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

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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.

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Headlines:

by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
August 27, 2024

U.N. Forced to Halt Aid in Gaza Amid Dire Humanitarian Needs Due to Nonstop Evacuation Orders

The United Nations has paused aid operations in Gaza after Israel ordered another mass evacuation from Deir al-Balah, where the U.N. had been forced to move its operations center after Israel attacked Rafah. This comes as medical staff have been forced to evacuate patients from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, the last functioning medical facility in central Gaza. This is Louise Wateridge of the U.N. agency UNRWA speaking from Deir al-Balah.

Louise Wateridge: “To describe the situation here, it’s just catastrophic. The last couple of weeks, we have had relentless forced displacement orders in the middle area, in the southern area and also in northern Gaza Strip. And what we’re seeing here is hundreds of thousands of people forced to move on a daily basis. … The humanitarian operations are also being displaced within these evacuation orders, and the humanitarian response here is being completely strangled and limited our ability of what we can do.”

U.S. Has Sent Over 50,000 Tons of Arms and Military Equipment to Israel Since Genocide Started

The Israeli military has revealed that the United States has sent over 50,000 tons of arms and military equipment to Israel since October 7. The weapons have arrived in more than 500 transport planes and over 100 ships — that’s an average of almost two arms shipments a day [2x/day] for the past 10 months, during which time Israel has killed over 40,400 Palestinians, including 20 Palestinians this morning.

Israeli Forces and Illegal Settlers Continue Deadly Attacks in Occupied West Bank

In the occupied West Bank, an Israeli airstrike has hit the Nur Shams refugee camp near the city of Tulkarm. Five deaths were reported. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers shot dead one Palestinian and wounded six others in an attack near Bethlehem.

Meanwhile, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has sparked outrage after he repeated his call to allow Jewish worshipers to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. He also said he would build a synagogue on the site of the mosque if he could. The Foreign Ministry of Jordan decried Ben-Gvir’s remarks as a “violation of international law and an unacceptable incitement.”

Greek Tanker in Red Sea with 150,000 Tons of Crude Has Been on Fire for Days After Houthi Strike

Fears are growing of an environmental catastrophe in the Red Sea. A Greek-flagged crude oil tanker has been on fire since August 23 after being attacked by Houthi fighters from Yemen. The tanker is carrying 150,000 tons of crude oil — that’s more than 1 million barrels of oil. The Houthi movement has vowed to continue targeting ships as long as Israel continues to attack Gaza.

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Palestinian Healthcare Workers Chained, Starved, Sexually Abused: New HRW Report on Israeli Prisons
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
August 27, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/8/27/ ... transcript

We speak with Human Rights Watch researcher Milena Ansari about the organization’s new report detailing the torture of Palestinian medical workers in Israeli prisons. HRW spoke with eight doctors, paramedics and nurses who were picked up in Gaza before being transferred to the notorious Sde Teiman camp and other facilities, where they say they suffered beatings, starvation, humiliation, electric shocks and other forms of abuse. The men also describe threats of sexual violence during brutal interrogations and seeing another prisoner bleeding after being gang-raped with an M16 rifle by three soldiers. The findings track with other reports from researchers and survivors, and HRW has called on the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel for its attacks on healthcare workers. “We’re really ringing the alarm about the situation inside the Israeli custody and detention facilities,” says Ansari, who says evidence is mounting of a “systematic pattern of ill-treatment and abuse.”

Transcript

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

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

We begin today’s show with a call by Human Rights Watch for the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel for arbitrarily detaining and torturing Palestinian healthcare workers. A new report by Human Rights Watch details the harrowing experiences of eight doctors, nurses and paramedics who were recently held in Israeli prisons, where they 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.

Eyad Abed, a 50-year-old surgeon who was taken by Israeli forces from Beit Lahia’s Indonesia Hospital in November, told Human Rights Watch, quote, “Every minute we were beaten. I mean all over the body, on sensitive areas between the legs, the chest, the back. We were kicked all over the body and the face. They used the front of their boots which had a metal tip, then their weapons. They had lighters: one soldier tried to burn me but burned the person next to me. I told them I’m a doctor, but they didn’t care,” unquote.

Others described being held in metal cages and seeing other detained Palestinians beaten to death. The Human Rights Watch report also details how 36-year-old paramedic Walid Khalili was taken to the notorious Sde Teiman prison, where Israeli forces suspended him and dozens of other detainees, most of them stripped and wearing diapers, from the ceiling with chains attached to their handcuffs. Israeli forces then shocked him with electric wires. The report also referred to a Palestinian prisoner who was gang-raped by Israeli soldiers using an M16 rifle.

Human Rights Watch’s findings track with other reports by Gaza’s medical workers who have been detained by Israel since October 7th. In July, Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Hospital, described his detention in an Israeli prison for seven months without charge.

DR. SAID ABDULRAHMAN MAAROUF: [translated] The torture was very severe in Israeli prisons. I am a doctor. My weight was 87 kilograms. I lost, in 45 days, more than 25 kilograms of my weight. I lost my balance. I lost focus. I lost all feeling. We were shackled for 45 days, handcuffed for 45 days. However you describe the suffering and insults in prison, you can never know the reality unless you lived through it.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Dr. Said Abdulrahman Maarouf.

For more, we’re joined in Ramallah by Milena Ansari, the Israel and Palestine assistant researcher for Human Rights Watch and a lawyer. She co-authored the new Human Rights Watch report, “Israel: Palestinian Healthcare Workers Tortured.”

Thank you very much for joining us. You’re joining us from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Can you talk, overall, about your findings? And who are all the people you talked to?

MILENA ANSARI: Thank you, Amy, and much appreciated for having us here.

The report on the torture and detention of Palestinian healthcare workers includes eight testimonies of Palestinian paramedics, nurses, doctors and surgeons who currently have been working in Gaza and living in Gaza for the past 10 months during the current hostilities. Many of the doctors and the nurses — six of them — were detained and arrested when they were actually in the hospital doing their duties and whatever they can to make sure Palestinians who are injured and Palestinians who need the medical care for their own survival are granted this humanitarian medical need. So, six of the doctors were detained during a siege on the hospitals, as well as during coordinated evacuation missions from the hospitals that are in the northern area of Gaza to hospitals in the southern areas. So, what I’m trying to say is, clearly, these healthcare workers were detained while they were doing their job, tasked and in a situation where Palestinians in Gaza are urgently needing medical care and medical assistance.

The testimonies, as you mentioned, are consistent with many other testimonies gathered by OHCHR, for example, Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations, where it gives us a window into how Israeli authorities are treating Palestinians in detention. We were able to speak to eight healthcare workers in order to really connect and better understand the health infrastructure in Gaza. So, the detention and torture of healthcare workers at this current moment in Gaza is only exaggerating and worsening the conditions of the catastrophic health infrastructure in Gaza.

So, the testimonies are of torture, beatings, punches, kicks with steel-toed boots by Israeli soldiers, using military dogs to attack and intimidate detainees, but as well as using stress positions for prolonged period of times while being blindfolded and cuffed by the hands and feet. Many of the healthcare workers we spoke to, as healthcare workers being experts in medical knowledge, testified to us and reported seeing and witnessing and being themselves subjected to medical neglect, where they have seen detainees with visible trauma and blunt trauma on their bodies, visible bites of dogs on their bodies, as well. They told us, as well, from their wounds during their detention and arrest, they were not given any proper medical treatment. And when I talk about medical treatment inside detention, this is the bare minimum that’s guaranteed under international humanitarian law, where the Geneva Conventions require the detaining authority to provide proper medical healthcare, proper monitoring of the conditions. But then we have testimonies and we have reports that talk about amputation of Palestinian limbs, including hands and feet, from prolonged cuffings, and amputations without anesthesia, as well.

So, sadly, this is, honestly, just a small example of what Human Rights Watch was able to document. But we’re talking about hundreds of other cases of testimonies from either U.N. or Israeli human rights organizations that talk about some kind of a systematic pattern of ill-treatment and abuse in detention.

And really important to highlight that when we talk about these eight healthcare workers, for example, for specific, they were not charged with any offenses. They were not brought before trial. So this is why we concluded that the detention was unlawful. They were either detained from seven weeks up to five months, none of them being informed why they are being detained or for how long they are being detained. They’re just experiencing ill-treatment and torture at the hands of the Israeli authorities, which is, again, only a window into the general detention conditions of Palestinian prisoners and detainees. And currently, we’re talking about 9,000 Palestinians who are in Israeli custody. Three thousand of them are under administrative detention, which is detaining a person without trial, without charge, for an indefinite time. And this includes hundreds of children, dozens of women, as well, elderly, journalists and human rights defenders.

So we’re really ringing the alarm about the situation inside the Israeli custody and detention facilities. And again, when we talk about military bases or detention facilities where Palestinians are detained, these cases are of Palestinians who were taken outside of Gaza. So they were forcibly deported from Gaza into detention facilities and detention military bases inside Israel. And this is considered a war crime under international humanitarian law, of forcible deportation. And for those Palestinians who were detained inside the occupied West Bank or inside the Occupied Palestinian Territory, have been forcibly transferred outside of their occupied territory, which is also a war crime under international humanitarian law.

So, the alarms are ringing. And this is why Human Rights Watch is calling for the International Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor to ensure including the treatment of Palestinian detainees and prisoners in their open investigation into the situation in Palestine. We know that the prosecutor at the ICC requested arrest warrants for two Israeli senior officials, as well as Hamas officials. So, for the Israeli officials, they are being — the arrest warrants are for war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, we did not notice that the ill-treatment, the detention and the torture of Palestinians inside Israeli detention was included during the calls or applications for arrest warrant. And we really sincerely put pressure on states and governments to also make sure that there is genuine accountability for the treatment of Palestinians inside Israeli detention.

As you may know, or to really highlight this information, that the International Committee for the Red Cross, that’s mandated to monitor detention conditions in order to make sure they comply with international standards, has been banned, since the start of the hostilities, from monitoring Israeli prisons and detention centers, which rings the alarm and the bells even higher with regards to what exactly is happening inside detention and inside Israeli custody, because we are hearing about reports of Palestinian deaths in custody. According to Haaretz, there are 48 cases of deaths in custody since the beginning of the hostilities, of Palestinians who were declared dead or have been killed inside detention. And there is no clarity to the reasons or the circumstances that led to their deaths. Physicians for Human Rights Israel was able to participate in the autopsy of five cases of Palestinian detainees who were pronounced dead inside Israeli detention. And some of the cases included clear medical neglect, and others included that the deaths was a cause of torture and ill-treatment. And I would just highlight that two cases of these deaths in custody were of Palestinian healthcare workers, like Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, who was declared by the Israeli Prison Services back in April killed, and as well as Dr. Eyad al-Rantisi, who was also killed during detention.

So, again, the bells are ringing. And there needs to be better clarity and understanding to what’s happening inside detention, but also to be confident in asking the question of “Why are these Palestinians inside detention, when they’re being detained for prolonged periods of time without being brought before a judge or even without any charges presented against them?” So, there’s a lot of questions that should be asked.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you, Milena — earlier, we played a clip of Dr. Said Abdulrahman Maarouf in February. He was jailed. He’s a Palestinian doctor, jailed by Israel for 45 days, described being tortured in Israeli custody, was jailed after Israeli forces raided al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. And now I want to play a clip for you from Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya. We mentioned him earlier. In July — he’s the director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza — he described his detention in an Israeli prison for seven months without charge.

DR. MUHAMMAD ABU SALMIYA: [translated] We were subjected to severe torture, and my little finger was broken. I was repeatedly subjected to hitting on the head, causing bleeding multiple times. There was almost daily torture in the Israeli prisons. When prisoners’ cells were raided daily, they were severely beaten every day. We say this with full certainty, and we lived through it with great bitterness. …

Colleagues working in the Ministry of Health and other prisoners got out with us today, about 50 prisoners. We left behind many prisoners, tens of thousands of prisoners, living in hardship, experiencing psychological and physical torture that no Palestinian prisoner has experienced since the Nakba in 1948. Our brave prisoners are subjected to all kinds of tortures behind bars. Even the older prisoners who have spent tens of years in the occupation prisons have been deprived of all of their most basic rights. Many prisoners have died while they were in interrogation and were deprived of medicine and food.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, held for seven months without charge. CNN also just reported this week that a former Palestinian detainee said he was sexually abused in Israeli prison. His name was Ibrahim Salem. He’s 34, arrested four days after an Israeli airstrike hit his home in Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza December 8th, killing eight of his relatives, injuring his wife and two of his three children. CNN reports, quote, “During interrogations, Salem said, he would be asked: 'Where are the hostages? Where are Hamas' weapons? Are you Hamas? Are you Qassam (Hamas’ military wing)? Are you Islamic Jihad?’ Salem alleges to have been beaten, verbally abused, had hot water poured on him, and told by soldiers that the rest of his family had been killed. But the worst part, he said, was the sexual abuse.” What has the Israeli government — how have they responded to your report?

MILENA ANSARI: So, the responses for the Israeli authorities has been in different ways. We did not have direct response. We sent them letters with our initial findings before releasing the report, for any comment or responses to specific questions. But as usual, since the beginning of the hostilities and for a few long time now, Human Rights Watch does not get any responses from the Israeli authorities when we reach out for any comment or any detailed information about the reports and investigation we have been doing.

But I can tell you about responses from Israeli officials or Israeli ministers with regards to the detention or treatment of Palestinian detainees. And we have seen, as you mentioned, the case of one Palestinian detainee who was gang-raped at Sde Teiman, where the Israeli military police investigating this case went inside Sde Teiman to arrest the 10 soldiers that are allegedly part of the sexual violence committed against the Palestinian detainee. And there was huge confrontation and backlash with Israeli right-wing protesters and Israeli soldiers who were in the same unit as the soldiers who were arrested. And there was a whole debate on Israeli media: How do Israeli authorities treat Palestinian detainees? And you have ministers saying that Israeli soldiers are the heroes of Israel, so they have the right to do whatever they want to do, including rape of Palestinian detainees in Israeli custody.

So, these are extremely alarming statements and alarming responses. But, unfortunately, they kind of reflect a general policy of how the Israeli authorities have been dealing with Palestinian detainees and allegations of torture. Human Rights Watch, for decades — we have a report from 1948 that looks into torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees during interrogation. And since then, we have not seen, as well as Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations, like B’Tselem, have not seen genuine accountability and justice being implemented. It’s mainly, I would say, according to B’Tselem, what they reference these investigations as, whitewashing — any way to really not hold these soldiers or these prison guards accountable, but to provide them more impunity and more legal coverage.

There has been statements, for example, from the Israeli minister of defense, condemning the protests that happened in Sde Teiman about the arrest of the nine soldiers for allegations of sexual violence, but the statement did not include any condemnation for the treatment itself or the allegations that are in question. So this only shows more the lack of genuine accountability and the inability or unwillingness of the Israeli authorities to seriously look into the reports that are coming out from detention centers and even Israeli Prison Services, that’s in a way directly under the authority of the Israeli Minister of National Intelligence Ben-Gvir. You know, I would just recall and remind ourselves with the many statements that were coming out from Israeli ministers with regards to the death penalty of Palestinian prisoners and detainees, where — statements of in order to solve the overcrowding in Israeli detention, ministers have been calling for the death penalty to be implemented against Palestinians.

And this is not even talking about the food situation, the water situation, the sleeping situation inside detention, where the eight healthcare workers we spoke to, consistent with many reports we have heard and are seeing online, are saying about depriving detainees of food and water, depriving them of any sugar intake. One detainee, a released healthcare worker, told us that, from his understanding, the food that was provided to the detainees is the basic minimum to only survive the day. So, these detainees are not getting proper medical care, they’re not getting proper food and water intake, and, above all that, are being subjected to systematic ill-treatment and humiliation during detention. It’s not only during one phase of detention; it’s throughout, throughout arrest, detention and release, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Milena Ansari, on Monday, you wrote a piece for Human Rights Watch about Walid Khalili, a paramedic and ambulance driver for the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, 36-year-old father of three. Your piece is headlined “A Palestinian Paramedic’s Ordeal in Israeli Detention.” As we begin to wrap up, can you tell us what happened to Walid Khalili on the morning of November 10th?

MILENA ANSARI: Walid Khalili was arrested or detained when he — he’s an ambulance driver with the Palestinian Medical Relief Society. And he was answering a call for four injured men at that time, on that day, where on his way to the four injured men, he witnessed Israeli forces shooting the four men to death. So, when his mission was a rescue mission in order to transfer the injured Palestinian men to hospital, it turned into a detention, basically, a detention experience, where when the soldiers saw Khalili, Walid Khalili, approaching the four injured Palestinians who were later killed by Israeli forces, according to the testimonies of Walid Khalili, the soldiers called out Khalili, who ran to a nearby building to seek refuge and shelter from Israeli forces on the ground. Then, later, he was detained. Immediately, in the field, he was interrogated in the field and asked what he was doing there. He explained that he was basically on a rescue mission after being called to rescue the four injured men.

He was subjected to ill-treatment from the beginning. He was asked to completely strip off his clothes in public. He was immediately cuffed by his hand and feet and blindfolded, and then transferred to detention facilities and Israeli prisons, where he was interrogated repeatedly, specifically asking for forced confession. What I mean by this is, according to what Walid Khalili explained to us, most of the interrogation was about: Are you a member of Hamas? Do you know where Hamas is keeping hostages? And even with the repeated denial of any information that Walid Khalili has, when he reached Sde Teiman, he was hearing voices and screams of other detainees. And at that time, Israeli soldiers removed the blindfold on his eyes.

And the testimony Walid Khalili gave us, myself, it was extreme harrowing to understand. He said, immediately when the blindfold was removed, he saw hundreds — he said dozens of Palestinian detainees being suspended from chains that are connected to the ceiling of the warehouse in Sde Teiman. He saw the men wearing diapers and not being fully clothed or properly clothed, suspended by chains. And then he understood where these screams and sounds of torture are coming from.

He then told us and walked us through how Israeli forces forced him to wear a garment that has wires all around it and a headband that also had wires around it. And he was later suspended, as well, similar to the other detainees, from chains that were in the ceilings of Sde Teiman. And this garment, this white overall, basically, was used to electrocute and shock Walid Khalili repeatedly over and over during his interrogation or during his detention in Sde Teiman. So he was electrocuted, as well as he reported about cases of being struck with gasoline or being thrown — gasoline being thrown at him.

He also, during his transfer not to Sde Teiman but a different detention facility in an-Naqab authorized by the Israeli Prison Services, he had a Palestinian male detainee sit next to him who was visibly bleeding from his bottom area. And the man told Walid Khalili that he was subjected to rape by three soldiers who raped him with an M16 assault rifle during the strip search and during his interrogation.

So, unfortunately, at the end of the interview, when I was speaking with Walid Khalili, he was pleading for us, pleading for the international community, to really understand what the situation is for Palestinian detainees. It’s sexual violence. It’s rape. It’s medical neglect. It’s deprivation of food. And it’s all happening all at once, nonstop. And these are, you know, extremely harrowing testimonies. I worked with a Palestinian prisoner organization for three years, and we have never heard that thorough or that brutal and extremely violent testimonies been coming out.

And as well as I go back to the point, 9,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees are currently in Israeli custody. This number is unprecedented. We have not seen this number since the Second Intifada in 2000. And again, these testimonies are not a case-by-case basis. We are hearing this from OHCHR. We’re hearing it from Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations. So, really, monitoring needs to be as soon as possible and immediate for detention conditions, and there needs to be a push on Israeli authorities to release Palestinians who are unlawfully detained, who don’t have any charges against them or trial against them.

AMY GOODMAN: Milena Ansari, I want to thank you for being with us. These are such horrifying accounts. Milena is a lawyer and the Israel and Palestine assistant researcher for Human Rights Watch. She co-authored their new report, “Israel: Palestinian Healthcare Workers Tortured.” We’ll link to that, as well as the piece you just wrote last week for them, “A Palestinian Paramedic’s Ordeal in Israeli Detention.”

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Israel: Palestinian Healthcare Workers Tortured: ICC Prosecutor Should Investigate Attacks on Health Care, Detainee Abuses
by Human Rights Watch
August 26, 2024 12:00AM EDT
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/08/26/isr ... s-tortured

-- The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib, edited by Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel

A leaked photograph of the detention facility at the Sde Teiman military base shows a blindfolded man with his arms above his head. Interviewed healthcare workers described this image as punishment imposed by Israeli soldiers on Palestinian detainees if they speak or move. © 2024 Private

(Jerusalem) – Israeli forces have arbitrarily detained Palestinian healthcare workers in Gaza since hostilities began in October 2023, deported them to detention facilities in Israel, and allegedly tortured and ill-treated them, Human Rights Watch said today. The detention of healthcare workers in the context of the Israeli military’s repeated attacks on hospitals in Gaza has contributed to the catastrophic degradation of the besieged territory’s healthcare system.

Released doctors, nurses and paramedics described to Human Rights Watch their mistreatment in Israeli custody, including humiliation, beatings, forced stress positions, prolonged cuffing and blindfolding, and denial of medical care. They also reported torture, including rape and sexual abuse by Israeli forces, denial of medical care, and poor detention conditions for the general detainee population.

“The Israeli government’s mistreatment of Palestinian healthcare workers has continued in the shadows and needs to immediately stop,” said Balkees Jarrah, acting Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The torture and other ill-treatment of doctors, nurses, and paramedics should be thoroughly investigated and appropriately punished, including by the International Criminal Court (ICC).”

From March to June 2024, Human Rights Watch interviewed eight Palestinian healthcare workers who were taken by the Israeli military from Gaza between November and December 2023 and detained without charge for between seven days and five months. Six were detained at work following Israeli sieges of hospitals or during hospital evacuations that they said had been coordinated with the Israeli military. None of the healthcare workers said they were ever informed of the reason for their detention or charged with an offense. Human Rights Watch also spoke with seven people who witnessed Israeli soldiers detaining healthcare workers carrying out their duties.

Human Rights Watch sent a letter to the Israeli military and Israeli Prison Services with the preliminary findings on August 13 but has not received a response.


Israeli prison guards at the entrance of Ofer prison, in the occupied West Bank, awaiting Palestinian prisoners' arrival from another Israeli prison, November 24, 2023. © 2023 Ilia Yefimovich/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Photo

All the healthcare workers interviewed provided similar accounts of mistreatment in Israeli custody. After being in Gaza, they were deported to detention facilities in Israel, including the Sde Teiman military base in the Negev desert and Ashkelon prison, or, forcibly transferred to the Anatot military base near East Jerusalem and the Ofer detention facility, in the occupied West Bank. All said that they were stripped, beaten, and blindfolded and handcuffed, for many weeks on end, and pressured to confess to being members of the Hamas movement with various threats of indefinite detention, rape, and killing their families in Gaza.

A surgeon said he was “wearing scrubs and Crocs” when Israeli forces detained him during their siege of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, Gaza, in December. “We were 50 healthcare workers, including nurses and doctors,” he said. “The soldier on the microphone ordered men and boys over 15 years old to evacuate the hospital.... When they took us out of the hospital, they told us to undress and stay in our underwear.”

One paramedic said that at the Sde Teiman detention facility he was suspended from a chain attached to handcuffs, electroshocked, denied medical care for broken ribs caused by beatings, and administered what he believed was a psychoactive drug before interrogations. “It was so degrading, it was unbelievable,” he said. “I was helping people as a paramedic, I never expected something like this.”

Healthcare workers also reported being punished in detention for moving or speaking, and collectively punished if other detainees spoke. “Sometimes if one spoke, they [soldiers] punished the whole warehouse [at Naqab prison], collectively,” one healthcare worker said.

The Gaza Health Ministry reported that Israeli forces have detained at least 310 Palestinian healthcare workers since October 7. Healthcare Workers Watch-Palestine, a nongovernmental organization, documented 259 detentions of healthcare workers and collected 31 accounts describing torture and other abuses by Israeli authorities, including the use of stress positions, deprivation of adequate food and water, threats of sexual violence and rape, and degrading treatment. Healthcare Workers Watch-Palestine helped Human Rights Watch interview released healthcare workers.

The prolonged arbitrary detention and mistreatment of healthcare workers has exacerbated the health crisis in Gaza, Human Rights Watch said. Since October, over 92,000 people in Gaza have been wounded, functional hospitals have fewer than 1,500 inpatient beds, and yet the Israeli authorities have allowed only 35 percent of nearly 14,000 people who requested medical evacuations to leave Gaza, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on August 5.

The healthcare workers’ accounts are consistent with independent reports, including by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Israeli news media, and rights groups, documenting dozens of detainee accounts of incommunicado detention, beatings, sexual violence, forced confessions, electrocution, and other torture and abuses of Palestinians in Israeli detention.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on June 3 that the Israeli military was conducting criminal investigations into the deaths of 48 Palestinians in Israeli detention facilities since October 7. These include Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, a surgeon and head of orthopedics at al-Shifa Hospital, and Dr. Eyad al-Rantisi, the director of a women’s health center at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia.

Common article 3 to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, applicable to hostilities between Israel and the Palestinian armed groups, provides that “[p]ersons taking no active part in the hostilities … shall in all circumstances be treated humanely.” “Cruel treatment and torture” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment” are prohibited at all times. Those wounded and sick “shall be … cared for.”

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, applicable to occupied territories, prohibits individual forcible transfers within the occupied territory as well as deportations of civilians from occupied territory to the occupying power’s territory, regardless of the motive. Serious violations of Common article 3 and article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention committed with criminal intent are war crimes.

Human Rights Watch has found that Israeli authorities for decades have failed to provide credible accountability for torture and other abuses against Palestinian detainees. According to official Israeli statistics, between 2019 and 2022, 1,830 complaints of abuse were opened against Israeli Prison Services officers, with none resulting in a criminal conviction. Israeli authorities have not allowed independent humanitarian agencies access to Palestinian detainees since the start of hostilities.

Governments should support international justice efforts to address Israeli abuses against Palestinian detainees and hold those responsible to account. The United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and other countries should press Israel to end its abusive detention practices, which form one aspect of systematic oppression underlying Israeli authorities’ crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians.

The ICC is considering arrest warrant applications against senior Israeli officials for grave international crimes and should ensure that its investigation addresses abuses against Palestinian detainees. Israel’s allies should press the government to urgently allow independent monitoring of detention facilities.

“The torture of Palestinian healthcare workers is a window into the much larger issue of the Israeli government’s treatment of detainees generally,” Jarrah said. “Governments should publicly call on the Israeli authorities to release unlawfully detained healthcare workers and end the cruel mistreatment and nightmarish conditions for all detained Palestinians.”

Humiliation, Ill-treatment, and Torture

The healthcare workers interviewed all reported humiliation, ill-treatment, and torture, including being stripped and beaten, with prolonged painful stress positions, near-constant cuffing, and blindfolding. Some said they were threatened with sexual violence and by attack dogs.

Abuses During Deportation, Detention

All eight men reported being forced to strip publicly immediately after being taken into custody and remain kneeling for extended periods, exposed to the cold, and at various times throughout their detention. Photographs and videos that Israeli soldiers shared online and that Reuters verified show Palestinian detainees unclothed [naked] or in underwear. Publishing such images online is an outrage on personal dignity and posted sexualized images are a form of sexual violence, which are war crimes.

“We were forced to strip in the street and remain in our boxers, one by one,” said Osama Tashtash, 28, a doctor at the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia who was arrested in early December at his home nearby. “For an hour and a half, we were on our knees.” He said that during that period, he and other detainees were exposed to danger from Israeli military operations in the area. He said shrapnel fell on them as Israeli soldiers threw grenades at nearby houses and set them on fire.


Dr. Khalid Hamoudeh (far left in the front) and Dr. Wadee Qasem (far right in the front) are detained along with other healthcare workers, internally displaced civilians, and patient’s families near the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. © 2023 Channel 12 via journalist Nir Debori/Telegram

Dr. Hamoudeh said they were photographed, then designated for release or detention. Behind them the photograph shows hundreds of men sitting in a large pit with at least 18 Israeli soldiers guarding them. A detailed analysis by the investigative TechJournalist identified several detainees with their hands tied behind their back, including Dr. Hamoudeh.

The image, whose site was identified first by the open-source researcher FDov on X, formerly known as Twitter, and later confirmed by Human Rights Watch, was taken approximately half a kilometer northeast of the hospital. Dr. Hamoudeh said that about 50 healthcare workers sitting together separately from internally displaced people. He said he was told to undress and stay in his underwear and was then blindfolded.

The healthcare workers described beatings and physical abuse after being detained, including being punched, kicked with steel-toed boots, slapped, and beaten with assault-rifle butts by Israeli soldiers.

Eyad Abed, 50, a surgeon at the Indonesian Hospital who was detained during a coordinated evacuation of the hospital in November, said:

Every minute we were beaten. I mean all over the body, on sensitive areas between the legs, the chest, the back. We were kicked all over the body and the face. They used the front of their boots which had a metal tip, then their weapons. They had lighters: one soldier tried to burn me but burned the person next to me. I told them I’m a doctor, but they didn’t care.

Abed said that he had broken ribs and a broken tailbone as a result of the physical assault by Israeli soldiers during his arrest and detention, which two months later still had not healed.

An ambulance driver who asked not to be named said while he was being held with dozens of other men in a large metal “cage” near the Israel-Gaza border fence, he saw guards beat to death two men, one of whom he recognized, with metal bars.

The healthcare workers all described ill-treatment during their deportation from Gaza to detention facilities in Israel, including beatings, sitting in prolonged painful stress positions while blindfolded and cuffed by the hands and feet, being “stacked above each other like sheep,” pepper sprayed, and denied water.

Abuses in Detention Facilities

The healthcare workers said that Israeli authorities abused detainees at detention facilities inside Israel. Four said that when they arrived at detention facilities, the authorities forced them to wear adult diapers and denied them access to toilets.

The ambulance driver, who was detained for five months, was first transferred to a prison in Ashkelon, where guards interrogated him daily for a week, during which time they bound him in his underwear to a chair for between 10 and 15 hours a day in a room with a blasting air conditioner. He said he had been badly beaten and that sitting caused extreme pain in his spine. He said the authorities denied him access to a toilet, forcing him to urinate on himself, and refused to provide him any food or water. He was then transferred to the Ofer military detention facility in the Occupied West Bank, where at night, the guards threw cold water on him and on his mattress.


Walid Khalili, sheltering alone in a tent in al-Mawasi, Khan Younis, unable to reach his wife and three boys who are in northern Gaza. The photo was taken on June 18, 2024, about four months following his release from Israeli detention.
A Palestinian Paramedic’s Ordeal in Israeli Detention

A paramedic, Walid Khalili, 36, said that when soldiers removed his blindfold at the Sde Teiman facility, he saw he was in a large building “like a warehouse,” with chains hanging from the ceiling. Dozens of detainees in diapers were suspended from the ceiling, with the chains attached to their square metal handcuffs. He said that personnel at the facility then suspended him from a chain, so his feet were not touching the ground, dressed him in a garment and a headband that were attached to wires, and shocked him with electricity.

Two doctors held at Sde Teiman said that other detainees came to them to seek care for wounds inflicted by Israeli authorities. When detainees “lifted their shirts, I saw signs of abuse and physical beatings,” one doctor said. The other said, “I saw [men] who had cigarette burns on their arms, it was very clear. One had a dog bite on his stomach.”

As punishment for moving or speaking, detainees would be forced to stand, sometimes for hours, with their cuffed hands held above their head or fixed to a fence, detainees said. Detainees could hear the screams of other detainees being beaten nearby. One said that after he asked a question, an Israeli officer forced his fingers through a chain-link fence, he “told me to shut up and not say a word,” and pressed downward on the detainee’s fingers for several minutes, causing severe pain until the detainee could no longer feel his fingers.

Three healthcare workers reported soldiers using military dogs to intimidate detainees. “They would threaten to shoot us and start loading their weapons,” one doctor said. “This felt like horror. They brought in military dogs. I screamed, that was the worst moment in my life, because I was still cuffed and blindfolded, not seeing where the dogs are coming from.” Another doctor said dogs were brought in late at night to wake and terrify detainees.

Threats and Acts of Sexual Abuse

Three healthcare workers said that Israeli authorities threatened them with sexual assault. Khader Abu Nada, 30, a nurse at Beit Hanoun hospital in northern Gaza, said that when he denied any Hamas affiliation during his first interrogation at a military base in Gaza, the commander threatened to rape him with an “electric stick.” When Abu Nada continued to deny any Hamas affiliation, soldiers beat him until he was bleeding from his nose, hands, and mouth.

Abu Nada said the commander then asked him where his mother was and threatened to bring her from the checkpoint where he was arrested and strip her in front of everyone. “When I heard this, I was psychologically broken. I felt humiliated,” he said. He said he was threatened with rape again prior to his release.

A detained paramedic who was transferred to al-Naqab prison after 20 days in Sde Teiman, said that a man who was visibly “bleeding from his bottom” was brought in and placed next to him. The man told the paramedic that before he was placed in detention, “three soldiers took turns raping him with an M16 [assault rifle]. No one else knew, but he told me as a paramedic. He was terrified.” In addition, a doctor said while he was detained in a military base, a detainee, “in his late 30s, crying hard … told me he was sexually assaulted during the strip search.”

Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Conditions

All the healthcare workers described horrific conditions in detention. Abed, the surgeon, said the food was “horrible” and inadequate, and that he lost 22 kilograms during a month and a half in detention. The bathrooms were “not even fit for animals.” The mattresses and blankets were thin, and the cold nights were “unbearable.” In the cells, water for toilets and for drinking was only available for one hour a day, with a “disgusting” stench emanating from the non-flushable toilets. “They gave us a bag for the garbage. We used to fill it with water and drink from it later. It smelled horrible but we had no choice,” Abed said.

For detainees’ meals at Sde Teiman, soldiers “emptied tuna cans into a garbage bag and gave it to me,” said Dr. Khalid Hamoudeh, whom soldiers ordered to distribute food to detainees. “One time I saw a soldier spit in the bag. Many [detainees] were starving and telling me they were hungry.” A nurse detained at Anatot said, “We got two meals [a day]. It was terrible food. I would just drink water, there were no fruits, not even apples. They gave us food just to survive the day.”

Khalili, the paramedic, said that at one point when he was detained in Sde Teiman, an Israeli news crew arrived, and a detainee who understood Hebrew told him that a prison official told the journalists, falsely, that the detainees were members of a unit of Hamas’s armed wing responsible for the October 7 attacks. The next day, the paramedic said, soldiers brought food and set it in front of the detainees, ordered them not to eat it, took photographs, then took the food away.

Prolonged Cuffing and Blindfolding

The healthcare workers said that they were cuffed almost constantly throughout their detention. They said Israeli authorities often ignored detainees who complained about the tightness of their cuffs or tightened their cuffs as punishment for complaining. In a public letter, an Israeli doctor working in the military field hospital at Sde Teiman wrote that in a single week, “two prisoners had their legs amputated due to handcuff injuries, which unfortunately is a routine event.”


Palestinian men who had been detained by Israeli forces arrive after their release for a checkup at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, July 1, 2024. © 2024 Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images

Abu Nada, the nurse, said he was arrested at the Kuwaiti Roundabout in Gaza on November 22 while evacuating from the north with his family. Soldiers ordered him to strip, cuffed and blindfolded him, then took him for questioning. He said his first interrogation ended with an Israeli military commander punching him in the face and kicking him all over his body, then ordering another soldier to tighten his cuffs and drag him to an open field, where he waited on his knees for an hour.

“My wrists hurt so much, they felt paralyzed and numb. I cried so much, I couldn’t take the pain,” Abu Nada said. When he asked a soldier to loosen his cuffs, he said the soldier repeatedly kicked his head instead. “I told him, ‘Kill me I can’t take it anymore, kill me already.’” Israeli soldiers ignored or beat him in response to his multiple requests to loosen his handcuffs.

Abu Nada said his wrists later turned black, and he feared his mistreatment may have caused permanent damage: “I still feel pain in my hands. My hands are weak, and I have no strength to hold or carry anything. Also, there’s still pain from my shoulders all the way to my fingertips. I have severe neck pain from the pressure on my head when they kept pushing our heads down.”

As Physicians for Human Rights Israel has reported, prolonged physical restraint causes intense pain and can result in permanent nerve damage that interferes with using the hands and in extreme cases can lead to death.

The healthcare workers also all reported prolonged, near-constant blindfolding. According to Physicians for Human Rights Israel, “blindfolding can, even with short-term use, induce visual hallucinations in healthy individuals. Over extended periods, prolonged use of blindfolds can contribute to the onset of anxiety disorders, depression, substance abuse, and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) in the medium to long term.”

Medical Neglect

The healthcare workers described medical neglect despite the detainees’ numerous requests and clear, urgent need for treatment for preexisting health conditions, or for injuries sustained during the hostilities in Gaza or from abuses in custody.

A nurse at Awda hospital in northern Gaza, who asked not to be named, said that on November 21 he was injured when an Israeli airstrike hit his hospital. He had emergency surgery at Awda hospital to stabilize broken fingers and a torn tendon in his right hand, which was then placed in a cast, and an open wound on his left hand was wrapped in gauze.

The next day, the nurse left the hospital in an ambulance along with 15 other people, including patients, their companions, and hospital staff, in an evacuation arranged by the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontieres (MSF or Doctors Without Borders). “The hospital shared our car license plate number, IDs, and names [with the Israeli military], and everything was approved,” he said.

Shortly after their departure, Israeli soldiers at the Kuwaiti Roundabout stopped the ambulance and ordered all passengers to exit. The nurse and another doctor were taken aside and ordered to strip. “My right hand had a cast and titanium [implants]; I couldn’t use it. I couldn’t even pee alone. The doctor detained with me helped me take off my clothes, even my shoes,” the nurse said.

Cuffed and blindfolded, the nurse was taken to Anatot military base. He said that on intake, soldiers introduced a man as a doctor who examined his wounds but did nothing else. He said despite repeated requests, the dressing was only changed for the first time on the third or fourth day of his detention and rarely after that. “They only changed the gauze on the injuries – no scans, no proper medication, nothing. My injury, the skin was open, [but I was given] nothing to treat possible bacteria,” he said. The nurse also said that after a week of detention he was released and needed surgery to treat hemorrhoids due to constant sitting and being kicked in detention.

Dr. Hamoudeh said that during his detention at Sde Teiman in late December, he saw another detainee with apparent “trauma from beatings, and I was terrified he would die.” He alerted authorities who said they were paramedics – he never saw an Israeli doctor at the facility – and “they took pictures [of the injuries] and sent it to someone. The soldier then told them enough, and not to do any more medical care.” He said when he told soldiers about people in need of medical care, they would reply to him saying they did not care if they died.

Dr. Hamoudeh said that one day in December, soldiers brought in five detained doctors, including Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, head of orthopedics at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, who was declared dead by Israeli Prison authorities in Ofer prison in April. “Dr. Adnan was in pain from the beatings. He was also punished. He had visible blunt trauma, and he had trouble breathing,” Dr. Hamoudeh said. “What happened to him, happened to many. There’s clear medical neglect.”

Dr. Osama Tushtash, 28, fell ill with a severe fever after a week in detention at what he believed was al-Naqab prison, but Israeli authorities refused to let him see a doctor or even to give him a painkiller. “They just told me to drink water,” he said.

Khalili, the paramedic, said he suffered broken ribs and a lung injury as a result of beatings, but received no medical treatment at Sde Teiman. He said he saw a detainee die from what he believes was cardiac arrest. When a soldier brought in a doctor, who confirmed the detainee was dead, the detainees shouted “Allahu akbar,” prompting a violent raid by an Israeli special unit tasked with prison raids.

Autopsies of Palestinians who died in Israeli detention facilities indicated medical neglect and signs of physical abuse, including bruising and broken bones, Haaretz reported in March. A report released by Physicians for Human Rights Israel documented treatment without consent, surgery performed without an anesthesiologist, and political interference in medical decisions in detention facilities.

In a letter to senior Israeli officials, an Israeli doctor at Sde Teiman field hospital described practices that endangered detainees’ health, including the lack of trained medical staff, and transferring patients back to the detention facility after only an hour of observation following “major [surgical] operations,” Haaretz reported.

Article 91 of the Fourth Geneva Convention requires facilities detaining civilians to “have an adequate infirmary, under the direction of a qualified doctor,” where those detained may receive “the attention they require, as well as an appropriate diet.” Under international human rights law, medical care for detainees should be at least equivalent to that available to the general population. Current conditions of detention violate the Israeli Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law, which provides for detainees’ right to medical treatment, hygienic conditions, healthy and dignified sleeping arrangements, and daily outside exercise.

Use of Prisoner Functionaries

Two healthcare workers detained in different facilities said Israeli military commanders tasked them to act as prisoner functionaries or Shawish (an Arabic slang term for “servant” or “subordinate”). The men said that shawish, who act as intermediaries between the guards and detainees, are the only detainees not constantly blindfolded, though their hands remain cuffed. The men prepared and distributed food, assisted detainees with eating or using the toilet, cleaned rooms, transferred detainees to interrogation, and provided basic medical care.

Whistleblowers who spoke to CNN alleged that Israeli authorities appointed detainees as shawish only after they were cleared of suspected links to Hamas, and thus had no reason to detain them. In a statement to CNN, the Israeli military denied holding detainees unnecessarily.

Dr. Hamoudeh said that soldiers at Sde Teiman told him to act as a shawish because he spoke English, warning, “If you do anything, you’ll be punished worse than the rest.” He was interrogated only once, for about 10 minutes, on the tenth day of his detention, and was released without charge after 22 days.

Abu Nada, the nurse, said authorities at the Anatot military base told him to work as a shawish. On the fifth day of his detention, a soldier speaking in Arabic told him that if he wanted a lawyer, he had to provide the lawyer’s phone number, which he could not. He said the soldier told him, “We didn’t find anything on you. But we will continue investigating.” He was released without charge after about eight days, on December 1.

With his blindfold removed, Dr. Hamoudeh saw 10 to 20 detainees with medical conditions at Sde Teiman, some of whom needed immediate medical care. “They [the soldiers] threw this responsibility at me, but [left me] without proper medical equipment and facilities,” Hamoudeh said. “I was terrified some would die. […] The shawish before me told me [before being released] that three detainees died during his time.”

Abu Nada accompanied cuffed, blindfolded detainees from the “warehouse” to the interrogation room. “All the way to interrogation, soldiers would be kicking and assaulting [the detainees],” he said. “I used to cry when transferring them, because I’m the one bringing them to this torture. Soldiers told me to turn my face not to look as they continued to kick and beat the detainees.”

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“Trying to Repeat the Nakba”: Israel Launches Largest Military Raids in West Bank in Two Decades
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
August 28, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/8/28/ ... transcript

The Israeli military has launched its biggest operation in the occupied West Bank in close to two decades, with hundreds of troops, backed by armored vehicles, bulldozers, fighter jets and drones, conducting simultaneous raids in the northern cities of Jenin and Tulkarm. At least nine Palestinians were killed overnight, with an additional 11 injured. In total, at least 652 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since October — nearly 150 of them children — most of them during near-daily raids by the Israeli military. Israeli officials have indicated that the raids are just the first stage of an even larger operation in the West Bank. “They are trying to repeat the Nakba. … They are trying to repeat the same ethnic cleansing, the same genocide that is committed in Gaza,” says Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, who joins us from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. “Their goal is ethnic cleansing. Their goal is annexation of the West Bank.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: At least nine Palestinians have been killed and 11 injured as the Israeli military launches its biggest operation in the occupied West Bank in close to two decades, with hundreds of troops, backed by armored vehicles, bulldozers, fighter jets and drones, launching simultaneous raids on the northern cities of Jenin and Tulkarm.

In Jenin, Israeli forces have surrounded the city, blocking exit and entry points and access to hospitals and ripping up infrastructure in the Jenin refugee camp. Israeli forces have also been closing down the main roads leading to Tulkarm and other cities. An Israeli military spokesman told a news conference the raids were the first stage of an even larger operation in the West Bank.

As the raids got underway, Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz called for the mass displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank. He wrote on social media, quote, “We need to deal with the threat exactly as we deal with terror infrastructure in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian civilians and any other step needed. This is a war for everything and we must win it,” he said.

Over 650 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since October, nearly 150 of them children, most of them during near-daily raids by the Israeli military.

For more, we go to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, where we’re joined by the Palestinian physician, activist and politician, Dr. Mustafa Barghouti. He serves as general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative.

Dr. Barghouti, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you explain what’s happening in the occupied West Bank?

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Well, Amy, thank you for having me.

But what’s happening is absolutely horrifying, because what we see here is Israel trying to transfer the genocide war that is conducted in Gaza and the war of ethnic cleansing from Gaza to the West Bank. And what we see here is a unilateral war from the side of a huge Israeli army, which has airplanes, which has tanks, which has huge number of soldiers, against a basically civilian Palestinian population.

You have to understand that the West Bank is an area that has been under Israeli military occupation continuously since 1967, so it’s an occupied territory. And now the Israeli army, which is occupying us all this time, is conducting a war on occupied people. It’s the worst and gravest possible violation of international law that governs the behavior of an occupying power.

And their goal is very clear. It’s as the Israeli minister of foreign affairs said. It’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. This is a fascist Israeli government governed by fascists, like Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, whose goal and aim is to annex the West Bank, is to settle Israeli illegal settlers in Palestinian territory and displace the Palestinian population. They are trying to repeat the Nakba. They are trying to repeat the ethnic cleansing that took place in 1948.

And this time, the Israeli army is invading not only Jenin and Tulkarm and Nur Shams camp and Tubas and Faraa camp; they are invading in so many areas in the West Bank. So many villages tonight were attacked and continue to be attacked. Hundreds of people have been arrested in this campaign. And the worst thing is that the Israeli army and bulldozers are destroying the infrastructure in many refugee camps, especially Nur Shams camp and Jenin camp. They are destroying roads. They are destroying power infrastructure. They are destroying water pipelines. They are destroying homes. And there is no limit to what they are doing. And at the same time, the world is watching and doing nothing.

It’s an absolute, absolute, unacceptable, horrible war crime that the Israeli army is conducting once again inside the West Bank. And I repeat: They are trying to repeat the same ethnic cleansing, the same genocide that is committed in Gaza, where, by the way, the war crimes continue. And every day, the Israeli army is killing 40 or 50 Palestinians — most of them, of course, are civilians.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Dr. Barghouti, I’m wondering your sense of whether this extreme right-wing government in Israel is determined to keep the fighting going even in the face of huge international criticism, not only with the assassinations and the attacks in Iran and in Lebanon and in Gaza, but now in the West Bank. Is it your sense that they feel this is their opportunity to finally have a decisive cleansing of the Palestinian people?

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Absolutely. I think that’s what they are trying to do. This is a fascist government run by theofascist people who have no respect of any human right, no respect of any international law. And their goal is ethnic cleansing, yes. Their goal is annexation of the West Bank.

And what’s happening now in the West Bank proves that the Israeli attack on Palestinians is not because of Hamas, because Hamas is not governing in the West Bank. It’s the Palestinian Authority, which was stripped from all its authorities. And it’s not about 7th of October, because these same acts started to happen before the 7th of October. And that shows you that the 7th of October was a result rather than a cause of what’s happening.

And now the Israeli ministers are coming out claiming they are fighting Iran in the West Bank. What kind of lie this is? Where is — I mean, the people who are occupied by Israel since 57 years are Palestinians, not Iranians. The people who were displaced by Israel in 1948, 70% of the Palestinian population, became refugees because Israel displaced them through massacres. They were Palestinians, not Iranians. But as usual, Israel is trying to claim that it is fighting some kind of another country. Before, it was the Soviet Union. Then it was Egypt. Then it was Syria. Then it was Iraq.

Now they’re talking about Iran, because they don’t want to admit that the real struggle here is the struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom, to end the occupation, to end the system of apartheid. They are trying to cover up the reality. And the reality is that there is an occupier, which is Israel, and occupied people, who are Palestinians. There is an oppressor, which is Israel and its parties and its government and its society, actually, and there is an oppressed, which are the Palestinian population. And now not only they are occupying us and practicing apartheid against us and stealing our land and imprisoning our children, more than that, they are conducting war on us and trying to conduct ethnic cleansing one more time against the Palestinian population.

They would not have dared to do all of that if it wasn’t for the United States of America, if it wasn’t for the unlimited military support that the United States is providing to Israel. They would not have dared to do so if it wasn’t for Germany, which is providing them also with military equipment, if it wasn’t for so many European countries — and I don’t want to put everyone in the same basket, but if it wasn’t for all this European support to Israel, while — and if it wasn’t for the double standard that is used internationally against the Palestinian population. I would also add Israel would not have dared to go so far if it wasn’t for the silence and the weak inaction from so many Arab governments and Muslim governments.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, I wanted to ask you about that, the Arab and Muslim governments, the role that they are playing right now. And what could they be doing?

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Well, there, it seems they don’t have a free will, most of them. Again, I don’t like to put everybody in the same basket. There are differences here. But the least they can do is boycott Israel, declare sanctions on Israel, cut all the normalization agreements with Israel. That’s the minimal thing they can do. We’re not asking them to send armies to fight Israel, but at least impose sanctions on Israel. And I say that the world community itself is responsible if it does not immediately engage in boycott, divestment, sanctions against this terrible fascist regime in Israel that is driving the whole region into a catastrophe and that continues this terrible crime against the Palestinian people.

How long can we continue to — how long can we continue to tolerate this terrible oppression? We’ve been subjected to ethnic cleansing, to occupation, to apartheid, to oppression, to persecution for 76 years. Why should we tolerate that? And why we don’t have the right to struggle for our freedom and for our independence and for our dignity like everybody else in this world?

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Barghouti, can you talk about the timing of this? You even have the Israeli generals putting pressure on Netanyahu, the prime minister, to sign off on a ceasefire. He hasn’t done that, has added more conditions to it, the whole issue of what’s happening in Gaza right now and then shifting to or adding the West Bank, not that they haven’t been attacking the West Bank before.

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: You know, Amy, what is really shocking is that everything that is happening was not a secret. Everything that we see today in the West Bank and what we see in Gaza was declared as a plan by Israeli ministers continuously and repeatedly. They never — they didn’t even try to hide their intentions, and they’re declaring it every day, including the intention of annexing the West Bank, including the intention of ethnically cleansing Palestinians. They’re not hiding that.

And I don’t buy that there are differences really anymore between the security apparatus and the army and Netanyahu. If they really had these differences, they would force him to stop.

But I think what you see here is a very dangerous phenomenon. It’s not just that we just have an Israeli fascist government; we also have a fascist society. I’ve never seen anything like that in previous history, except maybe the rise of Nazis in Germany, where a huge number of the people, out of fear, out of misleading information, out of extreme Zionist ideology, are behaving as fascists. And the reality is that Netanyahu, each time he declares that he’s continuing the war, he’s getting better votes in the polls. And that encourages him to continue. And that’s what pushed him to take this terrible step of moving the war and of continuing the war in Gaza and then moving it to the West Bank.

AMY GOODMAN: And Israel Katz, the foreign minister of Israel, saying this is a war on everything?

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Yeah, he means war on every Palestinian, war on every Palestinian child. Out of the 11 people they’ve just killed in Jenin and Tulkarm, many are children, and two children in the Faraa refugee camp. It’s a war on all Palestinians. It’s a war of a settler-colonial system that wants to erase the Palestinian population, to erase the Palestinian people in the 21st century. That is the meaning of what he says — a war on everything — because they mean that they want to ethnically cleanse the whole of the West Bank, the whole of East Jerusalem, and to annex them to Israel.

And that’s why we are attacked not only by the Israeli army, but also by Israeli illegal settlers, who are behaving like gangs, reminding us of the same gangs, the Zionist gangs of Stern and Haganah, that committed more than 52 massacres in 1948 and that razed to the ground 520 Palestinian communities in what became called Israel later. It’s a continuation of this terrible war of ethnic cleansing. That is the reality.

And this is happening in front of the whole world. It’s happening in front of the American government, which does nothing — nothing — to stop this terrible atrocity and does nothing to stop this terrible ethnic cleansing. On the contrary, they continue to provide Israel with weapons, continue to provide Israel with bombs, and continue to protect Israel in the United Nations Security Council and in every other political venue.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, we thank you for being with us, Palestinian physician and politician who serves as general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, speaking to us from the occupied West Bank, from Ramallah.

Coming up, Democrats are suing to halt new Trump-backed election rules that could be used to block certification of the November election. We’ll speak with voting rights journalist Ari Berman and with the CEO of LULAC, the oldest Latino civil rights organization in this country, which is asking the Department of Justice to investigate the Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for raiding the homes of LULAC members, accusing them of vote harvesting and more. Stay with us.

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Report from Gaza: Israel Kills Dozens More, Increases Forced Evacuations, Attacks Aid Truck
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
August 29, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/8/29/ ... transcript

We get an update from Gaza, where at least 68 Palestinians have been killed in the last 24 hours as Israel continues its relentless assault on the territory. After nearly 11 months of war, the official Gaza death toll now stands at over 40,600, although the true figure is estimated to be much higher. The World Food Programme announced it is pausing the movement of all staff in Gaza until further notice after Israeli forces shot at one of its clearly marked vehicles despite receiving multiple clearances by Israeli authorities. This comes just two days after U.N. humanitarian efforts in Gaza virtually ground to a halt due to new Israeli evacuation orders that disrupted operations again. Israel has issued several evacuation orders across Gaza over the past week, displacing a quarter of a million people in Deir al-Balah alone, including from the Al-Aqsa Hospital, where tens of thousands of residents and wounded were seeking shelter. Journalist Akram al-Satarri, speaking from just outside the hospital, describes “continuous military operations, continuous devastation, continuous targeting and [an] increased number of Palestinians affected by those ongoing operations either by being killed or being injured or by becoming displaced because of the new evacuation orders.”

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: In Gaza, at least 68 Palestinians have been killed and 77 wounded in the last 24 hours, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Nearly 11 months into Israel’s war on Gaza, the toll now stands at more than 40,600 Palestinians killed and nearly 94,000 wounded, though the true casualty figures are expected to be much higher with thousands unaccounted for.

As Israel’s daily bombardment continues, the humanitarian crisis is only deepening. The World Food Programme has announced it’s pausing the movement of all staff in Gaza until further notice after Israeli forces shot at one of its clearly marked vehicles as it was moving toward an Israeli military checkpoint. The U.N. food agency said the vehicle was shot despite receiving multiple clearances by Israeli authorities to approach. The U.N. food agency said the incident was a, quote, “stark reminder of the rapidly and ever shrinking humanitarian space in the Gaza Strip.”

This comes just two days after the U.N.'s humanitarian efforts in Gaza virtually ground to a halt due to new Israeli evacuation orders that forced the shutdown of the main U.N. operations center in Deir al-Balah. The U.N.'s main humanitarian aid hub, with warehouses and accommodation for staff, had already been relocated once before in early May following Israel’s ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza. The new hub was set up in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, but an evacuation order by the Israeli military on Sunday also included the new headquarters.

Israel has issued several evacuation orders across Gaza over the past week, displacing a quarter of a million people in Deir al-Balah alone. The new orders also forced many families and patients to leave Al-Aqsa Hospital, the main medical facility in Deir al-Balah, where tens of thousands of residents and wounded were seeking shelter.

AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Gaza to just outside the Al-Aqsa Hospital, where we’re joined by journalist Akram al-Satarri.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Akram. If you can explain the situation right now? The attention now is on the West Bank, but in the last 24 hours alone, 68 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza alone, with more than that injured.

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

Indeed, the situation in Gaza is ever escalating. The situation in the West Bank is marking a new beginning, where Israeli occupation forces are using the very same tactics of destruction and devastation and also besieging the hospitals and the other infrastructure for the sake of just — as they said, for the sake of preventing the movement of the armed people, but, indeed, that brings more devastation to the infrastructure and more devastation to the civilian population.

In the Gaza Strip, 68 Palestinians were killed in the last 24 hours. Around 21 Palestinians are killed since the morning as of today. And the number of Palestinians who are injured is also increasing. The number of military operations that have an aim of destroying residential blocks is increasing. The bombardment that is resulting from the ongoing operation destroying residential blocks in Rafah area, in Khan Younis area, in Deir al-Balah in Gaza central area, al-Bureij and also in al-Zeitoun area is also hit from all different parts of the Gaza Strip, continuous military operations, continuous devastation, continuous targeting and increased number of Palestinians affected by those ongoing operations either by being killed or being injured or by becoming displaced because of the new evacuation orders that were given to the Palestinians to move them from the humanitarian zone, to move them to the humanitarian zone that is also ever shrinking.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Akram, if you could describe the scale of these evacuation orders? Over 88.5% of Gaza is under evacuation orders. What’s the impact of these evacuation orders on people who are in Gaza?

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: For you to better understand the situation, people are asked to move to areas that have no infrastructure whatsoever, that have no regular water supplies, that have no regular even garbage collection services, with the municipal services coming to a full halt. So, you would be walking down the streets seeing tents erected on the sides of the road, seeing tents erected on the open areas, no infrastructure, no even sewage, no water supplies, no electricity, no hygiene, and the people are living there.

And all of the sudden, they are asked to move from the very same area, that is very lacking, to another area to start removing the tents and building the tents in some other area. People are asked to move to an area of around 11% of the Gaza Strip, to be more precise. And in those areas, that are called the humanitarian zone, there is nothing that have to do or has to do with the humanitarian need. The humanitarian needs are not met.

And people are exposed and vulnerable to extremely increasing risk of the bombardment. In those areas, people were erecting their tents, and they ended up being targeted and killed in those tents. In al-Mawasi area in Khan Younis, around 100 Palestinians were killed when the Israeli occupation forces targeted the whole area and then claimed to have managed to assassinate Mohammed al-Deif, who is the commander general of Hamas military wing. People are — even when they are moved into a humanitarian zone, they are not receiving humanitarian services.

The U.N. agencies and the other international agencies are also facing increasingly difficult situation because of the movement restrictions that have been taking place, because of the fact that they have always to redefine and replan for the sake of making sure that they can access the people and they can also make sure that their teams are safe. Their teams are not safe. The journalists are not safe. The medical teams are not safe. The international teams are not safe. And about every category, there is a list of incidents and of deaths and of injuries and of the destruction of the properties and the vehicles also when they were targeted by the Israeli occupation forces.

So, the bottom line, that the situation is overall unsafe. And the Israeli ongoing ground operations and aerial operations and the continuous targeting, including quadcopters and artillery fire and the F-16s and all the other kind or other kinds of the weapons in their arsenal is making things more difficult for the Palestinians and making life in Gaza more unlivable.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Akram, under these conditions, if you could talk about the diseases that are so rapidly spreading in Gaza, including, most recently, polio?

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Yes, some statements were made, and at least one case of poliovirus was already confirmed in Gaza for a child who’s 11 months old, and the risk of the outbreak of that disease, given the very severe limitations on the movement of the international staff and also of the local staff and also the impact of the ongoing operations on the primary healthcare centers, that most of them are not functional anymore because of the bombardment.

There were some also alarming percentages about the hepatitis A, that has been widespread in the Gaza Strip, and around 1 million Gazans have already been infected with this hepatitis A, that is extremely contagious. And that can be transmitted also through touching.

The water is polluted. The food is polluted, no hygienic conditions. And the result of that is very big risks for the public health of the people in Gaza. And the concerns have already voiced by the UNRWA, by other U.N. agencies, such as the UNFPA, the U.N. women program, where women, children and elderly people are bearing the brunt of that very lacking situation and of that ongoing bombardment. So, people at large are affected by that. They’re affected also by some digestive issues because of the quality of the water and the quality of the food and lacking to hygienic situation for also cooking the food.

So, overall, the situation is extremely risky and dangerous for all different categories of the Palestinian population. And if you need a soap in Gaza, if you need washing soap, or if you need even bleach to wash the clothes, you will not find it in Gaza. You will not find it in Gaza central area, in Khan Younis, in Rafah, or even in Gaza City. People are suffering, and people are denied the access to the very, very basic things that have to do with their life. They cannot clean themselves. They cannot clean their clothes. They cannot clean their houses or their tents. And they are left to face the exacerbating humanitarian crisis, and they’re left to face those increasingly acute humanitarian needs without any help extended to them, because, according to some of the international organizations, the Israeli occupation is not allowing the hygienic stuff into the Gaza Strip. and that exacerbates the problem of the Gazans.

AMY GOODMAN: Akram, we only have a minute to go. We do not take for granted that we’re even able to speak to you in Deir al-Balah, in Gaza. Deir al-Balah itself has been under attack. Ninety percent of Palestinians have been displaced at least once. How do you keep yourself and your own family safe?

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: Well, I’m one of the Palestinians who have been displaced. Our family — I’ve been displaced for around 12 times. It is something that makes you feel unsafe. This is something that makes you feel detached from your original habitat. This is something that makes you feel vulnerable. This is something that makes you fear an imminent death that is coming to you, something that I have seen with my eyes. I saw the bombardment. I saw the people getting injured. I saw the destruction of the homes of the people. And I saw people frantically trying to grab anything and run for the sake of just starting a new life anywhere else, where they are in a situation that is extremely lacking. No one is promised tomorrow in Gaza.

And I will conclude by quoting the UNRWA commissioner-general, who said, “No one safe, no place safe.” And that will still continue and remain like that if no solution reached, if no agreement concluded between all the parties. The situation is extremely catastrophic. I think sometimes I had the chance of being in Western countries. I had the chance of being in African countries, in China. I tell you, what we are living is inconceivable in the sense of everything that has to do with a normal life. We are extremely sure that we might not live for the next second, not for the next minute. But we still have to endure that, and we still have to chase life, despite death, uncertainty and destruction.

AMY GOODMAN: Akram al-Satarri, be safe. Thank you so much for being with us, Gaza-based journalist, joining us from outside the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. We usually break at this point, but because we’re going to the occupied West Bank, to Jenin, which is under siege, we don’t want to risk losing our next guest.

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“They Want Palestine Empty”: Artist in Jenin Blasts U.S. Support for Israel Amid West Bank Assault
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
August 29, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/8/29/ ... transcript

At least 18 Palestinians have been killed and 30 more wounded in the occupied West Bank, where Israel has launched its largest military operation in two decades. Israeli forces have simultaneously raided four cities and refugee camps in the north, with hundreds of soldiers backed by armored vehicles, bulldozers, fighter jets and drones. Much of the violence has been centered on Jenin, a frequent target of raids by Israeli forces, but this latest military operation is the largest since the Second Intifada. Ahmed Tobasi, artistic director at the Freedom Theatre in Jenin refugee camp, says Israel’s tactics are about “punishing the people, punishing the civilians,” with an ultimate goal of ethnic cleansing. “They want Palestine empty from Palestinians.” He also calls on the U.S. public to speak out against continued military support for Israel, saying the killings in both Gaza and the West Bank are only possible because Israel has “the green light from the U.S. government.”

Transcript

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

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now from Gaza to the occupied West Bank, where Israel has launched its largest military operation in over two decades, raiding four cities and refugee camps in the north simultaneously with hundreds of soldiers backed by armored vehicles, bulldozers, fighter jets and drones. At least 18 Palestinians have been killed and 30 wounded.

On Wednesday, the U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called on Israel to immediately end its military operation and strongly condemned the loss of lives, including that of children.

Meanwhile, three leading Palestinian human rights groups issued a joint statement warning, quote, “of even more escalated violence in the West Bank, with the employment of tactics that mirror those used in Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, particularly attacks on hospitals and healthcare facilities, and the use of excessive and indiscriminate force.”

AMY GOODMAN: In Jenin, Israeli forces have surrounded the city, blocking exit and entry points and access to hospitals and ripping up infrastructure in the Jenin refugee camp. Jenin has been the target of frequent raids by Israeli forces, but this latest military operation is the largest since the Second Intifada two decades ago, when Jenin witnessed some of the worst violence of that period after Israeli forces invaded it in 2002, laid siege to the refugee camp, killing dozens of civilians, destroying hundreds of homes, leaving a quarter of the population homeless.

We go now to Jenin, where we’re joined by Ahmed Tobasi, artistic director at the Freedom Theatre in the Jenin refugee camp.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Ahmed, describe the scene in Jenin right now.

AHMED TOBASI: Thank you, Amy, for having me.

I mean, the scene, it’s the same again and again. But as I said before, the Israelis keeping surprising us even the way they do the invasions. To be honest, I am calling my sisters around, some friends, and they are very scared. We, all of us, very scared. We know there is something different in this invasion. The way they start the invasion, the way they’re doing it now, it’s really scary. People don’t know what’s going to happen.

It looked like it’s going to be a bit more longer invasion than others. We are surprised of the number of the soldiers, the vehicles that keep coming to the city. The camp now having sometimes electricity, sometimes not. For sure, the internet is not there. We try to use the 3Gs, and not totally always good. But yeah, it’s a fear atmosphere where everybody is waiting.

And, you know, the scenes from Gaza, what happened to Gaza, the people in the camp are really afraid that’s going to happen to them, because it’s obvious that Israel is punishing the people, punishing the civilians. In the camp, all camp is surrounded with army. All of the entrances are closed. They already bulldozed all the streets, all the alleyways in the camp. And even the bulldozing is really deep. That mean no cars, no ambulances can go inside.

And many people tried to evacuate the camp. But, for sure, it’s very dangerous, because if you are a man above 15 or 14, you could be shot if you are moving or try to sneaking out from the camp. Only maybe kids or some women, if they are courage enough to leave, to know what’s going on outside the house, to leave the camp. But no one allowed to move.

People are afraid of having no food now for one week, because, you know, they didn’t prepare themselves for the invasion. They didn’t know which kind of the invasion is this. And, you know, the Israelis do not announce what they’re going to do exactly. So, many people are really afraid for the kids having no food.

So, yes, you hear the drones very close, the vehicles all around, the bombing by time to time. It’s, again, the scene repeating itself again and again. And we don’t know, like, what is the end, how long, what we should do. And it’s, obviously, the Israelis want to tell the communities, the civilians of these areas, “You have only two choices: You die here, or you leave, are displaced to other country.” And that’s what is — we’re still waiting what’s going to happen in the next days.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Ahmed, if you could put this latest military operation in the context of the ongoing assault on Gaza, on the one hand, and also the situation that’s been developing in the West Bank, both with the increasing violence over the last 10 months since the Israeli assault on Gaza, as well as the exponential increase in the number of Israeli settlements there?

AHMED TOBASI: Yes, I mean, also, at the same time, I hope American language and American, let’s say, journalism starts using the definition in a right way. It is not violence. It’s a genocide from the Israeli army against the Palestinian people. It’s not a conflict. It’s a genocide, a war, ethnic cleansing, from the Israeli military to the Palestinian civilians.

And yes, it’s, to be honest, from 100,000 of settlers to 850,000 in West Bank. West Bank is not anymore West Bank. It’s a little fragment, from Palestinian communities living there and there, and all the connection, all the network, the streets, all controlled by the settlers.

I promise you, I experienced a death threat. One time, I went out trying to go back from Ramallah to Jenin. It’s not even late. It’s the evening. And suddenly we find ourselves surrounded by settlers who really clearly want to kill you. And the last second, we just run with the car. And if we just stopped, they are ready to kill you. They are attacking everywhere. They are putting fire in the houses of the people. They’re shooting. Now they have guns, officially permitted guns from the Israeli government being given to the settlers to shoot Palestinians in very easy cold blood.

So, we’re not facing only army. We’re facing crazy settlers, groups of crazy people who just want to kill more and more. And the idea is clear. They want to empty West Bank from Palestinians. Guys, what is happening in Gaza, what is happening in West Bank, we say it again and again, this was planned from 80 years, and the Israelis have the time to work on it slowly to displace Palestinians in Palestine. They want Palestine empty from Palestinians, and that’s the only plan. And they will not relax. They will not stop until this happens, or, inshallah, it would be a victory for Palestinians, and they will get defeated.

AMY GOODMAN: Ahmed Tobasi, there have been more than 10,000 Palestinians on the West Bank arrested since October 7th. We have brought out reports from CNN to Human Rights Watch to Haaretz to Addameer of prisoners who haven’t been charged being sexually abused, being tortured. I’m wondering if you can talk about the effect of this level of imprisonment. And particularly this past December, the Israeli forces raided the offices of your theater, of the Jenin Freedom Theatre. Producer Mustafa Sheta was detained and sentenced to six months. Have you heard from him? Has he seen a lawyer? Has he been accused?

AHMED TOBASI: Exactly that’s what I’m talking about, Amy. I had an interview with your program in December, last December, and it’s the same and even more crazy, Mustafa still in prison, no information, not allowed even for lawyers to visit or have any information. As we said before, even kids in the Freedom Theatre have been shot where they were playing.

So, for me, it’s like: Is really American people, American government know what is going on? Are they really following? We have been saying this years and years, again and again, tons, tons of reports, United Nations, tons of reports. And what? What is next? We still — I mean, that’s why Israelis going on in there. That’s why they’re getting — and I’m sure the Israelis could not do this if they do not have the green light from the U.S. government.

I am saying, from your window, from your program, I’m calling to the American people, to the American artists, to the American activists, to the American people, please, you are the one who have to move now and stop this craziness. You have to stop supporting sending bombs to Israel. Enough military support. This military support goes for killing artists, children, destroying theaters, killing people, killing women. They do nothing more than this.

And the peace that Israel looking for is not to have a peace in Palestine. It’s to control all the world. It’s to occupy the whole Middle East and use it for the political situation that U.S. should try to fight China and Iran and Russia and Palestine.

I mean, we need to do something. It’s not only Palestinian, left alone, to deal with the Israeli occupation that is defending West and Europe, U.S. It’s really in a very difficult situation. If the U.S. do not follow the time and do something before this will be out of time, I think American people have to explain to the next generation. American people have to explain to the new generation in America what they did to the Palestinians, what they did to save and to finish this genocide and war. Guys, you will have a big responsibility in the future to define what happened to the Palestinians from the American support to the Israeli military terrorism people.

AMY GOODMAN: Ahmed Tobasi, we want to thank you for being with us, artistic director at the Freedom Theatre in Jenin refugee camp, speaking to us from Jenin.

Next up, in Afghanistan, the Taliban approves a law banning women from speaking in public. Stay with us.

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Mass Israeli Protests as 6 More Hostages Killed, But Netanyahu Refuses Ceasefire Terms, U.S. Sends Arms
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 3, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/9/3/i ... transcript

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis protested this weekend to demand a ceasefire following the deaths of six more hostages in Gaza, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to reject the terms of a deal that would remove Israeli troops from southern Gaza. This comes after nearly 11 months of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed over 40,000 Palestinians in the territory, according to local health authorities. “Our politicians won’t listen to anything, because they’re driven out of self-interest,” says Israeli peace activist Yonatan Zeigen, whose mother Vivian Silver was killed in the October 7 Hamas attack on Kibbutz Be’eri. Despite the feeling of solidarity on the streets, Zeigen says there is a sense of “hopelessness” in the mass protests in Israel. We also speak with Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy, who says the outrage in Israel is still mostly confined to critics of Netanyahu and has not yet penetrated his base of support, and that the United States has a major role in the continued violence and Netanyahu’s refusal to agree to a ceasefire. “If President Biden would have really liked to put an end to this war, he could have done it within days by stopping or at least conditioning … the supply of arms and ammunition to Israel. He didn’t do it,” Levy notes.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli army’s discovery of six dead Israeli hostages in tunnels in Rafah, in southern Gaza, has spurred some of the largest protests Israel has seen since October 7. Israel says the hostages were killed by Hamas; Hamas says they were killed by Israeli airstrikes, not far from where a seventh hostage was found alive last week.

On Sunday and Monday, grief and anger spilled onto the streets as hundreds of thousands of Israelis in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and other cities, along with hostage families, demanded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accept a ceasefire deal with Hamas to secure the release of all remaining hostages. This is demonstrator Michal Caspi, whose nephew Alon Ohel was taken hostage October 7th.

MICHAL CASPI: So many people came. I met people that never came before. They came for the first time. I think after what happened yesterday morning, when we hear about the six bodies that came back, I think everybody feel like they have to do something. And I think it’s one of the reasons that so many people came out from home and came to say their words, that they want all the abducted to come back home.

AMY GOODMAN: A rare general strike was called by Histadrut. It was held across Israel on Monday.

Meanwhile, thousands of mourners gathered at the funeral of the Israeli American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose body was among those retrieved from southern Gaza. Hersh’s father Jon Polin said he hoped his son’s death would not be in vain and instead lead to the release of the remaining 101 hostages still held captive in Gaza.

JON POLIN: Hersh, we failed you. We all failed you. You would not have failed you. You would have pushed harder for justice. You would have worked to understand the other, to bridge differences. You would have challenged more people to challenge their own thinking. And what you would be pushing for now is to ensure that your death, the deaths of all the soldiers and so many innocent civilians are not lashav, not in vain.

AMY GOODMAN: Despite the protests calling for a ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back Monday, rejecting the terms of a deal that would remove Israeli troops from southern Gaza. Netanyahu begged for forgiveness for not bringing the six hostages home alive.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] I told the families, and I say it again this evening: I ask for your forgiveness for not succeeding in bringing them back alive. We were close, but we didn’t succeed. And I also say this evening, Israel will not accept this massacre. Hamas will pay a very high price for that.

AMY GOODMAN: Even Netanyahu’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is disagreeing with Netanyahu saying he will not agree to a ceasefire unless Israeli soldiers can stay in the Philadelphi Corridor.

For more, we go to Tel Aviv, where we’re joined by two guests. Gideon Levy is an award-winning Israeli author and journalist, columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, member of its editorial board. And Yonatan Zeigen is an Israeli peace activist, trained mediator and social worker, son of the renowned Canadian Israeli peace activist Vivian Silver, who was killed on October 7th during the Hamas attack on her kibbutz, Kibbutz Be’eri, where she lived. He has said his mother had a plan for peace for Israel and the Palestinians before she was killed.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Yonatan, let’s begin with you in Tel Aviv. Can you describe the scene of the hundreds of thousands of Israelis, a number of them family members of hostages still in Gaza, demanding that Netanyahu agree to a ceasefire deal?

YONATAN ZEIGEN: Well, being on the streets with so many people and with that energy is very powerful, on the one hand. On the other, it’s filled with despair, because you know that our politicians won’t listen to anything, because they’re driven out of self-interest. So, in that sense, you feel — you feel the energy, you feel the solidarity, but also the hopelessness.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Yonatan, do you believe these latest deaths of the six hostages were preventable. If so, why? And do you see that the latest protests are some sort of a turning point in Israel?

YONATAN ZEIGEN: All of the deaths were preventable. October 7th was preventable, as well. If we would have pursued peace years ago, if we would seek partners, Palestinian partners, instead of strengthening fundamentalists, if we would have not strengthened our own fundamentalists and put them in government, then October 7th wouldn’t have happened to begin with.

And since then, if we wouldn’t have gone into this atrocious war, and if we would — sought diplomacy and the help of the international community and go to the PA and Saudi Arabia and the United States and asked, this is — “We’re willing to do 1, 2, 3 in order to create a new reality here, and we ask for Hamas to be driven out,” then we would have gotten that. And all of the deaths would have been prevented, and the hostages would have been brought home.

Is it a turning point?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to bring —

YONATAN ZEIGEN: Yeah?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: No, go ahead. Go ahead.

YONATAN ZEIGEN: I started to say: Is it a turning point? One should hope. But, you know, people relate — you know, they anchor themselves in personal stories. And we woke up on Sunday to a very harsh and heartbreaking story of the six hostages being killed. Will it fuel a relentless protest that will be strong enough to bring a government down or to make it change their policy? I’m not sure.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Gideon Levy, I’d like to pose that question to you. Do you think that these protests are a turning point? They’re certainly the largest since the October 7th attack.

GIDEON LEVY: I can’t agree more with Yonatan. I’ll be just more harsh, as usual. I doubt it very much. It cannot be a turning point as long as it is only this kind of protest. First of all, most of the protest, if not all of it, has nothing to do with the political base of Benjamin Netanyahu. And therefore, he did ignore it until now, and he can continue to ignore it as long as it doesn’t penetrate to his own base. And his own base, I must say, is still very solid, and the protest did not penetrate there.

And secondly, we have to remember that this kind of protest cannot last for long, because it’s a very partial protest. It’s only a protest about the hostages. And the hostages is a huge subject. It’s a huge tragedy. It’s a huge catastrophe. People lost everything. People lost their lives, innocent people, wonderful people, like Vivian and many, many others. But this protest ignores totally the Palestinian victims. And as long as it ignores totally — but really, totally — the 40,000 people, then killing of six gets different proportions and cannot fuel a protest for a long time.

AMY GOODMAN: Gideon Levy, can you explain what the Philadelphi Corridor is? And talk about the fact that Israel didn’t have it before, what Netanyahu is — why he’s resisting removing soldiers from there, even disagreeing — I mean, they’re both being investigated for war crimes, both he and Yoav Gallant, his defense minister — right? — at The Hague. But Gallant is even saying that this is not necessary. And how — is this — the same question that Juan asked Yonatan — a real turning point, this level of mass protest, with the strikes called on top of it?

GIDEON LEVY: So, first, about the Philadelphi Corridor, we will not bother your viewers too much, Amy, because nobody heard about the Philadelphi Corridor as such a huge, painful subject until one, two weeks ago. I’ll tell you more than this. I’m almost convinced that if the issue of the Philadelphi Corridor will be solved, Netanyahu will find a new thing to sabotage any kind of settlement. This man does not believe — and I give him the credit that it is ideological and maybe not only personal, but he doesn’t believe in any diplomacy with the Palestinians. He never did. He never did believe in any kind of settlement with the Palestinians, only living on his sword, only living on our military power. This was his ideology, and it continues now.

He will not end this war now, even if the Philadelphi Corridor — for your viewers, it’s a piece of land which is on the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu claims, rightly so, that many arms were smuggled through the tunnels in the Philadelphi Corridor. But I would like to remind the prime minister that the big attack on Israel did not come from the Philadelphi Corridor. It came from the most protected border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, the most invested border, the most sophisticated border. So it’s really ridiculous. It’s looking for excuses why to say no to stop the war.

And as about your question about turning point, it depends on the coming days. I mean, if the coming days will gain momentum, it might become a turning point. But I have my doubts, because, as I said before, the protests in Israel, until now, is limited to a very specific part of the population. It makes a lot of impression from the outside to see those hundreds of thousands of people gathering in Tel Aviv, but they are not the face of Israel, for sure not the majority of Israelis.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to one of the protesters in Tel Aviv this weekend, Itai Sela, a retired Israeli army veteran with two sons in the Israeli army.

ITAI SELA: The government of Israel is a threat to the world peace. It’s a dictatorship, run by one-man show. And Israel has 200 nuclear armaments. And the way Netanyahu is a world chaos agent, like Donald Trump, he’s a threat to the world peace. … He doesn’t care about the hostages.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Yonatan Zeigen, you were in the streets of Tel Aviv, as well. You and your brother have lost your beloved mother, beloved by so many, not only in Israel, but around the world, as a longtime peace activist. Vivian Silver died on October 7th when Hamas raided her kibbutz. You talk about a plan she had before she was killed. Do you agree with Gideon that the hundreds of thousands of Israelis are only focused on the hostages, calling for a ceasefire, or that there is some recognition of the horror that is taking place in Gaza, as well now as the West Bank?

YONATAN ZEIGEN: There is some, but it’s not enough. When I come to the streets, I stand with the bloc against the occupation or the people who want to end the war. But we are very, very few there, because there is no link in Israeli society between what was before October 7th and what — and the war since and what is happening in the West Bank. They don’t make the link between that and between our situation, our dire situation here, with the hostages and in general, the dire straits of our country. And it’s sad, because we have to make that link. It’s a blind spot of ours.

But a root of our problems is the lack of diplomacy for so long, the continuation of the expansion project of the settler movement, the occupation, a ruthless use of force in the siege of Gaza. This is the root of our problem. Our security issues and October 7th were symptoms of that. And as long as we don’t treat that problem together, — you know, we need a signal from the international community, as well, in order for us to understand that this is a problem needs solving. But as long as we don’t do that, then we are doomed.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I’d like to ask Gideon Levy: Do you think at this point that the only thing that can stop Netanyahu is a decision by the Biden administration to cut off arms to Israel?

GIDEON LEVY: Yes, but I don’t see this decision being made. We are dealing with science fiction, I’m afraid. The Biden administration played a very weird role in this war. On one hand, their heart was in the right place. I’m sure President Biden cared a lot about the suffer of Gaza, about the humanitarian situation. He was shocked, as many others in the world, from what Israel is doing there. But in the same time, he supplied all the weapons and ammunitions to commit all those crimes.

So, I really don’t know. If you want someone to stop a war, do you supply him with more arms and more ammunition? I don’t know this kind of logic. If President Biden would have really liked to put an end to this war, he could have done it within days by stopping or at least conditioning — conditioning — the supply of arms and ammunition to Israel. He didn’t do it. He was far of doing it. And therefore, all the other requests, the condemnations, remarks are totally hollow.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s put that in our last question to Yonatan Zeigen: The significance of the U.S. in leading to a ceasefire, and what President Biden has done, what he should do at this point?

YONATAN ZEIGEN: I think the United States and the international community, in general, plays a crucial role. They were actively enabling our status quo here before, and they are actively enabling the war now. And it’s rooted in the web of interests that was spun for years. And I think the administration has to create a new web of interests that does not rely on weapons and military, but on economy and tourism and trade routes. And I expected the Biden administration and the international community to establish a new international alliance that has authority to give us incentives, and to inflict sanctions if we continue on the wrong path, and to join hands with players on the ground, civil society in Israel and Palestine, to create a new roadmap and to incentivize political actors on both sides to understand that we need to tell a new story in the Middle East, one of peace and not of war.

AMY GOODMAN: Yonatan Zeigen, Israeli peace activist, a social worker, mediator, son of the renowned Canadian Israeli peace activist Vivian Silver, who was killed on October 7th in the Hamas attack on Kibbutz Be’eri, where she lived. And Gideon Levy, Israeli journalist and Haaretz columnist, member of the Haaretz editorial board — both speaking to us from Tel Aviv.

Next up, over 10,000 hotel workers are on strike across the United States to demand raises and fair workloads. We’ll speak with a striking hotel room attendant and the local president of the union UNITE HERE in San Francisco. Back in 30 seconds.

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Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 4, 2024

Israeli Attacks Kill 42 in Gaza as WHO Cites Progress in Polio Vaccination Efforts
Sep 04, 2024

The Palestinian Ministry of Health says Israel’s latest attacks on Gaza have killed 42 Palestinians while wounding more than 100 others in the past 24 hours. In central Gaza City, nine people were killed as Israel bombed a residential building near a city park. Two children were among the dead. Elsewhere, at least seven Palestinians were killed Tuesday when Israel bombed Namaa College northwest of Gaza City, where hundreds of displaced Palestinians had taken shelter.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization says its mass vaccination campaign against polio has so far reached about a quarter of Gaza’s children, after Israel agreed to eight-hour pauses in its attacks. This is Ghada Judeh, a displaced Gaza resident and volunteer on the vaccination campaign.

Ghada Judeh: “We are displaced from Deir al-Balah. I gave my children the polio vaccine to protect them from disease, but I can’t protect them from strikes and from death, unless you help us, just as you helped us and delivered the medications to us to protect our children. So, please, stand with us to stop the war so that our children can live peacefully and to continue their studies.”

Israeli Raids on West Bank Kill 33 Palestinians in a Week
Sep 04, 2024

Israeli forces have expanded their military offensive in the occupied West Bank, where troops have raided the Jalazone refugee camp, north of Ramallah. Separately, Israeli forces surrounded Hebron for a fourth day, with more raids reported around Qalqilya, Nablus and Bethlehem. The Palestinian Authority reports Israeli assaults on the West Bank over the past week have killed at least 33 Palestinians, including seven children.

Doctors Demand Justice for Palestinian Medical Workers Tortured in Israeli Custody
Sep 04, 2024

Pressure is mounting for Israel to release Dr. Khaled Alser, a highly respected Palestinian surgeon who was abducted by Israeli forces during a raid on Gaza’s Nasser Hospital in March. Colleagues say Dr. Alser has been tortured in Israeli custody at Ofer Prison and at the notorious Sde Teiman prison camp in the Negev Desert, where several Israeli soldiers have been accused of raping Palestinian prisoners. Dr. Alser is the lead author of a journal article just published in the British medical journal The Lancet. Democracy Now! spoke to one of the paper’s co-authors, Dr. Simon Fitzgerald, a Brooklyn trauma surgeon.

Dr. Simon Fitzgerald: “Our lead author, Dr. Khaled Alser, remains forcibly disappeared. And it was only about probably the same week that the piece was published that we got word through Israeli Physicians for Human Rights — we were able to get a lawyer into Ofer Prison, where Dr. Khaled Alser is — at least at the time he was interviewed in July was being held — and were able to get testimony that he indeed was abducted by Israeli forces, abused, maltreated, basically tortured.”

Human Rights Watch reports doctors, nurses and paramedics held by Israel have faced widespread torture, including beatings, rape and sexual abuse, forced stress positions, prolonged cuffing, blindfolding and denial of medical care. Click here to see our segment on that report.

Thousands of Israelis Continue Protests Demanding Gaza Ceasefire and Hostage Deal
Sep 04, 2024

Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of major cities across Israel for the fourth day in a row to demand Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agree to a ceasefire and hostage release deal. This morning, families of hostages held by Hamas protested outside of Likud party headquarters in Tel Aviv, following Tuesday evening protests outside the Israeli army headquarters. We’ll have the latest on Israel and Palestine after headlines.

***

Dire: Aid Workers Vaccinate Gaza Children During Pauses in Israeli Attacks, Urge Permanent Ceasefire
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 4, 2024
Healthcare

The World Health Organization has completed the first phase of a critical polio vaccination campaign in central Gaza. After health officials confirmed Gaza’s first polio case in 25 years, the Israeli military agreed to calls for limited humanitarian pauses on its attacks in order for aid organizations to carry out vaccinations. But “there’s real practical, operational problems with this current pause,” says Yanti Soeripto, president and CEO of Save the Children US, whose staff is part of the vaccine drive. “It is not a ceasefire at all. It is an eight-hour pause every day.” As Israel has repeatedly attacked civilians awaiting the provision of aid over the course of its war, it is “difficult to reach normal coverage numbers” — especially for the two-dose vaccine course necessary to vaccinate against polio. Soeripto also discusses outbreaks in other current war zones, including the recent outbreak of mpox in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and warns that “these diseases often cause even more casualties than bombs and bullets.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: Amidst Israel’s continued military attacks on Gaza, the World Health Organization says its mass vaccination campaign against polio has so far reached about a quarter of Gaza’s children to protect them from paralysis, after Israel agreed to eight-hour pauses in its attacks in certain areas of Gaza. This comes after health officials recently confirmed Gaza’s first polio case in a quarter of a century, a 10-month-old child. This is Gaza resident Baha al-Arbid.

BAHA AL-ARBID: [translated] We’ve heard about the truce for polio vaccinations, but I want to stay in this area, because I don’t trust this truce that has just begun. We still fear bombing will happen at any moment, as it happened this morning.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is Ghada Judeh, who recently got her children vaccinated at Yafa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, where she’s also volunteering with the polio vaccination campaign.

GHADA JUDEH: [translated] We are displaced from Deir al-Balah. I gave my children the polio vaccine to protect them from disease, but I can’t protect them from strikes and from death, unless you help us, just as you helped us and delivered the medications to us to protect our children. So, please, stand with us to stop the war so that our children can live peacefully and to continue their studies.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as residents of Gaza are also facing other diseases and chronic lack of food or access to education. This is Karam Yassin, a 10-year-old Palestinian boy in Deir al-Balah, as well.

KARAM YASSIN: [translated] We want to play with our friends, go to school, eat and drink. But this vaccination is of no use. It’s only useful against polio, but the war has destroyed us. It has destroyed our houses. I wish I can play with my friends, go to school. I wish to eat and drink like I used to before.

AMY GOODMAN: Just before we went to air today, Democracy Now! received this update from Tarneem Hammad in central Gaza, who’s part of the polio vaccination campaign with Medical Aid for Palestinians.

TARNEEM HAMMAD: We would need at least 95% vaccination coverage during each round of the campaign to prevent the spread of polio and reduce the risk of its reemergence. However, we’ve been facing many challenges, given the severely disrupted health system, also water system and sanitation systems. Other requirements for a successful campaign delivery include sufficient cash, fuel and functional telecommunication networks to reach communities with information about the campaign, which has been very, very difficult for all of our healthcare workers and social mobilizers who are working on the ground. Gaza has been polio-free for the last 25 years, so the reemergence, which the humanitarian community has warned about for the last 10 months, is another threat to the children in Gaza and also to the neighboring countries. A ceasefire is the only way to ensure public health security in Gaza and also in the region.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined in Washington, D.C., by Janti Soeripto, president and CEO of Save the Children US. Its staff is working from Deir al-Balah Primary Health Care Center, a key vaccination site, working there in Gaza.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Janti. Can you explain what is happening, how many people you understand have gotten this vaccine? It’s children that they’re attempting to do.

JANTI SOERIPTO: Thanks, Amy.

Yes, our site, our Primary Health Care Center in Deir al-Balah, is one of the 51 sites where vaccinations are given to children. I’ve understood that on day one we were able to vaccinate 1,825 children already, which is encouraging, of course. And our staff are working around the clock to make sure that people understand, that parents understand where they can go to get vaccinations, that those vaccinations are safe, to make sure that children are prepped and to make sure that healthcare workers are trained in order to do so safely. But, of course, we need much more than just a couple of days to be able to give these vaccinations. Also, you heard the cover rate there between 90 and 95%. But you have to give two doses of these vaccinations, and they have to be four weeks apart. So one dose is not enough.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about how these vaccines are being administered? Israel has agreed to certain pauses in the bombing. We’re reporting about children being vaccinated in this area, and children being killed in this area by Israeli bombs. Explain how it all happens and how the vaccines are getting into Gaza right now.

JANTI SOERIPTO: So, the procedure, getting in through the WHO over the road. But I think, look, you laid out so clearly. You can, say, have an eight-hour pause in the window in which you can vaccinate these children in these 51 designated sites. But then, I mean, in practice, yeah, children then have to be moved to a particular site. Then sometimes they have to move back to where they were displaced, because most of the people in Gaza are displaced anyway. They’re not in their homes. Homes are destroyed. So it’s very hard to say. I can’t imagine. You heard the previous person in Gaza talking how worried they were to actually even travel across roads that are destroyed to some of these clinics.

So, there’s real practical, operational problems with this current pause. It is not a ceasefire at all. It is an eight-hour pause every day. And then, again, the vaccines are oral drops, two or three drops per dose. You have to give them twice with four weeks in between. That means you have to track and trace these children, as well. They’re all displaced. Whatever happens between the intervening four weeks between those doses then also impacts how effective your campaign can be.

AMY GOODMAN: So, according to the World Health Organization, the Israeli military bombardment of Gaza has damaged or destroyed 31 of 36 hospitals in the area.

JANTI SOERIPTO: That’s right.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the significance of this, and also how polio has reemerged after a quarter of a century in Gaza?

JANTI SOERIPTO: Yeah, it’s just unbelievable. Look, I was there end of March, and I thought it was unbelievably dire then. And clearly, it has gotten much, much worse since, because I was there when people were still congregating in Rafah, and since then, they’ve been displaced from Rafah and the south of Gaza, as well.

So, you know, there is very, very limited access to healthcare. We set up that Primary Health Care Center in Deir Al-Balah. If you look at the people who come there every day, over half of them have to walk more than an hour — walk more than an hour — to get even to that site. So that tells you something about the lack of healthcare, adequate healthcare, in Gaza right now.

And the reemergence of polio doesn’t surprise us. Save the Children and many other organizations and doctors have been warning against this for many, many weeks now. If you look at the sanitation, the sanitary conditions there, solid waste is everywhere in the Gaza Strip. There are not enough toilets. There are no showers. This was a situation just waiting to happen.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you talked about how this is a two-dose regimen, and they’re trying to get, what, just under 700,000 children, to inject them with these vaccines. This never was an issue in the past. But if they are only able to get the first dose, is it ineffective?

JANTI SOERIPTO: That’s not the right level of coverage. I think — and we should also remind ourselves, these are oral drops. Children are already — in Gaza, are already malnourished. They’re weakened. Their immune systems are compromised after almost a year of conflict, displacements, lack of food — you heard it here before — lack of clean water, etc. So, to get adequate protection, they would definitely need those two doses. So we’re concerned that even the current setup, we will do what we can — the WHO is doing what they can — but it’s going to be difficult to reach the coverage numbers in the way that you would normally do it in a campaign.

AMY GOODMAN: So, families have — surviving families in Gaza have to trust that as the polio vaccination campaign makes its way, for example, to Rafah, and then there’s a pause there, that they won’t be bombed if they leave their house or wherever they are currently displaced to, to get this vaccination. That’s in Gaza. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Israelis are continuing their protests calling for a ceasefire and a hostage deal from the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said no so far. The significance of this? And the position of Save the Children on a ceasefire?

JANTI SOERIPTO: We’ve been calling for a ceasefire since October last year, because we know, as humanitarian operators, that that is the only way to get adequate aid, supplies and services to children and families that need it now. In the current scenario, our amazing staff and volunteers in Gaza are doing what they can at the risk of their own lives. We’ve lost colleagues and partners over these past months. But it’s really difficult to get people to come out, whether to get vaccinated, whether to get food, whether to get some level of mental health support or protection when bombs are falling. And deconfliction, so the safety of your convoys, of sending your own staff on the road with supplies to reach people, is not guaranteed at all.

AMY GOODMAN: In a moment, we’re going to speak with Gershon Baskin, Middle East director of the state International Communities Organization, a back-channel negotiator with Hamas in the past. So I wanted to switch gears just for one minute, Janti, to talk about what’s happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In mid-August, the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency in response to mpox. This is Nzigire Lukangira, whose child has been suffering from mpox for days in an isolation ward in Kavumu in the eastern DRC.

NZIGIRE LUKANGIRA: [translated] Since my child got this disease and I brought him here, he only received one injection and some pills. The conditions here are very poor. We have no food, and people are forbidden to visit us because we have a dangerous disease. We are suffering a lot and feel like we will die of hunger here.

AMY GOODMAN: Before we go, Janti Soeripto, as chair and as president and CEO of Save the Children US, you were just in the DRC. Can you talk about this outbreak of mpox and what people should understand and how difficult it is to get a vaccination right now?

JANTI SOERIPTO: Right. Thanks. Yes, I was there in May. I was actually in South Kivu, which is now the epicenter, I think, of this particular outbreak, with over 50 — with 50% of the cases. It is an incredibly contagious disease. It is very dangerous for children. So, of the cases, I think two-thirds of the cases affect young children.

And again — and we see a pattern here, Amy, whether it’s Gaza or the DRC or Sudan, for that matter. You know, contagious diseases, whether it’s cholera or polio or mpox, you know, wreak havoc on populations that are already vulnerable, that are displaced, and there is no access to proper healthcare, vaccinations, no sanitation. And these diseases often cause even more casualties than bombs and bullets.

So, we’re doing what we can. Again, we’re working with communities to make sure that they understand how to prevent or reduce the risk of spreading — simple hygiene, handwashing. Again, clean water is in short supply. People are weakened because there was already a food insecurity crisis. We’re trying to ascertain where people can have access to healthcare. But as you heard in the previous segment, it is difficult to get access to medicine. And there is currently no — there are vaccines in the DRC, either.

AMY GOODMAN: Janti Soeripto, we want to thank you for being with us, president and CEO of Save the Children US.

Next up, as tens of thousands of Israelis protest for Prime Minister Netanyahu to agree to a Gaza ceasefire, we’ll speak with Gershon Baskin, longtime Israeli back-channel negotiator with Hamas. His new book, In Pursuit of Peace in Israel and Palestine. Stay with us.

***

Fmr. Israeli Hostage Negotiator Gershon Baskin Slams Netanyahu for Blocking Ceasefire Deal
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 4, 2024

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects growing domestic and international calls to accept a Gaza ceasefire deal, we go to Jerusalem to speak to Gershon Baskin of the human rights advocacy group International Communities Organization. Baskin has spent years as a back-channel Israeli negotiator with Hamas in ceasefire deals, including throughout Israel’s current war on Gaza. “It’s very clear that Netanyahu doesn’t want to end the war,” says Baskin, who calls for all remaining stakeholders, including Hamas, the United States and Israeli protesters, to increase pressure on the defiant prime minister.

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.

Tens of thousands of Israelis have protested across Israel for the fourth day in a row to demand Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agree to a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal. Today, families of Israeli hostages protested outside the Likud party headquarters in Tel Aviv. This followed a Tuesday evening protest outside the Israeli army headquarters.

Despite the mounting pressure, Netanyahu remains defiant, refusing to accept a ceasefire deal, while putting forward new demands and insisting he would not agree to any deal with Hamas unless Israel maintains control of the Philadelphi Corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt.

President Biden has called on the Israeli leader to do more to secure an agreement with Hamas following the recovery of the bodies of six dead hostages. On Tuesday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matt Miller addressed the ceasefire negotiations.

MATTHEW MILLER: Over the coming days, the United States will continue to engage with our partners in the region to push for a final agreement. During talks last week, we made progress on dealing with the obstacles that remain, but, ultimately, finalizing an agreement will require both sides to show flexibility. It will require that both sides look for reasons to get to yes, rather than reasons to say no.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as the Middle East Eye is reporting an anonymous Turkish Foreign Ministry official is accusing the United States of misleading the public by claiming that the Gaza ceasefire negotiations are progressing favorably, and that Washington is not exerting enough pressure on Israel.

We go now to Jerusalem, where we’re joined by Gershon Baskin, Middle East director of International Communities Organization, a human rights advocacy group. For years, he has been a back-channel Israeli negotiator with Hamas in ceasefire deals, including during Israel’s current war on Gaza; in 2011, when he helped negotiate the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. On Tuesday, Baskin shared a deal Hamas leaders told him they would accept and that would lead to the release of all remaining Israeli hostages. He recently wrote, quote, “Let it be clear that Netanyahu has sentenced the hostages to death. Netanyahu stated that Israel will not leave the Philadelphia corridor … meaning that Israel will occupy Gaza for many more years. … Netanyahu is sacrificing the hostages on an altar of his own personal political survival.”

Gershon Baskin, welcome back to Democracy Now! Why don’t you lay out the situation as you understand it at this point and talk about the protests in the streets, what they’re demanding of Netanyahu and why he’s refusing?

GERSHON BASKIN: Right. I think it’s important to point out that, Amy, it isn’t tens of thousands of Israelis who have gone out to the street, it’s hundreds of thousands. To make that equivalent in the United States, it would be like 25 million Americans taking to the streets. That’s the dimension of the protests that we’ve seen in the last days since the bodies of those six hostages were recovered.

We could get many more Israelis on the street if they believe that the Hamas was really willing to release all the hostages, which is why I’ve pleaded with the Hamas to say yes not only to me, but to tell the Egyptians and the Qataris that they agree to the deal that I proposed to them, which is a three-week, end-of-war, full-term ceasefire, Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, release of all the Israeli hostages and a release of an agreed number and list of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. This is a deal that can be made. It is a million times better than the deal that the United States, Qatar and Egypt have been trying to negotiate, unsuccessfully, for the last three months, which would just keep the war going and only release 32 hostages in 42 days. That’s a bad deal. We need to have a good deal put on the table. I’ve communicated this to the White House, to the Qataris, to the Egyptians and, of course, to the Israeli government. Now the officials need to push this through.

AMY GOODMAN: Why is Netanyahu refusing?

GERSHON BASKIN: Well, it’s very clear that Netanyahu doesn’t want to end the war, as one of his top negotiators told me on Saturday. The problem with any agreement that we can put forward is that the bottom line is that Hamas won’t make an agreement that doesn’t end the war, and Netanyahu won’t agree to any agreement that ends the war. He wants to keep this going. He certainly won’t consider ending the war until they find and kill Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza. But I think that the message of this past weekend was that there’s no reason to believe that any hostage will survive if Israel in fact does find and kill Yahya Sinwar. There’s no reason to believe that they won’t simply execute all the remaining hostages.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the state of the negotiations since — well, it’s widely believed that it was Israel who assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, the lead negotiator, on Inauguration Day of the new president in Iran. The significance of this?

GERSHON BASKIN: I’m not sure that it had a real impact on the negotiations. Haniyeh was the face of the negotiators from Hamas with the Qatari prime minister, but he wasn’t actually a member of the negotiating team. He wasn’t in the room when negotiations were taking place. Of course, he was the leader of the Hamas politburo and played a significant role there. There are debates of whether or not he was pushing for an agreement or pushing against an agreement. It doesn’t really matter at this time. He’s no longer there, and there are other leaders of Hamas right now. Hamas makes decisions generally in consultation, and they try to reach consensus. When there is consensus or when there is a decision, it’s announced by the Hamas leader in Beirut, Osama Hamdan. And when Osama Hamdan says something in a press conference or on his Telegram page, it’s official, and everyone in Hamas stands behind it.

That’s what we’re waiting for now — that what I’m waiting for now, to Hamas to say that we agree to a three-week deal that will end the war, will release the hostages and release Palestinian prisoners. Of course, increase humanitarian aid into Gaza in a really substantial way, that has to be part of the agreement, as well. But we really need Hamas to signal to the Israeli public that this kind of deal is on the table, so that we can mass the public in the numbers way above a million people on the streets to force Netanyahu to accept it.

AMY GOODMAN: It keeps being said that he wants to keep Israeli soldiers in the Philadelphi Corridor. I spoke to Gideon Levy yesterday, on the editorial board of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and he said it’s not even worth talking about this. No one even knew what this was months ago. Suddenly, it has become so key. What is your assessment of what Netanyahu wants there and why this has become important?

GERSHON BASKIN: Look, last night on one of the main Israeli television stations, Alon Ben-David, a very significant military correspondent, said that in all the past months that the Israelis are searching for tunnels that lead underneath the Philadelphi Corridor, the borderline, 14-kilometer borderline between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, they haven’t found a single tunnel that penetrates the border. We have to recognize that this is an international border. There is a sovereign Egyptian side of the border. The Egyptians are responsible for sealing that border. And I’m certain that with the request from the United States and Israel, the Egyptians would agree to American finance and technology know-how and American supervision or observers on the ground to ensure that the border is closed.

This is a made-up issue by Netanyahu to create a new — I don’t know what we want to call it — a new excuse for Israel to remain in Gaza. Essentially, at the end of the day, what it means is that Israeli soldiers would be sitting ducks along the line of this border, where insurgents from Hamas would be able to kill them. And that’s what we’re facing today. Hamas has been largely decimated in terms of its military power, but they have the ability to engage in armed insurgency and kill Israeli soldiers every single day, Hamas fighters popping out of a tunnel and shooting an RPG at an Israeli tank or an Israeli vehicle. And we should be reminded of 18 years of Israel sitting in southern Lebanon, when soldiers came home every week dead, as well. That should be a lesson for us.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what happened back when you were involved with the negotiation to release the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit for a thousand Palestinian prisoners? And do you take any lessons from then to what’s happening today?

GERSHON BASKIN: It’s a very different situation when we’re talking about over a hundred hostages and an active war that’s been fought for 11 months with the total destruction of Gaza and 40,000 to 50,000 Palestinians killed and 1,700 Israelis killed, or more than that, so far. So it’s really different.

But there are some lessons. One is that there’s no replacement to a direct, secret back channel with direct communication between the parties. Even if it’s not an official channel, it’s a way to deliver messages and to brainstorm and find new ideas. There is no doubt that negotiating through third-party mediators, like Qatar and the United States and Egypt, convolutes the situation, makes it much more complex, and each side has its own interest here. There’s great reluctance to make compromises.

What I’ve seen, what I’ve observed over the last 18 years that I’ve been doing these negotiations is that sometimes it’s just unbelievable, the kind of behavior of the people in charge of these negotiations, who sometimes seem to be as if they were in a kindergarten classroom, with bringing up issues and ways of talking to each other, or talking at each other, that resemble what young children would do, rather than being responsible and finding direct ways to resolve the problem, which is ending the war and getting the hostages home. They never deal with it directly. And this is the truth today as it was many years ago when Gilad Shalit was in captivity.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think it would take at this point, in this last minute we have, Gershon?

GERSHON BASKIN: I think it would take an Hamas acknowledgment that they’re ready to release all the hostages, so that we can mobilize the Israeli streets. And it will take extreme American pressure on Netanyahu to make a deal. And the Americans have the pressure, if they were to choose to use it.

AMY GOODMAN: And what would that look like, the U.S. putting pressure on Israel?

GERSHON BASKIN: Well, look, the most obvious are the two things that are the most powerful. One is the shipment of arms to Israel, which is unlikely to happen. The other is the use of the veto in the Security Council and in other international arena. But the American-Israel relationship is so deep and so wide that there are many ways that the United States can use soft power with Israel to get the message across.

And what’s important is that it’s not done just to Prime Minister Netanyahu, but that the Israeli public knows what the United States of America wants and what it’s demanding from Israel. Again, we are still a democracy, or what’s left of a democracy, and the people are the sovereign. And we can mobilize the people if we have the tools to do that.

AMY GOODMAN: Biden, what is the single most important thing he can do as president of the United States?

GERSHON BASKIN: To put a deal on the table which is a good deal, the kind of deal I talked about, and to let the Israeli public know that it’s there. The United States is backing it. Qatar is backing it. Egypt and Hamas will support it. That’s the most important thing that Biden could do right now.

AMY GOODMAN: Gershon Baskin, I want to thank you for being with us, Middle East director of the International Communities Organization, longtime back-channel negotiator with Hamas. His memoir is titled In Pursuit of Peace in Israel and Palestine.

When we come back, Dynamite Nashville. Back in 20 seconds.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Hold On, I’m Comin’,” Sam & Dave, written by Isaac Hayes. A Georgia judge has agreed with a lawsuit by the Hayes family that said the legendary singer would disapprove of Donald Trump’s campaign’s use of his song and ordered the campaign to stop playing it at rallies — the Trump campaign, that is.