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

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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.”

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

[admin]

Headlines:
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 20, 2024

Hezbollah Leader Says Israel Has Crossed “All Red Lines” as Israel Escalates War with Lebanon
Sep 20, 2024

Israeli military jets bombarded southern Lebanon Thursday, while Hezbollah struck sites in northern Israel, after mass walkie-talkie and pager explosions on Tuesday and Wednesday killed at least 37 people in Lebanon and injured thousands of others in what is widely believed to be a coordinated attack by Israel. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah accused Israel of crossing “all red lines” as he addressed the week’s attacks in televised remarks.

Hassan Nasrallah: “War crimes or a declaration of war — you can call it anything, and it deserves those words. … Undoubtedly, we have been subjected to a major attack in terms of security and humanitarian aspects, unprecedented in the history of resistance in Lebanon. … We say to the enemy’s government, army and society that the Lebanese front will not stop before the aggression on Gaza stops.”

Despite the widely condemned attacks on Lebanon, Israel is doubling down on its intent to expand its war on Lebanon. This is Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Yoav Gallant: “Over the past several days, we have held a series of important discussions. This is a new phase of the war. It includes opportunities but also significant risks. Hezbollah feels it is being persecuted, and the sequence of military and defense actions will continue.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has postponed a trip to Israel early next week amid the mounting tensions. The Associated Press reports Yoav Gallant warned Austin ahead of the attacks this week that Israel was launching a military operation in Lebanon, but did not give any more details.

Video Shows Israeli Soldiers Pushing Bodies of Palestinians They Killed Off West Bank Roof
Sep 20, 2024

Deadly Israeli raids are continuing in the occupied West Bank, including in Jenin and Qabatiya, where a video has been circulating showing Israeli soldiers pushing dead bodies off a roof after a raid that killed at least five Palestinians. The desecration of corpses is considered a war crime, but Palestinians say the Israeli military frequently violates the deceased bodies of its victims. During the Qabatiya raid, Israeli forces also opened fire on a group of journalists filming the events. This is an eyewitness.

Zakaria Zakarneh: “Israeli special forces, fully equipped, raided and surrounded the area. They started shooting grenades and missiles. They struck young men at our place on the rooftop as they were trying to escape the trap.”

U.N. Panel Accuses Israel of Unprecedented Violations of Children’s Rights in War on Palestine
Sep 20, 2024

Israeli attacks on Gaza have also continued with deaths reported over the past day in Gaza City, Jabaliya, Nuseirat and Beit Hanoun. The official death toll in Gaza since October 7 has topped 41,000 with over 95,000 wounded, though the true toll is certainly much higher.

A U.N. committee on Thursday accused Israel of engaging in unprecedented violations of the Convention on the Rights of the Child over the past 11 months.

Ann Skelton: “More children have died in this war than men or women. That is massive. And I think when we think about it and we know that under international humanitarian law, that Israel admits it is bound by, killing of civilian targets on this scale is unacceptable in international humanitarian law and international human rights law, as well. And children are always civilians.”

Here in the U.S., three Democratic lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bill that would restore emergency funding to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, after the U.S. suspended its contributions in January and later passed a bill barring any further funding of UNRWA until March of next year.

Students Across U.S. Continue to Protest Universities’ Complicity in War on Gaza
Sep 20, 2024

Resistance to Israel’s U.S.-backed war on Gaza continues on college campuses as the new school year gets underway with more protests and calls to divest from Israel. On Wednesday, Cornell students shut down a career fair featuring weapons manufacturers supplying Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Meanwhile, a chapter of the activist group Students for Justice in Palestine is suing the University of Maryland in College Park after the school canceled an October 7 Gaza vigil.

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“Declaration of War”: Hezbollah Girds for Israeli Invasion of Lebanon After Mobile Device Attacks
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 20, 2024

Right after we broadcast, Israel carried out “targeted strikes” in Beirut as it appears to be preparing for a ground invasion of southern Lebanon as an expansion of its war on Gaza.

Following deadly Israeli attacks that blew up walkie-talkies and pagers across Lebanon this week, killing at least 37 people and wounding around 3,000, Israeli officials have pledged to ramp up their campaign against Hezbollah. Hezbollah characterized the devastating pager explosions as a “declaration of war.” In Beirut, we hear from journalist Rania Abouzeid about the aftereffects of the attack and the prospects of war on the Lebanese front. “There is certainly a sense of heightened anxiety as people wonder what else, what other devices in their vicinity, may explode,” she says.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Lebanon, where reports suggest Israel appears to be linking its southern Lebanon border to Gaza. As we broadcast, the Associated Press is reporting Hezbollah has launched 140 rockets into northern Israel in what is said is retaliation for Israeli attacks in southern Lebanon.

This comes as Al Jazeera reports Israel’s reserve forces commander said earlier today, quote, “It is time for Lebanon to suffer as well, … the power plants, bridges, airports and seaports as well,” unquote. Al Jazeera has also reported on videos from Israeli government media sources that show Israel’s minefields on Lebanon’s border are being cleared to, quote, “make way for what most likely will be a movement of ground forces into southern Lebanon.”

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Thursday Israel will keep up military action against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

YOAV GALLANT: [translated] Our goal is to ensure the safe return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes. As time goes by, Hezbollah will pay an increasing price.

AMY GOODMAN: This all comes after Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah denounced the deadly Israeli attacks that blew up walkie-talkies and pagers across Lebanon Tuesday and Wednesday, killing at least 37 people, including children, and wounding thousands more. As Nasrallah delivered a televised address Thursday, sonic booms from Israeli warplanes shook Beirut.

HASSAN NASRALLAH: [translated] We say to the enemy’s government, army and society that the Lebanese front will not stop before the aggression on Gaza stops. We have been saying this for 11 months now. It might sound repetitive now, but these words come after these two big blows, after all these martyrs, all these wounds, all this pain. I say clearly, whatever the sacrifices, whatever the consequences, whatever the possibilities, whatever the horizon to which the region heads, the resistance in Lebanon will not stop supporting the people of Gaza and the West Bank, who are oppressed in that Holy Land.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, the World Health Organization says the explosions in booby-trapped pagers and radios in Lebanon seriously disrupted Lebanon’s health sector. The WHO’s representative in Lebanon said a hundred hospitals were involved in responding to the crisis.

DR. ABDINASIR ABUBAKAR: You know, what happened for the last two days actually was an unprecedented incident, the explosion of different gadgets. And it’s been used not the normal explosion material. It’s been used a different. So, it’s sometimes — it’s very difficult actually to know exactly the short-term and the long-term impact of this substance that’s been used for the explosions. But I think the experts, and as well as in collaboration also with WHO now, we are trying to study more exactly what happened, how it happened, what kind of material is being used and how it’s affecting the people that have already been wounded, which is over 3,000 people. And also, 37 people have died so far.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Beirut, Lebanon, where we’re joined by Rania Abouzeid, Lebanese Australian journalist and author, who is based there.

Welcome to Democracy Now! First off, as you join us from Beirut, where there has been this wave of attacks, people are concerned about a second wave of explosions involving electronic devices. At this point, the figures are something like 3,500 people injured; 37, including children, are dead. Talk about the response on the ground, Rania.

RANIA ABOUZEID: Well, there’s certainly a sense of heightened anxiety as people wonder what else, what other devices in their vicinity, may explode. They wonder if anything that they’re holding in their hands or that might be in their homes could be weaponized, turned into an improvised explosive device to maim and kill either them or the people around them.

There is also anger about the attacks, the fact that people — you know, they didn’t target combatants in a battlefield, but, rather, people going about their everyday lives. These devices exploded in supermarkets. They exploded as people were driving their cars. They exploded in people’s homes.

The hospitals, as you mentioned in that report, were overwhelmed. More than a hundred hospitals rallied to try and help the thousands of wounded, as well as some of the dead that were coming into the hospitals.

So, it’s a — there’s also been an escalation on the southern Lebanese front with northern Israel. Overnight, there were more than 50 Israeli attacks on southern Lebanese villages. And as you mentioned in your report, more than a hundred Hezbollah rockets have been fired across the border today.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what Nasrallah said yesterday?

RANIA ABOUZEID: Well, it was a very wide-ranging speech. Part of it was he looked at these attacks and he said, “Let’s consider what Israel’s aims were in this attack.” And he pointed out three things. He said the first was to try and separate the Lebanese front from Gaza. And he said that won’t happen until the war in Gaza ends. The second was to splinter and to pressure Hezbollah’s support base to say, “Enough. We have had enough of this.” That aim also has failed. On the contrary, we have seen people who are wounded in the hospitals saying that this is a sacrifice that they are prepared to make. The third thing was to disrupt Hezbollah’s communications infrastructure. And Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said that that didn’t happen.

He also turned to these growing Israeli calls for a ground invasion of Lebanon or to widen the war in Lebanon away from the southern Lebanese border region, but to engulf the whole country. And he said at one point that Hezbollah welcomes a ground invasion. It prefers to target Israeli soldiers on its home turf rather than in northern Israel. And he said that if Israeli soldiers cross that border, they will find themselves in hell. And he also said at one point they will also face, quote, “hundreds of those who were wounded in Tuesday and Wednesday’s attacks.”

AMY GOODMAN: So, what about the response to the reports from Reuters and The New York Times and other places that it was Israeli agents who were reportedly responsible, but wouldn’t quite say — accurate to say rigging devices, manufacturing these devices, not clear, debate over where exactly they were manufactured, but possibly a Budapest, Hungary-based company was involved? Your response to this and the U.N. Secretary-General Guterres saying that — decrying the use of everyday electronics as a weapon of war?

RANIA ABOUZEID: Well, there’s — speculation is rife about exactly how these devices exploded and at what point did they — were explosives placed in them, were they remotely hacked. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah yesterday in his speech said that Hezbollah has set up a number of committees to investigate this and that it would, you know, soon release the results.

As for the use, you know, turning everyday objects into IEDs, basically, there was a press release recently, just moments ago, before we went on air, where U.N. experts said that it was a terrifying violation of international law, that you can’t booby-trap devices that civilians might use or that may be in the vicinity of civilians. So, it is a, to use Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s word again, “unprecedented” tactic and one that is very grave, because it also — it didn’t — it attacked so many different people. It wasn’t an attack, a mass attack, on people in the same location, but it was in at least three places across Lebanon: in south Lebanon, in the Beqaa Valley and in Beirut.

AMY GOODMAN: As Guterres decries the weaponization of civilian objects, can you talk about, on the ground, in the hospitals, the kind of injuries that these hospitals, that are overwhelmed, are dealing with? Word is that somewhere over 3,500 people were injured.

RANIA ABOUZEID: Yes, and we have seen — on Lebanese TV, we have seen trauma surgeons break down and cry as they describe some of the cases that they are dealing with. Injuries are predominantly to the eyes, to the face, to the torso and to the hands. We have heard surgeons say that in the same operation, there are sometimes three or four specialists who are trying to save some of these wounded people. Each one is focused on a particular body part. So they are really quite, quite devastating injuries. Some of them — there was a trauma surgeon this morning who was talking about how some of these wounded people might need multiple surgeries over a very extended period of time.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to the Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh speaking Thursday.

SABRINA SINGH: Yesterday, Secretary Austin spoke by phone with his Israeli counterpart, Minister of Defense Gallant, to review regional security developments and reiterate unwavering U.S. support for Israel in the face of threats from Iran, Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran’s other regional partners. The secretary emphasized the U.S. commitment to deterring regional adversaries, deescalating tensions across the region, and reaffirmed the priority of reaching a ceasefire deal that will bring home hostages held by Hamas, and an enduring diplomatic resolution to the conflict on the Israel-Lebanon border that will allow civilians on both sides to return home.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the U.S. response so far to these explosions in Lebanon? Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, was in Paris. He cautioned against any further escalations that would make a Gaza ceasefire deal even more challenging, though it looks like that has fallen apart, Rania.

RANIA ABOUZEID: Well, I can’t speak to what the U.S. is — to the U.S.’s point of view, but I can certainly tell you that over here, people very intimately link this Israeli offensive with the U.S. People point out the double standards in terms of international law. They also point out how, you know, Blinken and other U.S. officials talk about deescalating the conflict, while continuing to arm Israel, not only in Gaza, but also, of course, with regard to its offensive here in Lebanon. So, you know, the mask has fallen on the doublespeak that is coming out of Washington.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the formation of Hezbollah, what its political aspirations are, and its relationship to the Lebanese government?

RANIA ABOUZEID: Well, it is part of the Lebanese government. Hezbollah has more than a dozen parliamentarians. It also has Cabinet ministers. And it has had people in government for many, many years. It has a political wing. It has a military wing. And it also runs a lot of charities and schools and hospitals. It formed in 1982 as a resistance group in response to Israel’s occupation, invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon. And it maintains its arms because part of Lebanon remains Israeli-occupied and has been for decades.

AMY GOODMAN: And what you see happening now with the Israeli government, the Defense Minister Yoav Gallant saying the war is widening, the reports of troops being used, Israeli troops being moved to the north from Gaza?

RANIA ABOUZEID: Well, that’s the big question. That’s the question that is on the minds of many Lebanese: What happens next? Will there be a ground invasion? Will there be airstrikes? We heard the Israeli official point out targets. He mentioned the airport. He mentioned the port, Beirut’s port. These are all civilian infrastructure. And let’s not forget that in 2006 war with Israel, the airport was hit on day one. Beirut airport was hit on day one, rendering it unusable. So, the idea that Israel would broaden its war not just to target Hezbollah, but to target Lebanese civilian infrastructure, is a very — is a grave concern over here.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to your New Yorker piece. You said, “Earlier this summer, I met with a Hezbollah military strategist in a small village in southern Lebanon, a few kilometres from the Israeli border. At one point during our off-the-record conversation, his pager beeped. He decrypted the message using a neatly folded piece of laminated paper. I hadn’t seen a sheet like that since the 2006 war with Israel, when another Hezbollah militant in another southern Lebanese village pulled one out of his pocket to relay a coded message over a walkie-talkie. The group has long used various low-tech methods, including pagers, as part of its strategy to avoid Israeli tracking and surveillance of cell phones. It also has its own landline network.” Take it from there, Rania.

RANIA ABOUZEID: Well, I mean, I’ll just go back to the 2006 incident. Not only did the — I saw two fighters in a southern Lebanese village, and they were using the walkie-talkies and this laminated piece of paper. But they told me about how they use coded messages. One man said, “If I tell my friend to meet me under the tree where he met his fiancée, I understand it, he understands it, but even if a message like that is intercepted by the Israelis, they will not understand it.” This is the advantage that Hezbollah has on its home turf. These are local men fighting in their villages. They are fighting in their towns. The are fighting in territory that they are very intimately familiar with. And they’re a very disciplined, very highly trained, very motivated fighting force.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about the sonic booms that you’re hearing and how that affects the Lebanese population?

RANIA ABOUZEID: Well, they’re terrifying, first of all. It’s just — you don’t know if it’s a sonic boom, and you wait to hear if there’s an explosion that follows the noise. Now, this is also — you know, let’s not forget that Beirut has long been terrorized by Israeli overflights by Israeli warplanes. All of these things, incidentally, are violations of sovereignty and acts of war. Every year, the United Nations tallies up these violations and presents a report about them. They’re usually in the hundreds, sometimes in the thousands, these cross-border violations.

So, they’re not a new development per se. But given the heightened tensions, they are certainly a terrifying sound to hear in the middle of the day, because you just don’t know if this is the opening salvo of an expanded war or if it is just the boom itself and not followed by an explosion.

AMY GOODMAN: Are people afraid to use pagers, walkie-talkies, even their cellphones?

RANIA ABOUZEID: Beyond that, people are wondering if perhaps — you know, there were reports that people were disconnecting the lithium batteries in their homes from the solar panels to provide electricity. People were wondering what other devices might explode, what electronics in their home might explode. Some people were telling each other not to use cellphones, but to go back to landlines to communicate. So, they’re really — you know, this is psychologically — it’s broken something, because this is a new sort of development, when an everyday object can be weaponized and it can be weaponized en masse.

AMY GOODMAN: Rania Abouzeid, we thank you for being with us, Lebanese Australian journalist and author based in Beirut.

RANIA ABOUZEID: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: We will link to your article in The New Yorker magazine, “Explosions Across Lebanon.”

RANIA ABOUZEID: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Next up, weeks out from the U.S. election, the Uncommitted National Movement has announced it’s not going to endorse Kamala Harris, even as they say they oppose President Trump and that voting for a third party a mistake. We’ll speak with the co-founder of the movement. Stay with us.

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No Endorsement: Uncommitted Mvmt. Won’t Back Harris, Trump or Third Party as U.S. Keeps Arming Israel

by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 20, 2024

The U.S. presidential election is just 45 days away, and for antiwar voters, the policy differences between the two leading candidates are vanishingly thin. As the Biden-Harris administration continues to supply billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, the Uncommitted National Movement, which for months has attempted to steer the Democratic Party toward a more critical stance on Israel, has announced it is not endorsing Kamala Harris. Neither does the organization recommend casting a third-party vote, citing the risk of splitting the two-party vote and ushering in a second term for Donald Trump. “We were not met in good faith with our policy demands,” says the Uncommitted National Movement’s co-founder Lexis Zeidan about its attempts to parley with the Harris campaign. Zeidan says the organization will continue to pressure Democrats from within and outside of the party. “What we’re asking is not outrageous.”

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’re just 45 days away from the U.S. election. As the Biden administration continues to supply billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, demands for a U.S. arms embargo to Israel remain a key issue among antiwar voters, who say they feel ignored by both major political parties. Now the Uncommitted National Movement, which pressured by the Democratic Party — or, pressured the Democratic Party to shift its policy towards Israel and to end the war on Gaza, has announced it will not endorse Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, saying her campaign failed to accept the movement’s demands, which also include meeting with Palestinian American families who have had many of their relatives killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.

With less than two months to go until the election, Harris has repeatedly defended the Biden administration’s support of Israel amidst its relentless war on Gaza. During an interview on Tuesday with the National Association of Black Journalists in Philadelphia, Vice President Harris was questioned on the issues by reporter Tonya Mosley of WHYY Radio.

TONYA MOSLEY: You’ve called for a ceasefire-hostage deal and a two-state solution as an end to the war for many months now. And while you’ve expressed support for Israel to defend itself, a two-state solution and a ceasefire are at odds with what Benjamin Netanyahu has said is their right to defense. If it matters, as you say, how Israel defends itself, where do you see the line between aggression and defense, and our power as Israel’s ally to do something?

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: OK, a lot to unpack in what you just said. So, let’s start with this. I absolutely believe that this war has to end, and it has to end as soon as possible. And the way that will be achieved is by getting a hostage deal and a ceasefire deal done. And we are working around the clock to achieve that end. Stepping back, October 7, 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered — and actually, and some Americans, by the way, in that number, slaughtered, young people who were attending a concert. Women were horribly raped. And yes, so I have said Israel has a right to defend itself. We would. And —

TONYA MOSLEY: But, Madam Vice President —

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: But, no.

TONYA MOSLEY: — I think my ask —

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: But let me finish.

TONYA MOSLEY: — is the difference —

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: But, no, no. Let me finish.

TONYA MOSLEY: — between aggression and defense here.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: No, but it’s important to put it in context, which is what I’m doing, and I’ll get to that. And so, how it does so matters. And far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed, women and children. We have seen with horror the images coming out of Gaza. And we have to take that seriously.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Vice President Kamala Harris being questioned Tuesday by reporter Tonya Mosley as part of a panel of journalists at the National Association of Black Journalists event in Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Thursday Jewish voters will be to blame if he loses November’s election. Trump stood in front of an Israeli flag as he spoke at the Israeli-American Council national summit. He also used the term “Palestinian” as a pejorative to describe Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and New York Democrat, and claimed if Kamala Harris wins in November, Israel would cease to exist.

DONALD TRUMP: The Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss if I’m at 40%. If I’m at 40, think of it. That means 60% of voting for Kamala, who in particular is a bad Democrat. The Democrats are bad to Israel, very bad. … I mean, Chuck Schumer is a Palestinian. … But if we don’t win this election, Israel, in my opinion, within a period of two to three years, will cease to exist. It’s going to be wiped out. It’s what’s going to happen.

AMY GOODMAN: Trump previously referred to President Biden as a, quote, “very bad Palestinian,” unquote, in their only presidential debate in June.

This all comes as the Teamsters union has said it’s not endorsing a presidential candidate for the first time since 1996. The union, which endorsed Biden in 2020, says neither candidate have enough support from their 1.3 million-strong membership.

For more on the election and the “uncommitted” movement’s announcement it will not endorse Kamala Harris, we go to Detroit — actually, we go to Michigan, where we’re joined by Lexis Zeidan, co-founder and co-chair of the Uncommitted National Movement.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Can you explain the statement that you put out yesterday, Lexis?

LEXIS ZEIDAN: Yeah. Hi, Amy. Thank you so much for having me on the show.

As many know, Uncommitted put out a statement yesterday where we announced we will not be endorsing Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. And in that same statement, we had announced that we are vehemently opposing Donald Trump and that we do not recommend a third-party vote.

And to put it into a little bit of context, we have been working for months, where we, you know, started in Michigan, 1.5 million voter contacts, mobilized over 101,000 people to go to the polls and vote uncommitted as a protest vote against Biden and the administration and their ongoing support for Israel as it relates to the occupation and killing of Palestinians.

And what we offered to VP Harris is that if Vice President Kamala Harris is able to do two things — either change policy as it relates to current U.S. policy that backs bombs, or simply does the thing of ensuring and upholding current international and human rights laws as it relates to the way that Israel is violating war crimes — that we would do — that we would repeat what we did in Michigan to mobilize our base to go to the polls and vote for her come November. It was the offer we put on the table that was declined by Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign team.

And so, because we were not met in good faith, we had to make the decision to not be able to endorse her. And to be clear, an endorsement is an opportunity for us to do the same thing that we did in Michigan: mobilize our voters. An endorsement means that we are offering something and doing something. And because we were not met in good faith with our policy demands, it is something that we cannot do.

AMY GOODMAN: So, explain each position — not endorsing Kamala Harris, telling people not to support President Trump or a third-party candidate.

LEXIS ZEIDAN: Yeah, great question. I think I’ll lead with, we have to be very clear, is that there’s two options come November at the top of the ticket. It’s going to be Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump. So, keeping that context in mind, we had to make a decision of what that means to grow the power that we’ve already built within our antiwar organizing movement. And so, for us, and like I said, an endorsement is meaning that we will mobilize voters to go to the polls and vote for VP Harris. That has to come with policy change. And no policy change came, so it’s a decision we had to make to not endorse her.

Donald Trump, we have to be very clear, is a direct threat to our society, our civil liberties here and Palestinians back home. As he has mentioned, he plans to annex the West Bank. As he has mentioned, that he plans to criminalize organizations here in our own country who are fighting for Palestinian human rights.

And then, to the third point of not recommending a third-party vote, we know that, unfortunately, a third-party vote is not viable in this broken electoral system. And so, inadvertently, a third-party vote would support a Donald Trump victory.

And so, knowing all this context, we believe that our power lies within our movement, that our power lies within our people, that our power lies in continuing to grow the antiwar organizing movement that we have, to truly pressure the Democratic coalition or the Democratic administration to change policy as it relates to its current U.S. policy of backing bombs.

AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of third parties, this month, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, published a follow-up poll that shows Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein ahead of Kamala Harris among Muslim voters in the key swing states of Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin. So, can you talk about the significance of what this means of not endorsing Kamala Harris?

LEXIS ZEIDAN: Yeah. I mean, I think we have to recognize that a lot of people, especially people within the Arab and Muslim community — you know, as VP Harris put it in her speech, we’ve got to put things into context. And the context here is that these communities are communities that are suffering. They are communities that are grieving. And the idea of people going and asking them who you are voting for come November — we’ve said this repeatedly — is like asking them that question at a funeral. And so, we have to keep in context how people are grieving, feeling emotionally, the very same people who came out in 2020 and mobilized very well for Biden, who feels very betrayed by this administration.

And so, we believe, as a movement, that it’s our responsibility to do three things right in this very moment, is, one, educate voters across the country, including Arab and Muslim voters, provide them with voter education on the dangers of Donald Trump; two, recognize that the genocide is still happening, that we cannot wait ’til January to shift policy, and that we have to continue to pressure the Biden-Harris administration to change policy immediately to save as many Palestinian lives as possible; and the third thing is to continue to grow our antiwar organizing power with Democratic coalitions across the country. We have to recognize that our power has impacted elected officials speaking up for Palestine, as well, from school board members all the way up to congressional leaders that are talking openly about why we need to change our U.S. foreign policy as it relates to backing bombs.

And so, these people that are talking about voting Jill Stein and third party are people who are suffering. And we believe it is our job to continue to do the organizing work that we have to do ahead of November to educate our voters about what’s at stake come November and how we have to grow our organizing power to see long-term policy change to lead to a liberated and a free Palestine.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, your response to Senator Bernie Sanders preparing a joint resolution of disapproval against the 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.”

AMY GOODMAN: We have 30 seconds, Lexis. Your response?

LEXIS ZEIDAN: Yeah, I mean, he highlighted it perfectly, is that we are aiding and abetting in indiscriminately killing civilians. And it goes to the point of what we’ve been explaining in this movement and what we’ve been trying to get VP Harris and the administration to move on, a sentiment that actually resonates the majority of Democrats, 77% of Democrats, 61% of Americans, that oppose weapons aids to Israel. When we look at our international law and our U.S. law as it relates to violation of war crimes, this is something that we should not be funding.

So, what we’re asking is not outrageous. We’re making a very simple request to follow international law and do what’s right and create an opportunity to deescalate what’s happening in the region and to really make sure that we’re valuing Palestinian lives as much as any other lives.

AMY GOODMAN: Lexis Zeidan, I want to thank you for being with us, co-founder and co-chair of the Uncommitted National Movement, speaking to us from Detroit, Michigan.

[admin]

Headlines:
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 23, 2024

Massive Israeli Airstrikes in Lebanon Kill Over 180 People, Injure 700+
Sep 23, 2024

Al Jazeera is reporting Israel has killed more than 182 people in Lebanon so far today in a wave of extensive airstrikes hitting more than 300 targets. Lebanon’s Health Ministry reports the dead include children, women and paramedics. More than 700 people have been wounded.

Earlier today, Israel instructed residents of southern Lebanon to leave their homes if they live near any site used by Hezbollah. Israel sent text messages and made phone calls to tens of thousands of people in what Lebanese officials decried as a form of “psychological warfare.” Israel also hacked into Lebanese radio stations.

On Friday, Israel killed at least 45 people in a massive airstrike on a densely populated residential neighborhood of Beirut. The dead include 16 members of Hezbollah, including two senior commanders, Ibrahim Aqil and Ahmed Wahbi. Lebanon’s Transportation Minister Ali Hamieh condemned the Israeli attacks.

Ali Hamieh: “The Israeli enemy, with all its continued crimes, with the excuse of pursuing Hezbollah, has targeted a residential compound. It has committed a massacre to a residential building, against unarmed children, women at their homes. … The Israeli enemy is taking the region to war.”

Hezbollah responded to Friday’s attack by firing a barrage of rockets into Israel targeting an air base and weapons factories.

Ex-CIA Director: Israel’s Deadly Pager Attacks in Lebanon Was Act of “Terrorism”
Sep 23, 2024

Former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has accused Israel of committing an act of terrorism by rigging thousands of walkie-talkies and pagers that exploded in a coordinated attack last week that killed at least 37 people and injured thousands in Lebanon. Panetta spoke to CBS News.

Leon Panetta: “I don’t think there’s any question that it’s a form of terrorism. This has gone right into the supply chain. Right into the supply chain. And when you have terror going into the supply chain, it makes people ask the question: What the hell is next?”

Israeli Attacks Continue on Gaza’s Schools, Killing Displaced Palestinian Children Seeking Shelter
Sep 23, 2024

In Gaza, Israel is continuing to target schools and shelters housing displaced Palestinians. On Saturday, an Israeli attack on a school in Gaza City killed 22 people, including 13 children and six women. One of the victims was a 3-month-old baby. Survivors said there are no safe places to go in Gaza.

Umm Mahmoud: “We got displaced and came to this school. I left from my house after it was targeted and my husband and my two children were martyred, and we came to this school and thought it was safe. We thought this was a safe place. Then they target us. Where are we supposed to go if at a school we’re not safe? We got displaced seven or eight times, and I’m all alone with my two remaining children.”

An Israeli airstrike earlier today in Deir al-Balah killed a mother and four of her children. Meanwhile, heavy rain has flooded makeshift camps in al-Mawasi and other areas of Gaza.

Israel Raids and Shuts Down Al Jazeera Ramallah Office Amid Intensifying West Bank Attacks
Sep 23, 2024

Press freedom groups have condemned the Israeli military for raiding and shutting down Al Jazeera’s Ramallah office in the occupied West Bank. Heavily armed Israeli troops were seen on live TV entering the office and confiscating equipment while ordering the office closed for 45 days. Israeli troops also tore down a poster of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Al Jazeera journalist who was fatally shot by Israeli forces while covering a raid on Jenin two years ago. This is Al Jazeera’s West Bank bureau chief Walid al-Omari.

Walid al-Omari: “This is a blatant attack on the Al Jazeera channel and Al Jazeera network and those who are working with them, as well as on the freedom of speech and the task of delivering the truth. This is an attack that aims to obscure the truth.”

The raid comes months after Israel banned Al Jazeera from broadcasting inside Israel.

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

Israel Bombs Lebanon After Blowing Up Pagers in “Act of Mass Mutilation.” Is Ground Invasion Next?
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 23, 2024

​​Israel attacked more than 300 sites in Lebanon Monday, killing at least 182 people and injuring more than 700 others as fears grow of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah. The Israeli military also ordered residents of southern Lebanon to leave their homes if they live near any site used by the militant group. “At the heart of this is an attempt to manufacture consent and try to portray most southern Lebanese as Hezbolloh operatives,” says Sintia Issa, editor-at-large at the Beirut-based media organization The Public Source. We also speak with Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon volunteering at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, where he has been treating victims of last week’s device explosions that injured thousands of people. He describes the disfiguring injuries from Israel’s booby-trapping of pagers and walkie-talkies, calling it “an act of mass mutilation.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Lebanon, where Israel has attacked more than 300 sites today and fears of a broader regional war are growing. Al Jazeera and other media outlets report 100 people were killed in the wave of strikes today, 400 more wounded, as the Israeli army steps up pressure on Hezbollah. United Nations chief António Guterres told CNN he feared, quote, “the possibility of transforming Lebanon into another Gaza.”

Earlier today, Israel instructed residents of southern Lebanon to leave their homes if they live near by any site used by Hezbollah. Israel sent text messages, made phone calls to tens of thousands of people in what Lebanese officials decried as a form of “psychological warfare.” This is a Lebanese shopkeeper in Beirut.

LEBANESE SHOPKEEPER: [translated] I say this is the beginning of the war, definitely the beginning of a war.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes after Israel killed at least 45 people Friday in a massive airstrike on a densely populated residential neighborhood of Beirut. The dead include 16 members of Hezbollah, including two senior commanders, Ibrahim Aqil and Ahmed Wahbi. Lebanon’s Transportation Minister Ali Hamieh condemned the Israeli attacks.

ALI HAMIEH: [translated] The Israeli enemy, with all its continued crimes, with the excuse of pursuing Hezbollah, has targeted a residential compound. It has committed a massacre to a residential building, against unarmed children, women at their homes. … The Israeli enemy is taking the region to war.

AMY GOODMAN: Hezbollah responded by firing a barrage of rockets into Israel targeting an air base and weapons factories.

Meanwhile, former CIA director, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has accused Israel of terrorism for rigging thousands of walkie-talkies and pagers to explode in a coordinated attack last week that killed at least 37 people, injuring thousands more in Lebanon. Panetta spoke to CBS News.

LEON PANETTA: I don’t think there’s any question that it’s a form of terrorism. This has gone right into the supply chain. Right into the supply chain. And when you have terror going into the supply chain, it makes people ask the question: What the hell is next?

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Beirut, Lebanon, where we’re joined by two guests. Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah is a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon who arrived in Beirut last week to treat some of the thousands of people injured when pagers and walkie-talkies exploded. He’s also worked in Gaza with Doctors Without Borders. Also with us in Beirut is Sintia Issa, editor-at-large at The Public Source, a Beirut-based independent media organization.

We’re going to go to Sintia first. Can you describe the latest in Lebanon, this morning’s attacks that we hear killed, what, 100 people, injuring hundreds more, and then make your way back through the weekend?

SINTIA ISSA: Thank you for having me, Amy.

This morning, between 6 and 7 a.m., as most people were still sleeping, Israel began its largest bombardment campaign of the year in South Lebanon and then gradually it made its way to the Beqaa, reaching all the way north of the Beqaa to the Hermel. That’s about 200 kilometers far from the border. These are locations that were not targeted up until this point in the war. And in fact, this is very reminiscent of 2006. We’re talking about a hundred locations or so, 50 or a hundred locations or so, between villages, towns and various parts of the landscape. Jbeil district, which is not really involved at all in this war, was also targeted, Laqlouq. This is also part of the psychological warfare that we are seeing.

And the bombing itself, you know, we saw plumes that were not necessarily the most familiar, so we’re talking about bombs that may have been added to the arsenal for the first time here in Lebanon, or at least used in Lebanon for the first time. The scale is incomparable so far.

Later, in the afternoon, at around noon, we had maybe another hundred or 200 strikes in different locations. As you did mention, it seems like there’s a hundred people who were killed already and several hundred more definitely wounded and injured. Sites near hospitals were targeted, in a clear indication that what has happened in Gaza may be coming to Lebanon, as well.

In relation to this, as well, southerners, but also different people, reaching Beirut, but mostly in the south, received text messages telling them to leave their homes if their homes contains a missile or a rocket. Israel also infiltrated the landline network in Sour, in the south, and called people and told them to leave if their house contains rockets or if they’re close to any weapons. There’s also a series of videos that Israel has been circulating on social media platforms for propagandistic purposes. These are animations where you can clearly see homes, and inside these homes there are rockets lying there. And the same message is basically telling residents of Lebanon to leave if their homes contains rockets.

So, what we’re seeing here is an attempt to manufacture consent for a carpet-bombing campaign that will no doubt, perhaps — let’s see how far it goes, but it promises at least to resemble a little bit what we’re seeing in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: So, how do people know if they’re near some kind of Hezbollah site?

SINTIA ISSA: There is a conflation that’s essentially happening with southerners in Lebanon. There’s a conflation between all civilians and Hezbollah happening at the same time. There is a — if the question is, “Where is Israel attacking right now?” it’s been fairly indiscriminate. We’ve seen that, you know, cities and towns, including the heart of Nabatieh, was bombed. So, the Ghazieh, next to Saida, also the square was bombed. So we’re talking about attacks that are happening in the thick of the towns, densely populated areas, not just in disparate places. And, you know, at the heart of this is an attempt to manufacture consent and kind of try to portray most southernese as Hezbollah operatives, their homes as essentially depots and caches.

AMY GOODMAN: Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem spoke at the funeral of Ibrahim Aqil, killed in Friday’s Israeli airstrike on a residential building in Beirut.

NAIM QASSEM: [translated] The Lebanese support front for Gaza will continue, no matter how long it takes, until the war on Gaza ends. Secondly, the people of the north won’t return. Rather, displacement will increase, and support will expand. The Israeli military solution only deepens Israel’s dilemma and that of the northern population without solving their problems. So, go to Gaza and stop the war.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you could comment on what he was saying? And also, I wanted to go to White House national security spokesperson John Kirby, who told ABC’s This Week the U.S. has been engaged in, quote, “extensive and quite assertive diplomacy.”

JOHN KIRBY: We don’t believe that a military conflict — and we’re saying this directly to our Israeli counterparts, George — we don’t believe that escalating this military conflict is in their best interest. … We want to make sure that we can continue to do everything we can to try to prevent this from becoming an all-out war there with Hezbollah across that Lebanese border.

AMY GOODMAN: Sintia Issa, if you could comment?

SINTIA ISSA: Well, to be very clear, Hezbollah never intended to have a full-on war on Lebanon. That was not a part of their calculation or strategy at all, actually. They were very much interested in and intent on being a front of support and military solidarity to Gaza in the context of a genocide and ethnic cleansing. But Hezbollah never really wanted to have a full-fledged war. This is something that they stated themselves. And if we actually follow the facts on the ground, the actions, we will notice that they tried to work within the rules of engagement, target only military infrastructures and never civilian infrastructures. And that was always the intent. It was always Israel that wants to escalate this into a broader war with Lebanon. And for an entire year, Hezbollah has been trying to deescalate.

Now with what happened on Tuesday and Wednesday with about 3,000 people maimed in Dahieh in the span of seconds and then another assassination on Friday that took the lives of 54 people, injuring many more, it seems like war is forced upon Hezbollah. And if war is forced upon Hezbollah, then they will do it, and it will be a fierce battle, and it will be a costly battle for both sides.

Now, when it comes to the United States and John Kirby saying that, you know, the U.S. is very much trying to work for a ceasefire, again, if we actually try to compare the statements with actions on the ground, there’s large inconsistencies there. And the Lebanese people and the Palestinians and everyone in the region very much recognizes that the U.S. is not in fact trying to work on a ceasefire in real terms. In fact, the U.S. is quite complicit in what is happening in Gaza and now in this coming war on Lebanon. It supplies Israel with 60% of the weapons it’s using in Lebanon and Palestine, but also in Syria. It’s giving it diplomatic immunity in various U.N. Security Councils. And at the ICC, it’s basically stopping any incrimination of Yoav Gallant and Benjamin Netanyahu of war crimes and plausible genocide. So the U.S. has been playing a very important role in this war from the very get-go.

And, of course, this question of peace process, you know, one remembers the — this question of ceasefire process, sorry, one remembers the peace process and the question of peace process. This question of process is really a ploy to extend the possibilities of capitulation, the possibilities of, in this case here, genocide in Palestine and increase the war on Lebanon. But the reality is just a ploy that’s presented to give more time to Israel to do more. Unfortunately, that’s the situation.

Of course, the war is maybe a fait accompli or not. I think the war can come to an end, and there are — there is a way out of this war. There is a roadmap. First, if the U.S. is indeed, you know, interested in reaching a ceasefire, it would halt all arms supply to Israel right now, the 60% it supplies. And, you know, since the U.S. does sanction about 30% of the countries in the world, then, in that case, it should be able to sanction Israel for committing war crimes against humanity and a genocide. And then, finally, it would lift all diplomatic and legal impunity for Israel at the ICC, for example. So, there is a road forward to end the war, and that’s to be sure.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah into the conversation. You came to Lebanon last week. Interesting to hear the former CIA director, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta talking about the explosions of the pagers and the walkie-talkies as being a terrorist act. Can you talk about the effects on the ground and the kind of injuries you’re seeing, with, I think at last count, 37 dead, thousands injured?

DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: This is the largest act of mass mutilation we’ve seen, even more than in the civil war in Sierra Leone, where warring parties were chopping each other’s hands off. This is — the explosive put in the pagers was sufficient to maim and not to kill. And so, what you have is over 3,000, with around 90% who have penetrating injuries to the eyes, some of whom both eyes, and a blast injury to the hand, with what we refer to in hand surgery as a mangled hand, because what happened is the pager went off, the victims picked up the pager and then looked at it, and it exploded in their hand facing their faces, and so there are also facial injuries.

Now, the act of booby-trapping these pagers meant that they went off when the people were in their cars with families, when they were in their homes, with kids picking up these pagers when they went off. And so, truly, the aim of this was to mutilate. And I tell my colleagues here that it’s reminiscent of the Marches of Return between 2018 and 2020, when Israel intentionally shot over 8,000 Palestinians in the lower limb with the aim of disablement and mutilation. And so, this is an act that was designed at inflicting disablement, at mutilation of the victims.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s interesting you talk about the seconds’ delay, that it’s most like a double-tap bomb on a much smaller level — right? — when a country bombs another country, and then, as the rescue workers come running to help the people on the ground, they’re bombed again. In this case, it was a pager. And so, first it vibrates, forcing people — well, people instinctively then pick up or go over across the room to where it might not have hurt them, and then, as they pick it up, they are injured or killed.

DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: And also, what happened the following day is that the walkie-talkies that had also been booby-trapped went off. And these walkie-talkies were being used by paramedics, by ambulance staff, by civil defense staff. And so, there was a kind of second wave of similarly, but with bigger explosive quantities in, with the same aim of inducing that terrible injury, paralyzing the health system and leaving these people with permanent disability.

AMY GOODMAN: On Friday, you were operating on victims of the pager and walkie-talkie attacks, when Israel bombed the residential building in Beirut?

DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: Yes. And, I mean, that was our biggest worry, is that it highlighted the fact that as a result of around 3,000 wounded in the hospitals, there wasn’t any capacity left in the health system to take any of the wounded. And that’s what forced a lot of the hospitals to push for early discharge of the wounded over the weekend, because we felt that the health system was very exposed with all of these injured people in the beds, and we felt that there’s going to be another wave. And unfortunately, this came true this morning, that we needed to discharge a lot of the wounded early.

What you need to realize, this comes at the end of a four-year economic crisis that has really disabled the Lebanese health system and disabled the Lebanese government in terms of its ability to support the Ministry of Health. So, you have around a third of the doctors and nurses emigrated as a result of the collapse of the Lebanese currency. And you have a health system that’s mainly made up of small and medium-sized private institutions that, you know, just don’t have the purchasing capacity to buy the kind medications, consumables that they need. And those who did, it was used up on Tuesday treating and, since then, treating the 3,000 wounded.

AMY GOODMAN: You worked for weeks in Gaza treating the wounded, the injured there. How does what you’re seeing here in Beirut compare? You told The New York Times, “The Lebanese health system is in no way able to treat war wounded if it were to escalate into a full-blown war. the Lebanese health system is in no way able to treat war wounded if you were to escalate into a full-blown war. We are stuck in this loop. You just operate and operate. You feel like you are playing catch up all the time.” Dr. Abu-Sittah?

DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, when we have these 3,000 wounded all within a couple of hours of each other, they flooded the health system, which then meant that they were being taken to the operating room. Really, I mean, this is the biggest hospital in Lebanon, the American University of Beirut Medical Center. And we had 10 rooms going all the time. We were doing around 50 to 60 cases per day. And it took us from Tuesday night, Wednesday morning ’til Saturday to finish the majority of the initial surgeries.

I mean, these patients, especially for their hand reconstruction, will need between five and 12 surgeries over the next five years to regain some hand function, to try to limit the disability that’s left. The eyes, that’s the even more devastating thing, the eyes, the loss of vision as a result of these injuries. That’s going to leave permanent disability. This is an act of kind of almost mythical mutilation. It’s an act of mutilation, not an — it was not an assassination attempt, but an act of mass mutilation.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, we want to thank you for being with us. My final question is — you moved to Beirut in 2011, joined the faculty of the American University of Beirut Hospital. Your mother was born in Lebanon. Why did you choose to go back?

DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: On Tuesday, I realized, when I was in London — I had been in Glasgow as director, speaking at the opening ceremony of the academic year and then went back to London. And as the news came about on Tuesday morning, Tuesday morning and Tuesday afternoon, I realized the sheer number and the type of injuries which would require reconstructive surgery. And so, that was the decision. I took an overnight flight from London on Tuesday night and got here at 8:00 on Wednesday morning and came straight to the hospital. And we have literally been operating since then.

We’re now trying to clear the hospital, with the news of over 500 now wounded in the south. And we’re expecting these wounded, some of whom to come here, the most critically wounded. The Israelis have been targeting cars on the roads full of fleeing families. And so, we need — you know, I think the most important thing is that the humanitarian sector needs to realize that the Lebanese health system now needs help, before the Israelis bomb the airport. It needs trauma teams to be brought in. It needs them to be fully equipped and fully funded in terms of consumables and medication, because the system is not going to be able to deal with this.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, British Palestinian surgeon, speaking to us from Beirut, and Sintia Issa, editor-at-large at The Public Source, also in Beirut, Lebanon.

When we come back, press freedom groups are condemning the Israeli military for raiding and shutting down Al Jazeera’s main West Bank office in Ramallah. The raid was broadcast live on television. We’ll speak with Al Jazeera’s managing editor.

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“Israel Has No Right”: Al Jazeera Managing Editor Slams Israel’s Raid & Closing of West Bank Bureau
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 23, 2024

Israel stepped up its censorship of Al Jazeera on Sunday as soldiers raided the Qatar-based news network’s Ramallah offices in the occupied West Bank and ordered a 45-day closure of the bureau. This comes after the Netanyahu government banned the network inside of Israel in May under a new media law giving authorities broad power to censor foreign outlets deemed to be security threats. “It was a show of force, a show of intimidation to show journalists around the globe that what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank isn’t allowed to be reported,” Al Jazeera managing editor Mohamed Moawad tells Democracy Now! Israeli forces have killed as many as 160 journalists in Gaza over the last year, including several who work for Al Jazeera. In 2022, an Israeli sniper killed the network’s acclaimed Palestinian American correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank.

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.

Press freedom groups are condemning the Israeli military for raiding and shutting down Al Jazeera’s Ramallah office in the occupied West Bank. The raid was broadcast live on TV Sunday morning. Heavily armed Israeli troops were seen entering the office and confiscating equipment while ordering the office closed for at least 45 days. This is an Israeli soldier confronting Al Jazeera’s West Bank bureau chief Walid al-Omari.

ISRAEL SOLDIER: [translated] Good evening. There’s an order from the court to shut down Al Jazeera for 45 days. I ask you to take all the cameras and leave the office now.

WALID AL-OMARI: [translated] Should we all leave?

ISRAEL SOLDIER: [translated] This is an order.

WALID AL-OMARI: [translated] Can I see it, please? This is the order which was brought to us by this office and in his military forces. The order says that it is an order to shut down the office of Al Jazeera channel for 45 days. And this is a military decision from the commander of the central area and the Israeli military. It asks us to leave this office immediately and to take our personal belongings and our cameras.

AMY GOODMAN: During the raid, Israeli troops also tore down a poster of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Al Jazeera journalist, the Palestinian American, who was fatally shot by Israeli troops May 11th, 2022, when she was outside the Jenin refugee camp.

Reporters Without Borders responded to this weekend’s raid with a statement denouncing, quote, “Israel’s relentless assault,” unquote, and repeating its call for the repeal of the Israeli law that allows the government to shut down foreign media. U.N. secretary-general spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said Sunday the U.N. is deeply concerned about Israel’s closure of Al Jazeera’s offices in the occupied West Bank.

STÉPHANE DUJARRIC: We’re very concerned any time, anywhere in the world, media offices get closed, especially in conflict areas, where journalists are the eyes and ears of the world, and they need to be able to do their job free from harassment or any other type of impediment.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Doha, where we’re joined by Mohamed Moawad, managing editor of Al Jazeera.

Welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you lay out exactly what happened on Sunday morning, Mohamed?

MOHAMED MOAWAD: Thanks, Amy, for having me. Glad to be back with you.

When we spoke, when we last spoke in May, when the Israeli government took the decision of shutting down our offices in Jerusalem and the Palestinian — and Tel Aviv, I told you that the situation is ambiguous and that the law itself upon which the Israeli government took the decision is ambiguous, as well. It could be weaponized against us anytime. When the Israeli government feel that the intimidation — as type of intimidation isn’t enough, they can go farther, escalate the intimidation process. So, that’s exactly what happened.

Our bureau chief, Walid al-Omari, was live, was live on air, reporting on the exchange of strikes in Lebanon between Hezbollah and the Israeli forces. Suddenly, the Israeli soldiers — these were not ordinary officers, but, rather, you know, fully equipped and ready-for-combat-zone officers and soldiers, and they invade — I say “invade,” not “stormed.” They invaded the office, and they spoke to Walid al-Omari, who stood very strong against them, defending his right for freedom of the press. And he told them, “Why you are here? This is not a combat zone. This is a space for journalism.” They said that there is an order to shut down the office. And that’s when that the whole situation was chilling for us, because, you know, this is a dedicated space for journalism. This is an office for reporters, for journalists. This is not a combat zone.

They then went on to move from corner to corner in the office as if it’s a combat zone. And then they tore down our late colleague Shireen Abu Akleh’s picture from the wall. They stole all equipments from inside the office, despite the fact that the order itself that was handed to Walid al-Omari did not mention anything about equipments. And then they went farther, to follow our colleagues downstairs, where they continued reporting about the incident, and they took the mic from Walid al-Omari and said, “You’re not allowed to work here. Go home.”

But, you know, the whole situation here is not shutting down an office, it’s not a decision by the Israeli government that was executed by the army, a fully equipped army, but, rather, an invasion to the very principle of the press freedom around the world.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain how the Israeli military has jurisdiction here? Your Ramallah bureau, which is in charge of the whole West Bank coverage of Al Jazeera, is in Area A, an area marked as being under Palestinian control in the Oslo Accords. So what legal jurisdiction did Israel have to come in with their heavily armed soldiers?

MOHAMED MOAWAD: That’s why, Amy, it’s very difficult for us to find a way to challenge this legally, because, really, the whole situation is ambiguous. They say this is emergency law. This is according to the defense minister of Israel, an order by him to the army to enter the West Bank and shut down an office which does not — you know, does not include the power of the Israeli army in this area because it’s an area that is under the jurisdiction A, which is mainly for the Palestinian Authority to decide about.

But, you know, the whole — Israel has no right to kill over 160 journalists in Gaza, I mean, and they’ve done it, and they continue to do it. They’ve killed three colleagues at Al Jazeera. They continue to commit atrocities against journalists. So, it wasn’t surprising. By the way, it was the least decision, the least action they have taken against us, because we’ve lost colleagues.

But at the same time, it was a show of force, a show of intimidation to show journalists around the globe that what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank isn’t allowed to be reported about and that the coverage of Al Jazeera is an enemy for the Israeli government, despite the fact that we haven’t and we’re not weaponizing at all, and we’re not going to do that. We’re not weaponizing our platform, despite the fact that we are being intimidated, we have lost colleagues.

Just before I came on air, we’ve been airing the Israeli forces press conference. And we continue to do that, despite the fact that the Israeli government shut down our offices in Israel and the Palestinian territories to try to delegitimize our coverage and say that Al Jazeera is a one-sided coverage, don’t operate there. But we continue to cover. We continue to make sure that we give voice to the voiceless and at the same time make sure that both narratives are kind of covered.

AMY GOODMAN: One of the things you do on Al Jazeera when reporters are reporting on Israel, since you’re banned from Israel, is repeatedly say that. That’s unlike U.S. networks that don’t say, when they’re reporting on Gaza, that the Israeli military prevents them from going into Gaza. Talk about that editorial decision that you’ve made, as you have reporters in Amman and other places saying, “We are not allowed to be in Israel as we report this right now,” and what these images mean that you’re broadcasting that others don’t.

MOHAMED MOAWAD: This is exactly what we should be talking about, Amy. Shutting down Al Jazeera’s office is the headline, but the name of the game is preventing journalists from doing their job, either in Gaza, in the West Bank. They want us to report remotely. They don’t want us to be in the frontlines. And that’s crystal clear.

I mean, the whole international journalistic community should be talking about one topic when they see a journalist killed in Gaza. They should be talking about one topic when they see an office shut down in Gaza or in West Bank or in Israel. The one topic is: No international journalist was allowed to enter Gaza to cover the war there, to give voice to the voiceless, which is at the core of this and the principle, the main principle, of this profession. No international journalists.

Even the international journalistic community is not placing pressure on Israel to allow their colleagues to get into Gaza to cover. Remember the Arab Spring, when so many American and Western journalists challenged the bureaucracy of the authoritarian regimes to go cover from Tahrir Square or from Tunisia or from Syria or from Libya. Right now no one is placing that pressure. And it’s really, really annoying, because we should be defending the freedom of the press. We should be defending the right to know what’s happening there. We should not be — we should not shy from what’s happening in Gaza and be part of this concealing that the Israeli government is trying to do to conceal what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank and the atrocities being committed. They just want us to report remotely.

And we will continue to remind the world and the journalistic community that this is happening and that you should unite to place pressure on the Israeli government to give the right for journalists to enter Gaza. Even after a possible ceasefire, this should be the case to uncover what’s really happened there. I remind you that we still have six correspondents reporting from Gaza. And that’s something that we are committed to. We are committed to give voice to the voiceless. An office is nothing for us. We will continue the coverage. We asked our colleagues to stay safe in the West Bank right now until we figure out the legal procedure, because, as I told you, Amy, the situation is ambiguous. We can’t really know on what basis that decision was taken, but we expected it.

AMY GOODMAN: Mohamed Moawad, I want to thank you for being with us, managing editor of Al Jazeera, speaking to us from Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar.