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

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 06, 2024

Israel Hinders Polio Vaccination; U.N. Warns Gazans Getting No Food in “Beyond Catastrophic” Scenario
Sep 06, 2024

The U.N. is warning more than 1 million people in central and southern Gaza received no food rations in August, adding to a “beyond catastrophic” situation in the war-torn Palestinian enclave. Gaza’s Health Ministry, meanwhile, says Israel is hindering the delivery of polio vaccines as its military refuses to coordinate the entry of medical teams in southern Gaza.

This all comes amid ongoing Israeli aerial and ground attacks. Deaths were reported in Gaza City and the Nuseirat refugee camp earlier today. In Khan Younis, mourners grieved their murdered loved ones at Nasser Hospital, including this mother whose son was killed by an Israeli strike.

Palestinian mother: “A cry of pain comes from the depths of my heart. I want the whole world to hear it. The sound of my pain burns like fire from within. My heart is heavy, full of pain.”

As mass protests in Israel continue to demand a ceasefire and hostage release deal, Hamas has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of continuing to block a deal as he refuses to withdraw Israeli forces from Gaza’s border with Egypt.

The U.S. Justice Department earlier this week indicted Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and five others with terrorism and other charges over the October 7 attack in Israel.

Israel Continues Assault on West Bank, Leaves Devastating Scenes After Attacking Jenin and Tulkarm
Sep 06, 2024

Israeli forces are continuing their deadly raids in the occupied West Bank, including in Nablus, Balata, Bethlehem, Hebron and Ramallah. In Jenin and Tulkarm, Israeli troops withdrew after a 10-day raid which killed a reported 36 people and left a trail of destruction. This is Wasfiya Rahaima from the Tulkarm refugee camp.

Wasfiya Rahaima: “This was the worst night. Everyone left their homes, but I did not, because I am disabled. My nephews told me they are going to leave, and I told them I will not go anywhere. Whatever God’s willing will happen. There was sounds of strikes here and behind the house. They razed everything. Look at it, the shooting and sound grenades. I was reading the Qur’an all night so that God will protect us. … Seventy-eight years, I have never witnessed anything like this, from 1948 to ’67 to all the intifadas and all that I have witnessed, but nothing was like this.”

Earlier today, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to include the defeat of Hamas and other groups in the occupied West Bank as part of Israel’s war objectives. Ben-Gvir has repeatedly called for Israel to annex the occupied West Bank.

***

“Beyond Catastrophic”: U.N. Issues Dire Warning on Gaza as Israel Hinders Polio Vaccination Drive
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 06, 2024

The United Nations is warning the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains “beyond catastrophic” as more than 1 million Palestinians in Gaza did not receive any food rations in August amid Israel’s relentless assault. Israel’s 11-month campaign has killed more than 15,000 children and enabled the besieged territory’s first polio outbreak in a quarter-century. INARA founder Arwa Damon just got back from spending two weeks in Gaza, where the nonprofit currently provides medical and mental healthcare to Palestinian children. “Israel has decimated every single aspect of any sort of infrastructure within the Gaza Strip, from sewage to water to electricity to you name it,” says Damon, who reports that humanitarian assistance has diminished significantly while displaced Palestinians play a “macabre, dark, twisted game” of trying to escape constant Israeli bombing.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s talk specifically now about Gaza, where you just were for two weeks. The U.N. is warning the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains, quote, “beyond catastrophic” as more than a million Palestinians in Gaza did not receive any food rations in August amidst Israel’s relentless assault, this coming as Gaza’s Health Ministry says Israel is hindering the delivery of polio vaccines as it refuses to coordinate the entry of medical teams to parts of southern Gaza. This is Karam Yassin, a 10-year-old Palestinian boy in Deir al-Balah, Gaza.

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: And this is a Palestinian mother, Ghada Judeh, who recently got her children vaccinated at Yafa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, where she’s also volunteering for 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: Arwa Damon, can you talk about the crisis in Gaza, where you just spent two weeks?

ARWA DAMON: I mean, let’s start by talking about how it is that polio reemerged in Gaza after 25 years. And it really boils down to the fact that Israel has decimated every single aspect of any sort of infrastructure within the Gaza Strip, from sewage to water to electricity to you name it. And what has happened in Gaza right now is that you have a situation where piles and piles of trash are everywhere. Open sewage is running in the streets. Hygiene is just about impossible, made even more impossible, Amy, because we have not been able to get in to southern or central Gaza hygiene or even just bars of soap in months right now.

And so, polio is seeing right now this vaccination effort, but let’s talk about the other diseases. Let’s talk about the fact that in Nasser Hospital alone, the head of the pediatrics department said that two children per week were dying of hepatitis A, also largely due to the lack of hygiene. Let’s talk about the fact that meningitis, that can potentially be deadly, is spreading, or this horrific skin disease called impetigo, that basically is these blisters that start to form, and then they pus open and ooze and bleed, and then, eventually, as they’re healing, crust up but are horrifically itchy. And the more severe cases, children need to be hospitalized for that. And if they’re not hospitalized, it can lead to, you know, potential kidney failure, which can also lead to death.

Let’s talk about the fact that when you’re driving through Gaza and people recognize that you’re a humanitarian organization, children run up to the car and gesture like this, that they want soap. A bar of soap is something that we are not able to provide to the Gazan population. The lack of hygiene and the fact that if we were able to provide Gazans with a bar of soap, studies show that that would reduce communicable diseases by about 40%, means that Gazans are suffering exponentially more now than they need to be. And very little aid is getting in. If you look at the number of humanitarian trucks that, you know, have gotten in in August and July and June, it’s roughly 60 to 70 total.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can talk about, when it comes to this polio vaccine, the kids have to get two doses of it? I mean, how do they come out of places where they are hiding, where they’ve been displaced one, two, three, eight, nine times? How do they feel safe enough to go to places where they get this polio vaccine and then have to go back? And what does it mean that Israel says it’ll bomb this area but not this today, and then tomorrow they will bomb this area, and then you can go over there that they bombed the other day?

ARWA DAMON: I mean, you know, you talk to Gazans, and they really feel as if they’re sort of part of this very macabre, dark, twisted game where they’re just getting shuffled around trying to stay ahead of the bombing, but then, you know, still risking it.

Now, when it comes specifically to the polio vaccine, there are theoretically these pauses that have been set up in specific areas. And then, within those specific areas, where these pauses are meant to be lasting for a day or two or three or however long it is deemed to take, there are numerous points, as well as mobile points, that people are able to go to to actually receive the polio vaccine itself. But it is extraordinarily challenging. It is very, very difficult even under the best of conditions to undertake a vaccination campaign, you know, this wide and this broad.

And frankly, I hope I’m wrong, and I hope the doctor that I was speaking to is wrong, but he was saying that he doesn’t really believe that it is going to be all that successful, and that the fact that Israel is allowing this to proceed is just a smokescreen so that it can sort of continue to push forward this narrative of, “Oh, but we’re allowing humanitarian assistance. Look, we allowed the polio vaccine to happen,” and not really address the sort of bigger picture issues when it comes to the reality that humanitarian assistance is barely trickling in to Gaza, that the levels of aid that were able to provide to the people have diminished significantly, and that the number of people in need has grown drastically, and that people are being crushed into this smaller and smaller space. I mean, the conditions there, Amy, are inhumane. People there aren’t living; they’re barely surviving.

And there are alternative routes that Israel can provide for aid organizations to be able to get assistance to the people. I’ll give you one example. So, we were talking about the lack of hygiene kits and soap in the southern and central part of Gaza. Now, the southern and central part of Gaza is, for example, receiving fresh vegetables on the commercial market. What this means is that most people can’t afford them, but we, as aid organizations, can purchase them — albeit prices are quite astronomical — and deliver fresh food parcels to the people. Now, in the north of Gaza, there is no vegetables on the commercial market, but, ironically, hygiene kits are getting in to the north. What we are not permitted to do is move vegetables from the south to the north, where they’re needed, or hygiene kits from the north to the south. And this is just one sort of example of the various different hurdles and obstacles that are deliberately being placed in our way.

AMY GOODMAN: Before we go, Arwa, I wanted to ask you personally about your own life experience and how it’s informed what you’ve done, from being an international reporter at CNN to founding INARA. Your mother Syrian, your father American, you grew up in places like Morocco and Turkey.

Just two days after October 7th, you wrote a piece for New Lines Magazine titled “As Gaza Braces for a Ground Invasion, the Circle of Violence Continues.” You write in it, “We need to understand the past, the traumas of the past, traumas that have been passed on generation to generation, both on the Israeli and on the Palestinian side. We need to understand those intense emotions that can embed themselves in and change our DNA — paralyzing fear, the desperate need to belong, the longing for home and safety, the desire for a dignified life. We also need to understand how those emotions have been historically manipulated, twisted, and how from the start the failings of the key power brokers — incidentally neither Palestinian nor Israeli — have led to where we are today.” Your final thoughts, Arwa Damon?

ARWA DAMON: You know, I’m a big believer in the need to understand a person or even, you know, a country’s emotional trajectory, because we need to understand how and why it is that people act and think a certain way, if we want to alter the path that we’re on. And I think, obviously, you know, in my journalistic career, I tried to focus on that by storytelling and by sharing the human story that exists beyond the bombs and the bullets. And in the humanitarian space, I mean, look, I still tell a lot of stories, but I also believe that it’s very important for us to do what we can for those in need, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it can also help alter the balance of their own psyche.

When you see a child who has been so deeply traumatized, you look at that little kid, and their eyes are deadened. That spark of life doesn’t exist. But when you begin to provide them with medical and mental assistance, when you begin to support them and their family, you see that spark begin to reemerge. And I think that is something that we should not negate and that we should really be focusing our efforts and our capacities on trying to bring, because the more that we abandon populations, the more violent our world is going to become.

AMY GOODMAN: Arwa Damon, we want to thank you for being with us, award-winning journalist, founder of INARA, a nonprofit currently providing medical and mental healthcare to children in Gaza, previously spent 18 years at CNN. She just returned from a two-week trip to Gaza. She is joining us from the capital of Ukraine, from Kyiv.

Coming up, we speak to Fred Trump, Donald Trump’s nephew. He says President Trump once told him as they sat in the Oval Office that disabled Americans “should just die.” Fred Trump has written his memoir. It’s called All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way. Stay with us.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 09, 2024

U.N.: Israel Carrying Out “Starvation Campaign” as the Entire Gaza Strip Remains in Urgent Need of Food
Sep 09, 2024

Israel’s war on Gaza has entered its 12th month as the official death toll nears 41,000 — though that is believed to be a vast undercount. Israel killed at least eight Palestinians Saturday in an airstrike on a school housing displaced people in the Jabaliya refugee camp. Meanwhile, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, has accused Israel of carrying out a “starvation campaign” in Gaza. The World Food Programme warns some 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza remain in urgent need of food and humanitarian aid.

Israeli Forces Kill American Activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi in Occupied West Bank
Sep 09, 2024

In the occupied West Bank, a funeral is being held today for Turkish American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, who was shot dead Friday by Israeli forces. She was a 26-year-old recent graduate of the University of Washington who was volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement. She was shot while taking part in a weekly protest against illegal Israeli settlements in the town of Beita. The Israeli activist Jonathan Pollak witnessed the shooting.

Jonathan Pollak: “By the time this had happened, it was completely quiet here. We were standing for 10, 15 minutes without anything happening. The reason why no one was filming is because it was completely quiet. And then, all of a sudden, two shots. And the sniper or the soldier that was there took a kill shot.”

We will have more on this story after headlines.

Meanwhile, Israeli troops are also accused of fatally shooting a 13-year-old Palestinian girl named Bana Laboum. She was hit by a bullet while inside her own home in the village of Qaryut, which had been attacked by Israeli settlers. Bana’s mom spoke out after her daughter was killed.

Iman Lebwam: “She was in her room along with her sisters. She was afraid, in fear, and suddenly a bullet got in through the window and hit her while she was on her bed. This is what happened. There were scuffles outside with the youth, but we were surprised that a bullet came through the window and onto her.”

Israelis Take to Streets for Mass Protests Calling for Hostage Deal, Removal of Netanyahu
Sep 09, 2024

As many as 750,000 Israelis took to the streets Saturday in Tel Aviv and other cities calling for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal in what’s been described as one of the largest protests in Israeli history. This is Zahiro Shahar Mor, whose uncle Avraham Munder died in captivity in Gaza.

Zahiro Shahar Mor: “As long as Netanyahu remains in power, we will keep getting hostages back in body bags. Netanyahu must be removed from power in order to save the lives of the hostages and the country itself.”

Israel Temporarily Closes Border Crossings with Jordan After Shooting of 3 Israeli Security Guards
Sep 09, 2024

A Jordanian truck driver shot dead three Israeli security guards at a border crossing between the occupied West Bank and Jordan on Sunday. Israel responded by temporarily closing all border crossings with Jordan. Pedestrian traffic has resumed on the Allenby Bridge, the site of the shooting.

Separate Israeli Attacks Kill 3 Paramedics in Lebanon, 16 People in Syria
Sep 09, 2024

Three Lebanese paramedics were killed and two were injured Saturday in an Israeli attack on southern Lebanon. The Lebanese government said the paramedics were killed as they were responding to fire sparked by recent Israeli airstrikes.

In related news, Israel is accused of attacking Syria overnight, killing at least 16 people in Hama province. Another 36 people were wounded.

***

Justice for Ayşenur Eygi: As Israel Kills Another American in West Bank, Will U.S. Demand Accountability?
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 09, 2024

A funeral is being held today in the occupied West Bank for Turkish American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, who was shot dead Friday by Israeli forces while taking part in a weekly protest against illegal Israeli settlements in the town of Beita. The 26-year-old recent graduate of the University of Washington was a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement. Witnesses say she was fatally shot in the head by an Israeli sniper after the demonstration had already dispersed. The Turkish government has said it holds Israel responsible for Ayşenur’s death, while the U.S. government has offered condolences and called for Israel to investigate the incident. At least 17 Palestinian protesters have been killed in Beita in protests against illegal Israeli settlements since 2020.

Juliette Majid, a friend of Eygi at the University of Washington, remembers the slain activist as being “passionate about justice” and involved in various causes. “She’s no longer with us, but her spirit and her love and who she was and who she impacted in our community are still with us every day,” says Majid. Filipino American activist Amado Sison, who also volunteered in the occupied West Bank and was himself shot in the leg by Israeli forces on August 9 during a weekly protest in Beita, says the U.S. government must demand an independent investigation and end Israeli impunity. “If they took it seriously that a U.S. citizen was shot a month ago, maybe Ayşenur would be here right now,” he says.

Transcript

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

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

In Nablus in the occupied West Bank, a funeral procession is underway at the time of this broadcast for the Turkish American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi. She was killed by the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank on Friday. Ayşenur was a 26-year-old recent graduate of UDub, the University of Washington, in Seattle. She was shot dead by Israeli forces during a weekly Friday protest against illegal Israeli settlements in the town of Beita.

According to eyewitnesses, Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and live ammunition, forcing the protesters to disperse down a hill on the edge of the town. Israeli activist Jonathan Pollak, who was on the scene, said the shooting took place about half an hour after the protesters had dispersed and the situation was calm. He said Ayşenur and other foreign volunteers were standing about 200 yards from the Israeli military. He described what happened.

JONATHAN POLLAK: So, after retreating from the hilltop, I was right there where the garbage can is. And that’s — it was completely quiet already back then. The clashes had dissipated. And then, after 10 or 15 minutes it was completely quiet, I heard two distinct shots of live ammunition. One hit a metal object, and then I retreated a little bit backward into the olive grove, and then, a few seconds after, maybe two or three seconds, a second shot. And I heard someone calling my name and saying in English, “Help! Help us! We need help! Come over.” So I chased — I raced through the olive grove down there.

Her head was gushing with blood. She was lying here. I put my hand behind her back to try and stop the bleeding, which didn’t stop. I looked up and saw a direct line of sight from where the soldiers were on that rooftop, some 200 meters away. I quickly took her pulse. It was very, very weak. Her eyes were rolled back. Her skin started becoming yellow. And we panically called for the ambulance to come.

By the time this had happened, it was completely quiet here. We were standing for 10, 15 minutes without anything happening. The reason why no one was filming is because it was completely quiet. And then, all of a sudden, two shots. And the sniper or the soldier that was there took a kill shot. And this happens in context. This isn’t an isolated incident. It happens in the context of the 17 people who were killed in demonstrations in Beita since 2021. We have heard nothing about them because they’re not Americans.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Israeli activist Jonathan Pollak.

Ayşenur was taken to a hospital in Nablus, where she was pronounced dead on arrival. The governor of Nablus told reporters Saturday an autopsy confirmed that Ayşenur was, quote, “killed by an Israeli occupation sniper’s bullet to the head,” unquote.

The Israeli military said in a statement it was, quote, “looking into reports that a foreign national was killed” and that, quote, “details of the incident and the circumstances in which she was hit are under review,” unquote. The statement added Israeli forces had, quote, “responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them,” unquote.

The Turkish government has said it holds Israel responsible for Ayşenur’s death. On Saturday, the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan blasted Israel for the killing.

PRESIDENT RECEP TAYYIP ERDOĞAN: [translated] Yesterday, they heinously murdered our young child Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi. To date, they have killed over 40,000 innocent civilians, including 17,000 children. They attack barbarically and shed blood indiscriminately, whether it be children, women, youth or the elderly.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, the White House has called on Israel to investigate the attack. This is Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaking on Friday.

SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN: First, I just want to extend my deepest condolences, the deepest condolences of the United States government to the family of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi. We deplore this tragic loss. Now, the most important thing to do is to gather the facts. And that’s exactly what we’re in the process of doing, and we are intensely focused on getting those facts. And any actions that we take are driven by the facts. So, first things first, let’s find out exactly what happened, and we will draw the necessary conclusions and consequences from that.

AMY GOODMAN: Ayşenur’s family has called for an independent investigation, saying, quote, “We welcome the White House’s statement of condolences, but given the circumstances of Ayşenur’s killing, an Israeli investigation is not adequate. We call on President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Secretary of State Blinken to order an independent investigation into the unlawful killing of a U.S. citizen and to ensure full accountability for the guilty parties,” end-quote.

At least 17 Palestinian protesters have been killed in Beita in protests against illegal Israeli settlements since 2020.

For more, we’re joined by two guests. Amado Sison, which is a pseudonym, is a Filipino American citizen who was shot in the leg by the Israeli forces one month ago today, on August 9th, during the weekly protest in Beita in the occupied West Bank. Sison was volunteering with the international nonviolent protective presence group Faz3a, the same group Ayşenur was with along with being a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement. Amado Sison a high school English teacher from Jersey City in New Jersey. We’re also joined by Juliette Majid. She was friends with Ayşenur at the University of Washington. Juliette Majid is now a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University. She’s joining us from Raleigh, North Carolina.

Juliette, let’s begin with you. Tell us who Ayşenur is. She, like you, just graduated from UDub, from the University of Washington, in Seattle, where she grew up since, well, her family came there from Turkey, since before she was 1 year old.

JULIETTE MAJID: Yeah. First of all, thank you for saying who she is. She’s no longer with us, but her spirit and her love and her — who she was and who she impacted in our community are still with us every single day. The family, I think, in their statement had beautiful, beautiful words that I want to uplift on who she was. She was amazing, a staunch advocate and organizer. She was passionate about justice. She was compassionate and kind, and she wore her heart on her sleeves. She always made you feel like you were listened to. You never had to think when talking to her; you just had to be. That’s how she was. She just was herself, nobody else. She inspired everybody she ever met. She inspired me. And I know that, going forward, I will keep holding her in my heart, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Juliette, I know this is incredibly difficult for you. She was killed on Friday. This is just Monday. And our deepest condolences to you and to Ayşenur’s family, which I know extends beyond her own family, but to the whole community at UDub, those who were involved, like you and her, in the encampment there, like there were encampments all over the United States, protesting the Israeli war on Gaza. Can you talk about her activism — you talked about how she inspired you — and also about learning of her death on Friday? She had just gotten to the occupied West Bank — right? — did a training on Wednesday and was killed on Friday. And you’re now a student in North Carolina.

JULIETTE MAJID: Yeah, so I met Ayşenur at the University of Washington. We both graduated in June. More than just the student encampment, she was a community organizer in Seattle. She was always volunteering to help, always volunteering in the community, in the campus, before the encampment and after. So many people met her during the encampment. She was just always around, always willing to help. She moved in a wonderful grassroots way that was just always willing to assist wherever it was needed. She never asked much of herself. She always asked what others wanted from her, what they needed from her, how she could help, what she could do. She was very passionate about the student movement at UDub. She was very involved on campus. And the community is absolutely reeling, heartbroken, trying to come to terms with what happened. It was, as you said, so recent, on Friday. So many, I think, community members learned through the media on Friday morning, an absolutely heartbreaking way to find out for those who loved her. And there are so many. Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: This is the second loss in the UDub community, because on October 7th, Hayim Katsman was killed when Hamas raided, came over from Gaza. We spoke to his sibling Noy, who also immediately called for peace and said that their brother Hayim was a peace activist, as well.

JULIETTE MAJID: I can only speak to who I knew, and that was Ayşenur, who was upholding a long tradition of international observers in the West Bank, who was deliberately killed while she was peacefully observing. I want to uplift what the family has asked for, which is a independent U.S. investigation. We don’t — I don’t want to just rely on the Israeli military to investigate themselves. An American citizen, a member of our community, an American human rights activist who was passionate about the liberation of all peoples, here in the States and abroad, was taken from us. We want an investigation. We want our government to — I want our government to investigate this and to hold the guilty parties accountable. Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Juliette, we’re joined here in New York by another activist who joined those protests in Beita, just as Ayşenur did last week. Amado Sison, not his real name, a pseudonym, is a Filipino American, a Jersey City teacher, who was shot in the leg by Israeli soldiers a month ago today, August 9th, during that protest in Beita, volunteering with the international nonviolent group Faz3a. If you could explain with that is, Amado?

AMADO SISON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And also working with the International Solidarity Movement. In a moment, we’re going to talk with Rachel Corrie’s parents, who was killed 20 years ago, also with the ISM, protesting the Israeli occupation. If you can talk about what happened a month ago, the fact that you, too, were shot, and what the U.S. government has done about this?

AMADO SISON: Yeah. So, to clarify, so, ISM and Faz3a, we both work together in training. We’re two separate organizations. And Ayşenur was part of ISM, and I was part of Faz3a. But we see each other during those protests. So —

AMY GOODMAN: You’re walking with a cane now.

AMADO SISON: Yeah, I’m walking with a cane. They shot me in the leg.

AMY GOODMAN: Why were you protesting in Beita? Explain what it is.

AMADO SISON: Yeah. So, every week, our organizations come to Beita to protest the illegal settlement that was built upon Beita’s land, the Evyatar settlement, I believe. And there’s a Jum’ah prayer that happens. And after the prayer, that’s when the chanting starts. We never got to get to the settlement, for them to return to the land, because tear gas happened. So, they shoot tear gas at us. They shot live rounds at us. We’ve had to hide behind concrete walls. You could see the dust coming off of the concrete wall when the live rounds hit. When they come down, we run.

And then, on that day, we regrouped, and then we were at the foot of the street that goes up to where the watchtower was, where the Israeli army was. We saw them coming down, and we saw Palestinians running from our left, so we ran through the olive groves. So, when I was running, I got shot in the back of my leg. And I thought it was a tear gas canister, because it was a — it felt like a blunt object hit me. But when we got —

AMY GOODMAN: We’re actually showing, for our TV audience —

AMADO SISON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — your leg when you were shot.

AMADO SISON: Yeah, yeah. I only saw that twice. So, yeah, so, when I got to the clearing, the Palestinians raised me up, put me in a pickup truck, got me to the clinic, transferred me to an ambulance. And getting to the hospital, we had two trucks blocking us and then two checkpoints where they demanded to see who was inside, so it delayed my care further. But the Palestinians showed me so much care and love, and I am indebted to them for saving me that day.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to Jonathan Pollak, the Israeli activist who held Ayşenur as she died, has taken part in the weekly protests against the settlement in Beita for months. Jonathan couldn’t join us today because he’s taking part in this funeral procession for Ayşenur in Nablus. We spoke to him yesterday, and this is some of what he had to say.

JONATHAN POLLAK: I would just like to say that her death is not an isolated incident. The bullet that was shot at Ayşenur is the exact same bullet that was shot at Amado Sison a few weeks ago, like, hitting him in the leg, another American citizen hurt in exactly the same place. It is the same bullet used by Israeli forces to kill — to kill the people in Nur Shams and in Jenin. And these are the same bullets that killed a 13-year-old girl on the same day that Ayşenur was killed, just a few kilometers to the south. These are the same bullets that Israel uses to perpetrate the genocide in Gaza with complete impunity. And all these bullets are provided to Israel by the American taxpayers’ money. And the one thing that sets this incident apart is that on Friday, American bullets killed an American citizen. And this is why we hear of it now.

But it is really time for this to stop. It is time that Israel is held accountable and is forced to end its colonial regime over Palestinians and ensure Palestinian liberation. Now, that kill shot — and this soldier took a kill shot — was meant to convey a message. And that message is that any sort of Palestinian resistance to Israeli colonialism will not be tolerated, whether it be Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation or solidarity activists standing with Palestinians as they fight for liberation. And however violent the Israeli message is going to be, our message to the Israelis is that, no matter what, we will continue to stand with Palestinians in the struggle for liberation.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the Israeli activist Jonathan Pollak, who held Ayşenur as she died. She was there then. He went in the ambulance with her to the hospital in Nablus. He described to us also how this was after the weekly protest that they hold, this weekly protest every Friday. And they were done. It was very calm, when Ayşenur was shot in the head. Amado Sison, just staying with you for a moment, you were shot a month ago. What did the — you’re a U.S. citizen. You’re a teacher in Jersey City. What did the U.S. government do? Did you speak to the U.S. Embassy?

AMADO SISON: Yeah, so, it was just the U.S. Embassy. They reached out when I got shot.

AMY GOODMAN: In Israel?

AMADO SISON: Yeah. And we filed a report, don’t have any updates about what that turned into. I did give them a report, as well, consent. But no State Department, no politicians, nobody has reached out to me. And what I think is, if they took it seriously that a U.S. citizen was shot a month ago, maybe Ayşenur would be here right now.

AMY GOODMAN: So, did the ambassador or staff come to you in the hospital? Did the State Department here speak to you when you returned, shot in the leg?

AMADO SISON: No, nothing. I heard nothing from them.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve demanded an investigation?

AMADO SISON: I demand an investigation now for when I was shot, for, you know, Ayşenur’s murder, an independent U.S. investigation, because what the Israel report was was it was a mistake shooting me. Mistakes usually come from above and down. They shot me through my right thigh all the way through.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, they said they shot in the air.

AMADO SISON: They said it was a mistake. So, I don’t know what a mistake would be when you’re pointing and shooting straight through someone’s thigh. So, I don’t know what they’re going to conclude about Ayşenur, but I know that if they investigate themselves, they will find a way to cover it up. So, I want to uplift her family’s demands, as well.

***

Rachel Corrie’s Parents Mourn Death of Ayşenur Eygi, Warn of Israeli Military Cover-Up
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 09, 2024

As friends and family mourn the killing of Turkish American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, we speak with the parents of Rachel Corrie, another American killed while volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement to protect Palestinians from attacks and displacement. Corrie was just 23 years old when she was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer in Gaza in 2003 as she attempted to use her body to stop the destruction of Palestinian homes. Cindy and Craig Corrie have since devoted their lives to their daughter’s cause and founded the nonprofit Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice. They say the news of Eygi’s death brought back painful memories. “It thrusts us back to that moment on March 16, 2003, about noon, when we were in Charlotte, North Carolina, and got the word about Rachel,” says Cindy Corrie. “It’s a parent’s nightmare.” Craig Corrie echoes calls by Eygi’s family for an independent probe into her killing. “Israel does not do investigations; they do cover-ups.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn right now to a family that knows the pain of a daughter’s death. Ayşenur Eygi had been volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement, or ISM, to try to protect Palestinians from attacks by the Israeli military and settlers. That’s the same group that Rachel Corrie, also a U.S. citizen — she was a student at Evergreen College in Washington, in Olympia. She was volunteering with ISM in 2003 when she was crushed to death. It was actually three days before the U.S. invaded Iraq. It was March 16, 2003. She was crushed to death in Gaza by an Israeli military bulldozer. She was trying to protect the home of a Palestinian pharmacist’s family in Rafah that was about to be demolished. She was 23.

We’re joined right now by Rachel’s parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie. After Rachel was killed, they devoted their lives to her cause, founded the nonprofit Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice. Cindy is the foundation’s president; Craig, the treasurer. They’ve also gone on interfaith peace missions to Israel, to Gaza and the West Bank.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Cindy and Craig. I remember seeing you at Evergreen College. It was the largest graduation Evergreen ever had, in Olympia, that year, 2003, but it was missing one student who was supposed to have graduated, your daughter Cindy, who was killed in Rafah. When you heard this news of Ayşenur on Friday, I was wondering your response. And if you can talk about what you see as the parallels?

CINDY CORRIE: Thank you, Amy. And thank you to all of your guests who have shared this very tragic story.

We learned, we started to get word about what had happened to Ayşenur on Friday morning. And it was, of course, very disturbing and emotional for us. I think, for me, you know, it thrusts us back to that moment of March 16th, 2003, about noon, when we were in Charlotte, North Carolina, and got the word about Rachel. And I remember, you know, just the horror and the pain of that news. And so, for me, on Friday morning — I remember wondering, you know: Would I ever feel whole again? Would I ever be the same person again? Could I ever enjoy life? I mean, it’s a parent’s nightmare. And so, Friday morning, knowing that there was another family so nearby, in Seattle, who was getting that same kind of news was just very, very disturbing. And we continue to just feel deeply about what that family is experiencing right now.

AMY GOODMAN: Craig, if you can tell us — I mean, we actually just recently spoke to the two of you. You also called for an investigation. What ultimately came of the death of Rachel Corrie, killed by an Israeli military bulldozer, which was a Caterpillar bulldozer?

CRAIG CORRIE: Well, of course, we did call for a U.S. investigation into Rachel’s killing. Let me say that what we’re hearing today, it’s upsetting to our family to hear our State Department again, and I would expect them to say, that they are trying to find out the facts and looking to Israel for that. Israel does not do investigations; they do cover-ups. So, let’s face it, nothing’s going to come out of there that’s going to help these citizens or whoever may be killed in the future. That’s what we’re trying to stop. Our family worked for an investigation into Rachel’s killing, and we wanted some consequences out of that. And we hoped — even though we didn’t know the names of the people that would be killed in the future, we hoped that that would stop and it would not happen.

I think, at this point, yes, U.S. has to do an investigation, but there needs to be consequences. As Jonathan pointed out, these are American weapons that are being used. That’s against U.S. law, and it should be stopped. I know from working with members of Congress and their staff, working with the State Department, that under the Leahy Law, usually they’re asking for proof that it was a U.S. weapon. If I write a check, I don’t need proof about what’s going wrong. I need people to cooperate and determine that it’s not our money that’s being used that way. Israel does not do that, to my knowledge. So, we also need to look for international help here. I think that the U.N., the International Criminal Courts, they’re places that need to get involved. But we’re just sick and tired of hearing platitudes from the State Department. And these are people we’ve met. We have met with Antony Blinken before he became secretary of state. He’s a decent person. But there needs to be consequences, and there needs to be consequences that are enforced by the entire U.S. government and the international community.

CINDY CORRIE: We heard those words that we hear so often when something like this happens, that the U.S. had asked for a thorough, credible, transparent investigation. We did pursue help from the State Department, from our government, and we kept pursuing that help for many years. And, you know, we were still getting statements in — I believe it was 2008 from the State Department. Michelle Bernier-Toth wrote to us about how many people in the administration at that time had spoken to their counterparts in Israel about a thorough, credible and transparent investigation for Rachel’s case. And she — these were people like Secretary of State Colin Powell talking to his counterpart, a long list of names that you would recognize. And at the close, she said those requests go unanswered or ignored.

And when you think about what we’re doing, what we’re supplying to the Israeli military, to the Israeli government, the kind of backing that’s being given to them, it’s really — it was just really shocking that there would be this verbal request for accountability, or at least for an investigation, on the part of Israel. But the U.S. acknowledged that that hadn’t happened. And in fact, now-Secretary of State Tony Blinken in 2010 confirmed for us that the position of the U.S. government in Rachel’s case remains that there has not been a thorough, credible and transparent investigation in her case.

Also, the U.S. — we fought for investigation for years, U.S. investigation. There’s a very — we were told there’s very limited statute that allows for that to happen in the U.S. The Justice Department and FBI, apparently, ultimately, looked for that possibility. But we were told that policy impacts whether they take that on, and that even if there were investigation, prosecution of someone would be extremely unlikely through the U.S. So it’s one of the reasons that we are saying there needs to be an international element here, an international commitment to ensuring that an unbiased investigation happens, that an impartial investigation happens.

We ultimately went to the Israeli courts, which we learned are also implicated in furthering Israeli policy and occupation. And we heard the lead investigator, who completed the military investigation — and it’s important for people to understand Israel’s investigations are military investigations. It became clear that that was conducted in order to exonerate the Israeli military, not to find truth and what really happened. And that’s what our family was pursuing. But the lead investigator stated under oath in Haifa court that he believed that they were at war with everyone, including the peace activists from the International Solidarity Movement. I think that’s really important information for people to understand now as we move forward in this tragic case.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to end with the words of Congressmember Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who’s head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the largest caucus in Congress, on the killing of the Turkish American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi. She said, “I am very troubled by the reports that she was killed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers. The Netanyahu government has done nothing to stop settlement expansion and settler violence in the West Bank, often encouraged by right-wing ministers of the Netanyahu government. The killing of an American citizen is a terrible proof point in this senseless war of rising tensions in the region,” she said.

I want to thank you all for being with us, Rachel’s parents, Cindy and Craig Corrie, speaking to us more than two decades after Rachel was killed by an Israeli military bulldozer in Gaza near Rafah. I want to thank Amado Sison, Filipino American shot in the leg by Israeli forces a month ago today in Beita, where Ayşenur was also killed. Juliette Majid, Ph.D. student, North Carolina State University, speaking to us from Raleigh, dear friend of Ayşenur Eygi at the University of Washington, where they both graduated.

Coming up, we look at the raids in Jenin. We’ll speak with the Palestinian journalist Mariam Barghouti. Stay with us.

***

“The Brutality Is Truly Unprecedented” in West Bank: Mariam Barghouti on Israel’s Deadly Incursions
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 09, 2024

Israel is continuing its military assault across the occupied West Bank, with soldiers storming the Palestinian city of Tulkarm after midnight Monday, just days after Israeli forces withdrew from Tulkarm and Jenin following a brutal incursion that lasted over one week. Israeli troops have also raided other towns and villages across the occupied territory as part of the largest Israeli military operation in the West Bank in about two decades, deploying hundreds of soldiers backed by armored vehicles, bulldozers, fighter jets and drones. Israel has killed dozens of Palestinians since launching the operation on August 28. “The brutality is truly unprecedented,” says Palestinian journalist Mariam Barghouti, who adds that in many of the targeted areas, Israel has “bulldozed the overwhelming majority of the civilian infrastructure.” Her recent piece for +972 Magazine is titled “Inside the brutal siege of Jenin.”

Transcript

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

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

We return now to the occupied West Bank, where Israeli soldiers stormed the city of Tulkarm just after midnight today in new raids that come just days after Israeli forces withdrew from Tulkarm and Jenin. Israeli troops also raided the Balata refugee camp in the northern West Bank earlier today, and in Abu Shukheidim, near Ramallah, Al Jazeera reports Israeli forces were seen raiding homes.

On Friday, Israeli forces temporarily retreated from Jenin, Tulkarm and other areas in the occupied West Bank after laying siege to the cities for 10 days, killing dozens of Palestinians, including children and elders, and leaving a trail of destruction. Simultaneous raids also took place across Nablus, Bethlehem, Hebron and Ramallah in the largest Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank in two decades, with hundreds of troops backed by armored vehicles, bulldozers, fighter jets and drones.

During the raids, Israeli soldiers fired live rounds at Palestinian journalists documenting the attacks, injuring at least four of them in the town of Kafr Dan. Footage also surfaced of Israeli forces in an armored tank rolling over the dead body of an 82-year-old Palestinian man in Jenin who was killed Friday by Israeli soldiers and denied medical attention.

Meanwhile, Israeli settlers have continued their attacks in the West Bank. In Qaryut, near Nablus, a 13-year-old Palestinian girl was killed by Israeli gunfire as settlers attacked the village. Bana Laboum was hit by a bullet Friday while she was in her bedroom. Her mother described the Israeli attack ahead of her daughter’s burial.

IMAN LEBWAM: [translated] She was in her room along with her sisters. She was afraid, in fear, and suddenly a bullet got in through the window and hit her while she was on her bed. This is what happened. There were scuffles outside with the youth, but we were surprised that a bullet came through the window and onto her.

AMY GOODMAN: 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. That’s added on to the more than 40,000 Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza, and that figure is expected to be much higher, 16,000 of them children.

We go now to Ramallah, where we’re joined by Mariam Barghouti, Palestinian writer and journalist. Her recent piece for +972 Magazine is titled “Inside the brutal siege of Jenin.”

Mariam, welcome back to Democracy Now! Explain what has happened there in Jenin.

MARIAM BARGHOUTI: Thank you for having me, Amy.

So, what we have seen in Jenin specifically, but generally in the northern areas of the West Bank, is an escalated attack and an offensive under the title of Operation Summer Camps by the Israeli military. And what we have seen is the Israeli military basically greenlighting the use of lethal force excessively and sporadically, which is why we’re hearing news of young children being shot by bullets, as well as journalists being sniped by Israeli snipers.

And what the Israeli military did was essentially bring in D9 Caterpillar bulldozers within the city of Jenin, likewise in Tulkarm within the city, and then moving deeper towards the camp, and where they bulldozed nearly — the overwhelming majority of the civilian infrastructure, that includes water pipe, that includes electric wiring, that includes the sewage system. And the Israeli military basically besieged the entire city.

Entry and exit was dangerous and risky, because you can get shot, even as press. Medical personnel, as well as ambulances, were obstructed from moving patients, not simply banning injured persons from the camp throughout the nine-day siege, but patients from Jenin city were unable to reach the only governmental hospital in Jenin that is adjacent to the camp and was basically placed under siege by the Israeli military.

So, what we saw was an intensification and a brutal offensive. Again, this is an offensive by the Israeli military under the — and I quote — it’s a “preemptive strike against Palestinian terrorists.” But what I have seen on the ground is it was targeting essentially civilians mostly, and there was a very clear attempt to conceal what is happening from media, and that means from global audiences.

AMY GOODMAN: Again, you said they call this Operation Summer Camps?

MARIAM BARGHOUTI: Yes. So, the Israeli military has called this Operation Summer Camps. It was officially declared between August 27th or 28th of last month. And the Israeli military claims that they are basically targeting refugee camps. That’s why “summer camps.” But again, what we have seen is they’re targeting civilians. And they said the refugee camps, because that’s primarily where Palestinian combatants are operating from. Again, this is the Israeli military going into these areas and attacking these areas, under the statement of “this is a preemptive strike against terrorism.” But what we have seen is a focus on the civilian infrastructure and near destruction of the refugee camps, which are Area A and, under the Oslo Accords, outside the jurisdiction of the Israeli military or government.

AMY GOODMAN: So, can you describe what Jenin was like and the level of destruction left behind? Palestinians in the camp describe being forced out of their homes by gunpoint.

MARIAM BARGHOUTI: Yeah. So, Jenin has been under constant attack by the Israeli military for the past two years specifically, but generally, across time, in Palestine. But we have seen an intensification. So, every other month, the Israeli military would actually invade Jenin refugee camp and carry out lethal attacks against its community.

But this time what we have seen is that the brutality is truly unprecedented. The Israeli military, not just in the camp, but even on the outskirts, went into civilian buildings and, at gunpoint, forced families out of their homes to places unknown, to a fate unknown. They didn’t know where they will sleep, how long they will be away from their houses. And when they returned on Friday to their homes after the Israeli withdrawal, what I saw was complete destruction of their homes and their apartments. The furniture was ruined. Mattresses, they had dung on them. There were attack dogs that were put in these homes. The refrigerators would be destroyed. There would be Hebrew graffiti on the walls.

And inside the camp, it’s truly very difficult to capture it in words. I just saw families cleaning up the rubble, cleaning up the trash left behind by the Israeli military. The walls are full of bullets. It’s just rubble all over the ground. It’s so difficult to walk. Cars can’t move within the camp. And the families, you know, when I would ask them, “Are you going to rebuild? What are you going to do now?” they would respond with, “Why would we rebuild now, if the Israeli army is only going to come for another invasion, as we have seen happen in Tulkarm last night?” Again, after withdrawal from Tulkarm refugee camp, the Israeli military just kept going back.

So, people are frightened. They feel abandoned. They have zero protection. And again, in an impoverished area to rebuild, which is going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to rebuild the infrastructure, it’s truly a cost and a toll, and clearly, it is put to cripple Palestinian civil society.

AMY GOODMAN: Mariam, can you explain who is the Jenin Brigade? What’s their role in Jenin versus the security forces affiliated with the Palestinian Authority?

MARIAM BARGHOUTI: Right. So, in Jenin refugee camp, to what the military, Israeli military, dubs as the “wasps’ nest,” we have seen a rise of Palestinian armed youth groups, starting within 2021 until today. And these are small battalions. These are youth that grew up in the camp. Many of them have been imprisoned by Israel under administrative detention, meaning no trial, no charge, only torture. And they decided to take up arms, essentially, because they found that across the last decade, any efforts of Palestinians, whether it is in negotiations or whether it is in unarmed and nonviolent confrontation, has only allowed Israel to continue its expansion of settlements on Palestinian lands and continue its escalation of violence on Palestinians. So they see themselves as the force that is trying to push back. Even though they’re limited in resources, they are protecting their homes.

And please remember that these are the refugees that, essentially, Israel and its militia, its Zionist militias, had kicked out of their original homes in 1948 that are located within heartland Palestine, or what is now Israel. The difference between them and the Palestinian Authority is that the Palestinian Authority, which has been given the role of an administrative role under the Oslo Accord —

AMY GOODMAN: We just have 15 seconds.

MARIAM BARGHOUTI: — has actually done nothing, has done nothing to protect Palestinians, and actually, during the siege, remained within the headquarters, letting Palestinian families just being bombed constantly throughout the siege.

AMY GOODMAN: Mariam Barghouti, Palestinian writer and journalist, we’ll link to your piece for +972 Magazine, “Inside the brutal siege of Jenin.” Part 2 online at democracynow.org, when we ask her what it’s like to be a journalist reporting on Jenin.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Sep 10, 2024

Israeli Strike Kills 40 Displaced Palestinians in Gaza “Safe Zone”
Sep 10, 2024

In the Gaza Strip, at least 40 Palestinians were killed and scores more injured this morning as an Israeli strike ripped through a tent encampment housing displaced Palestinians near Khan Younis. Israel had designated the area as a so-called safe zone. Witnesses say at least four missiles fell onto the crowded camp as people slept, engulfing tents in flames and scattering body parts. The United Nations says its efforts to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of children against polio were further delayed after members of a U.N. convoy were detained by Israel’s military at gunpoint for more than eight hours Monday in northern Gaza. This is U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk.

Volker Türk: “Ending the war and averting a full-blown regional conflict is an absolute and urgent priority. Equally, the wider situation of illegality across the Occupied Palestinian Territory deriving from Israel’s policies and practices, as so clearly spelled out by the International Court of Justice in its advisory opinion in July, must be comprehensively addressed.”

Monday marked the traditional first day of school in Gaza, but for a second year in a row classes are canceled for all of Gaza’s schoolchildren. ActionAid Palestine said in a statement, “Going to school is not a luxury, it’s a fundamental right, and yet hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza are being denied an education for the second academic year in a row. A whole generation is being denied the opportunity to learn and build a better future for themselves.”

Funeral Held for Turkish American Activist Killed by Israeli Forces in West Bank
Sep 10, 2024

In the occupied West Bank, mourners held a funeral procession Monday for Turkish American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, who was fatally shot in the head by Israeli forces Friday while she joined a protest against illegal Israeli settlements in the town of Beita. Witnesses say she was killed by an Israeli sniper after the demonstration had already dispersed. This is Lulu, another U.S. activist in the West Bank.

Lulu: “We’re all very saddened by this. My heart and my thoughts are with her family. And we, as volunteers here, we feel her loss, but we are not scared off by the Israelis. We are not scared off by this attack. We will continue to stay here in solidarity with the Palestinians for as long as we live, no matter what happens.”

Ayşenur’s family is calling on the Biden administration to order an independent investigation into the unlawful killing of a U.S. citizen and to ensure full accountability. On Monday, the State Department appeared to rule out a U.S.-led probe, saying it would wait for the results of an Israeli investigation.

Vedant Patel: “I think most important is to let this process play out, for the facts to be gathered and for those to come to light. And I will just leave it at that.”

***

Tariq Ali on U.S. & U.K. Arming Israel’s War on Gaza, Pakistan Protests & Macron’s Embrace of the Right
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Sep 10, 2024

We speak to acclaimed historian, activist and filmmaker Tariq Ali about Western governments’ support for Israel’s war on Gaza and popular protest in support of Palestine, which Ali calls the “biggest divide we’ve seen in politics almost since the Vietnam War.” He argues that this division is “challenging the very nature of democracy” and the international rule of law. Ali also shares his analysis of South Asian politics — in Pakistan, where former Prime Minister Imran Khan has accused the United States of engineering his ouster, and in Bangladesh, where a student-led uprising recently toppled the authoritarian regime of its former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Finally, we cover developments in Europe. In France, President Emmanuel Macron has appointed conservative leader Michel Barnier as prime minister, despite the electoral gains of the country’s left-wing coalition. This comes as far-right and anti-migrant sentiment spreads throughout the Global North.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Britain to meet with the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Foreign Secretary David Lammy. The focus is expected to be on the Middle East, Ukraine and the Asia-Pacific. Blinken’s meeting comes just days after the United Kingdom announced it’s suspending some arms exports to Israel, citing a risk they might be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza. Britain’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer of the Labour Party, defended the decision.

PRIME MINISTER KEIR STARMER: This is a serious issue. We either comply with international law or we don’t. And we only have strength in our arguments because we comply with international law.

AMY GOODMAN: Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy told the British Parliament last week many weapons exports to Israel will continue, including parts for F-35 fighter jets.

DAVID LAMMY: This is not an arms embargo. It targets around 30, approximately of 350 licenses to Israel in total, for items which could be used in the current conflict in Gaza. The rest will continue.

AMY GOODMAN: Oxfam responded to the British government’s move by calling for all arms exports to be suspended to Israel.

To talk about Britain, Israel’s war on Gaza, and much more, we’re joined by Tariq Ali, the acclaimed historian, activist, filmmaker, editor of the New Left Review and the author of over 50 books, including the forthcoming You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024. He’s joining us here in our studio in New York.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Tariq. It’s great to have you in person.

TARIQ ALI: Very good to be with you and Juan, Amy. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in this studio, about 12 years almost.

AMY GOODMAN: Amazing. Well, today you are here, and Antony Blinken is meeting with Keir Starmer in London and the Foreign Minister David Lammy. There have been massive protests in London around a U.K. policy toward supporting Israel in its war on Gaza, and now you have this stopping of some arms shipments to Israel. Can you talk about the U.K. stance and the U.K.-U.S. relationship, especially when it comes to Gaza right now and Israel?

TARIQ ALI: The U.K., Amy, has been totally complicit in this war. They’ve sent help. They’ve sent fighter jets. Their personnel are involved. So, for them to pretend somehow that they’re an impartial party is utterly ridiculous. This war has been supported by the Conservative government, and it’s now being supported by the Labour government. Keir Starmer, the prime minister you just showed on the screen, as leader of the opposition, supported the genocide in Gaza, supported the cutting off of electricity, supported the cutting off of all water supplies.

I think they have received legal advice that they have to do something or they are liable to international law by the courts — not that that amounts to very much, as we see these days. But I think that’s the reason they made a few cuts to the aid. But as they themselves say, these are meaningless. They’re purely symbolic.

And the bulk of the country now wants aid to Israel, and the military aid particularly, cut off. The antiwar movement in Britain is one of the largest in the world. We’ve had, I think now — it’s almost a year, Amy, since this war began. Almost a year. And we’ve had dozens and dozens of demonstrations, some including a million people. So the country is opposed to this, you know, across the board.

But we have these governments in power — I call them the extreme-center governments, because, right or left, they do the same thing. And why is Blinken visiting Starmer? Normally they send orders online. So, why the need for a personal visit is to boost each other’s morale. I can see no other reason for it.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tariq, it’s not just the U.K. government, but most of the European Union governments. Could you talk about the wide gap between how these governments are dealing with Israel’s war on Gaza and the rest of the world, especially the Global South?

TARIQ ALI: Well, the Global South is more or less, you know, formally hostile to it. This is the biggest divide we’ve seen in politics almost since the Vietnam War, that the Global South opposed to the war and the West very much in favor of it, Juan. And this comes across very clearly. Now, the other thing is that the demonstrators — you know, Jews, non-Jews, Palestinians, non-Palestinians — who’ve been marching in the streets of Western cities are identifying here very clearly with the Global South, so even in their own homeland, not to mention in the United States, the demonstrations and the campus struggles. So what we are seeing is a big divide on a global level and a divide on an internal level, where large sections, if not majorities, are against what their governments are doing in backing unconditionally what the Israelis have been up to for a year now in Palestine.

And this divide is going to continue, given what is going on with the U.S.-China rivalries. And so, this gulf now which has opened up is going to be difficult to resolve. I mean, whatever else, on foreign policy, I don’t think there will be any big change in the United States regardless of who is elected. So, the demonstrations still go on, a year later, all over Europe, including France. The Germans have banned demonstrations. They don’t allow them because of their special links to the Judeocide and Holocaust of the Second World War, for which the Palestinians are now being punished. That’s what’s going on.

And it’s quite a critical situation, because lots of young people who I come across and speak to are challenging and questioning the very nature of democracy, the nature of the system which exists, where one court, international court, after the other has said this genocide must stop, pressure on the International Criminal Court not to prosecute Netanyahu, which has been demanded. And so, international law itself has now been questioned.

So we are now in a situation where what the United States says goes. The decisions are made in the White House and the Pentagon and the State Department. These are the key institutions which determine what happens in Israel. And why the U.S. is doing this puzzles many people who are sympathetic to them. Why are they doing this, when we’ve had presidents like Truman, like Reagan, like Bush Sr. stopping Israel from doing things like this when it was necessary? Now not a single phone call, both political parties totally complicit in this war. They might have other disagreements, but on the Gaza war, they are completely united, apart from indies, like Jill Stein, who, personally, I would vote for, were I a U.S. citizen, a sort of excellent politician. But apart from her and a few others, there’s no one else in the mainstream who’s come out against this. And this is very disturbing, I think, for democracy itself and for all its legal, political institutions.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tariq, I wanted to ask you, in terms of — you’re talking about the state of democracy. In your own homeland of Pakistan. Imran Khan has been detained since — for over a year now, accused of inciting violence, a former prime minister. And the U.N. panel recently had findings that Imran Khan’s detention is politically motivated. Do you think there will be any pressure on Pakistan to release him?

TARIQ ALI: So far, there hasn’t been any pressure. And Imran Khan, when he was first dismissed from office, claimed that the United States was behind the dismissal because of the positions he had taken on Ukraine at that particular time. He directly accused the State Department of having engineered his dismissal.

So, the fact that he is still in prison is a sign that the people who control Pakistan are the military. Politicians come and go. Political parties come and go. Politicians change sides in order to gain office. But effectively, Juan, it is the Pakistani Army that has run the show for many, many decades. They make the decisions. They choose the politicians, including Imran. He was a military choice. And his successors are military choices.

And now they are nervous, because normally they can discredit a politician very quickly. They haven’t been able to do it in the case of Imran Khan, and all the opinion polls show that were there to be an election in Pakistan, Imran would win by large majorities throughout the country. The Army have now made him a martyr. They’ve made him a popular hero. And he has been locked up in prison on completely frivolous and bogus charges.

AMY GOODMAN: So, there’s also the discussion of banning the PTI party, the Khan party, talking about it, oh, inciting violence, leaking classified information. What would that mean?

TARIQ ALI: Well, the classified information he revealed, Amy, which should be of interest to viewers here, is that a senior figure from the Pakistan Foreign Office said — wrote a letter back home from the United States saying that in the United States, he had been told in very clear language that Imran had to go. Well, in Pakistan, as in other parts of the world, these letters are not — they don’t remain secret for too long. So, Imran referred to the letter in public, stating something which most people knew. And as a result of that, they’ve charged him with betraying official secrets. I mean, there was no official secret. Everyone knew this in the first place.

And so, I think they’re determined to get rid of him. Banning his party won’t help, because his popularity will increase. And if there’s another uprising, like we’ve seen in Bangladesh recently, that could erupt in Pakistan, then they’ve had it. I mean, they’ll have to shoot people on the streets. And we’ll see a repeat of the uprisings of the ’60s and ’70s.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tariq, I wanted to ask you about Bangladesh. The supporters of the former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina have claimed that the United States was behind that, as well, that it wasn’t really a popular uprising as much as a color revolution. I’m wondering your thoughts. Is there any credible evidence that that is so?

TARIQ ALI: I don’t think so, Juan. I mean, you know, because the United States has done these things in the past, it can do them everywhere. And what we saw in Bangladesh was a very authoritarian government, confronted largely by students demanding democratic rights and freedoms and an end to laws which they regard as anti-democratic. And they won. She ran. She was taken by a special plane waiting for her to India and is now blaming the United States for this. In my opinion, there is no evidence to show U.S. involvement so far. Some may come out. We will see.

But I think more disturbing is that the students who replaced her had no real alternative. So quite a few unprincipled parties, political parties, and politicians who were there and are now in power, or close to it, are mistreating Awami League supporters. And that, too, is unacceptable.

But in Bangladesh, as in Pakistan, behind the scenes in Bangladesh, it’s the military who rules. The appointment of a sort of banker who became a celebrity and won the Nobel Prize, Dr. Yunus, very, very aged man, older even than me, and he is not going to be able to deliver anything. Behind him, it’s the Army.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to what’s happening in France. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets Saturday protesting President Macron’s appointment of the conservative Michel Barnier as the new prime minister even though leftist parties won the most of votes in July’s snap parliamentary elections. This is the leader of the leftist Unbowed party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, speaking last week.

JEAN-LUC MÉLENCHON: [translated] And so the election has been stolen from the French people. The message has been denied, and now we’re finding out about a prime minister that was named with the permission and maybe on the suggestion of the far-right National Rally, knowing that the second round of the legislative election has been entirely concentrated on making this National Rally fail.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of Unbowed. You have the leftists winning, and the president, Macron, who called the snap election and yet lost it, giving the prime ministership to the right.

TARIQ ALI: It’s appalling, Amy. I mean, this is the sort of trend we see in most of the Western world, a very authoritarian approach to politics if they lose. And Jean-Luc Mélenchon was determined to fight. He created a new united front with the socialists and all progressive parties to make sure that the extreme right-wing party of Marine Le Pen was defeated. Macron had said before the election, “Let the far right come to power. They’ll discredit themselves.” Well, that didn’t happen because of the campaign waged by La France Insoumise, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon in particular. Effectively, they created a united front which defeated the far right. And this spoiled brat Macron, who belongs — who came up from nowhere, you know, a sort of technocrat politician, now operates as if he’s a statesman. I mean, I think he has discredited himself considerably. And we shall see. He had a meeting with the far right. He has not met Mélenchon once. He’s made it clear that he’s not going to appoint a president from the group or the bloc which got the largest votes.

And this is the trend I was referring to earlier, of they feel they can get away with anything. And there have been demonstrations. There have been a few strikes, as well. But there’s been no big protest from the so-called international community, i.e. the State Department in D.C. You know, no protest from Foggy Bottom at all that this is intolerable behavior, because, you know, they tolerate it when their own allies do it.

How it’s going to turn out for Macron, we shall see. I think there is now 52% voted for his impeachment. I mean, in opinion polls, 52% of French people said that Macron should be prosecuted and impeached. So he’s divided the country quite, quite sharply. So, we’ll see what he does. I mean, Barnier is a joke figure. He got 4% of the vote, and he’s been appointed prime minister.

I mean, what’s needed in France actually, to be serious, is an abolition of this Fifth Republic that was created by de Gaulle after he seized power as a general in 1958. And it was designed to give the president maximum powers. It’s not a democratic state, you know, in any sense of the word. The democracy has tried to push through it. And so, we need a new republic. And, you know, Mélenchon has been arguing, and many of us have been, let’s have elections to a constituent assembly to choose and draft a new constitution. We need a Sixth Republic in France, because the Fifth Republic has failed.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tariq, I wanted to ask you, though — across Europe, the extreme right wing, especially anti-immigrant parties, have been gaining strength, even though in Britain and France they’ve been beaten back. But even the center has become increasingly more anti-immigrant, anti-African, anti-Arab, anti- — in the United States — Latin American. What’s your sense of the prospects for progressives and radicals to win popular support, given that sectors of the working class and the middle classes are falling prey to this anti-immigrant phobia?

TARIQ ALI: Oh, Juan, this is always the case at times of crisis — social, political, economic — that people from the working class and the middle class, as you call it here, get carried away. It’s a simple propaganda: “We don’t have enough jobs. We don’t have enough money. Look at these people coming from outside.” Well, in Europe, you can say that, but in the United States, as I always point out, everyone has come from the outside, except Native Americans. So, what is the big deal? That, you know, you just want to exclude people of color. In Europe, of course, they went and searched for workers all over the former colonies, because after the Second World War, there was a big shortage of labor. And what they did, effectively, was to go and plead with West Indian Black nurses to come and run the British National Health Service, for workers to come and run the factories. And this is a population which they are now targeting.

But the most reprehensible feature of this, as you point out, is that mainstream politicians have not managed to frontally take on these arguments. In fact, in the new Labour government, you have politicians sort of slyly saying, “Well, yes, there are problems. We have too many immigrants. Labour is working very hard to try and stop the flow.” And the result of this is illegal gangs promising migrants in poverty-stricken countries or countries where you have large numbers of people dislodged by wars, as we see in the Middle East today and as we’ve seen for the last five or six years, who want to come and seek refuge. And they’re being denied entry into the countries which have made these wars. And, in effect, many of them are drowning in boats in the English Channel, just dropping dead, being pushed out by unscrupulous gangsters who promised them that they would get them in illegally. So it’s a really grim situation on that front.

And this is now in Germany, too, that in recent state elections in the former eastern Germany, Thuringia, the far-right party, AfD, won the largest vote. I mean, you know, they can still be outvoted, but they won a large vote. And this is spreading in other parts of Germany, too, which also takes in the fact that some of these far-right groups are saying, “Why are we backing a war with Russia? Why are we supporting Ukraine? It’s not in our national interest. Why are we following the Americans?” So, it’s immigration and a lot of other issues actually being tied together by these parties. And the extreme-center governments, center-left and center-right, do nothing. They’re actually provoking this by doing nothing at all.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Tariq Ali, we want to thank you for being with us and in our studio. We look forward to having you back to talk about your memoirs when they are released. Tariq Ali is a British Pakistani historian, activist, filmmaker, editor of the New Left Review, the author of over 50 books, including the forthcoming You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024, in from London, here in New York City.

Coming up, as the official death toll in Gaza tops 41,000, we talk to former U.S. presidential candidate Ralph Nader about how the current death toll that is being repeated around the world may be a vast undercount. We’ll also be speaking with him about the upcoming debate, maybe the only one, between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Stay with us.

***

“A Horrifying Undercount”: Ralph Nader Says True Gaza Death Toll Could Be Many Times Higher
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
Sep 10, 2024

Former presidential candidate and celebrated consumer advocate Ralph Nader discusses Israel’s war on Gaza, the U.S. presidential election and more. Nader’s latest article, “Exposing the Gaza Death Undercount,” can be read in the Capitol Hill Citizen, which he also founded. The official death toll in Gaza has been suspended at around 40,000 for months, as Israel’s devastation of the territory makes it increasingly difficult to properly recover and identify the dead. Nader says that the true cost in Palestinian lives could already be “well over 300,000,” and that “if the true count was known, it would devastate the mythology that the Biden administration and Congress are furthering, that the Israeli government does not purposely target civilian populations.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: We continue to look at Israel war’s on Gaza, where the official death toll has topped 41,000 Palestinians, though that could be a vast undercount that doesn’t include those who remain trapped in the rubble and the people and children who have died due to chronic illnesses, infectious diseases spreading across Gaza.

Over the past 11 months, Israel has destroyed Gaza’s health system and other crucial infrastructure, placed a blockade on medications and other urgent aid. More than 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza also risk imminent famine, with children starving at a record rate. The U.N. humanitarian aid chief Martin Griffiths has said life is “draining out of Gaza at terrifying speed,” unquote.

Even some Biden administration officials have admitted the Gaza death toll could be significantly higher. This is Barbara Leaf, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, speaking last November.

BARBARA LEAF: In this period of conflict and conditions of war, it is very difficult for any of us to assess what the rate of casualties are. We think they’re very high, frankly. And it could be that they’re even higher than are being cited. We’ll know only after the guns fall silent. So, you know, we take in sourcing from a variety of folks who are on the ground. And so, I can’t stipulate to one figure or another, but I think that it’s very possible that they’re even higher than is being reported.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf.

The prestigious British medical journal Lancet has estimated the actual death toll could be 186,000 or even higher, roughly 8% of Gaza’s population. The report looks at how war leads to indirect deaths due to shortages of medical care, food, shelter and water.

This all comes as protests continue demanding the U.S. government immediately halt its military aid to Israel and calling on Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who’s debating Donald Trump tonight in Philadelphia, to shift her policies on Gaza.

For more, we go to Washington, D.C., where we’re joined by Ralph Nader, longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic, former presidential candidate four times. He’s the author of many books, including, most recently, Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country That Works for the People. Ralph Nader is the founder of the monthly print-only newspaper, Capitol Hill Citizen, where his front-page article in the latest issue is headlined “Exposing the Gaza Death Undercount.”

Let’s start with this undercount, what you are saying is so much higher, the death toll in Gaza, than what we understand.

RALPH NADER: Amy, this is a horrifying undercount, and it has political rationale for it. If the true count was known, it would devastate the mythology that the Biden administration and Congress are furthering, that the Israeli government does not purposely target civilian populations and, therefore, violate all kinds of U.S. laws, conditioning the shipment of weapons to Israel, and international laws.

So, I put together in this article in the Capitol Hill Citizen — people can go to CapitolHillCitizen.com and get it — the various probative evidence that shows that experts, who are blocked from getting additional data that the State Department has and is keeping secret — that the evidence shows that it’s well over 300,000. And it may double by the end of the year. In an article in The Guardian by the distinguished chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh titled “Scientists are closing in on the true, horrifying scale of death and disease in Gaza,” she estimates over 300,000 before the end of the year, pointing out, with The Lancet report that you mentioned, that The Lancet people used a very — quote, “used a very conservative estimate, but allowed that the number could easily be much higher.”

And so, why is this happening? Why are all sides, the anti-genocide side, the Israeli, the Hamas — why are they always using these figures? Because, for different reasons, it serves their political purposes. Hamas doesn’t want the true count to be known, because it will be assailed by its own people and its international allies as unable to protect its own people and provide shelters. Netanyahu, of course, wants it lowballed for obvious reasons, and Biden for the same reason.

So, what do these scientists see? They see a tiny enclave the geographical size of Philadelphia with 2.3 million people, crowded, already sick and destitute from years of Israeli illegal embargoes, high levels of anemia among the children before October 7th, and then, starting October 8th, the Israeli military issued the genocidal orders of no food, no water, no medicine, no electricity, no fuel, and they proceeded accordingly. And so, what these scientists are seeing are what’s called the empirical evidence, that people on social media are seeing and others. With over 130,000 bombs and missiles, plus daily tank shelling, ruthless sniper fire, there’s been massive destruction of apartment buildings, congested marketplaces, refugee camps, hospitals, over 150 health clinics, masses of families huddled in schools being blown up, ambulances being blown up, bakeries destroyed, schools, universities, mosques, churches, roads, electricity networks, critical water mains — just about everyone and everything.

And some people, partisans of Netanyahu, will say, “Oh, the Israeli government never targets civilians.” Historically, they’ve always targeted civilians. Go back to the early '80s, when former Israeli ambassador and foreign minister Abba Eban wrote of Israel under then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin that Israel — and I'm quoting him — quote, “is wantonly inflicting every possible measure of death and anguish on civilian populations in a mood reminiscent of regimes which neither Mr. Begin nor I would dare to mention by name,” end-quote. And just a few years earlier, in the late '70s, Israel's leading military analyst, summing up remarks by the Israeli chief of staff, stated the following, quote, “The Israeli Army has always struck civilian populations, purposefully and consciously. The Army has never distinguished civilian [from military] targets … [but] purposefully attacked civilian targets,” end-quote.

And why is this important? Because to this day, all of the administration spokespeople are denying that Israel has targeted civilians, denying that Israel has violated international genocide laws, denying that they have violated six federal statutes conditioning shipment of weapons to foreign countries on recognizing human rights excessively. To this administration and to the Congress, all deaths of civilians are accidental. Blowing up schools sheltering refugees, well, that was a mistake. So that’s why it’s important, Amy and Juan, to get that estimate as reliably high as possible.

We are seeing possibly a million deaths before the end of the year. We have starvation. We have infectious diseases. All the doctors that you’ve had on Democracy Now! have provided the clinical evidence of what’s going on, 5,000 babies born every month into the rubble, contaminated water, horrific air pollution with heavy metals from the bombing, and no food. We’re led to believe by these 41,000 figures that 98% or more of the Palestinian population is still alive? I mean, what are they made of? Asbestos and steel? And as the doctors have said on your program, when they went back to the rubble and the broken hospitals, they didn’t meet anybody in Gaza who wasn’t sick or injured. There was an interview in February on Al Jazeera by a Gaza undertaker who’s doing this free of charge and crying every day with his assistants on the open graves. He says he’s buried 17,000 bodies, including 800 in one day, and that was back in February.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ralph, I wanted to ask you — in addition to the bombings and the killings of civilians, Israel has also refused to allow foreign press to come into Gaza and has systematically been killing those journalists, those Palestinians within Gaza who are reporting. Talk about this attack on the press, that really has not gotten much outrage in the West.

RALPH NADER: Yeah, I mean, how weak can you get as a president of the United States or member of Congress when you can’t even demand that Netanyahu let foreign and Israeli journalists, including U.S. journalists, into Gaza to freely report? He’s been blocking this for years. And the Israeli military has targeted, as you indicated, Palestinian journalists. They’ve killed over 165 of them, including, in addition, members of their own family, targeting apartments, for example. They’ve killed over 200 members of UNRWA, the U.N. relief. They’re out to destroy every relief center, every food — feeding center of UNRWA, education center.

I mean, this is — right now let’s put it in comparative terms here. More Palestinians have been killed since October 8th than have been killed by the U.S. in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden. That total death toll was about 235,000-240,000 people. And those deaths were in countries, Germany and Japan, with 160 million population. Here we only have 2.3 million population. And all you’ve got to do is read the Israeli press, read Haaretz, read the statements by —

AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds, Ralph.

RALPH NADER: — 17 Israeli human rights groups.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, we want to thank you for being with us, longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic, four-time former presidential candidate. We’ll link to your article in the Capitol Hill Citizen, “Exposing the Gaza Death Undercount.”

That does it for our show. Watch tonight’s debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris at democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 11, 2024

Israel Used U.S.-Made 2,000-Pound Bombs in Assault on Gaza Encampment for Displaced Palestinians
Sep 11, 2024

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli attacks have killed more than two dozen Palestinians over the past 24 hours. Among the dead are 13 members of a single family across three generations who were killed when Israel bombed their home in Khan Younis. On Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres joined a chorus of international condemnation over Israel’s attack on a tent encampment of displaced Palestinians in al-Mawasi, which Israel had designated as a so-called safe zone. The assault killed at least 40 people and injured more than 60 others. Survivors said the blasts buried entire families under the sand and littered the camp with body parts.

Taghreed Abu Asi: “Children became orphans. We became homeless. Where should we go? They said, 'Go to al-Mawasi.' We went to al-Mawasi. They hit us after we were displaced many times. Where are we supposed to go?”

An Al Jazeera investigation found the massacre was carried out by U.S.-made MK-84 bombs produced by General Dynamics.

Meanwhile, Israel has stepped up its attacks on southern Lebanon, with reports of at least 20 Israeli airstrikes overnight that damaged farms and property and sparked intense wildfires. Israel’s military claims one of the strikes killed a Hezbollah commander in the Beqaa Valley.

Israeli Airstrike on West Bank Kills 5 Palestinians in Tubas
Sep 11, 2024

In the occupied West Bank, Israel’s military put the city of Tubas under siege as it carried out an airstrike that killed five Palestinians. Two of the dead were teenagers. Israeli forces also killed two Palestinians during another raid on the city of Tulkarm. The Palestinian Ministry of Health reports Israeli attacks have killed nearly 700 people across the West Bank over the past year.

Blinken Calls Israel’s Killing of U.S. Activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi “Unprovoked and Unjustified”
Sep 11, 2024

The family of the Turkish American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi says the White House has not called to offer condolences after Eygi was fatally shot in the head by an Israeli sniper at a protest in the West Bank town of Beita last Friday. On Tuesday, President Biden said he believed Eygi was killed by accident and that the bullet that struck her ricocheted off the ground. The Israeli military said in a statement it was “highly likely” Eygi was shot by its forces “indirectly and unintentionally” in fire that was not aimed at Eygi but another protester. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, meanwhile, criticized Israel’s military for Eygi’s death.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken: “Her killing was both unprovoked and unjustified. No one — no one should be shot and killed for attending a protest. No one should have to put their life at risk just for freely expressing their views. In our judgment, Israeli security forces need to make some fundamental changes in the way that they operate in the West Bank, including changes to their rules of engagement.”

Despite those remarks, the Biden administration has yet to put any conditions on U.S. arms transfers to Israel, including $20 billion in additional weapons sales approved last month.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 12, 2024

Israel Strikes Gaza’s al-Jaouni School for 5th Time, Kills 18 Palestinians, Incl. 6 UNRWA Staffers
Sep 12, 2024

In Gaza, another Israeli strike on a U.N. school being used to shelter displaced Palestinians has killed at least 18 people, including six UNRWA employees, making it the deadliest single day in UNRWA’s history. Wednesday’s bombing of central Gaza’s al-Jaouni school led to chaotic scenes, with survivors seen gathering scattered body parts. It’s the fifth time the same school has been hit by Israel since October 7. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry is demanding international protection against the “war of extermination and displacement on our people.”

On Wednesday, Hamas reiterated that it is prepared to implement the U.S.-proposed, U.N.-backed ceasefire plan announced by President Biden in June, without any new conditions.

Israel’s Assault on West Bank Continues as Death Toll in Occupied Territory Reaches 50 Over 2 Weeks
Sep 12, 2024

Israel’s military has killed four more Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as its deadly and wide-ranging incursion enters its third week. Since August 28, Israel has killed at least 50 people across the West Bank. In Tulkarm, residents were forced to abandon their homes, taking shelter in a mosque, as Israeli forces destroyed houses and businesses.

Qais Ambar: “They destroyed our houses. They displaced us. All the people in the camp left. My house was exploded. The army put explosives inside my house and exploded it. The bulldozer swept the house, and the rubble covered my neighbor’s house. They forced us to leave the houses.”

Biden Calls Israel’s Killing of Turkish American Activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi “Totally Unacceptable”
Sep 12, 2024

President Biden on Wednesday called Israel’s killing of 26-year-old U.S. activist and University of Washington graduate Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi in the West Bank “totally unacceptable.” This comes after Biden received backlash for his previous lukewarm remarks about her killing, which he dismissed as “apparently an accident.” Biden, however, has not called for an independent probe into the death. Turkey says it has opened its own investigation into the killing of the dual U.S.-Turkish citizen.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 12, 2024

U.N. Evacuates 100 Gaza Patients for Treatment in UAE, Says 25% of War Injuries “Life-Changing”
Sep 13, 2024

Israeli strikes have killed at least 40 people across Gaza today as U.N. chief António Guterres is once again calling for an immediate ceasefire following Israel’s massacre at the U.N.-run al-Jaouni school which killed at least 18 people Wednesday, including six U.N. employees — the deadliest day in UNRWA’s history.

The World Health Organization said Thursday it had evacuated about 100 people in need of medical treatment from Gaza to the United Arab Emirates, and called for regular evacuations to resume after Israel’s assault decimated Gaza’s health system. This is a cancer patient awaiting evacuation.

Bayan Munir Abu Sultan: “I’m suffering from Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and this type of cancer spreads very quickly. In one or two months, it spreads throughout your entire body, unlike other types of cancer. My trip was extremely tiring, and I came here to the south so I can travel and get treated outside the country, by God’s will.”

In related news, the WHO says 25% of Palestinians in Gaza wounded by Israel’s ongoing assault have “life-changing” injuries.

The U.N. is warning the Palestinian economy — which was already devastated before October 7 due to Israel’s occupation and blockade — is “in freefall” and could completely collapse.

Calls Mount for U.S. to Investigate, Hold Israel Accountable for Killing Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi
Sep 13, 2024

The body of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, the 26-year-old Turkish American activist who was killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, has arrived in Turkey ahead of her funeral. On Thursday, Ayşenur’s father, Mehmet Suat Eygi, praised Turkey for investigating the killing and called on the U.S. to do the same.

Mehmet Suat Eygi: “America is a different country. When there is injustice or torment toward its citizens or they are killed in any country in the world, it lands on that country like the eagle on its emblem. But when the subject is Israel, there is more of an effort to dodge it. But I want to believe that people will listen to their conscience.”

Earlier this week, The Washington Post published an investigation corroborating eyewitness accounts that the protests Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi had been taking part in were already over when Israeli soldiers opened fire and killed her.

Meanwhile, three top Democrats from Ayşenur’s home state of Washington — Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray and Congressmember Pramila Jayapal — called on the Biden administration to investigate her killing. On Wednesday, hundreds of people gathered at a Seattle beach for a vigil honoring the recent University of Washington graduate.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 16, 2024

Biden Admin OKs More Weapons for Israel as Death Toll of Gaza Genocide Tops 41,200
Sep 16, 2024

The U.S. State Department has approved a new $165 million arms deal for Israel to help fund heavy-duty tank trailers. This comes as the official death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza has topped 41,200. On Saturday, an Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza City killed 11 Palestinians, including four children. Al Jazeera reports Israel also killed at least 10 Palestinians in a strike on a home in the Nuseirat refugee camp.

Mu’men Shaheen: “Our neighbors here are all under the rubble, a family under the rubble, a man, his wife, their children, and the neighbors next to them. We were able to remove around nine martyrs, all of them children, in pieces.”

Israel has admitted there is a “high probability” that three Israeli hostages who died in Gaza in November were killed in an Israeli air attack.

Israeli Sniper Kills UNRWA Employee in Occupied West Bank
Sep 16, 2024

In the occupied West Bank, an Israeli sniper has fatally shot an employee of the U.N. refugee agency UNRWA. Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad is the first UNRWA staff member to be killed in the West Bank in more than 10 years.

Houthi-Launched Missile Strikes Central Israel, No Casualties Reported
Sep 16, 2024

Israel is vowing to retaliate after Houthi fighters from Yemen fired a missile into central Israel on Sunday. No direct injuries were reported. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to retaliate.

Biden and Harris Have Not Contacted the Family of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, the U.S. Citizen Killed by Israel
Sep 16, 2024

In Turkey, hundreds of mourners gathered Saturday for the funeral of 26-year-old Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, the Turkish American activist who was fatally shot in the head by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank. President Joe Biden has called the shooting “totally unacceptable,” but the news outlet Zeteo reports neither Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris have reached out yet to her family since her death over a week ago. Ayşenur graduated this year from the University of Washington in Seattle.

***

“Netanyahu Wants Open-Ended War”: Palestinian Journalist & Fmr. Israeli Negotiator on Gaza Ceasefire
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 16, 2024

As Israeli forces launch repeated attacks on civilian areas in Gaza, expand their deadly incursion into the West Bank and threaten retaliation for strikes by Hezbollah and Houthis, we discuss ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas with Palestinian writer Amjad Iraqi and former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy. Despite apparent divisions among Israeli leadership over the terms of an acceptable deal — if such a deal even exists — all of the Israeli proposals are “united by an assumption that Israel is going to be maintaining overarching control of the Gaza Strip,” says Iraqi. Meanwhile, in the United States, what Levy calls “the Biden administration’s slavish devotion to running cover” for Israel’s genocidal assault is threatening the Democratic Party’s attempt to hold onto executive power after the upcoming presidential election.

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 turn now to the ongoing Gaza ceasefire negotiations as Israeli forces continue their attacks on multiple fronts. The latest Israeli airstrike on Gaza killed at least 10 people in the Nuseirat refugee camp, one of the main areas where families are trying to take shelter in Gaza. Other Israeli attacks targeted Gaza City’s Zeitoun and Sheikh Radwan neighborhoods, where another 10 people were killed, including children, according to Al Jazeera. Residents of Nuseirat searched through the rubble of a house after the attack. This is resident Mu’men Shaheen.

MU’MEN SHAHEEN: [translated] Our neighbors here are all under the rubble, a family under the rubble, a man, his wife, their children, and the neighbors next to them. We were able to remove around nine martyrs, all of them children, in pieces. May God be sufficient for us, and that is it.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as the official death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza has topped 41,200. On Sunday, Gaza’s Health Ministry published a list of the names and ages of every Palestinian killed in Gaza between October 7th to August 31st that it can account for. The first 14 pages of the nearly 650-page document lists residents killed who were under the age of 1 year old.

Meanwhile, Israel has admitted there is a high probability three Israeli hostages who died in Gaza in November, were recovered in December, had been killed in an Israeli strike. The hostages were two Israeli soldiers and a civilian: Nik Beizer, Ron Sherman and Elia Toledano.

After talks last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy reaffirmed their commitment to a Gaza ceasefire and the release of hostages. This comes as Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant issued a statement today to U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on a possible agreement to stop the fighting with Hezbollah along the Israel-Lebanon border, saying, quote, “The possibility for an agreed framework in the northern arena is running out as Hezbollah continues to 'tie itself' to Hamas,” unquote.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would make Houthis pay a, quote, “heavy price” after a Houthi missile reached central Israel for the first time.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] We are in a multifront campaign against Iran’s axis of evil, which is striving for our destruction. This morning, the Houthis launched a surface-to-surface missile from Yemen into our territory. They should have known by now that we were exacting a heavy price for every attempt to harm us. Anyone who needs a reminder on this matter is welcome to visit the Port of Hodeidah. Whoever attacks us will not evade our strike. Hamas is already learning this through our determined action, which will bring about its destruction and the release of all of our hostages.

AMY GOODMAN: As Netanyahu spoke, he was wearing a yellow ribbon for the hostages. A number of the hostage families have called on Netanyahu to take off the yellow ribbon, saying it’s he who is most threatening the lives of hostages in Gaza.

For more, we’re joined by two guests here in New York. Amjad Iraqi is a Palestinian journalist, senior editor at 972 Magazine, policy member of Al-Shabaka. His recent article for Chatham House is headlined “The real schism in the Israel-Hamas ceasefire talks is about who decides Gaza’s future.” His recent piece for 972, “We’re already in a regional war. Only a Gaza ceasefire can end it.” And Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project, is with us, former Israeli peace negotiator under Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Amjad, let’s begin with you. In this piece you wrote in Chatham, “The real schism in the Israel-Hamas ceasefire talks is about who decides Gaza’s future.” Talk about what has prevented a ceasefire from going into effect.

AMJAD IRAQI: Thanks so much for having me, Amy.

I think it’s easy for a lot of people to assume that what’s wrong with the ceasefire talks for these past months are these kind of technical details or that it’s some disputes around the hostage-prisoner exchange. I think most of the parameters have been quite clear for a very, very long time. What the real issue is, the fundamental divergence is about what is the fate of Gaza and the 2.3 million Palestinians who are there. That is what’s really at the heart of this.

Now, for Hamas, coming into these ceasefire negotiations, it is essentially seeking for a full Israeli withdrawal and some kind of path towards returning Gaza to Palestinian control. And it’s also signaled, for example, that it will be — it’s willing to be part of an interim government. It has signaled that it does not want to have full control over Gaza itself. And so, it is indicating that that is essentially what it’s trying to achieve.

Now, for the Israeli side, it’s quite opposite. It’s very little interest in seeing Gaza return to the Palestinians. And Israeli officials, the generals, the politicians, have been putting forward various what they call day-after plans. And these range from a long-term deployment of Israeli troops to having Arab states come in with peacekeeping forces to even establishing Jewish settlements. And these are heavily contested, but these are all united by an assumption that Israel is going to be maintaining overarching control of the Gaza Strip. And this is not just something that’s theoretical, it’s something that they’re actively doing on the ground, literally shrinking Gaza, through buffer zones, through military corridors, including along the Gaza-Egypt border, what’s known as the Philadelphi Corridor. So, this is actively, essentially, redesigning the occupation of Gaza. This is what’s really at the heart of it.

And Washington has very clearly sided with the Israeli side of that equation, that is more willing to allow Israel to create those new facts on the ground and to try to give time for the Israelis to establish that, more so than it is willing to give Gaza back to the Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: You mentioned the Philadelphi Corridor. Daniel Levy, you have Yoav Gallant. Both Yoav Gallant and the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are being investigated for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Court of Justice. But I’m looking at a piece in The Times of Israel, “PM nearing move to fire Defense Minister Gallant, replace him with Gideon Sa’ar.” Gallant has disagreed with Netanyahu over saying the Philadelphi Corridor is that important.

DANIEL LEVY: Yes. And it’s good to be here in person.

What you have is a division between the Israeli prime minister and much of his Cabinet and the defense minister and elements of the security establishment, not over what Amjad was just describing to you, which is the long-term sense of a permanent Israeli presence in Gaza, indeed over the conduct of this war, but where they disagree is over whether there should be an acceptance of a deal which, at a minimum, would give a pause to get hostages out and, I would say, would also give some respite to a military which has been on this extensive deployment, is struggling, in fact, to replenish its ranks in terms of reservists. Prime Minister Netanyahu worries that any pause could make it more difficult for him to resume the war and could lead him to lose his coalition.

Netanyahu wants an open-ended war, an open-ended war in Gaza, an open-ended war in the West Bank. Since 28th of August, Israel has been conducting a more extensive — they’re always operating, but a more extensive, more destructive military operation, including against infrastructure, in the West Bank and an open-ended war on the northern front with Hezbollah in Lebanon. So he’s at odds with those guys. He wants to get rid of not only his defense minister, but some of the senior military echelon, in order to complete his takeover of the Israeli elite. Again, the differences matter. The differences aren’t that significant when it comes to Palestinian rights. They matter in terms of the immediacy, of the intensity of the genocide.

What’s interesting in the last weeks, and you referenced that yellow pin that Prime Minister Netanyahu was wearing and the criticism from the families of those Israelis being held in Gaza — what’s interesting in recent weeks is the extent to which the U.S. efforts have also sided with Netanyahu in this internal disagreement with his defense minister, with the hostage families, with the security establishment. I think mostly that’s because of the Biden administration’s slavish devotion to running cover and preventing accountability for Israel, slavish devotion to Israeli narratives. There’s probably some amateurishness and some unintentionality thrown in there, as well. But that is where we are.

AMY GOODMAN: Why do think this is going on? I mean, you’re not normally here in the United States, but you are here right now, so you can see very directly the coverage of U.S. politics. Leading up to the Democratic convention, when the Democrats were concerned of a repeat of 1968, mass protests, particularly around the issue of Gaza, inexplicably, they announced that they were OK’ing, what, $20 billion more weapons for Israel. And it was right before, supposedly, President Biden was pressuring Netanyahu for a ceasefire, but they OK’d this tens of billions of dollars of weapons before they were pushing him to OK a ceasefire — which, of course, he didn’t. And, of course, if he falls from office, if there isn’t an open-ended war, he could go to trial and end up in jail, which might lead us to understand why Netanyahu is pushing so hard to keep all of this open and not have a ceasefire.

DANIEL LEVY: And it’s ideological. I don’t want to leave that out of the equation. It’s political, it’s coalition, it’s Netanyahu is the indispensable wartime leader, but this is also driven by the Greater Israel, permanent-displacement-of-Palestinians ideology, in terms of what you referenced,

I don’t know of a definition of the word “pressure” which accords with the idea that America is exerting any pressure on Israel to end these activities. What we saw, and I think there was — unfortunately, characteristic when it comes to this issue — deceit and dishonesty from the administration by creating this sense, “Hey, we’re getting close. There are ceasefire talks,” just to coincide with the Democrat convention. However, they have placed themselves in the very precarious position that Netanyahu — I don’t know that this is going to happen, and probably won’t because he has other considerations. But here we are, less than 50 days from an election, where his next moves could still impact your election over here. I think when you look at this from the perspective, if I may, of Americans, I don’t think there’s much of a constituency, there’s much capacity on the Republican side to try and leverage this issue to impact their candidate. I think that still does exist on the Democrat side.

And I would also, if I can, just look to the future, Amy, because these people, whatever the outcome of the election, those who have been most in charge of this policy, a policy on trial very soon, one imagines, at the ICC, the International Criminal Court, already condemned at the International Court of Justice, they will now be out of office. And how will they be treated, both legally and socially politically, as the people who were complicit in this? How will Secretary Blinken be received when he leaves office, within legal realms, has to be? Because that will send a signal to future officeholders. There should be a stigma and a cost associated with complicity, legal culpability in these kinds of crimes.

And we saw a horrible reminder, not new, but a horrible reminder, to Americans, something we know already, but when Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, the dual national, Turkish American, was killed, perhaps by American weapons, Biden immediately ran to give cover to the Israeli side. We saw again that one kind of American life is treated differently to another when it comes to these dual nationals. The administration is absolutely right to wrap its arm around those dual national Israeli Americans being held, but where are they when it comes to wrapping its arms around, embracing, reaching out to these families? It’s happened before: Shireen Abu Akleh, Rachel Corrie. And it happened again.

And there is a price to pay here, not just in the U.S., because the international norms that are being violated are going to haunt us and have implications around the world for years to come. Israel is not the only bad actor. It’s not the first bad actor. Others do bad things in the world. But the extent of what has been done over these last months and the extent of America preventing accountability, when it comes to calling a U.N. agency like UNRWA a terrorist organization, a piece of legislation going through the Israeli parliament right now, when it comes to ignoring ICJ rulings, when it comes to the International Criminal Court, when it comes to using starvation as a weapon of war, when it comes to this mass destruction, we are going to be living globally with the consequences of the trampling of these norms for a long time, I’m afraid.

AMY GOODMAN: I should say that both of you are here in the United States. You spoke at a Jewish Currents conference, the magazine Jewish Currents, which was supposed to be at Brooklyn College, but in the end they said that they couldn’t have the meeting there, and, interestingly, they ended up having it at a synagogue on the Lower East Side.

Amjad, you write in your piece that the Biden administration’s policy towards Netanyahu has only reinforced the sense that the U.S. is Israel’s lawyer. Talk about coming to the United States, seeing these elections, and the position the U.S. has taken, even for the Democrats, who are in power right now, at the risk of losing the election, because there are not only large Arab American communities in a number of the swing states, but it is the Black community in the United States, which overwhelmingly has sided with peace in the Middle East. A thousand Black bishops or Black ministers wrote to the Biden White House saying they haven’t seen this kind of solidarity since the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Young people, overwhelmingly, the young Jewish community in this country, the encampments across university campuses, whether or not universities allow for this kind of discussion. What have been your observations? And what does it mean for Palestinians in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Israel?

AMJAD IRAQI: I mean, it’s been very interesting for me. I’ve obviously been following this from afar and, just in the few days that I’ve been here, having a lot of conversations with the activists and thinkers and writers and journalists. I mean, it’s quite extraordinary, the movement that’s been building up for many years now and just to see it really come out in full force both on the streets of New York and D.C. and Michigan, etc., to listening how the media is covering it, and even though it’s still a battle, but you’re seeing these really radical shifts and the fact that, you know, things like the “uncommitted” movement is trying to create that impact.

So, it’s really astounding to watch these debates. And in that, you are seeing these kind of intersectional angles to see how much there is that disconnect between the American public, which, even at its most minimum, is asking for something like a ceasefire, something like basic respect for Palestinian rights, and that the Democratic establishment, which we’re seeing very evidently, is just refusing to acknowledge that and is preferring to, essentially, side with a kind of foreign policy that the Republicans themselves are fully on board with, which should probably be a red flag if there really is that kind of bipartisan consensus. And there’s many ways to unpack this, but that really needs to be something that the Democratic Party needs to reflect on, of how much it has been contributing to a larger geopolitical status quo.

I mean, the way that Daniel has also described this recently in interviews, this war on Gaza and the regional conflagration, as Daniel says, this is also America’s war. It is not actually deescalating anything. It is actively contributing to sending weapons, funds, diplomatic cover for a war that is doing the exact opposite of everything that the Biden administration is saying, literally giving protection to a Netanyahu government which Biden and Blinken themselves say is a very problematic government, literally giving cover to an occupation which America claims to want to whittle down and end but is in fact providing everything that will ensure the exact opposite. It is saying that it does not want a regional war, but it’s actively launching airstrikes in Yemen, is giving Netanyahu standing ovations here in Congress, is attacking the ICJ and the ICC, is doing everything that is undermining the Biden administration’s declared purposes.

And so, regular citizens here in the United States are seeing through this. They’re seeing those contradictions, and they’re demanding consistency in the values that the Democratic Party claims to espouse and the policies that it enables.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is at risk of losing the election. I mean, you have now the Green Party candidate Jill Stein leading Kamala Harris among Muslim voters in three battleground states: Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan.

AMJAD IRAQI: Yeah. And this is the dialectic that the Democratic Party, if it claims to be representative of different kinds of communities in the United States, needs to actually listen to these voters and needs to understand that this is where public opinion is shifting. And if it’s refusing to do that and it’s still maintaining that brick wall between this idea — ideological, strategic, political — of where America needs to stand vis-à-vis Israel, then I’m afraid the Democratic Party is only going to be losing those kind of voters and those kind of communities. And Gaza and Palestine is one major test of that, but it certainly expands to a lot of other avenues.

AMY GOODMAN: Give us a description of what’s happening in the West Bank right now. I mean, you’ve got, since October 7th, nearly a thousand [sic] people arrested, hundreds of people killed. This isn’t Gaza. This is the West Bank. If you can explain what you think Israel wants to accomplish here?

AMJAD IRAQI: From the very beginning of the war, the Israeli state, the Israeli army and the Israeli settler movement has taken this as a full opportunity to entrench its control over the West Bank. You’re having a massive increase in settler violence, which has been increasing for years, but this has again been expedited massively since October 7th. The Israeli military is crossing all lines, not just in Area C, which is the main areas that the Israeli military controls, but is actively invading cities and refugee camps in Jenin, in Nablus, in Tulkarm. It is really going all out to essentially enshrine and expand its de facto annexation that has been going on for a very long time. And this is being accompanied on the ground with pushes in the Israeli Knesset by the Israeli government to pass new laws and bills and new policies, especially by people like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who’s also essentially the de facto governor of the West Bank, to, essentially, enshrine this one-state reality and to make it as permanent as possible. So, this is — and what’s happening in West Bank is intricately tied to what’s going on in Gaza. It’s not just isolated in one place.

AMY GOODMAN: I misspoke: I said 1,000 arrested.

DANIEL LEVY: You said — yeah. Yeah, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Ten thousand —

AMJAD IRAQI: Ten thousand, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — Palestinians have been arrested, most held without charge. A number of reports, from many different groups, have said people are being tortured, people are being killed, people are being raped in jails. Daniel Levy, what you thinks Israel wants to accomplish there before the end of this? Do you see them annexing the West Bank?

DANIEL LEVY: De facto, we are very deep into that process. The Israeli government is making good on its own coalition guidelines. And let me remind you what those guidelines say: The Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the land of Israel. That was set out long before October 7th. It was a government with those guidelines that the Biden administration handed entry to the visa waiver program, tried to get normalization with Saudi Arabia. So, that was the way that Biden backed the axis of Israeli extremism. And we now see it coming to fruition.

And it’s not coincidental that there is a scorched-earth policy in the West Bank, because the intentionality here is to either force Palestinians out or make life there so miserable and make this a kind of humanitarian aid basket case for years and decades to come, that we don’t talk politics. We focus on can we get this assistance in, that assistance in, or both. That is what is going on. That is what we need to keep our eyes on. And this is the permissive environment that the U.S. has created, and it backs the settler extremism, which is backed by the state.

AMY GOODMAN: Daniel Levy, former Israeli peace negotiator, president of the U.S./Middle East Project, and Amjad Iraqi, Palestinian journalist, senior editor at 972 Magazine. We’ll link to your piece at Chatham House, “The real schism in the Israel-Hamas ceasefire talks is about who decides Gaza’s future,” and your pieces in 972 Magazine, the most recent, “We’re already in a regional war. Only a Gaza ceasefire can end it.”

That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 17, 2024

Netanyahu Expands War Aims to Include Return of Israelis Displaced by Fighting with Lebanon
Sep 17, 2024

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has expanded his goals for the war on Gaza to include the return of Israelis displaced by fighting near the border with Lebanon. Netanyahu’s office announced the escalation after an overnight meeting of Israel’s security Cabinet, and just hours after Israel’s war chief Yoav Gallant told a senior adviser to President Biden, “The only way left to return the residents of the north to their homes is via military action.” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin responded by warning Gallant that a full-scale war with Hezbollah would lead to “devastating consequences.”

Israeli Assaults Have Killed 11,000 Students, Says Palestinian Education Ministry
Sep 17, 2024

The Palestinian Education Ministry reports Israeli attacks have killed more than 11,000 students across the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank since October 7. In one of the latest assaults, at least 20 Palestinians were killed when Israel’s military bombed the al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. Five others were killed in an attack on Gaza City’s al-Zeitoun neighborhood.

U.N. Special Rapporteur Blasts Western Nations for Supporting Israel’s Assault on Gaza
Sep 17, 2024

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is visiting Egypt today to discuss a potential Gaza ceasefire and the release of hostages. Blinken’s visit comes as top experts at the United Nations have strongly condemned the U.S. and other Western nations for supporting Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza. Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, spoke Monday.

Francesca Albanese: “I think that it’s unavoidable for Israel to become a pariah in the face of its continuous, relentless, vilifying assault on the United Nations, on top of millions of Palestinians.”

Man Sets Himself on Fire Near Boston’s Israeli Consulate to Protest Gaza Genocide
Sep 17, 2024

In Massachusetts, a man set himself on fire last Wednesday near the Israeli Consulate in Boston to protest the war on Gaza. He was reportedly hospitalized immediately after with severe burns, but few other details are known. Matt Nelson is believed to be the third person to self-immolate outside an Israeli consulate over the past 11 months. Video has circulated online purportedly of Nelson speaking ahead of his self-immolation.

Matt Nelson: “My name is Matt Nelson, and I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest. We are all culpable in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. We call ourselves the greatest nation in history, yet we spend more on weapons of war than we do on educating our children, helping the homeless, ensuring all Americans have equal rights and protecting the environment combined. We are slaves to capitalism and the military-industrial complex. Most of us are too apathetic to care. The protest I’m about to engage in is a call to our government to stop supplying Israel with the money and weapons it uses to imprison and murder innocent Palestinians, to pressure Israel to end the genocide in Gaza and to support the ICC indictment of Benjamin Netanyahu and other members of the Israeli government.”

Meanwhile, in Newton, Massachusetts, a U.S. veteran was charged for assaulting and shooting a man who was defending Palestinian rights to a group of pro-Israel protesters.

***

U.N. Experts Accuse Israel of “Starvation Campaign” in Gaza & Demand End to Western Complicity
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 17, 2024

Top United Nations human rights experts have condemned Western nations for supporting Israel’s devastating war on Gaza, urging the world to stop an unfolding genocide in Palestine. This comes as the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, is accusing Israel in a new report of carrying out a deliberate starvation campaign in Gaza. “What we are witnessing in Gaza is the starvation of 2.3 million Palestinians. We’ve never seen a civilian population made to go hungry so quickly and so completely,” says Fakhri, who joins us from Brazil. We also speak with Francesca Albanese, the special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, who says Israel’s assault on Gaza is part of a larger plan of “getting as much control as possible over maximum land with minimum Palestinian people.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: Top experts at the United Nations have strongly condemned Western countries for supporting Israel’s devastating war on Gaza. Speakers at a U.N. press conference Monday included Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, the U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation.

PEDRO ARROJO-AGUDO: The lack of clean water has led to 1.7 million cases of infection diseases, mainly diarrhea, dysentery and hepatitis A, particularly affecting children, as well as cases of polio, smallpox and other infectious diseases that can trigger massive and deadly epidemics. All this coupled with the lack of medical care result in deaths, especially of babies and children, making water scarcity and contamination a silent bomb which has far less visibility than those that destroy buildings, but a no less lethal bomb.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, has accused Israel, in a new report, of carrying out a starvation campaign in Gaza. Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, wrote in response to the report, quote, “The way Israel is destroying Palestinian food sovereignty will be studied not only as a shocking example of genocidal conduct, but also as a textbook case of sadistic disrespect for human life & dignity,” unquote.

U.N. special rapporteurs Francesca Albanese is joining us now from Tunisia, and Michael Fakhri is joining us from Brasília in Brazil.

We thank you both for being with us. Michael Fakhri, let’s begin with you. You have just released this report. Can you explain what you found?

MICHAEL FAKHRI: Yes, Amy. What we’re witnessing in Gaza is the starvation of 2.3 million Palestinians. We’ve never seen a civilian population made to go hungry so quickly and so completely. So, in this report, I answer the question, “How was this possible? How was Israel able to starve so many Palestinians so quickly and so completely?”

And the story starts, of course, with the political economy of Gaza. This story starts, in some ways, in 1991. Israel started restricting the flow of goods into Gaza starting in 1991. By 2000, it imposes a full blockade. So, what we saw from 2000 to 2002 is the rate of malnutrition amongst children in Gaza doubled. In 2005, what Israel did is it changed the nature of its occupation: It pulled its military out of Gaza and surrounded Gaza in a siege.

So, since 2000 until now, Israel has created a wall, in effect, a wall around Gaza, limiting the flow of goods. And what they did is they counted calories. They made sure that people in Gaza were just hungry enough to be weak but not so hungry to raise an alarm. So, right before October 7th of last year, 50% of Palestinians in Gaza were food insecure, and 80% depended on humanitarian aid.

So, when this war started, Israel announced its starvation campaign on October 9, and that’s, in effect, what they did. And they’ve been pushing people from the north into the south, while at the same time continuing to bomb civilian structures and target schools, hospitals and homes.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain — this is the first report that includes graphic reporting, Michael Fakhri.

MICHAEL FAKHRI: Yes. The situation is so horrific in Gaza right now that I felt that words weren’t enough to explain what’s going on. But words weren’t enough also to imagine a better future for Palestinians, but for people all over the world. This report focuses on the Palestinian people’s food sovereignty, but it looks at how starvation is being used as an — increasing rate by forces all over the world.

And so, I was lucky to work with Omar Khouri, an artist from Lebanon. And what we presented are illustrations and graphic reports highlighting the struggle of fishers, highlighting what food sovereignty means for the Palestinian people, but for everyone, and highlighting what it means to maintain and fight for your dignity despite the genocidal violence that the Palestinians are experiencing.

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Fakhri, who did you talk to for this report?

MICHAEL FAKHRI: For this report, I’ve consulted starvation and right-to-food experts from all over the world. I received direct testimony from people in Gaza. I spoke to U.N. workers both within Palestinian territories and around the world. I spoke to diplomats from countries from all over the world. And I did my own research, and I drew from statistics from the U.N. And this was standard, standard methodology for any U.N. human rights report.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has suggested starving the entire Gaza Strip to death could be justified. He told a conference last month, quote, “Nobody will let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned.” Smotrich also repeated the Israeli government’s goal of removing the threat of Palestinian statehood. You have that, and then you also have what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, that accusations of Israel limiting humanitarian aid were outrageously false. He said, “A deliberate starvation policy? You can say anything — it doesn’t make it true.” Your response, U.N. rapporteur Michael Fakhri?

MICHAEL FAKHRI: There is never an exception to starving civilians. There is never a justification for starving any civilian, whether it’s one person or 2.3 million. And this is in the context of genocide. And there is no exception to genocide. Israeli officials, since October 9th until today, have explicitly announced their intent to starve civilians. And they’ve executed their plan, and we’ve seen the effects of their plan.

We also have received reports regularly and consistently from U.N. sources that humanitarian aid is either blocked or restricted. And then, even when it goes through, these humanitarian convoys, that are coordinating with Israeli forces, are targeted by Israeli forces. And then, even when these humanitarian aid convoys reach civilians, civilians have been repeatedly targeted, shot and killed while trying to get aid.

But the issue is not just aid and the denial of goods. The issue is Israel has been weakening and destroying the food system in Gaza in this war and previously. Over 75% of the agricultural system has been destroyed. Fishers have been targeted. Orchards have been uprooted. Shepherds have been targeted and shot at. So, what Israel is trying to do is making — is they’re trying to make sure that the Palestinian people can’t feed themselves. This starvation campaign is part of displacing Palestinians from their land, and it’s part of a plan to annex not just Gaza but the West Bank, as well. The last two years, we’ve seen record violence against Palestinians, especially Palestinian farmers. This is, again, targeting all Palestinians in all of their territory, so it’s not just about Gaza. It’s Israel has over the decades attacked and destroyed the Palestinian food system as a way to create the conditions of starvation, and in this case now to the degree of genocidal violence.

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Fakhri, according to your report, 34 Palestinians, the majority of them children, are known to have starved to death since October 7th?

MICHAEL FAKHRI: Yes. And this is what indicates to us that it’s a full-blown famine across all of Gaza. So, you can imagine a situation, when a community is struggling, the first thing they always do is they feed their children. This is true throughout history. And so, when a parent is watching their child waste away before their very eyes and is unable to do anything and that child dies, when the first child dies in a community, that indicates to us that that whole society is being attacked. And when the first Palestinian child died, that confirmed that the situation in Gaza is a situation of famine.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, you’re expecting to give — present this report to the U.N. General Assembly in October. What are you expecting? How will this be presented?

MICHAEL FAKHRI: Right now all of us, all the U.N. human rights experts, and, I think, the whole world is watching closely the current draft resolution that’s before the General Assembly, that is — in the draft, they’re calling for sanctions against Israel. Since the first weeks of this war, we, as independent human rights experts, have been calling for a ceasefire, an immediate ceasefire, and sanctions against Israel. And we’ll see how this resolution goes through.

By the time I get to New York on October 18th, if there are no sanctions, I will repeat that call for sanctions against Israel. And what I will — I will tell the General Assembly what is at stake. What is at stake is the global order itself. How the world responds to Gaza and to the Palestinian struggle for liberation will determine the structure and the fate of the U.N. and the global order, because what’s at stake is, of course, the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, their right to return to the territory in Palestine, and American global power and Europe is facing an existential crisis. This is what’s at stake. This is why millions of people are marching in the streets in solidarity with the Palestinians. If the world does not respond to Palestine today just like the world is not responding to the starvation in Sudan, we are going to see more and more starvation campaigns around the world into the future.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to bring in Francesca Albanese into this conversation, U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory. You’re in La Marsa, Tunisia, where you participated from in that news conference yesterday in Geneva. You talked about the significance of this report. Can you respond?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yes. I was really impressed by the report that my colleague Michael Fakhri produced, because not only it analyzed what he just said — I cannot really add to the brilliant presentation he gave — but it put things in context, which is something that tends to be missed when discussing the situation of Palestinians under Israeli military rule. People tend to align themselves or accept uncritically the narrative of the two parties in conflict, without capturing the troubling asymmetry that exists between the Palestinians, the occupied people, and Israel, the protracted occupier, which is colonizing, annexing by force the little territory that remain. So, the fact of bringing the attention back to the root causes and the fact that this didn’t start on October 7, didn’t start even with the blockade that has been declared on Gaza 17 years ago, this is a long-term plan that Israel has somewhat devised to achieve its final goal, which is getting as much control as possible over maximum land with minimum Palestinian people.

AMY GOODMAN: Francesca Albanese, you’ve said the attack that Israel has unleashed is not just against Palestinians in Gaza, it’s against Palestinians as a whole. Explain.

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Absolutely. Amy, since the beginning of the assault against Gaza on the beginning of October, following, of course, the attack unleashed by Hamas and the other Palestinian armed groups, we have recorded an escalation of violence against the Palestinians in the rest of the occupied territory, both East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Over 11 months, 670 Palestinians have been killed. Curfew, incursions and raids have escalated at unprecedented rates, particularly against the northern Gaza, that over the past two weeks has experienced less lethal but similar attacks on civilian infrastructure — roads, water reservoir, electricity, electricity sources and homes — that are unjustifiable.

And the other thing is the detention. Arbitrary detention, detention without any legal justification of Palestinians, both from the Gaza Strip but all the more the West Bank and East Jerusalem, have skyrocketed. And all Palestinians, no matter their place of residence, have been exposed to humiliation and sadism in what B’Tselem has qualified as a network of torture across Israeli detention centers. How can we explain that? That is why I say when the international community has failed to prevent genocide in Gaza, we have to be very careful, because I do see patterns of violence clearly expanding to the West Bank and East Jerusalem. And ultimately, the goal is the same: expel the Palestinians, forcibly displace the Palestinians from the little that remain of their land. And this is not something that I’m inferring from the evidence; this is something that is accompanied by endless statements of Israeli political leaders and actions of both army and settlers, illegal settlers, that have been armed by Israeli ministers. So, this is a state — there is a state endeavor sustaining this wide attack against the Palestinian people as such.

AMY GOODMAN: Francesca Albanese, we want to thank you for being with us, U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, speaking to us from La Marsa, Tunisia, and Michael Fakhri, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food. We will link to your report — well, you’re going to present it at the United Nations next month — the report titled “Starvation and the Right to Food, with an emphasis on the Palestinian people’s food sovereignty.” Michael Fakhri is a professor of law at the University of Oregon, where he leads the Food Resiliency Project, speaking to us from Brasília, Brazil.

Next up, Yale professor Jason Stanley on his new book, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. Stay with us.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 18, 2024

12 Killed, 3,000 Wounded as Israel Triggers Explosives Planted in Pagers Used by Hezbollah
Sep 18, 2024

In Lebanon, at least 12 people were killed and nearly 3,000 people were injured Tuesday afternoon when electronic pagers used by members of Hezbollah exploded at the same time. The simultaneous blasts set off fear and panic in Beirut and across southern Lebanon and left hospitals overwhelmed. Hezbollah blamed Israel and vowed to retaliate, raising fears of a broader regional war. Reuters reports Israel’s Mossad spy agency managed to plant explosive devices in pagers bought in recent months by Hezbollah. Victims of the attack included a 10-year-old girl named Fatima Jaafar Abdullah, who was killed when her father’s pager exploded. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, lost an eye to an exploding pager. Hezbollah relied on pagers for communication in part to avoid Israel’s surveillance of other communication networks. Lebanese lawmakers condemned the attack as an act of terrorism. After headlines, we’ll go to Beirut, Geneva and Boston for the latest.

State Dept. Denies Advance Knowledge of Pager Plot; Kamala Harris Defends U.S. Arms to Israel
Sep 18, 2024

Top Biden administration officials quickly distanced themselves from Tuesday’s pager attack on Lebanon. This is State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller.

Matthew Miller: “I can tell you that the U.S. was not involved in it. The U.S. was not aware of this incident in advance. And at this point, we’re gathering information.”

On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris defended the Biden administration’s support of Israel throughout its assault on Gaza. During an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists, Harris also cited her support for President Biden’s decision in May to temporarily pause the delivery of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. Harris was questioned by reporter Eugene Daniels of Politico.

Eugene Daniels: “But what do you say to those that say that’s not enough, that stopping the 2,000-pound bombs the one time wasn’t enough, that this administration, your possible administration, has to do more?”

Vice President Kamala Harris: “Well, we are doing the work of putting the pressure on all parties involved to get the deal done. But let me be very clear also: I support Israel’s ability to defend itself.”

Just last month, the Biden administration approved $20 billion in additional weapons sales to Israel, including advanced air-to-air missiles and fighter jets.

8 Killed as Israel Bombs School Housing Displaced Palestinians in Gaza
Sep 18, 2024

In Gaza, at least 20 Palestinians have been killed and 54 wounded over the past 24 hours, including at least eight people who were killed in an Israeli airstrike targeting a school sheltering displaced civilians in Gaza City’s Shuja’iyya neighborhood. Another attack on a civilian car near Rafah in southern Gaza killed two Palestinians and wounded several others. Israel announced four of its soldiers were killed in Rafah.

***

Israel Blamed as Pager Explosions in Lebanon Kill 12 & Injure 2,800; Hezbollah Vows to Respond
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 18, 2024

At least 12 people were killed and over 2,800 people were injured Tuesday in Lebanon when electronic pagers used by many members of Hezbollah — who had switched to the older technology over concerns of mobile phones’ vulnerability to security breaches — exploded simultaneously across the country in a coordinated attack on the group. Individual explosions occurred in supermarkets, cafes, houses and in other public places. Many of the injuries were sustained by civilians who were not carrying the pagers themselves, including at least two children who died from their wounds. According to a Reuters report, Israel’s Mossad spy agency had managed to plant explosive material in a batch of pagers bought in recent months by Hezbollah, which has vowed to retaliate, deepening the risks of a broader regional war. We discuss the attack with three guests: Beirut-based journalist Mohamad Kleit, Human Rights Watch’s Ramzi Kaiss and Palestinian American journalist Rami Khouri. Kaiss says the “indiscriminate attack” on the Lebanese population — which Kleit additionally describes as “terrorist” — is “unlawful under the rules of war.” “What the Israeli attack using the pagers did was completely throw out the rulebook,” says Khouri, as eyes are on the region in preparation for another possible Israeli escalation.

Transcript

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

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

In Lebanon, at least 12 people were killed, over 2,800 injured Tuesday when electronic pagers used by members of Hezbollah exploded at the same time. It was about 3:30 in the afternoon. Israel is widely believed to be behind the attack. Hezbollah vowed to retaliate against Israel, as fears grow of a broader regional war.

According to a report by Reuters, Israel’s Mossad spy agency had managed to plant explosive material in a batch of pagers bought in recent months by Hezbollah. The pagers were sold under the name of the Taiwanese brand Gold Apollo, but the company said the pagers were actually made by a firm in Budapest that had a license to use the Gold Apollo name.

Victims of the attack included a 10-year-old girl who died when her father’s pager exploded. The Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was also injured by an exploding pager. The New York Times reports he lost an eye in the blast.

The nature of the simultaneous attack shocked many in Lebanon.

LEBANESE MAN: [translated] What happened yesterday shocked us. It was unimaginable. No one could have thought that pagers could explode like that. The scene was shocking, how people were torn apart right in front of you.

AMY GOODMAN: Hezbollah relied on pagers in part to avoid Israel’s surveillance of other communication networks, like cellphones. Lebanese lawmaker Tony Frangieh Jr. condemned the attack as an act of terrorism.

TONY FRANGIEH JR.: [translated] Catastrophic repercussions for the crisis today, but this, as I have previously explained with several stations, is terrorism being practiced against Lebanon. And we — and, I believe, the majority of the Lebanese people — do not submit to the language of terrorism.

AMY GOODMAN: Earlier today, U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken said the U.S. did not know about nor was involved in what he called, quote, “these incidents.” Blinken made the comments in Cairo, Egypt, where he held a joint news conference with the Egyptian foreign minister and met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Axios reports Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin shortly before the operation began.

We go now to Beirut, Lebanon, where we’re joined by independent Lebanese journalist Mohamad Kleit.

Thanks so much for being with us. Mohamad, can you describe the scene yesterday at 3:30?

MOHAMAD KLEIT: Thank you very much for having me.

We’re still in a sort of state of shock of what happened. We didn’t comprehend what was going on until later hours at night. What happened at 3:30 exactly, certain sounds of small explosions were happening in the streets of the southern suburbs specifically, people hearing — yelling at the street. People were in a state of shock. Some of them who were not targeted by this terrorist attack were in a state of — they were frozen in the streets, not knowing what was going on. It was very hard to comprehend, to make sense of what was happening.

Then, later on, people started helping the people who were injured, where these pagers exploded on their waists or even their hands or in front of their faces, taking them to hospitals, because they were falling down on the street by the thousands. As the minister of health has counted, around 1,850 persons were injured in the southern suburbs alone, or in Beirut in general. There were around 2,000 persons who were admitted to hospitals, around 450 persons who were critically injured in the faces and the eyes, while on the street people until now are still making sense of what was happening. Even until late at night, people were still on the streets still trying to get people who were injured from their houses, from the cafes, from the supermarkets, from all the civilian buildings where these pagers have exploded, trying to admit them to hospitals, trying to donate blood for those who have lost it.

AMY GOODMAN: And the number of people killed and wounded and the people who were killed — we just reported on an 8-year-old girl — can you go more into this, Mohamad?

MOHAMAD KLEIT: Yes. So far, there have been 13 persons who were killed, 10 of them who are direct personnels of Hezbollah, whether they be affiliated with Hezbollah or they might be contractors, as well, because from what — and there are also three other civilians, a mother and the little girl that you talked about, who was — I think she’s 9 years old, and there’s also a young boy who’s 11 years old who passed away late at night. From what I know, that these pagers are used by Hezbollah, basically by the people who are medics, who work in logistics, not the people who work — very few of them who work in the military sector of Hezbollah use these pagers.

AMY GOODMAN: I’d like to bring a guest into the conversation who is an expert on investigating human rights abuses: Ramzi Kaiss, Human Rights Watch researcher investigating human rights abuses in Lebanon. He’s joining us from Geneva. Ramzi, thanks so much for being with us. Can you explain what you understand technically happened? And talk about it in the context of an international human rights framework.

RAMZI KAISS: Thanks, Amy. And thanks for having me.

As you noted and as Mohamad noted, yesterday there were scenes of just chaos and shock in Lebanon as thousands of pagers exploded simultaneously across the country, resulting in thousands of people being injured, according to the Ministry of Health. At least 12 people have been killed. This includes two children and aid workers. At least 2,800 people have been injured.

Now, photos and videos that we reviewed that were taken by witnesses to the attack or victims showed pagers exploding in public places such as grocery stores or supermarkets. And other videos that appear to be linked to the attack that took place, taken from emergency rooms, showed adults and children in emergency rooms with truly severe, traumatic and penetrating injuries. We saw injuries to the head, to the torso, to the limbs, with — many people had decapitated fingers, in addition to other injuries that appear to be consistent with the detonation of high explosives.

Now, we know that Hezbollah, in a statement that they issued, said that these pagers had belonged to various units and institutions within Hezbollah. They blame the Israeli government. And we know from the various media reports that have come out, you know, citing Israeli — former Israeli officials and U.S. officials saying that Israel is responsible for the attack. But the Israeli military has not commented as of yet, at least according to my knowledge.

But, look, certainly, there needs to be a full and prompt investigation into how the attack unfolded, that should be conducted. But what we know, from the perspective of international humanitarian law, on the way in which this attack took place, the law of armed conflict is clear. It prohibits the use of booby traps or other apparently harmless portable devices that civilians could be attracted to or that civilians use, precisely in order to avoid the harm that we saw unfold in Beirut yesterday with the devastating scenes of thousands of people being rushed to the hospital at the same time, including children, including civilians. When an explosive device is used or implanted in something such as a pager, where this device, its location cannot be reliably determined, where the means of attack or the method in which the attack takes place cannot differentiate between civilians or combatants, it cannot be directed at a specific military target, and which would strike military targets and civilians alike without distinguishing between them, this is an unlawfully indiscriminate attack, and it’s unlawful under the laws of war.

And there needs to be accountability for this violation and for other violations, because, as we’ve seen, there has been continued impunity for violations of the laws of war in Lebanon. Human Rights Watch has documented apparently deliberate attacks on civilians, on journalists, indiscriminate attacks on civilians, widespread use of white phosphorus, including on populated areas, and the use of U.S. weapons unlawfully against aid workers. And without accountability for such violations, they will continue with impunity. We’ve previously on various countries, such as the U.S. and other countries, to suspend arms sales and military assistance to Israel in light of the fact that they could be used unlawfully in violations of IHL, as we are seeing unfold in the country.

AMY GOODMAN: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted following the attacks, quote, “What Israel has just done is, via any method, reckless. They blew up countless numbers of people who were driving (meaning cars out of control), shopping (your children are in the stroller standing behind him in the checkout line), et cetera. Indistinguishable from terrorism.” Ramzi, your response?

RAMZI KAISS: Yeah. I mean, in the videos that we reviewed, you could clearly see these devices go off in supermarkets, where civilians were nearby, children were nearby, and the attacks happened at the same time. And so, when you use explosive devices that are not able to distinguish between — or, specifically target a military object, then they’re indiscriminate and could cause harm to civilians, as well as the military target. That would amount to an indiscriminate attack, and that is unlawful under the laws of war and should be investigated as a violation of IHL. And for those reasons, there needs to be not just an investigation, but accountability for such violations, or we will continue to see violations unfold with impunity.

AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned about the risk of a broader regional war.

JOSEP BORRELL: I was in Lebanon before coming to Emirates. I was visiting the United Nation troops in the border. When I came there, the level of danger was increasing, and I see the troops going to their barracks. Certainly, there is a possibility of the war spilling over not only to Lebanon, but also it’s already being important fire in the Red Sea, where we, the European Union, has deployed a navy mission in order to protect the freedom of navigation. The risk of a spillover is not from yesterday; it’s from the beginning. And we have to put all our efforts in order to try to avoid the regionalization of the war in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Josep Borrell, EU chief, the European Union. Rami Khouri is also with us, in Boston, Palestinian American journalist, senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut. Rami, you have repeatedly said you do not believe what was happening in Gaza would lead to a broader regional war. What are your thoughts today on what happened yesterday and where this is all headed?

RAMI KHOURI: Yeah. Thanks for having me.

You know, there are so many dimensions to this. And most of the discussion that we’re all involved in is based on speculation and assumptions. We have to be really careful to wait ’til we get verifiable facts, and then we can have a better idea.

But for the moment, I think I would say the following. I still believe that Hezbollah, Israel, Iran, Hamas and others want to avoid a all-out, you know, free-for-all war between people in the region, which would probably include the U.S. if Iran gets involved. We saw a couple months ago that Israel cannot defend itself by itself. It needs Arab support. It needs big-time American support on the spot. And it needs significant aid of money and weapons and other things. So, I still believe an all-out regional war is going to be avoided, because everybody realizes it wouldn’t solve anything. It would just create massive suffering and more openings for terror groups and armed nonstate actors, as well, etc. That’s what happens when you have chaos.

So, but what we do have is a regional low-intensity conflict going on. It’s been going on for about a year or so. And Hezbollah and Israel are the key points of this, but Hamas is involved. The Ansar Allah, the Houthis, in Yemen are involved, and others. Iran indirectly is involved. And the U.S. indirectly, through Israel, is involved.

What the Israeli attack using the pagers did is completely throw out the rulebook on two things. One, as the previous guest said, the rules of war are irrelevant. They’ve always been irrelevant to Israel and the Zionist movements before the creation of Israel. They’ve done whatever they needed to do, they say, to protect themselves. The world says there’s rules of wars to deal with that, but the Israelis have always ignored it. But they’ve also now thrown out the rules of engagement that Hezbollah and Israel have applied really since 2006, the last big war between them. I was in Beirut for that, and I experienced it, and I know the feeling that’s prevalent all over Lebanon now. It’s something I’ve experienced several times. And that was the point of what the Israelis wanted to do. They wanted to traumatize and terrorize the entire civilian population. They wanted to shock the Hezbollah institutions. And they wanted to basically destabilize the country to the point where if the Israelis wanted to go into South Lebanon in a big way, they would lay the groundwork for that.

But at the same time, what we, I think, have to keep remembering, in the last three, four months, we’ve had Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Israel and the Ansar Allah in Yemen, with their supersonic missile or whatever it’s called, the big-time missile that went right into Israel undetected from Yemen — they’ve all been broadcasting, showcasing their technical capabilities — in other words, sending a message to the other that we want to avoid a full war, because we have huge capabilities that we haven’t used yet, and this is something you all want to avoid. Israel just did its part in that drama, showing the capabilities that it has.

The thing that is fascinating to me and important and still unclear is that Israel had to prepare for this months and months ahead of time. And we’ll get more details on that soon. But this suggests that this kind of an operation was probably the prelude to a big land and air attack, I’m assuming, because they wouldn’t just do this by itself and drop it probably. But we’ll see. We don’t know the details.

But the Israelis have talked about Hezbollah for several years as their main threat, their main concern in the region. Hamas and others are secondary. They see Hezbollah both as a threat because of its power and its disruption in the north of Israel and because of its very direct links with Iran. And they’ve talked about trying to break it up, destroy it, push it back from the border. They keep coming up with all kinds of different ideas, none of which are clear, and almost none of which are within its capabilities.

So, you know, there are so many unknown factors. But we can say that all sides have tremendous capabilities, technological and other. They’re prepared to use them. They’re prepared to risk an all-out war in the region, which they would try to contain in the region without getting, say, the U.S. and Iran involved. And we don’t know if this is all — if the Israelis did this mainly to put pressure on the Lebanese and Hezbollah to accept the Israeli terms for the new terms of engagement, which is to push Hezbollah back from the Lebanon-Israel border about 10 miles or so. And it’s possible that this is just a short-term measure that Israel is trying to achieve. So, I think we have to take all of these things into consideration.

The last point I make is, nothing that happened yesterday and today or in the last few months is really new, but the scale of it is much bigger than anything that’s happened before. Israel and Hezbollah and others have used technology to kill each other and terrorize each other for decades. Terrorizing civilians is a stable Israeli policy for many years. And none of it is really new, but the scale of it now is what’s kind of scary. And because the Israel-U.S. combination is now actively exchanging fire with five or six parties all around the Middle East and facing a huge global swell of support for a ceasefire in Gaza and for a Palestinian state, serious political pressures that might even influence the American presidential election outcome possibly in the swing states, these are signs that the scale of the actions and the scale of the consequences are far higher than ever before.

And if you take a — you say, “Why is this?” I would say the one main reason — there are many, but the one main reason is that the U.S. and the Western world has allowed the right-wing Israeli governments of the last 15, 20 years to do anything they want, in terms of settlements, imprisoning thousands of Palestinians, killing people, now a plausible genocide. Israel can do anything it wants, kill as many people, ignore as many laws, terrorize as many people as it wants, dehumanize as many people as it wants. It will suffer no consequences. This is something quite extraordinary. And the world has to somehow come to grips with this.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to Beirut for a moment. Victims of Israel’s pager attack included — I guess she’s 10 years old — a little girl named Fatima Jaafar Abdullah, killed when her father’s pager exploded. And now also confirmed, a young boy named Bilal Kanj has not survived his injuries after the Israeli pager attack in Lebanon. He becomes the second child to be killed. And I wanted to go back to the journalist Mohamad Kleit to ask about how widespread these pagers are in Lebanon and about the use of pagers specifically to avoid Israel’s surveillance of, specifically, cellphones.

MOHAMAD KLEIT: OK. So, there are two catches in this. The first part is that this batch, this new batch, that Hezbollah has ordered for these pagers, as you have mentioned before, that it’s a Taiwanese-made pager, but they got it from a Bulgarian [sic] company that uses the same name of the Taiwanese company or has the rights to use the name. As the investigations, journalistic investigations, have shown, Israel has intercepted this cargo of around 4,000 to 5,000 pagers, and they have tampered with it and detonated them, alongside placing eavesdropping devices inside of them.

And as Dr. Khouri has mentioned, that it was a weapon that they wanted to use during a full-on-scale attack or maybe a land attack on Lebanon, but, as we have seen two days ago, this plot was exposed by certain technicians in Hezbollah. And, you know, my personal sources have said that because this plot was exposed and they were working on getting rid of them and doing an investigation that they were doing on these pagers, that’s why Israel has detonated these pagers in a sudden way and caused this chain attack on people, on civilians and military personnel of Hezbollah. And about the —

AMY GOODMAN: Mohamad, just a quick correction.

MOHAMAD KLEIT: — second catch, why do they —

AMY GOODMAN: Just a quick correction on —

MOHAMAD KLEIT: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: It was a Budapest-based — it was a Hungary-based company. I’m looking at the Reuters report. “The model of pagers used in” —

MOHAMAD KLEIT: I’m sorry. Yeah, Hungary. I said Bulgaria. Yeah, sorry.

AMY GOODMAN: — “detonations in Lebanon were made by Budapest-based BAC Consulting,” —

MOHAMAD KLEIT: Yes, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — the “Taiwanese pager firm Gold Apollo said on Wednesday, adding it had only licensed out its brand to the company and was not involved in the production of the devices.” But keep going, Mohamad.

MOHAMAD KLEIT: Yes. I’m sorry. I think I said Bulgarian, not Budapest.

Yeah. And as for the second part, why do they still use the pagers? Hezbollah General-Secretary Hassan Nasrallah has said before that there’s a huge danger in using cellphones, smartphones, that are connected to the Wi-Fi and to global internet, on the safety of the combatants of Hezbollah in the south, as well as the civilian usage of these phones when they are filming in videos the locations of where the missiles and the rockets are coming out in the fields and in the valleys and so on, because this is — when it’s being spread on social media or being distributed and shared on WhatsApp or other applications, this is giving intelligence information for the Israelis, who are later on bombing these locations of the videos that are being widespread. So there were internal orders by Hezbollah to not use smartphones, to try to disconnect them, when possible, from the internet and from the Wi-Fi connections. So they have relied on this new batch of pagers that they had. But, as I’ve mentioned, that they were tampered with and — intercepted and tampered with by the Israeli Mossad. And we saw what happened yesterday.

AMY GOODMAN: And are people still going to hospitals to give blood?

MOHAMAD KLEIT: And I wanted to also — and I just wanted to add something for what Mr. Kaiss has said concerning that Israel is using booby traps, which are illegal based on international law. During the '90s, I still remember, when we used to go to the south during the Israeli occupation of the southern Lebanon, Israel used to drop baby toys that had booby traps, and they have small explosive devices. They used to drop them from military helicopters in the valleys, on the streets of the villages, where little kids used to pick them up, and then they would explode. That's why we have seen many people from my generation, from the ’90s, they are either arms are amputated or they are missing a leg, because of this illegal usage or illegal forms of warfare.

AMY GOODMAN: And the hospital, the issue of the hospitals and people going to give blood? Again, thousands and thousands of people have been injured, nearly 3,000, it’s believed, at this point, Mohamad.

MOHAMAD KLEIT: Yes. And as I’ve mentioned earlier, that these pagers are used by medical personnel or logistics, some of the military personnel of Hezbollah. I know some of the persons that I talked to yesterday, that they were at a clinic, and two of the doctors had these pagers, and they blew up on their waist. One of them had his fingers amputated. The other had minor injuries.

And we’ve seen this huge influx of people trying to donate blood, because, as the Ministry of Health has said, there are roughly 2,800 persons who were injured, as I’ve mentioned, as well, 1,850 only in Beirut. The huge state of chaos, of medical chaos that we have seen in the city, particularly, is out of this world. It’s sort of like something from a sci-fi movie. But we have seen this huge state of cohesion and support from Lebanese, in general, that they have went from — that they came from different parts of the country, from far sides of the country, just to donate blood. Doctors and nurses came from bordering areas to the city and to Baalbek in the east and also to Nabatieh and Tyre in the south, to support the hospitals, because they had a shortage of medical staff, and also to donate blood for the people who were injured, creating these blood banks in the streets, as we have — also are seeing today, because it’s a huge case of chaos, and, sadly, we don’t have the proper medical infrastructure because of the crises that we have been through since 2019, and there is no proper plan of emergency to be implemented by the government, so people are trying to organize themselves in order to ease the crisis that we are in right now.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Mohamad Kleit, I want to thank you so much for being with us, joining us from Beirut, Lebanon, Lebanese journalist. Ramzi Kaiss, a Human Rights Watch researcher, thank you, as well, for joining us from Geneva, investigating human rights abuses in Lebanon, and Rami Khouri, Palestinian American journalist, speaking to us from Boston, senior public policy fellow at American University of Beirut. Of course, we’ll continue to follow this story.

Coming up, ProPublica has revealed at least two Black women died in Georgia after they could not access legal abortion and timely medical care. Vice President Harris brought up their stories while addressing the National Association of Black Journalists yesterday. We’ll speak with a ProPublica editor working on the story and a Georgia reproductive justice activist with SisterSong. Stay with us.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 19, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/9/19/headlines

At Least 25 Killed in Walkie-Talkie Explosions in Lebanon, One Day After Pager Attack Kills 12
Sep 19, 2024

In Lebanon, at least 25 people were killed and more than 600 others wounded on Wednesday when more hand-held electronic devices exploded without warning. Most of the explosions were of walkie-talkies, but there are also reports of mobile phones; laptops and even solar panels suddenly exploding.

The blasts sowed further panic across Beirut and southern Lebanon one day after some 4,000 pagers exploded simultaneously, killing 12 people and leaving thousands more with gruesome injuries. Wednesday’s explosions triggered fires that engulfed homes, stores, cars and motorcycles. Some of the blasts occurred during the funeral of 9-year-old Fatima Abdullah, who was killed in Tuesday’s pager attack. Lebanon has banned pagers and walkie-talkies on all flights, while Lebanese citizens say they now live in fear everyday household electronics could suddenly explode. It’s widely believed Israel is behind the attacks. This is Lebanese politician Ahmad Hariri.

Ahmad Hariri: “The Lebanese people must be aware of what the Israeli enemy aims to achieve. They want to sow discord among us or strike Lebanon at a time when international attention is focused on the upcoming American elections. This suggests that the Israeli army might be preparing to execute a malicious plan to strike Lebanon, like they struck Gaza.”

Evidence in Pager Explosion Points to Israel as U.N. Warns Against Weaponizing Civilian Objects
Sep 19, 2024

The New York Times reports the electronic pagers had been manufactured by a company in Budapest, Hungary — BAC Consulting — that was actually a front company run by Israeli intelligence officers. Many of the pagers were obtained earlier this year after Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah warned against using cellphones to avoid Israeli surveillance.

On Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned nations against weaponizing civilian objects.

Secretary-General António Guterres: “The logic of making all these devices explode is to do it as a preemptive strike before a major military operation. So, as important as the event in itself is the indication that this event confirms that there is a serious risk of a dramatic escalation in Lebanon, and everything must be done to avoid that escalation.”

Israel Declares War Is Moving Toward Lebanon Border as It Continues Deadly Attacks in Gaza
Sep 19, 2024

Israel has declared it’s launching a “new phase” of war, redirecting forces from Gaza to Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. But Israel’s carnage in Gaza continues, with deadly attacks reported today in Rafah and Jabaliya, while many children were injured in an Israeli quadcopter attack on Nuseirat. Rescue workers are rushing to uncover possible survivors buried under rubble in the Bureij camp.

In Khan Younis, a father mourned the loss of nearly his entire family to an Israeli strike, including his three children. His youngest was just one-and-a-half years old.

Muhammad Abu Houj: “Come and see. What did he do? One year and 9 months old. What did he do? Did he fire a rocket? He was sitting, safe, amongst us. Look, people. Look, o world. One year and 9 months old. Look at how my son is.”

Third Doctor from Gaza Dies in Israeli Custody After He Was Abducted in Hospital Raid
Sep 19, 2024

The Palestinian Health Ministry said Wednesday Dr. Ziad Mohammed al-Dalou, who was abducted by Israeli forces during its March raid on Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, has died in an Israeli jail. He’s the third doctor to die in Israeli custody since October 7 and one of at least 60 Palestinians who’ve since perished in Israeli prisons, which are rife with abuse and torture.

U.N. General Assembly Adopts Resolution Calling on Israel to End Illegal Occupation of Palestine
Sep 19, 2024

The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution Wednesday demanding Israel end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory within 12 months. One hundred twenty-four countries voted in favor of the nonbinding resolution. Israel and the United States were among the 14 member states to vote no. It was the first resolution formally introduced by the State of Palestine since it took a permanent seat at the General Assembly last week.

“We Must End Our Complicity”: Sanders Unveils Resolution to Block $20B in Arms Sales to Israel
Sep 19, 2024

In Washington, D.C., Sen. Bernie Sanders is preparing a “joint resolution of disapproval” against a planned $20 billion in U.S. arms sales to Israel. He spoke from the Senate floor Wednesday.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: “Netanyahu’s policies have trampled on international law, made life unlivable in Gaza and created one of the worst humanitarian disasters in modern history. … The simple fact is that we must end our complicity in Israel’s illegal and indiscriminate military campaign, which has caused mass civilian death and suffering.”

Meanwhile, Reuters is reporting that Germany appears to have put a hold on new exports of weapons to Israel amid ongoing legal challenges.

******

Lebanon: 37 Dead, 3,400+ Injured in Wave of Explosions in Electronic Devices Booby-Trapped by Israel
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 19, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/9/19/ ... transcript

We get an update from Beirut, after at least 20 people were killed and 450 others wounded in Lebanon on Wednesday when walkie-talkie radios across the country exploded without warning, the second day of an apparent Israeli operation targeting Hezbollah members by booby-trapping handheld communication devices. A day earlier, at least 12 people were killed and thousands more left with gruesome injuries when pagers began exploding across the country. Lebanon has banned pagers and walkie-talkies on all flights, while Lebanese citizens say they now live in fear that everyday household electronics could suddenly explode. Among those killed in the attacks are children, medics and other civilians. “This has been widely reported in the Western press as a sophisticated campaign that targeted alleged Hezbollah operatives, but the reality is that, for the most part, these explosions were occuring in civilian areas,” says journalist Lara Bitar, editor-in-chief of the Beirut-based independent media organization The Public Source. Bitar warns that Israel’s “terrorist attacks” could be a prelude to a larger assault. “The Israeli government has already taken a decision to escalate, to wage full-scale war on all of Lebanon.”

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today’s show in Lebanon, where there’s widespread fear after a second wave of explosions involving electronic devices went off across the country. Israeli agents are reportedly responsible for rigging the devices. On Wednesday, thousands of walkie-talkies and other devices blew up, killing more than 25 people and injuring more than 600. Some of the blasts occurred at funerals for victims of Tuesday’s explosions which targeted electronic pagers, when 12 people were killed and nearly 3,000 injured, including many members of Hezbollah. This was the scene at one funeral on Wednesday.

AMY GOODMAN: Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib condemned what he called a “blatant assault on Lebanon’s sovereignty and security,” unquote. Hospitals in Lebanon have been overwhelmed with severe injuries as patients have come in after losing eyes and limbs.

DR. DANIA EL HALLAK: We saw young victims, and we saw very old victims. And all just had the same type of wounds. They had puncture wounds on their faces. They had amputated limbs. They had open abdomens, intestines out, bowels out. Unfortunately, there were — there were wounds that you couldn’t explain. There were ruptured eyeballs. There were fractured mandibles, fractured bones, bones out. So, basically, it was the first time I ever see the wounds like that. I couldn’t even classify some wounds or categorize some wounds.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: The New York Times reports the electronic pagers had been manufactured by a front company run by Israeli intelligence officers. Many of the pagers were obtained earlier this year after Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah warned against the use of cellphones to avoid Israeli surveillance. On Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the weaponization of civilian objects.

SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: I think it’s very important that there is an effective control of civilian objects, not to weaponize civilian objects. That should be a rule that everywhere in the world governments should be able to implement. The link of what’s happening in Lebanon with what’s happened in Gaza is obvious since the beginning. I mean, the Hezbollah has been very clear in saying that it has launched its operations because of what’s happening in Gaza and that it will stop when there will be a ceasefire in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel’s focus is turning more to its northern border with Lebanon. He said, quote, “We are at the start of a new phase in the war,” unquote. Meanwhile, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah is scheduled to give a televised speech today.

We go now to Beirut, where we’re joined by Lara Bitar, editor-in-chief of The Public Source, a Beirut-based independent media organization.

Thanks so much for being with us. These last two days, Lara, have been unprecedented. You have the shock of Tuesday, when all of these pagers exploded, killing 12 people, injuring close to 3,000, and then, yesterday, more explosions in walkie-talkies and not clear what other electronic devices. The total, 37 dead, what, something like 3,500 people injured. Can you describe the situation on the ground right now?

LARA BITAR: Good morning.

So, as you can imagine, the events of the past two days have caused a lot of panic, a lot of fear and, to a large extent, paranoia, which was aided by a disinformation campaign, to a large extent. Over the past couple of days, or at least yesterday, for the most part, people were receiving messages over different WhatsApp groups, on social media platforms, that any and every electronic device can be detonated by the Israelis. So people were scared of using their cellphones. People were hearing that even kitchen appliances were exploding, solar panels, laptops and so on. Thankfully, for the most part, this turned out to be a disinformation campaign, and it did not really — was not really materializing on the ground as was being reported across different channels. That may be the only solace from the events of the past couple of days, where we saw civilian areas and civilians being targeted.

This has been widely reported in the Western press as a sophisticated campaign that targeted alleged Hezbollah operatives, but the reality is that, for the most part, these explosions were occurring in civilian areas, in vegetable markets and in the supermarket and the funeral, as you mentioned. And that’s on one hand, but also, on the other, not everybody who’s carrying these pagers and these walkie-talkies is a Hezbollah fighter, nor were any of them on the combat field or on the frontlines in the southern part of the country. It’s very important to note that Hezbollah is not just a resistance group or a militant group. Hezbollah is also a political party here in Lebanon that is represented in Parliament. And Hezbollah also runs and operates several large civil institutions. So, we saw medical personnel and healthcare workers being killed and injured and maimed by these explosions. We saw children. We saw even the Iranian diplomat. So this was a indiscriminate attack that made the Lebanese population feel that anyone can be targeted, at any point, anywhere in the country.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Lara Bitar, if you could respond — give us a sense of what you expect Hassan Nasrallah to say today when he speaks at 5 p.m. Beirut time? You’ve suggested that this might be the very early stage of a much larger and much bigger war that has the potential to implicate the entire country. What are you expecting in terms of a response from Hezbollah?

LARA BITAR: It’s very difficult to anticipate what the secretary-general will be saying today. But one thing is clear, at least to my mind and to many who are following very closely what’s been happening in Lebanon: It seems that the Israeli government has already taken an action — a decision to escalate, to wage a full-scale war on all of Lebanon. And it seems to me that it doesn’t really matter what Hezbollah decides to do at this point and what form of retaliation the party engages in, that the Israeli — that the genocidal Israeli government has made up its mind to launch a full-scale war on all of the population.

And I think the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon can give us some significant clues as to what could potentially happen. So, in 2006, which was a war that lasted about 33 or 34 days, Israel started off by cutting communication lines. That was the first thing that it did before launching a wider-scale war on the rest of the country. And it seems like this is what it’s doing yet again, cutting the communication lines, and not just of Hezbollah members, but for military personnel, for paramedics, for aid workers, doctors and so on, causing a lot of disorientation, a lot of chaos, a lot of panic. And then this would be acting as a prelude to something that could potentially be much bigger and much scarier.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Lara Bitar, I’d like to ask you about what the response has been from different political parties in Lebanon to these widespread attacks. Let’s just go to Lebanese parliamentarian Mark Daou, who spoke to the BBC earlier today. This is what he had to say.

MARK DAOU: The reality is Lebanon has been suffering for the past 11 months from the war in Gaza, economically, financially, but also because we had some unilateral actions by Hezbollah, as well, to start bombing from South Lebanon. We’re talking to Hezbollah and telling them you need to take all your decisions within the institutions of the state. Acting as a rogue, unilateral actor on the military front is causing all of Lebanon damages because of Israeli aggressions, their genocidal war and their lack of respect for the rules of war or even for crimes against humanity.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Lara, if you could respond to what Mark Daou said and whether this is a widespread belief, the fact that Hezbollah is operating unilaterally and that it should not be, it should be working within the imperatives and desires of the Lebanese state?

LARA BITAR: So, Lebanon is split between two camps. On one hand, you have Hezbollah supporters who believe that we have a moral, ethical, political duty to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza and also in the West Bank. Hezbollah scholar Amal Saad referred to this as anticipatory self-defense and as military solidarity. We can roughly estimate that about half of the country or so supports this operation and this campaign that was initiated by Hezbollah on October 8.

And on the other hand, the second camp is fiercely in opposition, not only to this operation, but to Hezbollah in general. And they are using the war of the past 11 months as a means to weaken Hezbollah, to attempt to strip the resistance group from its weapons, to demoralize its supporters. The second camp has been consistently lobbying the international community to exert additional pressure on the militant group.

So, right now the country is not really unified. But in the aftermath of the two terrorist attacks that took place on Tuesday and then on Wednesday, we saw for the very first time wide condemnation across the board in Lebanon, but also for the first time, to some extent, in the international community.

AMY GOODMAN: You tweeted on Tuesday, the day of the pager explosions, “We should learn from the mistakes that were committed in 2000 and not repeat them when the next big day of liberation comes. And it will. Sooner or later.” What did you mean?

LARA BITAR: Many of us believe that the liberation of Palestine is inevitable and that it’s only a matter of time. In that tweet, in particular, I was referring to certain individuals, certain groups and, to some extent, some political parties who are constantly agitating against Hezbollah, who have in the past collaborated with Israel, and who would much rather see the country be completely destroyed rather than maintain Hezbollah in power or have Hezbollah maintain its weapons. In that tweet, I was referring to what happened in the aftermath of liberation in May 2000, when the southerners who had endured the torture, the abuse, the humiliation by the Israeli occupation forces and their Lebanese allies, those residents were asked to simply turn the page, to forget about what had happened, and to coexist with those who had tortured them.

And I was just referring to this mistake, in particular, that I believe has allowed these Zionists, to some extent, to continue to operate in the country. We saw something happen during the 2006 war, but this was on the level of government officials. And we know this from WikiLeaks cables. Several prominent government officials were agitating for war against Hezbollah. They were pushing the international community and supporting Israel to continue its bombardment of all of Lebanon in order for them to get rid of Hezbollah. And that, in my opinion, is a betrayal of the citizens of the country and the sovereignty of the country.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Lara Bitar, I would like you to talk about what your concerns are about how this war could escalate along the border. I’d just like to go to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who spoke Wednesday at an air force base near Haifa.

YOAV GALLANT: [translated] I believe that we are at the start of a new phase in the war, and we must adapt. … First of all, the center of gravity is moving north. The meaning is that we are moving resources and forces and energy in the northern direction. … The action is being done by all the bodies, and the goal is a clear one, and it’s simple: to return the residents of the communities in the north to their homes safely.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Lara Bitar, what do you think that means, their moving forces to the northern border?

LARA BITAR: It’s difficult to predict, but again, looking at the 2006 war, we can expect the bombing of bridges, of roads, power plants, irrigation and drinking water systems and other vital infrastructure. In 2006, an airport runway was also bombarded, and Israel imposed a sea, air and land blockade on Lebanon.

But I just want to address the point that this war that Israel will be waging against Lebanon is an attempt to return its settlers to the northern part of occupied Palestine. And I imagine that this is how most media organizations will be reporting on this war. But I think it’s important for us to go back a little bit in history and recall that Zionist organizations, as early as 1919, were pushing for the demarcation of the border after the Litani River, which means 30 kilometers, or 19 or 20 miles, deep inside Lebanon. So, this is not really very much about returning the settlers to their homes, but this is about this long-standing desire and intent of the Zionist project to seize the Litani River.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Lara Bitar, finally, will this —

LARA BITAR: Or I should say parts of the Litani River. Yes?

AMY GOODMAN: Will this make Hezbollah more popular in Lebanon? And compare its power to the Lebanese government.

LARA BITAR: There is no Lebanese government really to speak of. Lebanon is still reeling from an economic crisis that started in 2019. The state is almost bankrupt. Most state institutions are barely functional. There is absolutely no comparison between the power of the Lebanese government in comparison to Hezbollah.

AMY GOODMAN: Lara Bitar, we want to thank you very much —

LARA BITAR: And as far as Hezbollah’s — sure.

AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead.

LARA BITAR: I just wanted to respond to the question of Hezbollah’s popularity and support. We do know that Hezbollah supporters are only increasing their actions, their mobilizations, their support of the party. And it doesn’t really seem to matter what the political group does or the militant group does. Their supporters are fiercely behind them. And what we’ve been hearing over the past couple of days, but also over the past 11 months, is that they continue to be even more determined to wage this war against Israel. And the supporters of the party and loyalists to the party are willing to give up their children, their homes, their livelihoods in support of the mission and political project of Hezbollah.

AMY GOODMAN: Lara Bitar, editor-in-chief of The Public Source, speaking to us from Beirut. The Public Source, a Beirut-based independent media organization.

Coming up, we speak with Maya Berry. She’s executive director of the Arab American Institute, came under fierce questioning by Republican senators during a hearing on hate crimes this week. And we’ll be speaking with a congressmember from Illinois who’s introduced a bill against hate crimes, based on the 6-year-old Palestinian death in Chicago, a little boy killed by his landlord. Stay with us.

***

Arab American Leader Responds After GOP Senator Says at Hearing, “You Should Hide Your Head in a Bag”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 19, 2024

We speak with Maya Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute, after she faced racist and hostile questioning from Republicans at Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, including Senator John Kennedy, who told Berry, “You should hide your head in a bag.” The experience illustrated the very problem of dehumanization the hearing was meant to address, Berry says: “That kind of bigotry and hatred is difficult to hear from anyone, but to actually experience it at a hate crime hearing from a sitting member of this institution was pretty extraordinary.” We also speak with Democratic Congressmember Delia Ramirez of Illinois, who has introduced a resolution to honor 6-year-old Wadea al-Fayoume, a Palestinian American boy stabbed to death in a Chicago suburb last October in an anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian attack. “This horrible bigotry and hate have real consequences in the Arab community and the Palestinian community, in other communities, and it makes us all less safe,” Ramirez says of Kennedy.

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: As rights groups warn dehumanizing rhetoric around Israel’s U.S.-backed war on Gaza has put the lives of Muslims and Arabs in the U.S. at risk, we look now at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday on the “Tide of Hate Crimes in America.” Committee chair Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois called the hearing. His constituent, Hanan Shaheen, sat in the front row. Her 6-year-old son, Wadea al-Fayoume, was stabbed to death in an anti-Muslim hate crime by her landlord in a Chicago suburb in October. Shaheen herself was also stabbed at least 12 times.

Durbin has introduced a resolution honoring Wadea along with Illinois Congresswoman Delia Ramirez, who will join us in a minute to discuss growing support for the Wadea Act. We’ll also be joined by the Arab American witness at Tuesday’s hearing who faced hostile questions from Republicans, Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute. But first, let’s go to Republican Senator John Kennedy questioning Berry.

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: You support Hamas, do you not?

MAYA BERRY: Senator, oddly enough, I’m going to say thank you for that question, because it demonstrates the purpose of our hearing today in a very effective way.

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: Let’s start first with a yes or no.

MAYA BERRY: Hamas is a foreign terrorist organization that I do not support. But you asking the executive director of the Arab American Institute that question very much puts the focus on the issue of hate in our country.

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: OK. Well, I got your answer, and I appreciate it. What is the — you support Hezbollah, too, don’t you?

MAYA BERRY: Again, I find this line of questioning extraordinarily disappointing, Senator.

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: Is that a no?

MAYA BERRY: That you have —

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: Or yes?

MAYA BERRY: You have Arab American constituents that you represent —

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: But is that a —

MAYA BERRY: — in your great state.

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: Yes, ma’am, I understand that. But is — my time is limited, and I apologize, but is that a yes or a no?

MAYA BERRY: A yes-or-no question to do I support Hezbollah? The answer is I don’t support violence, whether it’s Hezbollah, Hamas or any other entity that invokes it. So, no, sir.

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: You can’t bring yourself to say no, can you?

MAYA BERRY: No, I can say no. I can say yes.

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: But you haven’t.

MAYA BERRY: What I can say is your line of questioning —

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: You just can’t bring yourself to do it.

MAYA BERRY: Senator —

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: Do you support or oppose Iran in their hatred of Jews?

MAYA BERRY: Again, I’m going to emphasize, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, none of them is going to —

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: You can’t bring yourself to say no, can you?

MAYA BERRY: This discussion — sir, I don’t support —

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: It’s real simple.

MAYA BERRY: Excuse me. I’m going to —

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: And —

MAYA BERRY: If I may?

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: Nah, nah, no!

MAYA BERRY: As a Muslim woman — as a Muslim woman, sir, I’m going to tell you —

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: I —

MAYA BERRY: — I do not support Iran. But what I will tell you is that —

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: You —

MAYA BERRY: — this conversation —

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: I’m running out of time.

MAYA BERRY: OK.

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: I’m sorry. You —

PROTESTER: Senator Kennedy —

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: You called our decision —

PROTESTER: [inaudible]

CHAIR: Please.

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: — to cut funding —

PROTESTER: [inaudible] Goodbye.

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: You called our decision to cut funding — well, first, what’s the United Nations Relief and Works Agency?

MAYA BERRY: It’s UNRWA, which is —

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: Yeah.

MAYA BERRY: — the institution that exists to provide services and aid to the nearly 6 million Palestinian refugees.

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: And you called our decision to cut funding for them, quote, “an incredible moral failure,” close quote.

MAYA BERRY: That is absolutely correct. But again, I would suggest that conversation —

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: And we did —

MAYA BERRY: — is about foreign policy —

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: We did that because nine UNRWA staff members were fired for actually helping Hamas on October 7th. Isn’t that the case?

PROTESTER: [inaudible]

MAYA BERRY: I don’t believe that that’s correct in terms of the —

CHAIR: Audience will please —

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: Let me ask you one more time: You support Hamas, don’t you?

PROTESTER: [inaudible] dead in Gaza!

MAYA BERRY: Sir?

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: You support UNRWA and Hamas, don’t you?

MAYA BERRY: Sir?

PROTESTER: [inaudible]

CHAIR: Please.

MAYA BERRY: I think it’s exceptionally disappointing that you’re looking at an Arab American witness before you and saying, “You support Hamas.”

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: You know what’s disappointing to me?

MAYA BERRY: I do not support Hamas.

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: You can’t bring yourself to say —

MAYA BERRY: I do not support Hamas or any —

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: — you don’t support UNRWA, you don’t support Hamas, you don’t —

MAYA BERRY: I was very clear on my support for UNRWA.

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: — support Hezbollah, and you don’t support Iran.

MAYA BERRY: I oppose —

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY: You should hide your head in a bag.

AMY GOODMAN: “You should hide your head in a bag,” Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana told Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, at Tuesday’s Senate hearing on hate crimes.

Maya Berry joins us now in our New York studio. And in the Cannon Rotunda in Washington, D.C., we’re joined by Congressmember Delia Ramirez of Illinois.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Maya Berry, you’re now the head of the Arab American Institute. During 9/11, you were the legislative director of the minority whip, Congressmember David Bonior. You’re well known on Capitol Hill. Can you talk about what Kennedy said to you? And talk about the other two witnesses, as well.

MAYA BERRY: It’s difficult to talk about what Senator Kennedy said to me, because I still, sitting here in front of you, actually do not know what he meant when he said, “Put a bag over your head.” I worry about the senator’s 31,000-plus Arab American constituents and the rest of the constituents he represents from Louisiana. That kind of bigotry and hatred is difficult to hear from anyone, but to actually experience it at a hate crime hearing from a sitting member of this institution was pretty extraordinary.

The hearing itself — but you’re right to point this out — is incredibly important to do. We have been, year after year after year, breaking records for the number of hate crimes in our country, a trajectory that’s increased since the 2015 year, which tied with the 2016 presidential election. And the fact that the hearing that was supposed to cover the issue of hate crime and how to formulate a better response was derailed by a group of senators who chose to have the conversation about a political agenda they wanted to advance with regards to Israel and instead use it as an opportunity to further dehumanize people, it’s not how we fight antisemitism, and it’s certainly not how we fight anti-Arab racism.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Maya Berry, could you speak specifically about the increase in hate crimes from 2023 to 2024, in other words, following the October 7th attacks and then the war, the assault on Gaza?

MAYA BERRY: Yeah. There’s been a sense, obviously, anecdotally and looking at specific news accounts, that there’s been an increase. One of the things that we did in preparation for the hearing is that we actually pulled all of the 2023 data from 27 states plus the District of Columbia. And we did that because the federal data on hate crime has not been released yet for 2023. That won’t be coming out until a bit later.

And we found exactly what we thought, which was that there’s been an extraordinary increase of hate targeting both the Arab American and the Jewish American community: in the case of the Jewish American community, just over a thousand to more than 2,000; in the case of Arab Americans, it went from just over a hundred to 180. All of that is to say, by the way, one of the most important things to understand about hate crime data is the massive underreporting problem that exists. Based on the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the Department of Justice, only about 1% of hate crimes are actually reported. So those numbers tell us that, yes, there’s a significant problem, but it’s significantly worse than that. And then, just to point out, the post-October numbers, that’s where you saw at least half of those crimes.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about Kenneth Stern, who was another witness, who is director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate.

MAYA BERRY: Yeah. Professor Stern was there specifically because I think there was an anticipation that this conversation might delve into the idea of debating what antisemitism is or isn’t. He is actually the author of the IHRA Definition, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Definition of Antisemitism, that he specifically wrote for the purposes of data collection outside of the United States primarily, to provide guidance. The definition is designed and written to introduce the idea of Israel and Israel issues into conflating it with the very real problem of antisemitism that exists. So, the problem has been — it’s we need to talk about antisemitism; we must not conflate it with anti-Israel criticism or criticism of Zionism. And, you know, he spent some considerable time trying to educate the senators on the importance of not doing that and the harm that it can cause to communities.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, what do you think — Maya, what do you think needs to be done in order to make government more responsible? I mean, [size=15\20]what the Republicans did, of course, the way they questioned you, was completely outrageous[/size]. But even beyond that, you know, taking that out of the picture, what is missing from the way in which the state, the federal government and also state governments, respond to this kind of violence?

MAYA BERRY: I think that’s the question and incredibly important to keep elevating. Part of how policy is set is that you’re asking the right questions and that it’s informed by data. And one of the things that has to happen in this process is actually what happened at the hearing, meaning the convening the hearing to have this discussion so we elevate the issue and the crisis of hate that we’re in. We strongly believe that part of that is requiring mandatory hate crime reporting, which means that every municipality that receives federal funding should have to report on hate crime. We’re not there yet. The introduction of the Khalid Jabara and Heather Heyer NO HATE Act was a vehicle to improve hate crime data collection and reporting. And I think there’s more that can be done in that space. But the point is, we must have our government focus on the actual problem as opposed to distractions from it, which do not advance safety for anyone.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Delia Ramirez into this conversation, who is standing in Congress right now, in Washington, D.C., in the Cannon Rotunda. In the front row of this hearing, your constituent, Senator Durbin’s constituent, since he’s the head of the committee, and he is also the Illinois senator, introduced her, Hanan Shaheen, the mother of Wadea al-Fayoume, the 6-year-old boy who — Palestinian child, who was killed by their landlord. Can you explain what happened then, in October, and what you’ve done in introducing your bill around hate crimes, how the Democrats dealt with this grieving mother, who herself was knifed repeatedly, and how the Republicans dealt with her?

REP. DELIA RAMIREZ: Yeah. Look, I was listening to what Senator Kennedy said, and it really was difficult for me not to have an out-of-body experience in reaction to what he did. Hanan Shaheen and Wadea al-Fayoume were constituents of Congresswoman Underwood, just a few minutes from my district. And when the conversation Senator Dick Durbin and I had about finally having a hearing that actually, since October 7th, talked about the rise of Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian hate and antisemitism and the impact that it has in our communities, it was with Wadea and his mother’s face in mind. And the idea that a hearing that was supposed to be about educating us on what this impact is around our country becoming the perfect example of what elected officials do and how they spew the hate that killed Wadea al-Fayoume was heartbreaking, but also, I think, to Maya’s point, was exactly what we’re talking about.

What Senator Kennedy did in that hearing, the consequences of his horrible bigotry and hate have real consequences in the Arab community and the Palestinian community, in other communities, and it makes us all less safe. The Wadea resolution is about honoring the life of a little boy that was stabbed 26 times by his landlord because Wadea and his mother are Palestinian. And the resolution was about honoring his life and also saying we have to end the bigotry and we have to end the spewing hate and the words that are used by elected officials and the media. That is what this resolution was about. And actually, it’s what inspired Senator Durbin to have this hearing on the rise of hate crimes.

What Senator Kennedy did should have real consequences. Here’s what I’m telling you. You can’t come into the House floor or the Senate chamber without a tie. You have to pay a fine. You can’t use a camera while you’re on the floor. You’ll get fined. But you can treat a witness, treat Maya the way that Kennedy treated Maya, and have no consequences? To me, that is the biggest ethics violation and an example of elected officials not being accountable to their people. And what he did should have consequences. And I’m going to look into what we could be doing to ensure that no elected official use a hearing room to further spew the hate that we’re seeing in the rise of hate crimes around the country.

AMY GOODMAN: As we talk about the issue of hate, Donald Trump said he is heading to Springfield, Ohio, where he and his vice-presidential running mate, now a sitting senator, Ohio Senator JD Vance, have falsely accused the Haitian community of eating pets. It is something that has generated enormous laughter, derision, but, much more importantly, horror, because of what’s happening in the streets of Springfield — state troopers marching through the streets, kids afraid to go to school, bomb threats at schools, at hospitals. You, yourself, Delia Ramirez, are an immigrant, an immigrant from Guatemala. If you can talk about this attack on the immigrant community and what it means, how it’s reverberating for you, as well?

REP. DELIA RAMIREZ: Let me start by saying that what is happening in Springfield, Ohio, is Donald Trump’s fault. All of it. The idea that you make immigrants less than human — which is exactly what his strategy has been the entire time, since he started his campaign eight years ago. This man is intentionally creating ways and using words and accusations to make immigrants less than human — Haitian immigrants, Black immigrants. I mean, if that is not racism and bigotry, and if you can support this man, then it makes me question if you’re a racist and a bigot, as well.

The people of Springfield have said, “Leave us alone.” Haitian immigrants in this town are boosting our economy. Its own mayor, the city manager, the entire community has said, “Enough is enough. You, Donald Trump, is bringing hate to our community. You, Donald Trump, is making us less safe. You, Donald Trump, is impacting our economy,” because now we’re having to spend all this money on safety because of what he did. Shame on Donald Trump. Donald Trump, the last thing he should be doing is going to Springfield, Ohio. What he should be doing is asking himself, “Who am I? And why do I hate people so much?”

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, though I’m not quoting his words directly, he just said in a town hall forum he’ll go to Springfield, but who knows if he’ll make it out? We’re going to leave it there. I want to thank you so much, Illinois Congressmember Delia Ramirez, speaking to us from Washington, D.C., in the Cannon Rotunda. And thank you to Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute. We thank you for both being with us.

Coming up, we speak to a Burmese genocide scholar about Burma, the latest news there, and his trip to the West Bank. Stay with us. Back in 20 seconds.

**********

Standing at Gaza Border Felt Like Visiting Auschwitz: Burmese Genocide Scholar Maung Zarni
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 19, 2024

The United Nations is warning about widespread human rights abuses in Burma as the military regime intensifies the killings and arbitrary arrests of tens of thousands of civilians since seizing power in a coup over three years ago. A new report from the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights says many of those detained by the Burmese military are children taken from their parents, with dozens of minors dying in custody. “What it paints is an extremely disturbing picture of Burma descending into this human rights abyss. If you’re living there, it’s a complete living hell,” says Burmese scholar, dissident and human rights activist Maung Zarni. He also discusses his recent visit with faith leaders to the West Bank and the border of Gaza, drawing parallels between Burma’s and Israel’s human rights abuses. “Israel has taken the practices and policies of genocide to a whole new level,” says Zarni.

Transcript

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

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: The United Nations is warning Burma is “plumbing the depths of a human rights abyss” as the military regime intensifies the killings and arbitrary arrests of tens of thousands of civilians since seizing power in a coup over three years ago. The gruesome findings are part of a new U.N. human rights report detailing how the Burmese military detained children who were taken from their parents. Dozens of those children have died in custody.

We end today’s show with Maung Zarni, a Burmese genocide scholar and human rights activist who’s been a vocal critic of the Burmese junta and Israel’s war on Gaza and the Israeli occupation.

AMY GOODMAN: In August, Maung Zarni traveled to the occupied West Bank and the Gaza border.

MAUNG ZARNI: Here at this Rafah crossing, sandwiched between Israel and Egyptian border, I feel like I am standing outside a giant concentration camp. When I see the tanks coming in and out, hearing airstrikes, I feel like I am once again visiting Auschwitz.

AMY GOODMAN: Maung Zarni, Burmese genocide scholar and human rights activist, joins us now from Kent, England, co-founder of the Forces of Renewal for Southeast Asia, or FORSEA.

Welcome back, Zarni, to Democracy Now! It’s so important to have you with us. Talk about the groups you traveled to the Gaza border and to the West Bank with and your thoughts not only about what’s happening there, but comparisons to what’s going on, the horror that’s going on in Burma right now.

MAUNG ZARNI: Well, Amy, I am greatly indebted to the North American-based, particularly the U.S.-based Rabbis for Ceasefire and Christians for Ceasefire, as well as the Jerusalem-based liberation theologian group called Sabeel. And these three organizations facilitated a visit of the 28-member delegation. And most of the delegates are, you know, clergymen and clergywomen and people of faith. And I am, rather, a humanist, a human rights activist, but nonetheless I joined them, because I wanted to bear witness to what’s happening.

As you know, you have — you know, I’ve covered my own native country of Burma for 30 years and since we have known each other. And Burma and Israel, we regained our — Burma regained independence in 1948. Israel established itself as a sovereign state in 1948. They had what Golda Meir called a love affair. And these newly independent states after the Second World War are now undergoing a genocide trial or, you know, proceedings at the International Court of Justice. And so, you know, Burma is no stranger when it comes to mass atrocities.

What I found in Israel actually shocked me more than what I was prepared. You know, I have studied genocide for decades, and I’ve studied Nazi genocide, Cambodian genocide, my own country’s so-called Buddhist genocide of Rohingya people in western Burma. But Israel has taken the practices and policies of genocide to a whole new level. You know, what I found there — I’ve said this, as well, in other forums — a vast ecosystem of genocidal methodologies or methods.

That is to say that Israel has invented, very creatively, a system of depopulating the pre-1967 Palestine land using different methods, separating different pockets of subpopulation of Palestinians, from Gaza as open-air prison to other various parts of West Bank, you know, five- or six-tier citizenships with severely limited basic and fundamental rights, the severely — you know, severe restriction of life’s essentials, like access to food system, agricultural land, not just simply confiscating massive agricultural land, you know, across Israel. The chicken farms that Israeli companies run, and settlers, that have set up fantastic stone houses in communities fenced off, have chickens. Let me put this this way. Chickens in Israel, in Israeli companies’ farm, have far more access to water and electricity than Palestinian villages and people. And checkpoints, 810-kilometer-long wall — and it’s not just for security purposes. It is actually — the U.N. said it in 2005 — the wall, 810-kilometer-long wall, has been the prime driver behind mass deprivation — in other words, mass poverty of Palestinian people. And so, it’s rather frightening.

And Ramallah, you know, it’s thriving, the city, a bubble. But the locals tell me that the Israeli IDF and security agency will come in and do anything they want, and Palestinian Authority is completely helpless and that they cannot do nothing. They cannot protect the Palestinian people, even in Ramallah — forget about West Bank and other places.

Land confiscation. You know, we came very close to being tear-gassed by the IDF because we were supporting a farm family that have been evicted after their farm has been confiscated in Jerusalem, UNESCO World Heritage agricultural areas. And so, the Hebrew-speaking local colleagues in Jerusalem area who were with us told us that we need to vacate the place because the IDF is going to start firing tear gas and stun guns or grenades.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Zarni, finally, we want to turn to what’s going on in Burma. If you could respond to the new U.N. human rights report and their warning about what’s going on in Burma?

MAUNG ZARNI: Yeah. The new U.N. human rights report cover a one-year period since spring of 2023. What it says — what it paints is an extremely disturbing picture of Burma descending into this human rights abyss. You know, if you’re living there, it’s a complete living hell. You know, 3 million people are being displaced by a civil war between the army, on one hand, and various — you know, the pro-democracy or pro-ethnic liberation armed groups. You know, then we got hit by the typhoon over the last 10 days, and another 700,000 people, they’re displaced and dispossessed.

And so, the only problem is that in the past the Burmese military, the junta, has been the number one or sole perpetrator of egregious human rights crime, but since the coup three years ago, we have a mushrooming of armed organizations in the name of like a pro-democracy movement, and they join hands with different ethnic or ethnonationalist organizations. And so, there are organizations, such as Arakan Army, which represent the Buddhist Rakhine in western Myanmar. Now they are —

AMY GOODMAN: We have 15 seconds, Maung Zarni.

MAUNG ZARNI: — [inaudible] permitting genocide. Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much for being with us. Of course, we’ll continue to cover what’s happening in Burma and also in Gaza and the West Bank. Maung Zarni, Burmese dissident, human rights activist, scholar of genocide, co-founder of the Forces of Renewal for Southeast Asia, speaking to us from Kent.

Very happy belated birthday to Sam Alcoff! That does it for our show. Democracy Now! produced with Mike Burke, Renée Feltz, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. Thanks for joining us.