago Palestine Film Festival, at the Laemmle theater in Los Angeles, and Unseen Cinema in Nairobi, Kenya.

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“We Don’t Want to Trade in the Blood of Palestinians”: Voices of Students & Profs at Columbia Protest
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
APRIL 30, 2024

Transcript

Nearly 300 peaceful protesters were arrested over the weekend as student-led Gaza solidarity encampments across U.S. university and college campuses face an intensifying crackdown. Democracy Now! spoke with Columbia University professors and students Monday as they were threatened with suspension but voted to continue the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, which began almost two weeks ago. “Hundreds of our students have been disciplined in the past six months on unfair premises,” said Sueda Polat, a Columbia student organizer who is studying human rights. “We are willing to put a lot on the line for this cause. My right to education shouldn’t come before the right to education of Gazans.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: As police crack down on student protesters around the country, we begin today at Columbia University, where scores of students took over Hamilton Hall just after midnight last night after the school began suspending students who refused to leave the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, which began almost two weeks ago. Columbia’s Emergency Management Operations Team says it has now locked down the main campus following the occupation. Hamilton Hall was also the site of a historic student occupation in 1968. Students have renamed the building Hind’s Hall in honor of Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl killed by the Israeli military in Gaza.

PROTESTER: [echoed by the people’s mic] This building is liberated in honor of Hind, a 6-year-old Palestinian child murdered in Gaza!

AMY GOODMAN: Students are calling for Columbia University to divest from Israel. Democracy Now! was on campus Monday. We spoke to professors and students after a vote around noon to stay in the encampment despite being sanctioned with interim suspension.

PROTESTERS: Disclose! Divest! We will not stop! We will not rest! Disclose! Divest!

AMY GOODMAN: I’m Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! We’re on the Columbia University campus. Right behind us is the tent encampment. There are dozens of tents there. And then you see around me are people in orange fluorescent vests. They are the faculty. They are the professors at Columbia University who are here to protect their students. It’s just before 2:30, when a news conference will be held. We just passed a 2 p.m. deadline, when Columbia President Shafik said after this point that the students can be suspended. It’s not clear whether they will be moving in the police. On Friday, President Shafik said they would not send in the New York police. But as we were coming up from the subway, there were scores of police. And I now have heard that they’re standing there with plastic handcuffs. But these students are determined.

SUEDA POLAT: My name is Sueda Polat. I’m a student organizer. I’m a graduate student at Columbia University. I study human rights here. I’m also part of the negotiating team.

AMY GOODMAN: And if you could tell us what is it exactly you’re demanding?

SUEDA POLAT: Simple. We don’t want to trade in the blood of Palestinians. And that means divestment from all direct and indirect holding that this university has, whether that be weapons manufacturing, companies that operate illegally in occupied territory, companies that produce information technology for the occupation army. Complete divestment.

We’re also requesting disclosure. We don’t have transparency on this university’s investments. And we need that to be able to push the movement further.

We’re also requesting amnesty. Hundreds of our students have been disciplined over the past six months on unfair premises. We’re willing to put a lot on the line for this cause. My right to education shouldn’t come before the right to education of Gazans.

LINNEA NORTON: My name is Linnea Norton. I’m a Ph.D. student here.

AMY GOODMAN: In?

LINNEA NORTON: In — I study ecology and climate science. I’m a second-year. And yeah, I’ve been part of the initial encampment and was one of the over a hundred students who were suspended and arrested, or first arrested and subsequently suspended.

We have our doctors in John Jay Hall, just there. And my shoulder was injured during the arrest because we were zip-tied for like seven hours straight. And I couldn’t go to the doctor. So I had to go to — because I wasn’t allowed to enter campus and be on campus property. So I had to go to urgent care.

AMY GOODMAN: So you had to pay for that.

LINNEA NORTON: Yeah, yeah.

PROTESTERS: Hey hey! Ho ho! The occupation has got to go!

SHANA REDMOND: My name is Shana Redmond. I am a professor of English and comparative literature and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. And I’m here today because this is leadership in action. These students have taken the worst of circumstances on a global scale and the worst of circumstances at a very localized university scale and turned it into something beautiful. The encampment here, complete with a library, complete with a deescalation team, complete with lessons and teach-ins, has modeled for this campus what open and free inquiry and debate actually looks like.

As the students say, we keep us safe. And so, we, as faculty, are here to assist in ensuring that that is made true.

NADIA ABU EL-HAJ: I’m Nadia Abu El-Haj. I’m an anthropologist, a professor of anthropology, and the co-director of the Center for Palestine Studies. The people behind me in the orange vests are mostly faculty, some staff, who have been mobilized since the last police raid, however long ago it was. We’ve mobilized faculty who would come out and stand sort of both guard but also mostly witness if the police came in again. The president has promised that the police would not come in. That was a promise made two days ago. But this morning, her email said that the encampment would be cleared after 2 p.m. if the students didn’t leave. So we’re not quite clear what that means, how they’re going to clear the encampment.

I mean, the core issue in the immediate is, of course, the genocide going on in Gaza. And the kind of depiction of the students as somehow Hamas supporters or antisemites and sort of dangerous rabble-rousers is a complete misrepresentation of these students. They’ve been calm. They’ve been incredibly well organized. And they’re taking a principled stance.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the fact that today a Jewish student sued the university, saying they don’t feel safe on campus?

NADIA ABU EL-HAJ: I think that there is a really important distinction to be made between feeling unsafe and being unsafe. So I would start with that. I am more than willing to engage any student in a conversation about feeling unsafe. And we’re hearing a lot of that from Muslim and Palestinian students, as well. But as I told the Palestinian students I met with about this months ago, I think it’s helpful to disentangle: When you say, “I feel unsafe,” what are you feeling? Are you uncomfortable? Are you offended? Are you angered? Or are you actually unsafe?

Being doxxed makes you unsafe. Being sprayed by chemicals makes you unsafe. Having the right-wing Christian nationalists on the outside trying to climb the fences into Columbia makes people unsafe. But a lot of what is being labeled as unsafe is being made uncomfortable. And if there are specific instances of physical threats and violence against Jewish students, of course they need to be dealt with. But the depiction of campus as a kind of hotbed of antisemitism that makes Jewish students unsafe is just not true. And there are lots of Jewish students in the encampment. JVP is a very powerful force on this campus, and they don’t think it’s an accurate description.

MAHMOUD KHALIL: Throughout the negotiations, the Shafik administration treated this movement as a matter of internal student discipline rather than a movement or rather than as one of the great moral and political questions of this generation.

ANURIMA BHARGAVA: Anurima Bhargava, civil rights lawyer and filmmaker. This is, you know, we’re into the second — third week of the encampment. Obviously, this morning, there was a statement by the president, very much sort of putting people on alert and trying to give herself the legal foundation that she didn’t have when she arrested students the first time.

And I think, in many ways, we continue to see a very — very much an encampment that has been peaceful. There are many, many students who came here when they heard about the fact that there’s action that has been promised to be taken today. And so we see a lot of people. A lot of students have come in support of the students who have been part of the encampment for all of these days. And I think this is somewhat of a situation of the university’s own creation, right? Because by suggesting that they’re going to take action today, there have been a lot more students who have come onto campus.

And in many ways — again, this is the last day of classes. This is a time where we’re going into study period. And if you can see around you, there’s a lot of efforts to get ready for commencement. And so, we’re at the end of the school year. And in many ways, this request to sort of remove students because of a safety concern — obviously, two weeks ago, when this happened, it was, you know, even the chief of police of the New York Police Department was saying that these students were peacefully protesting, and they were not resisting arrest, and they were peacefully here.

PROTESTERS: Disclose! Divest! We will not stop! We will not rest! Disclose! Divest!

AMY GOODMAN: Some of the voices of students, professors and their supporters at Columbia University, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment Monday, as many students refused to leave even as they faced suspension. Standing outside of Columbia University on the sidewalk, I then spotted civil rights activist Reverend Herbert Daughtry. I asked why he was there.

REV. HERBERT DAUGHTRY: My name is Herb Daughtry. My church is the House of the Lord Churches. And I’m standing out here today to support the students, the right to protest for what they believe is right. That’s our tradition. I’ve stood on many lines before, across the world, for Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland, for Jews here, for Palestinians. I just believe that somebody somewhere must be advocating for peace.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you: Did you know Dr. King? And when were you with him?

REV. HERBERT DAUGHTRY: Well, Dr. King, yes, we go back, 1958, ’59, something like that, particularly on the War in Vietnam, 1967. I was at the Riverside Church when he made his famous “Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam.” And —

AMY GOODMAN: Do you see this as a similar moment? Where people take a position that — even people in King’s inner circle said, “You shouldn’t take on the Vietnam War. It’s not your war. You are a civil rights leader.” And he said, “No, all of these issues are connected.”

REV. HERBERT DAUGHTRY: And I’m a follower of Dr. King. I believe our efforts are to save the planet, save the people. That’s what I believe that I’ve been called to do. And wherever there are oppression, exploitation, wherever there are people who — listen, Jesus said, told us, the least of these, to struggle for, speak for, work for, the least in society. And so we try to identify where are — where’s the pain, where’s the misery. And I’ve been to Sudan. I’ve been to Israel. I’ve been to Ireland, you name it, and Saigon. So, you know, I’m 93 now, so been —

AMY GOODMAN: So, you were here at Riverside Church, just down the road from Columbia University, on April 4th, 1967, a year to the day before Dr. King was assassinated, when he gave his speech here against the War in Vietnam. What was it like to be in there?

REV. HERBERT DAUGHTRY: Well, I had taken some young people. And it was an electric moment. Everybody was waiting for him and when he speaks, because he was mesmerizing. And when he speaks, his reasoning was compelling, persuasive, for anybody who had even a balanced mind. And it was an electric moment. And, well, it was an unforgettable moment.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you see parallels to today?

REV. HERBERT DAUGHTRY: Yeah, where people are gathered to make these issues, to raise these issues, yes. What impressed me is when people are putting their lives on the line, their conveniences on the line. That impressed me. So, when you run across people who are willing to risk something precious, you take note. And so, if Dr. King were here, I believe he’d be here. And it was he who said, “If we haven’t found something to die for, we haven’t found something to live for.”

AMY GOODMAN: That’s the legendary civil rights activist Reverend Herbert Daughtry at 93. His daughter, Reverend Leah Daughtry, was the CEO of the Democratic National Conventions in 2008 and 2016. As her father proudly said, they were rated the best conventions ever.

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In Gaza Protest, Columbia Students Occupy Hamilton Hall, Site of Historic 1968 Takeover
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
April 30. 2024

Columbia University students began occupying Hamilton Hall shortly after midnight Tuesday as the university moved to suspend students who joined Gaza solidarity protests, and renamed it Hind’s Hall, after Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza in January. We look at how it was 56 years ago today, on April 30, 1968, that the hall was also the site of the historic student occupation by students who renamed the building “Nat Turner Hall at Malcolm X University.” We feature an archival newsreel about the 1968 occupation and our interviews with campus activists on the 40th anniversary of the action about how they were protesting Columbia’s connections to the military-industrial complex and racist development policies in Harlem.

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 go back now in history, Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall, which students occupied just after midnight last night, we reported earlier, was also the site of a historic student occupation in 1968. It was actually on this day, April 30th, 1968, when hundreds of students at Columbia University started a revolt on campus. Students went on strike. They occupied five buildings, including the president’s office in Low Library. The students barricaded themselves inside the buildings for days. They were protesting Columbia’s ties to military research and plans to build a university gymnasium in a public park in Harlem. The protests began less than three weeks after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The 1968 Columbia uprising inspired student protests across the country. This is an excerpt from the documentary Columbia Revolt by Third World Newsreel.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Students at Columbia moved to take over buildings despite warnings from campus officials.

STUDENT ORGANIZER 1: In order to show solidarity of people with six strike leaders who they had tried to suspend, they decided to take Hamilton once again.

CAMPUS OFFICIAL: You are hereby directed to clear out of this building. I’ll give you further instructions if this building is not cleared out within the next 10 minutes.

STRIKE LEADER: I’m asking how many of you here are willing now to stay with me, sit-in here, until…

STUDENT ORGANIZER 2: After three votes, a majority decided to stay.

STUDENTS: Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike!

CAMPUS OFFICIAL: If you do not choose to leave this building, I have to inform you that we have no alternative but to call the police. Any student who is arrested will be immediately suspended.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The students then set up barricades inside the administration buildings.

STUDENT ORGANIZER 3: The first day in Math, we set up a defense committee, which took care of putting up the barricades. We decided what our policy would be toward police, toward jocks. We soaped some of the stairs. We taped the windows. We emptied bookcases and put them up in front of the windows in case tear gas canisters did get through the tape.

STUDENT ORGANIZER 4: And it hung up a lot of people when there would be a little scratch or mar on one of the marble-top desks or something. And the second time we built barricades, these hang-ups disappeared, and we had decided that barricades were necessary politically and strategically, and anything went in making strong and, this time, permanent-type barricades.

STUDENT ORGANIZER 5: Defense is all taken care of. Security is a problem, letting people in and out of the buildings. Watches — we need people to watch the windows every night.

STUDENT ORGANIZER 6: We had a walkie-talkie setup, citizens’ band walkie-talkies, plus there were telephone communications to every building, which the university tapped. We had three mimeographs at work constantly, and there were people who did nothing during the strike but relay to the mimeograph machine. And there was a big sign on the wall, a quote from somebody in Berkeley, who says five students and a mimeograph machine can do more harm to a university than an army.

AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt from the documentary Columbia Revolt by Third World Newsreel about 1968. Juan González, Democracy Now! co-host, introduced that tape when we first aired it on Democracy Now! on the 40th anniversary of the Columbia 1968 strike. Juan González was one of the founders of the Young Lords and one of the leaders of the Columbia student revolt in 1968.

Yes, in 2008, on that 40th anniversary, we spoke with a number of the activists involved in the Columbia strike, including William Sales, who was a leader of the Student Afro-American Society at Columbia and then the chair of African American Studies at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, as well as Gus Reichbach, who was a leading figure in Students for a Democratic Society at Columbia in 1968, then became a New York state Supreme Court judge in Brooklyn. We began the conversation with Juan González speaking on that 40th anniversary of the student strike and takeover of Hamilton Hall.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now we want to go into the dorms with all of you, with some of you who may not — who may not agree with a lot of what we’ve been saying here, who have questions, who support us, who want to know more. Let’s go to the dorms. Let’s talk quietly, in small groups. We’ll be there, and everyone in Livingston — in Livingston lobby, in Furnald lobby, in Carman lobby. We’ll be there, and we’ll talk about the issues involved, and we’ll talk about where this country is going and where this university is going and what it’s doing in the society and what we would like it to do and what we would — and how we would like to exchange with you our ideas over it. Come join us now.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Juan González, courtesy of the Pacifica Radio Archives. Juan, you speaking 40 years ago, explain the context.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, in the process of trying to build the strike, we were going into all the various dorms of the students and holding what SDS used to hold a lot of in those days, which were discussion groups or political discussions, group discussions, and we were trying to win over more people to the strike at that period of time. And this was after, obviously, the big — the major police occupation of the campus, which occurred on April 30th, and as the rest — throughout the rest of the semester, there was a strike that shut down the entire university for the rest of the year.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Gus Reichbach, now a judge, then a leader of SDS, please set the scene for us. How did this happen? Where were you before the strike?

GUSTIN REICHBACH: Well, I was one of the few law students who was involved in campus activity, antiwar activity, anti-gym activity.

The actual event itself was a spontaneous one, in terms of the actual occupation of the buildings. But the predicate for it was really years of organizing on the campus, really beginning in 1964. The year before, there had been a big demonstration about recruitment in ROTC. The gym was becoming an escalating issue. People were getting more and more responsive to the protest of the local community in Harlem, who was opposing the gym.

So, you know, we were often given, I’m happy to say, more credit than we deserve, in the sense that this was seen as a well-calculated plot, where at any point along that day things might have taken a different turn. In fact, probably if Dean Coleman in Hamilton Hall had opened his door and received the petition, the occupation may never have occurred. So things proceed in peculiar ways. But even though the events were unplanned, the lead-up involved years of organizing.

AMY GOODMAN: You mention '64. Bill Sales, ’65, Malcolm X was gunned down not far from there, now, actually at the Audubon Ballroom, that's been taken over by a new building, the Columbia University biotech building, also very controversial. Did that play a role, though that was three years before?

WILLIAM SALES: The Student Afro-American Society has very definite links to Malcolm X through the son of Kenneth Clark, Hilton Clark, who was one of the founding members of that organization, who was very much inspired by Malcolm X. SAAS always had a distinctly Black nationalist aura about it that was basically its guiding principle. So we saw ourselves as being in a tradition that had been highlighted by Malcolm X. When we actually took over Hamilton Hall, we renamed it Nat Turner Hall of Malcolm X University.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain who Nat Turner was.

WILLIAM SALES: Nat Turner was a slave preacher who in 1831 in Southampton County, Virginia, led the largest slave revolt on the North American mainland.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Bill, one of the things, I think, that most people are not aware of, because sometimes they don’t connect all of the events leading up to a particular crisis, was the climate. As I’ve often mentioned, this strike or the occupation began less than three weeks after the King assassination. And the impact on young people then, not only of the assassination, but of the disturbances and rebellions that broke out in over a hundred cities across the country — any of you want to talk about what the climate for young people was at that moment, at that particular moment in history?

WILLIAM SALES: Well, I certainly can speak to the African American experience, and it certainly — what made it an important experience was that for the first time other than African Americans were also being caught up in that energy. But most of the people in Hamilton Hall had been in one or another urban rebellion. For instance, you mention the King assassination. That very night, I and Ray Brown and other people would go on to play leadership roles of the takeovers that were on 125th Street. First time anybody ever shot at me was a policeman shooting over my head on 125th Street as various stores went up in flames. We were also, much earlier that previous summer, in Newark during the Newark rebellions. We had raised funds in support of the families of students killed on February the 8th, I think, in Orangeburg, South Carolina, South Carolina State. So there was a continuous involvement in the turmoil of the day that incorporated larger and larger numbers of people who also would take over those buildings.

AMY GOODMAN: That was William Sales, leader of the Student Afro-American Society at Columbia in 1968, then the chair of African American Studies at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, and Gus Reichbach, who was a leader in Students for a Democratic Society at Columbia in 1968. He was a Columbia law student, then a New York State Supreme Court judge in Brooklyn. Tom Hayden was also there. To see our full interview on the 40th anniversary of the Columbia revolt, along with Juan González, you can go to democracynow.org.

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Israeli Holocaust Scholar Omer Bartov on Campus Protests, Weaponizing Antisemitism & Silencing Dissent
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
APRIL 30, 2024

Transcript

As Biden administration and U.S. college and university administrators increasingly accuse peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters on school campuses of antisemitism, we speak with Brown University professor of Holocaust and genocide studies Omer Bartov, who visited the student Gaza solidarity encampment at UPenn alongside fellow Israeli historian Raz Segal. “There was absolutely no sign of any violence, of any antisemitism at all,” says Bartov, who warns antisemitism is being used to silence speech about Israel. “There’s politics, and there’s prejudice. And if we don’t make a distinction between the two, then what we are actually doing is enforcing a kind of silence over the policies that have been conducted by the Israeli government for a long time that ultimately culminated now in the utter destruction of Gaza.”

Transcript

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

As we continue to look at the crackdown on student-led Gaza solidarity encampments across U.S. campuses, we look now at how the Biden administration and several members of Congress have echoed intensifying accusations that the peaceful student-led pro-Palestinian protests are antisemitic.

We’re joined now by Omer Bartov. He’s a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University. His recent piece is headlined “Weaponizing Language: Misuses of Holocaust Memory and the Never Again Syndrome.” The professor recently visited the student Gaza solidarity encampment at the University of Pennsylvania, sharing on social media a photograph with the Israeli historian Raz Segal and a message that said, quote, “With Raz Segal at the UPenn encampment on April 26. Warm and open conversation about the perils of antisemitism and of its current weaponization,” unquote. Omer Bartov is also author of numerous books, including Genocide, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis. He’s an Israeli American scholar who’s been described by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as one of the world’s leading specialists on the subject of genocide. He’s joining us now from his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Professor Bartov, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you can talk about what’s happening on these college campuses, what your visit to the UPenn encampment was like, as your own university, Brown University, students have set up an encampment? And their chant is “From Columbia to Brown, we will not let Gaza down.” And talk about what authorities are charging are the charges of antisemitism, although so many of those involved in these encampments are Jewish, with groups like Jewish Voice for Peace.

OMER BARTOV: Good morning, Amy. Thank you for having me again.

Well, look, I mean, my visit to UPenn, I was there with Raz Segal. We first, actually, both gave a talk, both of us, about antisemitism and its current weaponization. And then we visited the encampment. It was a beautiful afternoon. There were very nice, good students there. We sat and chatted with them. We talked about antisemitism and about its current use. There was absolutely no sound of any — no sign of any violence, of any antisemitism at all. There were Jewish students there. There were Arab students there. There were all kinds of young people there. And the atmosphere was very good. The next day, I heard that the authorities of UPenn had decided to shut down the encampment.

A couple of days earlier, I was passing by the green at Brown University, and again there was an encampment there. Students were sitting there quietly, singing, playing the guitar. It was all very peaceful. And that same day, I heard from a faculty member who had visited that encampment that he had received an email from the dean of the faculty warning him that if he were to show up there again, measures would be taken. And now this issue is being debated at Brown. I believe today, this afternoon, there will be a meeting with the faculty, many of whom, of course, like me, very upset by this kind of arbitrary action, which was taken without any consultation with faculty. So, that’s the kind of context.

Look, I mean, obviously, antisemitism, as myself and many others have said, is a vile sentiment. It’s an old sentiment. It has been used for bloodshed, for violence and for genocide. And no one should condone it, and obviously none of us would ever condone it. But it has also become a tool to silence speech about Israel. And that, too, has quite a history. And the current Israeli government — or, rather, the numerous governments under Benjamin Netanyahu have been pushing this agenda of arguing that any criticism of Israeli policies, not least of Israeli occupation policies — this precedes, of course, events in Gaza — is antisemitic.

And I’ve been listening to some of the interviews with Jewish students who feel threatened. And often it appears to me — and, of course, we don’t have, you know, good research of that at the moment, but it appears to me that many of them feel threatened because they see a Palestinian flag, because they hear people calling for intifada. “Intifada” means “shaking off.” There’s a very similar word in Hebrew for it, ”lehitna’er.” It’s what a dog does when it shakes off water. It’s to shake off the occupation. And there are Jewish students, often who are influenced by their Israeli friends, who feel that that is threatening.

But there’s nothing threatening about opposing occupation and oppression. That is not antisemitism. You can agree with it or not. Even being anti-Zionist is not antisemitic. There are hundreds of thousands, if not more, of ultra-Orthodox Jews, including some who are in the Israeli government, who are anti-Zionist, but they’re not antisemitic. They see themselves as the epitome of Jewishness and Jewish tradition. So, there’s politics, and there’s prejudice. And if we don’t make a distinction between the two, then what we are actually doing is enforcing a kind of silence over the policies that have been conducted by the Israeli government for a long time and that ultimately culminated now in the utter destruction of Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, we were showing images of the Brown protest, where you’re a professor. And some of the signs read, “Brown, divest now.” Another said, “No others like Hisham,” of course, referring to the Brown University student Hisham Awartani, the Palestinian American student who was visiting his grandmother in Burlington, Vermont, with his two best friends, also Palestinian American, and they were shot by a white man from his porch. Hisham was the most wounded. He is paralyzed. And then you have at Columbia the students who were skunked, that kind of chemical that is used, where I think it sent eight Columbia students — they were pro-Palestinian activists protesting — to the hospital. And it turned out that at least one of the people who skunked them was a former IDF Israeli military soldier who was studying at Columbia University.

OMER BARTOV: Look, first of all, about Hisham, I mean, this is just a terrible tragedy, he and his two friends. This sort of combines both the politics and the rhetoric of hate that you find these days in Israel and, of course, American discourse, which have unfortunately converged. And that’s just horribly tragic.

This case of skunking, you know, over the last few months, there have been many demonstrations in Israel against this government’s policy. And the government has taken to using water cannon, often in a really brutal manner that is firing it directly at people’s faces, which is legally not allowed, and using this kind of stinking water, skunk, in central streets in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem, again, to shut down any debate in Israel. It’s very sad to see that being also imported to American streets.

Let me say there is an interesting difference between what is happening in Israel regarding Gaza, what is happening in the United States. In Israel, heads of universities have come out just recently with a statement warning about antisemitism on American campuses, which, to my knowledge, does not exist in any significant form. That is, as I said before, not antisemitism, but protests against Israeli policies. These same heads of universities in Israel have been collaborating in shutting down criticism in Israel itself. And there was a very tragic case with a Palestinian professor of the Hebrew University, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who was first sort of attacked by the university and later was arrested by the police and mistreated really badly, kept overnight in a jail, stripped, humiliated — this is a full professor in her sixties and a well-known scholar — because she had expressed empathy with what was happening in Gaza. And the main difference is that not only did university leaders not come out in support of their own faculty member, but there are many students at the universities that are actually supporting these kinds of policies.

And I think we should be proud that in American universities students actually are demonstrating in favor of those who are being oppressed and now who are being killed. And they’re doing it, first of all, because it’s the right thing to do. They’re doing it also because they are American citizens. It is American taxpayers’ money that is paying for the arms that the United States is shipping in vast amounts to Israel so as to destroy Gaza. And they have every right — and, in fact, they have a duty — to protest against these kinds of policies.

AMY GOODMAN: Omer Bartov, I want to thank you so much for being with us, professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University. He’s an Israeli American scholar, described by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as one of the world’s leading specialists on the subject of genocide.

Next up, an Israeli airstrike on Gaza has killed the eldest daughter and baby grandson of the late Palestinian poet and academic Refaat Alareer, who himself was killed in an Israeli airstrike months ago. Back in 20 seconds.

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Months After Israel Killed Gaza Poet Refaat Alareer, His Daughter & Infant Grandson Die in Airstrike
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
APRIL 30, 2024

Transcript

An Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on Friday killed the eldest daughter and the infant grandson of the prominent Palestinian poet and past Democracy Now! guest Refaat Alareer, who himself was killed in an Israeli airstrike in December. Shaima Refaat Alareer was killed along with her husband and 2-month-old son while sheltering in the building of international relief charity Global Communities. Shaima had recently lamented on Facebook that her father never got to meet his grandson, writing, “I never imagined that I would lose you early even before you see him.” “Why is the state of Israel and its military targeting the families and relatives of those it has already assassinated and murdered?” asks Jehad Abusalim, a scholar, policy analyst and friend of Refaat Alareer and his family. “Israel seeks to eradicate, to destroy the social environment that fosters resistance and defiance. This environment produced figures like Refaat.”

Transcript

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

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

We end today’s show with the tragic news that an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City Friday killed the eldest daughter and baby grandson of the prominent Palestinian poet and past Democracy Now! guest Refaat Alareer, who himself was killed in an Israeli airstrike in December.

Shaima Refaat Alareer was killed Friday along with her husband and 2-month-old son. She was a renowned illustrator in Gaza. She recently wrote a message on Facebook addressed to her late father that said, quote, “I have a beautiful news for you, I wish I could convey it to you while you are in front of me, I present to you your first grandchild. Do you know, my father, that you have become a grandfather? This is your grandson Abd al-Rahman whom I have long imagined you carrying, but I never imagined that I would lose you early even before you see him,” she wrote.

The website Electronic Intifada reports Shaima Refaat Alareer and her family were killed while sheltering in the building of Global Communities, an international relief charity.

For more, we’re joined in Washington, D.C., by Jehad Abusalim, a scholar and policy analyst from Gaza, executive director of the Jerusalem Fund. He was a friend of Refaat Alareer and is the editor of Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire.

Jehad, welcome back to Democracy Now! We only have a few minutes, but can you talk about this latest news, the death of Refaat Alareer’s eldest daughter, Shaima?

JEHAD ABUSALIM: Thank you for having me.

On April 26, Israel bombed the building where Shaima Refaat Alareer, her husband Muhammad Abd al-Aziz Siyam and their newborn baby, Abd al-Rahman, were sheltering in the Rimal neighborhood at the heart of Gaza City. This, of course, was a tragic loss for Refaat’s family and friends and those who love him, including, of course, his wife and children. Shaima was Refaat’s eldest daughter. She was deeply beloved by her father. And it was a tragedy.

And, of course, this tragedy raises many critical questions as to why is the state of Israel and its military targeting the families and relatives of those it has already assassinated and murdered. And as I have previously discussed on your program, by targeting poets, academics, scholars, journalists, doctors and institutional leaders, Israel aims to dismantle the societal structure of Gaza. Israel aims to make life unbearable and to make Gaza itself unlivable.

Of course, you know, despite the bombing and the killing and the mass destruction and starvation, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians continue to live and persevere in the entire Gaza Strip, but specifically in Gaza City and the north. And Shaima, Refaat’s daughter, was one of those who decided to stay in the north and endure and not leave and not give Israel the Nakba that it sought to accomplish by attacking and destroying Gaza.

So, again, Israel seeks to eradicate, to destroy the social environment that fosters resistance and defiance. This environment produced figures like Refaat, who, you know, people like him champion their dignity and national cause. And, of course, Israel’s aggressive actions and crimes know no bounds, extending even to children, mothers, fathers and newborns.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask, in this minute we have left — you talk about scholasticide. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor published a report last month titled “Annihilation of Gaza Education: Israel is systematically erasing the entire educational system.” At least 95 academics, including dozens of professors, like Refaat Alareer, have been killed by Israel. Jehad, your final comment?

JEHAD ABUSALIM: I mean, this shows the scale of destruction of Gaza’s educational sector. As you mentioned, the Israeli military killed more than 95 university professors, hundreds of teachers and thousands of students, in what has been a devastating assault on Palestinian education. All major universities in Gaza, including the Islamic University, Al-Azhar, Al-Israa, have been destroyed.

And as students globally continue to rise and voice their protest against the genocide in Gaza, we must remember and mourn the enormous losses suffered by the educational community. And I call on the student movement to continue to honor Refaat’s memory and legacy and to pay tribute to the countless educators and students who have perished under Israel’s bombs. This is the best way to honor our colleagues and those who have carried the message of education in Gaza and unfortunately have been murdered by Israel, and to continue carrying their message forward.

AMY GOODMAN: Jehad Abusalim, again, our condolences on the death of your friend Refaat Alareer and now the death of his eldest daughter, Shaima Refaat Alareer, her 2-month-old baby boy and her husband, just killed in an Israeli strike. Jehad Abusalim is a scholar and policy analyst from Gaza. He’s executive director of the Jerusalem Fund.

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Campus Crackdown: 300+ Arrested in Police Raids on Columbia & CCNY to Clear Gaza Encampments
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 01, 2024

Transcript

New York police in full riot gear stormed Columbia University and the City College of New York Tuesday night, arresting over 300 students to break up Gaza solidarity encampments on the two campuses. The police raid began at the request of Columbia President Minouche Shafik, who has also asked the police to remain a presence on campus until at least May 17 to ensure solidarity encampments are not reestablished before the end of the term. Police also raided CUNY after the administration made a similar call for the police to enter campus. Democracy Now! was on the streets outside Columbia on Tuesday night and spoke with people who were out in support of the student protests as police were making arrests. We also speak with two Columbia University students who witnessed the police crackdown. “When the police arrived, they were extremely efficient in removing all eyewitnesses, including legal observers,” says journalism student Gillian Goodman, who has been covering the protests for weeks and who says she and others slept on campus in order to be able to continue coverage and avoid being locked out. We also hear from Cameron Jones, a Columbia College student with Jewish Voice for Peace, who responds to claims of antisemitism, saying, “There is a large anti-Zionist Jewish voice on campus, and it’s also important to recognize the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: Hundreds of students at Columbia University and City University of New York were arrested last night after hundreds of police officers, carrying shields and in full riot gear, raided Columbia to break up a Gaza Solidarity Encampment set up almost two weeks ago that has inspired similar encampments in over 40 universities across the country, including CUNY. Students at Columbia took over Hamilton Hall a day earlier, after the school began suspending students who refused to leave the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Students renamed the building Hind’s Hall in honor of Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl killed by the Israeli military in Gaza.

The police raid began after Columbia University President Minouche Shafik sent a letter to the New York City Police Department calling for the encampment and Hamilton Hall to be cleared. She wrote, quote, “I have determined that the building occupation, the encampments, and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to persons, property, and the substantial functioning of the University,” unquote. President Shafik also asked the police to remain a presence on campus until at least May 17 — two days after graduation — to ensure, she said, that solidarity encampments are not reestablished. Columbia’s graduation is scheduled for May 15th.

Hundreds of officers entered the campus through the main gates and encircled the encampment inside last night. Police also pulled a truck outside Hamilton Hall, extended a ladder to a second-story window for a stream of officers to climb into the building.

Further uptown from Columbia, at the City College of New York, police in riot gear raided the Gaza solidarity encampment after the administration made a similar call for the police to enter campus. Scores of students and CUNY community members were arrested. Overnight, the department shared a video on social media showing officers lowering a Palestinian flag atop the city college flagpole, balling it up and throwing it to the ground before raising the American flag.

Over the past two weeks, police have swept through other campuses holding peaceful Gaza solidarity encampments across the country. Over 1,200 students and others have been arrested.

In moment, we’ll be joined by two Columbia University students who were on campus during the police raid. But first, Democracy Now! was on the streets last night outside Columbia.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! We’re standing at 113th and Broadway. It’s about 10:30 at night. The riot police have lined up here, and it is a complete frozen zone from here up to Columbia University. We understand that they’ve moved in on Hamilton Hall, that the students have occupied. And we understand arrests are underway, though we haven’t seen it. There was a group of protesters here, but they say they’re going to do jail support. They’re going down to 1 Police Plaza. Let’s see if we can find them and ask them why they’re out here.

PROTESTERS: Palestine will never fall! From the sea to the river!

AMY GOODMAN: What’s your name?

JEANNIE JAY PARK: I’m Jeannie. I am an organizer with Warriors in the Garden. I am a first-generation Korean American. I am a shamed alumni of NYU. We are out here as people whose ethnic roots originate in the Global South to stand against settler colonialism, because no matter how it looks, in every form, it kills, and we will not be complicit anymore. And this is a very historic moment, where our youth in our country are leading the revolution. And it is all of our responsibilities to not put that — to not just be like, “Oh, they’re so brave,” but to be in — to have that incite something within us.

PROTESTERS: Say it clear! Say it loud! Say it clear! Say it loud! Gaza, you make us proud! Gaza, you make us proud! Gaza, you make us proud! Gaza, you make us proud!

SAM: My name is Sam. I’m an organizer, and I’m here to show support for the students. I think that I’ve been a — I’ve been pro-Palestinian my whole life, as is my family. I’m Iranian. And we have always found the liberation of Palestinian people to be essential to our liberation as Iranians and everybody’s, you know, collective liberation.

PROTESTERS: Why are you in riot gear? Why are you in riot gear? Move, cops! Get out the way! Move, cops! Get out the way! Free, free Palestine! Free, free Palestine! Free, free, free Palestine! Free, free, free Palestine!

AMY GOODMAN: We’re standing at Amsterdam and 113th Street. It’s about 10:30, 11:00 at night. Why are you here?

BROWN ALUMNUS: So, I’m a Brown University alum. And as you know, one of our own, Hisham Awartani, was shot. And also, I have a Palestinian friend who told me that for his — for speaking out on Palestine, he’s been doxxed, I mean, and he’s been kicked off campus. He’s lost his housing and food, and he has no family here. But he feels the need to speak on it, because his cousins and family members are under the rubble right now, and he can’t reach a lot of his cousins. And so, knowing that, you know, there’s not a lot of degree of separation between Hisham and I and our other colleague that also lost family members and has been doxxed and kicked off campus, this is the least that we can do to support our friends.

AMY GOODMAN: Is this why you’re wearing a mask even though we’re outside?

BROWN ALUMNUS: Absolutely. And we’re not wearing a mask because we’re scared, but we’re doing this because this is what our predecessors have told us this is the right way to protest. And this is what we need to do to protect ourselves while also speaking and standing up for what’s true.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I understand there’s an encampment at Brown, too. And there’s a slogan: “From Columbia to Brown, we won’t let Gaza down.”

BROWN ALUMNUS: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Have you heard the latest from there?

BROWN ALUMNUS: So, today, actually, Brown University passed a resolution, in order to compromise with the students’ encampments, that they’re going to vote in October on divestment. So, I think that’s a big victory for the student encampments, for the 41 students who were arrested, and also for the students who were doing the hunger strike, as you may know. So, yeah, the vote — the agreeing to vote on divestment is a big step for the student organizers, and they’re very proud of it. And I think that’s the least we can do as alum to support them.

PROTESTERS: Divest! We will not stop! We will not rest! Disclose!

AMY GOODMAN: We’ve just spoken to some people who are supporting the students now. The bus of arrested students is coming through.

POLICE OFFICER 1: Back up!

AMY GOODMAN: Are these the buses of students?

POLICE OFFICER 1: The buses are coming up. Please back up. Please back up.

AMY GOODMAN: These are the arrested students?

POLICE OFFICER 1: Please back up. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Are they buses of the arrested students?

POLICE OFFICER 1: I’m not sure who’s in the buses. I know the buses are leaving. Please back up.

SUPPORTERS: You make us proud! You make us proud! You make us proud! Students, you make us proud! Students, you make us proud! Students, you make us proud! Students, you make us proud!

POLICE OFFICER 2: Back up!

PROTESTER 1: Stop! Stop!

AMY GOODMAN: Watch out.

POLICE OFFICER 2: Back up! Back up! Back up!

AMY GOODMAN: OK. There looks — seems to be an arrest right now. The police have moved in, and they’re on top of someone. The police have arrested someone. People are shouting “Shame!” He’s on the ground.

PROTESTER 2: Get off of him! Get off of him! Get off of him!

PROTESTER 3: What are you going to do? Are you going to arrest me? [inaudible]

POLICE OFFICER 3: Back up! Back up! Back up!

POLICE OFFICER 4: Back up!

POLICE OFFICER 3: Back up!

POLICE OFFICER 4: Back up! Back up! Let’s go! Move! Move!

POLICE OFFICER 3: Back up!

POLICE OFFICER 4: Back up! Back up!

POLICE OFFICER 3: Back up!

AMY GOODMAN: What’s your name?

POLICE OFFICER 4: Back up! Back up!

AMY GOODMAN: What’s your name?

AMY GOODMAN: Over 230 students were arrested at and around Columbia, dozens more arrested at City College just 20 blocks further north.

When we come back, we’ll be joined by two Columbia University students who were on campus last night, and we’ll hear from our own Juan González. Fifty-six years ago yesterday, police raided Hamilton Hall. He was one of the leaders of the students at Columbia, one of the leaders of the revolt. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “People Have the Power” by Patti Smith. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman in New York, joined by Juan González in Chicago.

Over 230 students and their allies were arrested at Columbia University last night when the Columbia president OK’d the presence of the New York Police Department and their raid of the university. Dozens of others were arrested just 20 blocks north at City College.

For more on the police raid at Columbia, we’re joined by two guests. Cameron Jones is a Columbia student with Jewish Voice for Peace. He was outside Hamilton Hall when police pushed everyone into nearby buildings and stormed the hall. Cameron is a 19-year-old urban studies major. He’s joining us here in studio. And Gillian Goodman is with us, a student at Columbia Journalism School covering Columbia’s ongoing student protests since the first days of the encampments. She joins us via video stream.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Gillian Goodman — no relation that we know of — Gillian, why don’t you describe what happened on campus? I mean, what’s really fascinating here is that Columbia J School, the Journalism School, overlooks the police raid. And in fact, Columbia journalism students and other students who were covering this event were told by police they’d be arrested if they didn’t stay inside. Gillian, thanks so much for joining us.

GILLIAN GOODMAN: Absolutely happy to be here.

That’s correct, Amy. And, in fact, the only reason that we were able to have access to campus, many of us in the Journalism School, is that we had slept in the building the night before. They had restricted campus to only those students in residential dorms. So, the only reason we were able to witness what we were able to witness is because we had stayed in the building.

When police arrived, they were extremely efficient in removing all eyewitnesses, including legal observers. Myself and my colleagues at the Journalism School were pushed with police batons to our backs and corralled out of the space, so we were not able to witness the arrests head on. But some journalism students were able to remain in the building to overlook the side of Hamilton Hall. But they were extremely clear and efficient that they were not to have any eyewitnesses, including the majority of press, during the time that the arrests were made.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Gillian, was there any warning beforehand or any sense that the arrests were coming?

GILLIAN GOODMAN: There had been a sense for a few hours as police gathered outside. I would say that no one knew the exact moment they were going to come in, but we knew pretty clearly within about a 30-minute window. I think there was a tremendous sense of trepidation, but also resolve, on campus that I saw from a lot of the organizers. We were also served an emergency alert from emergency management that went throughout to all Columbia students, issuing a shelter-in-place warning in the hour before the arrests happened. And so most students were corralled into their dorm by campus safety, and that was our tell that the arrests were imminent.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We’re also joined by Cameron Jones of Jewish Voices for Peace. Cameron, what did you see last night?

CAMERON JONES: Yeah. So, I was also one of the students who was forced into a nearby building once the police arrived on the scene. And it was very clear that the university and the police did not want any witnesses to the police brutality that was going to take place. They even pushed medics and legal observers into nearby buildings, preventing them from doing their jobs.

And then we got a slew of footage from onlookers that protesters were pushed and shoved, individuals were thrown downstairs. One individual was left unconscious for a few minutes. There was also the police using Tasers on peaceful protesters and also using a smoke bomb inside occupied Hind Hall. So, it’s very clear that the police used very aggressive and very violent tactics to suppress peaceful protesters.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about you? You were outside. You didn’t occupy Hamilton Hall. You were at the encampment. Do you face suspension?

CAMERON JONES: As of now, I am not sure what the university will do. Unfortunately, the university has arbitrarily suspended dozens of students already, so I would not be surprised if I do end up facing suspension, unfortunately.

AMY GOODMAN: The response of the students to the president, although on Friday saying she would not call New York police on campus, calling in those police who raided Hamilton Hall last night?

CAMERON JONES: Yeah. So, the president is definitely acting in bad faith, I would say. She really seems to be doing anything in her power to suppress student activism on campus, and that includes bringing in violent police to violently arrest hundreds of people. And it really appears as though the president has not learned her lesson from arresting people a few weeks ago, because the students only come back with more fury and with more intensity in regards to our activism.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Cameron, I wanted to ask you about the role of the faculty. Many of the faculty condemned the last raid, or the first raid that occurred a couple of weeks ago. Were there faculty out there trying to interpose themselves between the students and the police this time?

CAMERON JONES: I did not see a substantial faculty presence, but we have had faculty very present at the encampment acting as security, and we have widespread faculty support in terms of our opinions towards the administration. Faculty is on our side in condemning what the administration has been doing.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Gillian Goodman, you have both President Shafik and New York City Mayor Adams painting the takeover of Hamilton Hall as a takeover by outside agitators. What was your sense of who was inside Hamilton Hall?

GILLIAN GOODMAN: Yes. So, I was there the night that the occupation occurred. There’s no way to know exactly who was involved, but I know firsthand that there is a large student presence. And also the thing that surprised me the most was a massive student support outside. There was a human chain, linked arm in arm, to protect the building that was 200 students strong, and those are people that I know to be students of Columbia and Barnard in the large majority. So I think that mostly this is an effort by administration to distance these actions from the students, though I know that they are deeply resolved and in support.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask Cameron Jones — a Columbia student has sued Columbia for creating a hostile environment against Jews. You’re with Jewish Voice for Peace. I want to turn right now to a clip. This is Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson facing heckling and boos when he came to Columbia University a few days ago calling for President Biden to call in the National Guard to bring order to the campus, where the students set up the encampment last week. He also called for Columbia President Minouche Shafik to step down. Columbia students criticized Johnson’s visit.

SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: I am here today joining my colleagues in calling on President Shafik to resign if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos. As speaker of the House, I am committing today that the Congress will not be silent as Jewish students are expected to run for their lives and stay home from their classes, hiding in fear.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk about that as a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, Cameron?

CAMERON JONES: Yeah. So, I think, as a Jewish student on campus who represents a group of dozens of Jewish individuals, I would like to note that Jewish students have been part of the protest movement on campus since October. And there have been dozens of Jewish students who have been arrested for pro-Palestine demonstrations. So I think it’s really important to recognize that there is a large anti-Zionist Jewish voice on campus, and it’s also important to recognize the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Anti-Zionism is a political ideology, while antisemitism is in regards to Judaism, which is a culture and a religion. And it’s important to know the distinction between the two. And I think oftentimes in the mainstream media and on campus, there is a conflation of the two.

And it’s really important to recognize that there has been an intense amount of hostility towards pro-Palestine protesters on campus. We have faced harassment. We have faced physical and verbal intimidation. I myself have been doxxed and have faced death threats online. I have been harassed on campus by multiple individuals.

AMY GOODMAN: And explain what you mean by “doxxed.”

CAMERON JONES: Yeah. So, I’ve had my personal information published online, including pictures, social media, my LinkedIn profile, etc., in which people can message me death threats and email me horrible information. And the university has done nothing to protect pro-Palestine voices and has been really cracking down on anyone who is standing up for Palestinian rights. And this really just shows how Columbia University is using similar tactics that the apartheid state of Israel is using to crack down on Palestinians in occupied Palestine.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave it there, but I do want to ask Gillian Goodman — the president of Columbia — the president of Barnard has already had an overwhelming no-confidence vote by the faculty. President of Columbia says she has asked the police to maintain a presence on campus through May 17th, two days after graduation. What are you expecting, as we saw yesterday the campus almost completely shut down? Professors had their IDs canceled. Students couldn’t, unless they lived right there on the campus, get in.

GILLIAN GOODMAN: Yes, I think those actions shattered a sense that there is free and open access to our own resources on our own campus, the ways that they were really effectively able to bar anyone from that. I think there’s really profound disappointment and anger coming from Shafik’s decision to retain a police presence on campus, as that has consistently been an ask, I think, from all sides, is to remove the police presence. And that is often what creates a threat and intimidation of violence, much more so than the protests on campus. I watched the police at around 2 a.m. load the encampment into a trash-compacting dumpster, and I watched the community guidelines get crushed. And I think that, to me, was the perfect moment of seeing what that effect can be of having that police presence on campus.

AMY GOODMAN: Gillian Goodman, a Columbia Journalism School student covering Columbia’s ongoing student protests since the first days of the encampments, and Cameron Jones, Columbia College student with Jewish Voice for Peace, we thank you so much for being with us.

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Juan González, Veteran of '68 Columbia Strike, Condemns University Leaders' Silence on Gaza Slaughter
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 01, 2024

Transcript

Tuesday’s raid on Columbia University came 56 years to the day that police raided Hamilton Hall, arresting 700 students protesting racism and the Vietnam War. Democracy Now! co-host Juan González, who was a student leader at the historic 1968 protest, says the violent crackdown on Columbia University and other campuses across the United States has refocused national attention on “an unjust war,” carried out by Israel with U.S. backing. “No commencement in America will occur in the next month where the war in Gaza is not a burning issue,” he says. He adds that the more diverse makeup of the protests today — led primarily by Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students — may have made school officials and police “much more willing to crack down” than when it was a mostly white protest movement.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. And it’s Juan we’re going to turn to next.

The massive police raid on Columbia University last night came 56 years to the day after a similar raid by police quashing an occupation, or attempting to, of Hamilton Hall by students protesting racism and the Vietnam War. A week into the historic 1968 student strike, on April 30th, New York City police stormed the campus. Hundreds of students were injured, 700 arrested. The campus newspaper the Columbia Spectator’s headline read, in part, “Violent Solution Follows Failure at Negotiations.”

Juan, you were there. Juan González, you were a leader of the Columbia revolt. You were one of the founders of the New York chapter of Young Lords. Yesterday we played archival clips of you and the other students taking over Hamilton Hall. What were your thoughts as you watched what happened with the student takeover and then the police raid?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Amy, I think the similarities are really amazing in terms of the persistence of these students, the issues around which they were fighting, this opposition to a genocidal war occurring in Gaza.

And, you know, I was struck especially by the stands of these university presidents, not only at Columbia and Barnard, but also across the country. You know, the great Chris Hedges, I think, said it best, when he talked recently about the moral bankruptcy of these presidents of these universities who are condemning disruptions of the business as usual at the universities, while every single president of an American university has been silent about the massive destruction of universities in Gaza and of high schools and schools in Gaza by the Israeli army. They are silent about what is occurring in education in another country, another part of the world, financed by the United States.

So, I think that the importance to me in terms of the similarities are the students understand that at times you must disrupt business as usual to focus the attention of the public on a glaring injustice. And I think that’s exactly what they’ve been able to do. The entire country today knows what divestment means, what divestment means from the Israeli government and the Israeli military, whereas, before, this issue was on the margins of political debate. No commencement in America will occur in the next month where the war in Gaza is not a burning issue, either outside with the protesters or inside in the speeches and presentations. So I think that the students have managed to focus the entire attention of the country on an unjust war.

I don’t see how President Shafik survives. Many of these presidents across the country are going to be known not for whatever they accomplished previously, but they are going to be known throughout the rest of their lives as being the people who brought the police in to crush students who were maintaining a moral position of opposition to genocide.

So, I think the students are going to carry — those who were arrested are going to carry this badge of courage, as opposed to this profile of cowardice of the university presidents that dare to try to suspend or expel them. And the students’ lives have been changed forever — and, I think, for the best — in terms of the importance of dissent and opposition to injustice.

AMY GOODMAN: Juan, I wanted to go back to 1968, the student strike, students occupying five buildings, including the president’s office in Low Library, barricading themselves inside for days, students protesting Columbia’s ties to military research and plans to build a university gymnasium in a public park in Harlem. They called it Gym — G-Y-M — Crow. I want to go to a clip of you from the Pacifica Radio Archives, then a Columbia student, speaking right — it was before the raid, during the strike.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now we want to go into the dorms with all of you, with some of you who may not — who may not agree with a lot of what we’ve been saying here, who have questions, who support us, who want to know more. Let’s go to the dorms. Let’s talk quietly, in small groups. We’ll be there, and everyone in Livingston — in Livingston lobby, in Furnald lobby, in Carman lobby. We’ll be there, and we’ll talk about the issues involved, and we’ll talk about where this country is going and where this university is going and what it’s doing in the society and what we would like it to do and what we would — and how we would like to exchange with you our ideas over it. Come join us now.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that is Democracy Now! co-host Juan González when he was a student at Columbia University in 1968. It was before the police raid. Juan, tell us what happened after the police raid of Hamilton Hall, as they did last night of Hamilton Hall, 700 arrests. In fact, Juan, you only recently graduated from Columbia. This is the 56th anniversary. What was it, 50 years later, a dean at Columbia said, “Please, we need you as a graduate”?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: No, actually, it was 30 years later they gave me my degree, because I was a senior then. I was supposed to graduate that year. And, you know, amazingly, being suspended from college is not a big deal. You know, it only delays your career a little bit, and I think you gain more sometimes if you were suspended for the right reason. So I don’t think that that’s a big issue.

But I want to raise something else about these protests that I think people — I’ve seen little attention to. Back in the '60s, most of the student protests were led either by Black students who were in Black student organizations or white students. I was one of the few Latinos at Columbia at the time. And today, these student protests are multiracial and largely led by Palestinian and Muslim and Arab students. This is a marked change in the actual composition of the American university that we're seeing in terms of the leadership of these movements. And I think the willingness of these administrations to crack down so fiercely against this protest is, to some degree, they find it easier to crack down on Black and Brown and multiracial students than they did back then, when it was largely a white student population. And they always figured out a way to rescind the suspensions or get the students their degrees, because they saw them as part of them. Now, I think, they’re seeing these student protests as part of the other, and they are much more willing to crack down than they have been in the past. And I think it’s important to raise that and to understand what is going on in terms of the changing demographics of the American college student population.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Juan, thanks so much for being with us today and co-hosting. Juan González, student leader of the 1968 Columbia revolt, one of the leading journalists today in the United States.

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USC Grad Student Union Files Unfair Labor Practice Charge Against University over Arrests
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 01, 2024

Transcript

As protests continue on campuses across North America, we go to the University of Southern California, where the union representing about 3,000 graduate student workers at USC has filed an unfair labor practice charge against the school to end campus militarization and drop charges against students and faculty. The “rampant violence that they inflicted on our workers” violates the National Labor Relations Act, says Margaret Davis, president of UAW Local 872. “It was a clear act of retaliation because people were engaging in pro-Palestinian free speech, which they have a right to.”

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.

Today is May Day. As we continue our coverage of Palestine solidarity protests on campuses nationwide, we go to USC, University of Southern California, where graduate student workers and some 3,000 research assistants, teaching assistants and assistant lecturers recently won their first-ever union contract. This week, the union filed an unfair labor practice charge to end campus militarization and to drop charges against students and faculty taking part in the protests.

We’re joined in Los Angeles by Margaret Davis, president of the UAW Local 872, sociology Ph.D. candidate, teaching assistant at USC.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Can you talk about the unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board that your union has filed against the university, and the six violations you allege must be resolved, as well as your union victory?

MARGARET DAVIS: Yeah, absolutely. So, we filed an unfair labor practice with the university within the last week because of, you know, the rampant violence that they inflicted on our workers while they were engaging in peaceful protest, and we think that’s a violation of the National Labor Relations Act, because it unilaterally changes workplace policies by bringing in, you know, the Los Angeles Police Department to summon workers from their workplace. They also instituted a number of new workplace practices in requiring that people show IDs to enter campus and closing entrances to campuses that are closest to our Metro stations on campus. And we also think that it was a clear act of retaliation because people were engaging in pro-Palestinian free speech, which they have a right to. So, we think that these are clear violations of the National Labor Relations Act.

And, you know, this is just one way that we can enforce our protections that we won in our, yeah, first-ever union contract for research assistants, teaching assistants and assistant lecturers at the University of Southern California. That was a huge victory for us and for the labor movement in Southern California overall. You know, we really began that process a few years ago, when I entered my Ph.D. It was in 2020, and so it was a time when people were really coming to realize how precarious our condition was as workers in this really crazy world historical moment. And so, there were a lot of conversations on campus about, you know, the low wages that we experience, how difficult in particular it is for parents at our university to exist as workers, and how harassment and discrimination was most targeted towards international student workers on our campus.

And so we really began to organize and partnered with UAW. We had hundreds of one-to-one conversations with co-workers on campus to really collectivize and form a strong organizing committee that was representative across campus, and, yeah, as of last semester, won our first union contract, that guarantees for the first time in USC’s history annual wage increases every year, that guarantees stronger protections against harassment and discrimination, institutes child care, independent healthcare funds for parents. And so, we see the enforcement of those rights and those improved benefits as certainly connected to the fight that’s on the ground now to free Palestine and end the genocide in Gaza.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Margaret, you were on campus last week when over 93 USC students and community members, including five members of your union, were arrested. Can you talk about what you witnessed and how students in class are dealing with the encampment?

MARGARET DAVIS: Yeah, absolutely. So, I was there on Wednesday. And, you know, the encampment is organized by a really talented group of coalition partners who are really showing their power right now. They are in negotiations with the university, and they’re showing that these direct actions are working, in the face of very significant challenges.

On the ground Wednesday, you know, what was a very peaceful and joyous and, you know, showing-a-lot-of-resistance protest in the face of really, like, challenging and horrific things going on in Gaza was met with intense police violence. And so, you know, I witnessed not only, like, my colleagues and fellow union members being beaten and arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department, but, you know, our union also was very active in making sure that we could get our members out to that if they wanted to. And so, we were actually holding a monthly membership meeting that day and moved it to be close to the encampment so that folks could participate in that, if they wanted to and they wanted to participate in our union meeting. And so, you know, the union was actively endorsing this, and we have been doing so since October, putting out statements for, you know, an end to the genocide in Gaza. And it was really wild to see what happened on campus as a result of people expressing their rights.

And it was also a really telling moment for what, you know, building the collective power of our union has accomplished. We were able to institute really quick jail support measures for our own union members who were arrested. We were able to be there for them at the end of the night, when they had really experienced something quite horrific. And so, it was, you know, a really challenging moment, but the solidarity and direct action of the encampment is really working and putting pressure on the university —

AMY GOODMAN: Margaret Davis —

MARGARET DAVIS: — to meet with them and come to a negotiation.

AMY GOODMAN: — we want to thank you so much for being with us, Ph.D. candidate, president of UAW Local 872 at the University of Southern California. And the national UAW, United Auto Workers, has called for a ceasefire in Gaza. Also, the mainstage graduation has been canceled at USC, after USC canceled the valedictory address of the valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, and then canceled the speeches of the honorary people who are receiving degrees.

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Reed Brody: U.S. Hypocrisy Laid Bare as Biden Admin Claims ICC Can’t Prosecute Israel for War Crimes
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 01, 2024

Transcript

The Biden administration is claiming the International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction to charge Israeli officials for war crimes. This comes after rumors that the ICC may be close to issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials over possible crimes in Gaza. The International Court of Justice has rejected a request by Nicaragua to order Germany to halt exporting arms to Israel, but the court declined to throw out the case. For more, we speak with human rights attorney and war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody, who says ICC charges would be a “huge” development. “Since Nuremberg, no international tribunal has issued an arrest warrant for a Western official. For decades, we’ve had this double standard where international justice has only been effective for crimes committed by leaders of developing countries or by enemies of the U.S. like Vladimir Putin,” says Brody.

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

Prosecutors from the International Criminal Court have interviewed staff from Gaza’s two biggest hospitals, according to Reuters, in what’s being described as the first confirmation that ICC investigators are speaking to medics about possible war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza. Palestinian officials have demanded investigations after hundreds of bodies were exhumed in mass graves at Nasser and Shifa Hospital following Israeli raids on the medical centers.

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to news the ICC may be close to issuing arrest warrants for him and other Israeli officials.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: The International Criminal Court in The Hague is contemplating issuing arrest warrants against senior Israeli government and military officials as war criminals. This would be an outrage of historic proportions.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as the International Court of Justice has rejected a request by Nicaragua to order Germany to halt exporting arms to Israel, but the ICJ declined to throw the case out entirely. Nicaragua has accused Germany of violating the Genocide Convention by providing military and financial aid to Israel.

For more, we go to Reed Brody, a war crimes prosecutor, author of To Catch a Dictator: The Pursuit and Trial of Hissène Habré. He’s joining us from Barcelona, Spain.

Reed, can you first talk about this possibility that Prime Minister Netanyahu and others may be charged by the International Criminal Court, and the U.S. saying that the International Criminal Court doesn’t have the jurisdiction to do this?

REED BRODY: Well, of course, this would be huge, Amy. The International Criminal Court has never issued an arrest warrant for a Western official. Indeed, since Nuremburg, no international tribunal has issued an arrest warrant for a Western official. For decades, we’ve had this double standard where international justice has only been effective for crimes committed by leaders of developing countries or by enemies of the U.S. like Vladimir Putin.

We don’t know if this is true, but this would be a huge red line. I mean, you know, the Palestinians have been — and Raji Sourani has been on your show a number of times — have been fighting for 15 years to bring the ICC’s attention to alleged Israeli war crimes, back in — including illegal settlements in the West Bank. And the ICC, under three successive prosecutors, has given this slow walk to those complaints. And it was always assumed that this prosecutor, Karim Khan, a British barrister who came in with American support, was very reticent, would never actually cross that red line and indict an Israeli official. But I think the overwhelming evidence of atrocities, the disproportionate attacks, the indiscriminate attacks, the collective punishment of the people of Gaza, the international condemnation, and, frankly, also the genocide case brought by South Africa at the other court in The Hague, the ICJ, that resulted in a ruling by the ICJ essentially that Israel had a case to answer, these have all made it untenable now for the ICC not to act.

Now, of course, the U.S. position, as you’ve said, is that the ICC does not have jurisdiction because Israel has not ratified the ICC treaty. This is the historic position that the U.S. argued 25 years ago when we were drafting the ICC statute in Rome. But the U.S. was overwhelmingly outvoted, and the ICC has jurisdiction over nationals of countries that have ratified, so-called state parties, but also it has jurisdiction over crimes committed on the territory of states that have given authorization. And so, you know, when — but we saw under the previous ICC prosecutor, when she opened investigations into Afghanistan that potentially implicated American war crimes, when she finally opened an investigation into Israel-Palestine, that the Trump administration sanctioned the ICC for its temerity in investigating an act by officials of non-state parties. And even when those sanctions were lifted by the Biden administration, the U.S. said, “We don’t believe the ICC has jurisdiction over nationals of non-state parties.” But then Russia invaded Ukraine, and Russia began committing massive war crimes. And then, when the ICC — and, of course, Russia is also a non-state party. And when the ICC began to investigate Russia and issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, the U.S. celebrated that. So, now for the U.S. to go back and say, “Well, we loved it when you did it with Putin, but we think you’re crossing a red line when you do it with Israel,” of course, that’s just hypocrisy.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Reed, I wanted to ask you — one of the Israeli officials who spoke to The New York Times said that the possibility of the court issuing arrest warrants has been guiding Israeli decision-making in recent weeks. What’s the significance of this?

REED BRODY: Well, it shows, actually, that Israel is worried about this. Obviously, they can’t undo crimes that have already been committed. But many people say, “Well, you know, what’s the big deal? I mean, Netanyahu — I mean, in fact, the ICC, in 20 years, has never actually got its hands on, prosecuted and convicted any state official anywhere.” But the fact is that if the ICC issues this arrest warrant — and the furious diplomatic maneuvering that’s going on suggests that it may be imminent — of course, it represents, first of all, a profound moral rebuke for Israeli actions. It makes it impossible for people to say that Israel’s actions comport with the law. It also means that Benjamin Netanyahu could never — if he’s one of the people indicted, could never travel to an ICC state party for the rest of his life. He could never go to Europe. But it also — you know, it also suggests that, ultimately, any Israeli official involved in these kinds of activities, down the line, could potentially also be subject to an ICC investigation and indictment. So, it really, hopefully, would have not only a protective effect on the past, but a dissuasive effect on Israel’s actions in the future.

AMY GOODMAN: Reed Brody, I wanted to ask you about what’s coming up this summer. We’re speaking to you in Barcelona. You know, of course, Columbia just allowed police to raid the campus. Hundreds of students have been arrested. We’re moving into yet another Chicago Democratic convention. You wrote your college thesis on choosing — what happens when a presidential candidate drops out at the last minute and what that means. Can you make some parallels from ’68 to today?

REED BRODY: Well, sure. I mean, in 1968, we saw that the Democrats in Chicago nominated Hubert Humphrey, who was Lyndon Johnson’s vice president and a pro-war candidate, even though he had never won any presidential primary, even though Robert F. Kennedy, before he was assassinated, and Eugene McCarthy had garnered all the votes. And so you had this massive protest against a Democratic candidate who was pursuing a very unpopular war. And so, the whole primary, the whole Democratic selection process, was renovated, and so that you now have primaries and caucuses that result in pledged delegates.

The unfortunate, for the moment, result of that is that Joe Biden has now accumulated enough pledged delegates to the Democratic convention, so that no matter how unpopular he is among Democrats, no matter how unpopular he is as a candidate, he has enough delegates to secure the nomination. The only way that he can really be removed as the Democratic candidate is if he were to step down, in which case all of the delegates who are pledged to vote for him on the first ballot would then be released, and you’d have other candidates who could step in.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to leave it there, but I want to thank you for being with us. Reed Brody is a war crimes prosecutor and author of To Catch a Dictator: The Pursuit and Trial of Hissène Habré. We’re going to continue the conversation and post it online at democracynow.org and also talk about the ICJ decision, the International Court of Justice.

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“People Could Have Died”: Police Raid UCLA Gaza Protest, Waited as Pro-Israel Mob Attacked Encampment
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 02, 2024

Transcript

We get an update from the University of California, Los Angeles, where police in riot gear began dismantling a pro-Palestinian encampment early Thursday, using flashbang grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas, and arresting dozens of students. The raid came just over a day after pro-Israel counterprotesters armed with sticks, metal rods and fireworks attacked students at the encampment. The Real News Network reporter Mel Buer was on the scene during the attack. She describes seeing counterprotesters provoke students, yelling slurs and bludgeoning them with parts of the encampment’s barricade, and says the attack lasted several hours without police or security intervention. ”UCLA is complicit in violence inflicted upon protesters,” wrote the editorial board of UCLA’s campus newspaper, the Daily Bruin, the next day. Four of the paper’s student journalists were targeted and assaulted by counterprotesters while covering the protests. We speak with Shaanth Kodialam Nanguneri, one of the student journalists, who says one of their colleagues was hospitalized over the assault, while campus security officers “were nowhere to be found.” Meanwhile, UCLA’s chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine has called on faculty to refuse university labor Thursday in protest of the administration’s failure to protect students from what it termed “Zionist mobs.” Professor Gaye Theresa Johnson, a member of UCLA Faculty for Justice in Palestine, denounces the administration’s response to nonviolent protest and says she sees the events as part of a major sea change in the politicization of American youth. “This is a movement. It cannot be unseen. It cannot be put back in the box.”

NERMEEN SHAIKH: As we broadcast this morning, Los Angeles police in riot gear are dismantling a pro-Palestinian encampment on UCLA’s campus, after hundreds of police used flashbang grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas in a faceoff with protesters who chanted, “We are not leaving. You don’t scare us.”

PROTESTERS: You don’t scare us! We’re not leaving!

NERMEEN SHAIKH: The police raid at UCLA came a day after pro-Israel counterprotesters attacked the encampment with fireworks, metal rods and tear gas for hours late Tuesday night and into early Wednesday morning. At least 15 people were injured.

This is how UCLA’s student newspaper, the Daily Bruin, described the violence instigated by counterprotesters in an editorial: quote, “It began with ear-piercing screams of wailing babies loudly emitting from speakers. Counter-protesters tearing down the barricades. Laser pointers flashing into the encampment. People in masks waving strobe lights. Tear gas. Pepper spray. Violent beatings. Fireworks sparked at the border of the encampment, raining down on tents and the individuals inside,” the Daily Bruin wrote.

The editorial noted Los Angeles police did not arrive until slightly after 1 a.m. Meanwhile, around 3:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, four UCLA student journalists were attacked by the pro-Israel counterprotesters on campus. One of the journalists was treated for injuries at the hospital and has since been released. There were no arrests after Tuesday night’s attack. Wednesday’s classes were canceled.

The Daily Bruin’s editorial ended with a question: quote, “Will someone have to die on our campus tonight for you to intervene, Gene Block? The blood would be on your hands.”

AMY GOODMAN: University of California President Michael Drake and the UCLA Chancellor Gene Block have launched an investigation into what California Governor Gavin Newsom condemned as the, quote, “limited and delayed campus law enforcement response,” unquote. Meanwhile, the campus police union issued a statement that, quote, “the decisions regarding the response of the UC Police rest firmly in the hands of campus leadership.”

For more, we’re joined by three guests. Shaanth Kodialam Nanguneri is a senior staff writer for the Daily Bruin, UCLA’s student newspaper. They are one of the four reporters who were attacked. Mel Buer is a staff reporter for The Real News Network. She was at the Gaza solidarity encampment Tuesday night when counterprotesters violently attacked it for several hours. And Gaye Theresa Johnson is an associate professor of African American studies and Chicana/Chicano studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA. She writes and teaches on race and racism, cultural history, spatial politics and political economy, a member of UCLA’s chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine, which has called on UCLA faculty to refuse university labor today, the day after May Day, quote, “in protest of the university administration’s egregious failure to protect the student protest encampment from attacks by self-professed and proudly Zionist mobs coming to campus every night to enact violence,” unquote.

Welcome to all of you. We want to begin with Dr. Gaye Theresa Johnson. Before we get into the horrifying details of the attack on the Gaza encampment, if you can explain why you are withholding work today and the overall context of how UCLA is dealing with this protest encampment, and why the issue, so often not talked about in the corporate media, of why the Gaza encampment exists?

GAYE THERESA JOHNSON: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on.

We are so inspired by our students today. We are refusing our labor to the University of California, Los Angeles because we know that the conditions under which they were arrested, the conditions upon — the conditions that they were subjected to night before last with the counterprotesters, the violence that they have endured night after night after night, the complaints that they have lodged and that have been ignored by the university administration, all of the ways in which they were failed by the university administration, those are also our work conditions. And until our students are supported, we will also be stopping work.

The necessity for the camp was, I mean, what is going on in Gaza, what is happening here in the United States is linked. And these students, who have done so much study and who have done so much organizing, are clear about the connections between U.S. racism and international imperialism, and they are so clear about their role and purpose in this movement. So many of them have now been politicized, and this will not stop just because of tonight.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Shaanth, if you could explain? You were one of four journalists who was attacked. Tell us what happened.

SHAANTH KODIALAM NANGUNERI: Walking back from that protest where a group of pro-Israel counterprotesters had stormed and seized upon the encampment on campus at Dickson Plaza and near Powell Library, and me and three other journalists —

AMY GOODMAN: Shaanth, if you could speak as loud as you possibly can? We’re hearing — and come closer, yes, to your computer. And also, you’re describing what happened. Tell us what night, about what time it was, you with your four Daily Bruin — the three other Daily Bruin reporters.

SHAANTH KODIALAM NANGUNERI: Yeah, it was about, I want to say, 2 or 3 a.m. It was really late. We had all spent hours being out there on the field reporting, sending messages to our editors, really scared about the scenes that we were seeing on campus towards the protesters in the encampment, the level of violence and vitriol that was in the air. We had documented reporters hearing things like racial epithets. I personally witnessed a counterprotester slam a wooden slab onto an individual who had her hands on the barricade of the encampment and smashing her fingers, and listening to her scream and watching how that changed the environment. And many more harrowing scenes have been discussed by students on this campus, but —

AMY GOODMAN: And who were these people?

SHAANTH KODIALAM NANGUNERI: Yeah, we have been trying our best to be accurate about that. And I think in a Los Angeles Times article, my colleague talks about being attacked by one of these pro-Israel counterprotesters and how they have known who we are on campus. And they know that we report on these issues, and sometimes they know our faces.

And when we were leaving and were vulnerable and were in a small group, we were encircled and attacked. And they started shining lights in our face, spraying us with very strong irritants, circling in particular one of my colleagues and physically harassing and assaulting her. And by the time I had finally managed to help get three of us out of there, we found one of us had turned back. And by the time we had looked back around, they were on the ground being violently assaulted. And we were trying our best, as we ran back screaming their name, to pull them out of that fight, pull them out of the ground, pull people off of them. And we were begging while they were flashing [inaudible] —

AMY GOODMAN: And this was Catherine Hamilton, who was hospitalized?

SHAANTH KODIALAM NANGUNERI: Yes, she was. And —

AMY GOODMAN: How were they beating her?

SHAANTH KODIALAM NANGUNERI: You know, it was a very, very quick scene. I know she got hurt in the stomach. And I know that initially we had been — we had had so much tear gas in our eyes already from the protest that by the end of it, it was just hard to walk back. It was hard to make it back.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Shaanth, could you explain? I know that you said people are being careful about trying to talk about who the counterprotesters are, but could you tell us what you know? Were most of them not students? Were they students? If you could explain what you know?

SHAANTH KODIALAM NANGUNERI: Yeah, I mean, we do see students on, you know, rallies supporting pro-Israel groups. We have a pro-Israel group for Jewish faculty. And they themselves have actually distanced themselves from this behavior. But we do see a lot of non-UCLA students coming onto campus and sparking a lot of these controversies that end up going viral online and on social media and that do require deep, thorough reporting that goes beyond the kind of outrage bait that unfortunately fuels a lot of the conversations.

AMY GOODMAN: Where were the police? Where was security as this attack went on?

SHAANTH KODIALAM NANGUNERI: They were nowhere to be found. We actually walked up to a few campus security afterwards asking for help, as one of my peers was crying and having a breakdown, and I was trying help the other two, as well. And they were not able to help us with anything. They didn’t know what to do. And, in fact, we had documented that campus security, when faced with threats — these are private security guards handled by the campus, before the actual police had even come on campus — they would run away when they — or hide in buildings, and deny reporters access to those buildings, when they were afraid of what they saw on the scene and on the site when they got too violent.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Mel, you were there reporting on what happened. Could you describe where you were and what you witnessed?

MEL BUER: Yeah. So, myself and another reporter showed up around 10 p.m. We found ourselves on a side barricade next to Royce Hall. And we had a pretty good vantage point of the two sets of barricades that were separated by a sidewalk, prior to the confrontation happening.

Around 10:30 or 10:45, there was some sort of altercation, some sort of argument between the private security and the pro-Israel counterprotesters. And they very quickly dismantled the barricades and began ripping flags down from the Gaza encampment, pulling barricades apart, trying to rip apart the wooden barricades behind the metal ones that were installed there. And that continued for about three, four hours. It was a chaos, very scary, very quickly.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, it’s fascinating that the corporate media is describing this as just clashes between two different groups, the pro-Palestine groups and the pro-Israel groups. Mel, from your perspective — you’re a reporter with The Real News Network — what we’re hearing here is an assault by one group on the encampment.

MEL BUER: Right. You know, I’ve been to the UCLA encampment on the first day, when they were setting up. And from the jump, there have been individuals who have tried to agitate these demonstrators, these students. They’ve tried to get a rise out of them. They’ve tried to provoke some sort of violent reaction. And, you know, to their serious credit, these disciplined students have spent a lot of time and energy and effort not responding to that, or trying to deescalate situations, trying to keep each other safe, trying to keep the integrity of the encampment safe, because the point is not to get into an argument with counterprotesters, right? The point is to continue to pressure UCLA to divest from the various relationships that they have with Israel and to boycott these programs that are funding an occupation and a genocide.

So, to see what happened the other night was, essentially, these counterprotesters, many of them riled up and angry and throwing slurs over the fences, getting a chance to try and rip their way into the encampment. And this had been — tensions had been growing for multiple days, right? This was not the first instance of violence where pro-Israel counterprotesters were knocking over students, were trying to provoke fights. Some fights broke out even two nights before. So, from my assessment, as I was there, these groups, this giant group, probably 150, 200 or so counterprotesters — some of the were university age, some of them were much older and did not appear to be UCLA students — launching assaults on this barricade. And, you know, this was consistent for many hours. The bear mace was in the air. I mean, you know, I witnessed a lot of folks getting bludgeoned by parts of the barricades, by wooden sticks, batons, whatever they could bring. And that was a constant for the four-and-a-half, five hours that I was there.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Professor Gaye Theresa Johnson, if you could describe what you know is happening right now on campus at UCLA, and what the response of the administration has been to the encampment since it went up?

GAYE THERESA JOHNSON: This is something that so many of us feel disgusted by. We are — many of the faculty who I spoke to, as late as just about 45 minutes ago, were feeling shocked. They were feeling so disillusioned by the response of the university. This is a university administration that has for weeks, for months equivocated the experience of people who are proclaimed Zionists to those Muslim students who have been doxxed and harassed every day, and faculty, as well.

And so, this is a situation in which students have been subjected by the university to a complete negation of their experience, not only here at UCLA, but across the world, the idea that there are, as Amy said earlier, clashes between protesters or that there are fights that are breaking out between these two people. We’re talking about a nonviolent protest. We’re talking about students who have been organizing for months, who are trained, have taken it upon themselves to educate themselves on tactics of nonviolence, and the incredible and brave way in which they defended themselves all of these nights. But, of course, in the culminating violence of night before last, and then, of course, of the violence of this night, as well, as they’ve been gassed, flashbangs that have been set off by the LAPD, and it’s just been incredible, the way that they have responded in the face of the gaslighting that the university has done against them. They are just — they have just done such an incredible and brave job.

And many of us, while we are shocked, we are also understanding, as faculty, that thousands and thousands of students across the nation, across the world have been politicized today, and there is no way, just because the LAPD and UCLA have mandated the dispersal of these students, that this is the end. It is only the beginning, because there are so many people now who understand that this is a movement. And it cannot be unseen. It cannot be put back in the box.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And finally, if you could explain: Where do negotiations stand? Has the administration been speaking with students about their demands that UCLA divest from Israel?

GAYE THERESA JOHNSON: The other day, the university offered the students three options. One was negotiations, which we saw yesterday there was no negotiation. There was an offer of absolutely nothing. Students had demands that were completely ignored, that wasn’t even in the discussion once administrators came to the camp. They were offered absolutely nothing.

The second option was to continue in a sort of long-term action with encampment. But it wasn’t a real, legitimate choice that the university was giving these students, because they were going to make them adhere to policies that they call time, place and manner that would have evicted them from the encampment and forced them into other places that would have been completely ineffective as far as protest and visibility.

And the third action that administrators — third choice that they gave students was police action. And they said, you know, “If you don’t take the first two,” — which were, in effect, completely false — “then we will assume that you want the police action.”

And in the end, they didn’t care. They didn’t ask what students wanted yesterday. They just simply went into what was already scheduled, what was already planned, which, one, I will say, many of us think that it’s almost as if, like, we’ve seen this many times over history — in Katrina, for example, in New Orleans, where politicians said, “Let the hurricane do for New Orleans what we couldn’t do.” This was the same thing that was echoing for us as we watched these counterprotesters so violently attack our students, is the “We’ll just sit back and let that happen instead.”

And the irony of these counterprotesters attacking these vulnerable students, who are also incredibly strong and brave and organized, in an enclosed space, the analogy that we can make to what’s happening in Gaza is obviously lost on all of these counterprotesters. They have no regard for the lives, just as the UCLA administration. People could have died the night before last and this night, as well. And these are the conditions under which students are trying to enact free speech.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Gaye Theresa Johnson, I want to thank you for being with us, UCLA professor of African American studies and Chicana/Chicano studies. We also want to thank Mel Buer of The Real News Network and Shaanth Kodialam Nanguneri. Shaanth is one of four reporters, a senior reporter, with the Daily Bruin, the UCLA paper, who was attacked by the counterprotesters.

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Former Brandeis President on Gaza Protests: Schools Must Protect Free Expression on Campus
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 02, 2024

Transcript

We look at how university administrators have responded to Palestine solidarity protests by students with Frederick Lawrence, former president of Brandeis University and now the CEO of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and a lecturer at Georgetown Law School. Brandeis was founded in 1948 by the American Jewish community in the wake of the Holocaust and named after the first Jewish Supreme Court justice, the celebrated free speech advocate Louis Brandeis. Lawrence says the nationwide university crackdown on student protesters is a worrying violation of the principles of academic freedom. “Provoking people, challenging people, asking difficult questions, making people uncomfortable, that’s part of the price of living in a democracy,” he says. He also notes that what constitutes a threat to campus safety should be narrowly defined. “You are not entitled to be intellectually safe. You are entitled to be physically safe.”

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: As we continue to look at the widening police crackdown on pro-Palestinian student protests, we’re joined now in Washington, D.C., by Frederick Lawrence, the former president of Brandeis University, which was founded in 1948 by the American Jewish community in the wake of the Holocaust. Frederick Lawrence is also the former dean of the George Washington University Law School and a former visiting professor and senior research scholar at Yale Law School.

AMY GOODMAN: Frederick Lawrence, welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. You just heard our first segment, what’s happening right now, police raiding UCLA campus, dismantling the Gaza encampment and arresting students. You heard about the counterprotesters attacking the journalists and those in the encampment. And then, of course, we just came out of the police doing the very same thing at Columbia University, dismantling the encampment and going into Hamilton Hall, that the students had occupied. Can you respond to what’s happening right now, and what you think should be the path and the response of universities around this country as students rise up in horror about what’s happening in Gaza?

FREDERICK LAWRENCE: I think when students rise up on any issues around the world or on their local communities, as well, universities have to begin with first principles. We exist for the purposes of creating and discovering knowledge. That requires free expression and protection for free expression. We talk about balancing free expression on the one hand, safety on the other. And although I understand that, it somewhat misses the point, which is to say safety is essential for campuses, but safety is instrumental to protect the fundamental goal, and that’s free expression.

So, in a case like what happened at UCLA, there’s an interesting example there of sometimes universities can do too much, but sometimes they can do too little. And clearly, one of the things that came across was the need for intervention sooner to protect the violence that was going on at UCLA. But I think I would even take the camera back a long way further and say that the real answer here is work that takes place a long time before these events happen. You have to build relationships on campus. You have to know who these student leaders and student groups are, so that the kinds of conflicts that we’re seeing now don’t happen the way that they’re being presented, but happen in a much more productive way for all concerned.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And could you explain whether protocols — what are the ordinary, conventional protocols in place at universities dealing with protest, and whether those have changed in the last months since we’ve seen the Gaza protests begin?

FREDERICK LAWRENCE: I think different universities obviously approach this in different ways. But if you look at the ones that are the most productive, the most functional right now, they really cover a range of outcomes and a range of approaches.

Look at University of Chicago, where the president just put out a statement that said, “Here are the rules of engagement,” and that “You can stay out on the quad and encamp for certain lengths of time, but here are the guard rules. Anti-harassment rules still apply. You can’t threaten people. You can’t interrupt the functioning of the university. But you can have an encampment.” President of Williams College put out a statement roughly along the same lines. The president of Brown was involved in negotiations with students where I think they reached what appears to be a pretty good result. Did the students get everything they wanted? Of course not. And did the university get everything they wanted? Of course not.

You know, one of the biggest mistakes here is when you start to think about the students as “they” as opposed to “we.” There’s only one constituency here, and that’s the university. The faculty, the students, the staff, the administration, the trustees all have to think of themselves as “we” working together. As soon as it splinters into “they,” that’s when you start getting problems, and sometimes tragedies.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And what about your response, Professor Lawrence, to what the university professors say, namely — sorry, the university administrations say, across the board, which is that they’re acting in the interest of students, Jewish students on campus, who feel they’re being threatened on campus? And as the crackdown on the student uprising has intensified, the House now has passed a bill to widen the federal definition of antisemitism. Critics of the bill included Jerry Nadler, the most senior Jewish member of Congress and a strong supporter of Israel. Nadler said, quote, “This bill threatens to chill constitutionally protected speech. Speech that is critical of Israel alone does not constitute discrimination. The bill sweeps too broadly,” Nadler said. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers are vowing to launch new investigations into elite universities. Earlier this week, House Republican Whip Tom Emmer claimed, quote, “pro-terrorist antisemites taking over our college campuses.” So, if you could respond to that, what you think is actually going on, and how the Biden administration is responding, what’s happened in the House?

FREDERICK LAWRENCE: The most important thing is to focus on the limits on expression, which are pretty far out on the horizon. Free expression, free inquiry, academic freedom all have to be given broad range for protection. Where there’s actual threatening behavior, that can be restricted. That can be precluded. So, when you hear about talk of actual threatening behavior, I think there is a reason for the university to clamp down. But provoking people, challenging people, asking difficult questions, making people uncomfortable, that’s part of the price of living in a democracy, if you will. That’s what it means to live in a self-governing society.

Interrupting the actual functioning of the university, that can be precluded. You can’t block off buildings. You can’t keep students from getting into a library or into a classroom. But you can certainly create an encampment that might make it less comfortable for some students to get to class. Again, discomfort is not something that you should avoid in all cases in a university. Safety certainly should be provided. So I think that’s the balance that universities have to strike. And on some campuses, they have to do a better job of striking that balance.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is particularly interesting coming from you, Frederick Lawrence. If you can talk about the history of the founding of Brandeis University, and also your concern? I mean, it’s the issue you’re talking about right now, when Jewish students say they’re made to feel uncomfortable, and so you have the House acting and calling just — you’ll even have of the networks, when they say they feel threatened, just showing a Palestinian flag or a person wearing a keffiyeh. What that means?

FREDERICK LAWRENCE: We have been far too loose with what we mean by threatened, and not just in the past few months, but in the past few years. Many people feel that when they hear views that they deeply disagree with, that’s threatening to them. That’s not how universities operate. You are not entitled to be intellectually safe. You are entitled to be physically safe. So, where there are actual threats, certainly people are entitled to be protected, hopefully by university procedures, and by university security only as a last resort, with public officials and with police in riot gear. Hopefully, that’s always a last resort. But anything short of that, which is to say that which challenges one’s ideas, on any of the sides of these issues, that has to be part of an open conversation. Of course these are difficult conversations. Of course these issues are fraught.

Look, let me give you an example of one that worked recently that I was involved in. I was what was called a free expression resident at Skidmore College, upstate New York, for several days, met with a number of groups, but in particular had about an hour with a group of Jewish students and a group of Muslim students talking about Israel-Palestine, talking about what’s going on in Gaza. It was not an easy conversation. It was a hard conversation. But at the same time, we made some progress. I heard from the president of the college last night that he has continued to meet with these students, and he feels as if, in his words, it’s an air of cooperation, not antagonism. That’s the model that we’re looking for, that I think we should see on more campuses.

AMY GOODMAN: And the point of the founding of Brandeis University, why your voice is particularly important right now?

FREDERICK LAWRENCE: It’s Brandeis University, named for Justice Louis Brandeis, Justice Louis Brandeis who famously said, “In the absence of incitement of lawless activity, of imminent lawless activity, the answer to speech you disagree with is more speech, not enforced silence.” And Brandeis would have said that on any side of any issue. You cannot permit incitement of imminent lawless activity, but you have to protect the ability to express a wide range of views. Brandeis University has always been dedicated to that. That’s one of the reasons that, as its president, I was proud to advocate for free expression on a wide level. At the same time, the limits come, as I say, where safety is involved or where the orderly operation of the university is involved. Those things have to be protected.

AMY GOODMAN: Frederick Lawrence, we want to thank you for being with us, former president of Brandeis University, also the former dean of the George Washington University Law School and former visiting professor and senior research scholar at Yale Law School. He’s currently the CEO of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and distinguished lecturer at Georgetown Law School.

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Amnesty Int’l: Biden Must Halt Weapon Sales to Israel After U.S. Arms Used to Kill Civilians in Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 02, 2024

A new report from Amnesty International finds the sale of U.S.weapons to Israel for use in its indiscriminate assault in Gaza is in violation of U.S. and international law. We speak to Budour Hassan, a Palestinian writer and contributing researcher to the report, who says the U.S. is “complicit in the commission of war crimes” and must “halt all arms transfer to Israel as long as Israel continues to fail to comply with international humanitarian law and international human rights law.” We also discuss Israel’s detention of thousands of Palestinians without charge, the inadequacy of U.S. human rights investigations into the Israeli military, and Israel’s threatened ground invasion of Rafah.

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 coalition of international NGOs are holding a global day of action today calling on all states to halt the transfer of weapons, parts and ammunitions to Israel as the death toll in Gaza tops 34,500.

AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Jerusalem, where we’re joined by Budour Hassan, a Palestinian writer and Amnesty International researcher on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, contributing researcher to a new Amnesty report titled “U.S.-Made Weapons Used by Government of Israel in Violation of International Law and U.S. Law.”

Budour, thank you so much for being with us. Why don’t you tell us the conclusions of the Amnesty International report?

BUDOUR HASSAN: [inaudible] U.S.A. and response to the National Security Memorandum on Accountability and Safeguards on the Transfer of Defense Items and Other Services to Israel is based on firsthand documentation by Amnesty International of how U.S.-made weapons and U.S.-supplied weapons have been used by Israel in unlawful attacks, not just during the current war, but also in an earlier military campaign in May, where they were used in disproportionate attacks, killing civilians and injuring civilians, and where they were used — where small-diameter bombs were also used in the wanton destruction of property in cases amounting to collective punishment.

Also we cite in our research two cases where U.S.-made JDAMs have been used to decimate entire families, two entire families — the Abu Mu’eileq family in the middle area in Deir al-Balah and the Najjar family in Deir al-Balah also, back in October. A total of 43 civilians were killed in just two attacks. Amnesty International’s research did not find any evidence that there were any military targets in the area, raising doubt that the attacks were direct attacks on civilians and, as such, should be investigated as war crimes. And as such, also there is a high risk that by continuing to supply arms to Israel, the United States was fully aware that it is also supporting the commission of war crimes and it’s complicit in the commission of war crimes.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And so, Budour, has the U.S. responded in any way to your report, which came out earlier this week?

BUDOUR HASSAN: We are still waiting for a response by the U.S. The call is clear. The call is on the U.S. to halt all arms transfer to Israel as long as Israel continues to fail to comply with international humanitarian law and international human rights law. And it’s not just about the weapons that Israel is using, U.S.-made weapons. Also, Israel continues to use torture and other ill-treatment and also arbitrary detention against Palestinians, which also violates international law.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And if you could talk, Budour, about this global day of action, May 2nd, today? What prompted this call? Who all is involved?

BUDOUR HASSAN: The collective includes a variety of humanitarian organizations and human rights organizations that call for an immediate ceasefire, recognizing a ceasefire is the only way to end the man-made humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, but also calling for an arms embargo on Israel and all parties to the conflict, including freezing all arms transfer and ammunitions to Israel. And this group came together because it recognizes that it’s not just, of course, the United States. Of course, the United States is the biggest supplier of arms to Israel, but there are other countries supplying arms. There are strategic cases, litigation before numerous national courts, demanding that the courts demand that governments stop fueling this war and fueling human rights violations.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about the number of Palestinians right now who are detained under what’s called the Unlawful Combatants Law. What cases have you been working on? What are the profile of those detained, the number of those detained, if there are charges against them?

BUDOUR HASSAN: Officially, Israel acknowledges that it’s currently holding 865 Palestinians from Gaza as unlawful combatants. Under Unlawful Combatants Law, Palestinians — and they are mainly from Gaza — do not know the evidence used against them, cannot challenge the legal grounds for their arrest, and they are not charged, and they cannot face a fair trial, of course. Under the amendment to the Unlawful Combatants Law, a person from Gaza can be detained for up to 45 days without even being issued an arrest order. They can spend for up to 75 days without seeing a judge.

In many of the cases — in most of the cases we have documented, we interviewed doctors, we interviewed human rights defenders and also interviewed journalists, who said that they were told that they have a lawyer to represent them, but they never saw that lawyer. They said that they could not even ask why they are being held in jail. They did not know. Two of the doctors we interviewed spent 140 days in prison without ever knowing the charges against them, without being able to challenge the grounds based on which they are being detained. Israel never substantiated the very fact that they were taken, snatched, while treating wounded in hospital, only to spend 140 days in prison and later be released without ever knowing why they were detained in the first place.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, earlier this week — and this is, of course, something that happened before October 7th — but just earlier this week, the U.S. has found five units of Israel’s security forces responsible for human rights violations, most of them committed against Palestinians in the West Bank. The State Department said this is the first time the U.S. has come to such a conclusion about Israeli forces. And again, the violations occurred before October 7th and will not impact U.S. military aid to any of the units. If you could talk about the significance of this and whether you think this may lead to similar findings following October 7th for a far larger number of Israeli security forces units?

BUDOUR HASSAN: Of course, we think that these findings came a little bit too late in the first place. And in a sense, just implicating five military units serves to exceptionalize these five units and kind of absolves the Israeli army as a whole, the Israeli military as a whole, of its collective responsibility, because we cannot speak about individual units in the army and not recognize that the Israeli military as a whole has been committing grave human rights violations against Palestinians. And these human rights violations for decades have been fueled by impunity, not just from the military advocate general and from the investigative systems of the Israeli army, but also by Israel’s judiciary, judicial system, that has been incapable and unwilling to investigate these violations. So, it’s not just a few units here and there, exactly and precisely how it’s not just about one extremist or violent settler. It’s not the problem of one violent settler, but rather the whole settlement process.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you, Budour Hassan, about Gaza. You have the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that the invasion of Rafah is going to take place. Can you talk about the significance of this? And also talk about the famine that people in Gaza face, the opening of the Erez border. We just interviewed two people, a rabbi, American Rabbi Alissa Wise, and the Israeli-born writer Ayelet Waldman, who were arrested there as they tried to get in aid. But now Israel is saying it’s open. What level of aid is getting in?

BUDOUR HASSAN: To open, first of all, as Amnesty International, we have been calling for opening all land crossings and allowing the unfettered access of aid into Gaza, as per, of course, the provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice. And it’s good that they are finally beginning to enter, although it’s not — nowhere near the quantity that should be entering.

But to allow meager amount of aid to enter while at the same time threatening to invade Rafah, which we know that Rafah is the main place where most humanitarian organizations are working at the moment, where more than 1.3 million Palestinians from Gaza, mostly displaced people, are staying — so, invading Rafah and threatening a ground invasion in Rafah would lead to the decimation of the whole aid system in Rafah itself. So, allowing humanitarian some or improving entry of humanitarian aid, on the one hand, but launching a ground attack on Rafah, which would increase and complicate the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, is absolutely not going to help the humanitarian situation there, of course.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And the number of prisoners who are being held, finally, Budour? I mean, on the West Bank, since October 7th, 8,000 Palestinians have been arrested?

BUDOUR HASSAN: Yeah, more than that. At the moment, there are 9,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails, including 3,424 administrative detainees, people held without charges or trial, which is nearly 40% of all Palestinian detainees held in Israeli jails are held without charges or trial. In addition to those detained, many of them, of course, are being detained for organizing in support of Gaza, for trying and calling for an end to the war on Gaza.

But among those who were detained, and he’s now just under house arrest, is Palestinian human rights lawyer Ahmad Khalefa. And he was — ridiculously, he was arrested and indicted on inciting to terror because he chanted in support of Gaza and for an end to occupation. He chanted that Gaza will not surrender to the tank or to the gun. And based on that, he was indicted on charges of incitement to terrorism. He faces for up to two years in jail based on that law. And he is now under house arrest. He cannot work as a human rights lawyer. He faces the threat of being disbarred from Israel Lawyers’ Bar Association. He cannot work at the Umm al-Fahm municipality, where he has been elected as a member of municipality. And if Ahmad Khalefa ends up being convicted of incitement to terrorism for chanting, this will have a chilling effect on freedom of expression.

But it also kind of gives us echoes for what’s going in the U.S.A. You know, we see these attacks by and crackdown by Israeli authorities on anyone who dares to raise their voice against the war. And similarly, we’re seeing similar crackdowns in the United States against students organizing to put an end to the atrocity crimes happening in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Budour Hassan, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Palestinian writer, Amnesty International researcher on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We’ll link to the Amnesty report titled “U.S.-Made Weapons Used by Government of Israel in Violation of International Law and U.S. Law.”

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“Workers Have Power”: Thousands Rally in NYC for May Day, Call for Solidarity with Palestine
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 02, 2024

Transcript

Workers around the world rallied Wednesday to mark May Day, with many calling on the labor movement to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. In New York, Democracy Now! spoke to demonstrators who demanded that U.S. unions apply political pressure for a ceasefire in Gaza and to stop their government’s arms trade with Israel. “Workers do have the power to shape the world,” said Palestinian researcher Riya Al’sanah, who was among thousands gathered at a May Day rally in Manhattan.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org.

We end today’s show on yesterday’s May Day activities in New York. Thousands of students, workers and others rallied in Foley Square in Lower Manhattan to mark May Day.

JAMIL MADBAK: Jamil Madbak. In this current moment, after seven months of Zionist aggression against Gaza, is to underscore that there is a popular movement in support of Palestine, not just the students that are mobilizing, but also organized labor across the United States. That’s really important. After the mass arrests yesterday, we saw faculty at CUNY announce a sickout for today. We saw NYU faculty announce a grade strike. And we’ve seen other actions being taken in support of the students.

We know the United States manufactures bombs that are being dropped on the people in Gaza, the Palestinians, and the Arab population, more broadly. And in that sense, having an organized labor movement that is willing to advocate for the Palestinian struggle, to chip away at the strength of Western imperialism, more broadly, is essential. And for the Palestinians, the inverse is true. Like, it is our mandate to be part of a broader left in this country to help to struggle for worker rights here, understanding that a stronger labor movement means less of an ability to enact this destructive foreign policy.

PROTESTERS: Occupation no more! Occupation no more! Free, free, free Palestine! Free, free, free Palestine!

RIYA AL’SANAH: My name is Riya Al’sanah. I’m a Palestinian researcher, an organizer with the Workers in Palestine initiative. We at Palestinian unions have been organizing and calling for the colleagues in the labor movement and unions internationally to stop arming Israel.

So, since the call in October, on the 16th of October, workers internationally have galvanized and organized in solidarity with the call. We have seen workers in Barcelona port declare that they will not be — they will be stopping arms shipments destined to Israel. Workers in Belgium and transport workers have blocked the supply of weapons to Israel. At the Port of Oakland, we also saw workers here in the U.S. take concrete solidarity and action. Internationally, workers have been organizing in their workplaces and in their unions in solidarity and to heed the call. We see this also with the UAW here in the U.S. and other unions who have been calling for ceasefire and picking up the call from Palestinian workers and Palestinian unions.

This year, May Day comes at a moment where we Palestinians are subjected to a kind of undescribable onslaught, an undescribable violence. And it’s an important moment in our history to remember that workers do have the power to shape the world. Workers do have the power to influence kind of what happens not only locally, but to influence processes of colonial violence and dispossession on a bigger scale.

The very brave students and faculty on campuses in the U.S. advocating for divestment of Israeli — of military industries is a prime example of the entrenchment of militarism and military industries to all aspects of our lives, including our educational institutions. These campaigns at the moment amplify how the campaign, the call from Palestinian workers to stop arming Israel is a transformative demand for all of us to be involved in on campuses, in our various workplaces, as well.

JULIA THERESE BANNON: As a UAW member and as the president of my local, UAW must use its political power to put teeth into their call for a ceasefire. I am done with the narrative that this is a right-wing attack on free speech. This is the Democratic Party attacking free speech. This is Joe Biden attacking free speech. This is Chuck Schumer attacking a local. These so-called Democrats are the ones threatening our democracy by silencing anyone who speaks against their genocide. UAW must revoke endorsements of these politicians, if they want to make good on their call for a ceasefire.

BHAIRAVI DESAI: I bring you message of solidarity from the 28,000 members of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. We are here to say to Genocide Joe that as long as your bombs are there, we will remain here. How today, on International Workers’ Day, a day that is normally full of pride and celebration, but since October, we cannot have a day that feels like joy or celebration, because the level of death and destruction, it is crushing to our sense of being a human being.

HEALTHCARE WORKER: I stand here before you today as a member of Healthcare Workers for Palestine, New York City. This is a lot closer to them. So, I’m just going to forewarn that I’ll be speaking about the mass graves, that our media has so intentionally neglected. Last weekend —

PROTESTERS: Shame! Shame!

HEALTHCARE WORKER: Last weekend, at least 283 bodies were found in a mass grave in Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis in Gaza. These bodies, our families’ bodies, were found three meters into the ground, covered in waste, headless, skinless, organless, some of them zip-tied, and some of our healthcare workers still in their scrubs.

PROTESTERS: Shame!

HEALTHCARE WORKER: Three days later on Democracy Now!, we find out it wasn’t 283 bodies. It was at least 300. Three days after that, we find out it’s at least 400. And, y’all, we’re tired of playing this game of numbers.

NYU STUDENT: I am speaking to you as a student from the NYU encampment in solidarity with encampments and workers across the globe. To our administrations, we’re not going away. We hold our ground. We say to our administrations, to be suspended for Gaza is the highest honor.

PROTESTERS: Free, free, free Palestine! Free, free, free Palestine!

AMY GOODMAN: Special thanks to Hana Elias, Charina Nadura and Messiah Rhodes. Those voices from the Foley Square rally on May Day.

And that does it for our show. Democracy Now! is produced with Renée Feltz, Mike Burke, Deena Guzder, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud and Hana Elias. Our executive director is Julie Crosby. Special thanks to Becca Staley, Jon Randolph, Paul Powell, Mike Di Filippo, Miguel Nogueira. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh, for another edition of Democracy Now!

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“This Militaristic Approach Has Been a Failure”: Meet Hala Rharrit, First U.S. Diplomat to Quit over Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 03, 2024

Democracy Now! speaks with Hala Rharrit, the first State Department diplomat to publicly resign over the Biden administration’s policies backing Israel’s assault and siege of the Gaza Strip. Rharrit is an 18-year career diplomat who served as the Arabic-language spokesperson for the State Department in the region. “I could no longer be a part of the State Department and promote this policy. It’s an inhumane policy. It’s a failed policy that is helping neither Palestinians, neither Israelis,” Rharrit says. “We are not authorized to send military equipment, weapons to countries that commit human rights abuses. ICJ has determined plausible genocide, yet we are still sending billions upon billions of not just defensive weaponry, but offensive weaponry. It is tantamount to a violation of domestic law. Many diplomats know it. Many diplomats are scared to say it.” She adds, “I read the talking points that we were supposed to promote on Arab media. A lot of them were dehumanizing to Palestinians.” Rharrit also discusses how “corruption” in government allows for arms sales to continue. “I could not help but be concerned about the influence of special interest groups, of lobbying groups on our foreign policy and, as well, on Congress — on the people that decide whether or not some of those shipments of arms get sent. The bottom line is that our politicians should not be profiting from war. And unfortunately, we have some institutionalized corruption that enables that,” she says.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: Israel has killed at least 26 Palestinians in Gaza over the past day, including at least seven people, four of them children, in an airstrike on Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, where over 1.4 million Palestinians have sought refuge. Nearly 35,000 Palestinians have been killed over the past nearly seven months, with 7,000 others missing and believed to be buried under the rubble. Nearly 78,000 have been wounded.

A new United Nations report called the level of casualties in Gaza “unprecedented” in such a short period of time. The report also said the world has not seen the level of destruction of housing in Gaza since World War II.

Here in the United States, a massive student protest movement with Gaza solidarity encampments in university campuses across the country has been met with public raids, mass arrests and violence. Nearly 2,200 people have been arrested at 43 colleges and universities in recent weeks. President Joe Biden addressed the protests Thursday for the first time in weeks in unscheduled remarks from the White House.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others so students can finish the semester and their college education. Look, it’s basically a matter of fairness. It’s a matter of what’s right. There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos.

AMY GOODMAN: As President Biden concluded his remarks, he was asked whether the student protests would prompt him to reconsider his foreign policy.

REPORTER: Mr. President, have the protests forced you to reconsider any of the policies with regard to the region?

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: No.

AMY GOODMAN: The Biden administration’s financial, military and diplomatic backing of Israel’s assault on Gaza has sparked dissent within the U.S. government, with resignations and walkouts by government employees.

Today we’re joined by the first State Department diplomat to publicly resign over the war on Gaza. Hala Rharrit is an 18-year career diplomat who recently resigned from the State Department. She’s the third State Department employee, but the first Foreign Service officer, to do so. Hala Rharrit served as the Arabic-language spokesperson for the State Department in the region. She joins us now in her first TV interview since her resignation.

Hala Rharrit, welcome to Democracy Now!

HALA RHARRIT: Thank you so much, Amy. It’s an honor to be with you.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you start off by talking about why you have publicly resigned?

HALA RHARRIT: Absolutely. Honestly, I wasn’t intending to publicly resign. I was intending to resign. My profile at the Dubai Media Hub, my last assignment, was quite high-profile. My role was to speak to Arab media about American policy, so it inevitably made the news when I did resign. It first made the news, I believe, here in the region and in the United States.

But the reason why I resigned is really because I could no longer be a part of the State Department and promote this policy. It’s an inhumane policy. It’s a failed policy that is helping neither Palestinians, neither Israelis. And I want to stress that point, that it’s not strictly the horrific mass killings that we have all been watching over the course of over 200 days, the targeting of journalists, of healthcare workers, over 14,000 children massacred, but it’s also not keeping Israelis any safer. The hostages are still in Gaza. Israelis know that there is going to be a vicious cycle of violence after so many have been killed in Gaza. This does not help anyone.

And the militaristic policy is not the solution. As a diplomat, as someone that believes in diplomacy, in the power of diplomacy, I did everything I could from within to try to explain this on a daily basis, through reports, through cables. Nothing was working, until finally I made the decision that I could no longer be part of the system.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you feel President Biden and your boss at the State Department, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, could do right now that would be most effective?

HALA RHARRIT: They need to abide by national domestic law and international law. We have systems in place within the State Department to ensure situations like this don’t happen. We are not authorized to send military equipment, weapons to countries that commit human rights abuses. ICJ has determined plausible genocide, yet we are still sending billions upon billions of not just defensive weaponry, but offensive weaponry. It is tantamount to a violation of domestic law. Many diplomats know it. Many diplomats are scared to say it. It’s a violation of international law, what we’ve been seeing happening in Gaza.

And we cannot make exceptions for our allies. It does not help our allies to make exceptions, because, again, all that this is doing is creating a vicious cycle of violence. And it has clearly failed its objectives. It has failed. The hostages are still not back with their families where they belong. The situation in Gaza remains intensely unstable. People continue to suffer on a daily basis.

It’s time for President Biden and Secretary Blinken to realize that this militaristic approach has been a failure and they need to stop. They need to abide by U.S. law, and doing so will create a lot of leverage. If we are able to condition military aid, we will be able to pressure Israel. We will also be able to work with our Arab allies to pressure Hamas, to have real, substantive change on the ground. That’s what’s necessary at this time, not more arms.

AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think President Biden does not do that? As he says he’s heartbroken by the number of casualties and he says he admonishes the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, clearly the arms flow continues, Washington Post, New York Times reporting on, you know, the well over 100 arms transfers that are made, or arms sales, just under the threshold that would require Congress to approve it.

HALA RHARRIT: Absolutely. You make a very good point, Amy. Right under the threshold, willfully enabling the crimes that are happening in Gaza. And that’s why I could no longer be part of the State Department, because it’s willful.

It’s a very difficult answer to give you, and it’s one question that I ask myself every single day: Why doesn’t President Biden act? Why doesn’t Secretary Blinken act? If I had the answer to that, perhaps I — you know, I’d be somewhere else right now. I’d be within the system still trying to effect change.

But the bottom line to me and what it appeared like to me from within the system, and also as a spokesperson who was reading the talking points, is that, fundamentally, an Israeli life was not worth — or, a Palestinian life was not worth the same as an Israeli life. And it’s heartbreaking for me to say that as someone that has proudly served my country for 18 years. But I read the talking points that we were supposed to promote on Arab media. A lot of them were dehumanizing to Palestinians. Thirty-four thousand people killed in Gaza right now, and we’re still insisting that this is the only option, when it’s not.

Also, as a diplomat, I could not help but be concerned about the influence of special interests, of the arms lobby, of other special interests that serve foreign governments. It is very, very frustrating when you’re working on a daily basis on American foreign policy, but you know that no matter what you do and no matter what very senior officials in the department are doing, and despite all of the recommendations going up to Washington from the field, the policy is not changing. I could not help but be concerned about the influence of special interest groups, of lobbying groups on our foreign policy and, as well, on Congress — on the people that decide whether or not some of those shipments of arms get sent. The bottom line is that our politicians should not be profiting from war. And unfortunately, we have some institutionalized corruption that enables that. And as an American diplomat, my concern was U.S. national security interest. And I protested against this, but unfortunately could not effect enough change, that I had to submit my resignation.

AMY GOODMAN: You mentioned institutionalized corruption. Can you explain that further, Hala?

HALA RHARRIT: It is public knowledge that our politicians are able to profit significantly from the arms industry, from campaign contributions. That is something that is never allowed for a diplomat. We have no ability to gain any financial gain from anything, really. Everything has to be very transparent for us. We obviously have secret — top-secret security clearances. Our lives are really open book when we’re a diplomat. And that’s how it should be, because we’re serving our country. We’re not serving ourselves. We’re serving the people of the United States. We’re implementing the laws of the land. And it should be for the sake of U.S. national security, not for personal gain, not for campaign contributions. And as a diplomat, it was very concerning to me knowing that our domestic system clearly has an influence on our foreign policy, because we were not being heard.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about how the administration, to the highest levels, Blinken and, of course, ultimately, Biden, respond to criticism and how much they hear. The latest news, among a lot of other reports, more than 250 former staffers in the Obama administration and campaign workers for the Obama-Biden ticket sent a letter to their former bosses demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and calling for the U.S. to end its staunch support for Israel. You then have the number of people who have resigned publicly and more privately. I’m wondering their response to you? But have you spoken directly with President Biden, with Tony Blinken, the secretary of State, your, well, previous boss?

HALA RHARRIT: Did you ask, Amy, if I’ve spoken to them directly?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes.

HALA RHARRIT: I have not spoken to them directly, I mean, not in this particular occasion. I have in the past for Secretary Blinken, but not for this particular occasion. But what we do as diplomats is we send reporting. We send information back. That’s why we are overseas in our embassies and our consulates. And our job is to try to help Washington in making informed decisions. We do that. And we do hear from Secretary Blinken. We do hear about a culture of “We want to hear about dissent. We want to hear critical feedback.”

I can tell you that, for me, it was a mixed bag. I provided that critical feedback. I provided daily reports, for example, showing what pan-Arab media was covering in terms of the Gaza crisis, showing how American — there was growing anti-Americanism. Every single day, I could see growing anti-Americanism, which was extremely concerning. And I was trying to raise this on a daily basis to Washington, explaining we need to change course, this is hurting our own national security interests if we maintain this policy. And I was met with silencing. I was met with being sidelined. I was also met with “Thank you for your critical feedback. This is going to the highest levels of our government. We need more of this.” I was met with more silencing, more sidelining. So, for me, it was really a mixed bag.

And I have to be honest that there were people that were trying to ensure that those messages were heard, but at the end of the day and what was the most frustrating is that, in particular, with my particular role as Arabic spokesperson, I explained that our messaging posture was hurting more so than helping us, yet our messaging posture never changed. We’re still using the talking points directed to the Arab world even if it’s inflaming the tensions, even if it’s instigating people across the region, even if it’s making people across the region hate us more and be more frustrated with us, because they hear the double standard. They hear the double standard when we condemn an attack on Israeli interests, but we don’t condemn the death of Palestinians, only show concern. They are very, very in tune with these double standards. And it hurt us to continue to amplify these talking points. And it was very frustrating for me that there was the continued expectation that we would do that despite all of the data, despite the clear proof that it’s not helping America, it’s hurting America.

AMY GOODMAN: You refused to comment — you were the Arabic-language spokesperson to the Arab world. You refused to comment on U.S. policy in Gaza. Can you explain why you made that decision?

HALA RHARRIT: Absolutely. Just as I mentioned right now, I made it abundantly clear, through daily reports, of the ramifications of our messaging. Abundantly clear. I showed every day what was happening, what the reaction was. And I also was monitoring Arab social media and sharing with Washington the images that were going viral across Arab social media. And these — thank you, as well, Amy, for amplifying the voices of the Palestinian families at the top of the hour. Those are things that sometimes Washington does not hear. But it is what the Arab public is consuming on a daily basis. And these pictures of dead children, of maimed toddlers, they’re traumatizing. And my point back was, “Look at these images that people in this part of the world are consuming on a daily basis.”

There is an absolute disconnect with what people in the Arab world are seeing happening in Gaza and our talking points. There’s an utter disconnect. And it does not serve our interest to continue pretending like what’s happening in Gaza is not happening, and we keep promoting things that are just instigating. So, my role was to be a spokesperson, but I also believe my role to be to serve the United States, to advance American interests, to have effective messaging, not just messaging. And I could not in good conscience do something and go out on Arab TV knowing that it was hurting my country doing that, not helping it.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain more specifically, because this is a serious, important critique and charge, that the president, that the secretary of state are actually endangering U.S. national security with the position and the support of Israel that they are taking right now.

HALA RHARRIT: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, we had three of our troops killed in Jordan. That was in direct reaction to our Israel policy. And when that happened, I said, again, “I will not be part of this.” And then, if an attack happens on American interests in the region, I would not be able to sleep at night, because my face on that screen, on that Arab news channel, may have been the thing that prompted the person to go and retaliate or commit an act of terror.

The anger in the region is palpable, and it is traumatic. When people are consuming daily images of massacres, of people suffering, and yet they hear that the United States is willfully enabling it by continuing to send bombs, it makes people lose complete faith in the United States. And this is what was so painful to me as an American diplomat. I’ve worked for the last 18 years to strengthen ties between the United States and other countries, to advance U.S. interests, to promote America’s image. But this policy made it impossible. How can we talk about press freedom when we remain willfully silent about the killings of so many journalists? I mean, I personally worked to try to get a statement out on the killing of journalists in Gaza, and I was met with so much pushback. And I was so shocked at my own colleagues that would push back on that. It is a fundamental American value to be promoting freedom of press. We cannot have exceptions. We cannot have double standards.

As American diplomats, we need to apply our values, our standards on the situation. That is what we are supposed to be about. And until we do that, we are hurting — I keep on repeating this word, but I fundamentally believe it, and it’s a concern of mine that I expressed over the course of months. We are hurting ourselves, not just the Palestinians and not just the Israelis, but we’re hurting the United States of America.

AMY GOODMAN: You are publicly resigning, but there are others who have simply resigned, saying they don’t think they’re important enough to announce that they are resigning. Can you talk about the number of people who have left and also who have expressed, like you have, through the official channels, going all the way up, your concern?

HALA RHARRIT: I actually don’t know of any others that have resigned within the Foreign Service. There may be, and I may not know about them, but I do not know of any others, other than Josh and Annelle, who are not Foreign Service officers but were Washington-based, that have resigned. But I know for sure that a lot of people expressed frustrations of wanting to resign.

And I know this mostly from after my own resignation was announced internally. It was quite a surprise to me. I did not know how people would react to me, honestly, when I was still on the inside, because my resignation was announced internally before it became public externally. And at that point, so many people approached me and talked about how they’ve been so frustrated with the policy. They felt like they couldn’t say anything. They felt like they couldn’t do anything. They were worried about their careers. They were worried about if they spoke up internally, what would that do to them? And it was very disheartening to hear. It’s not what the State Department is supposed to be about. Many told me that they wished they could resign, because they really could not keep maintaining every single day under this policy, but that they couldn’t for financial reasons, for other considerations related to their families.

And so, it is a sad time within the department, as far as I’m concerned, and I can only share of my experience, of course. The State Department is a very large institution, but I can tell you, after 18 years of service, you get to know a lot of members of the diplomatic corps. And it’s an unprecedented time. It’s very uneasy. And I think everyone wakes up hoping that the next day will be better. But we really do need some fundamental changes to this policy, because it is such a failed policy that is just hurting all parties involved.

AMY GOODMAN: And your response to President Biden speaking out yesterday for the first time on the college campus unrest, the thousands of students who have been arrested — also professors have been arrested — saying that that protest across the country has no effect on his foreign policy?

HALA RHARRIT: Honestly, I was intensely disappointed that he would speak about constituents in that way, that he would speak about voters in that way, that he would speak about Americans in that way. He is supposed to be a representative of the people.

And the fact that these students have been dismissed, these students have been labeled — the bottom line is, I think there is a fundamental generational shift in not just the United States, but globally, because these students, much like people across this region, have been consuming on a daily basis the images coming straight out of Gaza. They’ve been seeing on their social media feeds the children that have been dying of starvation. They are seeing on their social media feeds the bloody toddlers that are being carried with an arm blown off. They’re seeing this on a daily basis. And it took them seven months to rise. If President Biden, if Secretary Blinken had solved this crisis, there would have been no student protests.

The buck stops with the president. Again, I’m going to say it: It is a failed policy. It has not succeeded in bringing home the hostages. It has not succeeded in making Israelis safer. And when students are seeing a potential, plausible, ongoing genocide, they are reacting to it. They are reacting to the fact that their academic institutions may be financially invested in the killings of innocent people in Gaza. They’re reacting to the fact that their governments — that their government is continuing to enable the killing of innocent civilians. And it is a fundamental democratic right in the First Amendment. And it was very, very disheartening to hear the president just dismissing them that way without even addressing the source of their concerns.

Of course, I am absolutely against any type of violence on campus or anywhere else. It should be inclusive. No students, regardless of their religion, of their race, of ethnicity, need to be targeted whatsoever, and that is clear, and that should go without saying. But it is also clear that there was so much community in these protests. There were Jewish students with Muslim students, with Christian students, with atheists, with agnostics — it doesn’t really matter. People were unified in calling for an end to the carnage and an end to the violence. And suppressing them in such a violent manner is horrific. And it’s also not necessary. Again, as a diplomat, I fundamentally don’t believe in solving conflicts through arms or through violence. I believe in sitting down and talking with individuals, sitting down and negotiating, not in suppression.

AMY GOODMAN: Hala Rharrit, I thank you so much for being with us. Hala Rharrit is the first State Department diplomat to resign over the Biden administration’s Gaza policy. She is an 18-year career diplomat. This is her first television interview since resigning.

Coming up, we speak with two doctors just back from volunteering at the largest functioning hospital in Gaza. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “A Place to Stay” by Sam Burton, Palestinian American singer-songwriter form Salt Lake City, dedicated this song to his Palestinian father.

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“Dead on Arrival”: Doctors Back from Gaza Describe Horrific Hospital Scenes, Decimated Health System
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 03, 2024

Transcript

Nearly seven months of constant bombardment, siege and obstruction of aid deliveries have annihilated the healthcare system in Gaza. Last week, the Palestinian Health Ministry said that around 600,000 Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip no longer have access to any kind of healthcare. The World Health Organization has said that Israel is “systematically dismantling” the health system in Gaza. Only 11 hospitals out of 36 hospitals in Gaza are partially functioning. At both of Gaza’s largest hospitals, Al-Shifa and Nasser, Palestinians found hundreds of bodies buried in mass graves after Israel raided and destroyed the facilities. Democracy Now! speaks with Dr. Ismail Mehr and Dr. Azeem Elahi just after they volunteered at the largest hospital still operating in Gaza, the European Hospital in Khan Younis. “The healthcare system has been always in a noose, and that noose tightens at times when there’s conflict,” says Mehr. “Right now that noose has completely just hung the healthcare system.”

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.

Nearly seven months of constant bombardment, siege and obstruction of aid deliveries have annihilated the healthcare system in Gaza. Last week, the Palestinian Health Ministry said around 600,000 Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip no longer have access to any kind of healthcare. The World Health Organization has said that Israel is, quote, “systematically dismantling” the health system in Gaza. Save the Children has reported Israel’s attacks on the healthcare sector in Gaza, at the rate of 73 attacks per month, are higher than in any other recent conflict in the world.

Only 11 hospitals out of 36 hospitals in Gaza are partially functioning. In April, Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa in Gaza City in the north, was completely destroyed following a two-week siege by Israeli forces. Then, Gaza’s second-largest hospital, Nasser Hospital, was also destroyed following another brutal siege by Israeli forces in Khan Younis. After their withdrawals, Palestinians found hundreds of bodies buried in mass graves at both hospitals.

Now the largest hospital remaining partially operating in Gaza is the European Hospital in Khan Younis. Like so many other hospitals, it’s also sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinians.

We’re joined now by two doctors just back from Gaza who volunteered at the European Hospital. Dr. Ismail Mehr is an anesthesiologist and chair of the nonprofit IMANA Medical Relief, which focuses on disaster relief. Dr. Mehr has participated in over 35 medical missions globally, has been to Gaza five times dating back to the 2008-2009 war. He’s joining us from Hornell, New York. And joining us from Charlotte, North Carolina, is Dr. Azeem Elahi, a pulmonary and critical care physician who was part of the team of doctors volunteering at European Hospital with Medical Relief. Dr. Elahi has participated in several humanitarian medical mission trips to various parts of the world, was previously in Gaza in 2019.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Dr. Mehr, let’s begin with you. Describe what you saw.

DR. ISMAIL MEHR: First of all, thank you, Amy, for having both of us.

And describe what I saw, a very common question. Immediately when we entered and in the mornings went to go to work, the first sight was all the amputees, the children, from children through the adults. Seeing the number of amputees, double amputees, with 30,000 people living outside or inside that hospital, was our first sights, the first thing that we saw. And, you know, my experience in Gaza — this was my fifth time there — I had never seen something like this, including my visits to Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen in the past, you know, conflict zones, areas under tense circumstances. I have never seen this number of amputees, destruction, and people just seeking refuge. It was an experience like no other.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can tell us about a few cases and also talk about patients coming from other hospitals and what you heard about Nasser and Shifa, this horrifying report we got in the last week of mass graves discovered at both major hospitals?

DR. ISMAIL MEHR: Yeah, you know, you make a lot of friends as you travel back and forth to Gaza, I mean, people that I was deathly sick and worried about if they were still alive. And when I was at European Gaza Hospital, I ran into some of my friends. I saw them there. They had shifted down from the north. And they shared some of the horrors of Shifa Hospital. They shared that they were there when forces came in, and some of the stories and what took place. And they shared with me the, you know, people that were friends of ours that had passed away, like Dr. Mehdat, the plastic surgeon who was killed. And Dr. Ahmed, a young plastic surgeon, and his mother were killed at Shifa, and their bodies were found there. They shared those stories with us. And we paused, and we grieved, and then we got back to work.

Patients, you know, Yassin, 11-year-old boy, was a double amputee. He’s 11 years old. You know, I have children. Those watching have children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Imagine your 11-year-old family member losing both his legs. And now in Gaza there were only two prosthetic centers that would help these amputees throughout the Gaza Strip, and those no longer exist.

And as you mentioned earlier a systematic dismantling of healthcare, you know, we saw it. We incurred it. Every night we would hear the bombings, the strikes, the drones, the artillery. And like clockwork, myself and Dr. Azeem and my other two colleagues, Dr. Shazia and Dr. Shariq, would know it’s time for us to get to the emergency department. And we would work long hours, into the early-morning hours, helping the local doctors at European Gaza Hospital try to save lives as mass casualties would come in. Some would be dead on arrival, and then some would die while we were working on them, and then others we’d be able to save. And, you know, as we started the show earlier about the recent bombing strike in Rafah, it brought back vivid memories, like, and I could recall myself and Azeem in that emergency department going through what takes place.

And to follow up, yes, European Gaza Hospital is the only tertiary, only high-level hospital remaining. It is not a massively huge hospital like Shifa was or Nasser was. And now when strikes take place in other places, there is no place that can stabilize or take care of such mass casualties besides European Gaza Hospital. So, from Rafah, they’re brought to European Gaza Hospital, which is probably about five to eight kilometers probably, and then receive care. So, you know, this is life in Gaza as a healthcare worker right now trying to deal with all this.

AMY GOODMAN: This is a short video your team filmed of some of the children and people taking shelter inside European Hospital. Many of them have set up makeshift tents in the hallways.

DOCTOR: Another day in EGH, Islamic — how are you?

PALESTINIAN CHILD 1: How are you?

PALESTINIAN CHILD 2: How are you?

DOCTOR: Hey!

PALESTINIAN CHILD 3: How are you?

PALESTINIAN CHILD 4: How are you?

DOCTOR: These are people, they’re living in the hospitals.

PALESTINIAN CHILD 5: How are you?

DOCTOR: Probably another 20,000 at least outside. Hey. How are you? So, they’ve lost everything.

PALESTINIAN CHILD 6: How are you?

DOCTOR: They live in the hospitals. They’re not patients. They make makeshifts on the side. There’s people up on the stairs like this. This is life in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s inside European Hospital. Dr. Azeem Elahi, if you can describe the atmosphere, not only the patients, but the people taking refuge, and then what people are dying of? You’ve got the airstrikes directly, but then you also have disease, and you have this imminent famine. Talk about that, Dr. Elahi.

DR. AZEEM ELAHI: Amy, thank you for inviting us to share our experience.

I was listening to that clip in my ears, and immediately a smile came on my face, just because it took me back to those moments when we’d walk through the hallways. It’s as equally happy as it is sad, because these are displaced people who have arrived to the hospital for shelter, for electricity, for food, with broken families. When you sit down and actually interact with the people that you encounter in these corridors, you realize very quickly that the families are extended families, and they’ve been brought together because of injured family members or family members who have passed away as a result of the war.

The corridors are lined, just like you see in that video. In every nook and cranny, every staircase, every space in the hospital where you’re taking care of patients, where the radiologist is reviewing scans, is occupied by displaced persons. The situation there is dire, because it does, in fact, interrupt medical care when you have this cohabitation of sterility and medical treatment with just life. And it’s a truly amazing parity to see in real life, because you can hear in the video the amazement and the joy and the laughter that you can hear from the children’s voices, but when they are tucked in behind those curtains, I can assure you that their life is very different than what their faces show.

AMY GOODMAN: And the issue of disease and people weakened by hunger, in addition to the direct — the morbidity from direct strikes?

DR. AZEEM ELAHI: The type of patients we would admit to the intensive care unit were oftentimes blast injury patients. I’m an adult critical care physician. And when I joined the European Gaza Hospital ICU, I realized the majority of our patients were actually pediatric patients. More than 50% of the patients in that ICU were under the age of 16, mainly because they were involved — when these bombings and the bombardment occurs, they’re typically in the evening, when the family units are sleeping together, and the patients that would make it to the hospital are the lucky ones. And just as Dr. Mehr pointed out, many of them would arrive dead, and the few that were able to survive would end up in the ICU.

The injuries we would see were trauma-related. So they had brain injuries, subarachnoid hemorrhages, subdural hemorrhages, traumatic brain injuries. They required mechanical ventilation because they weren’t able to breathe on their own. A lot of infections, especially in the postoperative setting, when your nutrition is affected — and this is true in the U.S., in the U.K., as it is anywhere else in the world. Every surgeon wants their patient to be as nourished as possible. We know, with clear-cut data, that patients who are malnourished are at higher risk of developing postoperative infections, postoperative morbidity.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to put the same question to Dr. Ismail Mehr, the question of the injuries people are suffering either from direct airstrike or from disease.

DR. ISMAIL MEHR: Yeah, I mean, Azeem was just a remarkable member of our team as was, like he shared, in the ICU. My role was, you know, I was in the operating room as an anesthesiologist. But with our experience and our team’s experience, we manned the ER quite often.

And what I want to really share with the viewers and the world, and my message is, is it’s very sexy to look at the bombings, the strikes, you know, and I share that — I’m being sarcastic, but, you know, that’s — the world focuses on traumatic stuff. What we forget is a grandmother who died from urinary tract infection. I had to do CPR on her and code her in the emergency department and then look at her son and say she died. He was like, “She just had an infection.” Because, as you shared earlier — excuse me — there is no healthcare system intact any longer. EGH is bursting at the seams — it’s not bursting, it has bursted.

And as you and I, when we get sick, or your child or grandchild or niece or nephew or aunt or uncle, you take them to the doctor. Gaza had a healthcare system in place, not always the most robust due to the embargo, but you could still go and see your doctor, get your glucose medicine. There was a gentleman, a mid-aged gentleman, that we had to do an amputation on because he had been barefoot for months, got an infection, learned that he never — he did not take his Glucophage or metformin. Those of you who are diabetics know those medicines. They’re for managing sugar. He got gas gangrene of his foot, came in so late that we thought he was going to die that night, operated on him early in the morning. He died six hours later.

What about the 20-year-old patient — I believe her name was Amna — who had fulminant liver failure from hepatitis A, not even — you know, hepatitis B and C are very severe forms of hepatitis. Hepatitis A is from unhygienic water and food. And she was dying in front of us in that emergency room. The mother who developed a blood clot in her leg because she’s been immobile living in a tent, and then she had a pulmonary embolism or a clot to her lung.

Every day there were people we were declaring dead in that emergency room who were dying of simple, basic things that in Gaza could be treated. I have seen them treated in Gaza before in my experience. And there’s no voice for those people. Yes, people are dying from the strikes every day, but the world is failing to see the implications of those who are the unaccounted for.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you both to stay with us, because we have other questions about how this compares to other medical trips you have made as you volunteer in conflict zones around the world. And on Monday, we will discuss the Abu Ghraib decision. So, we have to break one more time. Dr. Ismail Mehr and Dr. Azeem Elahi, stay with us. They’re just back from volunteering at Gaza’s European Hospital with the IMANA Medical Relief team. Back in 20 seconds.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Mum Sing to the Wind” by Nai Barghouti. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue with the two doctors just back from Gaza volunteering at European Hospital: Dr. Ismail Mehr, anesthesiologist, chair of the nonprofit IMANA Medical Relief, which focuses on disaster relief — Dr. Mehr has participated in over 35 medical missions globally, has been to Gaza five times dating back to 2008 and '09 — and Dr. Azeem Elahi is with us from Charlotte, North Carolina, pulmonary critical care physician who is just back also from European Hospital. Dr. Mehr, you've been in dozens of conflict zones around the world. How does Gaza compare?

DR. ISMAIL MEHR: There is no comparison. You know, you say you’ve seen — you know, in a long career, that when you’ve seen everything, you know your career is complete. And I thought at one point that I’ve seen everything, and when I walked into Gaza, I’m not even close. I can compare it to Gaza 2008, 2009, to 2022, 2023. You know, I had the opportunity to go Deir al-Balah. It’s a little bit north of Khan Younis, and I had to drive through Khan Younis to deliver supplies and medications that we had for different hospitals. And as far as I could see, it looked like Armageddon. There was not a single building, single structure, single gas station, single hospital, single school, single university that remained standing. And then, the despair that you see around you at European Gaza Hospital, I can’t do justice to describe it. I just — maybe Azeem can or someone else can. I just — it’s — you can’t describe it.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to one of the people you met at European Hospital, as you were just describing, Rafat Badwan, describing what he and his relatives were sleeping, targeted by an Israeli strike. His son survived, but severely injured.

RAFAT BADWAN: My brother and his wife and his all children, two daughters and one son, are killed. Es Tesh’hedu, Inshallah. Also, my sister’s son are killed by them. We don’t do anything. Hasbunallahu wa ni’mal wakeel. Our Gaza and all the health sector need your support. There’s many injured and a shortage in medical supplies. We all need your help.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Rafat Badwan, Dr. Mehr. If you can also talk about how Gaza has changed in the many times that you have been there back to 2008, ’09?

DR. ISMAIL MEHR: Yeah, I think people fail to — forget — everyone thinks everything started October 7th. This has gone back to — you know, 78, 75, 76 years ago, since 1948, and then, Gaza specifically, down back to the early 2000s with the embargo.

The healthcare system has been always in a noose, and that noose tightens at times when there’s conflict, or it loosens up, but it remains around the neck of the healthcare system. And right now that noose has completely just — you know, has hung the healthcare system.

I mean, people say “partially.” People use words as it’s “semi-functional” or “remaining hospitals.” Yes, there’s structures, and there’s amazing colleagues and brothers and sisters from healthcare that are doing amazing job, but a functional healthcare system to save lives has been extinguished. You know, I can’t describe what the situation is there.

And that gentleman, Mr. Badwan, he’s a pharmacist. And I remember that night vividly, and I’m sure Azeem does, as well. It was multiple casualties came in — children with depressed skull fractures, mothers. You know, some of them were his family members. Others were just others and his neighbors. And luckily, our team was there from IMANA and HEAL Palestine. You know, we partnered with HEAL Palestine in this mission. And we were able to work along and help save some lives that night. But what hurts me is, is that every day this is happening, and every day there are innocent people losing their lives.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Elahi, I wanted to get your final comment and your message as you come back to your practice in Charlotte, North Carolina, how this has changed you and what you’ll be telling the medical community here.

DR. AZEEM ELAHI: I would say, from 2019’s experience and our current experience just now, what you’ll realize from the people in Gaza is they just want the world to know and understand what they’re going through. You heard it in this gentleman’s voice, that he’s just expressing a plea to the world to provide help to the people of Gaza, see what’s happening there. And when I come back to the comfort of my home and the comfort of my family and the comfort of a modern healthcare system, it is —

AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds.

DR. AZEEM ELAHI: — really difficult to understand what’s happening. I think we just have to open our eyes, share with the world what’s happening there, and open our hearts for them.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Azeem Elahi and Dr. Ismail Mehr, back from volunteering at Gaza’s European Hospital with the IMANA Medical Relief team.

[admin]

“Criminal Act”: Israel Bans Al Jazeera, Largest Int’l News Org. in Gaza, Ahead of Rafah Invasion
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 06, 2024

Transcript

As the death toll in Gaza soars to more than 34,700, Israeli authorities have taken Al Jazeera off the air in Israel and ordered Palestinians in eastern Rafah to evacuate ahead of an Israeli offensive. “The Israeli government is trying to conceal what’s happening in Gaza and trying to intimidate Al Jazeera … and delegitimize the whole coverage,” says Al Jazeera’s managing editor Mohamed Moawad, explaining this is “a strategy” to “try to make sure that the story doesn’t reach the world.” Over the past eight months, Al Jazeera has been one of the only international outlets with reporters on the ground inside Gaza, where at least three of its employees have been killed by Israel’s monthslong assault. Israel has been threatening to ban Al Jazeera for “incitement” via “a series of intimidations” for months, culminating in “a criminal act,” says Moawad. He calls on the international community, including the U.S. government, to condemn Israel’s suppression of a free press.

AMY GOODMAN: Israel has ordered 100,000 Palestinians living in eastern Rafah to evacuate ahead of an Israeli offensive on the southern Gaza city, where more than 1.4 million displaced Palestinians have sought refuge. This comes as Israeli authorities have taken Al Jazeera off the air inside Israel. On Sunday, police officers raided the network’s Jerusalem bureau, seizing broadcasting equipment. Israel’s Foreign Press Association called it a, quote, “dark day for democracy.” The move came just two days after World Press Freedom Day. Over the past eight months Al Jazeera has been one of the only international outlets with reporters on the ground inside Gaza.

This is a prerecorded video message by Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan from East Jerusalem.

IMRAN KHAN: If you’re watching this prerecorded report, then Al Jazeera has been banned in the territory of Israel. On April the 1st, the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, passed a law that allowed the prime minister to ban Al Jazeera. He’s now enacted that law.

Let me just take you through some of the definitions within the law. They’ve banned our website, including anything that has the option of entering or accessing the website, even passwords that are needed, whether they’re paid or not, and whether it’s stored on Israeli servers or outside of Israel. The website is now inaccessible. They’re also banning any device used for providing content. That includes my mobile phone. If I use that to do any kind of news gathering, then the Israelis can simply confiscate it. Our internet access provider, the guy that simply hosts AlJazeera.net, is also in danger of being fined if they host the website. The Al Jazeera TV channel, completely banned. Transmission by any kind of content provider is also banned, and holding offices or operating them in the territory of Israel by the channel. Also, once again, any devices used to provide content for the channel can be taken away by the Israelis.

It’s a wide-ranging ban. We don’t know how long it will be in place for, but it does cover this territory of the state of Israel.

Imran Khan, Al Jazeera, occupied East Jerusalem.

AMY GOODMAN: Again, that’s a prerecorded video message by Al Jazeera correspondent Imran Khan from East Jerusalem.

As the death toll in Gaza approaches 35,000, with more than 78,000 people wounded in Israeli attacks since October 7th, we’re joined in Doha, Qatar, by Mohamed Moawad, managing editor of Al Jazeera, joining us from the studios of Al Jazeera.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Can you start off by responding to Israel’s move and what this means for Al Jazeera?

MOHAMED MOAWAD: Thanks, Amy, for having me, and thanks for following this story.

It’s a series of intimidations that the Israeli government are placing on us. And this move is within the same loop of failure that the Israeli government have entered since the beginning of this war. First, they have intimidated us to try and stop the message, the coverage of Al Jazeera from inside Gaza. Then they have — after they have failed, they shot the messenger, actually three messengers of Al Jazeera, three correspondents, and that did not stop our coverage.

So, now they are back again and trying to stop our coverage or try to delegitimize the coverage by saying that we don’t operate in Israel. And we consider this an attack on the journalistic community in all. And we consider it a criminal act, because this against and a violation, a clear violation, to the international human rights laws.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what happened this weekend, how you found out that Al Jazeera was banned, the raiding of your offices in Jerusalem? Describe the whole sequence.

MOHAMED MOAWAD: If you go back like three months back, the Israeli government have been threatening Al Jazeera, intimidating Al Jazeera by saying that they are going to vote for a law to block Al Jazeera for 45 days under the umbrella of the emergency actions that they are taking because of the war, the ongoing war. So, we’ve been hearing that, like our colleagues at Haaretz who were threatened to be defunded because they are against the national security of Israel, as the Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government stated. We’ve been hearing that they are going to put the vote for the cabinet to pass. And it took them three months. Up until yesterday, they have listed it on the top of the agenda of the government. They voted in favor, anonymously.

And the minister of communications took actions on the ground to block our coverage by seizing our signal with the cable companies in Israel and raiding our locations. They have raided a remote location, live position, where our colleagues at Al Jazeera English were broadcasting. And they have placed a blockage on our office in Jerusalem.

And, of course, this law is ambiguous. I mean, they can take actions as much as the Prime Minister Netanyahu is concerned. They can do the same with our office in Ramallah in the West Bank, because they can say that this is under the umbrella of the emergency law.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that the banning starting this weekend — and can you explain: Does this go for 45 days, or is it indefinite? Do you think that there is a direct relationship between the banning of Al Jazeera, which is one of the few international news organizations that have journalists on the ground in Gaza, and Israel announcing and dropping flyers in southern Rafah telling people to leave because of an imminent invasion?

MOHAMED MOAWAD: Of course, Amy, this move is politicized. I mean, anything taken against Al Jazeera is a politicization by the Israeli government and Prime Minister Netanyahu against a journalism organization, Al Jazeera. But, for us, we consider it, you know, part of a sequence of intimidations. We have three colleagues killed on the frontlines, families targeted of our colleagues. And, for us, we don’t want to be dragged in the political realm. We prefer to be in the journalistic realm. But, apparently, the Israeli government, for a country that’s called itself a democracy, is taking the same actions that were taken against us back in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, when a bunch of authoritarian regimes banned Al Jazeera and closed our offices under the umbrella of violating or threatening their national security, which is a very ambiguous and baseless and unfounded claims.

And by the way, Amy, it is very important to mention that our coverage includes, does include, the Israeli side. We have, from the beginning, aired all the press conferences for the Israeli officials, while this might anger our audience because they feel like this is uncomfortable for them to be watching the statements of the Israeli government. And at the same time, we air all the atrocities happening in Gaza. But we are committed to the impartial coverage, and we continued that. So, we consider all the events on the ground as events that we continue to cover from inside Gaza, but, of course, we cannot disconnect it from the fact that the Israeli government is trying to conceal what’s happening in Gaza and try to intimidate Al Jazeera and block Al Jazeera’s coverage and delegitimize the whole coverage by saying, “They don’t operate in Israel. They are a one-sided kind of coverage.” But we are committed to staying objective. And that’s our goal and our ethics from — code of ethics from the beginning of the launch of this organization in the Middle East 25 years back.

AMY GOODMAN: Today Israel marked Holocaust Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. At a wreath-laying event at Israel’s national Holocaust museum and memorial in Jerusalem, video shows Prime Minister Netanyahu being heckled with calls to resign. This is what happened.

PROTESTER: [speaking in Hebrew]

AMY GOODMAN: Apparently, the protester said in Hebrew, quote, “We must not descend into the abyss again. What else is necessary for you to go home?” he said to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Your response, Mohamed Moawad?

MOHAMED MOAWAD: Well, this is one of the events that Al Jazeera could have covered yesterday, but our correspondent wasn’t able to reach the area, because we abide by the laws. We don’t want to violate it, because our colleagues are operating under the Israeli law in Israel and Jerusalem. Our colleague today appeared live from Ramallah, from the West Bank, where we moved all our colleagues there. And we covered these events remotely. Of course, we will keep the space for this kind of coverage, and we’ll make sure that what’s happening inside Israel is on our screen. But still, the one who is not benefiting from that is the Israeli side. We want to stay impartial, but these kind of important events, the turmoil that Israel is going through, isn’t — we are not able to cover like before, after this decision.

AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli communications minister, Shlomo Karhi, said, “We finally are able to stop Al Jazeera’s well-oiled incitement machine that harms the security of the country.” Your response?

MOHAMED MOAWAD: Of course. This is the same thing that we have heard before in the Middle East, as well, when we get both sides to speak. I mean, the fact that they call the other party of the conflict bad people doesn’t mean that a news organization, you know, won’t deal with it. I mean, we report both sides. We have the Palestinian side and the Israeli side. We report both sides. And what the Israeli government is bragging about is trying to censor our coverage or try to intimidate us to have us not cover the other side of the story. We are committed to that. We’re covering from Gaza with six correspondents on the ground. We are the only news organization on Earth covering from north of Gaza.

And we call all the international community to act, the journalistic community specifically, because up until now, we are seven months in this war and the atrocities happening in Gaza, and you don’t have an international journalist entered Gaza, because the Israeli government is preventing this from happening.

So, it’s a strategy that the Israeli government is working upon from the beginning of the conflict, is try to make sure that the story doesn’t reach the world. But guess what: Any reporting of Al Jazeera is corroborated by other news organizations. We get called up by ABC, CNN, NBC, all the news organizations around the globe, to ask us to get the rights of the footage that we get from inside Gaza. And our reporting is the base for so many investigation reports that happened and that was broadcasted on so many channels around the globe.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Mohamed Moawad, Al Jazeera’s managing editor, speaking from the studios of Al Jazeera in Doha. I wanted to ask you about the killings and woundings of journalists. This Saturday, May 11th, will mark two years since the Palestinian American Al Jazeera Arabic reporter Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli gunfire while on assignment in the West Bank for Al Jazeera outside the Jenin refugee camp. Since October 7th, there have been reportedly over 50 attacks against Al Jazeera journalists. In December, Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa was killed by an Israeli drone attack as he reported in Khan Younis. Longtime Gaza correspondent Wael al-Dahdouh was also injured in the attack. Then, in January, his son Hamza, also a journalist, along with videographer Mustafa Thuraya, were killed in an Israeli drone strike. I remember watching Al Jazeera that day, when reporters at Al Jazeera in your studios in Doha held up signs of the killed and the injured. Mohamed Moawad, can you respond to what the kind of toll that this attack on Gaza, and, of course, in the case of Shireen Abu Akleh, that was two years ago, in the West Bank, has taken on your staff, on your reporters, and beyond Al Jazeera — according to CPJ, Committee to Protect Journalists, over a hundred media workers?

MOHAMED MOAWAD: We remember Shireen Abu Akleh every day now with what’s happening in Gaza and, you know, the devastating loss of our colleagues on the frontline. We remember Shireen Abu Akleh because now we understand that when the whole journalistic community and the international community let this go without holding the Israeli government accountable for the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, who was covering not, you know, a war like what’s happening in Gaza right now, but was covering an incident, an Israeli operation in Jenin — when the international community was silent with this crime, then came other crimes, and other crimes followed.

So, what we want right now is from the international community, the journalistic community, is to show strong actions against the Israeli government, place pressure for the United States. We are still waiting for a statement from the White House, from the State Department, to comment on what’s happened with our offices in Jerusalem and Israel. This is very important. Right now we haven’t seen a statement yet. And this is very important for the United States, who, you know, is talking about preventing the harming of journalists around the globe and defending democracy. So, we’re still waiting for a statement from the United States. We call upon the international community to intervene, because this is a kind of an intimidation to the whole journalistic community to try to make sure that Gaza’s story isn’t out there in the world and try to make sure that we don’t give voice to the voiceless, we report one side only of the story, from the Israeli side, and we don’t talk about what’s happening in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much for being with us, and condolences on the death of so many journalists at Al Jazeera. Mohamed Moawad, we thank you so much for being with us, managing editor of Al Jazeera, speaking to us from Al Jazeera headquarters in Doha, Qatar.

Coming up, as the World Food Programme warns northern Gaza is experiencing a “full-blown famine,” we’ll get a report from a doctor just out. Stay with us.


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“They Are Starving,” Says Doctor Back from Gaza; World Food Programme Warns North in “Full-Blown Famine”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 06, 2024

Transcript

The World Food Programme is warning northern Gaza has reached a “full-blown” famine that is spreading south. This comes after the Israeli military has spent months blocking the entry of vital aid into Gaza, attacking humanitarian aid convoys and opening fire on Palestinian civilians waiting to receive lifesaving aid. We get an update on conditions among the besieged and starving population of Gaza — including of children now suffering from the psychological effects of intense and prolonged trauma — from Dr. Walid Masoud, a vascular surgeon and a board member of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund who is just back from heading a medical mission to 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.

We continue to look at the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza as the head of the World Food Programme warns northern Gaza is experiencing a “full-blown famine,” with severe starvation quickly spreading to the south, due to Israel’s war and total blockade of Gaza. World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain, the widow of the late Senator John McCain, spoke Sunday on NBC News’ Meet the Press.

CINDY McCAIN: There is famine, full-blown famine, in the north, and it’s moving its way south. And so, with — what we’re asking for and what we’ve continually asked for is a ceasefire and the ability to have unfettered access to get in — safe and unfettered access to get into the — into Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Human rights groups accuse Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war, a war crime. The Israeli military has repeatedly blocked the entry of vital aid into Gaza, attacked humanitarian aid convoys and killed Palestinian civilians waiting to receive food and other aid. A Palestinian mother in Gaza City described the dire situation.

ASMAA AL-BELBASI: [translated] We need food to survive. We need to feed our children. We want to get to this area but can’t get there with cars, because the roads are blocked by rubble from the strikes. The sun hits us as we walk. And you find a long queue there from the morning. And you’re exhausted by the time you return, all for some bread.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Amman, Jordan, where we’re joined by Dr. Walid Masoud, a vascular surgeon, board member of Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. He headed PCRF’s medical mission to Gaza earlier this month.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Doctor. If you can start off by describing what we’re seeing, I mean, to have Cindy McCain, the head of the World Food Programme, saying the north is in “full-blown famine”? Describe the effects and what this means for the people who are surviving in Palestine, Gaza.

DR. WALID MASOUD: Good morning, first of all. Good morning, America.

First of all, let me say about PCRF that our mission is to provide medical and humanitarian relief for the children throughout the Levant, regardless their nationalities or religion. We headed to Gaza under the umbrella of PCRF and the umbrella of WHO. OK? We had one lecture in the WHO in Cairo telling us about the safety measures, what we are going to meet in Rafah.

Once we entered there, the moment we entered there, we could see the children around us begging for food, begging for money, begging for anything. OK? The starvation, you could see it in everywhere in the hospital. We were based in the European Hospital. And in the buildings of the hospitals, it was full of refugees. More than 50,000 refugees came from the north to this hospital, because they feel it is safe. It’s not only in the territory around the hospital, but inside the hospital, inside the corridors, in the stairs, every room, they had refugees.

While we were walking in the corridors, you could see the children around, and you could see by their eyes how they underfed and they have malnutrition and they are starving. You could see how they lost the muscle mass. You could see the skin. You could see how they fatigue. You could see how they are depressed, actually. When you talk to them, they are slow, slow motion in talking. OK? You can see the loss of the weight on these children. In the theaters, when we operate upon children, we could see how their body mass index is low, and we could see they are not oriented, actually, most of the patients upon which we operated. This reflects this decreased immunity of the children and increased rate of the infection, because there is not enough proteins in their body to initiate or to make the immunity system in the right way.

We had to operate immediately as emergency on many injured patients, not only children but also adults. Starvation does not only with the children. It was everyone in the population. Imagine you have 1.8 million in Rafah, and there is not enough food for these. If there is food, you cannot even reach it, because transportations is dangerous. You could see how is the World Kitchen being bombed and killed there. What about the locals? If the foreigners died from bombarding their cars, what about the locals?

You can imagine how 1.8 million, they don’t have enough hospitals. Only three proper hospitals is working in Rafah. We operated in Rafah only, but some of our surgeons went to Al-Kuwaiti Hospital, because they could not transfer the kids to the European Hospital. One of our surgeons, pediatric surgeons, went to the Al-Kuwaiti Hospital and performed 16 surgeries. Totally, we operated around 250 or 275 and more. The situation was very bad in the theater.

The staff, if we talk about the staff, the staff are exhausted, the staff depressed, the staff disoriented. All the staff in the theaters and in the wards in the hospital, they are volunteers, actually. They don’t receive salaries. Do you know what they receive? They are volunteers working, no money, but they receive only the lunch. And this lunch, they eat a little bit. Maybe they eat 10% of their lunch, in order to take the lunch to the tents to their families, because they don’t have money to buy anything. And if they have money, there is not enough food in the market.

We operated upon children who’ve been injured around five, six months ago. We had a patient, 13-years-old patient. I sent you his video. He had shrapnels behind the knee, and he developed a fistula between the artery and the vein. So, because of that, his foot and leg became ischemic, not enough blood, and it began a gangrene in his toes. So, we did such an operation. This patient had a referral letter to go to Egypt for treatment, but he could not, because there is a queue. Maybe it will take him 10 months just to his chance to go to Egypt. We did the operation. We disconnected the fistula. And he is OK. But you could tell how his muscles are weak and there is a loss of muscle bulk with him. His wounds — we followed him a few days after that. His wounds is not healing well because of the lack of proteins in his body, lack of minerals, lack of vitamins in his body. There is not enough food even in the hospital to give them IV fluids or IV nutrients.

Many patients died from infection because they don’t have enough immunity. They don’t have enough antibiotics or proper antibiotics, because sometimes they have the basics of the antibiotics. We managed to bring many medications, many antibiotics, other things, but it’s not that enough. When a mission comes, they bring some, but it’s not enough for 1.8 million people there. And there is, as you said earlier, above 78,000 injured patients.

Our mission was depressing to us from inside, but we were happy to give what we can do to them. There were many things which disturbed us. We could work in an environment which is unsuitable. OK? Example, these drones all the time have noisy, noise, voices, like zzzzz. They called it zanana. First three days, in our team, they could not sleep because of these drones and zanana and these noises. And it is 24 hours there. The staff is exhausted and depressed. When we came, we were seven surgeons from Jordan and one nurse also from Jordan. We had two from Ireland. We have one from Germany and one from United States. All of them, we gathered them. We could not eat full food, because we feel we are guilty once we are eating. And outside, there is a lot of children begging for food, and families, maybe they don’t eat at all or they eat one time a day.

Many surgeries were done, major surgeries, which means that this patient should have well feeding, IV or something, in order his wounds to heal. We managed to help patients, but in some situations it is out of our hands to continue. OK, I managed, for example, to reoperate the lab cath — the cath lab, so we can do some surgeries with intervention, interventional radiology. This cath lab was out of work for more than seven months. We managed to start working on this. We did many surgeries and, the patients, discharged them home.

This is another point. When we did surgery, patient went to discharge. The patient said, “Where I am going? I don’t have any home. I don’t have even tent to go.” So, many patients stay in the hospital so they can have a home, shelter. They can have food also.

We managed — also they have dialysis machines, which is out of work for the last seven, eight months in the European Hospital. We managed, with the help of one of the biomedical engineers who came from Jordan, Dr. Samadi, we managed to fix up these two machines, and we reopened the dialysis unit there. We tried to bring some medicine, some instruments, some tools, equipment to be used for the patients there, but that was not enough.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Masoud, I’m going to interrupt here —

DR. WALID MASOUD: Not enough for this.

AMY GOODMAN: — because we have to break.

DR. WALID MASOUD: Our mission not only was medical.

AMY GOODMAN: But I know that there is a delay.

DR. WALID MASOUD: We tried to support with —

AMY GOODMAN: Doctor — Dr. Masoud, there’s a delay, but I just wanted to end by saying that we are seeing nonstop breaking news on Twitter now. For example, The New Yorker contributor Mosab Abu Toha says the Israeli army is starting to blow up complete neighborhoods in East Rafah, just four hours after ordering families to evacuate the area. And I wanted to end — we just have 30 seconds — because you work with Palestine Children’s Relief, with your observation that increasingly children are expressing suicidal thoughts. We have 30 seconds.

DR. WALID MASOUD: Unfortunately, I had two patients — one patient and his sister — they were around 8 and 7 years. They were questioning me when I was in the round, “Why I am still alive while my wife — my mother and father and brothers died?” The children there, they started to think about suicidal attempts. And we have another patient who lost their legs and lost all the family, and she’s bedridden. And she tried to attempt suicide.

Children, I cannot imagine how they will grow, these children, in the future, while they were thinking about suicidal attempt because their family has died. Unfortunately, many children thinking about this. I cannot imagine in the future how they will act and how they will look to the world and to the peace. Imagine what’s happening. Each family has lost many of their main supporter as father or mother. This creates a psychiatric situation with these children.

I think as they need surgeons to be there, they need psychiatrists in order to treat these patients. There’s a need, definitely a need, because the increase of the, let us say, not suicide, because I did not see any suicidal attempts, but I heard from many children they are thinking about suicide. Unfortunately, the help now is going through vascular surgeon, orthopedic surgeon, etc. I think we need to send more doctors there. Unfortunately, the borders now is closed.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Walid Masoud, we’re going to have to leave it there as we go to the students who are protesting across the United States. I want to thank you so much for joining us from Amman, Jordan, just back from Gaza, vascular surgeon and board member of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

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Revolt on Campus: Protests over Gaza Disrupt Graduation Ceremonies as Police Crack Down on Encampments
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 06, 2024

Police have now arrested more than 2,500 students at pro-Palestine protests across the U.S., yet students continue to call for an end to the war on Gaza and universities’ investment in companies that support Israel’s occupation of Palestine. We speak to three student organizers from around the country: Salma Hamamy of the University of Michigan, president of the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, about the commencement ceremony protest she helped organize, and Cady de la Cruz of the University of Virginia and Rae Ferrara of the State University of New York at New Paltz about police crackdowns on their schools’ encampments. De la Cruz was arrested in the UVA raid and banned from campus without an opportunity to collect any of her belongings. She says repression has strengthened the resolve of many protesters, who are willing to risk their academic futures to push for divestment. “All of us there felt like we have more time on our hands … than the people of Gaza,” she explains, “We would hold it down for anything.”

Transcript

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

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

Graduation ceremonies have begun on college campuses across the United States as students continue their protests in solidarity with Palestine and calling on their schools to divest from Israel. On Friday, the student speaker at the University of Toledo’s graduate school commencement ceremony wore a keffiyeh hijab and a Palestinian flag over her graduation robe. This is part of the address by Maha Zeidan, a Palestinian American graduating law student, president of the Graduate Student Association.

MAHA ZEIDAN: I apologize that this is not a typical graduation speech, but there is nothing typical about the times that we are living in. There is nothing typical about 15,000 children live-streamed deaths being watched. And there is nothing acceptable about our institutional complicity, silence or the gross misuse of police force nationwide.

AMY GOODMAN: Maha Zeidan. Meanwhile, at the University of Michigan, students holding Palestinian flags briefly disrupted graduation ceremonies Saturday as a plane flew overhead holding a banner that read “Divest from Israel now! Free Palestine!” Also on Saturday, at University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where in 2017 neo-Nazis chanted “Jews will not replace us,” police in riot gear stormed a Gaza solidarity encampment and arrested at least 25 student protesters.

PROTESTER 1: Do not touch her!

POLICE OFFICER: Turn around and walk that way.

PROTESTER 2: Do not touch her Hey!

PROTESTER 1: Do not touch her!

AMY GOODMAN: The raid came after The Intercept’s Prem Thakker reported UVA, quote, “appears to have unilaterally changed policy on tents to help justify calling upon the police to arrest protesters.”

Police have now arrested more than 2,500 students at pro-Palestine protests across the U.S. in the past three weeks, which includes 133 arrests on Thursday at SUNY New Paltz alone, where police violently raided a student encampment with batons and dogs.

Well, we’re joined by three guests from these schools. We’re beginning in Southfield, Michigan, with Salma Hamamy, a student at the University of Michigan who just graduated this past weekend. Salma is president of the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at the University of Michigan.

Salma, can you describe the graduation ceremony on Saturday?

SALMA HAMAMY: Hi. Yes. Thank you for having me.

So, the graduation ceremony on Saturday took place in the early morning with nearly hundreds and hundreds of students prepared to enjoy a celebratory moment. However, likewise, there are hundreds of students who are in the process of immense grief, given the ongoing genocide in Gaza and given the fact that the University of Michigan is funding a genocide. So, students took it upon themselves to engage in protest at the ceremony, with nearly a hundred students walking up and down the aisle trying to rally for the university to heed our demands, considering that they have entirely ignored us for the last seven months. As soon as the plane flew over with the banner, “Divest from Israel now! Free Palestine!” students jumped out of their seats carrying the Palestinian flag, walked throughout the aisles. And eventually, the police pushed us towards the back and prevented further protesters from being able to join us in the graduation.

AMY GOODMAN: And the response of the overall crowd? I mean, there were tens of thousands of people there at University of Michigan graduation, Salma.

SALMA HAMAMY: Yeah, there were certainly tens of thousands of people there. The stadium is one of the largest in the world. And as soon the plane flew by with the banner calling for the university to divest, cheers erupted through the crowd. As students stood up and held their Palestinian flags, you could likewise hear a mix of cheers and some fellow students nearby calling for the police to immediately arrest us, cursing us out, throwing racial slurs. However, students continued on and held the Palestinian flag very high up and joined very quickly with one another and only got louder as both the cheers and boos continued.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, Salma, I’m curious. At the same time, you have a Gaza solidarity encampment on campus. Police have not been called in to raid that?

SALMA HAMAMY: Yes. Surprisingly, police officers have not been called in to raid our encampment yet. We have faced quite a bit in regards to police brutality throughout the last seven months. And as of right now, our best guess is due to the fact that every single time police suppression continues on the rise, students’ power only grows in response. And so, considering that the university would probably be very fearful of what would happen on campus if they were to engage in police violence again, witnessing what has happened in the past, students would only exemplify and amplify their solidarity. So, it’s more so a preventative cause. They’re saying that they’re trying to allow students to peacefully protest; however, every single time we have tried peacefully protesting in the past demanding a meeting, they’ve arrested us several times, brutally beaten us to the floor, even ripping off students’ hijabs in the process. So, as of right now, the university, I think, is trying to wait it out and to wait for the students’ energy to die down. However, it’s only going to continue to grow.

AMY GOODMAN: Salma is joining us from Michigan. We’re going now to Cady de la Cruz, an undergraduate student at University of Virginia in Charlottesville, arrested Saturday for participating in the pro-Palestine encampment, a senior scheduled to graduate in two weeks. Now, let’s place this again. This is Charlottesville, where in 2017 scores of white men, mainly men, marched, saying, “Jews will not replace us.” This is during the Trump administration. If you can describe the arrests that took place, Cady, police arresting 25 protesters? What happened?

CADY DE LA CRUZ: Hi. Good morning.

Yeah. So, as you noted, the tent policy changed without notice at 11 a.m. on Saturday. And at noon, they deployed state troopers in riot gear. We immediately linked arms. We knew why we were there. We knew we weren’t going to leave until they met our demands, and we felt strong. They stalled for two hours. The state police, the city police, the county police, the university police were all there, at least a hundred cops. And we danced. And a huge crowd gathered around the encampment, supporting us, as police tried to keep them from getting in, but people kept running actually past the cops to join us. There was so much solidarity. The crowd outside was almost louder than us.

Eventually, the state troopers in riot gear did close in on us, a line of at least 40 of them, just a little bit longer than us, with shields. We were able to hold our ground until they started to spray huge clouds of chemicals at close range. When we ran back into the encampment to flush out our eyes and our throats, it was when we were separated and on the ground that they started to beat me down with their shields, drag my body by my clothes, and they sprayed us at close range with the chemicals. I saw the can close to my face. I had a friend who they ripped her goggles off and sprayed her. They took us somewhere where they had no medics and no water, while we screamed in pain. They detained 26 of us for almost nine hours with the chemicals still burning on our skins.

I’m now banned from campus. They’ve given us no chance to get our belongings. I have no phone, no laptop, no wallet. I’m purely getting by on the generosity of my friends. And like you said, this is the same campus that knew that men with rifles, Nazis, white supremacists were coming, and did not stop them. And none of those white supremacists are banned from campus.

AMY GOODMAN: Cady, you’re supposed to graduate in two weeks?

CADY DE LA CRUZ: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re risking so much to have protested right before, spending years getting your degree. Why did you do it?

CADY DE LA CRUZ: We had spent so many months pushing for divestment. We had had walkouts, like Salma was saying. Like, we had had walkouts. We had done so, so much. We had passed a referendum that got more votes in favor than even our entire student council election. And our administration refused to even comment on divestment.

And even though I only have two weeks before I’m supposed to graduate, I actually started the encampment on my last day of classes, and I ended up missing my classes. But even with two weeks left, I still — all of us there felt like we have more time on our hands left on our timeline than the people in Gaza, as we’re watching them bomb Rafah. We had a vigil the night before they raided our encampment. And again, we felt so much strength —

AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.

CADY DE LA CRUZ: — in our escalation. We knew why we were there. We linked arms. We felt strong. We danced in front of that riot gear. We would hold it down for anything.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for joining us, Cady. And I want to now go to New York to Rae Ferrara, who is with SUNY New Paltz — that’s State University of New York at New Paltz — at the Gaza solidarity encampment. Rae Ferrara, can you describe — I mean, you had a large number of students arrested. Over 130?

RAE FERRARA: The closest thing to an accurate number we have is 133, but it is most definitely more than that. That’s the number that the DA is giving. But just our jail support resources have made it even more than that. We had about that many people at the encampment.

AMY GOODMAN: And very quickly, since we only have about 40 seconds, can you describe what happened? You had just put the encampment up, when police moved in?

RAE FERRARA: No, we set up our encampment at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, and it wasn’t until about 10:40 p.m. on Thursday that the police raided us. This was after several failed attempts to negotiate with the university. Police raided us for over three hours. They knocked my friend unconscious. He had a concussion. They knocked an 82-year-old woman unconscious. All of my friends have bruises. They have red marks on their hands from the zip ties. And then, afterwards, they bulldozed all of our things.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Rae Ferrara, SUNY New Paltz Gaza solidarity camp participant and student at SUNY New Paltz; Cady de la Cruz, speaking to us from the University of Virginia; and Salma Hamamy at the University of Michigan, graduate, just graduated, president of SJP. That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.

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Fmr. Israeli Peace Negotiator Daniel Levy: U.S. Pressure on Israel Is Key to Lasting Gaza Ceasefire
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 07, 2024

Even after Hamas accepted a Gaza ceasefire proposal Monday, Israeli forces moved in with tanks to seize the Rafah crossing with Egypt. Israel says the ceasefire deal falls short of its demands, and Hamas has called for “international intervention.” Former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy says the limited information and political maneuvering of all parties raises more questions than answers right now, but the core issue is whether all parties can maintain a sustained end to hostilities. “In addition to testing each other, the Hamas and Israeli parties are testing the United States of America and the Biden administration in an unprecedented way,” says Levy. “Hamas detects that the U.S. may finally be serious about offering a sustained calm.” While Levy says growing external pressure from global protests are “having an impact,” he doubts U.S. and Israeli leaders feel they must change course yet. “The pressure does not feel sufficient that Netanuahu’s politics needs him to accept a ceasefire. He still thinks he can wiggle out of this,” says Levy. “If this deal doesn’t go through, I fear we’re in for the much longer haul.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: Palestinians say nowhere is safe in Rafah, as Israeli forces carried out heavy aerial bombardment again overnight and moved in with tanks, seizing the Rafah crossing on Gaza’s border with Egypt. The Israeli military released video showing soldiers raising an Israeli flag near the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing and a tank running over an “I love Gaza” sign. Over a million Palestinians have fled to Rafah since October 7th.

Israel’s war cabinet voted to move forward with its Rafah military operation Monday even after Hamas said it had accepted a ceasefire proposal. Israel says the proposal, which was developed with mediators from Qatar and Egypt, falls short of its demands. At one point, Al Jazeera reported people in Rafah started celebrating upon hearing the announcement that Hamas had accepted the Gaza ceasefire proposal. This is a displaced child in Gaza, Malak, responding to the news Monday.

MALAK: [translated] We were optimistic when Hamas agreed to the ceasefire proposal. We were very optimistic. But Israel procrastinated, and it is going too far. They don’t want to agree for a ceasefire, and they want to raid Rafah. They dropped leaflets, and we don’t know what to do or where to go.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, thousands of people rallied across Israel Monday night calling for an immediate deal to release the hostages still held in the Gaza Strip, criticizing the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On Monday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller responded to questions about Hamas accepting the Gaza ceasefire proposal from Egypt and Qatar.

JOHN KIRBY: The last thing I would ever want to do from this podium is say something that could put this very sensitive process at greater risk. We are at a critical stage right now. We got a response from Hamas. Now Director Burns is working through that, trying to assess it, working with the Israelis. I mean, my goodness, folks, I don’t know that it gets any more sensitive than right now. And the worst thing that we can do is start speculating about what’s in it.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s White House spokesperson John Kirby. In a statement today, Hamas called for international intervention to push Israel towards a ceasefire.

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

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Daniel Levy. If you can talk about the latest that is understood about the ceasefire proposal, what Hamas has accepted, what Israel has refused to accept at this point, though they have sent a mid-level delegation to continue the negotiations?

DANIEL LEVY: With pleasure, Amy, as long as you let me just very quickly acknowledge that John Kirby and the White House have done very little from their podium except undermine the prospects of ending this war for the last months. So I think it’s little bit rich for the spokesperson, Mr. Kirby, to stand there and say, “The last thing I’d want to do is undermine it.” You’ve done very little else for many, many months. If we are getting close, then why did you wait this long? Why have so many thousands of children died and suffered appallingly, along with all of the Palestinian civilian population? And why have those hostage families had to wait so long?

Now, what’s going on? What has been proposed? What has been agreed? There is a document that has been leaked. I cannot speak to its veracity, but I understand that it is certainly close to what we understand to be discussed. And there are two key components to this, Amy. One is this thing that we have been circling around for months now, which is: Does a pause, a hostage release, a release of Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails — does this represent the beginning of a sustained calm, a sustained ceasefire, an on-ramp to that permanent ceasefire? Or is this limited in time, duration, and then Israel continues to enter Rafah, carry out its assault on Gaza? If Hamas turned around and said, “At the end of 40 days, we’re going to launch rockets on northern — on southern Israel,” I think people would say, “Well, that’s a bit of a strange deal.” But if Israel says, “At the end of 40 days, we’re going to launch an assault on Rafah,” then this is apparently a reasonable response. And that’s the key thing.

And I think what has happened this time around is that in addition to testing each other, the Hamas and Israeli parties are testing the United States of America and the Biden administration in an unprecedented way. What do I mean by that? I think we’ve come this far because Hamas detects that the U.S. may finally be serious about offering a sustained calm, about guaranteeing — and this can’t be ironclad, but at least credibly guaranteeing — that they do not see a continuation of the war after two weeks or four weeks or six weeks. On the flipside, Prime Minister Netanyahu is testing: “Are the U.S. serious? Are they really going to hold off my weapons supplies? Are they really going to lay the blame at my door if I’m the recalcitrant party? Because that will be difficult for me to sustain domestically.” We don’t yet have the answer from the Biden administration in unequivocal terms. I think that will be crucial. That’s the key question.

Then, Amy, there are the details of the agreement, which will be hard to iron out. But if you’ve got this core question addressed of “Are we really going to a ceasefire, or we going to a temporary pause?” — and unless it’s the former, this can’t be done — if we’ve got that ironed out, then one hopes that the questions around Palestinian movement inside Gaza, the questions around where the Israeli forces will be deployed, the questions around the entrance of humanitarian desperately needed assistance, one hopes that all those can be thrashed out. If we got there, then there’s implementation. Implementation will be difficult, especially if Netanyahu feels he can get away with slipping out of this and going back to what he clearly prefers, which is an even longer war, because that’s how his politics stacks up.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Daniel Levy, the BBC is reporting that a senior Palestinian official familiar with the ceasefire is claiming that Hamas has agreed to, quote, “end hostile activity forever” if the conditions of the truce are met. Do you place any stock in that report, from what you’re hearing?

DANIEL LEVY: I do not. Hamas is a political movement. It’s an armed resistance movement. It has committed, I would argue, violations of international law. Israel was doing that before October 7. So was Hamas. That has continued throughout this war. Hamas is also an idea, in terms of resistance to permanent, hostile, belligerent occupation. I would take with extreme caution anything we are being told by a Palestinian Authority source. They are simply not part of this, because they have marginalized themselves by becoming part of the furniture of the Israeli occupation. Unfortunately, today, it’s hard not to see them as a coopted authority.

I think it’s important to acknowledge that alongside condemning what Hamas did on October 7th, one has to acknowledge that the Palestinians have the right, under international law, to resist an illegal occupation. They must simply do so within the parameters defined by international law, just as Israel has a right to defend its citizens. That’s its responsibility. But again, it must do so within the parameters of international law, rather than violating, very plausibly, the Genocide Convention, as set out by the International Court of Justice in its provisional ruling. So, I would suggest that that kind of rumor mill is unhelpful.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I wanted to ask you also about the protests, the continuing massive protests within Israel, even while the war continues. Your sense of the impact of these protests on the Israeli government?

DANIEL LEVY: It’s a very important point, Juan. What I think we have seen is the intensity of those protests — and those protests tend to center around the prioritizing of getting the hostages out, saying, “Do the deal. Get the hostages out.” The intensity, especially those led by members of family of those being held, by family, friends, those have increased. The volume, the extent to which this is disruptive and is impossible for Netanyahu to stare down, I do not think we are anywhere near that moment.

And so, you have to put these protests in the context of what is the internal dynamic in Israel. Is it a dynamic where Netanyahu feels he’s run out of options? So, there’s a way of interpreting what’s happening at the moment, is that Israel has started, especially at the border crossing with Egypt, seizing a part of Rafah, a part of this area called the Philadelphi Corridor, as well, as a last-gasp thing so that the Israeli government, which feels it will have to agree to a deal, will be able to say, “You see, it was this action which got them to accept slightly better terms. We did what we needed to do.” That is the optimistic interpretation, that the pressure, internally and externally, is such that Netanyahu feels it’s closing in on him. I do not think we’re there yet. I’m not with that interpretation. I would like us to be there.

The internal pressure is such that the soft opposition, who will run against Netanyahu in the next election, led by this guy Gantz, former chief of staff, former defense minister, and Eisenkot, they are still in the government. They have still not unequivocally said that if Netanyahu turns down the deal, they will quit. Even if they quit, Netanyahu has a majority. The street protests — courage to them — they’re important. You even had — it was Holocaust Remembrance Day yesterday. You even had Holocaust survivors coming out and saying, “Not in our name. This isn’t how one goes about remembering the Holocaust.” And Netanyahu used this, as he has done throughout, in very scurrilous terms.

But the pressure does not feel sufficient that Netanyahu’s politics needs him to accept a ceasefire. He still thinks he can wiggle out of this, which is where the question of the external pressure becomes a key factor, because it’s going to be that combination of internal and external. So I think the next question one would have to address is: Where does the external pressure stand?

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to another clip, this of U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller.

MATTHEW MILLER: So, I can confirm that Hamas has issued a response. We are reviewing that response now and discussing it with our partners in the region. As you know, Director Burns is in the region working on this in real time. We will be discussing this response with our partners over the coming hours. We continue to believe that a hostage deal is in the best interests of the Israeli people, it’s in the best interests of the Palestinian people. It would bring an immediate ceasefire. It would allow increased movement of humanitarian assistance. And so, we are going to continue to work to try to reach one.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, if you can talk — he’s referring to the CIA Director Burns, who is intimately involved with these negotiations. He’s going back and forth. If you can talk about his significance? And when you talked about the role of the United States, how exactly has it stopped this from happening to this point, Daniel Levy?

DANIEL LEVY: Yes, I wish I could confirm that the U.S. has stopped this from happening. I mean, firstly, Amy, let’s just go back to those scenes you showed earlier on, Palestinians in Gaza celebrating when the news came through of the Hamas acceptance of the terms of a deal. I think one can understand their celebrations, not only, of course, because of what they’ve been going through, but also they have been told — if anyone takes the United States government seriously, they have been telling us — Blinken said this in his last visit — they have been telling us that all it takes is a Hamas “yes.” So I think many of us would have been reasonable in responding, “Well, we got a Hamas 'yes.' It’s all done and dusted, isn’t it?” The reason that’s not quite true is this was, I think one has to acknowledge, misinformation on the part of the U.S. government, that this doesn’t just depend on Hamas. It very clearly depends on the Israeli side, which most of the Israeli commentators at this stage are acknowledging that Prime Minister Netanyahu has constantly undermined these talks. And rather than being pulled up on this, being held with his feet to the fire by the U.S. administration, they have failed to do that.

Now, I think it matters that CIA Director Burns is still in the region, we understand, is directly engaged. Blinken has really not done a good job of this. I understand they play different roles. But one has to really ask this question, because that’s the outside pressure: Will the U.S. make it as near as impossible for Netanyahu to say “no”? If they fail that test, then Rafah will happen.

By the way, it will almost certainly still be going on when Democrats convene for their convention in Chicago. I am not suggesting — and I think this is an important distinction to draw, Amy — I am not suggesting that the administration can click their finger and stop this. What I am saying is that a U.S. administration that is willing to sustain a standoff with the Israeli leadership will place Netanyahu in a position where his military are saying, “We just can’t keep going with this.” You already have burnout. Rafah will not be easy. The military side of this has not gone well. You will have a population increasingly saying, “This is too much to put at risk this relationship.” And Netanyahu will have the hardest choice to make. And I think, over time, he will have to succumb to this.

There have been reports that some of the weapons transfers have been held up from the U.S. to Israel by the administration. Those have neither been confirmed nor denied. If you want to get a ceasefire, they’re going to have to be confirmed. That is actually going to have to happen.

I imagine that some of this move towards a possible deal, move towards possible U.S. seriousness in challenging Netanyahu, that we are not at the point of success yet. But some of the move towards that is a consequence of what you’ve shown us, what’s going on inside the U.S., the pressure, the campuses. People should not feel disheartened. What they are doing is having an impact: the fear of how this could play out politically. And so, I would say, in these crucial moments, those efforts should be redoubled, because they are meaningful.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Daniel Levy, I’m wondering: The decision of the Israeli Cabinet to urge Palestinians, 100,000 Palestinians, to leave eastern Rafah, do you sense that this is also an attempt by Netanyahu to short-circuit a potential deal?

DANIEL LEVY: I would interpret it that way, yes, Juan. There are two ways people are looking at this. Is this a smart negotiating tactic to gain more leverage? I don’t think that’s worked with Hamas thus far. I see no reason to think that was the case. Hamas had already submitted its responses. The other way of looking at this is that it’s a way of testing, prodding: Can Israel get away with this? Can this prove to Hamas that we can do it, we are going to do it, there is no deal, and therefore Hamas will retreat from its position? I think that is a more reasonable reading, given everything we know about Netanyahu, everything he and his coalition have said. I’d love to think that this is a last gasp, and I hope that’s how it plays out, but it doesn’t look that way.

There are three ways this can go, Juan. Number one, this is something that Netanyahu cannot pull off. He feels cornered. He does the deal, and it holds. That would be a precious thing. I don’t think we’re near that yet. The second is that Netanyahu says “no,” proves that he means “no.” This effort unravels. And then the question is: Do the Americans, as they have done throughout, say, “Well, of course we have to blame Hamas.” And I understand that for people to think that a Hamas negotiating position is more reasonable than an Israeli negotiating position, for those who follow mainstream American media, yeah, that’s a hard disk to switch in your head. But that’s the second option. The third option is the deal begins, but it unravels while it’s being implemented.

And if I could just zoom out for a moment, all of this is going on — we’re talking about Gaza — while the provocations in the West Bank continue to intensify. Every day there are disturbances there. It’s not just settlers, it’s the Israeli military. There are no settlers without the backing of the Israeli military, without the backing of the Israeli state. And we’re still in an extremely uncertain time in the Israel-Hezbollah, Israel-Lebanon front. So, all of this feeds into each other. And if this deal doesn’t go through, I fear we’re in for the much longer haul, and everything that you’ve reported on, with such tenacity — and I give you credit for that — that has happened over the last months, I’m afraid, will remain with us perhaps for an awfully long time.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, we have 15 seconds. President Biden is giving what some are billing as one of the most important speeches of his administration, a speech on antisemitism. Daniel Levy, you’re an Israeli Jewish former peace negotiator for Israeli prime ministers. Do you consider anti-Zionism antisemitism?

DANIEL LEVY: This is one of the most dangerous conflations imaginable. Desist from this now. We will fail in the struggle against antisemitism. We will fail to allow Jewish heterogeneity, which has been part of being Jewish throughout. The idea that one creed can be hegemonic, and anything else is antisemitic, is an affront to Jewish history. Desist from this now, Mr. President.

AMY GOODMAN: Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project, former Israeli peace negotiator under Israeli Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin.

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Report from Rafah: Israel Seizes Border Crossing, Blocking Humanitarian Aid, as Ceasefire Talks Continue
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 07, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/5/7/r ... al_satarri

In Rafah, we speak with Gaza-based journalist Akram al-Satarri about Israel tightening restrictions on humanitarian aid, refusing a ceasefire deal and planning to invade the city where over a million Palestinians are sheltering. Israel’s military seized control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing with Egypt, blocking humanitarian aid from entering the besieged territory, and trapping Palestinians under heavy Israeli bombardment. This comes after Israel also closed the Karem Abu Salem crossing in southern Gaza this weekend after a Hamas attack killed four Israeli soldiers. “Israel is not allowing the entry of the humanitarian aid to Gaza, which is perceived as a lifeline,” says al-Satarri, who reports Palestinians are “in despair” as Israel orders a third of Rafah’s population to move ahead of their invasion. “They understand that more destruction, more devastation, more death and deprivation is coming for them.” Al-Satarri also speaks about Israel banning Al Jazeera, one of the only international outlets with reporters in Gaza. “I think they want to silence Al Jazeera and they want to silence all the free media for the sake of preventing any further exposure of the things that are happening on the ground.”

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

As the Israeli military strikes Rafah in southern Gaza after Hamas agreed Monday to a ceasefire proposal, we go now to Rafah for an update on the situation there, including access to humanitarian aid. The White House said Monday a ceasefire does not have to be in place for a pier off of Gaza to be operational to bring in aid, but the pier’s construction was temporarily paused last week due to bad weather. Israel seized the Rafah crossing on Gaza’s border with Egypt overnight. This comes after Israel also closed the Karem Abu Salem crossing in southern Gaza this weekend after a Hamas attack killed four Israeli soldiers.

For more, we’re joined by Akram al-Satarri, the Gaza-based journalist, joining from Rafah in southern Gaza near the Kuwaiti Hospital.

Akram, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you talk about what’s happening on the ground right now? What does it mean that Israeli tanks have moved in, that they’ve seized the crossing with Egypt? And how are people responding?

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Well, as a matter fact, to start with, that means a lifeline has just been blocked. That means the movement of people who are traveling out of Gaza and people who are returning to Gaza has already been blocked. That means the patients who are in need to medical care and are transferred somewhere outside of Gaza are denied that access. That means the general population in southern Gaza and northern Gaza alike are deprived from the food supplies that were delivered — and were even slow before this last development took place — and that people are talking, and irately they have been saying that Israel has been successful in two major military fronts yesterday. The major front, number one, is that they control the Rafah border, which is a civilian facility that is in charge of facilitating the entry and departure of people into and outside of Gaza. And number one, that the Israeli army succeeded in destroying the “I love you, Gaza” banner, which means they have been out and about to destroy anything that has to do with life or love in the Gaza Strip.

People are extremely worried. They understand that they will be greatly affected by that operation. And they understand, as well, that Israel has been playing that card for the sake of consolidating its position when it comes to the negotiations that are still underway between Hamas and between Israel, which is propelled indirectly by Egypt and Qatar and with the supervision and support also of the American administration. The people in Gaza are afraid of the collective punishment that has been going on in Gaza north, and they see this move as a replication of the very same collective punishment techniques followed by the Israeli occupation forces, as they describe them, for the sake of just negotiating over the fate of people, weaponizing the food that people are entitled to as a human, weaponizing the healthcare and health supplies that are entitled to people as humans, and also weaponizing the shelter that has been destroyed.

Yesterday, one-third of Rafah population was asked to leave their homes and head either to the very west of Rafah or to Khan Younis and the Gaza central area. Tens of thousands of people are moving. Tens of thousands of people are still moving. And they are in despair, and they understand that more destruction, more devastation, more death and deprivation is coming for them. So, this is the overall atmosphere in Gaza. People are afraid. People are skeptical about the real intention of the Israeli army or for the Israeli political level to engage in negotiation. And they understand that they have been doing all they have been doing for the sake of undermining the possibility of living a decent life in Gaza and for the sake of just pushing towards an ultimate objective and goal of the transfer of people of Gaza after rendering Gaza uninhabitable.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Akram, I wanted to ask you — all of this comes as Israel banned over the weekend Al Jazeera from reporting in the country and raided Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem bureau. So many reporters, and Al Jazeera reporters, have been killed since this war started. Do you fear that this is an attempt to stamp out any reporting from Gaza just before this new potential invasion of Rafah?

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: In general, the Israeli army and the Israeli political level are so fed up with the performance of all different media outlets. But the irony when it comes to Al Jazeera is that they have been talking about the freedom of expression, and now they are just banning Al Jazeera from transmitting the news bulletins from their — what they call their soil.

They have killed so far 149 journalists. And they have been chasing different news outlets, including some of the review of the materials and of the news bulletins that are provided by reporters on the ground, and then going after those reporters that might be providing some different narrative than the narrative that they want to see on the ground, that they want to see reported to the people and to the public. So, the situation is extremely catastrophic.

And I think they want to silence Al Jazeera, and they want to silence all the free media for the sake of preventing any further exposure of the things that are happening on the ground, those things that include wiping out of whole families, destruction of very critical plants and facilities that are intended to purify the water, that is going for the people who need them, and that’s why people are suffering from severe health symptoms and problems, including upper respiratory systems, digestive systems and all different type of health issues. Israeli government proved by its performance that they have been after the freedom of expression and that they’re willing to take an extra mile when it comes to banning that voice from going out for people. And by banning Al Jazeera, they are supporting the analysis that they have been fighting against freedom of expression at all different fronts and levels.

AMY GOODMAN: Akram al-Satarri, the issue of aid coming through? You have the World Food Programme saying — that’s Cindy McCain saying that the north is in “full-blown famine.” Then you have the U.N. saying Israel is denying access to the southern Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing as aid groups warn of impending catastrophe amidst chaotic scenes of families fleeing with no safe option for shelter. Can you talk about the aid situation right now as the closing of another border, and how people are getting aid at this point?

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Well, the aid has been extremely slow for the last few weeks or so. People are affected, and people are struggling for the sake of stockpiling, if that is the right expression. The right expression is to get any kind of food that they can serve their families on a daily basis. And the ones who were seeing that ground operation coming, who were hopeful that they would stockpile some of the food for the sake of just using it when they move from Rafah, because they were foreseeing a scenario within which the very same almost famine in the Gaza north would be replicated in the Gaza south, now with the very slow entry of the food, they could not store anything, and the blockade now that has been imposed on the Gaza south, which is a blockade by the literal meaning of the word. Now Israel is controlling the Rafah border. Israel is controlling the area of Kerem Shalom. Israel is not allowing the entry of the humanitarian aid to Gaza, which is perceived as a lifeline for the people of Gaza, who lost their livelihoods, who lost their shelters, who lost their dears, who lost almost everything. But they are still willing to live, and they need that food to live. Now this food is going to be denied. They are going to be denied access to that food. And that is likely to aggravate the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding in the Gaza Strip.

They fear, that has been voiced by the UNRWA, by the World Food Programme, by the United Nations Development Programme, by the Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which is a U.N. organization that is in charge of observing the situation and supervising and reporting about the situation — technically, all the international organizations have been working about such a move that is likely to have a catastrophic impact on the life of Gazans.

This catastrophic impact has already started last night. When the Rafah crossing was stormed, Kerem Shalom was stormed, people entered the area, were trying to get anything that they can get, anything they can put their hands on. Now no food supplies whatsoever that are coming from the Rafah crossing or from the Kerem Shalom. That is likely to affect people. Today it is affecting people. And it will affect them in a much worse manner as time elapses, because Israel would stay in that area, and then they would resort to some nominal measures to show the world that they have been allowing food aid into Gaza. Gaza needs 1,000 trucks of food aid, of food supplies every day. Gaza has been receiving, in the very first days of the crisis, five trucks, six trucks, 10 trucks, 30 trucks. And Gaza, in the recent days, before the Passover, was receiving around 230 trucks, still below the minimum. But now there’s nothing, not even the minimum or nothing else. And Gaza is likely to continue suffering. And I think that is going to bring about more hunger, more starvation and more death and suffering.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Akram, I wanted to ask you — you’re aware of these massive protests of students across the United States and Europe and other parts of the Western world in support of the Palestinians. Has news and information about these protests reached the people in Gaza? And are they heartened, by some degree, by the support of the young people in these countries?

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Palestinians have been extremely grateful following the news about those major protests in all different, like, American universities in support of people of Palestine. Palestinians have been very grateful for the Jewish voices for justice and peace, who have been galvanizing people into action. They have been following the news about the people who have been the culprit of that ongoing — they see it as an uprising, and they call it “intifada,” after the name of the intifada, the uprising, that started in 1987, and they are grateful. They are hopeful. And they are extremely positive about that.

And they hope that this kind of activism is going to lead the American — to prompt the American government to reconsider its positions from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and from the Gaza crisis. They are hopeful that this dynamic movement all over the United States is going to also line up more people in support of the Palestinian cause and in support of the right of the people of Palestine to live a dignified life. They want a ceasefire. And they think that this kind of action is leading and is paving the way to a ceasefire by pushing the American administration and by opening the eyes of the public.

So, it has the component of educating. It has the importance of advocating. It has also the operating level, where they have been talking the talk, walking the walk, extending the helping hand, changing the dynamics in the hope something positive would happen.

And personally, I see many positive things happening in the United States, thanks to the efforts of the university students, thanks to the efforts of the humanitarian community, and thanks to the efforts of the Jewish voices who have been there in support of Palestine and in support of humanity and justice.

That is the perception of the Gazans of the things that are happening. Gazans are amazed. Gazans are grateful. Gazans are hopeful that this kind of action would continue and would lead to something bigger and more positive and sustainable, including the sustainable ceasefire.

AMY GOODMAN: Akram al-Satarri, we thank you so much for being with us, Gaza-based journalist, joining from Rafah in southern Gaza.

Next up, Gaza solidarity encampments continue. We speak with a Dartmouth professor who was body-slammed to the ground, former chair of Jewish studies at Dartmouth. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “Hind’s Hall” by Macklemore. The song just came out, announced that all proceeds from the song go to UNRWA.

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“Stop Weaponizing Antisemitism”: Police “Body-Slam” Jewish Dartmouth Prof. at Campus Gaza Protest
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 07, 2024

Transcript

Gaza solidarity protests continue at college campuses across the nation — as does the police crackdown. This comes as more than 50 chapters of the American Association of University Professors have issued a statement condemning the violent arrests by police at campus protests. At Dartmouth College last week, police body-slammed professor and former chair of Jewish studies Annelise Orleck to the ground as she tried to protect her students. She was charged with criminal trespass and temporarily banned from portions of Dartmouth’s campus. She joins us to describe her ordeal and respond to claims conflating the protests’ anti-Zionist message with antisemitism. “People have to be able to talk about Palestine without being attacked by police,” says Orleck, who commends the students leading protests around the country. “Their bravery is tremendous and is inspiring. And they really feel like this is the moral issue of their time, that there’s a genocide going on and that they can’t ignore it.”

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 look now at how Gaza solidarity encampments are continuing on college campuses across the U.S. despite brutal police crackdowns. In the latest roundup, at least 43 students were arrested Monday at UCLA. The Intercept reports after New York police raided Columbia University encampment last week, some of the arrested students were denied water and food for about 16 hours. Two protesters were held in solitary confinement. On Monday, Columbia canceled its main university-wide graduation ceremony May 15th amidst mounting fallout from its mishandling of the peaceful protests.

Meanwhile, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner visited the University of Pennsylvania Gaza solidarity encampment last week to speak with organizers and legal observers.

LARRY KRASNER: The First Amendment comes from here. This is Philadelphia. We don’t have to do stupid, like they did at Columbia. We don’t have to do stupid. What we should be doing here is upholding our tradition of being a welcoming, inviting city where people say things, even if other people don’t like them, because they have a right to say it in the United States, and where protesters also have an obligation to remain nonviolent and to engage in speech activity and in activity that does not become illegal.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner at the encampment at UPenn.

This comes as more than 50 chapters of the American Association of University Professors, the AAUP, have issued a statement condemning the violent arrests by police at campus protests. This includes our next guest, Dartmouth professor, from former chair of Jewish studies, Annelise Orleck, who says police body-slammed her to the ground as she tried to protect her students when officers in riot gear cleared the peaceful encampment on Dartmouth’s campus. Annelise Orleck is a professor of history, women’s, gender and sexuality studies, former chair of Jewish studies at Dartmouth College, where she’s taught for more than 30 years. Professor Orleck was among dozens of students, faculty and community members arrested at the Dartmouth encampment last week. She’s been charged with criminal trespass and temporarily banned from portions of Dartmouth’s campus. She’s joining us now from Thetford, Vermont.

Professor Orleck, thanks so much for being with us. Can you take us through what happened that day? Where were you? Why did you decide to go to this encampment? And then what happened?

ANNELISE ORLECK: We were concerned that the students might be subject to some kind of violence, to — I didn’t really think there was going to be arrests, but I didn’t know for sure. The institution had sent out a very strict list of dos and don’ts earlier in the day, and it was clear that they were going to try to break up the encampment as quickly as possible. So, there were a whole bunch of us. There were dozens of faculty out there to try to support them.

And I was in a line of mostly older women, most of us Jewish, and the riot police came at us and started trying to literally physically push people off the Green. We were standing in front of our students, between the students and the riot police, in the hope of preventing violence. That didn’t happen. My students and I were subject to really violent handling in the course of our arrests. And it’s possible that I was subject to the most violent handling.

AMY GOODMAN: What happened to you?

ANNELISE ORLECK: I was videoing my students’ arrests. I was telling the police, “They’re just students. They’re not criminals. Leave them alone.” And suddenly, I was body-slammed from behind by these very large men in body armor, and hard enough that my feet left the ground for a few seconds. I landed on the ground in front of the protesters. They had taken my phone. And so I got up to try to demand my phone, and then they grabbed me under the arms, slammed me to the ground, dragged me facedown on the grass. You know, one guy had his knee on me. And honestly, Amy, I heard myself saying what I’d seen in videos so many times: “You’re hurting me. I can’t breathe. Stop.” And they said to me what they’ve said to so many victims of police brutality: “You’re talking. You can breathe.” They then put on the zip-tie cuffs on me, on a colleague, my colleague Christopher MacEvitt, and on many of our students so tightly that people have nerve damage, compressed nerves, severe pain. So, that’s what happened to us that night.

And the university has not dropped charges for criminal trespass or even asked the DA to drop the charges. So, we are all banned from the Green, which is the center of campus, from the administration building, where we would go to protest, and from the street on which the president’s house stands.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor Orleck, the faculty met with the Dartmouth president yesterday, Monday. Could you talk about what was discussed and what was the message of the faculty to the administration?

ANNELISE ORLECK: The message of the faculty was: Drop all the charges now, apologize for the harm and trauma you’ve inflicted on the campus, promise that there will be no riot police called to campus again, change your policies on protest to be less restrictive, and, you know, to acknowledge constitutional protections on free speech, and get rid of the Palestine exception to free speech. People have to be able to talk about Palestine without being attacked by police with clubs, gas and God knows what else.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you, Professor Orleck — you’re professor of history, of women’s, gender and sexuality studies, former chair of Jewish studies. President Biden is going to be giving an address on antisemitism today, issuing what they say is a clarion call to fight a swiftly rising tide of antisemitism across the United States and especially on college campuses. I put this question to the Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy, as well, but if you can talk about whether you see this rise, and also the equating of anti-Zionism with antisemitism, and the number of Jewish professors and students who are part of these protests?

ANNELISE ORLECK: Yes. I think this protest movement has a large and disproportionate percentage of Jewish students and faculty involved, because we all feel very strongly that we don’t want — we don’t want this genocide in Gaza in our name. And I was really struck by the fact that there was some reporting, I think, by The Guardian and BBC that I heard today that the people stirring up a lot of trouble and saying things outside the gates at Columbia were tied to the Proud Boys, that there were people who attacked the protesters at UCLA so violently and who had ties to Trump rallies. And I think it’s deeply ironic — deeply, deeply ironic — that the House Republicans who supported the January 6th assault on the Capitol, in which people were wearing Camp Auschwitz shirts and shirts with a logo that says “6MWE” — “6 million wasn’t enough” — and that they have become the defenders against antisemitism.

I heard nothing. There were Buddhist, Christian, Muslim and Jewish chaplains at our protest. The students were singing. They were chanting. Yes, there was some of the “river to the sea” chant that many Jews find so offensive and believe is a call to genocide. I accept the interpretation made by my Palestinian colleagues and students that this chant is about equality from the river to the sea and freedom. So, I don’t see any antisemitism. And you should know that the Jewish — many Jewish faculty at Dartmouth signed a letter insisting that the president not speak in our name and not use antisemitism to rationalize bringing these violent forces onto our campus.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor, your message to the students who’ve led and organized these peaceful protests for months despite all of this repression?

ANNELISE ORLECK: Well, my students are — our students are holding another rally today on one of the parts of the campus we’re not banned from, which is the grass in front of the library. And I think their bravery is tremendous and is inspiring. And they really feel like this is the moral issue of their time, that there’s a genocide going on and that they can’t ignore it.

And again, I have colleagues at Columbia, colleagues at UCLA and in many parts of the country who have been part of the — not part of the encampments, but have visited the encampments, have spoken to the students there, have not felt threatened, have not felt antisemitism. Certainly at Dartmouth, we didn’t. And there’s a very powerful open letter from a Christian pastor who was there who’s saying the same thing. So, stop weaponizing antisemitism. It’s offensive, and it’s wrong.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Professor Orleck, how are you right now, having been beaten to the ground? And also, you’re banned from your campus, where you’ve taught for over 30 years, parts of it?

ANNELISE ORLECK: Yes, I was initially, as a condition of my bail, banned from the entire campus, but the college insisted that was a clerical error and, you know, gave lie to their argument that they can’t get charges changed or dropped by calling the local police department and getting them to change my bail so that I can teach. So I can now teach, but my building is one of the — on one of the streets that I’m banned from. So, I was having to run up the street yesterday in sunglasses really quickly trying to get to my class, you know, and not get arrested. It’s ridiculous.

And the Green is the very center of our campus. We all cross it many times a day. My kids grew up playing on the Green. The idea that we can’t have access to the beating heart of our campus is offensive again and, you know, just gives a sense — the president makes this argument that she’s trying to ensure that the Green is open to people with all views and that, you know, the five tents and 10 students who were camped out there would make the Green a place that only people of one view could be. Honestly, I think that’s what they did by making us frightened.

I’m still hurting. I have nerve damage in my wrist. I have an injured shoulder. I have bruising and swelling. And it’s very scary. And I’m getting better, but it’s crazy that I should be in this position for trying to protect my students. And I say the same for other faculty who were out there, including Chris MacEvitt, my colleague on the faculty, who was also arrested and also harmed.

AMY GOODMAN: Annelise Orleck, we want to thank you for being with us, professor of history, women’s gender and sexuality studies, former chair of Jewish studies at Dartmouth College, where she’s taught for more than 30 years, Professor Orleck among dozens of students, faculty, community members arrested at a Dartmouth encampment. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, for another edition of Democracy Now!