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

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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!

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Meet Students at 4 Colleges Where Gaza Protests Win Concessions, Incl. Considering Israel Divestment
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 08, 2024

As students around the country set up Gaza solidarity encampments on their campuses, many universities have called in police who have arrested students and dismantled the sites. But students at a number of colleges have managed to negotiate agreements where administrators have acceded to some of their demands, including considering divestment from Israel. We speak with four students who have been involved in pro-Palestine protests on campuses at Middlebury College in Vermont, Evergreen College in Washington state, Brown University in Rhode Island and Rutgers in New Jersey.

“Being an American complicit in this and being a student at an institution complicit in this genocide directly, I couldn’t imagine standing by and not acting,” says Duncan Kreps, who is graduating from Middlebury.

Aseel, a Palestinian student at Rutgers who is only using her first name out of safety concerns, tells Democracy Now! that nearly 100 of her relatives have been killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza. “The Gaza that I once knew is essentially gone, but I am more than confident, along with my family, that we will return and that we will rebuild it,” she says.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: College campuses around the world have ignited in a global uprising of students protesting Israel’s assault on Gaza. From New York to Berlin, San Francisco to Sydney, students have set up Gaza solidarity encampments to call for a ceasefire and to demand that their schools disclose and divest from companies with ties to Israel.

Many universities have responded by calling the police onto their campuses to violently break up the encampments. In the U.S. alone, over 2,000 students, faculty and supporters have been arrested at dozens of universities over the past three weeks.

But as the campus crackdowns continue, students at a number of universities have managed to negotiate agreements where administrators have acceded to some of the protesters’ demands. One of the first was Pitzer College in California on April 1st.

Today we’re joined by students from four universities where school administrations have agreed to a number of key demands, such as publicly calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and exploring divestment from Israel.

At Brown University, which came to an agreement last week, we’re joined by Rafi Ash, a sophomore majoring in urban studies, part of Brown Jews for a Ceasefire Now and Brown Divest Coalition. He’s joining us from Providence, Rhode Island.

At Middlebury College, which struck a deal on Sunday, we’re joined by Duncan Kreps, a graduating senior at Middlebury, where he’s majoring in mathematics. He was part of the pro-Palestinian Middlebury solidarity encampment, and he joins us from Middlebury, Vermont.

At Evergreen State College in Washington, which came to an agreement last week, we’re joined by Alex Marshall, a third-year student, joining us from Olympia. Evergreen is the alma mater of Rachel Corrie, the American peace activist killed by an Israeli military bulldozer in Gaza March 16th, 2003.

And at Rutgers University in New Jersey, we’re joined by Aseel, a Palestinian student at Rutgers who has family in Gaza. She’s part of Students for Justice in Palestine.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Let’s begin at Brown. Rafi Ash, you are a sophomore in urban studies at Brown. Can you talk about the encampment that was set up and then what ensued?

RAFI ASH: Yeah. So, we set up an encampment last — two weeks ago at this point, and our encampment was on the Main Green, our central quad on campus. And we set up for seven days. And while the administration raised its disciplinary threats over the course of those days, that really did not, you know, sway students. And as the administration was trying to start setup for commencement, the pressure grew on them to actually begin to, you know, either force us out or come to the table. And we were able to force them to the table on Monday of last week, and that led to a multiday negotiations process.

And, you know, I think these negotiations didn’t really seem like a possibility before these encampments began, but through them, we were able to actually push to force a vote on divestment, and that’s a vote that’s never happened before at Brown, and that’s something that we’ve been pushing for for a long time, that our Board of Corporation will first have a more informational session on divestment without a vote, but then followed by, at the meeting after, a guaranteed vote. And, you know, that’s not the end of the story. We still have so much more work to do, and we need to make sure that that vote is a yes for divestment. But that was a huge step that came out of an escalatory encampment.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, a while ago, there were a number of arrests on campus. There were protests after Hisham Awartani, who is the Brown student who was shot in Burlington, Vermont, when he and two of his best friends from the Friends Academy in Ramallah, who had come to the United States to go to college, where their families thought it was safer, was shot by a white man off his porch when they were taking a walk on the way to his grandmother’s house. Hisham is now paralyzed. Can you talk about what happened after that and the number of arrests that took place and the administration’s response to that? And are there — the quashing of those charges also a part of this discussion with the administration?

RAFI ASH: Yeah. So, we had, last semester, 61 arrests on campus, 20 of them in early November, before the shooting, and then another 41 in the weeks after Hisham’s shooting. And I think there’s a — it brings it very personal and directly to home that the violence against Palestinians is — that our university is currently complicit in through its endowment. Yes, that affects — that is not only affecting Palestinians in Palestine, but it also incites violence against Palestinians here and against Brown’s own Palestinian students.

AMY GOODMAN: So, at this —

RAFI ASH: And —

AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead.

RAFI ASH: Well, that this makes it very, very personal and very essential to so many Brown students to stand up against the administration’s violence.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Duncan Kreps into the conversation, a senior at Middlebury College at Middlebury, Vermont. Duncan, talk about setting up the encampment and what happened next.

DUNCAN KREPS: Yeah. We set up our encampment, I guess, early morning two Sundays ago and then started engaging with the administration on Tuesday of that following week and had negotiations from there. I think a notable part of our experience is the atmosphere of relative calm that we existed in. We didn’t experience the counterprotests of many other college campuses, and also our administration decided to not send the police in on students, which we want to clarify we believe is the bare minimum for any administrative response to student activism and free speech.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about the demands in the negotiations and who is on the team, on both sides, administration and students.

DUNCAN KREPS: Yeah. We met with the four administrators, consistently, representing kind of different aspects of the institution, and then we sent a rotating team of students to kind of spread the burden of those negotiations and also to ensure that various voices are being heard in that room. But all decisions were brought back to the camp and made as a collective.

AMY GOODMAN: And the students took down the encampment?

DUNCAN KREPS: I’m sorry?

AMY GOODMAN: The students took down the encampment?

DUNCAN KREPS: Yes. So, we voted to accept an agreement, after six rounds of negotiations, that came down on Monday, in exchange for significant progress on all five demands. Our administration agreed to call for a ceasefire. And we also made progress on divestment.

The decision to bring down the encampment was a strategic one. We believed that we could assign resources in other ways to continue to put pressure, especially on divestment, and hold the administration accountable to their comments. And we now look towards an upcoming Board of Trustees meeting where divestment will be discussed.

AMY GOODMAN: Why do you care about this issue, Duncan? You’re a graduating math senior at Middlebury College in Vermont.

DUNCAN KREPS: Yeah, I don’t know how I couldn’t. I mean, we see what’s happening. We see the invasion of Rafah happening before our eyes. This feels like the — in many ways, the most horrific thing I’ve seen happen in my lifetime. And being an American complicit in this and being a student at an institution complicit in this genocide directly, I couldn’t imagine standing by and not acting.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to Alex Marshall, who’s across the country, a third-year student at Evergreen State College. Now, Evergreen State College is in Olympia, Washington. It’s the home city of the parents of Rachel Corrie. In fact, it’s the alma mater of Rachel Corrie. She was set to graduate from Evergreen in 2003 and went to Gaza and stood in front of a pharmacist’s home as an Israeli bulldozer was moving in to demolish it, and she was crushed to death by that bulldozer. Alex, can you talk about the protest encampment, when it was set up, and then what you negotiated with Evergreen authorities, the administration?

ALEX MARSHALL: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

So, our encampment was established on Tuesday the 23rd. And negotiations began with administration on the following day, Wednesday the 24th. There was initially a rotating team of negotiators, but then a second team was established to step in on Sunday the 28th. And I was a part of that new team.

Our demands were formulated through a process of consensus within the encampment. And we focused on divesting from companies that are profiting off of the Israel — off of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, changing Evergreen’s grant acceptance policy to no longer accept funding from Zionist organizations that support stifling students’ free speech, as well as a Police Services Community Review Board structure to be created and the creation of an alternative model of crisis response. Evergreen also agreed to prohibit study abroad programs to Israel, Gaza or the West Bank, until the day comes when Palestinian students would be allowed entry. And they also agreed to release a statement calling for a ceasefire and acknowledging the International Court of Justice’s genocide investigation.

AMY GOODMAN: And who were the people who negotiated on both sides, Alex?

ALEX MARSHALL: Well, I was on a team of four. And on the administrative side, it was the vice president of the college and the dean of students.

AMY GOODMAN: And what do you think was different about your school than places like Columbia, where they called in the police twice?

ALEX MARSHALL: Well, it being Rachel Corrie’s alma mater, I think, is significant. She’s been gone for 20 years, but her memory lives on amongst the student body and the Olympia community at large. Craig and Cindy Corrie came to one of our rallies to speak. And I think her memory — you know, I have learned about her. I’ve read her emails to her parents in multiple classes that I’ve taken at Evergreen, and her memory being so inspiring in that way.

I believe also that Evergreen has an interest in maintaining its image as a college that highly values diversity and equity, working across significant differences and advocating for students’ voices and students’ abilities to exercise their rights to freedom of speech, freedom of protest. And Evergreen is a small college. We’ve had — the college has had a rough few years after the media storm that occurred in 2017. And administration knew that there would be serious repercussions to Evergreen’s image if police were called in.

We are extremely grateful that all of our students were safe and we had no arrests and no students have been written up for policy violations. And I think that that really speaks to Evergreen’s — the culture of Evergreen’s student body as one that really emphasizes taking care of each other and fighting for the struggle for justice.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to end with Aseel, who is a Palestinian student at Rutgers University in New Jersey who has family in Gaza. We’re only using Aseel’s first name because she is concerned about doxxing. Aseel, can you talk about what happened at Rutgers after students set up the Rutgers encampment?

ASEEL: Yeah. Hi. So, last Thursday, we ended our encampment. It was a four-day encampment. And as a result of our collective efforts, we were able to have Rutgers, the Rutgers administration, agree to commit to eight out of 10 demands, which we are like really, really happy about. And I just also want to note that this encampment came in like the span of three weeks, where we did a — like, it was our second encampment, because we revived Tent State University. That’s one.

And another thing, as well, is we are very excited that part of our demands is, number one, that we are going to welcome 10 Gazan students, some of whom we anticipate to be our family members. Another thing is that we are going to finally have Palestinian flags hung, and Holloway is finally going to acknowledge his Palestinian students, finally, and name Palestine and Palestinians in his statements, instead of like the “Middle East region” and “the Gaza region.” And then, not only that, but we are also going to hire additional professors of Palestinian studies, because apparently everyone thinks that this started on October 7th. So, I think that’s pretty important. Another thing is that we are finally going to have an Arab cultural center. “Why didn’t we have one before?” is the real question. We are also going to finally get a Middle Eastern Studies Department. Again, why did we not have one before? Another thing is that we are going to be granted, hopefully — hopefully Rutgers commits to this — amnesty and no suspensions for our encampment. And yeah, I hope I’m not missing anything, but it’s eight demands.

AMY GOODMAN: One of the standard calls for — at these campus encampments has been to disclose and divest. Was that an issue for Rutgers students?

ASEEL: Yes, that was our main reason why we came. We demanded to divest from Israel, from Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism. And also, our second most important demand was to end our relationship with Tel Aviv University and close down the construction of the HELIX Hub, which is right next to the New Brunswick train station. It should also be noted that Tel Aviv University is not just any university. It is a like very prime component of Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism. They manufacture weapons that basically kill my family in Gaza. Not only that, but they also hold the corpses of like 60 to 70 corpses of Palestinians. Just to like also illustrate how close this hits to home is that one of these corpses is the cousin of our beloved professor Noura Erakat. And they basically refuse to give back these corpses, these bodies, to Palestinian families.

We, unfortunately, were not able to get these agreements. However, we did get an agreement to have a meeting with the Joint Committee on Investments, with the Board of Governors, with President Holloway, for divestment, which is a process to divestment. So, this is incredible progress, in our eyes, and to everyone’s eyes, I think, because we had been asking for a meeting for five years, and we finally got one. And that’s why we decided to not get arrested, to not — to leave, basically, the encampment and shut it down, because we got the meeting, we got the eight demands, and we believe that these are just like increment steps towards divestment. But it should be noted that we were more than willing to get arrested. We were actually prepared for it. But we decided not to. And —

AMY GOODMAN: Aseel —

ASEEL: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — you mentioned your family. I wanted to end by asking about your family in Gaza. How are they?

ASEEL: Yeah. So, they are not OK. A hundred members of my — nearly like a hundred members, I think — we don’t know exactly, because of Netanyahu’s psychological warfare of cutting down the electricity and cellular devices to be able to, honestly, reach them. But nearly a hundred of my members were martyred.

And obviously, I still have family left. I am still in contact with them. But they are all displaced. Our family home’s basically destroyed. Even photos, like, just show that, like, on the walls say “Blame Hamas.” And it should be noted that none of my family members are in Hamas, have nothing to do with them. And yeah, like, even the photos of Gaza are just unrecognizable. I can’t even tell, like, where anything is anymore. Photos on my phone of, like, so many memories I had don’t even exist anymore. The Gaza that I once knew is essentially gone. But I am more than confident, along with my family, that we will return and that we will rebuild it.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Aseel, deepest condolences on the death of so many family members in Gaza. Aseel is a Palestinian student at Rutgers University in New Jersey. I want to thank you for being with us; Rafi Ash, a sophomore in urban studies at Brown University; Duncan Kreps, a graduating senior at Middlebury College; and Alex Marshall, a junior at Evergreen State College in Washington.

Coming up, we’ll stay with Rutgers and speak to a professor there, one of 60 journalism professors around the country who have signed a letter to The New York Times calling for it to commission an independent review of a controversial December article alleging Hamas systematically weaponized sexual violence on October 7th. Back in 20 seconds.

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AMY GOODMAN: RISD, Rhode Island School of Design, students singing at a vigil last night while they barricaded themselves inside a campus building which they renamed Fathi Ghaben Hall after the acclaimed Palestinian artist who died after being unable to get care in Gaza. Special thanks to Democracy Now! fellow Eric Halvarson.

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60+ Journalism Profs Demand Investigation into Controversial NYT Article Alleging Mass Rape on Oct. 7
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MAY 08, 2024

Transcript

A group of more than 60 journalism professors has written to The New York Times calling on the paper to commission an independent review of its report that members of Hamas committed widespread sexual violence on October 7. Numerous media outlets, as well as some of the paper’s own staff, have raised questions about the December 28 article headlined “Screams Without Words,” reported in part by a freelance Israeli journalist who had liked multiple posts on social media advocating for violence against Palestinians. The Times has even published subsequent reporting undercutting some of the key elements of the article, which was used by Israeli leaders and Western allies as justification for the brutal military campaign in Gaza that had already killed tens of thousands of Palestinians up to that point. “It was very troubling to professors of journalism to see such a shoddy article be published without a retraction or an investigation,” says Rutgers media studies professor Deepa Kumar, one of the signatories, author of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire. She also says that as an academic, she is troubled by the mainstream media’s depiction of student encampments as places of hate and violence. “For those of us who have been to these encampments, we know that the atmosphere there is peaceful until the police show up and start to create chaos. … These are fantastic spaces of learning.”

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.

More than 60 journalism professors around the United States have written to The New York Times calling on the paper to commission an independent review of its report that members of Hamas committed widespread sexual violence on October 7th. Numerous media outlets have raised questions about the paper’s reporting, which was written in part by a freelance Israeli journalist, or reported by her, who had liked multiple posts on social media advocating for violence against Palestinians.

Last week, Democracy Now!'s Juan González and I spoke to one of the letter's signatories, Rutgers University journalism and media studies professor Deepa Kumar, author of Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire: 20 Years after 9/11. I began by asking her what prompted the letter.

DEEPA KUMAR: Basically, after this particular article, “Screams Without Words: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7,” came out, there have been numerous reports that have debunked its primary claims. And several journalism professors started to talk about what it means for The New York Times to run a piece like this even though its key claims have been debunked. And so, a group of journalism professors got together and crafted this letter to The New York Times to, as you say, set up an investigative — an independent investigation of how the story was reported, written and published.

And at the center of the controversy, really, is how the two freelancers who were recruited, particularly Anat Schwartz, who’s not a journalist at all — she’s an Israeli filmmaker and an intelligence officer for the — former Israeli officer for the Air Force, and she has no experience doing journalism. She’s recruited to do this story. And what The Intercept, for instance, and Jeremy Scahill — you’ve had him on the show to talk about this story — what they have shown is how she went around trying to find evidence for the claim that there was systematic violence against women on October 7th and couldn’t find any. She phones Israeli hospitals, rape crisis centers, rape crisis hotlines, and she couldn’t find any evidence, and so she turns to more dubious sources in order to actually create this story. And this is in her own words, right? They are quoting Anat Schwartz in her own words. And I encourage viewers to go check out that story.

And so, it was very troubling to professors of journalism to see such a shoddy article be published without a retraction or an investigation. And so it became important for us to write this letter and to send it to The New York Times.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Deepa, The Intercept had a recent story about how journalists at The New York Times were encouraged to, quote, “restrict the use of the terms 'genocide' and 'ethnic cleansing' and to 'avoid' using the phrase 'occupied territory'” when describing Palestinians. Your response to these kinds of guidelines?

DEEPA KUMAR: Absolutely. I mean, I actually wrote an open letter back in November to The New York Times really criticizing the very skewed way in which this genocide, this war on Gaza, was being represented. And I had a problem with the way in which the key tag is the “Israel-Hamas war.” That’s deeply problematic for a number of reasons, not least that Hamas is not a country. Gaza is not a country. Gazans do not have an army, a navy, an air force or nuclear weapons in the way that Israel does. This is a wholesale slaughter of Palestinian people, a genocide in the works. And unfortunately, that has really — that right from the get-go, right? And I’m so glad that these memos are showing that this was intentional, right? This was not an accident, that, in fact, it’s been very skewed in its coverage of what is going on. So, what’s wrong with that phrase is also that by focusing on Hamas and repeatedly putting a spotlight on the tragedy of October 7th, what happens is it suggests that there was no history before October 7th. And the paper is actually justifying the actions of Israel in Gaza from then on. And that’s just, you know, completely one-sided, and it’s not what journalism is supposed to be.

I’ll just say one more thing about the “Screams Without Words” article. And that is that I don’t want to come off saying that there was no sexual violence on October 7th. I think that would be a problem. And in fact, The Intercept story does not say that. What it says is that there wasn’t systematic — there wasn’t a campaign of systematic sexual violence. And that is important, because, in fact, if there was one, that is horrific, isn’t it? And in the climate that we’re in today, where the gains of the #MeToo movement are being rolled back, most recently with the sentence being overturned for Harvey Weinstein, it’s very important to take women seriously.

But I will say this, that this is also a piece of propaganda, right? Because it draws from a narrative that has a much longer history in settler-colonial societies, where sexual violence, alleged sexual violence, against particularly white women becomes the basis for genocide. This is true in the United States. Scholars have documented this and researched this quite well, how the alleged rape of white women became the basis from which to slaughter Indigenous people, to slaughter Native Americans. This was used also against African Americans. Frederick Douglass talks about the myth of the Black rapist, where, you know, alleged sexual violence by Black men was used to justify mass lynchings. And, unfortunately, this piece in The New York Times is really the latest iteration of this longer narrative that then serves to justify violence.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to a piece in The New York Times. They retracted a part of their December story on March 25th, though, to be clear, they didn’t issue a correction. But this is what they wrote: “New video has surfaced that undercuts the account of an Israeli military paramedic who said two teenagers killed in the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Oct. 7 were sexually assaulted. The unnamed paramedic, from an Israeli commando unit, was among dozens of people interviewed for a Dec. 28 article by The New York Times that examined sexual violence on Oct. 7. He said he discovered the bodies of two partially clothed teenage girls in a home in Kibbutz Be’eri that bore signs of sexual violence. … But footage taken by an Israeli soldier who was in Be’eri on Oct. 7, which was viewed by leading community members in February and by The Times this month, shows the bodies of three female victims, fully clothed and with no apparent signs of sexual violence, at a home where many residents had believed the assaults occurred. Though it is unclear if the medic was referring to the same scene, residents said that in no other home in Be’eri were two teenage girls killed, and they concluded from the video that the girls had not been sexually assaulted.” Again, I was reading an article from The New York Times on March 25th. Professor Deepa Kumar, if you can respond?

DEEPA KUMAR: Yes. Thank you for mentioning that article, Amy. And I also want to reference that the podcast of The New York Times, The Daily, was actually going to do a full episode on the “Screams Without Words” article, but when they put it through their standard fact-check, it didn’t pass. So, within The New York Times itself, this story did not pass the basic fact-check. And then, since then, there have been articles, like the one you just mentioned, as well as some corrections, if you will, that have taken place.

But in response to our letter, we have heard nothing from the editorial board of The New York Times. And I understand that a New York Times spokesperson told The Washington Post that they stand by the story. So, it’s pretty clear that they are not interested in actually holding an independent investigation and moving away from this really shoddy piece of journalism.

AMY GOODMAN: I also wanted to read from Ynet, the news source in Israel, with a headline, “New York Times cuts ties with Israeli reporter over alleged policy violation: American newspaper ends Anat Schwartz’s employment after liking pro-Israel posts on social media, including one that called to turn Gaza 'into a slaughterhouse,' sparking calls from pro-Palestinian groups to review her employment.” Again, she was one of the authors of this December 28th New York Times piece, Deepa Kumar.

DEEPA KUMAR: Yes, she was in fact the key person gathering the information, along with her partner’s nephew, on the ground, and Jeffrey Gettleman is the one who actually — he’s a New York Times journalist, award-winning, I might add — who actually wrote the story. And I’ll just say very quickly something about Gettleman, which is that at one interview with Sheryl Sandberg, he actually questioned what evidence was, saying that evidence is a legal term, and it’s not something that journalists apparently look for, which is just bizarre. These are the basics of any — you go to a J school, and this is what they teach you. You have to have evidence. You have to fact-check. And so, you know, it’s just shocking.

We’ve also heard from journalists inside The New York Times saying how happy they are that this letter was sent, because they describe the climate inside The New York Times as a very stifling environment, one which is very tightly controlled. You know, so much for free speech. So much for the newspaper of record.

And I just want to say that the reason that many of us argue and criticize The New York Times is not because we think that The New York Times is worse than the New York Post or, you know, Fox News or whatever. You know, those news media outlets don’t even pretend to be neutral, to be objective and so on, whereas The New York Times does. The New York Times says it adheres to the standards of professional journalism. And here we have such an out-and-out propaganda story that, you know, they have just dug their heels in around in terms of allowing for an investigation, much less retracting the story.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Deepa, what about the current student protests and the push at all these campuses for divestment from Israel of the university endowments, how the Times has been covering these student movements, from your perspective?

DEEPA KUMAR: Yeah. I mean, I’ll first say that these movements are incredible. This is the largest protest movement, solidarity movement with Palestine that I have seen in my lifetime, in over 30 years of being an activist. And this is probably the biggest movement in support of Palestinians in the history of the United States. And for those of us who have been to these encampments, we know that the atmosphere there is peaceful until the police show up and start to create chaos.

So, for instance, I was at the University of Pennsylvania encampment last Friday, where two Israeli-born scholars, Omer Bartov and Raz Segal, were speaking about what is antisemitism. And there was a fantastic discussion going on. The people at the encampment were so diverse — Black, Brown, white, Muslim, Jewish and so on. The only disruptor that I saw was a person identified as a rabbi, who came with a sign saying “Mein Camp,” right? This is a play on Hitler’s famous book, calling those at the encampment, you know, Nazis by extension. And he tried to shut it down, and he was gently told to leave. I mean, Raz Segal actually asked him to come and speak, but he preferred to actually, you know, scream at the protesters. So, that’s our experience of going to encampments. These are fantastic spaces of learning, and not just, you know, talking about the history of the region and talking about antisemitism, but as growing as human beings, of being decent human beings with empathy and solidarity with the oppressed. I mean, that’s what a university is for, right? There’s been music. There’s been dancing. There’s been poetry reading. And none of that spirit is captured either in The New York Times or in other newspapers, who, you know, “if it bleeds, it leads.” That’s what we’re seeing.

And I want to say, though, also, that what is particularly troubling is that the Times, as well as other newspapers, are going with the charges coming from politicians, from congressional figures, that these encampments are antisemitic. That could not be further from the truth. There is so little evidence presented to actually validate this point. Instead, what they turn to is that the protesters have slogans which say, “From the river to the sea, Palestinians will be free.” Now, some have chosen to interpret this as a call for genocide against Jewish Israelis. The only way you could actually reach that conclusion is if you actually have a settler-colonial mentality. Remember, of course, that in 1977, in their election platform, the Likud party had exactly such a slogan. They want an Israeli state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. And for them, that means genocide. It means displacement. It means ethnic cleansing. That’s not what the protesters are saying. What the protesters are saying is that we want freedom for Palestinians, we want human rights and democracy, from the river to the sea. Because what occurs to me when people oppose the slogan is: Where exactly do you want Palestinians to be unfree, from the river to the sea? So, central to this slogan, which is not at all antisemitic, is really the charge to end apartheid. It is to create a free, democratic, whatever you want to call it, Israel-Palestine in this region, where Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side. And this is possible.

AMY GOODMAN: Rutgers University journalism and media studies professor Deepa Kumar, speaking to us from Philadelphia.

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"Something came from the outside": An Eyewitness Account of the Aftermath of Ismail Haniyeh’s Assassination. Iran and Hamas are challenging the story put forth by the New York Times of a planted bomb.
by Jeremy Scahill
Drop Site
Aug 03, 2024

Iranian Leader Ali Khamenei attends the funeral prayer of the Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh. Photo: Handout from Iranian Leader Press Office
“The only thing that came into my mind is that Israel has killed our leader,” said Khaled Qaddoumi, Hamas’s representative in Iran, who was sleeping in an apartment two floors below the group’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh when an explosion rocked the building. “Whether it was with the American tools, whether it was through the Americans, what came into my mind directly is that the Israeli enemy has killed our leader.”

Today, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps directly accused Israel of assassinating Haniyeh in Tehran early Wednesday morning by firing a “short-range projectile with a warhead weighing about 7 kilograms” from outside the apartment complex. While Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) did not offer any forensic evidence to back its allegations, the statement served as a direct challenge to an article published in the New York Times Thursday asserting that Haniyeh was killed by a bomb covertly planted in the residence months ago.

From what Qaddoumi saw, it appeared a projectile had blown a hole in the side of the building directly on the apartment where Haniyeh was staying. In an interview with Drop Site News, Qaddoumi, who is also a member of Hamas’s Office of Political Relations in the Arab and Islamic World, said he met with Haniyeh in the residence in northern Tehran following a state dinner for the newly inaugurated Iranian president. Qaddoumi did not attend the dinner, but was waiting at the apartment complex, situated in a compound operated and guarded by the IRGC, for him to return. Haniyeh, he said, arrived at the building at around 11:30 p.m., at which point Qaddoumi and others gathered with the Hamas leader to discuss the recent Israeli attack in a southern district of Beirut that killed senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr.

After an hour or so, “he left to his bedroom on the fourth floor of the building. And I went to my place, which was on the second floor,” Qaddoumi recalled.

He went to sleep and was awoken by the building shaking around him. “At around 1:37 a.m., I felt a shock to the building. And that gave me a very strange feeling.” He thought it was, “maybe an earthquake,” but “with more scale.”

“I went out to check. I found smoke coming towards me everywhere. The washroom of my suite was destroyed, the ceiling was destroyed. And then I went out. My friends, they told me what has happened. Then I rushed towards the room of Ismail,” he said. “I entered into the [suite] and I found a room where the two walls at the outer side of the building had been destroyed. And the ceiling of that room was also destroyed. So it gave me a [sense] that something came from outside, [fired] into the room.”

Qaddoumi said he saw Haniyeh’s body and, in an adjacent room, his bodyguard, who was also killed. After that, he and other Palestinian officials in Tehran were briefed by Iranian counterparts. “Initially, everybody, according to the evaluation from the field, they were agreeing that something has attacked the building from outside. And then with the passage of time and checking the technical processes, [the IRGC] have released this statement.”

A planted bomb would indicate deep infiltration of Israeli spies. A projectile fired from outside the military compound also indicates a major security failure.

How Haniyeh was killed—whether it was with a short-range projectile or a planted bomb—could have significant implications, particularly for Iran’s internal response. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, was reportedly woken up in the middle of the night of the attack to be briefed. He has vowed Iran will retaliate against Israel. A planted bomb would indicate deep infiltration of Israeli spies, with the ability to operate within a housing complex controlled and guarded by the most elite military and intelligence force in Iran. A projectile fired from outside the military compound also indicates a major security failure. The planners of this operation clearly wanted to send a message that Iran is no longer safe for enemies of Israel.

The New York Times said the bomb was smuggled into the guest residence where Haniyeh has stayed on previous visits to the Iranian capital and remotely detonated shortly after 1:30 a.m. local time. Qaddoumi told me that while Haniyeh has stayed in the complex on previous visits to Tehran, the Hamas leader did not always stay in that specific suite. “It depends on the guest list,” he said.

The Times story was sourced to “seven Middle Eastern officials, including two Iranians, and an American official.” The report did not indicate how many of the “Middle Eastern” officials were Israelis. The lead byline on the story was Ronen Bergman, an Israeli journalist with close ties to Israeli intelligence who wrote a book, Rise and Kill First, about the history of Israeli assassination operations. The Times report, citing three anonymous “Iranian officials,” said the attack represented “a catastrophic failure of intelligence and security for Iran and a tremendous embarrassment for the Guards, which uses the compound for retreats, secret meetings and housing prominent guests like Mr. Haniyeh.”

This version of events reads like a tale lifted from the popular Israeli espionage drama, “Tehran,” about a covert Israeli agent operating in the Iranian capital on a mission to destroy a nuclear reactor—and that framing may be intentional, according to Qaddoumi.

“Israel wants to create, through the propaganda, [the impression] that there was some security [breakdown] to create chaos within the Iranians themselves,” he said. “This is the habit of the Israelis and the American agencies. They are very good in scenario building and they are very good in making stories and good scenarios for a cheap, maybe Bollywood movie.”

It is true that Israel has been engaged in a longtime propaganda effort aimed at sowing paranoia within the Iranian government that Mossad and other Israeli intelligence agencies can covertly and lethally operate at will within Iran. Israel is widely believed to be behind the assassinations of several nuclear scientists in Iran, five of whom were killed between 2010 and 2020.

Whether the IRGC’s conclusions or those published in the New York Times about how Haniyeh was killed are accurate, the killing of Hamas’s top political official and its lead negotiator for a Gaza ceasefire on Iranian soil sent shockwaves throughout the chambers of power in Tehran.

In the aftermath of Haniyeh’s killing, Iran reportedly carried out a series of arrests and interrogations of senior intelligence and military officials. The investigation is being led by IRGC’s special unit on counterintelligence and espionage. Iran has vowed to respond to the killing of Haniyeh in an apartment housed within a complex controlled by the IRGC that was reportedly equipped with radar equipment, air defense systems and surveillance cameras.

On Friday, President Joe Biden spoke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “reaffirmed his commitment to Israel’s security against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis,” according to a White House readout of the call. “The President discussed efforts to support Israel’s defense against threats, including against ballistic missiles and drones, to include new defensive U.S. military deployments.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered the USS Abraham Lincoln, destroyer vessels, and an additional squadron of combat aircraft to the region to support Israel in the event of an Iranian military response. These deployments join an array of sea, land, and air assets the U.S. has positioned in the region over the past several months in the name of confronting Iran, Iraq, Yemen, and other forces from the Axis of Resistance.

Qaddoumi added that he does not believe Israel acted unilaterally and, as Hamas’s official representative in Iran, he joined Tehran in accusing the U.S. of involvement. “Israel could not do such adventures without the blessing and the green light from America,” he charged. “America is absolutely backing and facilitating the Israeli genocide in Gaza. And that is what's happening in the assassination operations.”

The IRGC also said the Israelis killed Haniyeh, who was in Iran to attend the inauguration of the country’s new president, with the support of the U.S. government. Senior Biden administration officials have said the U.S. had no advanced knowledge of the hit on Haniyeh and have stated the U.S. was not involved in the operation.

The U.S. maintains that it does not want a wider war in the region and insists it is working tirelessly to achieve a Gaza ceasefire. An Israeli official claimed Biden told Netanyahu on their most recent call that he wants a ceasefire “within a week to two weeks.” Biden told reporters that Haniyeh’s assassination “doesn’t help” the situation. Yet for all of its claims, the Biden administration has focused its public pressure firmly on Iran, the Palestinian factions fighting the Israeli genocide in Gaza, and Hezbollah in Lebanon while offering “ironclad” support for Israel.

“40,000 Palestinians have been killed. One of them is Ismail Haniyeh.”

“The so-called retaliation process from the American side is actually an act of war. They are starting the war,” said Qaddoumi. “Unfortunately, we are not facing a country or facing a state. We are facing gangsters, who are having the cartel mentality, to kill and to win always. That is not negotiation.”

Qaddoumi said that Haniyeh’s assassination will not push Hamas to surrender. “If you continue using the gun, if you continue using the blood shedding language, you will never get a flower for an answer. You will receive an answer of a blood, because the blood will drag another blood shedding,” he said. “It's not because Ismail Haniyeh was killed. It's that 40,000 Palestinians have been killed. One of them is Ismail Haniyeh. Among them, 70% are children and women. So you cannot expect that we will surrender with these things.”

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The Undoing of Israel: The Dark Futures That Await After the War in Gaza
by Ilan Z. Baron and Ilai Z. Saltzman
Foreign Affairs
August 12, 2024
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/undoing-israel

-- Zionism in the Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal, by Lenni Brenner

-- The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine, by Edwin Black

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At the site of an explosion in Tel Aviv, Israel, July 2024. Ricardo Moraes / Reuters

At Israel’s creation, in May 1948, its founders envisioned a country defined by humanist values and one that upheld international law. The Declaration of Independence, Israel’s founding document, insisted that the state “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or sex” and that it would “be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” But from the very beginning, this vision was never fulfilled—after all, for nearly two decades after the signing of the declaration, Palestinians in Israel lived under martial law. Israeli society has never been able to resolve the contradiction between the universalist appeal of the declaration’s ideals and the narrower urgency of the founding of Israel as a Jewish state to protect the Jewish people.

Over the decades, this intrinsic contradiction has surfaced again and again, creating political upheavals that have shaped and reshaped Israeli society and politics—without ever resolving the contradiction. But now the war in Gaza and the judicial crisis that preceded it have made it harder than ever to go on this way, pushing Israel to a breaking point.

The country is on an increasingly illiberal, violent, and destructive path. Unless it changes course, the humanist ideals of its founding will disappear altogether as Israel careens into a darker future, one in which illiberal values define both state and society. Israel is on track to become increasingly authoritarian in its treatment not just of Palestinians but of its own citizens. It could fast lose many of the friends it still has and become a pariah. And isolated from the world, it could be consumed by turmoil at home as widening fissures threaten to break up the country itself. Such is the perilous state of affairs in Israel that these futures are not at all outlandish—but neither are they inevitable. Israel still has the capacity to pull itself back from the brink. The cost of not doing so may be too great to bear.

THE END OF ZIONISM

Hamas’s bloody October 7 attack hit Israel at a time when it was already facing tremendous domestic instability. The country’s electoral system, which relies on proportional representation, had in recent decades allowed the entry of ever more fringe and extreme political parties into the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. Since 1996, there have been 11 different governments, an average of a new government every two and a half years—six of them led by the current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. And between 2019 and 2022, Israel had to hold five general elections. Small political parties have played key roles in forming—and toppling—governments, wielding disproportionate influence. After the last election, in November 2022, Netanyahu formed a government with the backing of political parties and leaders from the far right, bringing to power forces in Israeli politics that had long lurked on the margins.

In 2023, Netanyahu and his far-right allies then pushed for a judicial reform bill that sought to substantially reduce the Supreme Court’s oversight of the government. Netanyahu hoped that the proposed reform would protect him from an ongoing criminal case against him. His ultra-Orthodox allies wanted the reform to prevent the drafting of thousands of yeshiva students, who have long been exempt from military service. And the religious Zionists designed the reform to block the Supreme Court’s ability to limit the construction of settlements.

Israel is on an increasingly illiberal, violent, and destructive path.

The proposed judicial reform sparked massive protests across the country, revealing a society deeply fractured between those who wanted Israel to remain a democracy with an independent judiciary and those who wanted a government that could do more or less whatever it pleased. Demonstrators brought cities to a standstill, military reservists threatened not to serve if the bill passed, and investors hinted that they would take their money out of the country. A version of the bill still passed the Knesset in July 2023 but was struck down by the Supreme Court at the beginning of this year. At present, the governing coalition is attempting to revive some elements of the judicial reform even as the war in Gaza rages.

The judicial reform protest certainly revealed concerns within Israel about the character of the country’s democracy, but it did not raise questions about Israel’s responsibility toward Palestinians living under occupation. Indeed, many Israelis see their country’s treatment of Palestinians as separate from its functioning as a democracy. Israelis have long tolerated, if not sanctioned, violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians. In a contravention of international law, Israel subjects Palestinians living under its rule in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to what is in effect martial law. Successive Israeli governments have overseen the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, imperiling the future creation of a sovereign Palestinian state. The war in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed around 40,000 people, according to conservative estimates, has revealed a country that appears unable or unwilling to uphold the aspirational vision in its independence declaration.

As many progressives within Israel have long acknowledged, the brutality of the military occupation and the imperatives of being an occupying military power have a corrupting effect on all of Israeli society. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, an Israeli scientist and philosopher, observed “the national pride and euphoria” that followed the Six-Day War, in 1967, and saw a darker turn ahead. That celebration of country, he warned in 1968, would only “bring us from proud, rising nationalism to extreme, messianic ultranationalism.” And such extreme passions, Leibowitz claimed, would be the undoing of the Israeli project, leading to “brutality” and ultimately “the end of Zionism.” That end is now closer than many Israelis care to admit.

SPARTA WITH A YARMULKE

On its current path, Israel is veering in a deeply illiberal direction. Its current hard-right turn, pushed by politicians as well as by many of their constituents, could see Israel become a kind of ethnonationalist theocracy, run by a Jewish judicial and legislative council and right-wing religious extremists, nothing less than a Jewish version of Iran’s theocratic state. Israel’s demographic and sociopolitical changes, including a rapid increase of the ultra-Orthodox population, the rightward tilt of young Israeli Jews, and a decline in the number of Israeli Jews who identify as secular, have produced a more devout body politic that perceives the continued existence of Israel as part of an irreconcilable struggle between Judaism and Islam.

Ultra-Orthodox nationalist politicians who overtly call for a state in which religion plays a more definitive role include Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben Gvir, and Avi Maoz—all key players in Netanyahu’s coalition government. They represent a relatively new but increasingly influential segment of the religious Zionist movement known as the Hardal, which believes that God promised the entire biblical land of Israel to the Jews, rejects Western culture and values, and fundamentally opposes the accepted norms of Israeli liberalism, such as LGBTQ rights, some separation between synagogue and state, and gender equality. Figures associated with the Hardal currently serve as ministers in the Israeli government, occupy powerful positions in the Knesset, and are prominent leaders of yeshivas and pre-military preparatory academies known as mechinot. Political and demographic trends suggest that the far right in Israel will remain electorally influential, even dominant, for the foreseeable future.

But many Israelis who are not especially religious are also beginning to subscribe to this increasingly extreme ethnonationalist ideology. Since the October 7 attacks, the Israeli right wing has grown even more radical. For them, and many others in Israel, Hamas’s massacre proved that there can be no compromise with the Palestinians or their supporters. These conservatives see Israel as existing in an eternal state of war, with peace unthinkable—a state, to borrow the phrase of Israeli historian David Ochana, akin to “Sparta with a yarmulke.”

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Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men protesting in Jerusalem, June 2024
Ronen Zvulun / Reuters

That stance could harden into a broad consensus among Israeli Jews and produce a fully illiberal Israel, in which the war in Gaza leads to the complete erosion of democratic norms and institutions that were weakened by Netanyahu and his allies. The war has already provided the government with an excuse to restrict civil liberties; the Knesset’s National Security Committee, for instance, recently promoted legislation that authorized the police to conduct searches without warrants. There has also been an increase in state-sanctioned violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, and Israeli peace activists are increasingly viewed as traitors. An Israel dominated by the far right would become more authoritarian, with civil liberties curtailed, particularly gender rights. The state would wield a deleterious influence on public education, with a rounded civic understanding of Israeli democracy replaced by a more baldly nationalist and illiberal one.

An illiberal Israel would also become a pariah state. Israel is already becoming increasingly isolated internationally, and multiple international organizations are seeking punitive legal and diplomatic measures against it. The genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and its recent opinion about the illegality of the occupation, the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, and numerous credible allegations of war crimes and human rights violations have dealt a blow to Israel’s global standing. Even with the support of key allies, the cumulative impact of negative public opinion, legal challenges, and diplomatic rebukes will increasingly marginalize Israel on the global stage.

An illiberal Israel would still receive economic support from a few countries, including the United States, but it would be politically and diplomatically isolated from much of the rest of the global community, including most G-7 countries. These countries would cease to coordinate with Israel on security matters, maintain trade agreements with Israel, and buy Israeli-made weapons. Israel would likely end up relying entirely on the United States and become vulnerable to shifts in the U.S. political landscape at a time when more and more Americans are questioning their country’s unconditional support for the Jewish state.

The social contract between state and society in Israel currently hangs in the balance. Should Netanyahu and his allies have their way, Israeli democracy will become hollow and procedural, with traditional liberal checks and balances fast eroding. That would place the country on an unsustainable path that would likely lead to capital flight and brain drain—and deepening internal strains.

A FRACTURED ISRAEL

As Israel becomes more authoritarian, that illiberal turn would not mask the growing fissures within Israeli society. The state would increasingly lose its monopoly over the legitimate use of force, and divisions could inflame to the point of civil war. The recent violent confrontation at the Sde Teiman detention facility, where soldiers suspected of abusing a Hamas terrorist were taken for questioning, could augur what lies ahead. Reserve soldiers, civilians, and even a far-right parliamentarian attacked the military police inside the base, incensed that military personnel were detained for their maltreatment of a Palestinian prisoner. In the future, such episodes may become more common. Other signs of the fragmentation already underway within Israel’s security apparatus include the growth of settler militias—groups that the state has been unwilling to suppress despite their violent attacks on Palestinians—and the fact that soldiers have tipped off vigilantes to illegally stop the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

The rule of law in Israel could break down. Israel would remain a more or less functional economic state. It would protect private property. There would still be universities, hospitals, and some kind of public education system. The high-tech economy—the heart of Israel’s claim to be a “startup nation”—could still function for a time. But the state would operate without the rule of law, in keeping with the hollow democracy favored by the extreme right. Security would devolve into a fragmented system with no oversight and no unified command, with the monopoly over the legitimate use of force eroding. Different groups would claim the right to violence, including armed settler militias, civilians who align with the far right, and the existing security forces.

This future is not the province of dystopian science fiction. The conflict in Gaza has intensified political divisions within the country, particularly between right-wing groups advocating for extreme military and security measures that utterly disregard international humanitarian law and others calling for a more conciliatory approach toward the Palestinians. The war has also deepened divisions between secular and religious Jews. A major debate within Israel regarding whether ultra-Orthodox Jews should be obliged to serve in the military—as all other Israelis are—has stoked these tensions. The Israeli Supreme Court recently ruled that the government cannot avoid drafting ultra-Orthodox Jews and must refrain from funding yeshivas whose students are not enlisting as mandated by existing laws—a decision that has galvanized attempts to revive the judicial reform legislation.

This weakening of the central authority of the state could presage a more shocking unraveling. Beyond administering the economy, the government would be unable (and even unwilling) to fulfill any of its other traditional political responsibilities, including the provision of security and a stable legislative system of governance that guarantees accountability. The presence of competing security groups and lax parliamentary supervision would weaken Israel’s overall security deterrent and undermine any coherent system of governance in Israel’s security establishment. An Israel in this condition could well be at odds with itself. It could become a kind of balkanized entity with the religious and nationalist right-wing elements building up their own de facto state, most likely in the settlements of the West Bank. Or it could witness a rebellion of religious extremists and ultranationalists that would divide Israel in a violent civil war between an armed religious right wing and the existing state apparatus. Short of civil war, this situation would still prove unstable, and the economy would collapse, leaving Israel a failed state.

A PATH AWAY FROM CHAOS

The weight of events and the prevailing political forces are pushing Israel in these dangerous directions. It is becoming a country that its founders would not recognize. But it does not need to go this way. To avoid these outcomes, Israel needs to restore political stability in the country by shoring up its constitutional foundations, strengthening the rule of law, reaching more productively for a lasting settlement to the conflict with Palestinians, and better ensconcing itself within the region.

Israel should set up an independent constitutional commission to address the country’s political instability and provide a firm foundation for the future of Israeli democracy. The commission would need to draft a constitution that would not be as easy to change as the Basic Laws—the 14 laws that together compose the closest thing Israel has to a constitution—and would have to adhere to the original humanist values of the state’s founding. Such a commission has been held in the past, and its revival would require significant cooperation among what remains of the political center, the political left, and Israeli Arab political parties. Interestingly, Yoav Gallant, the current Israeli defense minister, has called for Israel’s Declaration of Independence to be the first text in such a constitutional document.

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Protesters gathering outside Sde Teiman detention facility, near Beersheba, Israel, July 2024. Amir Cohen / Reuters

Israel also needs to better enforce the rule of law both inside Israel and in the West Bank, which means that the state can no longer tolerate violence by settlers toward Palestinians. Moreover, the military occupation over the Palestinians needs to end, and a binding peace process needs to be initiated involving neutral third-party negotiators. At a minimum, Israel should commit to addressing the ICJ’s recent opinion regarding Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

To better guarantee domestic stability, Israel needs to legitimize its place in the Middle East, building on the gains made in the Abraham Accords and strengthening ties with Saudi Arabia and other regimes in the region. To safeguard its relations with G-7 countries and the broader international community, Israel should reiterate its commitment to international law, including by making military operations more transparent, ensuring accountability for any violations of international law, and ratifying the Rome Statute, which established the ICC in 2002.

The steps described above would face potentially insurmountable opposition in Israel, but such opposition would only reaffirm our fears for Israel’s future. To be sure, Israel does face real and dangerous enemies, which, like Hamas, are guilty of human rights abuses. But the trajectory Israel is on is not a winning one. On its current course, the state may morph into something that would destroy the humanist Jewish vision that inspired many of its founders and supporters around the world. It is not too late for Israel to save itself from its own demise and find another way forward.

ILAN Z. BARON is Professor of International Politics and Political Theory and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Jewish Culture, Society, and Politics at Durham University.

ILAI Z. SALTZMAN is Associate Research Professor of Israel Studies and Director of the Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies at the University of Maryland.

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DNC Kicks Off as Progressives and Uncommitted Delegates Demand Harris Take Action on Gaza Genocide
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 19, 2024

Thousands of delegates and elected officials have descended on Chicago as the Democratic National Convention kicks off today. The four-day convention comes one month after President Biden ended his bid for reelection. Vice President Kamala Harris secured the Democratic presidential nomination in a virtual roll call earlier this month and is expected to again formally accept the party’s nomination when she addresses the convention on Thursday.

Dozens of delegates with the “uncommitted” movement are also in Chicago as they continue to pressure Harris to halt U.S. military support for Israel’s war on Gaza. The delegates represent states where some 700,000 people cast uncommitted votes during primaries to protest Democrats’ pro-Israel policies. For the first time ever, the DNC is hosting a panel on Palestinian human rights. The uncommitted delegation welcomed the move and is continuing to request that Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, who has volunteered in Gaza, be permitted to address the convention from the stage.

On Sunday, hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Chicago saying they will disrupt the DNC until Democrats listen to their demands. This is Kshama Sawant, co-founder of Workers Strike Back and former socialist Seattle city councilmember.

Kshama Sawant: “The possibility of Trump 2.0 is only a reality because of the many betrayals by the Biden-Harris administration. Biden and Harris, both as president and as vice president, and the Democratic Party as a whole, they broke their promise for a $15-an-hour minimum wage. They blocked the railroad workers’ strike, which is possibly one of the most anti-worker, anti-union actions that can be taken by politicians. And so, in other words, both the Democratic and Republican parties are anti-worker, and they are both pro-war.”

Meanwhile, Chicago’s Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson in a recent interview called Israel’s war a genocide, saying, “What’s happening right now is not only egregious, it is genocidal. We have to acknowledge and name it for what it is and have the moral courage to exercise our authority.” We’ll have more from the DNC after headlines.

Gazans Hold Out Little Hope as Blinken Pushes for Ceasefire in Tel Aviv
Aug 19, 2024

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Israel, where he warned ongoing ceasefire talks may be the “last chance” to free Hamas hostages as he spoke from Tel Aviv earlier today. Blinken added, “It’s also time to make sure that no one takes any steps that could derail this process.” Inside Gaza, displaced Palestinians in Khan Younis responded to Blinken’s latest visit.

Mahmoud Abu Daoud: “Today in the Gaza Strip, we are suffering from the Americans and international community ganging up on us, without mercy on us. As I said, this visit is, as usual, to check on Israel and provide it with arms and logistic matters, to continue the war of extermination on the Gaza Strip. There will be no changes. We are very pessimistic about this visit.”

Israeli Soldiers Attack Deir al-Balah, Wiping Out Families, Children, Another U.N. Worker
Aug 19, 2024

Israel’s slaughter continues throughout the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military is pushing further into central Deir al-Balah, as Gazans are now being crowded into just 10% of the besieged territory. On Saturday, an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah killed at least 18 members of the same family, including 11 siblings aged between 2 and 22. On Sunday, another attack in the same region killed more Palestinian children. Mohammed Awad Khattab said six of his grandchildren were killed as they slept, along with their mother — his daughter — who worked for the United Nations.

Mohammed Awad Khattab: “My daughter had been struggling to have children for years. She had them through IVF. Four of the children were quadruplets. The eldest son and the youngest daughter, who was only a year-and-a-half old, were also killed. What wrong did these innocent children do? Were they posing any danger to Israel? Were they carrying arms?”

UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, is marking World Humanitarian Day today by honoring its 207 staff members who have been killed by Israel since October 7.

First Case of Polio Identified in Gaza in 10-Month-Old Baby
Aug 19, 2024

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres is calling for a “polio pause” to conduct an urgent vaccination campaign inside Gaza after health authorities confirmed a 10-month-old infant had contracted the highly contagious disease.

Secretary-General António Guterres: “Let’s be clear: The ultimate vaccine for polio is peace and an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. But in any case, a polio pause is a must. It is impossible to conduct a polio vaccination campaign with war raging all over.”

The 10-month-old baby is Gaza’s first known case of polio in a quarter of a century. Overwhelmed parents expressed fear over yet another threat to their families’ lives.

Elham Nassar: “We’re tired of this life we are living — no food, no drink, no medicines. What are we supposed to do in this life? At the least, we need medicines for our children, to protect them from being infected with the polio virus that’s now spreading across Gaza. You must find a solution to our situation. We need vaccines. We need medicine. We need proper sanitation. We want you to save us before it’s too late. Or how long are we supposed to wait? Should we wait until we watch our children die and become paralyzed, and then become helpless to do anything for them?”

Israeli Relatives of Hamas Hostages Rally in Tel Aviv Ahead of Blinken Visit
Aug 19, 2024

In Israel, relatives of hostages held in Gaza rallied in Tel Aviv this weekend ahead of Blinken’s visit. This is Lee Siegel, whose brother is one of the remaining hostages.

Lee Siegel: “We are broken. We are sad. We are tired. We wake up in the morning thinking about the hostages. Maybe this will be the day when they come home. We go to sleep every night thinking tomorrow morning we will wake up to a better day. This morning was not a better day. True, negotiations are ongoing. Until the hostages are home, negotiations mean nothing.”

Meanwhile, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad say they are responsible for an explosion on a truck in Tel Aviv Sunday evening. The blast killed one person, believed to be the detonator of the explosive.

Israel Attacks Southern Lebanon, Killing 10 Civilians from Syria
Aug 19, 2024

Regional tensions remain high amid ongoing attacks around the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese state media reported an Israeli strike in the south of the country killed at least 10 Syrian nationals Saturday, including two children. This is a witness of that attack.

Yaser Jaber: “Honestly, a number of workers were martyred on the site, including the janitor, along with his wife and two children. With them were a number of workers who also lived in the same building. They are all Syrians. This is a civil establishment that works in metal trades for hangars, false ceilings and homes, and has nothing to do with military things at all.”

Meanwhile, Israeli forces earlier today raided the town of Houla in southern Lebanon, according to local reports.

Protesters Demand “Not Another Bomb” on Gaza in Marches Across the Globe
Aug 19, 2024

On Sunday, protesters took to the streets in dozens of cities across the United States on the eve of the DNC to demand “Not Another Bomb” on Gaza. Demonstrations also took place in cities across the globe, including in Amsterdam, where massive crowds rallied to condemn the Dutch government over its failure to hold Israel accountable.

Marleen: “Since October, I’ve been going to all the demonstrations with my kids, because that’s all we can do. I can’t believe what I’m seeing with my eyes. And I hope this, inshallah, will end soon, because this is not normal. Almost a year, we’ve been watching blown-up children, blown-up mothers, fathers. I don’t have words. It breaks me. It breaks us all. This just has to stop now.”

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Voices from the Streets of Chicago: DNC Protesters Call for Gaza Ceasefire & Economic Justice
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 19, 2024

Democracy Now! is in Chicago for the 2024 Democratic National Convention, where protesters have actions planned throughout the week. The demonstrations kicked off on Sunday, on the eve of the convention, with the March for Bodies Outside Unjust Laws, which was organized by a coalition of several different activist groups to demand action on reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights and an end to the war on Gaza. We hear from protesters on the ground who say they will withhold their votes in the presidential election until the Democratic Party commits to reversing the Biden administration’s policy of “warmongering.”

Transcript

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

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The Democratic National Convention opens today here in Chicago, where Vice President Kamala Harris will be accepting the Democratic nomination on Thursday. While the delegates gather in the United Center for the convention, thousands of protesters are converging on Chicago to make their voices heard. Over the course of the week, there are at least six major protests planned.

The demonstrations kicked off on Sunday, on the people of the convention, with the March for Bodies Outside Unjust Laws, which was organized by a coalition of several different activist groups to demand action on reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights and on an end to the war on Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Democracy Now! was on the streets to cover the demonstration. These are some of the voices of the protesters.

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

JEX BLACKMORE: My name is Jex Blackmore, and I am the organizing director of Shout Your Abortion. You cannot talk about reproductive justice without talking about Palestinian liberation. We are talking about body autonomy. We are talking about the freedom to control what happens to our bodies, our families, our futures, our ability to move between places. This is not something that’s exclusively granted just to the American voter. This is something that we protect and stand in solidarity with people around the world and around the globe. And so, we stand just as much about bodily autonomy and reproductive justice as we do for people here as we do in Palestine.

EMAN ABDELHADI: My name is Eman Abdelhadi. I’m an organizer here in Chicago. I’m also a professor at the University of Chicago.

MARÍA TARACENA: What specifically about queer and trans movements and reproductive rights connects to Israel’s war on Gaza and the horrors that people are experiencing in Gaza today?

EMAN ABDELHADI: The genocide has had massive amounts of sexual violence and has had a disproportionate impact on women and their access to healthcare. But more broadly, genocide always starts with the decision that some bodies need to be controlled, contained or exterminated. And that’s exactly what reproductive justice is about, and that’s exactly what freeing Palestine is about, is about ending the state’s right to do that to any population.

KSHAMA SAWANT: I’m Kshama Sawant. I was a socialist on the Seattle City Council for a decade. We can see that we have two parties for the warmongering billionaire class. Harris and Trump are both warmongering candidates. And despite some of the differences between them, at the end of the day, it is the Biden-Harris administration that has presided over the support for this war. After Harris became the anointed, you know, crowned candidate for the Democratic Party, after that happened, you saw the Biden-Harris administration approving more than $20 billion more for military aid to Israel.

JANE STEINFELS HUSSAIN: I’m Jane Steinfels Hussain. I’m here with CodePink, and I’m here from the Nashville Peace and Justice Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

MARÍA TARACENA: And you were here in Chicago in 1968 for the DNC that took place that year.

JANE STEINFELS HUSSAIN: It was accurately described as a police riot, and I was a witness to it. I was a street medic. I was newly graduated from the University of Chicago and hugely pregnant. And I was stuck at one point right out in front of the Hilton Hotel, where the police were beating people and dragging them and putting them in paddy wagons. And the young man who was staying with us, I spent several days afterwards looking for him at hospitals and police stations. And he was left in an alley behind the Hilton by the police after both of his legs were broken. So, it was really, really violent.

And I think it is a pivotal moment, but there have been so many pivotal moments for the Democratic Party to take the right action, and so I don’t have an awful lot of hope for the Democratic Party. But I do have a hope for the people of America, because I think young people, in much greater numbers, are really clued into American imperialism and the whole war economy.

RABBI BRANT ROSEN: Brant Rosen. I’m the rabbi of the congregation Tzedek Chicago.

MESSIAH RHODES: And what do you say to people who are calling for, you know, arms embargo, calling for these simple demands, a ceasefire, who are pro-Palestinian, as being antisemitic?

RABBI BRANT ROSEN: It’s just astonishing to hear people say stop war is somehow antisemitic. I mean, on a very basic level, as a rabbi, my spiritual tradition is — demands that we pursue peace and we pursue justice. You know, the claim that it’s somehow antisemitic is just — it’s absurd on its face, and it shows the desperation of those who stand with Israel unconditionally. It shows the patent immorality of that position.

JUSTINE MEDINA: Justine Medina. I’m on the organizing committee at JFK8 with ALU-IBT.

MESSIAH RHODES: What brings you here today at the DNC?

JUSTINE MEDINA: The Palestinian trade unions, since this genocidal war started, have been asking for support from their labor and brother sisters around the world. So, as internationalists, as fighters for labor power, we cannot, you know, ignore that call. And we are going to come here, and we’re going to tell everyone — Republican, Democrat, independent, it doesn’t matter — we need a ceasefire now. We need an arms embargo now. We need a liberated Palestine, you know? We need to end the occupation, because the working class is global.

KSHAMA SAWANT: The possibility of Trump 2.0 is only a reality because of the many betrayals by the Biden-Harris administration. Biden and Harris, both as president and as vice president, and the Democratic Party as a whole, they broke their promise for a $15-an-hour minimum wage. They blocked the railroad workers’ strike, which is possibly one of the most anti-worker, anti-union actions that can be taken by politicians. And so, in other words, both the Democratic and Republican parties are anti-worker, and they are both pro-war.

RABBI BRANT ROSEN: I want people to know that there is a strong movement within the Democratic Party, certainly with the “uncommitted” movement but not only, inside the halls of the convention and out here in the streets, that there is a strong, strong constituency that is demanding a fair and humane and a just foreign policy, and, in particular, an end to this genocide. And, you know, people often say that, “Well, this is just focusing on one issue.” In a time of genocide, genocide is the only issue.

JUSTINE MEDINA: If the Democrats want us to get out the vote for them, they need to actually earn our votes by giving us a meaningful change on Gaza. They have not done that. We are not going to do the work for them of getting Kamala Harris elected if they cannot stop the most basic thing, which is the slaughter of our people abroad with our money. So, for Palestinian Americans, this is a fundamental issue. And we have spent 10 months watching our people die every day. To ask us to simply come out and just wait and hope that some change will happen before the election, it’s just offensive, and it’s completely insensitive to where we are as a community.

AMY GOODMAN: Some of the voices from the first protest leading up to the Democratic National Convention here in Chicago, beginning today, that protest yesterday. Special thanks to Democracy Now! producers Sam Alcoff, Messiah Rhodes and María Taracena.

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Kamala Harris Is Reaching Out to Arab American Leaders, But Will There Be Any Change in Gaza Policy?
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 19, 2024

Arab American voters could significantly impact the 2024 presidential election, particularly in Michigan, home to the largest Arab community in the United States. Many of these voters, incensed at U.S. support for the Israeli war on Gaza, have mobilized over the past year to pressure the Biden administration to change policy, including by casting hundreds of thousands of ballots for “uncommitted” in Democratic primary elections to signal their demand for policy changes. We speak with Osama Siblani, founder and publisher of The Arab American News, who has had several meetings with senior figures from the White House and the Democratic presidential campaign. Despite all those meetings, “nothing has happened” except “more killing,” Siblani says. “Something has to be done to stop Benjamin Netanyahu’s appetite for killing.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency: Breaking with Convention.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, in addition to the protests on the streets, dozens of delegates with the “uncommitted” movement are also in Chicago as they continue to pressure Kamala Harris to halt U.S. military support for Israel’s war on Gaza. The delegates represent states where some 700,000 people cast uncommitted votes during primary elections to protest the Democrats’ pro-Israel policies.

For the first time ever, the DNC is hosting a panel on Palestinian human rights. The uncommitted delegates welcomed the move and are continuing to request that Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, who has volunteered in Gaza, be permitted to address the convention from the stage.

AMY GOODMAN: Top Democrats have spent weeks meeting with uncommitted voters and their allies, including a sit-down between Harris and the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, Abdullah Hammoud, in an effort to respond to criticism in key swing states like Michigan, which has a significant Arab American population. Harris’s campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez Thursday held several one-on-one meetings with leaders of the Arab American community, uncommitted movement in metro Detroit, among them, Osama Siblani, founder and publisher of The Arab American News, the largest and most widely circulated Arab American publication in the United States. He’s based in Dearborn, Michigan, where he joins us from today.

Osama Siblani, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you talk about that meeting you had with Julie Chávez Rodríguez, one of the campaign managers for Harris, had been for Biden, the granddaughter of Cesar Chavez, what you had to say to her and how you feel the Harris-Walz campaign is responding to your concerns?

OSAMA SIBLANI: Well, first of all, good morning, Amy, and thank you for having me on your program again.

Yeah, this is not the first time I met with Julie. Actually, I did meet with her in January of this year when she was managing the campaign of President Biden. And we met in my office for two-and-a-half hours. And we’ve had a good discussion, and it was frank. And I met her again Thursday, last Thursday, and now she’s managing the Harris campaign. And we met, and we talked for about an hour, and it was a frank and straightforward discussion. It was the same discussion. And I told her that it’s true that the Democratic Party changed horses, but we’re still seeing the same jockey — that is, Benjamin Netanyahu riding these horses all the way, you know, in the same direction, doing the same thing.

You know, I’ve been listening to the program, and I’ve listened to the demonstrators. And all of them, they are right on the point. They have made a very good case. I would say that they have represented everything that we believe in, everything that we have said.

Between January and between Thursday, we have met several times senior leaders from the White House, emissaries from the president’s office, from the White House and from the secretary of state, and nothing has happened. Nothing. Nothing. More killing. Actually, when I met with Julie in January, it was like, the killing today, three times as much. So, nothing has happened. There’s more killing, more destruction, and the genocide is going on without any — without any reprisal, without any kind of steps to take care from here, from the United States, the most powerful country on the face of this Earth, the one that can really stop the killing, not doing anything.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Osama Siblani, what are the, first, Biden and, now, Harris people telling you behind closed doors versus what they’re saying to the public?

OSAMA SIBLANI: They are not really saying any much. I mean, they listen to us, they shake their head, and we think that something can happen. And the times go, you know, time passes, and all what we see is more killing. There are no promises.

They say that Harris is different, they’re from different generations. But we have not seen anything from her. We’ve been listening. We are good listeners. But so far, we have not listened to anything that changes policy. She said that she is not going to consider an arms embargo. What if they kill more people? What are you going to do? You’re going to continue to give them more bombs to kill more people?

There are no leadership in this country. I am sorry. If they think that they can give us lip service, and then, on November 5, go and vote for them because the choices are very bad, the other choice, they are wrong, because there is another choice: that we can sit home. And this is what most of the people are going to be doing, sitting home and not going out to vote. Is that the right thing to do? Of course not. But what choices do we have? You tell me.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Osama Siblani, I wanted to ask you about this unprecedented moment where for the first time the Democratic National Convention, today, before the actual convention opens, in one of the side meetings, will be hosting a discussion that includes Layla Elabed, who is one of the founders of the uncommitted movement, the sister of the only Palestinian American congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib, and others at the McCormick Center around the issue of Palestinian human rights. Do you think that this is an accomplishment?

OSAMA SIBLANI: Well, every time that we stand and speak about the Palestinian issue and the massacre that’s happening in Gaza, it is important. And I think that this is an important step. However, what changes this is going to make? We have been talking to this administration since October, right after October. And we have been meeting. And every meeting, we listen, they listen, we talk, they listen, they talk, we listen, they leave. Nothing happens. More killing is happening. That is what is happening. Now, we have to stop talk. We have to stop the talk and do something to stop the killing, because this is what’s happening right now, you know, like you see these people are suffering every day more and more, and we keep talking, and nothing is happening. And I don’t understand why we are not able to stop it. This country is able to stop the killing tomorrow. If there is a will, there is a way. But the will is not there anymore.

So, I welcome the discussion, but those discussions are leading us nowhere, Amy. Nowhere. Nowhere. Our people are dying every day, in a way that is unprecedented. We see them on television with body parts, their children, carrying children dead, 16, 17 years old, carrying those babies dripping with blood. That is not a very good scene. That is not how peace is going to be generated in the Middle East. That’s more war and more hate, not peace, not harmony anymore. So, something has to be done to stop Benjamin Netanyahu’s appetite for killing.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’m wondering if you’re heartened at least in terms of the change in attitude among many Americans. We’ve seen the votes, the uncommitted votes, in the primary. And even here in Illinois, by my calculations, 50,000 people voted in the presidential primary just in Chicago but did not vote for president, because they didn’t have an alternative or uncommitted slate here, but their votes were not counted. So, there’s at least 50,000 people right here in Chicago who opposed President Biden, and about 100,000 in Illinois. I’m wondering your sense of the change in public opinion in the United States in terms of Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian land.

OSAMA SIBLANI: I’m very appreciative, in fact, to the change in opinion, especially among the young people. And that is due to, you know, being informed — through social media, unfortunately, not mainstream media — of what has been happening in Gaza and around the world. And I believe that the change is coming in America. I really do. I mean, I look at the demonstrations and the encampments in the universities, all the universities, especially the Ivy League, and we see those are the potential leaders in America. And I believe that in the next maybe decade or two decades, things will change in America. But we have to be patient. We have to be persistent. We have to continue to tell the truth. Once the American people know what is happening, they will make the right decision. That’s what happened in 1968, actually — you know, the history repeats itself — when they were demonstrating against the Vietnam War, and people prevailed, and they changed, you know, policy.

And today, the same thing is happening. America is waking up. The American people are waking up to the fact that there is a crime being committed against civilians in Palestine, and there is a situation there that has been brewing for 76 years, and it is time to end. And therefore, they are going to be aware of it, and they will change it. It’s going to take time. Change in America is coming. I believe in the new generation. I believe in what you guys are doing at Democracy Now! and others. And I think that this is changing opinion. And in fact, I see the change coming, maybe in the next decade or two decades at most.

AMY GOODMAN: Osama Siblani, we want to thank you for being with us, founder and publisher of The Arab American News, the largest, most widely circulated Arab American publication in the United States, speaking to us from Dearborn, Michigan. Harris’s campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez met with him for the second time last week.

Coming up, we’ll speak with two Chicago men who spent decades in prison before being exonerated. Stay with us.

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Headlines:

Biden, AOC Address Night 1 of DNC as Palestinian Rights Activists Shine Light on Gaza Genocide
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 20, 2024

President Biden took to the stage on the first night of the Democratic National Convention Monday, where he “passed the torch” to Vice President Kamala Harris.

President Joe Biden: “Selecting Kamala was the very first decision I made before I became — when I became our nominee. And it was the best decision I made my whole career.”

A few minutes into Biden’s remarks, protesters dropped a sign that read “Stop Arming Israel.” The sign was quickly wrestled away from the protesters. We’ll speak to three activists involved in last night’s actions in hour two of our live DNC broadcast. The DNC on Monday evening voted to adopt the party’s official platform, which does not call for an arms embargo on Israel and reasserts unwavering U.S. support for Israel.

Among other high-profile speakers Monday night was New York Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “We have a chance to elect a president who is for the middle class because she is from the middle class. She understands the urgency of rent checks and groceries and prescriptions. She is as committed to our reproductive and civil rights as she is to taking on corporate greed. And she is working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing hostages home.”

AOC’s speech came after her fellow Squad members, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, recently lost their House seats after AIPAC poured tens of millions of dollars into their primary challengers’ campaigns.

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Protesters “March on the DNC” Amid Heavy Police Presence, Arrests
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 20, 2024

Thousands of protesters took to the streets Monday as part of the “March on the DNC.” Nick Tilsen is an Oglala Lakota leader and president of the NDN Collective.

Nick Tilsen: “I’m here to remind America that this election is happening on the stolen lands of Indigenous people. And the Land Back movement stands in solidarity with a free Palestine and to end all military aid to the state of Israel and to stop the genocide.”

Amid heavy police presence, a group of protesters broke off from the main march and headed to the United Center, where they breached a security fence as they chanted “Whose streets? Our streets!” before police began to make arrests. We’ll hear more voices from the March on the DNC later in the broadcast.

During a separate action Monday, Cheri Honkala with the Poor People’s Army was also arrested near the United Center after she crossed a police line as she attempted to walk into the DNC to deliver a citizen’s arrest warrant for Democratic leaders the Poor People’s Army has accused of crimes against humanity. This is Honkala speaking before her arrest.

Cheri Honkala: “Either arrest me or let me continue to walk.

Police officer 1: “OK. OK. Continue push against us, and you will.”

Cheri Honkala: “Am I under arrest? If I’m not, I will continue to walk.”

Police officer 2: “Make sure you get that on camera, too.”

Police officer 3: “You’re not going that way.”

Cheri Honkala: “You do not have a right to beat or hurt me. I’m asking you.”

Honkala led a similar action in Milwaukee last month, the site of the Republican National Convention, where she was also arrested. Several members of the Poor People’s Army walked from Milwaukee to Chicago ahead of the DNC.

Blinken Says Netanyahu Agreed to Ceasefire Proposal, But Israel Continues Its Genocidal War in Gaza
Aug 20, 2024

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted a U.S. proposal that would bridge remaining differences in achieving a Gaza ceasefire, and urged Hamas to do the same. Hamas called out the hypocrisy of Blinken’s announcement and repeated its demand that any deal must result in a permanent end to Israel’s war on Gaza, and accused the U.S. of “merely buying time for Israel to continue its genocide” by watering down a previous agreement. Despite the news from Blinken, who is now in Egypt to garner support for the deal, Israel’s carnage in Gaza continues unabated. The U.N. warned Monday Israel is now “relentlessly” striking the besieged territory, with almost all Gazans displaced and some resorting to living among the rubble amid Israel’s barrage of evacuation orders.

In Khan Younis, distraught family members gathered at the Nasser Hospital morgue after Israeli strikes earlier today killed at least 11 people, including children. This is researcher and professor Iyad Abu Mustafa, speaking outside the hospital.

Iyad Abu Mustafa: “The occupying state continues to carry out brutal operations day after day. Yesterday, 18 martyrs were killed, and this morning, more than 10 martyrs. The number of martyrs has reached more than 44,000 martyrs. This escalation indicates a crime of genocide, a well-organized crime. Every bloodbath is a crime in itself. There is no country in the world that is able to stop these serious violations against the Palestinian people. The United States is still taking the neutral stance and is blindly biased toward the occupying Israeli state.”

Meanwhile, Israel says it retrieved the bodies of six hostages from Khan Younis overnight. The families of hostages have been calling on Netanyahu to work toward a ceasefire in Gaza for months.

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Thousands March on DNC in Chicago to Demand End to War on Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 20, 2024

On the opening day of the Democratic National Convention, Democracy Now! was on the streets of Chicago during the March on the DNC as thousands of protesters held a rally and march to call on Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party to end U.S. support for Israel amid its ongoing assault on Gaza. We bring you the voices of some of the protesters.

Transcript

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

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The Democratic National Convention opened on Monday with speeches by top officials of the Democratic Party, including an unscheduled appearance on stage by Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden wrapping up the night with a 50-minute address.

Earlier in the day, thousands of protesters took to the streets to voice their opposition to Israel’s war on Gaza and to call on Biden, Harris and the Democratic Party to end U.S. support for the war. Demonstrators gathered in Union Park for a rally before setting off on a march through the streets amidst a heavy police presence. A few dozen protesters broke away from the larger group and marched toward the United Center, the site of the DNC, and tore down parts of the security fence. Several protesters who managed to get through the fence were detained and handcuffed by police. Protests are scheduled in Chicago every day this week for the DNC.

AMY GOODMAN: Democracy Now! was on the streets yesterday covering the March on the DNC. These are some of the voices of those protesters.

ABLA ABDELKADER: We all come together to say one thing: We want humanity to take priority over profit. We want people to come together. Our front is united. It’s stronger than it’s ever been. I don’t think I’ve ever seen as diverse a protest in my life, and I’ve been to — I’ve been going since I was little. And seeing all these different flags, all these different faces, all these different flyers, holding up signs for queer liberation, for Black liberation, for workers’ rights, for disabled people rights, it’s extremely empowering.

And I think that frightens the white supremacy cushion that our elected officials have been sitting on. They’re losing their power, and they realize that with our tie to solidarity and our united front continuing to build and become more unwavering, it’s only a matter of time until their time is up and we begin to speak. As Kamala Harris said she’s speaking, well, we’re speaking now, and we’re making sure you hear us that you’re not going to get away with killing, the killing of hundreds of thousands of people, not just in Palestine, but just wreaking havoc all over the Global South and on all minority communities.

PROTESTERS: Occupation no more! Five, six, seven, eight!

NICK TILSEN: My name is Nick Tilsen. I’m Oglala Lakota. I’m the president and CEO of NDN Collective. We’re an international Indigenous rights organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. And I’m from Pine Ridge, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. And I’m here. I’m here to remind America that this election is happening on the stolen lands of Indigenous people. And the Land Back movement stands in solidarity with a free Palestine and to end all military aid to the state of Israel and to stop the genocide.

GILLIAN RATH: We’re here today. We, as SDS, have been launching a long campaign for divestments on our campus, so demanding that our administration divests from countries complicit in war crimes, and that includes Israel, and weapons manufacturing companies. But we’re also here as Minnesota residents saying that we want to hold our Democratic politicians accountable, and that now includes Tim Walz. And we’ve actually been protesting Walz for years and years. He’s the chair of the State Board of Investments in Minnesota, so he’s responsible for investing Minnesota tax dollars. And they — him personally, with the SBI, invests currently $3.2 billion into Israeli companies that are complicit in genocide. And I was actually arrested on Walz’s front lawn for protesting this exact thing before he was even announced that he was the VP nominee.

JASPER NORDIN: My name is Jasper Nordin. I’m a UPS Teamster Local 638 Minneapolis. I’m also with Minnesota Workers United. I get really annoyed when Republicans are like, “Tim Walz is a super far-left radical.” Like, I assure you he’s not. He sent out the National Guard to beat up protesters after the George Floyd riots in 2020. He has continually ignored people calling for Minnesota to divest its investments in Israel, in its genocide.

PROTESTERS: ¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!

MARI MANSFIELD: Mari with MIRAC, the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee. The same company, Elbit Systems, that created the wall in Gaza, created and has funded and designed the wall at our southern border in Mexico, that uses both wall and then — and what they’re calling smart wall technology, surveillance towers, drone systems. And so, there is a pretty direct link between Palestine and Gaza, because the same business of oppression is being used in both places.

MARÍA TARACENA: And what is your response? It seems like Kamala Harris is trying to prove that she’s tougher on border security than Trump in order to garner more support. What are your thoughts on that strategy?

MARI MANSFIELD: Border security is a lost cause. Border security is an illusion. There is no such thing as a safe border. This wall is impossible. We are spending millions and millions of dollars at something that will never be completed and will never make us safe. Most crime, most drugs coming through the border come through legal ports of entry, and they are aided by Custom and Border Patrol agents. So, Kamala, her position is just to continue the same, which is pushing our money, our tax dollars, into a system that will never work for any of us.

CLAUDIA DE LA CRUZ: My name is Claudia De la Cruz, and I’m the presidential candidate for the Party for Socialism and Liberation. We are here to make it clear that the people of the United States are not represented in that DNC. That DNC convention is a coronation of war criminals. And we are here to say that it is not with our consent that they are continuing to fund and provide weapons to the war criminals of the state, colonial state, of Israel. We’re here to say that they have enough business in the United States to take care of, that does not — does not require for them to go across the globe waging war. We are here to say that we need a price freeze on essential goods. We are here to say that the urgency our communities need to be covered with housing, with healthcare, but instead they’re spending trillions of dollars on bombing babies, and it is not with our consent. And we demand not only to be heard, but to have political and economic decision-making power in this so-called democracy.

PROTESTERS: Palestine will live forever! Palestine will live forever!

AMY GOODMAN: Some of the voices from the thousands in the streets of Chicago at the March on the DNC protest. Special thanks to Messiah Rhodes, María Taracena, Sam Alcoff and Hana Elias.

When we come back, we go inside the convention for the first-ever panel on Palestinian human rights at the DNC. Stay with us.

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

First-Ever DNC Panel on Palestinian Rights: We Need to “Restore the Soul of the Democratic Party”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 20, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/8/20/ ... transcript

This year, the Democratic National Convention held its first-ever panel on Palestinian human rights. The panel came after persistent grassroots organizing against U.S. support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. We play excerpts, including from the Arab American Institute’s James Zogby, a former executive member of the Democratic National Committee; Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care surgeon who recently worked in Gaza; and Layla Elabed, co-chair of the Uncommitted National Movement.

Later that day, during President Biden’s convention speech, protesters standing near the Florida delegation unfolded a banner proclaiming “Stop Arming Israel.” Democracy Now was at the scene. We speak with one of the protesting delegates, Liano Sharon, an elected DNC delegate from Michigan, as he was escorted off the convention floor. Sharon, who is Jewish, told Democracy Now! that he participated in the action because “'never again' means never again for anyone, anywhere, ever, period.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency: Breaking with Convention.” I’m Amy Goodman, here in Chicago with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, the opening day of the Democratic convention on Monday featured the first-ever panel on Palestinian human rights at the DNC. The panel was announced just a day earlier and came after persistent grassroots organizing against U.S. support for Israel’s assault on Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: The panel was moderated by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and featured former Michigan Congressmember Andy Levin; Hala Hijazi, a Democratic organizer and fundraiser who’s had over 100 family members killed in Gaza; Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care surgeon who served in Gaza many times; Layla Elabed, the co-chair of the “uncommitted” movement; and James Zogby, a former longtime executive member of the Democratic National Committee and the founder of the Arab American Institute. Zogby began by speaking about the significance of the first-ever panel on Palestinian rights being held at the DNC.

JAMES ZOGBY: I have been doing this for most of my life, like 50 years. And I remember when we couldn’t get the issue of Palestine discussed at the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy, that was all the left groups, because they said, “If you let the Arabs in, we’ll lose our credibility.” And when the anniversary of Dr. King’s march happened, again, we were invited to be on the steering committee, and they said, “Eh, if you let the Arabs in, it’ll hurt our credibility.” And so we were asked to leave.

Jesse Jackson made all the difference in the world, because he elevated the issue, and he elevated those of us who raised the issue. And the last two times — the only two times — that the word “Palestine” was mentioned at a Democratic convention was 1984 and 1988 with Jesse Jackson, when — when he spoke in his speech about it, and he invited me first to give him a nominating speech, where I talked about justice for Palestinians. And then, in ’88, we had a platform fight, an actual platform debate from the podium of the convention, on justice for Palestinians.

So, we’ve come a long way. People say to me, “Well, you’re just being optimistic. You’re just saying, you know, 'Cup is half full.'” I say, “No, I remember when we didn’t have a cup.” And we are now with a cup and filling it up. So, when I look at this panel today, it is not the prize. The prize is a change in policy. That’s the prize. …

But what’s historic here is that we are having an officially sanctioned panel to talk about it. Like I said, it’s not the main prize. It’s not the big prize. But it is something I do not want to dismiss for a minute as to how significant this is, about what message the Harris campaign is sending by saying, “We want to talk about this and hear you talk about it.”

And so, I’ve heard some grumbling, you know? I quote Willie Barrow, a friend of mine from the Jackson campaign in the '80s, who said, “We ain't never been here before.” She’d say, “We ain’t never been here.” We’ve never had this forum before. And it is not, like I said, the end. It’s the beginning of a process.

And the difference is — and I told this to Layla and Abbas last night — that when we raised it in '84 and ’88, we did so because Jesse Jackson enabled us. It was a top down. There were people in our Jackson coalition who were, “Reverend, you sure you want to do this? Are you sure you want to talk about this?” He said, “Damn it, I'm doing it. I’ve been doing it from the beginning. We’re not backing away.” This is different. No candidate elevated this movement. This was a bottom up. This was Abbas. This was Layla. This was Waleed. This was activists across the country who said, “We’re not taking it.”

And part of recognition of that is that we’re having a forum, a recognized one. I’ve been to a lot of the forums since this day has begun. You know, I’ve been to a number of these sessions. This is the largest audience I’ve seen for any one of them. Right?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was James Zogby, the former longtime executive member of the Democratic National Committee and the founder of the Arab American Institute. One of the most emotional parts of the panel came during comments by Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care surgeon who has been to Gaza several times over the past 10 months with the aid group Doctors Without Borders and other groups. She spoke about some of what she witnessed in Gaza.

DR. TANYA HAJ-HASSAN: For the past 10 months, we have witnessed civilian massacre after civilian massacre — school massacres where internally displaced people were sheltering, the flour massacre, massacres of people trying to collect water, massacres of people collecting aid at aid sites — massacre after civilian massacre, entire families exterminated in one single bomb; humanitarians, healthcare workers killed and journalists killed at record — in record numbers; pediatric amputations, amputations in children that are breaking records; over 17,000 children who have lost one or both parents since October in Gaza.

We have treated so many children who have lost their entire family that it has — a term has been coined to describe these children — you’ve probably heard it — “wounded child, no surviving family,” WCNSF. This is a term that has been coined since October to describe this very frequent phenomenon that I personally witnessed more times than I can count while I was there. For children — I have held the hand of children who are taking their last gasps, because their entire family was killed in the same attack and couldn’t be there holding their hand and comforting them, and could not bury them thereafter.

For the children who I treated who were discharged, they were — and survived, they face a Russian roulette of a hundred ways that they will likely and potentially die when they leave the hospital due to the circumstances incompatible with life that have been architectured by this military assault: direct bombing, starvation, dehydration, disease, alarming reports of the first cases of polio in Gaza right now. Polio is a potentially deadly disease that causes paralysis, including paralysis of the muscles needed to breathe. That has been eradicated for decades in that region. There has been a polio vaccination campaign that essentially has eradicated the disease from the majority of the world. And now we’re seeing cases emerging in a area of the world that cannot — that has a healthcare system that has been completely and entirely annihilated.

I mentioned these wounded children with no surviving family. I’m going to give you two quick stories, just so that you can humanize what I mean when I say this, because I know it’s really hard to hear these numbers and think about individuals and what this means to them.

I received a young boy into the emergency department during one of the mass casualties who had half of his face and neck blown off. Luckily, the organs that are vital for breathing and blood supply to the brain were preserved. They were visible, but preserved. And he was talking to us. He couldn’t see himself, so he didn’t know what he looked like at that point in time, and he kept asking for his sister. His sister was in the bed next to him. The majority of her body was burned beyond recognition. He didn’t recognize that the girl in the bed next to him was his sister. His entire family, parents and the rest of his siblings, were killed in the same attack.

That boy survived. And the next day, I went to see him. A very young plastic surgeon, one of the few remaining plastic surgeons in Gaza, because the others have either been killed or have fled, understandably, had removed part of his chest and created a graft to cover those vital organs of the neck. He was lying in his bed and mumbling, because it was so difficult to talk. And he kept saying — I got really close to him, and he said, “I wish I had died, too.” And I said, “What?” And he said, “I think my entire family has gone to heaven” — or, it’s not “my entire family.” His exact words were something to the effect of, “Everybody I love is now in heaven. I don’t want to be here anymore.” That is one of so many stories. I’m giving you — I’m so sorry, Layla, but I think people need to hear this. I’m giving you the story of one child.

One of my healthcare worker colleagues, a young nurse, one of the most dedicated nurses I’ve ever met, was trying to evacuate a patient when Al-Shifa Hospital was bombed, from north to south. He carried that patient, was eventually called by Israeli forces, not by name, but by uniform: “You, the person in scrubs, come here.” He was subsequently detained for 53 days. He reported physical, sexual and psychological torture while in detention, and ultimately released because he had no crime.

After he was released, he worked constantly, because, one, he was so dedicated, and, two, he suffered from severe insomnia from the trauma of his detention. He was always in the resuscitation room of the emergency department, cleaning out sand from the eyes of people pulled from under the rubble, trying to comfort them. One day, overnight, he fell asleep holding the body of a dead child still with a breathing tube in after they had failed to resuscitate the infant.

Another day, I asked him to go home, because he hadn’t slept in so many hours. So he left the hospital. Couple hours later, I see him in the emergency department trying to resuscitate a man whose arms and leg — sorry, whose both legs and one arm had been blown off. I asked him what he was doing in the hospital. “I thought you went home to rest.” And he said, “This is my sister’s husband. They woke me up to tell me that the aid distribution site had been bombed, and my sister’s husband had gone there. So I went to find him, and found him severely injured.” So I helped him resuscitate this patient. His home has been destroyed. He’s a young man. He’s engaged. He’s trying to get married. He had a whole life ahead of him, and he was a very dedicated healthcare worker.

I’m giving you two stories, a child and a healthcare worker, but these are representative of literally almost everybody I know in Gaza. I don’t know a single healthcare worker who has not lost multiple members of their family.

So, as the U.S. continues to fund this military campaign unconditionally, and somewhat blindly, in stark contrast to documented realities on the ground, in stark contrast to the findings of the International Court of Justice of plausible genocide, and in stark contrast to the universal, global condemnation of humanitarian and human rights organizations, we have no choice but to exert as much pressure as possible and use all the leverage we can to change direction, the direction that this country is taking.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care surgeon who’s volunteered in Gaza hospitals a number of times. Layla Elabed, the co-chair of the Uncommitted National Movement, who was seated right next to her, was overcome with emotion and briefly walked out during Haj-Hassan’s comments. Layla Elabed later responded to a question about the plans for the uncommitted movement between now and November.

LAYLA ELABED: We stand at a very crucial moment for our party. The Democratic Party, the party of my father, the party that has stood up for justice, is being tested. Will it rise for the occasion and stand for the values that it was built on — freedom, equality, justice — or will it remain silent in the face of unimaginable suffering? If we remain silent, and we become complicit. But if we stand up and demand action, an arms embargo, a ceasefire, an end to war, we may have an opportunity to restore the soul of the Democratic Party and unite us under a big tent.

The Listen to Michigan and the Uncommitted National Movement is in the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party. I want to quote Fannie Lou Hamer, who wasn’t allowed to speak from the stage at the 1964 Democratic National Convention because of her identity: “I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave?” All we are doing right now is in the tradition of Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Party and the civil rights movement of the 1964 Democratic Party convention: bringing moral witness to the most powerful political party in the world to listen to voices deeply impacted by our U.S. policy decisions.

We aren’t that different from any other movement, from unions, civil rights, gay marriage, reproductive rights or climate justice. We are fighting to be recognized, to be part of this party. And we are fighting for this party to believe in our equal rights. Hala and I shouldn’t have to stand up here and tell you the suffering of our family members for Democrats and for this administration and for Vice President Harris to want to do the moral and right thing to do.

AMY GOODMAN: Layla Elabed is co-chair of the uncommitted movement, speaking at the first-ever panel on Palestinian human rights here at the DNC. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency: Breaking with Convention.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: On Monday night, President Biden headlined the opening night of the Democratic National Convention. Biden’s speech came less than a month after he announced he ended his reelection campaign, paving the way for Vice President Kamala Harris’s nomination. On Monday night, Biden briefly spoke about Israel’s war on Gaza.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: We’re working around the clock, my secretary of state, to prevent a wider war and reunite hostages with their families and surge humanitarian health and food assistance into Gaza now, to end the civilian suffering of the Palestinian people and finally, finally, finally deliver a ceasefire and end this war. … Those protesters out in the street, they have a point. A lot of innocent people are being killed, on both sides.

AMY GOODMAN: A few minutes into President Biden’s remarks, three delegates, part of Delegates Against Genocide, dropped a banner that read “Stop Arming Israel.” We were inside the convention floor right next to the Florida delegation, where it happened. While some delegates snatched the banner away, many others of the Florida delegation quickly raised Joe Biden placards that said “Thank you, Joe” and “We love Joe” to block any view of the banner. The protesting delegates who dropped the banner were quickly escorted from the convention floor by security. We’re going to go to that moment inside the convention on opening night.

BIDEN SUPPORTERS: Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe!

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I wasn’t looking in the past. I was looking in the future.

DELEGATE: We have a right. We have a right. We have a right.

BIDEN SUPPORTERS: We love Joe! We love Joe! We love Joe!

BIDEN SUPPORTER 1: Get him out. He’s threatening her. He’s threatening her. Get him out.

AMY GOODMAN: Sir? Sir? Sir?

BIDEN SUPPORTER 2: Ma’am, we’re trying to listen to the president.

AMY GOODMAN: What are you doing?

BIDEN SUPPORTER 2: We’re trying to listen to the president. Sir, you are committing assault.

LIANO SHARON: I’m trying to protest.

BIDEN SUPPORTER 3: We’re trying to listen to the president.

LIANO SHARON: I’m trying to protest the murder of children in Gaza. I’m trying to protest. [inaudible] This is the only way [inaudible] America is through protest.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s your name, sir? Sir, what’s your name?

LIANO SHARON: My name’s Liano Sharon. I’m a DNC delegate from Michigan.

SECURITY GUARD: Can we wait 'til you're downstairs?

AMY GOODMAN: And what did you do today?

LIANO SHARON: Today, we held up a sign protesting the murder of children in Gaza and the continuing genocide.

SECURITY GUARD: Watch your step. Watch your step.

REPORTER: What did the sign say?

LIANO SHARON: It said “Stop Arming Israel.”

SECURITY GUARD: All right, thank you. Let’s keep it going. [inaudible]

REPORTER: What was your name, sir?

LIANO SHARON: Liano Sharon.

AMY GOODMAN: And what happened then?

SECURITY GUARD: Let’s get into the tunnel. You can interview him in the tunnel. OK?

AMY GOODMAN: And what happened next?

SECURITY GUARD: I just don’t want you to break your ankles.

LIANO SHARON: Then the people behind us grabbed a hold of the sign and tried to rip it out of our hands several times. Eventually, they succeeded.

SECURITY GUARD: Interview in the hall, OK? Let’s get him down. All right, thanks for being cooperative, sir.

LIANO SHARON: Yeah, no problem.

SECURITY GUARD: OK. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: And why did — and why did you do it?

LIANO SHARON: I did that because we are currently funding a genocide.

BIDEN SUPPORTER 4: Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe!

LIANO SHARON: And we need to — and it needs to stop. And also, I want to — I want to make it clear to the Harris campaign that this is actually in their interest. Netanyahu is trying to instigate a larger war so he can remain in power and avoid going to prison. In order to move Netanyahu off of his current position of trying to expand the war in order to stay in power and remain out of jail, we believe that the U.S. needs to stop arming Israel, needs to have an embargo against their — against their genocide. Otherwise, Netanyahu doesn’t have the incentive to stop the genocide, to stop the mass murder.

AMY GOODMAN: Why does this matter to you so much?

LIANO SHARON: It matters to me so much because I’m a Jew and I was always brought up to believe that “never again” means never again for anyone, anywhere, ever, period. And that’s not what’s happening right now. What’s happening right now is that we are continuing to fund and support an ongoing genocide, the mass murder of children. And it needs to stop.

AMY GOODMAN: Voices from inside the Democratic National Convention Monday night during President Biden’s remarks. Special thanks to Sam Alcoff, Hany Massoud and Nermeen Shaikh. It was when three of the delegates, part of a group called Delegates Against Genocide, dropped a banner that read “Stop Arming Israel.” We’ll speak with all three delegates in our other hour of “War, Peace and the Presidency: Breaking with Convention.” Stay tuned.

When we come back, we look at the life and legacy of pioneering TV host Phil Donahue. Stay with us.

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

Muslim, Immigrant & Jewish Delegates Unfurl “Stop Arming Israel” Banner During Biden DNC Speech
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 20, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/8/20/ ... transcript

During President Biden’s speech on the first night of the DNC, protesters briefly unfurled a banner that read “Stop Arming Israel,” before it was wrested away by convention staff. We speak to three members of the group Delegates Against Genocide who organized and carried out the action: Esam Boraey, a human rights activist and delegate from Connecticut; Florida DNC member Nadia Ahmad; and progressive Jewish activist Liano Sharon, an elected delegate from Michigan. “We were there specifically to confront President Joe Biden,” says Ahmad, explaining why the protesters chose to disrupt Biden’s speech. “He’s the one who can stop this genocide by picking up the phone and making a phone call, and he has chosen not to do that.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency: Breaking with Convention.” I’m Amy Goodman, here with Juan González in Chicago.

On Monday night, President Biden headlined the opening night of the Democratic National Convention. A few minutes into his remarks, three delegates unfurled a banner that read “Stop Arming Israel.” The action took place where the Florida delegation was sitting. While some other delegates snatched the banner away, many delegates quickly raised Joe Biden placards that read “Thank you, Joe” and “I love Joe” to block any view of the banner. More and more of those placards were brought out to cover the banner as much as possible. The protesting delegates who unfurled that banner were quickly escorted from the convention floor by security. Democracy Now! was nearby when it happened.

BIDEN SUPPORTERS: Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe!

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I wasn’t looking in the past. I was looking in the future.

DELEGATE: We have a right. We have a right. We have a right.

BIDEN SUPPORTERS: We love Joe! We love Joe! We love Joe!

BIDEN SUPPORTER 1: Get him out. He’s threatening her. He’s threatening her. Get him out.

AMY GOODMAN: Sir? Sir? Sir?

BIDEN SUPPORTER 2: Ma’am, we’re trying to listen to the president.

AMY GOODMAN: What are you doing?

BIDEN SUPPORTER 2: We’re trying to listen to the president. Sir, you are committing assault.

LIANO SHARON: I’m trying to protest.

BIDEN SUPPORTER 3: We’re trying to listen to the president.

LIANO SHARON: I’m trying to protest the murder of children in Gaza. I’m trying to protest. [inaudible] This is the only way [inaudible] America is through protest.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s your name, sir? Sir, what’s your name?

LIANO SHARON: My name’s Liano Sharon. I’m a DNC delegate from Michigan.

SECURITY GUARD: Can we wait 'til you're downstairs?

AMY GOODMAN: And what did you do today?

LIANO SHARON: Today, we held up a sign protesting the murder of children in Gaza and the continuing genocide.

SECURITY GUARD: Watch your step. Watch your step.

REPORTER: What did the sign say?

LIANO SHARON: It said “Stop Arming Israel.”

SECURITY GUARD: All right, thank you. Let’s keep it going. [inaudible]

REPORTER: What was your name, sir?

LIANO SHARON: Liano Sharon.

AMY GOODMAN: And what happened then?

SECURITY GUARD: Let’s get into the tunnel. You can interview him in the tunnel. OK?

AMY GOODMAN: And what happened next?

SECURITY GUARD: I just don’t want you to break your ankles.

LIANO SHARON: Then the people behind us grabbed a hold of the sign and tried to rip it out of our hands several times. Eventually, they succeeded.

SECURITY GUARD: Interview in the hall, OK? Let’s get him down. All right, thanks for being cooperative, sir.

LIANO SHARON: Yeah, no problem.

SECURITY GUARD: OK. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: And why did — and why did you do it?

LIANO SHARON: I did that because we are currently funding a genocide.

BIDEN SUPPORTER 4: Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe!

LIANO SHARON: And we need to — and it needs to stop. And also, I want to — I want to make it clear to the Harris campaign that this is actually in their interest. Netanyahu is trying to instigate a larger war so he can remain in power and avoid going to prison.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by the three DNC delegates who unfurled the “Stop Arming Israel” banner. They’re all members of Delegates Against Genocide. Nadia Ahmad is a Florida Democratic National Committee delegate and member. Liano Sharon is a longtime Jewish progressive activist, an elected DNC delegate from Michigan. And Esam Boraey is a delegate from Connecticut.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! here in Chicago. Liano, I want to start with you, because you were the one escorted out by security. If you can explain further why you did what you did? As we heard in that clip as you were talking as you were taken out, you’re a Jewish Michigan delegate, a Democratic National Committee member.

LIANO SHARON: Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, as I said when I was escorted out, you know, I was always raised as a Jew that “never again” means never again for anyone, anywhere, ever, period. And that’s not what we’re doing. We are currently continuing to arm a Zionist regime that is set on genocide and mass murder of children, and we need to stop that. And there isn’t anything else that is as important as that in this moment. So, that’s why I did it.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Esam, I’d like to ask how you managed to organize it. You’re from different states. And the motivation for you to get involved in this kind of protest right on the floor of the convention?

ESAM BORAEY: Well, thanks to Nadia, since we learned that we would be part of the DNC delegation to Chicago, we quickly came together with our history together on organizing and activism in the community since the war on Gaza started, and we decided to do something, and we wanted to make sure that our voices are heard. We tried multiple ways and many ways of doing these things, and that was our last resort last night.

It means a lot because, you know, as an immigrant myself, I was once political activist back in my home country of Egypt, and I was kicked out of the country because I was pushing for justice and equality for everybody. And I believe, and I still do, that within the convention, that will be the best platform that our voices will be heard. And this is why, following Nadia’s lead on that, we decided to do something yesterday.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Nadia, this was your delegation. This was the Florida delegation where you unfurled this banner. It was almost as if they knew. I mean, I was amazed at the alacrity with which, first, they immediately put up these banners that said “We love Joe,” “Thank you, Joe,” but they didn’t have enough to cover the banner, and so someone had a large stash of them, and they were bringing more and more, and they were handing them out so people were holding two and three to cover up this banner. Did other delegates know or in any way support what you did? And talk about your work in Florida. You’re a professor. You’re also getting a Ph.D.

NADIA AHMAD: So, for me, this was really a matter of being able to speak up for the community. And this was a moment where we have a massive audience, and we were there specifically to confront President Joe Biden. We could have confronted at any time at that convention, but we chose specifically during President Joe Biden’s address, because he’s the one who can stop this genocide by picking up the phone and making a phone call, and he has chosen not to do that.

And for the organizing that we have done, it’s really something that has happened on its own, whether you saw with the student encampments that have happened since April, and also with the protests that’s been just endless and ceaseless. And we felt that we could make a change within the party, and that’s why we took the actions that we did. And I specifically decided to do it in Florida, and that was just a strategic location, because we felt that it would be harder for them to take down the banner right away. But I don’t think they knew about it. But what they did — because throughout the time that we were there, they kept giving banners and posters. So, they just started to just give a lot more in that particular area.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I’m wondering, just tactically, how you managed to get the banner in, because I’m sure that they’re on the lookout for any kind of protest signs that are not part of the official placards that are distributed at the convention.

NADIA AHMAD: So, I was a reporter for six years. I’m an attorney and a law professor. I’ve been to the White House a number of times. I’ve been to DNC events. So I know like the level of security that they will go through. And I also felt that if I didn’t wear anything — like, I wore hijab — I tried to wear something that wouldn’t attract attention, so I wore a large dress to kind of — just wrapped around myself.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re wearing a Yale University T-shirt right now.

NADIA AHMAD: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s your connection?

NADIA AHMAD: So, I’m a Ph.D. student there. I was also the first visible Muslim woman, or a hijabi, to be somebody who taught there with the rank of professor.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I’m wondering, for any of you, the conversations you’ve been having with fellow delegates, what your sense is of the unspoken support that exists for Gaza among the delegates who don’t dare say anything?

LIANO SHARON: There’s a great deal of it. We spoke to a large number of delegates, and the vast majority of the people that we spoke to, certainly the people that I spoke to, were supportive of the idea, but were intimidated by the party. In fact, we know of people who were told explicitly that, “If you participate in this, you will never have a position in the party again.” And that’s the kind of intimidation that we really have to expunge from the Democratic Party, because we have a right to protest and to have our voices heard and to have our opinions known.

AMY GOODMAN: Describe the sash that you’re wearing.

LIANO SHARON: This is a Palestinian symbol, a keffiyeh. This is a — these lines symbolize the Mediterranean Sea, and the dots symbolize the olives, which are, you know, important symbols of Palestine. And it says “Democrats for Palestinian Rights,” which I don’t know why anybody in the Democratic Party could possibly object to Palestinian rights or human rights anywhere.

AMY GOODMAN: Esam, can you describe what happened to you on Sunday around a Palestinian flag?

ESAM BORAEY: Oh, yeah. So, we arrived — I arrived in Chicago on Sunday afternoon. And as part of our efforts to raise the Palestinian issue within the party, we were invited to an event by the American Palestinian Community Association. And there, they shared, gave us flags, Palestinian flags, and pens. So, I didn’t have time to go — after that event, to go back to my hotel room and drop my stuff, so I decided to go, to carry my bag to the reception party. And at the gates, they asked me to open my bag, which I did. And then they started digging into my bag.

And immediately the security guard held my bag from me and said, “You need to wait for a minute,” and then called his supervisor, who came along and looked at the bag and said, “OK, we need to call someone.” So he called the DNC people, who showed up. And I kept begging for any explanation, so the supervisor told me, like, “I’m not going to give you an explanation. The DNC will do. But we’re not going to let you in.” And then the DNC employees showed up, and they asked me to leave or leave the bag behind. I was not allowed to get in with the flag inside. I told them that I’m not planning on anything. I’m just — just a flag in my bag, there is no harm found in that whatsoever. But they forced me to go back and leave my bag outside and come in without the bag, which was very concerning.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I’m wondering, after this convention is over, the debate that will continue among those who believe that the Biden administration, whether it’s President Biden or Kamala Harris, are not really moving in the way they should to end this war, what your sense is of what’s going to happen in the future in terms of the Gaza support movement. And also, I’m getting the feeling that the Biden administration is really trying to rush to announce a ceasefire before this convention is over, as a means of building greater unity within the Democratic Party. Your thoughts on that?

ESAM BORAEY: We’ve seen a lot of change in the rhetoric of the party, which is something we really appreciate and support. But that rhetoric is not going to cause any real change on the ground. So, we are — I believe our efforts to push forward will continue.

However, we have a biggest concern. Like, let’s be honest here for a second. So, we’ve been, for the last — all last night, we’ve been hearing about “We are stopping the fascism from coming to the American politics, and Trump will come back and bring all of the fascism to the American politics again.” And here we are, a hijabi woman, a Jew and an immigrant, who just raised a banner. And the immediate reaction was someone from the Democratic Party who started beating a hijabi woman with a sign on her head, and three others pulled down just the banner, while the staff of the DNC encouraged everybody to raise their signs as high as possible to block just the simple banner. So, if we are fighting fascism, what are we doing in the convention center?

AMY GOODMAN: Nadia, we’re going to give you the last word, and, actually, I’d like to know if any of you want to share, with whether you are going to support Kamala Harris in November, what your thoughts are, what your bar is.

NADIA AHMAD: So, Kamala Harris has to decide if she wants me to support her, because every vote has to be earned. That’s been the position of the Democratic Party. And the Democratic Party has taken the Muslim vote, even the African American vote, for granted for a number of years, because what are we going to support? A Muslim ban?

But we have to decide as a community how we’re going to decide. And so, 80% of the Muslim community, even higher number, depending on which state you live in, are against the Biden administration and are very much against supporting the Democratic Party. And so, if we look at that, I mean, I live in a red state, so it’s hard for my vote to have that much of an impact, but it’s going to really have an impact.

AMY GOODMAN: Liano? We have 10 seconds.

LIANO SHARON: So, I plan to vote for Harris, OK? Because I don’t want Trump. That’s the only reason. I’m not really voting for Harris; I’m voting against Trump.

AMY GOODMAN: And Esam?

ESAM BORAEY: I’m a proud Democratic Party member, but vice president needs to earn my vote.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there. I want to thank you all for being with us, Esam Boraey, a Connecticut delegate; Liano Sharon, a Michigan delegate; and Nadia Ahmad, a Florida delegate. All three, with Delegates Against Genocide, unfurled a banner that read “Stop Arming Israel.”

That does it for our broadcast. It’s now an expanded two-hour broadcast during the DNC. Check it all out at democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, from CAN TV in Chicago.

[admin]

Headlines:

Chicago PD Arrests Protesters at Israeli Consulate; 16 Activists from U.K.’s Palestine Action in Prison
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 21, 2024

In more news from Chicago, protests continued for a third day inside and outside the DNC. On Tuesday, CodePink and other pro-Palestine groups disrupted Minnesota governor and Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz during a Women’s Caucus meeting.

Medea Benjamin: “We need an arms embargo now! We need to stop killing women and children every day with our weapons. It’s not right! It’s not right!”

Meanwhile, dozens of people were arrested Tuesday night outside the Israeli Consulate in Chicago as police clashed with protesters demanding an end to Israel’s war on Gaza. The Chicago Tribune reported at least two independent journalists were among the arrests. This is Chicago resident Jonathan Bell.

Jonathan Bell: “They are starving the people. They are bombing schools and hospitals. And the people here are protesting to say that that’s not right and the United States should not be aiding and abetting a terrorist like Netanyahu. He is a terrorist. And his Cabinet, who are calling for the starvation and the annihilation of the Palestinian people, it is a terrorist act on the part of Israel.”

Elsewhere, in the U.K., five activists were handed prison sentences of between 12 and 16 months Tuesday after occupying the Thales weapons factory in Glasgow, Scotland. The group Palestine Action says 16 of their activists are in prison as a result of their actions to stop the genocide in Gaza.

U.S. Doctors Share Horrors They Witnessed in Gaza at DNC Press Conference
Aug 21, 2024

In other news from the DNC, American doctors who treated patients in Gaza held a press conference Tuesday to shine a light on the ongoing atrocities inflicted by Israel’s U.S.-backed war. This is pediatrician Dr. Ahmad Yousaf.

Dr. Ahmad Yousaf: “She had burns that covered over 70% of her surface area, which is a death sentence in an environment where you can’t find gauze and there isn’t clean water and there aren’t antibiotics. We all knew what this meant on the ground in the trauma bay the first minutes we met her: She was going to die there, and her baby would die there. And there was nothing we were going to be able to do about it, because the Israeli government, the IDF, had made it impossible to care for people to the extent which they deserve. Every human being deserves the right to medical aid in that situation. She was no fighter. She was a pregnant woman who was sitting in her home when a bomb dropped on her head.”

Israel Continues Its Genocidal War, Attacking Another Gaza School and Pushing Gazans Out of Deir al-Balah
Aug 21, 2024

Scores of Palestinians have been killed over the past day as Israel continues its unrelenting attacks on Gaza. An Israeli strike on another school, this time the Mustafa Hafez School in Gaza City, killed at least 12 people Tuesday.

Umm Mohammed: “We were sitting peacefully, and we did not see the explosion. The people are gone. They’re dead! They are under the rubble, our people! … Our children! We don’t know where our young girls are, my dears! Where are they?”

Hundreds of people had taken shelter at the school. Displaced Palestinians are yet again on the move after Israel issued fresh evacuation orders for the densely packed Deir al-Balah. It’s not clear where they can take refuge since there is no safe place in Gaza.

Released Palestinian Describes Detention at Ofer Prison, Site of “Systematic Torture and Humiliation”
Aug 21, 2024

In the southern city of Khan Younis, a Palestinian man who spent over two months in Israel’s Ofer Prison, was released and reunited with his family. Hubb Al-Deen Maqat recounted the horrors he and other Palestinian prisoners were subjected to.

Hubb Al-Deen Maqat: “We stayed for about 40 to 50 days blindfolded with this cloth. This way for 50 days! We were sitting down with our hands and feet bound. What’s happening in the prison, there is no living person of conscience who can bear it.”

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society says detainees at Ofer Prison suffer “systematic torture and humiliation.”

This all comes as another ceasefire deal appears to have stalled.

Meanwhile, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Tuesday it’s still waiting to receive polio vaccines amid a growing risk of a major outbreak across the besieged territory.

Israeli Strikes in Lebanon Kill at Least 6 as Cross-Border Fighting Adds to Growing Tensions
Aug 21, 2024

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said at least five people were killed Tuesday in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon. At least one other death was reported today. Hezbollah said it launched a barrage of rockets and drones at Israeli troops in response.

Report Says Countries and Oil Co’s Supplying Israel May Be Complicit in Genocide Under Int’l Law
Aug 21, 2024

A new report by Oil Change International lays out the countries and companies that have transferred the most fossil fuels to Israel since it launched its war on Gaza, and says they could be liable for complicity in war crimes and genocide under international law. Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Gabon are the top three countries supplying crude oil to Israel. Brazil ranks in fourth place, supplying nearly 10% of Israel’s crude, despite President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva speaking out against the war. The U.S. supplies JP-8 jet fuel for Israel’s warplanes, sourced from a Valero refinery in Texas. Corporations including BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies and Shell are also named as main culprits. The report holds up Colombia as an example for other nations after it halted coal exports to Israel over the war.

In related news, the Scottish government announced it will stop holding meetings with Israeli ambassadors until “real progress” is made toward a Gaza ceasefire.

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As Gaza War Is Largely Ignored on DNC Stage, Doubts Grow over Blinken’s Claims on Ceasefire Talks
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 21, 2024

The Israeli military has ordered new forced evacuations in parts of central Gaza, signaling the expansion of ground operations and the latest displacement of Palestinians, many of whom have already been displaced multiple times over the course of Israel’s war on the territory. At least 50 Palestinians have been killed in the last 24 hours, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, pushing the official death toll past 40,200. Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken ended his ninth visit to the Middle East since October without securing any breakthrough for a ceasefire deal. In Chicago, where Democrats are gathered for the DNC, Gaza has been mentioned only in passing from the main stage of the convention. The party’s official platform adopted this week does not call for an arms embargo on Israel and reasserts unwavering U.S. support for Israel. “There’s been an almost competition between Democrats and Republicans on 'how much can we show Israel that we support them and that we have their back?'” says human rights lawyer Zaha Hassan, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and previously the senior legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team during Palestine’s bid for U.N. membership. “Why should Israel ever compromise its positions if they know that by holding out, they’ll get more goodies from the U.S.?”

Transcript

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

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The Israeli military has ordered new evacuations from areas in Deir al-Balah, signaling an expansion of Israel’s ground operations in central Gaza. Deir al-Balah is the only remaining standing city in the entire Gaza Strip and is currently home to more than a million displaced Palestinians. An Israeli airstrike on a market in the city on Tuesday killed at least seven people and wounded dozens more. At least 50 Palestinians have been killed in the last 24 hours, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken ended his ninth visit to the Middle East since October without securing any breakthrough for a ceasefire deal. Blinken has said that Israel has accepted a so-called bridging proposal put forward by the U.S. and now the focus should be on Hamas to, quote, “get on board” as soon as possible. But few details have been released about what is in the bridging proposal, and Hamas has called it a reversal of what it had previously agreed to, accusing the U.S. of acquiescing to new conditions from Israel.

Over 40,200 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza and nearly 93,000 wounded since October.

AMY GOODMAN: Here in Chicago, Gaza has hardly been mentioned by top Democrats speaking on the main stage at the DNC this week. On Monday, the Democratic National Convention voted to adopt the party’s official platform — that’s the Democratic National Committee — which does not call for an arms embargo on Israel and reasserts unwavering U.S. support for Israel. President Biden gave a 50-minute address on the opening night of the convention. This is all he had to say about the war on Gaza.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: We’re working around the clock, my secretary of state, to prevent a wider war and reunite hostages with their families and surge humanitarian health and food assistance into Gaza now, to end the civilian suffering of the Palestinian people and finally, finally, finally deliver a ceasefire and end this war. … Those protesters out in the street, they have a point. A lot of innocent people are being killed, on both sides.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Zaha Hassan, a human rights lawyer, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She was previously the senior legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team during Palestine’s bid for U.N. membership.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Zaha. We want to talk about what the Democrats are saying about Gaza now, and, you know, back to Obama, Clinton. But let’s start with the latest news. Antony Blinken has just finished his trip, did not secure a ceasefire. Explain what’s taken place.

ZAHA HASSAN: Well, you said in your opening remarks that Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, said he had a bridging proposal — right? — that this was supposed to get us to a ceasefire and that all we needed was Hamas to agree. The bridge apparently is a bridge to nowhere, because a deal was struck on May 31st, and that was supposed to be a deal that Israel wanted and that the U.S. supported. Hamas agreed to it. And what we have now is a new agreement that’s being called an implementing agreement, but we don’t have the details. But what we do know is that Israel has said it’s not after a permanent ceasefire, and it’s not intending to leave the Philadelphi Corridor, which is along the border between Egypt and Gaza. These are nonstarters for Hamas, and the Israeli security officials that are involved in the negotiations know that. And they’re baffled by this notion that, you know, according to the U.S. position, that we’re closer than we ever were, because they know that these aren’t positions that Hamas is going to agree to.

Hamas has their concerns. They want to be able to stay in Gaza. They want to make sure that they have achieved something, after all the destruction and all of the death. And for them, the achievement would be being able to pick the hostages or the prisoners that they want released. And it would be being able to stay in Gaza and being able to rebuild and to show Palestinians that they’ve achieved something and they’ve made Israel concede something. And that’s not what’s happening in this latest rendition of an agreement.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, even The New York Times today is reporting that, according to some people close to the negotiations, that the U.S. has changed the original proposal that Biden said had been agreed to, to please some of the concerns of Israel. I’m wondering, this whole thing of constantly saying, “We’re almost there. We’re almost there,” while more and more people are being killed every day, what that does to the — again, to the credibility of the United States before the world community.

ZAHA HASSAN: No, it’s completely shattered at this point, because we all know what it’s going to take to get across the finish line in terms of an agreement. We have Qatar and Egypt putting all pressure on Hamas. Hamas is reliant on Egypt for that border, that it needs to have some kind of, you know, movement and access. And Qatar has Hamas officials, and it can force them out of its country. So there’s a lot of pressure on Hamas’s side. On the Israeli side, you have zero pressure from the U.S. There is no willingness to use any pressure on Israel to get to an agreement. We know that the families of the hostages, the Israeli hostages, they’ve beseeched the U.S. to, “Please, use your leverage on Israel,” because they know that their prime minister has no incentive to conclude a deal.

AMY GOODMAN: So, instead, it was announced last week that the Biden administration and Congress have approved $20 billion more in military sales, before this final negotiation, as opposed to holding out as a carrot to Netanyahu after.

ZAHA HASSAN: So, yes, exactly. What’s the message, then, to Netanyahu? That he can continue to hold out, hold his position, avoid accountability for his failure of leadership for October 7th, avoid corruption charges that are awaiting him, and stay in office and maintain his coalition, and he’ll still get benefits from the U.S.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’m wondering — at last night’s convention, even Bernie Sanders, who has spoken out in the past, he did mention that we must have an immediate ceasefire, but even he didn’t mention all that is needed for a ceasefire is for the U.S. to cut off arms supplies to Israel. That would be the real leverage that the United States has.

ZAHA HASSAN: You’re right. I mean, there could have been a lot more said by a lot of different people that took to the main stage last night and the night before. You know, saying that we’re working for a ceasefire or that we’re calling for a ceasefire is not what’s needed. But, you know, these conventions are heavily managed stagecraft, and everyone wants to have, you know, sort of a uniting voice and a uniting spirit in this convention setting, given how much is riding on this next election, given what might happen in November with a Republican return with Donald Trump at the helm. So, there is this idea that, you know, we don’t want to show too much disunity.

So I think that there has been much more muted references to Gaza in this convention, which is unfortunate, because if you go to the streets and you see the thousands that have shown up here in Chicago to demand — people from all walks of life, diverse backgrounds, coming to say, “No, this is an important issue to us,” and it should matter to the Democrats, given the battleground states and how close things are going to be.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s interesting. Every time there’s even a passing reference to Gaza or to Israel-Palestine from the main stage, there is deafening applause. When Raphael Warnock, the senator from Georgia, the reverend, mentioned at the end, you know, that Palestinians, Israelis, Ukrainians are all children of God, I mean, deafening applause, right through to last night. And these are passing references. Zaha Hassan, you have written in +972 Magazine about U.S. policy, and particularly Democratic policy, over the years, from Clinton to Obama to what we’re seeing now. And last night was the big night of the Obamas on the stage. Both Michelle Obama spoke and President Obama. Can you talk about the trajectory and whether it is significantly or meaningfully different from Republican policy on Gaza, Israel, Palestine?

ZAHA HASSAN: No. In fact, I think there’s been an almost competition between Democrats and Republicans on “how much can we show Israel that we support them and that we have their back?” And so, what we’ve had in terms of the U.S. position on negotiations is that each administration has tried to, you know, diminish the Palestinian negotiating position in order to gain support from Israel for, you know, domestically in the U.S., to show that this administration, whether Republican or Democrat, is the true friend of Israel. And in the process, it’s prevented really a resolution between Palestinians and Israelis. Why should Israel ever compromise its positions if they know that by holding out, they’ll get more goodies from the U.S. in terms of changing the parameters for a peace agreement?

And so, this sort of dynamic, we’re also seeing it play out in terms of the ceasefire negotiations. The U.S. is unwilling to offer any leverage to press Israel and, in fact, is offering it goodies in terms of more weapon supplies and more diplomatic cover at the U.N. and other fora. And this just prevents getting to an agreement.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about something related. You posted on social media recently about Israel’s targeting of a Palestinian journalist in Gaza who was working on a short documentary for Carnegie, where you are a fellow. What happened there?

ZAHA HASSAN: So, you know, we had this short documentary. We wanted to shed light on sort of how dangerous it has been for Palestinian journalists to cover the situation in Gaza. You know, foreign journalists are not allowed in. So, while these Palestinian journalists are covering, they’re also trying to stay alive. They’re trying to take care of their families. They’re facing evacuation orders. They’re being targeted. And so we wanted to just, in a very brief way, show what life is like every day for the journalists trying to cover. And during the course of this short documentary, the journalist that we were — that was offering a narration got targeted, and he lost his leg.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to play two clips for you. At the DNC last night, Democracy Now!’s Renée Feltz briefly spoke to Maryland Congressmember Jamie Raskin, who has supported a Gaza ceasefire.

RENÉE FELTZ: Representative Raskin, what did you think of the protest last night?

REP. JAMIE RASKIN: I was up there, so I didn’t see the protest.

RENÉE FELTZ: And they unfurled a banner. You know, they’re asking for a ceasefire.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN: Well, I thought that President Biden made a very powerful statement in his speech. … But right now I think the vast majority of the people in this room want to see the hostages come home, a ceasefire, and a comprehensive agreement that will break the cycle of terrorism, war and occupation. And I think everybody wants to get out of it as quickly as possible.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Democratic Congressmember Jamie Raskin of Maryland. Democracy Now! also spoke to Rima Mohammad, an “uncommitted” delegate from Michigan.

RIMA MOHAMMAD: I’m Palestinian. Both my grandparents were Nakba survivors of 1948. I have family still in Israel. So, they’re in Akka. They’re feeling traumatized as this goes on. I also have close family friends that have lost hundreds of their family members. So, this is very personal to me. But also, as this keeps going on, it is impacting my life and a lot of other Muslim and Palestinians here in the U.S., with an increase in anti-Palestinian racism, Islamophobia and so much hate, for something that we’re asking for humanity. We’re not asking for anything more, but just to respect. So, that’s why — this is how this is impacting me personally. …

Regardless of who the Democratic nominee is, you know, or who even the president is, been living that throughout my life, but it has increased since Gaza, since the genocide that’s happening in Gaza is going on. So, it’s a little bit dehumanizing, to be honest, for me to have to be — all that weight to be on my shoulder as a Palestinian that is facing racism, facing hate, to then say, “Well, wait, why — who are you going to choose between Trump and Biden?” I want to choose true democracy. I’m a true Democrat, but I also don’t believe what we’re doing in Gaza is democratic.

AMY GOODMAN: Again, that was Rima Mohammad, an uncommitted delegate from Michigan who is Palestinian American. Your thoughts, Zaha Hassan? As, you know, we hear, last night was the virtual roll call vote. They had already taken it virtually, but actually it was the ceremonial one on the floor. And you would hear in certain states those that had not committed to Harris-Walz. Although it wasn’t talked about in that way, I assume that the vast majority of them had to do with being uncommitted, like Rima.

ZAHA HASSAN: Yeah. I mean, you know, I was on the floor yesterday and the day before, and I’m coming across the uncommitted voters. I’m coming across just plain old Democrats that are really hungry to hear some kind of policy difference between Biden’s approach and what a prospective President Harris’s approach would be, and they’re not hearing it.

We know from a YouGov poll that was recently done by the Institute for Middle East Understanding that between like 34% and over 40% of the independent and Democrats that were polled say that if the Democratic nominee would say that they would have an arms embargo on Israel or if they would be able to deliver a ceasefire, that if Biden was able to deliver a ceasefire, that they would be more likely to support the Democratic nominee.

I mean, this should be, you know, a clarion call for the Harris campaign. They should be willing to come out and offer a vision of what a Harris presidency would look like. They should be putting pressure on the president himself to do something before November 4th. But you don’t see this urgency. What you’re seeing in this heavily managed convention is an effort to avoid talking about Gaza at all. And this is problematic if you want to win in November.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you for being with us, Zaha Hassan, human rights lawyer, fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, previously the senior legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team during Palestine’s bid for U.N. membership.

Democracy Now! is expanded to two hours during this week, broadcasting from Chicago from the Democratic National Convention. In our other hour, we will speak with a congressmember who was targeted by AIPAC and ultimately lost his seat. He is Andy Levin of Michigan. He was a synagogue president. We’ll also be hearing from doctors who have just returned from Gaza, American doctors who came to the DNC to speak about their experiences.

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What I Saw Was “Unfathomable”: Doctor Who Worked in Gaza Speaks Out Against U.S. Arming of Israel
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 21, 2024

A group of American doctors who treated patients in Gaza held a press conference in Chicago on Tuesday to describe the suffering they saw among Palestinians injured and killed in Israel’s war on the territory. The press conference, taking place during the Democratic National Convention, was organized by the Uncommitted National Movement, which is pressuring Democrats for an end to blanket U.S. support for Israel. Among those who spoke was Dr. Ahmed Yousaf, who returned from Gaza just weeks earlier. “When we got to the hospital, everything I saw on TikTok and Instagram and all the television, all the stuff that we had in alternative media … it was 100 times worse than I could have ever imagined,” he said.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency: Breaking with Convention.” I’m Amy Goodman, here in Chicago with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In Gaza, at least 50 Palestinians have been killed in the last 24 hours as the Israeli military continues its assault on the territory and expands its ground operation in Deir al-Balah. Over 40,200 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 93,000 wounded over the past 10 months.

AMY GOODMAN: Here in Chicago, a group of American doctors who treated patients in Gaza gathered on Tuesday for a press conference here at the DNC inside the McCormick Place Convention Center. The press conference was organized by the Uncommitted National Movement. Among those who spoke was Dr. Ahmed Yousaf, who just returned from Gaza three weeks ago. This is some of what he had to say.

DR. AHMED YOUSAF: My name is Ahmed Yousaf. I’m a board — double board-certified internal medicine, pediatrics doctor focused primarily in the ICU. I come from Arkansas. I may have a hard time doing this. I went to Gaza, about three weeks ago came back, after being there for about three weeks. I primarily worked in the ICU and in the emergency room in Al-Aqsa Hospital.

I thought — I’m not a politician, and I’m not a military strategist, but the moment we drove through Rafah with a U.N. convoy towards the middle area where we were going to be stationed, it became clear to me that what I was seeing was unfathomable. And at the same time, I had a small hope that when the doors are opened and the ceasefire is had, that when you all are allowed back in there, that it doesn’t require a military strategist to realize what they’re doing.

They are making Gaza unlivable. They’ve destroyed the water infrastructure, and so we were seeing kids die of diarrheal illness. They prevented all medical supplies in. And I can tell that by firsthand witness, not by hearsay. They refused me the medical supplies that I was able to gather over months from wonderful people in Arkansas, things like endotracheal tubes and Foley catheters, things like antibiotics and sedative medications, that were denied at the border. Firsthand experience. They do not allow medical supplies in to treat children that are dying.

And when we got to the hospital, everything I saw on TikTok and Instagram and all the television, all the stuff that we had in alternative media, because you can’t be there, it was a hundred times worse than I could have ever imagined. …

I have no ties to Gaza. I’m not from there. I have no blood there. But those people treated me better than I deserved as a member of the international community. With no food, they tried to feed me. And they’ll tell you the same. With no food, they tried to feed me. And when I asked them what we could do, because there was so little we could do as doctors, they said, “Just make sure people know we’re here.”

I’m going to mention the names of some of the girls that were in medical school that were with me. There was Lena. She was a fifth year medical student. There was Rahaf and Rahab. They were sixth year medical students. There was Fadah, who just graduated from medical school. These young women were displaced four or five times before I met them. They lived in tents, sometimes areas in the red zone, which mean they were free target practice if they crossed the roads. And they came every day to the hospital to learn, because their schools had been completely stopped. And they would take that trek every day knowing they could lose their lives, knowing that the value they present to their families as medical people could be lost, because they wanted to come and help in whatever way they could. …

On the first day I was there in Al-Aqsa Hospital, we were in a small trauma bay in the ER. And when the first mass casualty, which was one of almost one every day I was there, occurred, and we could hear the bombs in the distance, and we knew that about 45 minutes later people would come in pieces, that children would be carried in pieces by their loved ones, on donkey carts and in ambulances, four or five in one ambulance.

There was a young woman who got laid up right next to the young boy I was treating. She was 22 or 23 years old, full body surface area burns, and she was unable to speak, because she likely had inhalational injury, because the same burns that burned her skin likely burned her airway. And a woman screamed from outside the door, ”Hamil!” “She’s pregnant!” And so we turned her over quickly, because she had come and laid down on her belly. And somebody put an ultrasound probe on her belly, and she had a viable 18- to 20-week pregnancy. But when we did our secondary survey and tried to understand what other injuries she had, she had a shattered tib-fib from an explosive injury. She had burns that covered over 70% of her surface area, which is a death sentence in an environment where you can’t find gauze and there isn’t clean water and there aren’t antibiotics. We all knew what this meant on the ground in the trauma bay the first minutes we met her: She was going to die there, and her baby would die there.

And there was nothing we were going to be able to do about it, because the Israeli government, the IDF, had made it impossible to care for people to the extent which they deserve. Every human being deserves the right to medical aid in that situation. She was no fighter. She was a pregnant woman who was sitting in her home when a bomb dropped on her head.

And she eventually moved to the ICU. And every day she lived until she died, she was in pain, because we didn’t have the kind of medicine we needed to care for her pain. And when wound care came — in America, I’d give her two Dilaudid before changing her wound dressings. And there, I could give her nothing. And every morning, when we’d round, we’d stop by her bed first. And every one of us and the Gazan medical professionals, who are heroes — that one day will get to be here and tell you their stories themselves, so I don’t have to tell it for them — we’d all keep our mouth shut and keep the tears held back, because we knew we couldn’t do anything, and we knew the inevitable was coming, until one day I walked in, and the bed was empty.

And her story is just one of tens of thousands. And her family mourned for her just like we would mourn for our own family members. And she and every single person in Gaza deserves the dignity and support that humanity as a whole is burdened and has an obligation to provide.

I stand here, and I’ll conclude with this last thought, which is, the reason I lose sleep and the reason we cry tears isn’t sadness anymore. It’s a feeling that we have no ability, despite being from the most powerful country in the world, providing the bombs that drop on these innocent people, that we have no power to stop the bleeding. And so, we call for a ceasefire and a stopping of the bleeding by stopping the sales of bombs. There’s no reason that the bomb that dropped on that young woman’s head had to be made in America.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Dr. Ahmed Yousaf, who just returned from Gaza three weeks ago. The news conference he was a part of was organized by the Uncommitted National Movement.

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Andy Levin, Pushed Out of Congress by AIPAC, Calls for Change in U.S.-Israel Policy
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 21, 2024

We speak with former Michigan Congressmember Andy Levin, a former synagogue president, who lost his 2022 Democratic primary in a race that saw millions spent by pro-Israel groups to unseat the progressive Jewish lawmaker. AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and other lobby groups have used the same playbook over the years to defeat members of Congress who do not toe the line, and Levin says the Democratic Party has to act to stop such “dark money” from deciding elections and push for a new policy on Israel-Palestine that brings peace. “We need to all get along there, and we need to work together here to make that happen,” he says.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency: Breaking with Convention.” I’m Amy Goodman, here in Chicago with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to look at how AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has spent millions targeting Democrats who have criticized U.S. support of Israel. In June, AIPAC and the affiliated super PAC spent almost $15 million to defeat New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman. And then, two weeks ago, Missouri Congressmember Cori Bush lost her seat after AIPAC spent $8 million to defeat her.

We’re joined now in Chicago by former Democratic Congressmember Andy Levin of Michigan. In 2022, he lost his House seat after AIPAC spent millions in dark money to defeat him. Levin is a former synagogue president and self-described Zionist. Despite this, AIPAC labeled him as, quote, “arguably the most corrosive member of Congress to the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

AMY GOODMAN: Andy Levin is a former Democratic congressmember from Michigan. He’s part of a political dynasty.

We thank you so much for being with us. If you could start off by talking about — you know, when we hear about Bowman, we hear about Bush, you came before them. And talk about the race that unseated you — might surprise many that you were a synagogue president and a congressmember — and how you were driven out.

ANDY LEVIN: Right. Well, you know, I was a former — I had been a synagogue president until I went to Congress, and I felt I should stop doing that, because, you know, you have to devote all your time to Congress. And I had, you know, mezuzahs, the little things that Jewish people hang on their doors, on all my doors in Congress. I’m a really, like, joyous Jewish person.

And, you know, I think they felt particularly threatened by that, Amy and Juan. The idea — and plus, my dad and my uncle had served in Congress before me — my dad in the House, my uncle in the Senate. My dad was the president of the high school class of 1949 at Central High School in Detroit, right? They were from the bosom of the Jewish community there. And I think that these right-wing-on-Israel people can’t stand the idea that a Jewish person like me, who is fully for self-determination for my people in the Holy Land, was the loudest voice in Congress saying, “Well, that’s not going to be sustainable, and we’re not going to have peace there, until and unless we fully realize the human rights and the political rights of the Palestinian people, too.”

AMY GOODMAN: I just want to talk about your family dynasty, the political dynasty.

ANDY LEVIN: We don’t talk about it like that. Yes, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Your father, Sander Levin, the congressmember; your uncle, Carl Levin, head of Armed Services in the Senate —

ANDY LEVIN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — at the same time your father was head of Ways and Means Committee?

ANDY LEVIN: Yeah, my — these two Jewish boys from Detroit. And my uncle, who passed away, never left the city of Detroit. They each served 36 years in Congress. They served 32 years together. In the 235-year history of our elected democracy in the United States, they are by far the longest-serving siblings, and even more than three Kennedy brothers, more than anybody. And I’m so proud of them and, you know, their contributions to our democracy.

But, you know, Uncle Carl got crosswise with AIPAC in the '90s, when Yitzhak Shamir was, I think, the secondly couped prime minister of Israel, and he said, “Land for peace? We're not doing land for peace.” And Carl, it may feel naive today, but he was like, “Oh my gosh! That’s the basis for any hope of peace.” And he wrote a letter to Secretary of State George Shultz, I think it was at the time. And he got 30 — on a Friday afternoon, he got, I think, 30 senators to sign this letter. It was supposed to be private. And they sent it to him, saying, “We have to have land for peace. Do something about this,” something like that. And one of the other senators or their staff made it public. Carl had shown the text to AIPAC beforehand. But when it went public, AIPAC went crazy, said, “This can’t be Carl Levin’s letter.” They demanded he retract it. They said, “It must have been the work of some staffer.” Uncle Carl totally stood by his staffer, who helped him write the letter. He said, “No, that’s my letter.” And anybody who knew Uncle Carl knew he went over every line, you know, himself before they sent the letter.

And so, you know, this is — look, if you are a Jewish person and you really want to be true to your faith, you have to treat the other as yourself. You have to love your — you know, the stranger, the neighbor. The most oft-repeated mitzvah, or requirement, in the Torah, I think 36 times, which is a very significant number for Jews, is some version of that. Who is the most important other for us, honestly, if not — OK, a homeless person, someone who looks different than you, you know, yes, treat them well. But, really, I think the acid test for Jewish people is how do we treat our Palestinian cousins. And so, we have to treat them as we would want to be treated. They are from the land. They’re there on the land. And if you come from Michigan, you know so many amazing Palestinian Americans who are your neighbors, your colleagues, your doctor, your friend, you know? And so, we need to all get along there, and we need to work together here to make that happen.

And I don’t care what AIPAC does. You know, the fact — it’s outrageous that they’re using money from Republican billionaires to decide who wins Democratic primaries. That’s a problem for democracy, and it’s a threat to the soul of the Democratic Party, even from a kind of a dry political science point of view, right? If you are in a political science class and your professor says, “Well, there’s multiple parties, right? And they each have to choose their candidate that represents that party’s values or beliefs, to go up against some other party, right?” — if any party lets a different party, interest groups from a different party, billionaires from a different party, come and choose its candidates, it’s kind of finished.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I wanted to ask you — you mentioned, obviously, Michigan, where you’re from. Talk about the rise of the “uncommitted” movement and what kind of impact it’s had on the Democratic Party and on the process of choosing a president.

ANDY LEVIN: Juan, I am so proud of this movement. These are young people. This is a true grassroots movement. I remember when I went to a phone bank that they had during the Michigan primary, which our primary for president was way back on February 27th. The energy in that room, the beautiful rainbow of people in that room, the food that someone had cooked, you know, you know — if you’re an organizer in the social movements of this country, when you walk into a situation like that, you know if something has life, is authentic, has power. And not only did they get over 100,000 people to vote uncommitted in just a few weeks in Michigan to say to President Biden, “We want to vote for you in November, but you’ve got to change course on Gaza to help us do that,” it obviously went national, too.

And I’m so proud of these young people, because I don’t want Donald Trump to get anywhere near the White House ever again, but even now, in late August, I feel like Vice President Harris — I hope that she can sort of reach out more. And it’s difficult as a vice president, right? But I think she has plenty of space to say, “Look, under a Harris administration, we’re going to follow U.S. and international law on military aid to Israel and all of any other military aid,” right? And she could say — she has a lot of room to say different things that would win the support of the uncommitted movement, which I think it would be very helpful to win Michigan, which is necessary.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, you were on this panel, Palestinians and Jews, elected officials, that was the first DNC — first-ever panel on Palestinian human rights, held on Monday.

ANDY LEVIN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And we played a part of that on Democracy Now! The demand of many in the uncommitted movement has been to have a Palestinian speaker on the stage of the Democratic National Convention.

ANDY LEVIN: Right, during primetime. Yeah, during primetime.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you expect that to happen?

ANDY LEVIN: We’re still holding out hope. I’m actually grateful. I understand that hostages’ families will be on the stage tonight, I think. I’m grateful for that. You know, it’s horrifying that Hamas took hostages. It’s totally a war crime, right? That should be exposed. But, my goodness, you know, with 40,000 people dead, 15,000 children dead, 19,000 children orphaned, a million children displaced, for our party to have a Palestinian American speaker to talk about this, I think, would be a really positive thing and indicate growth for our party.

And, you know, I think, look, Kamala Harris is going to be our next president. She needs to be. There’s no president in this century, two Republicans and two Democrats, who’s actually moved the ball forward for peace in the Middle East in a significant way. I need Kamala Harris to be that president who changes that dynamic. I think she can be. We’re hoping that she really finds a way to express that, in this convention and afterwards. Having a Palestinian speaker in primetime would certainly be a positive thing, and we’re still hoping for that.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, you mentioned billionaires of the other party. We just have 20 seconds. Explain what you mean, deciding Democratic primary candidates.

ANDY LEVIN: Right. Well, so, you know, there’s a lot we have to do to get dark money out of politics, right? Citizens United. But it’s up to the political parties to set their own rules. So, within Democratic primaries, our party, our leaders in the House and Senate, could set rules to say, “No, if you’re running for the U.S. House or U.S. Senate as a Democrat in a Democratic primary, we don’t want and we’re not going to let Republican billionaire dollars in here.” And that would be better for our party.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. Andy Levin is former Democratic congressmember from Michigan.

And that does it for our show. We’ve expanded to two hours every day from the Democratic National Convention. To hear or watch our other hour, go to democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, from Chicago.

[admin]

Headlines:

Uncommitted Movement. and Allies Launch Sit-In After DNC and Harris Refuse to Let Palestinian Take Main Stage
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 22, 2024

Outside the convention hall, delegates from the Uncommitted National Movement and their supporters launched a sit-in protest Wednesday night, after the DNC and the Harris campaign refused to let a Palestinian take the main stage, despite allowing family members of Israeli hostages to address the convention. We’ll air clips from the sit-in, which is still ongoing, later in the broadcast. Earlier in the day, uncommitted delegates and progressive lawmakers gathered for an event outside the DNC. This is Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar.

Rep. Ilhan Omar: “Working tirelessly for a ceasefire is really not a thing, and they should be ashamed of themselves for saying such thing, because we supply these weapons. So, if you really wanted a ceasefire, you just stop sending the weapons. It is that simple.”

In response to the Democratic refusal to let a Palestinian speak at the DNC, the group Muslim Women for Harris-Walz announced it was disbanding, saying in a statement, “This is a terrible message to send to Democrats. Palestinians have the right to speak about Palestine.” Protesters also took to the streets of Chicago Wednesday for more rallies calling for an end to U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

Israel’s Genocide Continues Amid Dimming Hopes for Ceasefire
Aug 22, 2024

In Gaza, Israeli attacks continue to kill more Palestinians, with at least 22 reported deaths today. On Wednesday, at least 13 people were killed, including children, in an attack east of Khan Younis. This father lost his teenage son.

Mourning father: “Oh my son Mudi is dead! Mudi is dead! They hit us, and we’re all destroyed. … He was so precious to me, my oldest son, my darling son.”

Reporter: “How old was he?”

Mourning father: “Fourteen years old. He hasn’t seen anything in his life. I went to buy him a rooster and left it on the floor. A mere 10 minutes later, we were hit. God rest your soul.”

Another strike on a school acting as a shelter in Gaza City killed two people and injured 10 children.

On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken headed home after his latest visit to the region once again failed to secure a Gaza ceasefire. Blinken warned the failed plan may have been the chance to avert a broader regional war.

New Report Details Israel’s Pattern of Kidnapping, Torturing and Humiliating Gazan Children
Aug 22, 2024

A new report from Defense for Children International Palestine says Israeli forces are detaining and torturing Palestinian children in Gaza, using children as human shields and “intentionally and systematically” separating children from their families. The report includes testimony of children survivors, including the case of many boys who were forced to strip naked and walk with their hands bound in front of Israeli tanks and bulldozers. The children were also beaten, denied water and threatened with dogs. Sixteen-year-old Abdulmunim, who was abducted with his younger brother Ali, said he was barely able to move after Israeli forces blindfolded them, tied them up and beat them with rifles before leaving them in the cold.

Israel and Hezbollah Continue Cross-Border Fighting Amid Fears of a Broader Conflict
Aug 22, 2024

Israel and Hezbollah continued to exchange cross-border fire Wednesday, with Israel targeting multiple areas across southern Lebanon and Hezbollah blasting over 50 rockets and a swarm of drones in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israel also killed a senior member of Palestine’s Fatah movement in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, claiming Khalil al-Maqdah has orchestrated attacks on Israeli forces in the West Bank. The Fatah party accused Israel of seeking to “ignite a regional war.”
Meanwhile, President Biden spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday, and a second U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, arrived in the Middle East Wednesday as the U.S. bolsters forces in the region.

Emmy Awards Stands Firm on Nomination of Gazan Reporter Bisan Owda After Pushback from Israel Lobby
Aug 22, 2024

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has rejected an attempt by pro-Israel groups and Hollywood celebrities to rescind an Emmy nomination for the widely admired Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda. Owda, who has been reporting from the ground in Gaza since October, was nominated for her Al Jazeera Plus report, “It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive,” which chronicles her family’s forced evacuation of their home in Beit Hanoun. The pro-Israel group Creative Community for Peace and celebrities like Debra Messing and Selma Blair accused Owda of spreading antisemitism, an accusation which has been widely used against anyone who opposes Israel’s war.

Israel Kills at Least 2 More Journalists in Gaza: Ibrahim Muharab and Hamza Murtaja
Aug 22, 2024

Israel has killed at least two more Gaza journalists in recent days. Twenty-six-year-old photojournalist Ibrahim Muharab was killed while covering ground invasions north of Khan Younis Monday. In Gaza City, Hamza Abdul Rahman Murtaja was one of the victims in Israel’s attack on the Mustafa Hafez School this week. Hamza Murtaja was the brother of Yasser Murtaja, who was killed by an Israeli sniper in Gaza in 2018. Some 170 journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 7, by far the largest death toll of media workers recorded in any war.

U.K. Gov’t Official Resigns over British Arms Sales to Israel to Use in War Crimes
Aug 22, 2024

A British diplomat has resigned, charging the U.K. government of complicity in war crimes amid its continued military aid and arms supply to Israel. Mark Smith previously worked in Middle East arms export licensing assessment for the British government, and said he raised his concerns, including to Foreign Secretary David Lammy, but was ignored. He recently spoke to the BBC.

Mark Smith: “For me, personally, my profession, or former profession, as of last week, was to advise the government on the legality of arms sales. And when you look at what constitutes a war crime, it’s actually quite clear, even from what you see in open source on the TV, that the state of Israel is perpetrating war crimes in plain sight.”

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Uncommitted Delegates Launch Sit-In After DNC Rejects Request for a Palestinian Speaker at Convention
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 22, 2024

Delegates from the Uncommitted National Movement and their allies launched a sit-in protest Wednesday night outside the convention hall in Chicago after the DNC refused to honor their request to let a Palestinian American speak onstage, despite allowing family members of an Israeli American hostage to address the convention. We hear voices from the sit-in with uncommitted delegates and their allies. “Today I watched my party say, 'Our tent can fit anti-choice Republicans,' but it can’t fit an elected official like me?” said Georgia state Representative Ruwa Romman, referring to convention addresses given by anti-Trump Republicans. Romman was among the list of speakers offered by the uncommitted movement that the DNC refused to allow on onstage. “We can’t take no for an answer here,” Minneapolis City Councilmember Jeremiah Ellison, an uncommitted delegate from Minnesota, tells Democracy Now!.

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: The third night of the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday was headlined by Minnesota Governor Tim Walz formally accepting the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential nomination. The evening featured a host of celebrity speakers and prominent Democrats, but the most solemn portion of the evening was an address by the parents of an American Israeli hostage, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who has been held in Gaza since October 7th. Polin’s parents, Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, wore pieces of tape with the number 320, marking the number of days their son has been held hostage. As they spoke, the convention hall was largely silent. In his remarks, Jon Polin also called for an end to the war in Gaza.

JON POLIN: There is a surplus of agony on all sides of the tragic conflict in the Middle East. In a competition of pain, there are no winners. In our Jewish tradition, we say, ”Kol adam olam um lo’o,” “Every person is an entire universe.” We must save all these universes. In an inflamed Middle East, we know the one thing that can most immediately release pressure and bring calm to the entire region: a deal that brings this diverse groups of 109 hostages home and ends the suffering of the innocent civilians in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Jon Polin, the father of American Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, addressing the Democratic National Convention last night.

At the same time, delegates with the “uncommitted” movement received word that their request for a Palestinian American to address the convention was denied by the DNC and the Harris campaign. Uncommitted delegates were selected in state Democratic primaries earlier this year to call for an end to the Biden administration’s backing of Israel in its assault on Gaza.

After the Democratic National Committee denied their request for a Palestinian American speaker onstage, uncommitted delegates and their allies staged a sit-in outside the convention hall. They remained throughout the night; the sit-in is still ongoing at the time of this broadcast. These are some of the voices from that sit-in last evening, beginning with the co-founder of the uncommitted movement, Abbas Alawieh.

ABBAS ALAWIEH: The Democratic Party is actively suppressing a Palestinian American from speaking from the stage. We urge the Democratic Party to reconsider. I’ve worked across the aisle. I’ve written bipartisan bills. I was a congressional staffer. I’m proud of it. I’m proud that I was a Democratic congressional staffer. And so, as part of our negotiation with the DNC, we gave them a list of names. One such name is a Palestinian American elected representative from Georgia. Her name is Ruwa Romman. And for some reason, Ruwa didn’t pass the vetting. And I want to know what the issue is. I want Ruwa to speak.

REP. RUWA ROMMAN: Good evening, everybody. My name is Ruwa Romman. I am a Georgia state representative. I am an elected Democrat. I come from the swing state of Georgia.

We are not here to create any divisions. As my colleagues have said over and over and over again, the only reason we are here — the only reason we are here — is to ensure that Donald Trump will never make it to the White House, and save the lives of the people that we love. It’s about the fact that today I watched my party say, “Our tent can fit anti-choice Republicans,” but it can’t fit an elected official like me? I do not understand. I do not understand why being a Palestinian has become disqualifying in this country.

I don’t know how much more we have to prove. All of us have decade-or-more-long résumés working for this party, because we know that this party is the only one that’s ever tried to meet the promise of our country. We are here to literally save the soul of our party. I do not understand why that is a bad thing.

This would have truly and sincerely been a beautiful gesture to show this party cares about the cries of an Israeli child the same way they care about the cries of a Palestinian child. We are not asking for too much. All we wanted was to be on that stage and show people desperate for hope there is something to hope for.

JUNE ROSE: My name is June Rose. I came into this week feeling hopeful. When President Biden was the nominee, I felt hopeless, hopeless because our presidential nominee, who we were putting forth to take on Donald Trump, was enabling a genocide of Palestinians, was providing the bombs used in the genocide of Palestinians, and hopeless because I felt, like so many others, that he had no chance of beating Donald Trump anyways. And then Vice President Harris became the nominee, and I felt hopeful. For the first time in a long time, I felt like we might beat Donald Trump. And then I heard her speak about Palestinians. I heard her speak when Benjamin Netanyahu, a genocidal leader, came and visited this country, and disgracefully, Congress let him speak in front of it, and I heard empathy in her voice for Palestinian suffering. And I thought, “Maybe we’re turning a page. Maybe we’ll get something different.”

What is a bigger issue in this moment than in the midst of a housing crisis where no one can afford a place to live, in the midst of a climate crisis posing an existential threat to our planet, when every single dollar in this country is meaningful towards creating the world that we want to see, and instead billions of dollars going to kill children across the world, billions of dollars, instead of addressing the crises in front of us, are going to tear families apart, where generations are wiped off the map, where children will have to go the rest of their lives without knowing another member of their family? Is that what we pay taxes for? Is that what we elect these people to do?

SABRENE ODEH: My name is Sabrene Odeh, and I’m an uncommitted delegate from Washington state, a Palestinian uncommitted delegate from Washington state. To know as a Palestinian, my voice, my people’s voice is not important enough to be on the main stage is heartbreaking.

The Palestinians in Gaza are suffering the most unimaginable circumstances. These are teachers. These are doctors. These are artists. These are dreamers. They deserve to live. All four of my grandparents were survivors of the Nakba from a village called al-Malha in Palestine. My family still lives in a refugee camp, internally displaced in the West Bank to this day. They live under occupation to this day, since 1948.

How many more Palestinians need to die until the American government stops sending arms to kill them? What more do we have to do? What more do we have to do? They have our names on the lists of the dead. They have our sisters’ names, our brothers’ names, our parents’ names, our grandparents’ names.

ASMA MOHAMMED: Asma Mohammed. I’m the co-chair of the Minnesota delegation of uncommitted delegates. Every single one of us who are sitting here have been getting calls and texts from our family members and people from our community, the nearly 740 — no, the nearly million voters who voted for us to be here as delegates, asking what’s happening, asking for updates on what is happening, because they asked for us to be here. They elected us as delegates to be here to represent them inside.

They wanted a reason to support the vice president. They wanted us to leave this convention saying Vice President Harris supported a plan for a ceasefire, and she did that by putting in an arms embargo. She did that by stopping the bombs. Imagine all 1 million, nearly 1 million of those voters watching right now and saying, “That party isn’t representing me right now.” I want you to imagine you are a young Muslim woman watching right now. You’re a Palestinian watching right now. You’re a young anti-Zionist Jew watching right now. You’re a Gen Z voter watching right now, wondering, “How is this party representing me in this moment?” wondering, “Where do I fit in?”

When I was organizing in Minnesota, we got 46,000 votes in just eight days. Imagine if we had the three weeks that Abbas had in Michigan. I imagine we’d have a lot more.

UNIDENTIFIED: We do it.

ASMA MOHAMMED: Yeah, we do it. We do it.

UNIDENTIFIED: Challenge accepted.

ASMA MOHAMMED: Challenge accepted. At this convention, I brought a young Muslim woman with me who the other day said, “Asma, sometimes it feels like they don’t even want us here.”

I challenge you, Vice President Harris, to make Palestinians, to make young Muslims, to make the anti-Zionist Jews, to make Gen Z voters welcome in this party, to remind everyone that this tent is big enough for all of us, to remind everyone that we can be the Democratic Party that stands up for human rights, the one that I know and love, because I know the Republican Party does not give a damn about me. I know that this party is the only party that can and will uphold human rights. I want a reason to believe in this party again. Give us that reason, Vice President Harris.

DAN ENGELHART: Dan Engelhart. It’s a big night for Minnesota. I’m from Minnesota, uncommitted delegate. In 2002, I was staff. We had a paid canvass for the late Senator Paul Wellstone, who voted against the Iraq War, and the polls went up. Tim Walz likes to talk about Paul Wellstone. They need to have that courage and realize that people respond to that. And we all know that that was a horrible mistake, the Iraq War. And this is exponentially worse, what’s happening with our bombs and our money.

With 70 — a little over 70 days left, this is about winning. I’ve been doing a lot of talking to delegates here and getting people to sign that letter and come out and support. Somebody in the elevator said — she was really having a hard time, and she finally got it out and said, “So, do you think Palestine matters more than saving democracy?” And I said, “They are connected. They are absolutely connected. That’s what this is about.”

ASMA MOHAMMED: Now that the vice-presidential pick is our Governor Tim Walz, you’re going to hear him and people from Minnesota talk a lot about Paul Wellstone and the famous quote, “We all do better when we all do better.” That should include Palestinians. I say that to the vice-presidential pick: Governor Walz, if you’re hearing this, we all do better when we all do better, and that includes Palestinians.

ABBAS ALAWIEH: I’ve got June Rose right here. We became quick siblings through this work. I didn’t know June before. I didn’t know that June lived in Israel and that I had a very different experience and that we would end up, in this moment, speaking up for our siblings, who are no different than June and I, in Gaza. We make siblings with people who are willing to put themselves on the line, who are willing to put their names on the line, who are willing to take the professional risk to do the right thing. One such sibling I’ve gained very quickly, Lily Greenberg Call, who will tell you herself who she is and why she’s here. Lily.

LILY GREENBERG CALL: Well, I saw the live stream, and I had to come down and join all these brave folks. My name is Lily Greenberg Call. I am a Jewish American. I was a Kamala staffer. And until May 15th, I was an appointee in the Biden-Harris administration, and I resigned in protest of the president’s unconditional support for Israel’s assault on Gaza.

PROTESTERS: Thank you! Thank you!

LILY GREENBERG CALL: I resigned because for 10 months I watched the president, who was my boss, who I was supposed to represent, this administration that I was supposed to serve, the American — you know, serve the American people through this administration — I watched the president make my community the face of this war machine. I watched him use our safety and abuse and abuse the death of my friends on October 7th.

I’m very proud to be a Jewish person. It’s the first thing I identify as. It is the most important part of what makes me a person. And I grew up in a really beautiful Jewish community, very strong, went to Jewish day school for 20 years, did Torah study, chose to do text study in high school in my free time because I was a nerd.

And I grew up learning that Judaism, at the end of the day, is about a lot of things. We can’t really agree on anything. That’s kind of our whole shtick. We say “two Jews, 10 opinions.” The word “Israel” means wrestle with God. That’s the name Jacob was given after wrestling with angels. I learned that to be Jewish is to question authority, is to know that laws and the people who make them do not always have your best interests at heart, because we, as Jewish people, know what it is like to be persecuted, know what it is like to be victims of state-sponsored violence, know what it is like to have an entire country dedicate itself to your extermination. That is what I learned about being Jewish, that because of that obligation, you stand up for other people.

UNIDENTIFIED: That’s my congresswoman! That’s my congresswoman!

ABBAS ALAWIEH: The most honorable from Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is here.

REP. ILHAN OMAR: I love you all.

ABBAS ALAWIEH: We love you.

REP. ILHAN OMAR: And I am pained by the fact that we have to go through this, that everybody doesn’t feel the pain and the anguish of others as we talk about seeing people as their neighbors, that that is not extended to Palestinians.

ABBAS ALAWIEH: Doesn’t make any sense.

REP. ILHAN OMAR: And it’s almost certainly mostly never really extended to anybody that is Muslim, which — which is sad. And I hate that we have to beg for our humanity to be recognized, for our children’s pain, the loss of their dreams and aspirations. But as those who came before us never lost hope, we are not going to lose hope.

ABBAS ALAWIEH: We’re going to win. We’re going to win. We’re going to win.

REP. ILHAN OMAR: And I am in this with you all for as long as it takes.

ABBAS ALAWIEH: We love you, Congresswoman.

REP. ILHAN OMAR: Yes.

ABBAS ALAWIEH: Thank you for leading.

REP. ILHAN OMAR: Please do not — do not despair.

ABBAS ALAWIEH: I have an update: The vice president’s team is aware of what we’re doing here. DNC leadership is aware of what we’re doing here. We’ve been trying to have this conversation in private. This is a moment when over 16,000 children have been killed, with the help of U.S. bombs, in contravention of international humanitarian law and American law. So we were trying to be reasonable. We are reasonable. We feel like we’re being very reasonable. Just let a Palestinian American speak.

And so, the response that we just received is, a speaker is not happening. Could something else work? Would you be open to a private meeting? And I want to be clear: This is a conversation that is long overdue. Our party is long overdue for a reckoning about Palestinian human rights. There is no suppressing this conversation. We will not be silenced. We will not be silenced. If you believe me, say, “We will not be silent.”

PROTESTERS: We will not be silent.

ABBAS ALAWIEH: We will not be silent.

PROTESTERS: We will not be silent.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Abbas Alawieh, the co-founder of the uncommitted movement. Formerly, he was the chief of staff of Congressmember Cori Bush. He, along with other uncommitted delegates and their allies, are still at the sit-in just outside the United Convention Center, waiting for a call from the Democratic National Committee or the Harris campaign.

Joining us here in the studio at CAN TV in Chicago is Jeremiah Ellison. He’s a Minneapolis city councilmember, one of the 30 uncommitted delegates at the DNC. He was at the sit-in last night until the early hours. He was going inside the convention for the speeches and coming outside, as well.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Can you give us an update on what’s taking place just outside? This is a sit-in these uncommitted delegates did not plan to have.

JEREMIAH ELLISON: Yeah, no, we didn’t plan it at all. And, you know, I think we initially thought that our demands were going to get met. We’ve had good conversations with the DNC throughout the week. Abbas and Layla Elabed have been really great about those conversations. But when we were denied the chance to have a speaker — and we’re not asking for someone from uncommitted to speak. We’re not asking for any of our members to speak. We’re asking for a Palestinian American to address the crowd. There are tons of Palestinian American elected officials who have endorsed the administration, who can speak on this issue, who can speak for their families. That’s the request, not for us to be up on that stage. And when the DNC denied that request, it felt like, you know, this is a low bar, we can’t take no for an answer here.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Was there any explanation given?

JEREMIAH ELLISON: No, there was no explanation given, not any that we thought would — you know, not any that was communicated to us, just it’s a no.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go to the sit-in in the second hour of Democracy Now!, where some of the people were sleeping. Also, the executive director of the Democratic National Committee, Roger Lau, stayed overnight to ensure that they weren’t arrested?

JEREMIAH ELLISON: Yeah. I left around 2 a.m. to get some folks home, but that’s my understanding from, you know, my colleagues on the ground, is that Roger Lau was there.

AMY GOODMAN: So, we’ll get more information. Also congressmembers visited the site. Ilhan Omar, congressmember from Minneapolis, your city, and also Summer Lee. On the phone, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congressmember, also called in. Jeremiah, we’re going to ask you to stay with us as we have a discussion about Tim Walz, who has just accepted the nomination as a vice-presidential candidate last night here in Chicago. Jeremiah Ellison is a Minneapolis city councilmember, one of 30 uncommitted delegates at the DNC. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Stevie Wonder performing “Higher Ground” last night at the Democratic National Convention here in Chicago.

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“Stop Sending Bombs”: Rep. Ilhan Omar Visits Uncommitted Sit-In & Demands Israeli Arms Embargo
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 22, 2024

Democracy Now! spoke with Minnesota Congressmember Ilhan Omar late Wednesday outside the Democratic National Convention, where members of the “uncommitted” movement launched a sit-in to demand a Palestinian American be allowed to address the convention from the main stage. Omar said she joined protesters outside the DNC because “there is no compassion in turning our heads away from the piles of dead bodies” in Gaza. “A ceasefire is only possible if we use every leverage that we have, and the biggest leverage that we have is to stop sending bombs,” says Omar, explaining why she is calling for an arms embargo against Israel and an end to “this genocidal war.”

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Delegates from the “uncommitted” movement and their allies launched a sit-in protest Wednesday night after the DNC refused to let a Palestinian American take the main stage, despite allowing the parents of an American Israeli hostage to address the convention. Uncommitted delegates were selected in state Democratic primaries earlier this year to call for an end to the Biden administration’s backing of Israel in its assault on Gaza. The sit-in continued throughout the night and is still ongoing at the time of this broadcast.

Among those who addressed the crowd last night at the sit-in was Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian American who is a Georgia state representative and an uncommitted delegate. She was among the list of speakers offered by the uncommitted movement that the DNC refused to allow onstage. This is some of what she had to say last night.

REP. RUWA ROMMAN: Good evening, everybody. My name is Ruwa Romman. I am a Georgia state representative. I am an elected Democrat. I come from the swing state of Georgia.

We are not here to create any divisions. As my colleagues have said over and over and over again, the only reason we are here — the only reason we are here — is to ensure that Donald Trump will never make it to the White House, and save the lives of the people that we love. It’s about the fact that today I watched my party say, “Our tent can fit anti-choice Republicans,” but it can’t fit an elected official like me? I do not understand. I do not understand why being a Palestinian has become disqualifying in this country.

I don’t know how much more we have to prove. All of us have decade-or-more-long résumés working for this party, because we know that this party is the only one that’s ever tried to meet the promise of our country. We are here to literally save the soul of our party. I do not understand why that is a bad thing.

This would have truly and sincerely been a beautiful gesture to show this party cares about the cries of an Israeli child the same way they care about the cries of a Palestinian child. We are not asking for too much. All we wanted was to be on that stage and show people desperate for hope there is something to hope for.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Georgia state representative, uncommitted delegate Ruwa Romman. Among those who came to the sit-in to express their support were Pennsylvania Congresswoman Summer Lee and Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. I caught up with Congressmember Omar at the sit-in last night.

AMY GOODMAN: The uncommitted delegates are here asking for a Palestinian speaker on the stage of the DNC. Do you support this?

REP. ILHAN OMAR: Yes, I did put in a request for that accommodation to be made, both to the Harris campaign and to the chairman of the DNC. I am hopeful that they will hear. It’s not just me who made that request. There’s multiple leaders within the Democratic Party who are here, have also made that request.

AMY GOODMAN: And the delegates here who have sat down asking for this one response say they’ve been simply told no.

REP. ILHAN OMAR: Mm-hmm. Well, that’s — that’s heartbreaking to learn. That hasn’t been the response. The response was, to me, “Be patient. We’ll figure out something.” And it’s unfortunate if they have been told no.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think there’s still a chance for them to change their minds?

REP. ILHAN OMAR: Every phone call I’ve had, every conversation I’ve had today, has been, “Be patient with us. We’ll figure something out.” So…

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think Vice President Harris takes a different position than President Biden on the issue of an arms embargo, on the issue of stopping supporting Israel’s assault on Gaza?

REP. ILHAN OMAR: She has certainly been more forceful in talking about how this war and its devastation is unconscionable. I do hope that tomorrow we get to hear what her policy positions will be going forward.

AMY GOODMAN: You spoke earlier today. Can you talk about your message?

REP. ILHAN OMAR: My message is, this is not about just winning votes. It’s about living up to the words that we say about caring for our neighbors, for having a heart, for being compassionate. If that is who we are as Democrats, there is no compassion in continuing to fund this genocidal war. There is no compassion in turning our heads away from the piles of dead bodies that have been going on for the last 10 years. There is no compassion and care in simply keeping this the status quo. There is compassion and care in saying we know that a ceasefire is only possible if we use every leverage that we have. And the biggest leverage that we have is to stop sending bombs. Thank you all.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. She visited the sit-in, where we are going right now.

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Uncommitted Delegates Speak Out After Sleeping Outside DNC to Protest Silencing of Palestinian Voices
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 22, 2024

As “uncommitted” delegates continue their sit-in just outside the Democratic National Convention in protest of the party’s refusal to meet demands to platform a Palestinian American speaker on the main stage, we hear from two uncommitted delegates who have made a concerted effort to bring Israel’s war on Gaza to the forefront and to push the Harris campaign on its policy in the Middle East. Asma Mohammed, a campaign manager for Vote Uncommitted Minnesota and a delegate from Minnesota, says there is widespread disappointment and betrayal among delegates who feel their voices in support of Palestinian rights are being ignored. “This level of silencing, this level of exclusion [does] not belong in our Democratic Party,” adds Abbas Alawieh, a co-founder of the Uncommitted National Movement and an uncommitted delegate from Michigan.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Just outside the United Center, the convention center, we’re joined by Asma Mohammed, campaign manager for Vote Uncommitted Minnesota and co-chair of the Minnesota uncommitted delegation, one of the 11 Minnesota uncommitted delegates at the DNC. She spent the entire night at the sit-in, though wasn’t planning to do that, and we were having her on to talk about Governor Walz. She is from Minneapolis.

But right now in this sit-in — that looked like it surprised all of you last night when you got word that your request for a Palestinian American speaker had been denied — can you describe what you understand is happening? I understand that Roger Lau, the executive director of the Democratic National Committee, stayed with you all overnight, concerned that — he wanted to make sure you weren’t arrested. But you haven’t had your demands met. Explain why you’re sitting there, Asma. I know the video might be a little dodgy here, but we thought it was really important to hear your voice from the sit-in site.

ASMA MOHAMMED: Yeah, and I will have Abbas share in a moment, as well. But it was important to sit here, because the demand hasn’t been met. We set the lowest bar for our party. And we’ve gotten questions like, “Why? Why now? Why is now the time?” Because this is our party. I spent over a decade of my life organizing for Democrats up and down the ballot, professionally. It is within my right as a Democrat to ask for a Palestinian. I’m not a Palestinian myself, but I’m advocating for a Palestinian, like Ruwa Romman, like Abdelnasser Rashid, like the brilliant Palestinian elected leaders and representatives that we have, to be able to have a chance to speak to what has been happening in Gaza over the past 10 months, to be able to speak to what they’re feeling right now as Palestinian Americans.

And to have that denied reminded me — it made me feel that this tent, this party, isn’t big enough. And I think for those who are watching, the messages that I’ve been getting from people in my community is: Do we have a place in this party right now? And as a Democrat, I never want to send that message to my people. I never want my people to feel like they don’t have a place in this party. I’m going to give it to Abbas.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, sitting alongside you, Asma, we see Abbas Alawieh, who has also been there overnight. Abbas, if you could talk about how this night has passed and what kind of response you’re expecting now from the DNC?

ABBAS ALAWIEH: Thank you so much. It’s great to be on with you.

As uncommitted delegates, Asma and I are 30 uncommitted delegates who came to the convention supporting a ceasefire that stops the bombs and that reunites all captives, all Israeli and Palestinian captives, with their families. We came here as 30 uncommitted delegates. We’ve been organizing as we’re here. A whole bunch of Harris delegates have joined us. We’re almost 300, what we’re calling, ceasefire delegates. The position that we’re representing is widely popular among Democrats. We need to stop sending weapons that kill civilians. That’s how we achieve a ceasefire. Those are the demands of our movement.

As we are continuing to push those demands, we had a secondary ask, that we thought — we think our demands are very reasonable. Stop killing people we love. But we had a secondary ask that we thought for sure was a slam dunk in the party of representation, in the party where everybody gets to at least be heard. We thought that in the party that allowed for an Uber executive to speak from the main stage — Uber, a company that treats its workers terribly, I might add — in this party, at least they would allow for a Palestinian American to speak from the stage in this moment when our own government has contributed so profoundly, unfortunately, horrifically, to the pain that Palestinians and Palestinian Americans are experiencing.

And so, overnight, we were thinking about our central demand. We need our government to stop sending weapons. We also, honestly, are in a state of shock. This level of silencing, this level of exclusion, this does not belong in our Democratic Party. And we know that the majority of Democratic voters across the country agree with us. We are appalled the Democratic Party leadership have given us an answer of no. We hope that will not be their final answer. We’re still sitting out here right in front of the United Center. I have my phone. I’m waiting for the Democratic Party to call back and tell us, hopefully, that this is not a party that silences Palestinians and those advocating for Palestinian human rights

AMY GOODMAN: When we heard you were having the sit-in and we raced over to the United Center, you all seemed as surprised as anyone to be having this, as you got what you thought at the time was the final no, though nothing is final. But you do have the executive director of the DNC right there, of the Democratic National Committee. Asma Mohammed, is that right? Roger Lau. And can you ask him these questions? I mean, he stayed with you all overnight.

ABBAS ALAWIEH: Yeah. So, we’ve been in touch with a whole bunch of folks, both at the DNC and on Vice President Harris’s team. So it’s not just one individual. We know that everybody in Democratic leadership has been aware of this request. So, the issue isn’t with any one individual.

The issue is with, unfortunately, a systematic problem in our party, a systematic problem in our country, where there are pro-war forces. There are pro-war forces in our country. They’re not the majority. We’re the majority, and we’re going to win. We will end the war. That’s what the American people want. But there are pro-war forces that make money off of every additional bomb that drops and kills babies. That is the difficult thing that we’re sitting in.

And for some reason, after a very long back-and-forth with the DNC, where they — where we were feeding them names, and we were having member of Congress after member of Congress also get in touch with the vice president’s team, and folks pushing from the inside — after all of that, and after we felt we were very close, out of nowhere — out of nowhere, the answer is no. Someone vetoed it. I don’t know who they are. They probably oppose Palestinian human rights. But we are people who support all human rights. We support human rights for all people, including Palestinians. And we are the majority in this country.

ASMA MOHAMMED: Eighty-six percent of Democrats support a ceasefire. I know the people at this convention want to hear from a Palestinian. They need to hear from a Palestinian. As someone who isn’t Palestinian, I want to hear from a Palestinian on that main stage. They deserve that stage. They need that stage. Do you not think that over the last 10 months, that we at least owe Palestinian Americans that? I do.

AMY GOODMAN: Asma, we originally booked you before this sit-in. You were going to be in the studio. You are an uncommitted delegate from Minnesota. And we wanted to ask you — and we’ll end with this question: What is your governor, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who was speaking inside the convention center, where you planned to be last night, as you all sat down outside — what is his position around the uncommitted delegates and around Gaza?

ASMA MOHAMMED: Around uncommitted voters, he’s been actually very kind. After we 46,000 voters joined us to say that we want an end to the genocide, he said, “Those people need to be heard.” And right now he has an opportunity to tell his running mate to hear us. He has an opportunity to say, “We need to let them take the main stage.” He has an opportunity to say, “We need to stop sending bombs.” So, if he feels like we need to be heard, like he said on March 6th, the day after the primary election in Minnesota, then he needs to make that very clear in this moment, because, as Minnesotans, we always, always reference late Senator Paul Wellstone, and we say, “We all do better when we all do better.” Well, I think that includes Palestinians, too.

AMY GOODMAN: Asma Mohammed, we want to thank you so much for being with us, an uncommitted delegate from Minnesota, and Abbas Alawieh, an uncommitted delegate from Michigan. They are both taking part in a sit-in. We’re speaking to them where they are, just outside the United Center, just outside the Democratic National Convention.

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“So Horrific”: Doctor Recounts Treating Patients in Gaza Injured in Massacres Enabled by U.S. Bombs
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 22, 2024

Tanya Haj-Hassan is a pediatric intensive care physician who has volunteered in Gaza multiple times over the past 10 months. She joins us to recount what she witnessed there and to explain why she is calling for an end to U.S. support for the Israeli military and the resumption of comprehensive humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Over the course of Israel’s assault, Haj-Hassan has treated victims of “massacre after massacre,” with injuries and casualties “enabled by American bombs.” She joins demands for Palestinian voices to be allowed to address the convention onstage and argues that Democratic Party leadership’s refusal is part of a systematic “process of dehumanization” targeting Palestinians.

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And we’re joined now by Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care surgeon who volunteered in Gaza many times. Earlier this week, she spoke at the first-ever panel on Palestinian human rights held at a Democratic convention. “Uncommitted” delegates had asked the DNC to allow Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan to speak on the main stage, but she’s not been invited.

Dr. Tanya, welcome back to the show. So, if you could just begin by saying, if you had been given the opportunity to speak on the main stage of the Democratic National Convention, what would you have said?

DR. TANYA HAJ-HASSAN: So, I think — you know, I’m an American citizen. Every American physician and surgeon that I know that’s been to Gaza and returned comes back with the same very urgent message. And in fact, when I was first contacted about potentially coming and speaking, I rang the other American doctors and surgeons that I know to see if any of them would be available to join me here in Chicago, and I got an overwhelming response of yes from everybody, with the exception of one person who couldn’t swap out of their shifts. And so, that tells you how much we all feel like we need to deliver this message.

You cannot unsee what you witness there. It is so horrific, so egregious. And we know that it’s being funded by American bombs, and it’s being enabled by American bombs, and in direct contrast to demonstrated realities on the ground, documented realities on the ground, universal condemnation from international human rights and humanitarian organizations, and findings by the ICJ of plausible genocide.

And so, I would have liked to get up on stage and say, look, for the last 10 months, we have witnessed massacre after massacre — massacres of schools where internally displaced people were sheltering, massacres outside of hospitals, massacres of — a flour massacre, water distribution site massacres, humanitarian distribution site massacres. And we have witnessed as our healthcare worker colleagues have been detained, tortured, killed. We have witnessed, as healthcare workers, healthcare workers, journalists and humanitarian workers have been killed at an unprecedented and in record-breaking numbers.

And we feel very much — particularly when we know that international journalists are not let inside of Gaza for the last 10 months, we feel like our witness becomes particularly important. You know, I work for an organization called Médecins Sans Frontières, Doctors Without Borders. And one of our core principles is témoignage, the concept of bearing witness. And that was an organization founded by journalists and doctors, with the understanding that when atrocities are committed anywhere in the world, it’s very important that we bear witness to those atrocities. And that’s particularly important as a physician, when you’re trained not only to treat disease, but to prevent disease and illness. And there’s a very easy way, well within the grasp of the American government, to prevent this disease. But instead, we are enabling it.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Tanya, you’re a pediatric intensive care physician, so can you tell us the story of a child in Gaza that stays with you even as you have left?

DR. TANYA HAJ-HASSAN: I mean, it’s hard, Amy. There are so many stories. It’s really heartbreaking. Every single day, I would sit down and try and find five minutes alone to kind of reflect on what happened throughout my day. And this is a practice I’ve always had in medicine. You know, when a patient of mine dies, I take a minute — sometimes I go to the bathroom, sometimes I do it in the patient’s room — just to kind of honor that person. There was no time. There was no time.

You know, I remember — I remember trying to resuscitate two children at the same time, along with my Palestinian colleagues, on a bed, and there were no family members around for either child. They were cousins. And one of their families — the entire family of one of them was killed. Maybe even fortunately for him, he ended up dying, too. And the other one, both of her parents were severely injured in the same attack, and so weren’t at her bedside. And it’s really heartbreaking.

I shared the story the day before yesterday of a child who had lost his parents and all of his siblings, bar one sister who was burned beyond recognition and in the bed next to him while we were treating him. And he kept calling her name, because he didn’t recognize that this body in the bed next to him, burned beyond recognition, was his sister. She died about two days later in the intensive care unit, and he survived, with horrible injuries, but will be — will function well. However, I don’t know how he would ever psychologically survive from that. He told me the following day that he wished he had died. He said, “Everybody I love is in heaven. I don’t want to be here anymore.” And this is the daily reality. This was in March. My colleague, a pain doctor in Gaza, who’s trying to practice pain relief for patients right now, as we speak, without adequate access to pain medications, told me two days ago that children around him are wishing for death.

And, Amy, just importantly, for what’s happening right now outside the DNC, I’m not Palestinian. I know there are a lot of rumors going around that I am Palestinian. I’m not. And, in fact, it would be an honor to be a Palestinian, particularly today, as I watch my Palestinian colleagues come in day after day after day to the hospital, dedicating every ounce of their being to their patients, despite having been displaced five times, having had their own family members killed, knowing that they’re a target of this — a clear target of this military campaign, with over 500 of them killed, some executed, and many detained and tortured. I am not a Palestinian. But I think the fact that people are trying to discredit me by calling me a Palestinian is very telling of how we view the Palestinian voice. You know, Palestinians are humans, are wonderful human beings. And this constant effort to dehumanize is so destructive, not only to the Palestinians themselves, but for the perpetrators of this dehumanization. When you dehumanize others, you dehumanize yourself. And I’m really sad to see that the DNC is a part of this process of dehumanization, of not giving Palestinians a voice where they deserve it.

And I don’t want to be speaking on that platform. I want one of my Palestinian colleagues, and certainly one of the Palestinian delegates would be — but if you’re looking for a medical voice, I would have wanted one of my Palestinians in Gaza to be on that platform, people like Dr. Hammam Alloh, who you interviewed, who said he was not going to leave his patients. He said, “If I leave my patients, who will treat them?” So he didn’t evacuate and was killed. Or people like Dr. Mahmoud, a Doctors Without Borders physician, who stayed at Al-Awda Hospital and wrote on a board, “Whoever stays will tell our story. Remember us.” He was killed. That sign that he wrote was destroyed. This is the reality for healthcare workers in Gaza right now. And they are the ones who should be speaking right now, not me.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, first case of polio, 10-month-old infant in Gaza, the crisis of a disease that was eradicated decades ago there, and how it affects children, and the demand for all the children of Gaza to be inoculated?

DR. TANYA HAJ-HASSAN: Amy, the resurgence of polio is a symptom. It’s a symptom of the bigger disease, and it’s very concerning. It’s a deadly disease. It causes paralysis. Particularly deadly is the paralysis of the breathing muscles, that would require you to be on a ventilator. If that were to happen, there aren’t enough ventilators. There aren’t enough intensive care beds. The majority of the hospitals in Gaza have been destroyed. There are a remaining few partially functioning hospitals. So it would be a death sentence for many people who contract the disease, not to mention the public health disaster of the resurgence of an eradicated, very contagious disease.

But it is a symptom of these unlivable conditions that have been architectured by this military campaign — destruction of sewage systems, destruction of clean water supply, people living in overcrowded conditions, over a thousand people sharing a bathroom or a shower. These are the sort of conditions that are not compatible with life and that are very compatible with the resurgence of these sorts of eradicated diseases. We were already seeing measles, hepatitis, other communicable diseases that you see when people are in crowded circumstances, like they are in Gaza right now.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you for being with us. And for people to hear Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan’s testimony before the first-ever Palestinian human rights panel held by the Democratic National Convention — it was a side event of the convention itself — you can go to democracynow.org. Dr. Haj-Hassan is a pediatric intensive care physician, served many times in Gaza hospitals, co-founder of the social media account Gaza Medic Voices, which shares firsthand accounts from healthcare professionals in Gaza.

Coming up, we host a roundtable on an issue that’s received very little attention here at the DNC: the climate crisis. We’ll be back in a minute.

[admin]

Headlines

Kamala Harris Accepts Democratic Presidential Nomination, Backs Israel While Calling for End to War
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 23, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris formally accepted the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday night here in Chicago. Harris is the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to be nominated for president by a major party. Before a thunderous crowd, Harris, who was California’s top prosecutor before becoming a senator, then vice president, laid out her case against Donald Trump.

Vice President Kamala Harris: “Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails and how he would use the immense powers of the presidency of the United States not to improve your life, not to strengthen our national security, but to serve the only client he has ever had: himself.”

During her speech, Kamala Harris reiterated her support for Israel while also calling for its U.S.-backed war on Gaza to end.

Vice President Kamala Harris: “President Biden and I are working to end this war, such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.”

Uncommitted Delegates Walk DNC Halls Arm in Arm After Being Denied Opportunity to Take the Stage
Aug 23, 2024

Protests continued Thursday with thousands of people taking to Chicago’s streets for the March on the DNC. Protesters rallied into the night as Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic presidential nomination on the DNC stage. Demonstrators had planned to march toward the convention site but were blocked by hundreds of police in riot gear who forced the march to disperse. Democracy Now! was there. We asked protesters what their message is to Vice President Harris.

Beneen Prendiville: “I am asking her to look into her humanity and to look at photos like this and recognize that this is what happens every day, hundreds of times a day, for decades, and in particular the last 10 months.”

The protester held up a photo on her cellphone of a Palestinian child with burn wounds on their face.

Meanwhile, delegates from the “uncommitted” movement locked arms and walked inside the DNC halls wearing Palestinian keffiyehs, one day after the DNC refused to allow a Palestinian American speaker to take the main stage. Uncommitted delegates circled the halls of the United Center arm in arm.

The powerful United Auto Workers union is the latest group to condemn the exclusion of Palestinian voices from the DNC, saying in a statement, “If we want the war in Gaza to end, we can’t put our heads in the sand or ignore the voices of the Palestinian Americans in the Democratic Party.”

New Round of Ceasefire Talks in Cairo as Israel Rebuffs Demand to Withdraw Troops from Gaza
Aug 23, 2024

In Gaza, the U.N. says it will begin vaccinating children against polio by the end of the month, amid fears of a massive outbreak. This comes as Israeli attacks continue to kill besieged Gazans as soldiers ramp up operations in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and Khan Younis in the south.

Israeli negotiators have returned for more ceasefire talks in Cairo as Israel continues to rebuff Hamas’s demand for Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza. On Thursday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the U.N. Security Council a ceasefire and hostage deal is “now in sight.” Riyad Mansour, Palestine’s U.N. envoy, also addressed the Security Council Thursday.

Riyad Mansour: “Stop the bleeding in Gaza. Impose an immediate ceasefire. Stop the suffering. Protect our children and all our civilians, as international law and our collective humanity demand. End this genocide. End it now.”

Israel has killed over 40,200 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7 and injured over 93,000, though those official tallies are certainly far lower than the true toll.

Israeli Forces Kill 3 Palestinians, Destroy Homes in West Bank Raid on Tulkarm
Aug 23, 2024

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces killed three Palestinians during an attack Thursday on the Tulkarm refugee camp, where the Israeli military has been conducting near-daily raids. The repeated Israeli assaults have been described as collective punishment, intended to terrorize and dispossess the local population. This is a homeowner in Tulkarm whose house was destroyed during the raid.

Maha Issa: “We are like other people. They say there is a raid and a military operation, so we flee the house, because they usually attack this neighborhood. We went to my brother’s house. While at my brother’s home, we saw on social media that our house was blown up.”

In other news from the occupied West Bank, the Norwegian Refugee Council is calling on the international community to take meaningful action after noting Israeli settler violence has triggered the largest forcible transfer since the weeks just after October 7. The NRC said the ongoing attacks are “occurring in broad daylight under the watching eyes and the protective force of the Israeli military, [and] highlight the unlawfulness of Israel’s presence in the West Bank, as recently ruled by the International Court of Justice.”

Israel’s War on Palestinian Territories Has Driven a Spike in Water-Related Violence
Aug 23, 2024

A new report from the Pacific Institute finds a 50% increase over the past year in global water-related violence as a direct result of Israel’s attacks on Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Attacks by Israeli settlers and the Israeli military on Palestinian water supplies accounted for a quarter of all water-related conflicts last year.

University of California Bans Protest Encampments in Wake of Student Uprising for Gaza
Aug 23, 2024

In other education news, the president of the University of California has ordered all 10 UC campuses to ban protest encampments, as well as wearing face masks on campus as the new school year kicks off. The order comes months after students at U.S. college campuses set off a nationwide uprising in solidarity with Gaza. Many schools cracked down on the peaceful protests, violently clearing encampments and suspending students who took part in them.

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“Historic Moment”: Barbara Ransby on the Symbolism & Shortcomings of Kamala Harris’s Nomination
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 22, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris formally accepted the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday night at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, making history as the first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to be nominated for president by a major party. Her ascent to the top of the Democratic Party comes just over a month after President Biden dropped out of the race. We play excerpts from her speech and speak with historian Barbara Ransby, who says that while the nomination “breaks a barrier,” it’s important to note the “contradictions,” as well. ​​”Yes, it breaks barriers. Yes, it is a historic moment in a certain sense. But we have to also talk about the gravity of this moment and the politics that Kamala Harris brings with her,” says Ransby, who criticizes Harris for her pro-Israel policy and for refusing to let Palestinian Americans address the convention. “I was glad to hear her mention the suffering of the Palestinian people, but, of course, it didn’t ring true. It rang a little bit hollow, because the Biden administration could stop much of that suffering by not sending 2,000-pound bombs and $3 billion a year to the Israeli government.”

Transcript

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

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Vice President Kamala Harris formally accepted the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday night here in Chicago. Harris is the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to be nominated for the president by a major party. Her nomination came just over a month after President Biden dropped out of the race. Before a thunderous crowd at the United Convention, Harris laid out her case against Donald Trump.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Fellow Americans, this election is not only the most important of our lives, it is one of the most important in the life of our nation. In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man. But the consequences — but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.

Consider — consider not only the chaos and calamity when he was in office, but also the gravity of what has happened since he lost the last election. Donald Trump tried to throw away your votes. When he failed, he sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol, where they assaulted law enforcement officers. When politicians in his own party begged him to call off the mob and send help, he did the opposite: He fanned the flames. And now, for an entirely different set of crimes, he was found guilty of fraud by a jury of everyday Americans and, separately — and, separately, found liable for committing sexual abuse.

And consider — consider what he intends to do if we give him power again. Consider his explicit intent to set free violent extremists who assaulted those law enforcement officers at the Capitol; his explicit intent to jail journalists, political opponents and anyone he sees as the enemy; his explicit intent to deploy our active-duty military against our own citizens.

Consider — consider the power he will have, especially after the United States Supreme Court just ruled that he would be immune from criminal prosecution. Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails and how he would use the immense powers of the presidency of the United States not to improve your life, not to strengthen our national security, but to serve the only client he has ever had: himself.

And we know — and we know what a second Trump term would look like. It’s all laid out in Project 2025, written by his closest advisers. And its sum total is to pull our country back to the past.

But, America, we are not going back. We are not going back. We are not going back. We are not going back to when Donald Trump tried to cut Social Security and Medicare. We are not going back to when he tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, when insurance companies could deny people with preexisting conditions. We are not going to let him eliminate the Department of Education that funds our public schools.

AMY GOODMAN: Kamala Harris, speaking on Thursday night at the Democratic National Convention. We’ll get response to her acceptance speech when we come back with Barbara Ransby, historian, author and activist. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “Think” by Aretha Franklin, featuring Blues Brothers. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” We are “Breaking with Convention.” We’re here in Chicago for the last day of our five-day expanded two-hour broadcasts from the Democratic National Convention. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we continue our coverage of Vice President Kamala Harris, who formally accepted the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday night here in Chicago. If Harris wins in November, she will become the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to be nominated for president by a major party.

AMY GOODMAN: We are joined now by historian, author and activist Barbara Ransby. She’s a professor of Black studies, gender and women’s studies and history at the University of Illinois Chicago. Ransby’s latest book is Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the 21st Century.

Welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us, Professor Ransby. Well, it was a historic night in many ways. You have Vice President Harris accepting the presidential nomination before 20,000 people. Many of the women — though she wasn’t, many of the women were dressed in white to honor the original suffragists. Can you talk about the significance of this moment and what Vice President Harris did and didn’t say?

BARBARA RANSBY: What she did and didn’t say. Thanks for having me, Amy, and welcome to Chicago. I don’t have to say welcome to Juan, because he is here with us.

But yeah, I mean, it’s a historic moment in a lot of ways. Certainly it breaks a barrier. You know, I never thought I would see a Black woman nominated. But, you know, I want to speak to the historic significance, but I also want to talk about the contradictions — right? — that Kamala Harris, unlike others who have, you know, fought for inclusion in Democratic Party at the convention, isn’t coming out of the same kind of movement. She has ties to the civil rights movement through her mother, and she also participated in the anti-apartheid movement. But, really, you know, I think a lot of what I appreciate about this generation of activists is the deemphasis on representation and the emphasis on politics and the emphasis on where do you stand on issues. And if we think about a tradition of Black women in politics, including in the Democratic Party — right? — it has been pushing the conscience of the Democratic Party toward a radical inclusivity, toward some of the most oppressed sectors of our community and all communities.

And so, yes, it is significant in terms of representation, but, again, at a time when representation is limited. We have a multiracial right-wing movement, by the way. So representation is not the goal, and, you know, I just want to deemphasize in some ways. I mean, of course, we can talk about, you know, a larger political lineage which she is connected to, but I know — you know, I hope — I think we’re going to talk about Fannie Lou Hamer and others — but I think of someone like Abbas Alawieh as much more in the tradition of Fannie Lou Hamer than a Kamala Harris. So, yes, it breaks barriers. Yes, you know, it is a historic moment in a certain sense. But we have to also talk about the gravity of this moment and the politics that Kamala Harris brings with her. So, that is my historian’s view and my activist’s view.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And your response to the DNC’s decision to not allow a Palestinian American voice on the stage?

BARBARA RANSBY: Disgraceful. Absolutely disgraceful. I mean, and it was such a small ask. You know, we’re witnessing genocide in Gaza right now. And many of our hearts are breaking, certainly our Palestinian friends and colleagues here who have lost dozens of family members — people you’ve had on your show — who tell harrowing stories, the physicians who have gone there and seen the devastation of children, hospitals bombed, etc. So, you know, a minimum of decency would have been to allow for a Palestinian voice on that stage.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I’m wondering, the whole week, for those of us who remember the old Democratic conventions, the first convention that I covered as a reporter was —

BARBARA RANSBY: Yeah, you were raising trouble in ’68, I hear.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Right, but the first one I actually covered inside was in 1984.

BARBARA RANSBY: OK.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what has struck me about this convention and the last several is the level of mass — of choreography of mass spectacle.

BARBARA RANSBY: Yes.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: There are no — back in the '60s, ’70s and even the ’80s, individual delegates could hold up their own signs. You know, the cameras would show dissent in the audience. Now we're talking about a Democratic Party where every single banner is controlled —

BARBARA RANSBY: Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — and decided by the organizers of the convention. And everyone, like sheep —

BARBARA RANSBY: Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — get up and hold the same signs at the appropriate times that they’ve been told to do it.

BARBARA RANSBY: A little creepy.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And so, you really have no dissent —

BARBARA RANSBY: Right, right.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — visible at all —

BARBARA RANSBY: Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — within a supposedly democratic party.

AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, on the floor, it was the Minnesota delegation — and that’s an interesting delegation. They had 10 uncommitteds —

BARBARA RANSBY: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — people who would not commit to —

BARBARA RANSBY: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — well, President Biden at the time, when voting in the primary. And they held up the names of Palestinians who had died in Gaza. And immediately, the other delegates in the Minnesota delegation, well prepared, held up “U.S.A.” signs that covered all of those signs.

BARBARA RANSBY: Oh boy, yeah. I missed that. That’s interesting.

AMY GOODMAN: And then you had the unfurling of the banner earlier in the week — this was in the Florida delegation —

BARBARA RANSBY: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — by a Florida delegate, a Connecticut delegate and a delegate from Michigan, that said “Stop Arming Israel.” And they immediately put up signs, placards that said “We Love Joe.” It was Monday night when Joe Biden was speaking.

BARBARA RANSBY: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And immediately, some of the runners for that Florida delegation started handing out dozens of placards, and so they had more and more to cover the banner —

BARBARA RANSBY: Yeah, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — because that was particularly large.

BARBARA RANSBY: Concealing and containing protest in this sort of cosmetic appearance of unity, when there was dissent in that room, not just the uncommitted delegates, but others. But it has a carnivalesque feel to it. And the real conversations and the real passions and debates were happening outside.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s stay inside for a minute.

BARBARA RANSBY: OK.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to Kamala Harris addressing the issue of Israel-Palestine and Israel’s war on Gaza.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: With respect to the war in Gaza, President Biden and I are working around the clock, because now is the time to get a hostage deal and a ceasefire deal done.

And let me be clear. And let me be clear: I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself, because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on October 7, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival.

At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating — so many innocent lives lost; desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking.

President Biden and I are working to end this war, such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.

And know this: I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Vice President Kamala Harris in her acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination for president, speaking here in Chicago at the United Center. Professor Ransby, your response?

BARBARA RANSBY: Well, I was glad to hear her mention the suffering of the Palestinian people, but, of course, it didn’t ring true. It rang a little bit hollow, because the Biden administration could stop much of that suffering, you know, by not sending 2,000-pound bombs and $3 billion a year to the Israeli government. So, you know, it would have been backed up by action, if it would have been backed up by allowing a Palestinian speaker to speak in their own terms, that part would have resonated.

But, of course, talking about Israel’s right to defense disguises the fact that this is an offensive war, offensive on every level that that word means something, right? And the United States is facilitating it. And the 40,000 Palestinian lives — I mean, you all absorb these numbers every day in your reports, but it is — it was not enough. It was the wrong message. And, you know, a throwaway line about Palestinian suffering does not get it.

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Watch: Palestinian American Lawmaker Gives Speech the DNC Wouldn’t Allow on Stage
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Aug 23, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic nomination Thursday after a four-day convention in Chicago where her campaign refused to allow a Palestinian American to take the stage to address Israel’s war on Gaza. We hear Georgia state Representative Ruwa Romman, who was among the list of speakers offered by the Uncommitted National Movement that the Harris campaign rejected, reading the speech she would have given on the convention floor had the DNC and the Harris campaign allowed her onstage.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s go to what wouldn’t have been a throwaway line.

BARBARA RANSBY: OK.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is what the “uncommitted” delegates attempted to get all week. You have Harris accepting the Democratic nomination Thursday night, after a four-day convention where the Harris campaign refused to allow a Palestinian American to take the stage. There were private negotiations that were going on throughout the week. But at a news conference on Thursday, delegates with the uncommitted movement said the Democratic National Committee told them it was the Harris campaign that denied their request to have a Palestinian American speak. After receiving the news on Wednesday, many of the delegates and their allies staged a sit-in and spent the night on the sidewalk just outside the United Center.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: [Uncommitted delegates were selected] in state Democratic primaries earlier this year to call for an end to the Biden administration’s backing of Israel in its assault on Gaza and for an arms embargo. The Uncommitted National Movement called on Harris to come to Michigan, where the uncommitted movement was launched, to meet with them and discuss U.S. policy on Israel-Palestine by September 15th.

AMY GOODMAN: Among those who spoke at the press conference yesterday was Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian American who is a Georgia state representative in the Georgia Legislature. She was among a list of speakers offered by the uncommitted movement that the Harris campaign refused to allow onstage. In her remarks, she read out the speech that she would have given at the convention had the convention allowed a Palestinian American onstage. This is Ruwa Romman.

REP. RUWA ROMMAN: So, what I’m about to read to you is, frankly, very sanitized. It was meant to have an opportunity to represent a Palestinian voice. But I’m incredibly dismayed, because we came here to offer a gift. We came here to offer an opportunity to bridge the gap between our party and our voters, because when you looked around that convention, everybody — I mean, you literally looked around, so many people wearing their pins, their keffiyehs, their flags. It’s very unfortunate.

My name is Ruwa Romman, and I’m honored to be the first Palestinian elected to public office in the great state of Georgia and the first Palestinian to ever speak at the Democratic National Convention.

My story begins in a small village near Jerusalem called Suba, where my dad’s family is from. My mom’s roots trace back to al-Khalil, or Hebron. My parents, born in Jordan, brought us to Georgia when I was 8, where I now live with my wonderful husband and our sweet pets.

Growing up, my grandfather and I shared a special bond. He was my partner-in-chief, whether it was sneaking me sweets from a bodega or slipping me a 20 into my pocket with that familiar wink and a smile. He was my rock. But he passed away a few years ago, never seeing Suba or any part of Palestine again. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss him.

This past year has been especially hard. As we’ve been moral witnesses to the massacres in Gaza, I’ve thought of him, wondering if this was the pain he knew too well. When we watched Palestinians displaced from one end of the Gaza Strip to the other, I wanted to ask him: How did he find the strength to walk all of those miles decades ago and leave everything behind?

But in this pain, I’ve also witnessed something profound: a beautiful, multifaith, multiracial and multigenerational coalition rising from despair within our Democratic Party. For 320 days, we’ve stood together demanding to enforce our laws on friend and foe alike, to reach a ceasefire, end the killing of Palestinians, free all the Israeli and Palestinian hostages, and to begin the difficult work of building a path to collective peace and safety. That’s why we are here, members of this Democratic Party committed to equal rights and dignity for all. What we do here echoes around the world. They’ll say this is how it’s always been, that nothing can change. But remember Fannie Lou Hamer, shunned for her courage, yet she paved the way for an integrated Democratic Party. Her legacy lives on, and it’s her example we follow.

But we can’t do it alone. This historic moment is full of promise, but only if we stand together. Our party’s greatest strength has always been our ability to unite. Some see that as a weakness, but it’s time we flex that strength. Let’s commit to each other, to electing Vice President Harris and defeating Donald Trump, who uses my identity as a Palestinian as a slur. Let’s fight for the policies long overdue, from restoring access to abortions to ensuring a living wage, to demanding an end to reckless war and a ceasefire in Gaza.

To those who doubt us, to the cynics and the naysayers, I say, “Yes, we can.” Yes, we can be a Democratic Party that prioritizes funding our schools and hospitals, not for endless wars, that fights for an America that belongs to all of us — Black, Brown and white, Jews and Palestinians — all of us, like my grandfather taught me, together.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Ruwa Romman, a Palestinian American who is a Georgia state representative, reading the speech she would have given had the Harris campaign allowed a Palestinian American to speak onstage.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: After holding a press conference outside, uncommitted delegates locked arms and walked inside the convention hall wearing Palestinian keffiyehs.

UNCOMMITTED DELEGATE: We are going to walk in single file. Abbas and I will lead the way. [inaudible]

JUNE ROSE: What we’re demonstrating is that in a party that stands for freedom, there should be space for freedom for Palestine. So we’re taking up space as we walk a full lap of the halls of the United Center to stand for a free Palestine, to make sure that every person in this arena right now has to think about Palestine, as the war has killed over 16,000 Palestinian children, as the Israeli government uses bombs provided by the United States. We take up this space. We take this to the delegates head on, to our elected officials head on, with our message of peace, of freedom, of no more war, of no more violence, a future safe for Israelis and Palestinians alike, Jews and Muslims alike.

UNCOMMITTED DELEGATES: Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now! Ceasefire now!

HASSAN SAFFOURI: My name is Hassan Saffouri.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Do you feel that the other delegates in this convention see you?

HASSAN SAFFOURI: I hope they do. I don’t know that they have so far. I know that in the last couple of days, there have been a couple of moments where they have tried to block us. And when we did the roll call, there were delegates who stood up and took their signs, “U.S.A., U.S.A.,” and blocked us so that the media couldn’t see us. Now, that’s not just having blinders on. That’s putting blinders on. So, we want to make sure that that doesn’t happen anymore. I’m sure that the whole delegation, that everybody here is seeing us now.

UNCOMMITTED DELEGATES: I believe that we will win! I believe that we will win! I believe that we will win! I believe that we will win! I believe that we will win!

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was the protest — that was the uncommitted delegates walking arm in arm inside the convention center through the halls before they took their seats in their various delegations.

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Thousands March Against U.S. Arming of Israel as Harris Accepts Presidential Nomination
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
August 23, 2024

Thousands of protesters marched on the DNC on Thursday night calling for an end to U.S. aid to Israel. Protesters rallied into the night as Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic presidential nomination on the DNC stage. Demonstrators had planned to march toward the convention site but were blocked by hundreds of police in riot gear who forced the march to disperse. We hear from some of the protesters who took to the streets.

Transcript

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

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Meanwhile, outside, thousands of protesters marched on the DNC calling for an end to U.S. aid to Israel. The protesters rallied into the night as Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic presidential nomination on the DNC stage. They had planned to march toward the convention site but were blocked by hundreds of police in riot gear, who forced the march to disperse.

AMY GOODMAN: Democracy Now!’s María Taracena was in the streets speaking to protesters.

MARÍA TARACENA: If you had the opportunity to deliver a message to Vice President Kamala Harris, what would you tell her?

BENEEN PRENDIVILLE: I am asking her to look into her humanity and to look at photos like this and recognize that this is what happens every day, hundreds of times a day, for decades, and in particular the last 10 months. And our humanity, the Palestinian people’s humanity, does not rely upon the humanity of others, meaning it does not need to be within that context, meaning I am sick of seeing the media only relay the inhumane conditions in Gaza within the context — or, October 7th within the context of what is happening to Israelis. It just has to stop.

MARÍA TARACENA: Could you describe the photo that you were showing us?

BENEEN PRENDIVILLE: This is a child that has been burned. There’s no anesthesia. There’s no antibiotics. This child is suffering in filth and pain. And this is just one out of tens of thousands.

EDUARDO: This didn’t start on October 7th. And I don’t think — and it’s ahistorical to pretend that it did. You know, this has been an almost centurylong liberation struggle. My partner is Palestinian. And everybody that knows a Palestinian knows their family’s Nakba story. I know my partner’s grandparents’ Nakba story. They came from a town called al-Lidd in '48. And, you know, you can't erase a people off the face of a planet.

I’m a Chicano. My family’s from Guadalajara, so I’m wearing a Mexican flag around my back and a keffiyeh on my neck and a Sox hat on my head, because I’m a Chicagoan. Ni de aquí, ni de allá. But, you know, I don’t know. I think that people in struggles recognize each other in this moment.

JOSEPHINE GUILBEAU: The message we want to give is that veterans, we understand what’s self-defense. We understand what war is. What we are witnessing, the footage coming out, is not self-defense. This is not war. This is a genocide. We have a duty as a country to follow international laws, to respect the Geneva Conventions. And we’re not doing that right now by unconditionally supporting a country, a foreign country, who’s committing a genocide.

PROTESTERS: The whole world is watching!

AMY GOODMAN: Just a few of the thousands of people who marched through the streets of Chicago on Thursday night. Special thanks to Democracy Now!’s María Taracena and Hana Elias.

Coming up, we look at how Shirley Chisholm and Fannie Lou Hamer helped pave the way for Kamala Harris. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “Hold On I’m Coming” by Sam & Dave, written by Isaac Hayes. The Hayes family has sued Donald Trump for copyright infringement for using the song in his campaign. They say, since 2022, since telling him to stop, he has used it more than 120 times at various rallies and events.

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“A Testament to Our Power”: Chicago’s Little Palestine Resists Racism, Disenfranchisement & War
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
August 23, 2024

The city of Chicago, which hosted the 2024 Democratic convention, is home to the highest concentration of Palestinian Americans in the United States. In the suburbs of the city, residents of Bridgeview — known as “Little Palestine” — have been hard hit by Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed over 40,200 Palestinians. We take a tour of Little Palestine, where Palestinian flags and signs reading “Free Palestine” adorn many of the streets and businesses, and traditional pastry and coffee shops have colorful murals of Palestinian landscapes on their walls. And we speak with residents about how they are organizing against anti-Palestinian racism and pushing for an end to uncritical U.S. support for Israel.

Transcript

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

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We’re broadcasting from Chicago, which is home to the highest concentration of Palestinian Americans in the United States. In the suburbs of the city, residents of the Bridgeview, known as “Little Palestine,” have been hard hit by Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed over 40,200 Palestinians, including thousands of children, since October, though the true toll is likely much higher.

AMY GOODMAN: Democracy Now!’s María Taracena and Hana Elias visited Little Palestine this week to get a tour of the neighborhood.

JENIN ALHARITHI: So, right now we’re driving, and it’s like the southwest suburbs of Chicago. So, this consists of, like, Bridgeview, Little Palestine, which is — it’s called Little Palestine. And just like the other southwest suburbs that are surrounding it, there’s a huge Arab population, there are huge Muslim populations. I think this community really, like, started being established in the late '80s, ’90s. And there's a huge diasporic people here of Palestinians, and we’ve been so ingrained in the community here.

There’s a lot of people here directly affected by what’s happening in Gaza and what’s happening in Palestine, in regards to the occupation and in regards to state violence from the U.S. There was a lot of FBI surveillance in the late '90s, and especially after 9/11, on community leaders here and on the mosques here in the community, that actually traumatized a lot of families in the neighborhoods. And after October 7th, definitely, we've seen hate crimes, and we’ve seen a lot of violence. But I think our numbers are so strong, and we’re so powerful. And the fact that we are so big and so present in this city is just a huge, like, testament to our, like, power, our cause, and how strong we are as Palestinians, and also just as just a community that’s very, like, unified here in Chicago.

MARÍA TARACENA: Which business are we standing in front of?

JENIN ALHARITHI: Right now we’re in front of Al Basha Sweets. They are Palestinian-owned.

[translated] Hello. How are you?

RAZAN: [translated] My name is Razan, and I’m the cashier and manager at Al Basha Sweets. Here, we have donations for Gaza. Anyone who wants to donate to Gaza can take a free sweet, then donate. And then the donation goes to a company that sends the money to Gaza. We try to help in whatever way we can, in a simple way. We will try what we can. And these stickers, too, the payment goes to Gaza.

MARÍA TARACENA: So, we’re in Little Palestine. Where are you taking us right now?

JENIN ALHARITHI: So, right now we’re going to one of the biggest coffeehouses here in the neighborhood, in the area. It’s Palestinian-owned. They opened up a few months ago, but they’ve actually been really, really successful.

WASIF IBRAHIM: My name is Wasif Ibrahim. You know, it’s a place for people in the community to come together. We basically started on this project after October 7.

MARÍA TARACENA: Why is it so important to support a Palestinian-owned business during a time where pro-Palestinian voices, Palestinian rights voices have faced so much backlash?

WASIF IBRAHIM: So, when all this happened, we kind of seen where these corporations took their stance, and we believed that we needed alternatives where we could support ourselves, not only in the sense that — from a business perspective, but also being there for each other, for one another, at such a crucial time. Being in Little Palestine, you know, we need that support system to support one another, because you see our politics and our government doesn’t really do a good job of supporting us. So we have to be there for one another.

MARÍA TARACENA: Where is your family from, and how many generations does it go back?

WASIF IBRAHIM: I’m first generation. So, my family is from Burqa, Nablus. So, my parents’ generation were born in Kuwait. And then, for me and my siblings, we were all born here in Chicago.

Enjoy.

NESREEN HASAN: Originally, Little Palestine was on the South Side of Chicago in the inner city. And they actually used to call it al-mukhayyam, which means refugee camp. And so, many Palestinians started to come here after the '67 War. Some were displaced in ’48, and then they got displaced again in ’67, very similar to my family's experience.

MARÍA TARACENA: You’ve been a community organizer for at least 15 years. Could you talk about what inspired you to get involved?

NESREEN HASAN: The issues that been having — the Palestinian community has been having has been over 76 years. You know, I actually come from an activist family. When my grandfather came to this country, he wanted a community center, and he actually was one of the founders of the first-ever Arab American community center. So I kind of have it in my family. And so, you know, I would also say Obama’s failed promises motivated me to go into community organizing.

MARÍA TARACENA: How does the rhetoric coming out of the Biden administration in regards to its support of Israel, in regards to Gaza, also the way that Biden officials have described pro-Palestinian protest, a lot of them led by students on college campuses, as antisemitic and other demonizing language — how has this rhetoric translated into violent attacks and targeting of Palestinian community members, including here in Illinois, outside of Chicago?

NESREEN HASAN: After October 7th, he enacted anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia. It manifested. People took him seriously, like you just pointed out. Wadea al-Fayoume, a 6-year-old boy, whose landlord knew him, went to his apartment and stabbed him 28 times, because he thought this kid was going to grow up to be a terrorist. We have the three students in Vermont who were shot for wearing their keffiyehs. And Biden gave his sympathies, but it’s empty. It’s really, really empty. How can you give your sympathies when you’re the one who started the fire of this racist rhetoric?

DEANNA OTHMAN: My name is Deanna Othman. I’m from Little Palestine in Oak Lawn and Bridgeview, Illinois. I am a teacher at a local Islamic school, and I’m also a board member of American Muslims for Palestine Chicago.

Many of our students were heavily impacted by October 7th and onward. Many of them regularly visit the West Bank, so they’re familiar with the ravages of the occupation. They’ve seen armed soldiers as they’ve crossed checkpoints with their families. They’ve had family members killed. We have students who are from Gaza who have had family missing, family killed. Some of them have lived there in the past, so they’ve had friends killed, people they’ve gone to school with.

Myself, my husband’s family is in Gaza, and I visited there last summer, in June and July of 2023. So, with my own children, it’s been difficult sort of processing it with them, because their immediate — like, their grandmother is there, their uncle, their aunts, their cousins and people that they — some of them, they just met for the first time last summer, and now they’re worried about losing them. And many of the places where they made memories that summer, lifelong memories, no longer exist anymore.

So, it’s been tough, especially with the younger children, because they can’t quite grasp why this would happen, why any government would allow this to happen. And it’s difficult to explain why our government, the place that we live, is funding this genocide.

So, you know, we’ve had to process this in many different ways as a community, whether it’s through counseling with students in our schools, whether it’s through more educational outreach in the greater community, or even just, you know, psychological trauma processing for people who have, you know, experienced major loss.

AMY GOODMAN: Some of the voices from Little Palestine. Afterwards, many of them boarded a bus to take part in a March on the Democratic National Convention. Again, Chicago has the largest proportion — the largest concentration of Palestinian Americans in the United States.

When we come back, we’ll talk about Kamala Harris, immigration and Gaza with Texas Congressmember Greg Casar. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “No More” by Eddie Vedder. The song was featured on the soundtrack for Body of War, a documentary that tells the story of Tomas Young, an Iraq War veteran paralyzed from a bullet to the spine. It was co-directed by the pioneering TV host Phil Donahue, who tackled major social and political issues. Tomas Young became a major antiwar activist. Phil Donahue died this past weekend at the age of 88.

[admin]

Headlines:

U.N. Seeks “Immediate Deescalation” After Israel and Hezbollah Exchange Heavy Fire
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
August 26, 2024

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is calling for an “immediate deescalation” after Israel and Hezbollah exchanged heavy fire over the weekend. Early on Sunday morning, over 100 Israeli warplanes struck about 40 sites in Lebanon. Hezbollah responded by launching hundreds of drones and rockets at Israel. Three deaths were reported in Lebanon and one in Israel. Israel described its attacks as preemptive, saying the raid was conducted to blunt an imminent attack by Hezbollah, but Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah rejected that claim.

Hassan Nasrallah: “What happened was an aggression, not a preemptive action. And if we were to assume this was a preemptive action, it left no impact whatsoever on our military operations today, neither on its missiles, nor on its drones, nor on its fighters.”

Human Rights Watch: Israel Has Tortured Detained Palestinian Medical Workers
Aug 26, 2024

Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of arbitrarily detaining and torturing Palestinian healthcare workers. Eight doctors, nurses and paramedics recently held in Israeli prisons have described being blindfolded, beaten, held in forced stress positions, and handcuffed for extended periods of time. They also reported torture, including rape and sexual abuse by Israeli forces.

Over the weekend, Israel bombed another school in Gaza sheltering displaced Palestinians. Meanwhile, on Saturday, an Israeli strike on a home in Khan Younis killed 11 members of the same family, including two children. This comes as Israeli forces have withdrawn from the Hamad City portion of Khan Younis, leaving the neighborhood largely destroyed. Rescue workers recovered 16 bodies from the rubble. Residents say they have no safe place to go.

Randa Sammour: “Where is a safe area? There is no safety. Where is safety? We flee every day. We get displaced every day under the rockets, under the bombing. I am alone with my little children. I flee with them every day from a place to another. I don’t know where to go. They tell you about safe areas. Where is safety? Make me feel safe. Make the little child feel safe. We are tired, people. It’s enough. Have mercy on us.”

No Deal Yet as Ceasefire Talks Continue in Egypt
Aug 26, 2024

Ceasefire and hostage talks were held in Cairo, Egypt, over the weekend, but a deal has not been reached. Egyptian officials said neither Hamas nor Israel agreed to a number of compromises put forward by a mediator. Hamas has said any deal must include a permanent ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

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“Colonial Process”: How U.S.-Led Ceasefire Talks Are Latest Erasure of Roots of Arab-Israeli Conflict
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
August 26, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/8/26/ ... transcript

Palestinian American journalist Rami Khouri responds to the latest exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah and the drawn-out ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas, which Khouri calls a “fictitious political dynamic” that is primarily used as diplomatic cover for Israel’s warfare. “The ceasefire talks should not be taken very seriously as an effort to bring about a ceasefire,” he says. “It’s pretty clear now that the ceasefire negotiations today are the equivalent of the so-called peace process in the bigger Arab-Israeli conflict over the last 40 years.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is calling for an immediate deescalation after Israel and Hezbollah exchanged heavy fire over the weekend. Early Sunday morning, over a hundred Israeli warplanes struck about 40 sites in Lebanon. Hezbollah responded by launching hundreds of drones and rockets at Israel. Three deaths were reported in Lebanon and one in Israel. Israel described its attacks as preemptive, saying the raid was conducted to blunt an imminent attack by Hezbollah, but Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah rejected that claim.

HASSAN NASRALLAH: [translated] What happened was an aggression, not a preemptive action. And if we were to assume this was a preemptive action, it left no impact whatsoever on our military operations today, neither on its missiles, nor on its drones, nor on its fighters.

AMY GOODMAN: Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah also spoke about the Gaza ceasefire negotiations in Cairo, Egypt.

HASSAN NASRALLAH: [translated] Our operation today, in any case, may be very useful for the negotiations, for the Palestinian side or the Arab side that is negotiating alongside the Palestinian team. And its message is clear to the enemy and to those behind the enemy, to the Americans, that any hopes of shutting down the supporting fronts, whether in Lebanon, in Yemen or in Iraq — these fronts are actually open — these hopes are dashed.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah will continue.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] What happened today is not the end of the story. Hezbollah tried to attack the state of Israel with rockets and drones early in the morning. We instructed the Israeli army to carry out a powerful preemptive strike to remove the threat. The Israeli army destroyed thousands of short-range rockets. All of them were intended to harm our citizens and our forces in Galilee. In addition, the Israeli army intercepted all the UAVs that Hezbollah launched at a strategic target in the center of the country.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Rami Khouri, Palestinian American journalist, senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut, also a nonresident senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC.

Rami, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about this escalation of violence. I mean, we haven’t seen anything like this on the northern border between Israel and Lebanon in many months.

RAMI KHOURI: It’s an escalation of aggression by Israel and resistance by Hezbollah. And the mutual attacks back and forth have been going on for probably the last 16, 18 years, since the 2006 war between them. But this is significant for several reasons. First, it’s a much higher level of attack in the number of fighter jets from the Israeli side, and sites attacked and the number of rockets and drones sent by Hezbollah. Both sides are claiming things that we can’t verify, so we just have to wait a little bit, a couple days more, for the actual factual evidence to come out.

But what’s significant from the Hezbollah side is that they used Katyusha rockets mostly, which are kind of old-fashioned, limited-capability rockets, not very good in terms of hitting — being aimed, etc. And then they used some drones. And their focus was to detract the defense system in Israel, the air defense system, with the rockets, and then get the drones in to attack some military sites. They’re clearly targeting military sites. And the Israelis say everything is fine. Hezbollah says they hit some of their targets, but they’re assessing the situation now. But the more sophisticated weapons that Hezbollah has, with much better guidance systems, much more accurate and can evade the Israeli defense systems, haven’t been used yet. So, this is a sign from Hezbollah that they’re going to attack, to avenge the killing of their commander in Beirut about a month ago, and they are going to do it with increasingly sophisticated weapons system down the road.

Their aim is to do psychological warfare, as well as actual damage. They want the whole country to remain on edge. They want the army to be preoccupied in the north. They want the 70,000, 80,000 civilians who were evacuated from north Israel to remain evacuated and annoyed and angry, disruption to businesses, to tourism, to all kinds of investments, and to keep the military guessing what’s going to come next. So, this is an escalation of a pattern that’s been really the norm for many, many years.

And both sides, remarkably, but expectedly, said earlier today that they have finished this phase, and therefore, they’re not going to continue large-scale attacks today or tomorrow, it seems, that they’ve done what they did. And this is the pattern that one side does something, the other does something of equal magnitude.

And it’s going to go on until two things happen: The Israelis get out of Gaza, and Palestinians can rebuild their lives there, and, second of all, some signs of action or movement towards resolving the overall Palestinian-Israeli and Arab-Israeli conflict, some signs of that materialize, because, until then, this is going to continue. There will continue to be this antagonism by the Hezbollah and Lebanese and Syrians and Palestinians and others and Yemenis towards Israel for what it’s done in Palestine. And this has to be resolved politically. It can’t be resolved militarily.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Israeli army spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, speaking Sunday.

DANIEL HAGARI: [translated] We look around the state of Israel all the time, also at Yemen, also at Iran. I remind you that Hezbollah is an extension of the Iranians. They are financed, armed, targeted by the Iranians. And I am convinced that this widespread shooting is also directed by Iran, also under Iranian responsibility. And we will attack and remove threats wherever necessary.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can respond, Rami Khouri?

RAMI KHOURI: This is a typical Israeli Zionist propaganda message that has been going on for years and years. They will always — and with the U.S. close behind them, following their lead. They’ll always find some threat in the Middle East. Before, it used to be Saddam Hussein. It was al-Qaeda. It was the Russians. It was the PLO. Now it’s Iran is behind everything bad. And they will focus a lot of attention on addressing that issue, trying to evade the central reality that the Palestine-Israel conflict, the conflict between Zionism and Arabism in Palestine, which has been going on for a hundred years, that’s the real core of the problem. So, these are evasive tactics, diversionary tactics.

Iran is a very close ally of Hezbollah. They’re deeply involved in increasing its technical and military capabilities, as they are with Hamas and the Ansar Allah in Yemen, the Houthis. But to say that Iran directs them and tells them what to do, I believe, is a bit of a stretch. So, it’s like the relationship between Israel and the United States. They’re very close in armaments and strategy, and the U.S. now is actively, almost enthusiastically, supporting the Israeli genocide in Gaza, but Israel does what it feels it needs to do, and the U.S. doesn’t seem to be able or willing to stop it. And I think we have a similar relationship between Hezbollah and Iran. They’re very close, but Iran doesn’t command, direct Hezbollah in telling it what to do.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk about what’s happening right now, this whole — the Gaza ceasefire negotiations? Hamas sent representatives to Cairo. Israel had their delegation. Egypt and Qatar are involved. But it looks like they broke down once again, though they say they’re continuing.

RAMI KHOURI: Well, they had reached an agreement in early July, when Biden announced his so-called plan for a ceasefire. And Hamas accepted it. Biden said this came from the Israelis. And then, when Hamas accepted it, the Israelis, Netanyahu came back and added more conditions. And this has been the pattern ever since. And whenever Hamas accepts it, they add more conditions, suggesting that Netanyahu doesn’t really want a ceasefire. He wants to just keep negotiating.

And I think it’s pretty clear now that the ceasefire negotiations today are the equivalent of the so-called peace process in the bigger Arab-Israeli conflict over the last 40 years, which also was under U.S. management or direction. And the ceasefire talks seem to be, in the eyes of most analysts and observers in the Middle East, seem to be a mechanism just to delay anything serious from happening to allow Israel to continue with its genocidal killing of — you know, the figures, the official figures, are over 40,000. Most people say it’s closer to 150,000 dead, but we’ll find that out in the future. So, the ceasefire talks are a fictitious political dynamic.

And the reason they’re fictitious is because the United States is trying to be the main driver of the peace process, to the point where Biden announced an agreement back in early July, but the U.S. is also the main funder, arms supplier and political cover provider, diplomatic protector of Israel in the U.N. and other places. So, you can’t have the one party that is the major force for letting the genocide happen, technically and politically, and at the same time claim to be a mediator that’s trying to mediate between Israel and Hamas. This is the kind of fiction and fantasy that comes out of the State Department and the White House, and most of the world just watches this on TV, thinking, “Oh, something might happen.”

The important point is the Hamas — and you see it in Hezbollah — is that they have taken a much harder position. They say, “We accepted the ceasefire that Biden provided, that came from Israel. What more do you want from us? We are ready to stop the fighting, exchange prisoners and hostages,” etc., etc. But they have certain hardcore demands. And what’s obvious now is that both Hezbollah and Hamas refuse to play the game that all the Arab governments, and Fatah under Arafat and now under Abu Mazen, the Palestinian leadership, played for so many years, which is to make concession after concession after concession, rely on Western or other international intervention, and then expect something to happen.

We’ve realized — everybody in the Arab region has realized that this is not a serious process. This is the latest manifestation of a colonial process managed by white, Northern, racist, militant groups, countries — it used to be England, now it’s the United States — that keeps playing games with the people of the region for the benefits of either the Western powers or, today, for Israel. So, the ceasefire talks should not be taken very seriously as an effort to actually bring about a ceasefire. They are better seen as an indication of the skewed relationship between Western imperial powers and Israel, which is their closest manifestation in the region, settler-colonial power — relations between them and between the Palestinians, who are standing steady. Hamas is holding its ground and saying, “Look, we are prepared to make peace. We’re prepared to coexist with the current Israeli state as a Jewish-majority state.” They’ve made these offers many times. But their refusing to make more concessions is an important indicator of where they are. And this is something that the Western — Israeli and Western imperial powers don’t know how to handle. They’re not used to steadfast Arab parties. They’re used to compliant Arabs, who, you know, roll over and say, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.” And this isn’t happening anymore.

So this is an important moment. You know, it’s the generational change in leaderships in the Arab countries. And this is why the majority of ordinary people in the Arab world stand by Hamas and the Palestinians. They might not support the actual actions that it had used, whether either on October 7 or previously in terms of terror attacks inside Israel, you know, attacking buses and pizza parlors and stuff, but they support its basic political stand that we have rights; we are prepared to achieve those rights through a peaceful negotiation; we are not prepared to play cartoon games with people like Antony Blinken, and Dennis Ross before him, and people who are not serious about the real resolution that is required to address the real core of the problem, which is the conflict between Zionist Israel and Zionism, on the one hand, and Arab — Palestinian Arabism, on the other. There is a resolution to that conflict, a peaceful resolution that can be done, just like there is a resolution in Gaza, but the Israelis don’t want to do it.

AMY GOODMAN: Rami Khouri, I want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian American journalist, senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut, also a nonresident senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC.