Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 24, 2024
Israel Vows to Ramp Up Its Assault on Lebanon After Killing 558+ People in One Day
Sep 24, 2024
Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati has accused Israel of waging “a war of extermination” after Israeli airstrikes killed at least 558 people, including 50 children, and injured over 1,800 since Monday. It was Israel’s largest attack on Lebanon in nearly two decades. Israel said today it will further “accelerate” its attacks on Lebanon. Israel claimed the airstrikes struck 1,600 Hezbollah targets, but Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Israel mostly struck civilian sites including hospitals, medical centers and ambulances. Thousands of Lebanese residents have fled southern Lebanon, with many heading to Beirut. The U.N. Human Rights Office warned Israel that sending a “warning” before attacking civilians is not acceptable.
Hezbollah forces responded to Israel’s massive attack by firing missiles at Israeli military bases, arms factories and other areas. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned, “We are almost in a full-fledged war,” while U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said that U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres was “alarmed” at the large number of civilian casualties reported in Lebanon.
Stéphane Dujarric: “The message to the parties that are firing at each other across the Blue Line, to all the parties involved in this conflict, is: Step back from the brink. Stop the escalation. … As we just said, there is no military solution at this point that will make anyone in either country any safer.”
Israel’s attack on Lebanon also killed at least one journalist. Hadi Al-Sayed, a reporter for Al-Mayadeen, died after Israel bombed his home in southern Lebanon.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon has announced more U.S. troops would be sent to the Middle East.
“They’re Being Killed in Schools as They Seek Shelter”: U.N. Decries Israel’s War on Gaza’s Children
Sep 24, 2024
The U.N. Human Rights Office is calling on Israel to stop attacking schools in Gaza that provide shelter to displaced Palestinians. Over the past three days, Israeli attacks on schools have killed at least 32 Palestinians, including 16 children. The U.N. agency said, “The children of Gaza have already lost schools as a place of education. Now, they are being killed in schools as they seek shelter.”
On Monday, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa spoke at the United Nations.
Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa: “As I speak to you, before you, our people in Gaza are enduring one of the darkest chapters in modern history. For nearly a year now, Israel’s genocidal war has caused unprecedented loss and suffering and humanitarian catastrophe. At the same time, our people in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, continue to face systemic threats driven by the escalating settlers’ violence, military raids, movement restrictions and financial siege, withholding of Palestinian tax revenues.”
Biden Admin Kept Arming Genocide After State Dept., USAID Found Israel Blocked Gaza Aid Delivery
Sep 24, 2024
ProPublica has revealed USAID and the State Department’s refugees bureau both concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza. But U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other top Biden officials rejected the findings of the agencies — the two foremost U.S. authorities on humanitarian assistance. Blinken’s decision allowed the U.S. to keep sending arms to Israel. Under U.S. law, the government is required to cut off weapons shipments to countries preventing the delivery of U.S.-backed aid.
Greta Thunberg Joins Palestinian Call to Boycott Chevron
Sep 24, 2024
Prominent climate activist Greta Thunberg has joined demands to boycott Chevron over its supplying of energy to Israel.
Greta Thunberg: “In Palestine and all over the world, the fight against colonialism and corporations’ destruction of the planet are intrinsically linked. Look at Chevron. Everyone knows that Chevron is one of the world’s biggest climate criminals, but the oil giant is also fueling Israel’s genocide in Palestine.”
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“Absolutely Terrifying”: Israel’s War Comes to Lebanon, Setting Record-Breaking Single-Day Death Toll
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 24, 2024
Israel’s massive aerial bombardment of Lebanon killed at least 558 people on Monday in what is the highest single-day death toll in Lebanon in nearly two decades. Thousands more have been injured in strikes that targeted hospitals, medical centers and ambulances, while tens of thousands of civilians have been forced from their homes. “It has been havoc,” says Michelle Eid, editor-in-chief of Al Rawiya, in Beirut, describing attempts by family members to flee the attacks in the south. “The speed with which this has happened has been incredibly shocking,” says Lebanese writer and translator Lina Mounzer. “Once Lebanon goes up in flames, it’s also very likely that the entire region goes up in flames.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli military says it carried out another airstrike on Beirut today in a southern suburb of the city. This comes as the death toll from Israel’s massive aerial bombardment of Lebanon Monday rose to at least 558 people, including over 50 children and over 40 women. More than 1,600 people have been injured. It marked the highest single-day death toll on Lebanon in nearly two decades.
Tens of thousands of civilians have been forced from their homes in southern Lebanon in the largest exodus since the 2006 war. Many displaced families are sleeping in makeshift shelters set up in schools in Beirut and other cities. Some 500 people have even crossed into Syria to seek safety, according to Agence France-Presse.
Israel claimed the airstrike struck 1,600 Hezbollah targets, but Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Israel also struck hospitals, medical centers and ambulances. Hezbollah forces responded to Israel’s massive attack by firing missiles at Israeli military bases, arms factories and other areas. Satellite data analyzed by Associated Press showed the wide range of Israeli airstrikes aimed at southern Lebanon covering an area of over 650 square miles.
The aerial bombardment comes as Lebanon is still reeling from last week’s attack by Israel when thousands of electronic communication devices, from walkie-talkies to pagers, exploded at the same time across Lebanon, killing 39 people and wounding nearly 3,000.
For more, we go to Beirut, where we’re joined by Michelle Eid, editor-in-chief of Al Rawiya, a digital magazine covering the Levant. She joins us from Beirut.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Can you describe what’s happening on the ground now in Lebanon with this largest single-day death toll in almost 20 years, the massive flight of Lebanese from the south moving towards Beirut, Michelle?
MICHELLE EID: Hi. First of all, thanks for having me.
Essentially, what’s happening now is a massive exodus from the south. Many people are displaced. They’re trying to find a safe haven. And as a result, the roads are jammed. There’s an oncoming fuel crisis, as well, because people are trying to fill their tanks. And so, so many people have been stuck on the road for hours on end trying to reach somewhere safe. And as people were exiting south Lebanon and going on the road towards Beirut, there were airstrikes falling near them, around them. So you can imagine it’s a very panic-filled scene.
And around Lebanon, so what’s happening at the moment is these individuals who are displaced from the south are trying to find safe havens in schools and different shelters all across Lebanon, whether it be the north, Beqaa, Mount Lebanon. And people are going, trying to help them, trying to find any basic necessities that they can help them with, provide them with food, with water, with medicine, with sleeping bags so they can sleep. So you can imagine the situation is quite dire at the moment.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Michelle, these bombing attacks have occurred not just in the south, but also in some northern sections of Lebanon, as well. So, how are the civilians supposed to know even where to go?
MICHELLE EID: You know, the way that I can describe this is, they think about the next — the immediate solution. So, once they’re bombing the south, people are leaving the south. When they bomb Beqaa, they try to find another safe place in Beqaa. They don’t have the luxury of thinking long term. They don’t have the luxury of thinking, “Where would be the safest place for me to be now?” especially with the crowding, you can say, because there are a lot of people who are trying to find these shelters, who are trying to find apartments, so there’s an overflow of demand and maybe not enough supply, or, rather — let me fix that — there is supply, but there is also some sort of exploitation of the people who are being displaced from the south. So, landlords, for example, there is not a lot of, you can say, give and take when it comes to rent. And so, many families find themselves unable to rent an apartment with their children, with their elderly parents, with their members of the family that have special needs or special medical requirements.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this comes — these attacks come in a situation where Lebanon has already had a long-term economic crisis. Could you talk about the situation in the country as a whole?
MICHELLE EID: You know, prior to the war, the country has already been suffering. It’s been suffering since 2019 with the financial collapse, then, after that, with the coronavirus. So, public institutions are not able to support the community, the Lebanese population properly, or all communities that live within Lebanon. And so, once the war began in October, there was, you know, panic amongst people in the community, in the Lebanese communities, about whether Lebanon would be able to sustain a war, whether the medical sector would be able to sustain the war, whether directorates that are responsible for food security are able to, whether gas and energy directorates are able to, as well.
So, Lebanon is not properly equipped to be able to sustain such a war. And it was not properly equipped to function even ever so normally prior to the war in its normal situation. So, as you can imagine, there is panic across not only members of the public, but also people who are in public institutions, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Michelle, you’re speaking to us from Beirut, so your own family has to be impacted by this. Can you describe both what you’ve talked about, the chaos —
MICHELLE EID: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: — in the streets, what has happened to your family in the south, and what these phone calls mean? Israel is saying they’ve sent out tens of thousands of calls. Apparently, Lebanon’s minister of information got one of these morning calls. The U.N. Human Rights Office warned Israel sending a warning before attacking civilians is not acceptable.
MICHELLE EID: Mm-hmm. I can talk about maybe my family first. So, I have family living in the south and Beqaa, as well. And on a personal level, for the past few days, it has been havoc trying to be able to reach them to make sure that they are OK. My maternal great-uncle is stuck in the south because of the situation on the roads. He didn’t want to leave the south at first, either, because the concept of leaving his home is already painful enough, because this is not the first time the south witnesses such aggression, you know? And so, it’s been just panic mode on a personal level to be able to try and get my family to safety, especially with data not being able — not being proper, as well, not having good connections, so we can’t reach them all the time. So, as you can imagine, even my family living abroad, they’re also in this state of panic trying to reach their family members here, as well. So, on an internal level, it’s been a mess.
And then, going on to people receiving texts and phone calls, so, dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of individuals yesterday received either phone calls or texts telling them to evacuate their buildings because they do have some either Hezbollah weapons or Hezbollah personnel in these buildings. And they gave them either a timeframe to leave or with no timeframe at all. So, these individuals, not even knowing — you know, they haven’t had time to think of a plan B or a plan C. They had to grab their stuff and just leave their homes, try to find some safe haven, whether near or far. And these people who were conducting these phone calls, for example, the phone calls, they were coming from Lebanese numbers, but the individuals who were doing the calling spoke in formal Arabic, which is very different than our colloquial language, our mostly used language, our informal language. And so, as you can imagine, this induces quite the scary scenario for many people who are also unable to leave right away, who have members of their family who need special support, whether it be a physical disability, a mental disability of the sorts. So, it’s been quite hard on these families who were across the Beqaa, across the south and even in some suburbs in Beirut.
AMY GOODMAN: Michelle Eid is editor-in-chief of Al Rawiya. She’s speaking to us from Beirut. And in our New York studio, we’re joined by Lina Mounzer, Lebanese writer, translator, senior editor of the arts and literature magazine The Markaz Review. Her new piece for Middle East Eye is headlined “Israel’s war on Lebanon: The trauma of watching the 'Hollywood movie' from afar.”
Start off with what just has happened in the last 24 hours, worst single lethal day, deadly day for Lebanon in nearly 20 years, with over 558 people dead, 50 of them children. Your response, looking at all of this from New York?
LINA MOUNZER: First, hi, Amy. Thank you for having me here.
Honestly, it’s very shocking, looking at it, the speed with which everything is happening. The death toll, as you said, it’s actually — at this point, I think it’s fully half the amount of casualties that we saw in the 33 days of the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon — or, I should say, the assault on Lebanon in 2006. So, within one day, we’re seeing a huge amount of casualties.
And at the same time, we’re seeing all of the tactics that they have been using in Gaza. They’re kind of speed running what has been happening in Gaza. They’ve been bombing ambulances, pathways to hospitals. As Michelle was just talking about, they’ve been asking people to evacuate, but really it is flee. They’re, you know, making people panic. And then they’re also bombing the roads out, the bridges. People are terrified. It’s very difficult for them to find their way out.
And it’s really — you know, I just left Beirut. I’ve been there. You know, I live there normally, and I left Beirut a few weeks ago, and knowing that there was a possibility that things would escalate while I was gone, but truly the speed with which this has happened has been incredibly shocking. And, you know, just between one night and the next to wake up and to see full-blown war and this level of casualties and carnage is just absolutely terrifying. So, you know, my initial reaction really is one of shock, even though I feel we should have been inured watching what’s been happening in Gaza over the period of an entire year. We shouldn’t be shocked anymore, but still it is absolutely shocking.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Lina, I wanted to ask you about the coverage, the media coverage, in the United States and Europe on this, because it’s clear, number one, that these pager and walkie-talkie attacks were sheer terrorism on the part of Israel and that this is a naked escalation of the war on Israel’s part, yet that’s not the way it’s being portrayed. Rather, they’re concentrating on the technological sophistication of Israel and being able to use these pagers and these walkie-talkies to attack Hezbollah.
LINA MOUNZER: Yes, Juan, absolutely. I mean, basically, what we’ve been seeing from the beginning of the assault on Gaza, as well, is the media has been — you know, we use the word “complicit,” but what does that really mean? I mean, the media has been actively helping manufacture consent for what has been happening, allowing people to — not just to be complacent, but to feel that whatever is happening in Gaza, in Lebanon is well deserved. You know, this is Israel’s counterterrorism. This is Israel “defending itself,” quote-unquote. And people have bought that, to the extent that now Israel can come up with whatever flimsy excuse. You know, one of the things that they’ve been saying now is that they are bombing locations in the south because Hezbollah uses people’s homes to hide rocket launchers, and so any civilian casualties incurred are part of this counterterrorism.
And so, for me, the pager attack and the way that it was covered is really only just a small part of all of the way that Israel’s attacks have been — are being covered, you know, whether it’s by the fact that they continue to repeat the lies about, you know, burned, raped, mutilated, beheaded babies. If you notice, every single time an Israeli spokesperson speaks, they will never — you know, when they talk about the attacks, they will always — you know, it’s like they’ve been given this directive to use all of these, like — to use this particular language that’s very incendiary and to remind people of, you know, burned, beheaded, etc. And no one calls them out on it, even though there is no evidence of any of these things actually having taken place.
And so, it was very shocking to me. You know, if this pager attack had happened anywhere else — and we keep saying that, which I think it’s actually quite sad that we have to keep saying, “Imagine this happened to you,” or “Imagine it happened in any other country. What would you think about it in that way?” You know, it’s this constant feeling of having to remind people that, you know, we are equally as human as anybody else.
But, truly, I mean, what you had was you had a series of small explosions going off against the intimacy of people’s bodies across the entire country. And it was — everybody was in a — it is the absolute definition of terrorism. People were terrified. People were afraid of the electronic devices in their own homes.
And yet, you know, you have people covering this as though it were a marvel. I mean, even I saw an opinion piece in The New York Times the other day that began with, “Even though we’re all amazed by this, even though we all think it’s such an incredible thing, you know, technological feat that Israel pulled off, we still must admit that this is an act of terrorism.” So, even if somebody uses those words, it’s always couched within a kind of inherent excuse. And it’s, frankly, sickening, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, it’s quite something to, for example, hear Leon Panetta, the former CIA director, the former defense secretary, saying that the blowing up of pagers and walkie-talkies is terrorism. So, he is describing it in that way, you know, represents the establishment in the United States. And, of course, you hear Biden and Blinken decrying the fact that there isn’t a ceasefire, but at the same time, we bring you this report today from ProPublica, just one of many different reports, that says, USAID and the State Department’s refugee bureau — and this has to do with Gaza, and you make serious links, like saying Israel is speed running the Gaza playbook. ProPublica has revealed USAID and State Department’s refugee bureau both concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza, but Secretary of State Blinken and other top Biden officials rejected the findings of the agencies, the two foremost U.S. authorities on humanitarian assistance. That decision allowed the U.S. to keep sending arms to Israel, because under U.S. law, the government is required to cut off weapons shipments to countries that prevent the delivery of U.S.-backed aid. And I wanted to bring that to the end of your piece, where you quote a Lebanese friend who’s been living in the U.S. for a while, saying, “I’m either in the flames or I’m in the place [that’s] lighting the fire.” Can you talk about the U.S. role in what’s happening in your country, Lebanon, and Gaza?
LINA MOUNZER: I mean, the United States is — you know, there’s always these debates about who is wagging the dog, let’s say, you know, this idea of like who is truly in control. Is it Israel, or is it the United States? For me, they are one and the same. Israel seems to be kind of like a colonial outpost of the United States, and I feel that their interests are very much aligned. And so, the United States continues to say that it is not interested in a regional war, it is not interested in a conflagration. At the same time, they have been running cover for what Israel has been doing in Gaza for an entire year.
And honestly, since pretty much October 8th, we could see that this day was coming. We could see that so long as the war continued in Gaza, as long as the assault on Gaza continued, that this was eventually going to come and engulf Lebanon. And, you know, once Lebanon goes up in flames, it’s also very likely that the entire region goes up in flames.
And so, the United States can say all they like that they are, you know, looking at the possibility of a ceasefire, that they don’t want for there to be a regional war, but the way that they have been doing things is — you know, frankly, says otherwise, including and up to the fact that every single time that there’s something that Israel needs to be called out on, we see them running interference for Israel. You know, all the State Department spokespeople refuse to comment. They will not allow journalists to ask them any questions, and they will deflect constantly.
And so, I mean, the United States is firmly partnered. You know, as they keep saying, they say, you know, “We’re looking to our partners in Israel.” That’s exactly what they mean. They’re partners in Israel. They are partners in crime. And they truly are one and the same. It’s very difficult, honestly, to separate between the two, the United States and Israel, at this point.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Lina, I wanted to ask you about the timing of this escalation by the Netanyahu government, because those of us who have followed the conflict in the Middle East for decades know that Israel almost always uses the period before a presidential election, or sometimes after the election before a new government is sworn in, to launch its fiercest attacks, precisely because it knows that the administration in power, given the volatility of U.S. elections, is reluctant to take any action to even mildly criticize Israel. I’m wondering what your thoughts about the timing of this escalation.
LINA MOUNZER: I mean, I think you’re absolutely correct, and yet, at the same time, because we have seen absolutely no change in the U.S. administration, the Biden administration has been absolutely gung ho, 100% behind Israel, you know, so they have the full support. So it’s not — it doesn’t seem to me like this is going to — that the United States at any point was even threatening to withdraw full support from what’s happening. So, yes, the timing is before the election, and at the same time, you know, it’s been going on for so long at this point that I don’t even know what the election has to do with it anymore. It just feels like the United States is busy right now with its own — you know, with the elections and what’s happening there, and Israel is just free to run rampage all over Gaza, all over Lebanon. So, it is related to the United States elections, and yet, at the same time, I really cannot see how it’s going to make any difference whether it’s Harris or Trump or Biden in power, frankly, at this stage. It seems like it’s just running on autopilot, this war, at this point.
AMY GOODMAN: Lina Mounzer, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Lebanese writer, translator, senior editor of the arts and literature magazine The Markaz Review. We’ll link your piece in Middle East Eye headlined “Israel’s war on Lebanon: The trauma of watching the 'Hollywood movie' from afar.”
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Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 25, 2024
Thousands Flee as Israel Continues Assault on Southern Lebanon
Sep 25, 2024
Tens of thousands of people have fled southern Lebanon as Israel’s military continues intense artillery and missile attacks. Lebanon’s Health Ministry reports the death toll has climbed to at least 569 people, including 50 children. Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched dozens of drones and rockets at Israel, including a long-range missile fired toward Tel Aviv that was intercepted by Israeli air defense systems. Israeli public media is reporting that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is readying troops for a possible ground invasion into Lebanon. In Beirut, officials say they’ve secured shelters for 10,000 people displaced from southern Lebanon. Some of the evacuees were forced into the same shelters they fled to nearly two decades ago during Israel’s July 2006 assault. This is Feryal Mehsen, a 58-year-old who narrowly survived a strike that destroyed her family home.
Feryal Mehsen: “The rocket landed in front of me. I was shocked. I couldn’t hear or see after that. Dust was all over the place. So I drove off quickly and headed to the upper road and kept going. I lost my temper because of what happened. It took me 12 to 15 hours to reach Beirut from Aitat because of the traffic congestion.”
U.N. Staffers and Journalist Among Those Killed by Israeli Strikes on Lebanon
Sep 25, 2024
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reports two United Nations staffers were among those killed by Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon. Ali Basma worked as a janitor at the UNHCR’s Tyre office for seven years before he was killed in an Israeli strike on Monday. And Dina Darwiche, a UNHCR employee featured in many of the agency’s videos, was killed along with her youngest son in an Israeli strike that seriously injured her husband and her other child. A separate Israeli strike killed cameraman Kamel Karaki of Al-Manar TV. He’s at least the fifth journalist killed by Israeli attacks on Lebanon since October 7.
Israeli Attacks on Gaza Kill 53 Palestinians, Including a Mother and Her Five Children
Sep 25, 2024
Israel’s military has continued its attacks on the Gaza Strip with at least 53 Palestinians killed over the past 24 hours. Among the dead are a mother killed along with her five children when Israel’s military bombed their house north of Rafah.
In the occupied West Bank, four Palestinians were shot and wounded as Israeli soldiers raided the Fawwar refugee camp south of Hebron. Elsewhere, a Palestinian doctor was hospitalized in serious condition after he was shot by Israeli forces during a raid near the city of Qalqilya.
World Leaders Gathered at U.N. General Assembly Condemn Israel’s Assaults on Gaza, Lebanon
Sep 25, 2024
Here in New York, world leaders gathered for the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday condemned Israel’s assaults on Palestine and Lebanon. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and said the failure of nations to stop the violence showed the United Nations system and Western values are “dying.” Chilean President Gabriel Boric also condemned Israel’s actions.
President Gabriel Boric: “I refuse to choose between Hamas’s terrorism or the massacre and genocidal behavior of Netanyahu’s Israel. We do not have to choose between barbarities. I choose humanity. We denounce the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and the de facto denial of the existence of an independent Palestinian state by the occupying country.”
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres accused Israel of violating the United Nations Charter and said too many governments were turning a blind eye to international human rights conventions and the decisions of international courts. Meanwhile, Joe Biden delivered his last speech to the United Nations as U.S. president, calling for a diplomatic solution to end Israel’s war on Gaza — even as his administration continues to provide weapons and billions of dollars in aid to Israel’s military.
President Joe Biden: “We’re also working to bring a greater measure of peace and stability in the Middle East. The world must not flinch from the horrors of October 7th. Any country, any country would have the right and responsibility to ensure that such an attack could never happen again.”
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“Lebanese Civilians Are Paying the Price”: Israeli Strikes Kill Nearly 600, Displace Tens of Thousands
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 25, 2024
Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
The Israeli military is reportedly preparing to invade Lebanon while continuing to launch extensive airstrikes across the country, forcing tens of thousands to flee. Lebanon’s Health Ministry reports the death toll has reached at least 569 people, with more than 1,800 wounded. Israeli strikes have killed United Nations employees, medical workers, at least one journalist and 50 children over the past two days. Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets at Israel, including a long-range missile fired toward Tel Aviv that was intercepted by Israeli air defense systems. “Lebanese civilians are paying the price,” says Aya Majzoub in Beirut, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, who calls Israel’s attacks “unprecedented” and “devastating.” “In a single day, on Monday, more than 500 people were killed. … It is one of the highest daily death tolls in recent global wars.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: At least 22 people have been killed in Lebanon today as the Israeli military continues its bombardment across Lebanon. Israel is expanding the zones of attack with strikes for the first time on the beach resort town of Jiyeh, just south of Beirut, and Maaysrah, in the mountains in the north. The death toll over the past three days is nearly 600 killed, including over 50 children, 40 women, with more than 1,800 people wounded. Tens of thousands have fled southern Lebanon, many going to Beirut and the coastal city of Sidon, and are sleeping in schools and parks, in their cars.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reports two United Nations staffers were among those killed by Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon. Ali Basma worked as a janitor at the UNHCR’s Tyre office for seven years before he was killed in an Israeli strike Monday. And Dina Darwiche, a 12-year staff member of UNHCR’s Beqaa office who was featured in UNHCR videos, was killed along with her son in an Israeli strike that seriously injured her husband and another of their children. Another Israeli strike killed cameraman Kamel Karaki of Al-Manar TV.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets at Israel, including a long-range missile fired toward Tel Aviv that was intercepted by Israeli air defense systems.
The U.N. Security Council has scheduled an emergency meeting on Lebanon today at the request of France.
For more, we go to Beirut, where we’re joined by Aya Majzoub. She’s Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Aya. Since you’re right there in Beirut, just describe the scene on the ground in the country.
AYA MAJZOUB: I mean, the onslaught that started Monday was really unprecedented. We saw tens and tens and tens of thousands of families hastily pack up their bags, leave their homes, without any idea where they’re going to next. All across Beirut now, you see cars that are parked with displaced families that have nowhere to go. The strikes have been expanding. There’s a lot of misinformation around. People are paranoid about another pager or walkie-talkie attack. I mean, the situation is really devastating.
And, Amy, you know, I really want to put the death count into perspective here. In a single day, on Monday, more than 500 people were killed, and that is a really astounding number. It is one of the highest daily death tolls in recent global wars. It is higher than most daily death tolls in Gaza in the past year. You know, in Gaza, despite the horrific Israeli onslaught, it took 18 days for the death count to reach 500. This happened in Lebanon in about 24 hours. In 2006, the 33-day war that took place between Hezbollah and Israel resulted in 1,100 deaths over 33 days. We’ve already achieved half of that in just 24 hours. So the numbers are really unprecedented.
And you see a major panic across the entire country. People don’t know where is safe anymore. The Israelis have expanded the areas that they’re targeting. They’re not limited to some areas in south Lebanon along the border and in the Beqaa. They’ve really expanded inwards into coastal cities, into mountains in the north. It really feels like nowhere is safe, and people are very much at a loss for what to do and where to go.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Aya, what about these phone calls and text messages and also reports of dropping of leaflets on the population by the Israelis? How are people reacting to that? And what indication do they have of even where to go?
AYA MAJZOUB: So, on Monday, the information minister said that around 80,000 people received calls to evacuate. And we tried to look into some of those calls, and there didn’t seem to be any pattern for who was receiving these calls. Some people in Beirut received them. Some people in the south received them, in the Beqaa. It was really all across the country. So it seemed like a tactic that was more intended to cause fear rather than an actual evacuation.
Some residents in south Lebanon did get more specific evacuation orders. But again, under international law, for evacuation orders to mean anything, they have to be effective, meaning that people must have the time to leave, and they must have the means to do so. What we saw on Monday was anything but. I mean, the instructions that people got were stay away from Hezbollah targets. Nobody knows — a civilian doesn’t know where a Hezbollah target is. So people just fled with the clothes off their back. It took 14, 15 hours for some families to make it from south Lebanon to Beirut. And we were receiving reports that there were some strikes on, you know, near where civilians were gathered to evacuate, in traffic jams. We’re still looking into those. But if that holds up, then that is also a serious violation.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I wanted to ask you — that Amnesty is calling for an international investigation into the deadly attacks using these exploding portable devices. Could you talk about what you’re calling for and why? And why isn’t this patently labeled as a terrorist attack?
AYA MAJZOUB: So, under international humanitarian law and human rights law, we don’t use the term “terrorist attacks.” For us, attacks are either lawful or unlawful. Our qualification of the pager attacks is if, as is being reported and as U.S. officials and Lebanese officials have said, Israel was behind the attacks, then international humanitarian law applies, because these attacks were part of an armed conflict. Under international humanitarian law, it is prohibited to use weapons indiscriminately, which we found that the pager attacks were. The people who detonated the pagers did not know who was given the pagers or the walkie-talkies, and they did not know who would be around the individuals carrying those pagers and walkie-talkies. Therefore, the attack was indiscriminate and, therefore, unlawful under international humanitarian law and should be investigated as a war crime.
The reason that Amnesty has called for an international investigation on this particular attack is because of the risks of this kind of warfare. It transforms everyday objects, like pagers and walkie-talkies, into essentially booby traps. And there is an explicit prohibition under international humanitarian law on the use of such booby traps. But we felt that such an attack, although it didn’t cause nearly the same number of casualties as Monday’s onslaught, did instill some fear and panic into the Lebanese society and is a really dangerous method of warfare to be using. It was unprecedented. And the involvement goes far beyond just, you know, the Israeli military. There are allegations around various shell companies. So we’re trying to look into all of the multifaceted aspects of this attack, but we do feel that an international investigation in this case is warranted.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you, Aya Majzoub, if you consider this a war on Hezbollah or Israel’s war on Lebanon.
AYA MAJZOUB: I mean, in terms of the impact on civilians, it is undeniable that Lebanese civilians are paying the price. You know, a lot of the media coverage of Monday’s attacks was Israel strikes Hezbollah targets. However, you know, we’ve looked at entire neighborhoods that have been flattened, residential towers that have been brought down, people’s livelihoods, their shops, their homes, their cars, all in ruins. You mentioned the deaths of the two UNHCR staff members. The health minister also mentioned the deaths of four medics and paramedics. Ambulances are being hit, medical centers. And the wave of displacement from south Lebanon, the Beqaa and other areas is now, I think, almost 500,000 people have had to leave their homes. Not all 500,000 people are Hezbollah. So, the impact on Lebanese civilians has really been catastrophic.
AMY GOODMAN: And the response of the United States? President Biden just gave his last speech at the United Nations as U.S. president. He — let’s see — the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has characterized this as almost a full-fledged war. President Biden said, “Too many on each side of the Israeli-Lebanon border remain displaced. Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest.” Even though a “situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is not [sic] possible.” He said “is still possible,” he said. Aya Majzoub, at the same time, the U.S. continuing to provide billions of dollars to the U.S. military — to the Israeli military.
AYA MAJZOUB: Yeah. I mean, there’s an obvious hypocrisy there. We consistently, since October 7, have been calling for the suspension of weapons sales and shipments to Israel. We’ve continued to call for respect of IHL. We have, in at least one instance, documented a possible war crime that Israel committed in Lebanon using U.S. weapons. So, if the U.S. really was serious about a deescalation in the region, then they should start by stopping arms and weapons shipments to Israel and by also supporting judicial criminal proceedings, including at the ICC.
AMY GOODMAN: Aya Majzoub, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Middle East and North Africa, speaking to us from Beirut, Lebanon.
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 25, 2024
Thousands Flee as Israel Continues Assault on Southern Lebanon
Sep 25, 2024
Tens of thousands of people have fled southern Lebanon as Israel’s military continues intense artillery and missile attacks. Lebanon’s Health Ministry reports the death toll has climbed to at least 569 people, including 50 children. Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched dozens of drones and rockets at Israel, including a long-range missile fired toward Tel Aviv that was intercepted by Israeli air defense systems. Israeli public media is reporting that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is readying troops for a possible ground invasion into Lebanon. In Beirut, officials say they’ve secured shelters for 10,000 people displaced from southern Lebanon. Some of the evacuees were forced into the same shelters they fled to nearly two decades ago during Israel’s July 2006 assault. This is Feryal Mehsen, a 58-year-old who narrowly survived a strike that destroyed her family home.
Feryal Mehsen: “The rocket landed in front of me. I was shocked. I couldn’t hear or see after that. Dust was all over the place. So I drove off quickly and headed to the upper road and kept going. I lost my temper because of what happened. It took me 12 to 15 hours to reach Beirut from Aitat because of the traffic congestion.”
U.N. Staffers and Journalist Among Those Killed by Israeli Strikes on Lebanon
Sep 25, 2024
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reports two United Nations staffers were among those killed by Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon. Ali Basma worked as a janitor at the UNHCR’s Tyre office for seven years before he was killed in an Israeli strike on Monday. And Dina Darwiche, a UNHCR employee featured in many of the agency’s videos, was killed along with her youngest son in an Israeli strike that seriously injured her husband and her other child. A separate Israeli strike killed cameraman Kamel Karaki of Al-Manar TV. He’s at least the fifth journalist killed by Israeli attacks on Lebanon since October 7.
Israeli Attacks on Gaza Kill 53 Palestinians, Including a Mother and Her Five Children
Sep 25, 2024
Israel’s military has continued its attacks on the Gaza Strip with at least 53 Palestinians killed over the past 24 hours. Among the dead are a mother killed along with her five children when Israel’s military bombed their house north of Rafah.
In the occupied West Bank, four Palestinians were shot and wounded as Israeli soldiers raided the Fawwar refugee camp south of Hebron. Elsewhere, a Palestinian doctor was hospitalized in serious condition after he was shot by Israeli forces during a raid near the city of Qalqilya.
World Leaders Gathered at U.N. General Assembly Condemn Israel’s Assaults on Gaza, Lebanon
Sep 25, 2024
Here in New York, world leaders gathered for the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday condemned Israel’s assaults on Palestine and Lebanon. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and said the failure of nations to stop the violence showed the United Nations system and Western values are “dying.” Chilean President Gabriel Boric also condemned Israel’s actions.
President Gabriel Boric: “I refuse to choose between Hamas’s terrorism or the massacre and genocidal behavior of Netanyahu’s Israel. We do not have to choose between barbarities. I choose humanity. We denounce the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and the de facto denial of the existence of an independent Palestinian state by the occupying country.”
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres accused Israel of violating the United Nations Charter and said too many governments were turning a blind eye to international human rights conventions and the decisions of international courts. Meanwhile, Joe Biden delivered his last speech to the United Nations as U.S. president, calling for a diplomatic solution to end Israel’s war on Gaza — even as his administration continues to provide weapons and billions of dollars in aid to Israel’s military.
President Joe Biden: “We’re also working to bring a greater measure of peace and stability in the Middle East. The world must not flinch from the horrors of October 7th. Any country, any country would have the right and responsibility to ensure that such an attack could never happen again.”
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“Lebanese Civilians Are Paying the Price”: Israeli Strikes Kill Nearly 600, Displace Tens of Thousands
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 25, 2024
Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
The Israeli military is reportedly preparing to invade Lebanon while continuing to launch extensive airstrikes across the country, forcing tens of thousands to flee. Lebanon’s Health Ministry reports the death toll has reached at least 569 people, with more than 1,800 wounded. Israeli strikes have killed United Nations employees, medical workers, at least one journalist and 50 children over the past two days. Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets at Israel, including a long-range missile fired toward Tel Aviv that was intercepted by Israeli air defense systems. “Lebanese civilians are paying the price,” says Aya Majzoub in Beirut, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, who calls Israel’s attacks “unprecedented” and “devastating.” “In a single day, on Monday, more than 500 people were killed. … It is one of the highest daily death tolls in recent global wars.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: At least 22 people have been killed in Lebanon today as the Israeli military continues its bombardment across Lebanon. Israel is expanding the zones of attack with strikes for the first time on the beach resort town of Jiyeh, just south of Beirut, and Maaysrah, in the mountains in the north. The death toll over the past three days is nearly 600 killed, including over 50 children, 40 women, with more than 1,800 people wounded. Tens of thousands have fled southern Lebanon, many going to Beirut and the coastal city of Sidon, and are sleeping in schools and parks, in their cars.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reports two United Nations staffers were among those killed by Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon. Ali Basma worked as a janitor at the UNHCR’s Tyre office for seven years before he was killed in an Israeli strike Monday. And Dina Darwiche, a 12-year staff member of UNHCR’s Beqaa office who was featured in UNHCR videos, was killed along with her son in an Israeli strike that seriously injured her husband and another of their children. Another Israeli strike killed cameraman Kamel Karaki of Al-Manar TV.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets at Israel, including a long-range missile fired toward Tel Aviv that was intercepted by Israeli air defense systems.
The U.N. Security Council has scheduled an emergency meeting on Lebanon today at the request of France.
For more, we go to Beirut, where we’re joined by Aya Majzoub. She’s Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Aya. Since you’re right there in Beirut, just describe the scene on the ground in the country.
AYA MAJZOUB: I mean, the onslaught that started Monday was really unprecedented. We saw tens and tens and tens of thousands of families hastily pack up their bags, leave their homes, without any idea where they’re going to next. All across Beirut now, you see cars that are parked with displaced families that have nowhere to go. The strikes have been expanding. There’s a lot of misinformation around. People are paranoid about another pager or walkie-talkie attack. I mean, the situation is really devastating.
And, Amy, you know, I really want to put the death count into perspective here. In a single day, on Monday, more than 500 people were killed, and that is a really astounding number. It is one of the highest daily death tolls in recent global wars. It is higher than most daily death tolls in Gaza in the past year. You know, in Gaza, despite the horrific Israeli onslaught, it took 18 days for the death count to reach 500. This happened in Lebanon in about 24 hours. In 2006, the 33-day war that took place between Hezbollah and Israel resulted in 1,100 deaths over 33 days. We’ve already achieved half of that in just 24 hours. So the numbers are really unprecedented.
And you see a major panic across the entire country. People don’t know where is safe anymore. The Israelis have expanded the areas that they’re targeting. They’re not limited to some areas in south Lebanon along the border and in the Beqaa. They’ve really expanded inwards into coastal cities, into mountains in the north. It really feels like nowhere is safe, and people are very much at a loss for what to do and where to go.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Aya, what about these phone calls and text messages and also reports of dropping of leaflets on the population by the Israelis? How are people reacting to that? And what indication do they have of even where to go?
AYA MAJZOUB: So, on Monday, the information minister said that around 80,000 people received calls to evacuate. And we tried to look into some of those calls, and there didn’t seem to be any pattern for who was receiving these calls. Some people in Beirut received them. Some people in the south received them, in the Beqaa. It was really all across the country. So it seemed like a tactic that was more intended to cause fear rather than an actual evacuation.
Some residents in south Lebanon did get more specific evacuation orders. But again, under international law, for evacuation orders to mean anything, they have to be effective, meaning that people must have the time to leave, and they must have the means to do so. What we saw on Monday was anything but. I mean, the instructions that people got were stay away from Hezbollah targets. Nobody knows — a civilian doesn’t know where a Hezbollah target is. So people just fled with the clothes off their back. It took 14, 15 hours for some families to make it from south Lebanon to Beirut. And we were receiving reports that there were some strikes on, you know, near where civilians were gathered to evacuate, in traffic jams. We’re still looking into those. But if that holds up, then that is also a serious violation.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I wanted to ask you — that Amnesty is calling for an international investigation into the deadly attacks using these exploding portable devices. Could you talk about what you’re calling for and why? And why isn’t this patently labeled as a terrorist attack?
AYA MAJZOUB: So, under international humanitarian law and human rights law, we don’t use the term “terrorist attacks.” For us, attacks are either lawful or unlawful. Our qualification of the pager attacks is if, as is being reported and as U.S. officials and Lebanese officials have said, Israel was behind the attacks, then international humanitarian law applies, because these attacks were part of an armed conflict. Under international humanitarian law, it is prohibited to use weapons indiscriminately, which we found that the pager attacks were. The people who detonated the pagers did not know who was given the pagers or the walkie-talkies, and they did not know who would be around the individuals carrying those pagers and walkie-talkies. Therefore, the attack was indiscriminate and, therefore, unlawful under international humanitarian law and should be investigated as a war crime.
The reason that Amnesty has called for an international investigation on this particular attack is because of the risks of this kind of warfare. It transforms everyday objects, like pagers and walkie-talkies, into essentially booby traps. And there is an explicit prohibition under international humanitarian law on the use of such booby traps. But we felt that such an attack, although it didn’t cause nearly the same number of casualties as Monday’s onslaught, did instill some fear and panic into the Lebanese society and is a really dangerous method of warfare to be using. It was unprecedented. And the involvement goes far beyond just, you know, the Israeli military. There are allegations around various shell companies. So we’re trying to look into all of the multifaceted aspects of this attack, but we do feel that an international investigation in this case is warranted.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you, Aya Majzoub, if you consider this a war on Hezbollah or Israel’s war on Lebanon.
AYA MAJZOUB: I mean, in terms of the impact on civilians, it is undeniable that Lebanese civilians are paying the price. You know, a lot of the media coverage of Monday’s attacks was Israel strikes Hezbollah targets. However, you know, we’ve looked at entire neighborhoods that have been flattened, residential towers that have been brought down, people’s livelihoods, their shops, their homes, their cars, all in ruins. You mentioned the deaths of the two UNHCR staff members. The health minister also mentioned the deaths of four medics and paramedics. Ambulances are being hit, medical centers. And the wave of displacement from south Lebanon, the Beqaa and other areas is now, I think, almost 500,000 people have had to leave their homes. Not all 500,000 people are Hezbollah. So, the impact on Lebanese civilians has really been catastrophic.
AMY GOODMAN: And the response of the United States? President Biden just gave his last speech at the United Nations as U.S. president. He — let’s see — the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has characterized this as almost a full-fledged war. President Biden said, “Too many on each side of the Israeli-Lebanon border remain displaced. Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest.” Even though a “situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is not [sic] possible.” He said “is still possible,” he said. Aya Majzoub, at the same time, the U.S. continuing to provide billions of dollars to the U.S. military — to the Israeli military.
AYA MAJZOUB: Yeah. I mean, there’s an obvious hypocrisy there. We consistently, since October 7, have been calling for the suspension of weapons sales and shipments to Israel. We’ve continued to call for respect of IHL. We have, in at least one instance, documented a possible war crime that Israel committed in Lebanon using U.S. weapons. So, if the U.S. really was serious about a deescalation in the region, then they should start by stopping arms and weapons shipments to Israel and by also supporting judicial criminal proceedings, including at the ICC.
AMY GOODMAN: Aya Majzoub, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Middle East and North Africa, speaking to us from Beirut, Lebanon.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Thu Sep 26, 2024 11:22 pm
Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 26, 2024
Israel Rejects Ceasefire Calls, Prepares for Possible Ground Invasion as Lebanon Death Toll Tops 620
Sep 26, 2024
Israel has rejected a possible ceasefire as it continues its assault on Lebanon. The U.S., France, Canada, Australia, Japan, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia had called for a 21-day ceasefire as the death toll in Lebanon topped 620 people, at least 72 of those killed on Wednesday. Despite resounding international warnings against escalating attacks, Israel is doubling down, with its military chief Herzi Halevi telling troops Wednesday, “You hear the jets overhead; we have been striking all day. This is both to prepare the ground for your possible entry and to continue degrading Hezbollah.”
Half a million people in Lebanon are now believed to be displaced. Hospitals are overrun with victims of Israeli attacks. This is Dr. Adel Raee, director of the Raee Hospital in Sidon.
Dr. Adel Raee: “Since Monday until today, we have received 136 wounded, including 36 martyrs. Among those 36 martyrs, 18 were torn to pieces. There are still bodies in the morgue that require DNA testing for identification.”
We’ll go to Lebanon for the latest later in the broadcast.
“Israel Is Violating Our Sovereignty”: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Pleads with UNSC to Do Its Job
Sep 26, 2024
Here in New York, Lebanon’s interim Prime Minister Najib Mikati pleaded with the U.N. Security Council Wednesday to intervene to stop Israel’s bombardment during an emergency session. Mikati said, “Israel is violating our sovereignty by sending their warplanes and drones to our skies.” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke from the sidelines of the Security Council meeting Wednesday.
Abbas Araghchi: “The Security Council must act now to halt Israel’s war and enforce an immediate ceasefire, and by that, to save innocent lives. If not, the region risks full-scale conflict, and history will hold Israel’s enablers, especially the United States, responsible. … Iran will not remain indifferent in case of a full-scale war in Lebanon. We stand with the people of Lebanon with all means.”
This comes as a new Oxfam report is calling for urgent reform of the “colonial and archaic” Security Council. Oxfam says the UNSC’s five permanent members — the U.S., Russia, China, the U.K. and France — are “failing people living in conflict” as they consistently abuse their veto power in their own interests, blocking opportunities for peace around the world.
One Year into Genocide, Palestinians in Gaza Warn Israel Is Poised to Subject Lebanon to Same Fate
Sep 26, 2024
In Gaza, displaced Palestinians are expressing solidarity with Lebanese people under Israeli attack.
Umm Muhammad Abu Shaqfa: “What is happening to us in Gaza is happening to Lebanon now. I have been displaced from the north for the last five months. And the world is quiet and is still standing by Israel. How is it the world is standing by it? In what viewpoint are they standing by them? How did they see the oppressor, and how did they see the oppressed? I don’t understand how. I don’t know how to comprehend this in my head, this mass genocide, the massacre of children, women, elderly, and making us live in tents and crisis that have no end. And now they are doing the same to Lebanon. But the war will not end unless it ends in Lebanon. If it ends in Lebanon, it will end in Gaza.”
Israel Dumps Truck with 88 Unidentified Palestinian Bodies in Gaza
Sep 26, 2024
In Gaza, the Palestinian Health Ministry refused to receive an Israeli truck filled with the unidentified remains of 88 Palestinians killed by Israel. A distraught mother searching for her missing son went to meet the truck.
Umm Tamer Yassin: “I got a call telling me there are dead bodies coming from Israel. I came running to see if my son is fine or dead. I want to know if he is among the dead bodies. … Look! These are dead bodies being thrown. They throw it to the people, left them to the streets, and their families cannot identify their bodies. Here is the truck. The bodies are inside. We cannot see them.”
Journalist Mujahed al-Saadi Arrested Amid Unprecedented Israeli Assault on West Bank Reporters
Sep 26, 2024
The Committee to Protect Journalists reports an unprecedented number of journalists and media workers have been arrested by Israeli forces across the occupied West Bank over the past year. CPJ has documented a total of 54 such arrests since October 7; 36 remain jailed, including 14 held without charges under Israel’s “administrative detention” policy. Among them is Palestinian journalist Mujahed al-Saadi, who was beaten along with his wife by Israeli soldiers during a violent raid on their home in the early hours of September 19. He has since had no contact with his lawyer or family.
“It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive” Wins Emmy for Outstanding Hard News Feature
Sep 26, 2024
Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda has won a News and Documentary Emmy for her AJ+ report “It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive.” A group of Hollywood celebrities and pro-Israel groups unsuccessfully attempted to disqualify Owda’s widely acclaimed report, which chronicles her family’s forced evacuation of their home in Beit Hanoun after Israel launched its assault on Gaza.
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“Hell Is Breaking Loose in Lebanon”: Israel Rejects Ceasefire Proposal as U.N. Chief Calls for Peace
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 26, 2024
Israel is continuing its bombardment of Lebanon and preparing for a possible ground invasion of the country, with the Netanyahu government rejecting a proposed 21-day ceasefire put forward by the United States, France, Canada, Australia, Japan, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. About 500,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced, and the Health Ministry reports at least 72 people were killed and nearly 400 wounded in Israeli attacks on Wednesday, bringing the death toll to over 620 in recent days. “There is a lot of suffering. There is a lot of hardship right now,” says Beirut-based journalist Lara Bitar, who details how Israel has repeatedly attacked and invaded Lebanese territory going back decades. “The source of this pain can be pinpointed to the presence of the Israeli settler state in our region that continues to wreak havoc in Palestine, in Lebanon and across most of the world.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to Lebanon, where some 500,000 people have been displaced by Israel’s bombardment. The Lebanese Health Ministry reports at least 72 people were killed and nearly 400 wounded in Israeli attacks on Wednesday, bringing the death toll to over 620 in recent days. Earlier today, Israel rejected a proposed 21-day ceasefire that had been called for by the United States, France, Canada, Australia, Japan, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, Israel has called up two brigades to the Lebanese border in a sign that a ground invasion could be imminent. U.N. Secretary-General António Gutteres called for peace on Wednesday.
SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: Hell is breaking loose in Lebanon. … An all-out war must be avoided at all costs. It would surely be an all-out catastrophe. The people of Lebanon, as well as the people of Israel and the people of the world, cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: 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.
Lara, if you can talk about what’s happening on the ground in Beirut? And here we are in New York right next to the United Nations. You have this international call for a ceasefire, but apparently the Netanyahu government of Israel is saying no, the Israeli general in charge of the IDF forces rallying troops, saying he’s preparing them for a ground invasion of Lebanon.
LARA BITAR: Good morning.
Here in Beirut, nobody really has any hope in these processes in the United Nations, in the words of the Biden administration or in the words also of the Netanyahu government.
I wanted to share with you some things that were relayed to me by one of our journalists who is now working in the south. He is going around to different schools that are hosting people who have been displaced from their homes but remain in southern Lebanon. So, first, he relayed to me that people are very, very tired. They’re unable to sleep for longer than a few minutes at a time because of the relentless bombardment by Israel. And he said that the shelters are full with elderly people, who have lived through so many massacres and witnessed so much horror inflicted by the Israeli settler colony. And he shared the story of one woman in particular. He said that she was in her eighties. She was wearing her house key as a pendant. And she told him that this is nothing in comparison to what they have lived through over the past few decades. And she mentioned the 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut, the first Qana massacre in 1996, the second Qana massacre in 2006, and so on and so forth.
And the one thing that I want to relay here is that for a lot of these people who have been displaced from their homes, whose homes have been destroyed, their attachment to their land only grows stronger. And this is a prevailing sentiment among those who have been displaced. And this is not uncommon for Lebanon.
So, if you will just allow me 30 seconds or so, I would like to read a brief passage that I came across yesterday, written by Mahdi Amel, who was a Marxist intellectual. And he wrote this a few months after the 1982 invasion of Beirut. And he writes, “They said that the war in Lebanon would be swift and that in a few days those who have not knelt and who understand only the language of force would kneel. They declared that there would be no salaam, but shalom, and that Israel is the Rome of our modern times. To the kings of Israel, to the scum of our nation and our foul Arab regimes, to the petty fascists and to their imperialist masters, we say: It pleases us to spit in your faces. We will fight you even with our nails. Our fists are the compass of history. And the bullet of our freedom will pierce your hearts. To them, we say, brick by brick, we build a world on your graves. You are the dustbin of history, and Beirut is the city of the free. We have vowed that we will resist you.”
And this is not to say that everyone in Lebanon shares this sentiment, and definitely not the over 200,000, up to half a million people who have been displaced from their homes over the past few weeks, because there is a lot of suffering. There is a lot of hardship right now. People are struggling to find housing, shelter, food, diapers, milk. Hospitals are at capacity. People are really exhausted and suffering across the board. But for the most part, this pain can be pinpointed — the source of this pain can be pinpointed to the presence of the Israeli settler state in our region that continues to wreak havoc in Palestine, in Lebanon and across most of the world.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Lara Bitar, you talked about this quotation that you read from 1982, when Israel invaded in 1982, and you’ve said that you don’t have much faith in a ceasefire. So, if you could provide some context to a possible imminent invasion, Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Talk about what happened in not just 1982, but also in 1978 and 2006.
LARA BITAR: I think we have to take very, very seriously every genocidal intent that is now being uttered by different government and military officials in Israel. Lebanon has a long history of invasions and occupation and terror by the Israeli state. And we can go even further back, to ’47, ’48. Lebanon [sic] seized over a dozen Lebanese towns and villages in ’78. There was also an invasion in ’82. The ’82 invasion lasted until the liberation in May 2000. There was also an attempted ground operation in 2006. And in terms of the 2006 attempted ground invasion into Lebanon, soldiers who returned home recounted how traumatizing it was for them, how they felt that they were fighting with ghosts. They could not see the fighters on the other side.
So, I think it’s important to note that coming into Lebanon is deeply traumatizing and frightening experience for the Israeli soldiers, who are accustomed to throwing bombs from the safety of the airspace. But on-the-ground battle, on-the-ground confrontation with real fighters who are fighting for their land, for their country, for their people, they don’t stand much of a chance.
And to the point of pushing for a ceasefire or for a truce or for the Biden administration having any kind of redline, we saw exactly what happened in Gaza over the past 11 months. The Biden administration was repeatedly saying that Rafah was a redline, that a ground invasion into Gaza was a redline. But the Israeli state, there were absolutely no repercussions, no ramifications for any of the actions that the Israeli state was doing. And this is what compelled it to continue to escalate, to continue to escalate its massacres, its terror of the Palestinian people in Gaza, who to this day continue to endure daily massacres that are not being reported on as much as they were at the beginning of the war.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Lara Bitar, so, if you could tell us a little bit more about how you think Hezbollah might respond to a possible invasion? And also explain Resolution — U.N. Resolution 1701, because the U.N. secretary-general, speaking Wednesday, he warned that Lebanon is at the brink, calling for an urgent ceasefire, but he also called for the implementation of U.N. Resolutions 1559 and 1701.
LARA BITAR: I can’t really predict how Hezbollah will respond, but what we know is that, so far, Hezbollah has continuously tried to deescalate. Hezbollah is not targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure. They have consistently aimed their weapons at military infrastructure and sites and soldiers, even after the pager attack, the walkie-talkie attack, repeated campaigns on Dahieh. Just a few minutes ago, before I joined you, Dahieh was yet again bombarded by the Israelis. I think this is the eighth attack on the Lebanese capital. Despite all of this escalation from the Israeli side, Hezbollah remains restraint, continues to try to deescalate. And the only ask here, which is not a really unreasonable ask, is for Israel to immediately end its war on the Palestinian people of Gaza after 11 months.
As far as U.N. resolutions, for the most part, they’re not legally binding. For the most part, they’re not respected. The 1701 Resolution, that was adopted after the 2006 war, is habitually, if not daily, violated by the Israelis in a variety of different ways. That’s why the majority of the Lebanese population is not holding its breath waiting for a U.N. resolution or for the Security Council or even for the international community. I think not just the people in Lebanon, but people around the world have completely lost faith in the so-called international order, the rule of law.
So, right now we can only expect things to get significantly worse. So long as the international community does not take any action to halt the insanity and the barbarism of the Israeli state, so long as the Western world continues to supply the Israelis with weapons, with support, with diplomatic cover, we have very little chance of seeing an end to this campaign anytime soon.
But on the other hand, what people can do, people anywhere can boycott Israel, can put pressure on their institutions, on their universities, on the corporations in which they work, and to divest from Israel. The only chance that we have is for the world and for comrades around the world to put this kind of pressure on their governments and on their institutions to isolate Israel, because Israel will only stop this campaign and this war around the region if it becomes too costly for it. And right now it’s not paying any kind of price for its actions.
AMY GOODMAN: As we wrap up, Lara Bitar, there is a protest that is approaching the United Nations now, especially people protesting what’s happening in Gaza. You have Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who delayed his trip by a day. He was supposed to address the U.N. General Assembly today; he’s going to do it tomorrow. What do you expect him to say? And in the U.S. media, on television, they’re saying that Blinken has been desperately, you know, rallying countries on the sidelines to get this 21-day ceasefire that the U.S., France, Canada, Australia, Japan, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are now calling for. But you have The Guardian reporting that, in fact, an effort by France and Britain to secure a joint statement by the U.N. Security Council calling for a ceasefire has stalled in the face of U.S. objections. Your final thoughts, Lara?
LARA BITAR: At the risk of repeating myself, I don’t see —or, we, for the most part, don’t really believe anything that’s coming out of the Biden administration, neither its White House spokespeople or Blinken and others who are representing the U.S. And again, we have seen these maneuvers and this manipulation of public opinion, manipulation of the press for 11 months. They are not serious about a ceasefire, neither in Gaza nor in Lebanon, regardless of what they’re saying, regardless of what narrative they’re trying to sell us. We’re simply not buying it.
AMY GOODMAN: Lara Bitar, I want to thank you for being with us, editor-in-chief of The Public Source, a Beirut-based independent media organization, speaking to us from Lebanon.
Next up, Israel deliberately blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza, two government bodies concluded. Antony Blinken rejected them. We’ll speak to the reporter who exposed this story in ProPublica. Stay with us.
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U.S. Gov’t Agencies Found Israel Was Blocking Gaza Aid. Blinken Ignored Them to Keep Weapons Flowing
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 26, 2024
We speak with Brett Murphy, the ProPublica reporterbehind a blockbuster exposé that revealed the Biden administration ignored warnings from its own experts about Israel blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza in order to keep supplying the country with weapons. USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the State Department’s refugees bureau both concluded earlier this year that Israeli authorities routinely impeded delivery of food and medicine into the devastated Palestinian territory, where hunger, disease and displacement have wreaked havoc on the civilian population. Although U.S. law requires the government to stop arms shipments to countries that prevent the delivery of U.S.-backed aid, Secretary of State Antony Blinken ignored the findings and told Congress Israel was not restricting humanitarian assistance — helping to keep weapons flowing to the Israeli military to continue its assault on Gaza.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: ProPublica has revealed USAID and the State Department’s refugees bureau both concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza, but U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other top Biden officials rejected the findings of the agencies even though they’re considered the two foremost U.S. authorities on humanitarian assistance. Blinken’s decision allowed the U.S. to keep sending arms to Israel. Under U.S. law, the government is required to cut off weapons shipments to countries preventing the delivery of U.S.-backed aid. Days after receiving the reports, Blinken told Congress, quote, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”
On Tuesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, called for Blinken’s resignation, accusing him of lying to Congress. [Blinken] was asked about the ProPublica report Wednesday on CBS. This was his response.
SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN: So, this is actually pretty, pretty typical. We had a report to put out on the humanitarian situation in Gaza and what Israel was doing to try to make sure that people got the assistance they needed. And I had different assessments from different parts of the State Department, from other agencies that were involved, like USAID. My job is to sort through them, which I did, draw some conclusions from that. And we put our report, and we found that Israel needed to do a better job on the humanitarian assistance. We’ve seen improvements since then. It’s still not sufficient.
AMY GOODMAN: Of course, that was U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
We’re joined now by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Brett Murphy, a reporter at ProPublica, where his new piece is headlined “Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza, Two Government Bodies Concluded. Antony Blinken Rejected Them.”
Can you respond to Blinken’s response to your report, Brett?
BRETT MURPHY: Yeah. So, he said, basically, it was his decision to make. He was getting a lot of information, and he ultimately decided that it was not the assessment of the State Department that the Israelis were deliberately blocking aid.
What he didn’t mention and what’s really important to note here is that the two agencies that had told him that they were in fact deliberately blocking aid, one being USAID, are the foremost experts in this, as you said. They are the ones responsible for delivering humanitarian assistance into Gaza, into war zones all over the world. In addition to that, his own refugees bureau had made a similar conclusion called that a law called the Foreign Assistance Act should have been triggered because the Israelis were restricting aid.
The other assessments he was receiving were nowhere near as detailed as what he received from USAID. They sent a 17-page memo with detailed evidence describing exactly what they knew to be the truth on the ground, and he ultimately rejected those findings in what he told Congress.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, if you could elaborate, Brett, also on what U.S. obligations are under the Foreign Assistance Act?
BRETT MURPHY: Sure, yeah. So, it’s this law that has not been used very much systematically, but it basically says a foreign partner or ally that is receiving military assistance from the U.S. cannot at the same time be blocking U.S.-backed humanitarian assistance into a war zone. If it is the conclusion of the U.S. government that that is happening, the U.S. government is then required to cut off the military assistance. That’s what the law says.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Is there any other context in which this has occurred, that the U.S. has denied that a country is preventing U.S. aid from getting in in a conflict zone?
BRETT MURPHY: The last time it came up was in Turkey and Armenia. That was kind of the original context of the law itself. But, like I was saying, we have never truly been applying this in a systematic way. So, this has really been an obscure provision in the Foreign Assistance Act, but this year lawmakers, activist groups have been calling for the Biden administration to be using this exact provision.
AMY GOODMAN: We interviewed two people: Stacy Gilbert, the former senior adviser in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration — she resigned over this after 20 years in service — and Alex Smith, a former contractor for USAID, who was forced to resign over the Biden administration’s support for the war on Gaza. Talk about the significance of what they did, and Antony Blinken understanding full well what they understood and why they left.
BRETT MURPHY: Stacy Gilbert worked on the report that Secretary Blinken ultimately delivered to Congress. She was working on the drafts of that report. She was in the refugees bureau. She had a very clear understanding of what was going on. And what she ultimately said, when she resigned, when she saw the final version of what he had told Congress, she said, “We know this not to be true. We, the experts inside of the government, know that the truth on the ground is that the Israelis have been blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza.” This is what she said, and this is what she resigned over. And she said in her resignation letter that this report, what he told Congress, “is going to haunt us.”
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And can you explain: How detailed was that USAID memo that Blinken saw?
BRETT MURPHY: It was extremely detailed. It’s 17 pages of evidence that they were bringing to bear. The example that stuck out to me the most was on food, food shipments that were being held up just 30 miles outside of Gaza. There was enough flour, USAID said, to feed 1.5 million Palestinians for at least five months. But at the time — this was in the February to March timeframe — Israelis were not allowing flour into Gaza, because they said it was going to the U.N.’s branch there that had been accused of having ties to Hamas, so they were not allowing the flour in.
And this is what — this is the kind of thing that was really bothering USAID and frustrating their efforts. They couldn’t get food in. They couldn’t get medicine in, other supplies. A lot of their trucks, from, like, the Red Crescent, other humanitarian groups, were being turned around because of items in there the Israelis were not allowing in. Aid workers had been killed. Their convoys had been targeted. These were all the types of examples that USAID was telling Secretary Blinken.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And basically, there’s no recourse now, right, because it’s done? Or is there anything that the U.S., the Biden administration could now do differently?
BRETT MURPHY: Yeah, the law is not — it was not just a one-time shot. And this is what the U.S. government said, too, in response. They said, “We’re currently — we’re always assessing the situation.” They said that they believed that the situation was improving since after they applied leverage with this. The folks I talked to, both inside the government and in the humanitarian world, said that’s not true at all. The situation is as bad as it’s ever been, including since the Rafah incursion. But this law does not only have — you know, whenever Blinken addresses Congress to it; it can be applied at any point.
AMY GOODMAN: That they could cut off, that the U.S. government could cut off aid to — military arms to Israel.
BRETT MURPHY: Absolutely. If it assesses that the Israelis are deliberately blocking humanitarian assistance at any point, they can apply this law. That’s right.
AMY GOODMAN: Brett Murphy, we want to thank you for being with us, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for ProPublica. We’ll link to your new article, “Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza, Two Government Bodies Concluded. Antony Blinken Rejected Them.”
And this update from the streets of New York: Twenty-five protesters have been arrested outside the United Nations ahead of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s arrival to address the U.N. on Friday. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 26, 2024
Israel Rejects Ceasefire Calls, Prepares for Possible Ground Invasion as Lebanon Death Toll Tops 620
Sep 26, 2024
Israel has rejected a possible ceasefire as it continues its assault on Lebanon. The U.S., France, Canada, Australia, Japan, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia had called for a 21-day ceasefire as the death toll in Lebanon topped 620 people, at least 72 of those killed on Wednesday. Despite resounding international warnings against escalating attacks, Israel is doubling down, with its military chief Herzi Halevi telling troops Wednesday, “You hear the jets overhead; we have been striking all day. This is both to prepare the ground for your possible entry and to continue degrading Hezbollah.”
Half a million people in Lebanon are now believed to be displaced. Hospitals are overrun with victims of Israeli attacks. This is Dr. Adel Raee, director of the Raee Hospital in Sidon.
Dr. Adel Raee: “Since Monday until today, we have received 136 wounded, including 36 martyrs. Among those 36 martyrs, 18 were torn to pieces. There are still bodies in the morgue that require DNA testing for identification.”
We’ll go to Lebanon for the latest later in the broadcast.
“Israel Is Violating Our Sovereignty”: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Pleads with UNSC to Do Its Job
Sep 26, 2024
Here in New York, Lebanon’s interim Prime Minister Najib Mikati pleaded with the U.N. Security Council Wednesday to intervene to stop Israel’s bombardment during an emergency session. Mikati said, “Israel is violating our sovereignty by sending their warplanes and drones to our skies.” Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi spoke from the sidelines of the Security Council meeting Wednesday.
Abbas Araghchi: “The Security Council must act now to halt Israel’s war and enforce an immediate ceasefire, and by that, to save innocent lives. If not, the region risks full-scale conflict, and history will hold Israel’s enablers, especially the United States, responsible. … Iran will not remain indifferent in case of a full-scale war in Lebanon. We stand with the people of Lebanon with all means.”
This comes as a new Oxfam report is calling for urgent reform of the “colonial and archaic” Security Council. Oxfam says the UNSC’s five permanent members — the U.S., Russia, China, the U.K. and France — are “failing people living in conflict” as they consistently abuse their veto power in their own interests, blocking opportunities for peace around the world.
One Year into Genocide, Palestinians in Gaza Warn Israel Is Poised to Subject Lebanon to Same Fate
Sep 26, 2024
In Gaza, displaced Palestinians are expressing solidarity with Lebanese people under Israeli attack.
Umm Muhammad Abu Shaqfa: “What is happening to us in Gaza is happening to Lebanon now. I have been displaced from the north for the last five months. And the world is quiet and is still standing by Israel. How is it the world is standing by it? In what viewpoint are they standing by them? How did they see the oppressor, and how did they see the oppressed? I don’t understand how. I don’t know how to comprehend this in my head, this mass genocide, the massacre of children, women, elderly, and making us live in tents and crisis that have no end. And now they are doing the same to Lebanon. But the war will not end unless it ends in Lebanon. If it ends in Lebanon, it will end in Gaza.”
Israel Dumps Truck with 88 Unidentified Palestinian Bodies in Gaza
Sep 26, 2024
In Gaza, the Palestinian Health Ministry refused to receive an Israeli truck filled with the unidentified remains of 88 Palestinians killed by Israel. A distraught mother searching for her missing son went to meet the truck.
Umm Tamer Yassin: “I got a call telling me there are dead bodies coming from Israel. I came running to see if my son is fine or dead. I want to know if he is among the dead bodies. … Look! These are dead bodies being thrown. They throw it to the people, left them to the streets, and their families cannot identify their bodies. Here is the truck. The bodies are inside. We cannot see them.”
Journalist Mujahed al-Saadi Arrested Amid Unprecedented Israeli Assault on West Bank Reporters
Sep 26, 2024
The Committee to Protect Journalists reports an unprecedented number of journalists and media workers have been arrested by Israeli forces across the occupied West Bank over the past year. CPJ has documented a total of 54 such arrests since October 7; 36 remain jailed, including 14 held without charges under Israel’s “administrative detention” policy. Among them is Palestinian journalist Mujahed al-Saadi, who was beaten along with his wife by Israeli soldiers during a violent raid on their home in the early hours of September 19. He has since had no contact with his lawyer or family.
“It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive” Wins Emmy for Outstanding Hard News Feature
Sep 26, 2024
Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda has won a News and Documentary Emmy for her AJ+ report “It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive.” A group of Hollywood celebrities and pro-Israel groups unsuccessfully attempted to disqualify Owda’s widely acclaimed report, which chronicles her family’s forced evacuation of their home in Beit Hanoun after Israel launched its assault on Gaza.
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“Hell Is Breaking Loose in Lebanon”: Israel Rejects Ceasefire Proposal as U.N. Chief Calls for Peace
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 26, 2024
Israel is continuing its bombardment of Lebanon and preparing for a possible ground invasion of the country, with the Netanyahu government rejecting a proposed 21-day ceasefire put forward by the United States, France, Canada, Australia, Japan, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. About 500,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced, and the Health Ministry reports at least 72 people were killed and nearly 400 wounded in Israeli attacks on Wednesday, bringing the death toll to over 620 in recent days. “There is a lot of suffering. There is a lot of hardship right now,” says Beirut-based journalist Lara Bitar, who details how Israel has repeatedly attacked and invaded Lebanese territory going back decades. “The source of this pain can be pinpointed to the presence of the Israeli settler state in our region that continues to wreak havoc in Palestine, in Lebanon and across most of the world.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to Lebanon, where some 500,000 people have been displaced by Israel’s bombardment. The Lebanese Health Ministry reports at least 72 people were killed and nearly 400 wounded in Israeli attacks on Wednesday, bringing the death toll to over 620 in recent days. Earlier today, Israel rejected a proposed 21-day ceasefire that had been called for by the United States, France, Canada, Australia, Japan, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, Israel has called up two brigades to the Lebanese border in a sign that a ground invasion could be imminent. U.N. Secretary-General António Gutteres called for peace on Wednesday.
SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: Hell is breaking loose in Lebanon. … An all-out war must be avoided at all costs. It would surely be an all-out catastrophe. The people of Lebanon, as well as the people of Israel and the people of the world, cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: 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.
Lara, if you can talk about what’s happening on the ground in Beirut? And here we are in New York right next to the United Nations. You have this international call for a ceasefire, but apparently the Netanyahu government of Israel is saying no, the Israeli general in charge of the IDF forces rallying troops, saying he’s preparing them for a ground invasion of Lebanon.
LARA BITAR: Good morning.
Here in Beirut, nobody really has any hope in these processes in the United Nations, in the words of the Biden administration or in the words also of the Netanyahu government.
I wanted to share with you some things that were relayed to me by one of our journalists who is now working in the south. He is going around to different schools that are hosting people who have been displaced from their homes but remain in southern Lebanon. So, first, he relayed to me that people are very, very tired. They’re unable to sleep for longer than a few minutes at a time because of the relentless bombardment by Israel. And he said that the shelters are full with elderly people, who have lived through so many massacres and witnessed so much horror inflicted by the Israeli settler colony. And he shared the story of one woman in particular. He said that she was in her eighties. She was wearing her house key as a pendant. And she told him that this is nothing in comparison to what they have lived through over the past few decades. And she mentioned the 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut, the first Qana massacre in 1996, the second Qana massacre in 2006, and so on and so forth.
And the one thing that I want to relay here is that for a lot of these people who have been displaced from their homes, whose homes have been destroyed, their attachment to their land only grows stronger. And this is a prevailing sentiment among those who have been displaced. And this is not uncommon for Lebanon.
So, if you will just allow me 30 seconds or so, I would like to read a brief passage that I came across yesterday, written by Mahdi Amel, who was a Marxist intellectual. And he wrote this a few months after the 1982 invasion of Beirut. And he writes, “They said that the war in Lebanon would be swift and that in a few days those who have not knelt and who understand only the language of force would kneel. They declared that there would be no salaam, but shalom, and that Israel is the Rome of our modern times. To the kings of Israel, to the scum of our nation and our foul Arab regimes, to the petty fascists and to their imperialist masters, we say: It pleases us to spit in your faces. We will fight you even with our nails. Our fists are the compass of history. And the bullet of our freedom will pierce your hearts. To them, we say, brick by brick, we build a world on your graves. You are the dustbin of history, and Beirut is the city of the free. We have vowed that we will resist you.”
And this is not to say that everyone in Lebanon shares this sentiment, and definitely not the over 200,000, up to half a million people who have been displaced from their homes over the past few weeks, because there is a lot of suffering. There is a lot of hardship right now. People are struggling to find housing, shelter, food, diapers, milk. Hospitals are at capacity. People are really exhausted and suffering across the board. But for the most part, this pain can be pinpointed — the source of this pain can be pinpointed to the presence of the Israeli settler state in our region that continues to wreak havoc in Palestine, in Lebanon and across most of the world.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Lara Bitar, you talked about this quotation that you read from 1982, when Israel invaded in 1982, and you’ve said that you don’t have much faith in a ceasefire. So, if you could provide some context to a possible imminent invasion, Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Talk about what happened in not just 1982, but also in 1978 and 2006.
LARA BITAR: I think we have to take very, very seriously every genocidal intent that is now being uttered by different government and military officials in Israel. Lebanon has a long history of invasions and occupation and terror by the Israeli state. And we can go even further back, to ’47, ’48. Lebanon [sic] seized over a dozen Lebanese towns and villages in ’78. There was also an invasion in ’82. The ’82 invasion lasted until the liberation in May 2000. There was also an attempted ground operation in 2006. And in terms of the 2006 attempted ground invasion into Lebanon, soldiers who returned home recounted how traumatizing it was for them, how they felt that they were fighting with ghosts. They could not see the fighters on the other side.
So, I think it’s important to note that coming into Lebanon is deeply traumatizing and frightening experience for the Israeli soldiers, who are accustomed to throwing bombs from the safety of the airspace. But on-the-ground battle, on-the-ground confrontation with real fighters who are fighting for their land, for their country, for their people, they don’t stand much of a chance.
And to the point of pushing for a ceasefire or for a truce or for the Biden administration having any kind of redline, we saw exactly what happened in Gaza over the past 11 months. The Biden administration was repeatedly saying that Rafah was a redline, that a ground invasion into Gaza was a redline. But the Israeli state, there were absolutely no repercussions, no ramifications for any of the actions that the Israeli state was doing. And this is what compelled it to continue to escalate, to continue to escalate its massacres, its terror of the Palestinian people in Gaza, who to this day continue to endure daily massacres that are not being reported on as much as they were at the beginning of the war.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Lara Bitar, so, if you could tell us a little bit more about how you think Hezbollah might respond to a possible invasion? And also explain Resolution — U.N. Resolution 1701, because the U.N. secretary-general, speaking Wednesday, he warned that Lebanon is at the brink, calling for an urgent ceasefire, but he also called for the implementation of U.N. Resolutions 1559 and 1701.
LARA BITAR: I can’t really predict how Hezbollah will respond, but what we know is that, so far, Hezbollah has continuously tried to deescalate. Hezbollah is not targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure. They have consistently aimed their weapons at military infrastructure and sites and soldiers, even after the pager attack, the walkie-talkie attack, repeated campaigns on Dahieh. Just a few minutes ago, before I joined you, Dahieh was yet again bombarded by the Israelis. I think this is the eighth attack on the Lebanese capital. Despite all of this escalation from the Israeli side, Hezbollah remains restraint, continues to try to deescalate. And the only ask here, which is not a really unreasonable ask, is for Israel to immediately end its war on the Palestinian people of Gaza after 11 months.
As far as U.N. resolutions, for the most part, they’re not legally binding. For the most part, they’re not respected. The 1701 Resolution, that was adopted after the 2006 war, is habitually, if not daily, violated by the Israelis in a variety of different ways. That’s why the majority of the Lebanese population is not holding its breath waiting for a U.N. resolution or for the Security Council or even for the international community. I think not just the people in Lebanon, but people around the world have completely lost faith in the so-called international order, the rule of law.
So, right now we can only expect things to get significantly worse. So long as the international community does not take any action to halt the insanity and the barbarism of the Israeli state, so long as the Western world continues to supply the Israelis with weapons, with support, with diplomatic cover, we have very little chance of seeing an end to this campaign anytime soon.
But on the other hand, what people can do, people anywhere can boycott Israel, can put pressure on their institutions, on their universities, on the corporations in which they work, and to divest from Israel. The only chance that we have is for the world and for comrades around the world to put this kind of pressure on their governments and on their institutions to isolate Israel, because Israel will only stop this campaign and this war around the region if it becomes too costly for it. And right now it’s not paying any kind of price for its actions.
AMY GOODMAN: As we wrap up, Lara Bitar, there is a protest that is approaching the United Nations now, especially people protesting what’s happening in Gaza. You have Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who delayed his trip by a day. He was supposed to address the U.N. General Assembly today; he’s going to do it tomorrow. What do you expect him to say? And in the U.S. media, on television, they’re saying that Blinken has been desperately, you know, rallying countries on the sidelines to get this 21-day ceasefire that the U.S., France, Canada, Australia, Japan, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are now calling for. But you have The Guardian reporting that, in fact, an effort by France and Britain to secure a joint statement by the U.N. Security Council calling for a ceasefire has stalled in the face of U.S. objections. Your final thoughts, Lara?
LARA BITAR: At the risk of repeating myself, I don’t see —or, we, for the most part, don’t really believe anything that’s coming out of the Biden administration, neither its White House spokespeople or Blinken and others who are representing the U.S. And again, we have seen these maneuvers and this manipulation of public opinion, manipulation of the press for 11 months. They are not serious about a ceasefire, neither in Gaza nor in Lebanon, regardless of what they’re saying, regardless of what narrative they’re trying to sell us. We’re simply not buying it.
AMY GOODMAN: Lara Bitar, I want to thank you for being with us, editor-in-chief of The Public Source, a Beirut-based independent media organization, speaking to us from Lebanon.
Next up, Israel deliberately blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza, two government bodies concluded. Antony Blinken rejected them. We’ll speak to the reporter who exposed this story in ProPublica. Stay with us.
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U.S. Gov’t Agencies Found Israel Was Blocking Gaza Aid. Blinken Ignored Them to Keep Weapons Flowing
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 26, 2024
We speak with Brett Murphy, the ProPublica reporterbehind a blockbuster exposé that revealed the Biden administration ignored warnings from its own experts about Israel blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza in order to keep supplying the country with weapons. USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the State Department’s refugees bureau both concluded earlier this year that Israeli authorities routinely impeded delivery of food and medicine into the devastated Palestinian territory, where hunger, disease and displacement have wreaked havoc on the civilian population. Although U.S. law requires the government to stop arms shipments to countries that prevent the delivery of U.S.-backed aid, Secretary of State Antony Blinken ignored the findings and told Congress Israel was not restricting humanitarian assistance — helping to keep weapons flowing to the Israeli military to continue its assault on Gaza.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: ProPublica has revealed USAID and the State Department’s refugees bureau both concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza, but U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other top Biden officials rejected the findings of the agencies even though they’re considered the two foremost U.S. authorities on humanitarian assistance. Blinken’s decision allowed the U.S. to keep sending arms to Israel. Under U.S. law, the government is required to cut off weapons shipments to countries preventing the delivery of U.S.-backed aid. Days after receiving the reports, Blinken told Congress, quote, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”
On Tuesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, called for Blinken’s resignation, accusing him of lying to Congress. [Blinken] was asked about the ProPublica report Wednesday on CBS. This was his response.
SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN: So, this is actually pretty, pretty typical. We had a report to put out on the humanitarian situation in Gaza and what Israel was doing to try to make sure that people got the assistance they needed. And I had different assessments from different parts of the State Department, from other agencies that were involved, like USAID. My job is to sort through them, which I did, draw some conclusions from that. And we put our report, and we found that Israel needed to do a better job on the humanitarian assistance. We’ve seen improvements since then. It’s still not sufficient.
AMY GOODMAN: Of course, that was U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
We’re joined now by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Brett Murphy, a reporter at ProPublica, where his new piece is headlined “Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza, Two Government Bodies Concluded. Antony Blinken Rejected Them.”
Can you respond to Blinken’s response to your report, Brett?
BRETT MURPHY: Yeah. So, he said, basically, it was his decision to make. He was getting a lot of information, and he ultimately decided that it was not the assessment of the State Department that the Israelis were deliberately blocking aid.
What he didn’t mention and what’s really important to note here is that the two agencies that had told him that they were in fact deliberately blocking aid, one being USAID, are the foremost experts in this, as you said. They are the ones responsible for delivering humanitarian assistance into Gaza, into war zones all over the world. In addition to that, his own refugees bureau had made a similar conclusion called that a law called the Foreign Assistance Act should have been triggered because the Israelis were restricting aid.
The other assessments he was receiving were nowhere near as detailed as what he received from USAID. They sent a 17-page memo with detailed evidence describing exactly what they knew to be the truth on the ground, and he ultimately rejected those findings in what he told Congress.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, if you could elaborate, Brett, also on what U.S. obligations are under the Foreign Assistance Act?
BRETT MURPHY: Sure, yeah. So, it’s this law that has not been used very much systematically, but it basically says a foreign partner or ally that is receiving military assistance from the U.S. cannot at the same time be blocking U.S.-backed humanitarian assistance into a war zone. If it is the conclusion of the U.S. government that that is happening, the U.S. government is then required to cut off the military assistance. That’s what the law says.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Is there any other context in which this has occurred, that the U.S. has denied that a country is preventing U.S. aid from getting in in a conflict zone?
BRETT MURPHY: The last time it came up was in Turkey and Armenia. That was kind of the original context of the law itself. But, like I was saying, we have never truly been applying this in a systematic way. So, this has really been an obscure provision in the Foreign Assistance Act, but this year lawmakers, activist groups have been calling for the Biden administration to be using this exact provision.
AMY GOODMAN: We interviewed two people: Stacy Gilbert, the former senior adviser in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration — she resigned over this after 20 years in service — and Alex Smith, a former contractor for USAID, who was forced to resign over the Biden administration’s support for the war on Gaza. Talk about the significance of what they did, and Antony Blinken understanding full well what they understood and why they left.
BRETT MURPHY: Stacy Gilbert worked on the report that Secretary Blinken ultimately delivered to Congress. She was working on the drafts of that report. She was in the refugees bureau. She had a very clear understanding of what was going on. And what she ultimately said, when she resigned, when she saw the final version of what he had told Congress, she said, “We know this not to be true. We, the experts inside of the government, know that the truth on the ground is that the Israelis have been blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza.” This is what she said, and this is what she resigned over. And she said in her resignation letter that this report, what he told Congress, “is going to haunt us.”
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And can you explain: How detailed was that USAID memo that Blinken saw?
BRETT MURPHY: It was extremely detailed. It’s 17 pages of evidence that they were bringing to bear. The example that stuck out to me the most was on food, food shipments that were being held up just 30 miles outside of Gaza. There was enough flour, USAID said, to feed 1.5 million Palestinians for at least five months. But at the time — this was in the February to March timeframe — Israelis were not allowing flour into Gaza, because they said it was going to the U.N.’s branch there that had been accused of having ties to Hamas, so they were not allowing the flour in.
And this is what — this is the kind of thing that was really bothering USAID and frustrating their efforts. They couldn’t get food in. They couldn’t get medicine in, other supplies. A lot of their trucks, from, like, the Red Crescent, other humanitarian groups, were being turned around because of items in there the Israelis were not allowing in. Aid workers had been killed. Their convoys had been targeted. These were all the types of examples that USAID was telling Secretary Blinken.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And basically, there’s no recourse now, right, because it’s done? Or is there anything that the U.S., the Biden administration could now do differently?
BRETT MURPHY: Yeah, the law is not — it was not just a one-time shot. And this is what the U.S. government said, too, in response. They said, “We’re currently — we’re always assessing the situation.” They said that they believed that the situation was improving since after they applied leverage with this. The folks I talked to, both inside the government and in the humanitarian world, said that’s not true at all. The situation is as bad as it’s ever been, including since the Rafah incursion. But this law does not only have — you know, whenever Blinken addresses Congress to it; it can be applied at any point.
AMY GOODMAN: That they could cut off, that the U.S. government could cut off aid to — military arms to Israel.
BRETT MURPHY: Absolutely. If it assesses that the Israelis are deliberately blocking humanitarian assistance at any point, they can apply this law. That’s right.
AMY GOODMAN: Brett Murphy, we want to thank you for being with us, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for ProPublica. We’ll link to your new article, “Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza, Two Government Bodies Concluded. Antony Blinken Rejected Them.”
And this update from the streets of New York: Twenty-five protesters have been arrested outside the United Nations ahead of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s arrival to address the U.N. on Friday. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
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Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza, Two Government Bodies Concluded. Antony Blinken Rejected Them. Blinken told Congress, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting” aid, even though the U.S. Agency for International Development and others had determined that Israel had broken the law.
by Brett Murphy
Propublica
Sept. 24, 5 a.m. EDT
https://www.propublica.org/article/gaza ... id-blinken
The U.S. government’s two foremost authorities on humanitarian assistance concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza.
The U.S. Agency for International Development delivered its assessment to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the State Department’s refugees bureau made its stance known to top diplomats in late April. Their conclusion was explosive because U.S. law requires the government to cut off weapons shipments to countries that prevent the delivery of U.S.-backed humanitarian aid. Israel has been largely dependent on American bombs and other weapons in Gaza since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks.
But Blinken and the administration of President Joe Biden did not accept either finding. Days later, on May 10, Blinken delivered a carefully worded statement to Congress that said, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”
Prior to his report, USAID had sent Blinken a detailed 17-page memo on Israel’s conduct. The memo described instances of Israeli interference with aid efforts, including killing aid workers, razing agricultural structures, bombing ambulances and hospitals, sitting on supply depots and routinely turning away trucks full of food and medicine.
Lifesaving food was stockpiled less than 30 miles across the border in an Israeli port, including enough flour to feed about 1.5 million Palestinians for five months, according to the memo. But in February the Israeli government had prohibited the transfer of flour, saying its recipient was the United Nations’ Palestinian branch that had been accused of having ties with Hamas.
Separately, the head of the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration had also determined that Israel was blocking humanitarian aid and that the Foreign Assistance Act should be triggered to freeze almost $830 million in taxpayer dollars earmarked for weapons and bombs to Israel, according to emails obtained by ProPublica.
The U.N. has declared a famine in parts of Gaza. The world’s leading independent panel of aid experts found that nearly half of the Palestinians in the enclave are struggling with hunger. Many go days without eating. Local authorities say dozens of children have starved to death — likely a significant undercount. Health care workers are battling a lack of immunizations compounded by a sanitation crisis. Last month, a little boy became Gaza’s first confirmed case of polio in 25 years.
The USAID officials wrote that because of Israel’s behavior, the U.S. should pause additional arms sales to the country. ProPublica obtained a copy of the agency’s April memo along with the list of evidence that the officials cited to back up their findings.
USAID, which is led by longtime diplomat Samantha Power, said the looming famine in Gaza was the result of Israel’s “arbitrary denial, restriction, and impediments of U.S. humanitarian assistance,” according to the memo. It also acknowledged Hamas had played a role in the humanitarian crisis. USAID, which receives overall policy guidance from the secretary of state, is an independent agency responsible for international development and disaster relief. The agency had for months tried and failed to deliver enough food and medicine to a starving and desperate Palestinian population.
It is, USAID concluded, “one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in the world.”
In response to detailed questions for this story, the State Department said that it had pressured the Israelis to increase the flow of aid. “As we made clear in May when [our] report was released, the US had deep concerns during the period since October 7 about action and inaction by Israel that contributed to a lack of sustained delivery of needed humanitarian assistance,” a spokesperson wrote. “Israel subsequently took steps to facilitate increased humanitarian access and aid flow into Gaza.”
Government experts and human rights advocates said while the State Department may have secured a number of important commitments from the Israelis, the level of aid going to Palestinians is as inadequate as when the two determinations were reached. “The implication that the humanitarian situation has markedly improved in Gaza is a farce,” said Scott Paul, an associate director at Oxfam. “The emergence of polio in the last couple months tells you all that you need to know.”
The USAID memo was an indication of a deep rift within the Biden administration on the issue of military aid to Israel. In March, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, sent Blinken a cable arguing that Israel’s war cabinet, which includes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, should be trusted to facilitate aid shipments to the Palestinians.
Lew acknowledged that “other parts of the Israeli government have tried to impede the movement of [humanitarian assistance,]” according to a copy of his cable obtained by ProPublica. But he recommended continuing to provide military assistance because he had “assessed that Israel will not arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede U.S. provided or supported” shipments of food and medicine.
Lew said Israeli officials regularly cite “overwhelming negative Israeli public opinion against” allowing aid to the Palestinians, “especially when Hamas seizes portions of it and when hostages remain in Gaza.” The Israeli government did not respond to a request for comment but has said in the past that it follows the laws of war, unlike Hamas.
In the months leading up to that cable, Lew had been told repeatedly about instances of the Israelis blocking humanitarian assistance, according to four U.S. officials familiar with the embassy operations but, like others quoted in this story, not authorized to speak about them. “No other nation has ever provided so much humanitarian assistance to their enemies,” Lew responded to subordinates at the time, according to two of the officials, who said the comments drew widespread consternation.
“That put people over the edge,” one of the officials told ProPublica. “He’d be a great spokesperson for the Israeli government.”
A second official said Lew had access to the same information as USAID leaders in Washington, in addition to evidence collected by the local State Department diplomats working in Jerusalem. “But his instincts are to defend Israel,” said a third official.
“Ambassador Lew has been at the forefront of the United States’ work to increase the flow of humanitarian assistance to Gaza, as well as diplomatic efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement that would secure the release of hostages, alleviate the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, and bring an end to the conflict,” the State Department spokesperson wrote.
The question of whether Israel was impeding humanitarian aid has garnered widespread attention. Before Blinken’s statement to Congress, Reuters reported concerns from USAID about the death toll in Gaza, which now stands at about 42,000, and that some officials inside the State Department, including the refugees bureau, had warned him that the Israelis’ assurances were not credible. The existence of USAID’s memo, Lew’s cable and their broad conclusions were also previously reported.
But the full accounting of USAID’s evidence, the determination of the refugees bureau in April and the statements from experts at the embassy — along with Lew’s decision to undermine them — reveal new aspects of the striking split within the Biden administration and how the highest-ranking American diplomats have justified his policy of continuing to flood Israel with arms over the objections of their own experts.
Stacy Gilbert, a former senior civil military adviser in the refugees bureau who had been working on drafts of Blinken’s report to Congress, resigned over the language in the final version. “There is abundant evidence showing Israel is responsible for blocking aid,” she wrote in a statement shortly after leaving, which The Washington Post and other outlets reported on. “To deny this is absurd and shameful.
“That report and its flagrant untruths will haunt us.”
The State Department’s headquarters in Washington did not always welcome that kind of information from U.S. experts on the ground, according to a person familiar with the embassy operations. That was especially true when experts reported the small number of aid trucks being allowed in.
“A lot of times they would not accept it because it was lower than what the Israelis said,” the person told ProPublica. “The sentiment from Washington was, ‘We want to see the aid increasing because Israel told us it would.’”
[x]
Aid trucks wait in Egypt at the border with Gaza on Sept. 9. Credit AFP/Getty Images
While Israel has its own arms industry, the country relies heavily on American jets, bombs and other weapons in Gaza. Since October, the U.S. has shipped more than 50,000 tons of weaponry, which the Israeli military says has been “crucial for sustaining” the Israel Defense Forces’ “operational capabilities during the ongoing war.”
The U.S. gives the Israeli government about $3.8 billion every year as a baseline and significantly more during wartime — money the Israelis use to buy American-made bombs and equipment. Congress and the executive branch have imposed legal guardrails on how Israel and other partners can use that money.
One of them is the Foreign Assistance Act. The humanitarian aid portion of the law is known as 6201, which dates back to Turkey’s embargo of Armenia during the 1990s. That part of the law has never been widely implemented. But this year, advocacy groups and some Democrats in Congress brought it out of obscurity and called for Biden to use 6201 to pressure the Israelis to allow aid freely into Gaza.
In response, the Biden administration announced a policy called the National Security Memorandum, or NSM-20, to require the State Department to vet Israel’s assurances about whether it was blocking aid and then report its findings to lawmakers. If Blinken determined the Israelis were not facilitating aid and were instead arbitrarily restricting it, then the government would be required by the law to halt military assistance.
Blinken submitted the agency’s official position on May 10, siding with Lew, which meant that the military support would continue.
In a statement that same day, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., criticized the administration for choosing “to disregard the requirements of NSM-20.”
“Whether or not Israel is at this moment complying with international standards with respect to facilitating humanitarian assistance to desperate, starving citizens may be debatable,” Van Hollen said. “What is undeniable — for those who don’t look the other way — is that it has repeatedly violated those standards over the last 7 months.”
As of early March, at least 930 trucks full of food, medicine and other supplies were stuck in Egypt awaiting approval from the Israelis, according to USAID’s memo.
The officials wrote that the Israeli government frequently blocks aid by imposing bureaucratic delays. The Israelis took weeks or months to respond to humanitarian groups that had submitted specific items to be approved for passage past government checkpoints. Israel would then often deny those submissions outright or accept them some days but not others. The Israeli government “doesn’t provide justification, issues blanket rejections, or cites arbitrary factors for the denial of certain items,” the memo said.
Israeli officials told State Department attorneys that the Israeli government has “scaled up its security check capacity and asserted that it imposes no limits on the number of trucks that can be inspected and enter Gaza,” according to a separate memo sent to Blinken and obtained by ProPublica. Those officials blamed most of the holdups on the humanitarian groups for not having enough capacity to get food and medicine in. USAID and State Department experts who work directly with those groups say that is not true.
In separate emails obtained by ProPublica, aid officials identified items in trucks that were banned by the Israelis, including emergency shelter gear, solar lamps, cooking stoves and desalination kits, because they were deemed “dual use,” which means Hamas could co-opt the materials. Some of the trucks that were turned away had also been carrying American-funded items like hygiene kits, the emails show.
In its memo to Blinken, USAID also cited numerous publicly reported incidents in which aid facilities and workers were hit by Israeli airstrikes even sometimes after they had shared their locations with the IDF and received approval, a process known as “deconfliction.” The Israeli government has maintained that most of those incidents were mistakes.
USAID found the Israelis often promised to take adequate measures to prevent such incidents but frequently failed to follow through. On Nov. 18, for instance, a convoy of aid workers was trying to evacuate along a route assigned to them by the IDF. The convoy was denied permission to cross a military checkpoint — despite previous IDF authorization.
Then, while en route back to their facility, the IDF opened fire on the aid workers, killing two of them.
Inside the State Department and ahead of Blinken’s report to Congress, some of the agency’s highest-ranking officials had a separate exchange about whether Israel was blocking humanitarian aid. ProPublica obtained an email thread documenting the episode.
On April 17, a Department of Defense official reached out to Mira Resnick, a deputy assistant secretary at the State Department who has been described as the agency’s driving force behind arms sales to Israel and other partners this year. The official alerted Resnick to the fact that there was about $827 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars sitting in limbo.
Resnick turned to the Counselor of the State Department and said, “We need to be able to move the rest of the” financing so that Israel could pay off bills for past weapons purchases. The financing she referenced came from American tax dollars.
The counselor, one of the highest posts at the agency, agreed with Resnick. “I think we need to move these funds,” he wrote.
But there was a hurdle, according to the agency’s top attorney: All the relevant bureaus inside the State Department would need to sign off on and agree that Israel was not preventing humanitarian aid shipments. “The principal thing we would need to see is that no bureau currently assesses that the restriction in 6201 is triggered,” Richard Visek, the agency’s acting legal adviser, wrote.
The bureaus started to fall in line. The Middle East and human rights divisions agreed and determined the law hadn’t been triggered, “in light of Netanyahu’s commitments and the steps Israel has announced so far,” while noting that they still have “significant concerns about Israeli actions.”
By April 25, all had signed off but one. The Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration was the holdout. That was notable because the bureau had among the most firsthand knowledge of the situation after months of working closely with USAID and humanitarian groups to try to get food and medicine to the Palestinians.
“While we agree there have been positive steps on some commitments related to humanitarian assistance, we continue to assess that the facts on the ground indicate U.S. humanitarian assistance is being restricted,” an official in the bureau wrote to the group.
It was a potentially explosive stance to take. One of Resnick’s subordinates in the arms transfer bureau replied and asked for clarification: “Is PRM saying 6201 has been triggered for Israel?”
Yes, replied Julieta Valls Noyes, its assistant secretary, that was indeed the bureau’s view. In her email, she cited a meeting from the previous day between Blinken’s deputy secretary and other top aides in the administration. All the bureaus on the email thread had provided talking points to the deputy secretary, including one that said Israel had “failed to meet most of its commitments to the president.” (None of these officials responded to a request for comment.)
But, after a series of in-person conversations, Valls Noyes backed down, according to a person familiar with the episode. When asked during a staff meeting later why she had punted on the issue, Valls Noyes replied, “There will be other opportunities,” the person said.
The financing appears to have ultimately gone through.
Less than two weeks later, Blinken delivered his report to Congress.
by Brett Murphy
Propublica
Sept. 24, 5 a.m. EDT
https://www.propublica.org/article/gaza ... id-blinken
The U.S. government’s two foremost authorities on humanitarian assistance concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza.
The U.S. Agency for International Development delivered its assessment to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the State Department’s refugees bureau made its stance known to top diplomats in late April. Their conclusion was explosive because U.S. law requires the government to cut off weapons shipments to countries that prevent the delivery of U.S.-backed humanitarian aid. Israel has been largely dependent on American bombs and other weapons in Gaza since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks.
But Blinken and the administration of President Joe Biden did not accept either finding. Days later, on May 10, Blinken delivered a carefully worded statement to Congress that said, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”
Prior to his report, USAID had sent Blinken a detailed 17-page memo on Israel’s conduct. The memo described instances of Israeli interference with aid efforts, including killing aid workers, razing agricultural structures, bombing ambulances and hospitals, sitting on supply depots and routinely turning away trucks full of food and medicine.
Lifesaving food was stockpiled less than 30 miles across the border in an Israeli port, including enough flour to feed about 1.5 million Palestinians for five months, according to the memo. But in February the Israeli government had prohibited the transfer of flour, saying its recipient was the United Nations’ Palestinian branch that had been accused of having ties with Hamas.
... [T]he UN Office of Oversight Services (OIOS)... was not able to independently authenticate information used by Israel to support the allegations....
“In one case, no evidence was obtained by OIOS to support the allegations of the staff member’s involvement, while in nine other cases, the evidence obtained by OIOS was insufficient to support the staff members’ involvement,” he said.
-- UN completes investigation on UNRWA staff, 8/5/2024
Separately, the head of the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration had also determined that Israel was blocking humanitarian aid and that the Foreign Assistance Act should be triggered to freeze almost $830 million in taxpayer dollars earmarked for weapons and bombs to Israel, according to emails obtained by ProPublica.
The U.N. has declared a famine in parts of Gaza. The world’s leading independent panel of aid experts found that nearly half of the Palestinians in the enclave are struggling with hunger. Many go days without eating. Local authorities say dozens of children have starved to death — likely a significant undercount. Health care workers are battling a lack of immunizations compounded by a sanitation crisis. Last month, a little boy became Gaza’s first confirmed case of polio in 25 years.
The USAID officials wrote that because of Israel’s behavior, the U.S. should pause additional arms sales to the country. ProPublica obtained a copy of the agency’s April memo along with the list of evidence that the officials cited to back up their findings.
USAID, which is led by longtime diplomat Samantha Power, said the looming famine in Gaza was the result of Israel’s “arbitrary denial, restriction, and impediments of U.S. humanitarian assistance,” according to the memo. It also acknowledged Hamas had played a role in the humanitarian crisis. USAID, which receives overall policy guidance from the secretary of state, is an independent agency responsible for international development and disaster relief. The agency had for months tried and failed to deliver enough food and medicine to a starving and desperate Palestinian population.
It is, USAID concluded, “one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in the world.”
In response to detailed questions for this story, the State Department said that it had pressured the Israelis to increase the flow of aid. “As we made clear in May when [our] report was released, the US had deep concerns during the period since October 7 about action and inaction by Israel that contributed to a lack of sustained delivery of needed humanitarian assistance,” a spokesperson wrote. “Israel subsequently took steps to facilitate increased humanitarian access and aid flow into Gaza.”
Government experts and human rights advocates said while the State Department may have secured a number of important commitments from the Israelis, the level of aid going to Palestinians is as inadequate as when the two determinations were reached. “The implication that the humanitarian situation has markedly improved in Gaza is a farce,” said Scott Paul, an associate director at Oxfam. “The emergence of polio in the last couple months tells you all that you need to know.”
The USAID memo was an indication of a deep rift within the Biden administration on the issue of military aid to Israel. In March, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, sent Blinken a cable arguing that Israel’s war cabinet, which includes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, should be trusted to facilitate aid shipments to the Palestinians.
Lew acknowledged that “other parts of the Israeli government have tried to impede the movement of [humanitarian assistance,]” according to a copy of his cable obtained by ProPublica. But he recommended continuing to provide military assistance because he had “assessed that Israel will not arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede U.S. provided or supported” shipments of food and medicine.
Lew said Israeli officials regularly cite “overwhelming negative Israeli public opinion against” allowing aid to the Palestinians, “especially when Hamas seizes portions of it and when hostages remain in Gaza.” The Israeli government did not respond to a request for comment but has said in the past that it follows the laws of war, unlike Hamas.
In the months leading up to that cable, Lew had been told repeatedly about instances of the Israelis blocking humanitarian assistance, according to four U.S. officials familiar with the embassy operations but, like others quoted in this story, not authorized to speak about them. “No other nation has ever provided so much humanitarian assistance to their enemies,” Lew responded to subordinates at the time, according to two of the officials, who said the comments drew widespread consternation.
“That put people over the edge,” one of the officials told ProPublica. “He’d be a great spokesperson for the Israeli government.”
A second official said Lew had access to the same information as USAID leaders in Washington, in addition to evidence collected by the local State Department diplomats working in Jerusalem. “But his instincts are to defend Israel,” said a third official.
“Ambassador Lew has been at the forefront of the United States’ work to increase the flow of humanitarian assistance to Gaza, as well as diplomatic efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement that would secure the release of hostages, alleviate the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, and bring an end to the conflict,” the State Department spokesperson wrote.
The question of whether Israel was impeding humanitarian aid has garnered widespread attention. Before Blinken’s statement to Congress, Reuters reported concerns from USAID about the death toll in Gaza, which now stands at about 42,000, and that some officials inside the State Department, including the refugees bureau, had warned him that the Israelis’ assurances were not credible. The existence of USAID’s memo, Lew’s cable and their broad conclusions were also previously reported.
But the full accounting of USAID’s evidence, the determination of the refugees bureau in April and the statements from experts at the embassy — along with Lew’s decision to undermine them — reveal new aspects of the striking split within the Biden administration and how the highest-ranking American diplomats have justified his policy of continuing to flood Israel with arms over the objections of their own experts.
Stacy Gilbert, a former senior civil military adviser in the refugees bureau who had been working on drafts of Blinken’s report to Congress, resigned over the language in the final version. “There is abundant evidence showing Israel is responsible for blocking aid,” she wrote in a statement shortly after leaving, which The Washington Post and other outlets reported on. “To deny this is absurd and shameful.
“That report and its flagrant untruths will haunt us.”
The State Department’s headquarters in Washington did not always welcome that kind of information from U.S. experts on the ground, according to a person familiar with the embassy operations. That was especially true when experts reported the small number of aid trucks being allowed in.
“A lot of times they would not accept it because it was lower than what the Israelis said,” the person told ProPublica. “The sentiment from Washington was, ‘We want to see the aid increasing because Israel told us it would.’”
[x]
Aid trucks wait in Egypt at the border with Gaza on Sept. 9. Credit AFP/Getty Images
While Israel has its own arms industry, the country relies heavily on American jets, bombs and other weapons in Gaza. Since October, the U.S. has shipped more than 50,000 tons of weaponry, which the Israeli military says has been “crucial for sustaining” the Israel Defense Forces’ “operational capabilities during the ongoing war.”
The U.S. gives the Israeli government about $3.8 billion every year as a baseline and significantly more during wartime — money the Israelis use to buy American-made bombs and equipment. Congress and the executive branch have imposed legal guardrails on how Israel and other partners can use that money.
One of them is the Foreign Assistance Act. The humanitarian aid portion of the law is known as 6201, which dates back to Turkey’s embargo of Armenia during the 1990s. That part of the law has never been widely implemented. But this year, advocacy groups and some Democrats in Congress brought it out of obscurity and called for Biden to use 6201 to pressure the Israelis to allow aid freely into Gaza.
In response, the Biden administration announced a policy called the National Security Memorandum, or NSM-20, to require the State Department to vet Israel’s assurances about whether it was blocking aid and then report its findings to lawmakers. If Blinken determined the Israelis were not facilitating aid and were instead arbitrarily restricting it, then the government would be required by the law to halt military assistance.
Blinken submitted the agency’s official position on May 10, siding with Lew, which meant that the military support would continue.
In a statement that same day, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., criticized the administration for choosing “to disregard the requirements of NSM-20.”
“Whether or not Israel is at this moment complying with international standards with respect to facilitating humanitarian assistance to desperate, starving citizens may be debatable,” Van Hollen said. “What is undeniable — for those who don’t look the other way — is that it has repeatedly violated those standards over the last 7 months.”
As of early March, at least 930 trucks full of food, medicine and other supplies were stuck in Egypt awaiting approval from the Israelis, according to USAID’s memo.
The officials wrote that the Israeli government frequently blocks aid by imposing bureaucratic delays. The Israelis took weeks or months to respond to humanitarian groups that had submitted specific items to be approved for passage past government checkpoints. Israel would then often deny those submissions outright or accept them some days but not others. The Israeli government “doesn’t provide justification, issues blanket rejections, or cites arbitrary factors for the denial of certain items,” the memo said.
Israeli officials told State Department attorneys that the Israeli government has “scaled up its security check capacity and asserted that it imposes no limits on the number of trucks that can be inspected and enter Gaza,” according to a separate memo sent to Blinken and obtained by ProPublica. Those officials blamed most of the holdups on the humanitarian groups for not having enough capacity to get food and medicine in. USAID and State Department experts who work directly with those groups say that is not true.
In separate emails obtained by ProPublica, aid officials identified items in trucks that were banned by the Israelis, including emergency shelter gear, solar lamps, cooking stoves and desalination kits, because they were deemed “dual use,” which means Hamas could co-opt the materials. Some of the trucks that were turned away had also been carrying American-funded items like hygiene kits, the emails show.
In its memo to Blinken, USAID also cited numerous publicly reported incidents in which aid facilities and workers were hit by Israeli airstrikes even sometimes after they had shared their locations with the IDF and received approval, a process known as “deconfliction.” The Israeli government has maintained that most of those incidents were mistakes.
USAID found the Israelis often promised to take adequate measures to prevent such incidents but frequently failed to follow through. On Nov. 18, for instance, a convoy of aid workers was trying to evacuate along a route assigned to them by the IDF. The convoy was denied permission to cross a military checkpoint — despite previous IDF authorization.
Then, while en route back to their facility, the IDF opened fire on the aid workers, killing two of them.
Inside the State Department and ahead of Blinken’s report to Congress, some of the agency’s highest-ranking officials had a separate exchange about whether Israel was blocking humanitarian aid. ProPublica obtained an email thread documenting the episode.
On April 17, a Department of Defense official reached out to Mira Resnick, a deputy assistant secretary at the State Department who has been described as the agency’s driving force behind arms sales to Israel and other partners this year. The official alerted Resnick to the fact that there was about $827 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars sitting in limbo.
Resnick turned to the Counselor of the State Department and said, “We need to be able to move the rest of the” financing so that Israel could pay off bills for past weapons purchases. The financing she referenced came from American tax dollars.
The counselor, one of the highest posts at the agency, agreed with Resnick. “I think we need to move these funds,” he wrote.
But there was a hurdle, according to the agency’s top attorney: All the relevant bureaus inside the State Department would need to sign off on and agree that Israel was not preventing humanitarian aid shipments. “The principal thing we would need to see is that no bureau currently assesses that the restriction in 6201 is triggered,” Richard Visek, the agency’s acting legal adviser, wrote.
The bureaus started to fall in line. The Middle East and human rights divisions agreed and determined the law hadn’t been triggered, “in light of Netanyahu’s commitments and the steps Israel has announced so far,” while noting that they still have “significant concerns about Israeli actions.”
By April 25, all had signed off but one. The Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration was the holdout. That was notable because the bureau had among the most firsthand knowledge of the situation after months of working closely with USAID and humanitarian groups to try to get food and medicine to the Palestinians.
“While we agree there have been positive steps on some commitments related to humanitarian assistance, we continue to assess that the facts on the ground indicate U.S. humanitarian assistance is being restricted,” an official in the bureau wrote to the group.
It was a potentially explosive stance to take. One of Resnick’s subordinates in the arms transfer bureau replied and asked for clarification: “Is PRM saying 6201 has been triggered for Israel?”
Yes, replied Julieta Valls Noyes, its assistant secretary, that was indeed the bureau’s view. In her email, she cited a meeting from the previous day between Blinken’s deputy secretary and other top aides in the administration. All the bureaus on the email thread had provided talking points to the deputy secretary, including one that said Israel had “failed to meet most of its commitments to the president.” (None of these officials responded to a request for comment.)
But, after a series of in-person conversations, Valls Noyes backed down, according to a person familiar with the episode. When asked during a staff meeting later why she had punted on the issue, Valls Noyes replied, “There will be other opportunities,” the person said.
The financing appears to have ultimately gone through.
Less than two weeks later, Blinken delivered his report to Congress.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Fri Sep 27, 2024 1:01 am
Stein leads Harris among Muslim voters in several swing states, new analysis finds
Adam Reilly
September 09, 2024
[X]
Jill Stein speaks into a microphone at a stage in a public park.
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein speaks at a pro-Palestinian protest in front of the White House on June 8, 2024, in Washington, D.C. Mattie Neretin Getty Images
A new report from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) shows that Jill Stein, the Lexington, Massachusetts, resident and Green Party candidate for president, is leading Democratic nominee Kamala Harris among Muslim voters in several key swing states.
The analysis expands on a survey conducted late last month that showed Muslim voters nationally split between Harris and Stein, even thought 69% of the respondents said they usually vote for the Democratic Party. The new analysis dug deeper into the data, specifically looking at voters in swing states.
In Michigan, 40% of Muslim voters said they plan to vote for Stein, compared to just 12% who said they plan to vote for Harris. Stein also received significant support from Muslim voters in Wisconsin, where 44% said they plan to vote for her compared to 39% who said they’ll back Harris. And in Arizona, Stein draws support from 35% of Muslim voters, compared to 29% for Harris.
According to the website World Population Review, Michigan has a Muslim population of more than 241,000, meaning that Stein’s substantial lead there — if it holds — could have a decisive impact on who ultimately wins that state. The website FiveThirtyEight currently shows Harris leading Republican nominee Donald Trump in Michigan by 1.9%.
A similar dynamic applies in Arizona and Wisconsin, where World Population Review puts the Muslim population at about 110,000 and 68,000, respectively. FiveThirtyEight currently gives Trump a 0.5% lead in Arizona and Harris a 2.8% lead in Wisconsin.
“When you have a candidate like Stein being a third-party candidate in these states, she has the potential to disrupt all these elections,” said Robert McCaw, CAIR’s national government affairs director and one of the authors of the report. “And how all candidates appeal to Muslim voters will really determine who might be the next president of the United States.
”From a Muslim civil rights organization’s perspective, we’re really challenging Muslims to turn out to vote regardless of which candidate they [choose], knowing that they can have an impact on the election,“ McCaw added.
Stein previously ran for president in both 2012 and 2016, when she received about 1% of the vote nationally. While Stein’s total tally in 2016 was modest, an argument can be made that the votes she received in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that year ultimately helped Trump become president. Stein was also a candidate for governor of Massachusetts in 2002 and 2010, and for secretary of the commonwealth in 2006.
Stein’s 2024 platform calls, among other things, for an “immediate ceasefire in Israel and Palestine” and an immediate end to all U.S. military aid to Israel. She has also called for an independent investigation into “the legality of the billions for direct military aid” and suggested that prosecution by the International Criminal Court may be warranted.
In a statement provided to GBH News, Stein said: “We’re grateful for the strong support of Muslim voters who share with us the determination to end genocide in Gaza, and the injustice faced by our Muslim friends. We urge all people of conscience to resist the propaganda telling you to hold your nose and vote for genocide.
”If you vote for genocide, you are actively consenting to it and enabling it,“ Stein added. ”Don’t let them talk you out of your humanity. Stopping genocide is the moral imperative of our time.“
After President Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid, Harris made remarks that were interpreted by some as indicating that she is more pro-Palestinian than Biden. But others argue that on a substantive level, Harris has maintained Biden’s approach to the Israel-Hamas war. At the recent Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Harris asserted Israel’s fundamental right to defend itself during her acceptance speech, and pro-Palestinian activists who had hoped to secure a speaking slot have said they were rebuffed.
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to CAIR’s analysis, Harris leads Stein among Muslim voters in other swing states, including Georgia (43% to 17%), Pennsylvania (37% to 25%), and Nevada (26% to 13%, with Trump at 27%). According to World Population Review, the Muslim population of those states is approximately 124,000, 150,000 and 7,000, respectively.
FiveThirtyEight currently shows Harris leading Georgia by 0.3%, Pennsylvania by 0.6% and Nevada by 0.5%.
During the Democratic presidential primaries, when Biden was the party’s presumptive nominee, activists opposed to the administration’s policy on the Israel-Hamas war urged voters to remain uncommitted in several states. In Michigan, more than 100,000 uncommitted votes were ultimately cast, and in Hawaii, “uncommitted” received 29% of the vote.
The new report also highlights some notable differences inside the national Muslim electorate. For example, while Harris enjoys a sizable lead over Stein among Black Muslim voters (55% to 11%), Stein fares better with white, Arab and Turkic Muslims (33% to 26%). The discrepancy is smaller among Asian Muslims, with 28% backing Harris and 26% backing Stein.
Support for the two candidates also varies by gender. Harris leads among Muslim men with 29% support, while Stein leads among Muslim women with 34% support.
Adam Reilly: Adam Reilly is a politics reporter and the host of GBH’s Talking Politics. Questions? Feedback? Story ideas? Email Adam at [email protected].
Adam Reilly
September 09, 2024
[X]
Jill Stein speaks into a microphone at a stage in a public park.
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein speaks at a pro-Palestinian protest in front of the White House on June 8, 2024, in Washington, D.C. Mattie Neretin Getty Images
A new report from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) shows that Jill Stein, the Lexington, Massachusetts, resident and Green Party candidate for president, is leading Democratic nominee Kamala Harris among Muslim voters in several key swing states.
The analysis expands on a survey conducted late last month that showed Muslim voters nationally split between Harris and Stein, even thought 69% of the respondents said they usually vote for the Democratic Party. The new analysis dug deeper into the data, specifically looking at voters in swing states.
In Michigan, 40% of Muslim voters said they plan to vote for Stein, compared to just 12% who said they plan to vote for Harris. Stein also received significant support from Muslim voters in Wisconsin, where 44% said they plan to vote for her compared to 39% who said they’ll back Harris. And in Arizona, Stein draws support from 35% of Muslim voters, compared to 29% for Harris.
According to the website World Population Review, Michigan has a Muslim population of more than 241,000, meaning that Stein’s substantial lead there — if it holds — could have a decisive impact on who ultimately wins that state. The website FiveThirtyEight currently shows Harris leading Republican nominee Donald Trump in Michigan by 1.9%.
A similar dynamic applies in Arizona and Wisconsin, where World Population Review puts the Muslim population at about 110,000 and 68,000, respectively. FiveThirtyEight currently gives Trump a 0.5% lead in Arizona and Harris a 2.8% lead in Wisconsin.
“When you have a candidate like Stein being a third-party candidate in these states, she has the potential to disrupt all these elections,” said Robert McCaw, CAIR’s national government affairs director and one of the authors of the report. “And how all candidates appeal to Muslim voters will really determine who might be the next president of the United States.
”From a Muslim civil rights organization’s perspective, we’re really challenging Muslims to turn out to vote regardless of which candidate they [choose], knowing that they can have an impact on the election,“ McCaw added.
Stein previously ran for president in both 2012 and 2016, when she received about 1% of the vote nationally. While Stein’s total tally in 2016 was modest, an argument can be made that the votes she received in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that year ultimately helped Trump become president. Stein was also a candidate for governor of Massachusetts in 2002 and 2010, and for secretary of the commonwealth in 2006.
Stein’s 2024 platform calls, among other things, for an “immediate ceasefire in Israel and Palestine” and an immediate end to all U.S. military aid to Israel. She has also called for an independent investigation into “the legality of the billions for direct military aid” and suggested that prosecution by the International Criminal Court may be warranted.
In a statement provided to GBH News, Stein said: “We’re grateful for the strong support of Muslim voters who share with us the determination to end genocide in Gaza, and the injustice faced by our Muslim friends. We urge all people of conscience to resist the propaganda telling you to hold your nose and vote for genocide.
”If you vote for genocide, you are actively consenting to it and enabling it,“ Stein added. ”Don’t let them talk you out of your humanity. Stopping genocide is the moral imperative of our time.“
After President Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid, Harris made remarks that were interpreted by some as indicating that she is more pro-Palestinian than Biden. But others argue that on a substantive level, Harris has maintained Biden’s approach to the Israel-Hamas war. At the recent Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Harris asserted Israel’s fundamental right to defend itself during her acceptance speech, and pro-Palestinian activists who had hoped to secure a speaking slot have said they were rebuffed.
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to CAIR’s analysis, Harris leads Stein among Muslim voters in other swing states, including Georgia (43% to 17%), Pennsylvania (37% to 25%), and Nevada (26% to 13%, with Trump at 27%). According to World Population Review, the Muslim population of those states is approximately 124,000, 150,000 and 7,000, respectively.
FiveThirtyEight currently shows Harris leading Georgia by 0.3%, Pennsylvania by 0.6% and Nevada by 0.5%.
During the Democratic presidential primaries, when Biden was the party’s presumptive nominee, activists opposed to the administration’s policy on the Israel-Hamas war urged voters to remain uncommitted in several states. In Michigan, more than 100,000 uncommitted votes were ultimately cast, and in Hawaii, “uncommitted” received 29% of the vote.
The new report also highlights some notable differences inside the national Muslim electorate. For example, while Harris enjoys a sizable lead over Stein among Black Muslim voters (55% to 11%), Stein fares better with white, Arab and Turkic Muslims (33% to 26%). The discrepancy is smaller among Asian Muslims, with 28% backing Harris and 26% backing Stein.
Support for the two candidates also varies by gender. Harris leads among Muslim men with 29% support, while Stein leads among Muslim women with 34% support.
Adam Reilly: Adam Reilly is a politics reporter and the host of GBH’s Talking Politics. Questions? Feedback? Story ideas? Email Adam at [email protected].
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Fri Sep 27, 2024 1:19 am
Netanyahu's Lebanon Gambit: The second front has restored the prime minister’s political standing
by Seymour Hersh
Sep 26, 2024
[x]
Smoke billows from a site targeted by Israeli shelling in Zaita, in the southern Lebanon, on September 23. / Photo by Mahmoud Zayyat / AFP via Getty Images.
One way to understand the dramatic events of the past week, and the restitution of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political standing in Israel, is to recall a famous statement of Admiral Ernest King, the US chief of naval operations throughout the Second World War. As the war neared its end, so the story goes, King was told by an aide that a group of reporters wanted an interview with him. “When it’s over,” he replied, “tell them who won.”
It could be Netanyahu’s motto today. I was surprised to be told recently by a well-informed official in Washington that things had changed dramatically in the war in Gaza—in Israel’s favor. There is no longer a possibility or a need for a ceasefire in Gaza, the official said. I further learned that ceasefire talk had been muted because, obviously, there is now a renewed Israeli war against the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. Amid the continuing carnage, Bibi’s standing inside Israel has soared as the death toll in Lebanon has risen.
The Israeli high command now believes, as has been reported in the Israeli media, that Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who orchestrated the murderous attack on Israel on October 7, may be dead and the Israeli Defense Force “is now in a ‘mopping-up phase’ of the tunnel war with Hamas.” The American official told me that “there’s been no communication from Sinwar in the past two or three weeks.” The implication was clear: somehow Israeli or American intelligence had been tracking or monitoring Sinwar’s communications, if not his precise underground location. There is little hope that any of the remaining Israeli hostages will be left alive. This is a conclusion that has yet to be shared with the increasingly anxious Israeli public.
(I must note here that the six hostages who were executed in a tunnel late last August were not killed, as I inaccurately recently reported, because their Hamas captors heard the noises of an Israeli sapper team whose mission was to destroy tunnels. The mission took place because the tunnel location of the hostages had become known and an Israeli special forces team was assigned to attack the site and seize the hostages. The six were found dead because there was no other exit for the guards. I do not know whether the guards were killed in a shootout or took their own lives. The full, tragic story was not made known at the time by the Israeli military, a decision that is hard to question.)
There are other facts, I was told, that indicate the Gaza war is in a mopping-up phrase. There have been no Israeli bombing missions over Gaza since last Friday (although Al-Jazeera reported that fifty people were killed in Gaza on Tuesday in various attacks), and many of the Israeli reservists who have been heavily involved in the war since last fall are in the process of being replaced by regular Israeli army soldiers.
There have been no ceasefire meetings or significant discussions with Hamas since the Israeli assassination last July 31 of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas who was in Tehran to celebrate the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian, a four-time member of the Iranian parliament. Pezeshkian, a moderate, repeatedly says that he wishes to play a constructive role in world affairs, beginning with renewed talks on Iran’s nuclear program.
Just a few weeks ago, Netanyahu was in trouble at home and abroad as the war in Gaza seemed to be an endless pit of horror. Hamas still seemed to be capable of putting up a fight, and the world was recoiling from the constant Israeli bombings of Gaza, the growing casualties, and the desperation of the surviving residents there. Netanyahu was continuing to disregard the anxieties of President Joe Biden and his foreign policy aides, led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who were in seemingly endless meetings in Egypt and Qatar and failing to achieve a ceasefire that would result in a bombing pause and the return of the surviving Israeli hostages.
The IDF, composed largely of reservists who had been called up for what was turning out to be an endless commitment, was fraying as the war dragged on, and the Israeli reservists inevitably turned on the civilian population in Gaza. Just last week a group of IDF soldiers were caught on video throwing four bodies—it was assumed all were dead—from the roof of a battered building in the West Bank to the street.
The American official, who has long dealt with Israeli issues, ruefully explained his view of the long-standing Middle East impasse: “The Israelis want the Palestinians to be peaceful and accept their fate. The Palestinians objected and fought back. A new day in the Middle East will never come.”
Last week, as the current Israeli impasse with Hezbollah was turning murderous, I had a long talk with an Israeli hero of earlier war—he served in an elite commando unit—whose grandchildren are nearing a one-year deployment in Gaza. He was full of contempt for Netanyahu and his refusal to agree to a ceasefire. There are families in Tel Aviv, he told me, who are leaving the country every day “to get their children out of the kill.”
He remains convinced that the war with Hamas was lost well before the October 7 attack when those in charge of Israel’s most important intelligence unit, dealing with signals intelligence, ignored the reports of a senior female officer who repeatedly warned of the coming Hamas attack. The Israeli veteran, who spent his career in special units, said he understood what happened. The men running the unit told the woman, a colonel, in essence, that “you ladies are here to bring me coffee.”
It’s increasingly evident that a full inquiry into the military and intelligence failures of October 7, once promised by Netanyahu, will not take place as long as Netanyahu is still in office.
The retired officer, whose negative views of Netanyahu I have heard about for years, also told me he is totally supportive of Bibi’s current war against Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and the Hezbollah militia. “We will nail Hezbollah,” he said, because its defeat would be a blow against Iran, “and Iran controls Hezbollah.”
Netanyahu, seemingly on the political ropes inside Israel and around the world, is suddenly in full bloom as the leader of the expanding war against Hezbollah. Most Israelis fear Hassan Nasrallah, its Shiite leader, for his close ties to Shiite Iran, long viewed by Israel as a potential nuclear power and its most dangerous enemy. The Biden administration and Congress are joined to the hip with Israel when it comes to Iran, though its closeness to nuclear weapons capability has long been exaggerated.
Hezbollah demonstrated its support for Sunni Hamas after the devastating Israeli bombing of Gaza began by initiating a series of missile and rocket attacks on Israeli cities and villages as far as 35 kilometers south of the border with Lebanon. The Hezbollah attacks eventually led to the evacuation of some 67,000 Israeli citizens, who were moved into temporary housing. Israel responded by bombing Hezbollah and other targets in southern Lebanon. That war has exploded with renewed ferocity in the past two weeks. Nasrallah added to the tension by authorizing his missiles to strike targets up to 50 kilometers south of the Israeli border, putting the historic Israeli city of Haifa in peril as well as Tel Aviv.
The missile and bomb exchanges remained at a low intensity until last week, when Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, triggered explosives that had earlier been implanted in a shipment of 6,000 foreign-made pagers that were purchased by Hezbollah and distributed to its senior leadership and soldiers. Many of the pagers inevitably ended up with the family members of Hezbollah officials and fighters, and the ensuing chaos when all were triggered by an Israeli signal became front-page news around the world.
Israel’s electronic reach was demoralizing and terrifying, both for the technology involved and the obvious conclusion that Netanyahu had escalated his confrontation with Hezbollah while ignoring pressure from the Biden administration to agree to a ceasefire. I had a talk with another well-informed Israeli veteran, who was seriously wounded in an earlier war, who explained that the Israeli decision to trigger the explosives was not the planned act of war that it seemed to be. He said the embedded materials were triggered only because Mossad learned that its action had been inadvertently discovered by a few Hamas officials who had brought their pagers in for routine repairs. It was that discovery that led Netanyahu or one of his aides to authorize the attack.
I got no answer when I asked how anyone in Mossad or any Israeli intelligence service could uncover such a random fact. Instead, I was told Israel’s secret triggering of the pagers was “a brilliant special op but not a plan to start a war.”
The pager blasts are estimated to have killed dozens of people, including children, and injured thousands across Lebanon. The Israeli veteran also said more than three thousand Hezbollah soldiers were injured, many of them seriously.
If there was concern at the top of the Israeli military or civilian authority about a rebuke for such tactics from Washington, it was misplaced. There was no reaction from the Biden administration and the American media has consistently viewed Hezbollah primarily as a terrorist organization, despite its presence in the last decade as a significant member of the Lebanese parliament and government. If anything, the reaction was awe and respect for the attack. David Ignatius, the Washington Post columnist, noted that Israel had not taken immediate credit for the attack: “it didn’t need to. An attack of this sophistication and daring in Lebanon could not have been staged by any other nation. The video scenes of Hezbollah fighters being blown to the floor by their own communication devices sent an unmistakable message to the Iranian-backed militia. We own you. We can penetrate every space in which you operate.”
The next day, Israel doubled down and triggered explosions in walkie-talkies throughout Lebanon. Newspapers reported the death of at least twenty civilians and the wounding of 450 more amid widespread panic and terror throughout the county.
Michael Walzer, a renowned political theorist, writing in the New York Times, described Israel’s actions in blunt language as “terrorist attacks by a state that has consistently condemned terrorist attacks on its own citizens.” Walzer has written on just and unjust wars and supported Israel’s ferocious response to the Hamas attack on October 7 as justified. But the wrongdoing in this case, Walzer wrote, “was Israel’s, and the plotters had to know that at least some of the people hurt would be innocent men, women, and children.”
The main plotter was Israel’s prime minister, who authorized the use of the militarily useless terror attacks that could only bring Hezbollah and Lebanon closer to war. Netanyahu has understood that a war with Hezbollah is a way to bolster his declining popularity in Israel and perhaps some of the world.
The Biden administration has supplied Israel with an estimated 68 percent of its arms, and Netanyahu has treated the president and his secretary of state and other diplomatic officials as pawns to be led on. In his farewell speech this week to the UN General Assembly, Joe Biden talked about his ceasefire proposal, seemingly unaware that the fate of hostages had been overtaken by events, beginning with the assassination of Haniyeh. But Biden did say, referring to the current crisis between Hezbollah and Israel: “Full scale war is not in anyone’s interest.”
Vice President Kamala Harris has been silent on the issue in the closing weeks of her presidential campaign, as has Donald Trump. The political axiom that foreign policy has little to do with presidential campaigns remains safe for now. The one political figure left standing and talking is Netanyahu, still the man of the hour in Israel.
It was déjà vu for a retired Lebanese government official and longtime resident of Beirut who lived through the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel that ended with the saturation bombing of South Beirut, a Shiite area where Hezbollah was dominant. “There is no Washington now,” he told me. “It is a vacuum. As for Bibi, it is a historical opportunity. And the war he is seeking will be awful. He is awful. And it will take a long time, and he will be exhausted in Lebanon.”
I have written about the 2006 war between Israel and a seemingly outgunned Lebanon in which the powers that be in Israel were confident of success. In the end it was, by all accounts, as I wrote then, a wash.
An all-out war this time will be torrential.
by Seymour Hersh
Sep 26, 2024
[x]
Smoke billows from a site targeted by Israeli shelling in Zaita, in the southern Lebanon, on September 23. / Photo by Mahmoud Zayyat / AFP via Getty Images.
One way to understand the dramatic events of the past week, and the restitution of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political standing in Israel, is to recall a famous statement of Admiral Ernest King, the US chief of naval operations throughout the Second World War. As the war neared its end, so the story goes, King was told by an aide that a group of reporters wanted an interview with him. “When it’s over,” he replied, “tell them who won.”
It could be Netanyahu’s motto today. I was surprised to be told recently by a well-informed official in Washington that things had changed dramatically in the war in Gaza—in Israel’s favor. There is no longer a possibility or a need for a ceasefire in Gaza, the official said. I further learned that ceasefire talk had been muted because, obviously, there is now a renewed Israeli war against the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. Amid the continuing carnage, Bibi’s standing inside Israel has soared as the death toll in Lebanon has risen.
The Israeli high command now believes, as has been reported in the Israeli media, that Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who orchestrated the murderous attack on Israel on October 7, may be dead and the Israeli Defense Force “is now in a ‘mopping-up phase’ of the tunnel war with Hamas.” The American official told me that “there’s been no communication from Sinwar in the past two or three weeks.” The implication was clear: somehow Israeli or American intelligence had been tracking or monitoring Sinwar’s communications, if not his precise underground location. There is little hope that any of the remaining Israeli hostages will be left alive. This is a conclusion that has yet to be shared with the increasingly anxious Israeli public.
(I must note here that the six hostages who were executed in a tunnel late last August were not killed, as I inaccurately recently reported, because their Hamas captors heard the noises of an Israeli sapper team whose mission was to destroy tunnels. The mission took place because the tunnel location of the hostages had become known and an Israeli special forces team was assigned to attack the site and seize the hostages. The six were found dead because there was no other exit for the guards. I do not know whether the guards were killed in a shootout or took their own lives. The full, tragic story was not made known at the time by the Israeli military, a decision that is hard to question.)
There are other facts, I was told, that indicate the Gaza war is in a mopping-up phrase. There have been no Israeli bombing missions over Gaza since last Friday (although Al-Jazeera reported that fifty people were killed in Gaza on Tuesday in various attacks), and many of the Israeli reservists who have been heavily involved in the war since last fall are in the process of being replaced by regular Israeli army soldiers.
There have been no ceasefire meetings or significant discussions with Hamas since the Israeli assassination last July 31 of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas who was in Tehran to celebrate the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian, a four-time member of the Iranian parliament. Pezeshkian, a moderate, repeatedly says that he wishes to play a constructive role in world affairs, beginning with renewed talks on Iran’s nuclear program.
Just a few weeks ago, Netanyahu was in trouble at home and abroad as the war in Gaza seemed to be an endless pit of horror. Hamas still seemed to be capable of putting up a fight, and the world was recoiling from the constant Israeli bombings of Gaza, the growing casualties, and the desperation of the surviving residents there. Netanyahu was continuing to disregard the anxieties of President Joe Biden and his foreign policy aides, led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who were in seemingly endless meetings in Egypt and Qatar and failing to achieve a ceasefire that would result in a bombing pause and the return of the surviving Israeli hostages.
The IDF, composed largely of reservists who had been called up for what was turning out to be an endless commitment, was fraying as the war dragged on, and the Israeli reservists inevitably turned on the civilian population in Gaza. Just last week a group of IDF soldiers were caught on video throwing four bodies—it was assumed all were dead—from the roof of a battered building in the West Bank to the street.
The American official, who has long dealt with Israeli issues, ruefully explained his view of the long-standing Middle East impasse: “The Israelis want the Palestinians to be peaceful and accept their fate. The Palestinians objected and fought back. A new day in the Middle East will never come.”
Last week, as the current Israeli impasse with Hezbollah was turning murderous, I had a long talk with an Israeli hero of earlier war—he served in an elite commando unit—whose grandchildren are nearing a one-year deployment in Gaza. He was full of contempt for Netanyahu and his refusal to agree to a ceasefire. There are families in Tel Aviv, he told me, who are leaving the country every day “to get their children out of the kill.”
He remains convinced that the war with Hamas was lost well before the October 7 attack when those in charge of Israel’s most important intelligence unit, dealing with signals intelligence, ignored the reports of a senior female officer who repeatedly warned of the coming Hamas attack. The Israeli veteran, who spent his career in special units, said he understood what happened. The men running the unit told the woman, a colonel, in essence, that “you ladies are here to bring me coffee.”
It’s increasingly evident that a full inquiry into the military and intelligence failures of October 7, once promised by Netanyahu, will not take place as long as Netanyahu is still in office.
The retired officer, whose negative views of Netanyahu I have heard about for years, also told me he is totally supportive of Bibi’s current war against Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and the Hezbollah militia. “We will nail Hezbollah,” he said, because its defeat would be a blow against Iran, “and Iran controls Hezbollah.”
Netanyahu, seemingly on the political ropes inside Israel and around the world, is suddenly in full bloom as the leader of the expanding war against Hezbollah. Most Israelis fear Hassan Nasrallah, its Shiite leader, for his close ties to Shiite Iran, long viewed by Israel as a potential nuclear power and its most dangerous enemy. The Biden administration and Congress are joined to the hip with Israel when it comes to Iran, though its closeness to nuclear weapons capability has long been exaggerated.
Hezbollah demonstrated its support for Sunni Hamas after the devastating Israeli bombing of Gaza began by initiating a series of missile and rocket attacks on Israeli cities and villages as far as 35 kilometers south of the border with Lebanon. The Hezbollah attacks eventually led to the evacuation of some 67,000 Israeli citizens, who were moved into temporary housing. Israel responded by bombing Hezbollah and other targets in southern Lebanon. That war has exploded with renewed ferocity in the past two weeks. Nasrallah added to the tension by authorizing his missiles to strike targets up to 50 kilometers south of the Israeli border, putting the historic Israeli city of Haifa in peril as well as Tel Aviv.
The missile and bomb exchanges remained at a low intensity until last week, when Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, triggered explosives that had earlier been implanted in a shipment of 6,000 foreign-made pagers that were purchased by Hezbollah and distributed to its senior leadership and soldiers. Many of the pagers inevitably ended up with the family members of Hezbollah officials and fighters, and the ensuing chaos when all were triggered by an Israeli signal became front-page news around the world.
Israel’s electronic reach was demoralizing and terrifying, both for the technology involved and the obvious conclusion that Netanyahu had escalated his confrontation with Hezbollah while ignoring pressure from the Biden administration to agree to a ceasefire. I had a talk with another well-informed Israeli veteran, who was seriously wounded in an earlier war, who explained that the Israeli decision to trigger the explosives was not the planned act of war that it seemed to be. He said the embedded materials were triggered only because Mossad learned that its action had been inadvertently discovered by a few Hamas officials who had brought their pagers in for routine repairs. It was that discovery that led Netanyahu or one of his aides to authorize the attack.
I got no answer when I asked how anyone in Mossad or any Israeli intelligence service could uncover such a random fact. Instead, I was told Israel’s secret triggering of the pagers was “a brilliant special op but not a plan to start a war.”
The pager blasts are estimated to have killed dozens of people, including children, and injured thousands across Lebanon. The Israeli veteran also said more than three thousand Hezbollah soldiers were injured, many of them seriously.
If there was concern at the top of the Israeli military or civilian authority about a rebuke for such tactics from Washington, it was misplaced. There was no reaction from the Biden administration and the American media has consistently viewed Hezbollah primarily as a terrorist organization, despite its presence in the last decade as a significant member of the Lebanese parliament and government. If anything, the reaction was awe and respect for the attack. David Ignatius, the Washington Post columnist, noted that Israel had not taken immediate credit for the attack: “it didn’t need to. An attack of this sophistication and daring in Lebanon could not have been staged by any other nation. The video scenes of Hezbollah fighters being blown to the floor by their own communication devices sent an unmistakable message to the Iranian-backed militia. We own you. We can penetrate every space in which you operate.”
The next day, Israel doubled down and triggered explosions in walkie-talkies throughout Lebanon. Newspapers reported the death of at least twenty civilians and the wounding of 450 more amid widespread panic and terror throughout the county.
Michael Walzer, a renowned political theorist, writing in the New York Times, described Israel’s actions in blunt language as “terrorist attacks by a state that has consistently condemned terrorist attacks on its own citizens.” Walzer has written on just and unjust wars and supported Israel’s ferocious response to the Hamas attack on October 7 as justified. But the wrongdoing in this case, Walzer wrote, “was Israel’s, and the plotters had to know that at least some of the people hurt would be innocent men, women, and children.”
The main plotter was Israel’s prime minister, who authorized the use of the militarily useless terror attacks that could only bring Hezbollah and Lebanon closer to war. Netanyahu has understood that a war with Hezbollah is a way to bolster his declining popularity in Israel and perhaps some of the world.
The Biden administration has supplied Israel with an estimated 68 percent of its arms, and Netanyahu has treated the president and his secretary of state and other diplomatic officials as pawns to be led on. In his farewell speech this week to the UN General Assembly, Joe Biden talked about his ceasefire proposal, seemingly unaware that the fate of hostages had been overtaken by events, beginning with the assassination of Haniyeh. But Biden did say, referring to the current crisis between Hezbollah and Israel: “Full scale war is not in anyone’s interest.”
Vice President Kamala Harris has been silent on the issue in the closing weeks of her presidential campaign, as has Donald Trump. The political axiom that foreign policy has little to do with presidential campaigns remains safe for now. The one political figure left standing and talking is Netanyahu, still the man of the hour in Israel.
It was déjà vu for a retired Lebanese government official and longtime resident of Beirut who lived through the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel that ended with the saturation bombing of South Beirut, a Shiite area where Hezbollah was dominant. “There is no Washington now,” he told me. “It is a vacuum. As for Bibi, it is a historical opportunity. And the war he is seeking will be awful. He is awful. And it will take a long time, and he will be exhausted in Lebanon.”
I have written about the 2006 war between Israel and a seemingly outgunned Lebanon in which the powers that be in Israel were confident of success. In the end it was, by all accounts, as I wrote then, a wash.
An all-out war this time will be torrential.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Thu Oct 10, 2024 8:50 pm
Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 27, 2024
Lebanon Calls for Int’l Community to Intervene as Israel’s Attacks Kill 700+ in a Matter of Days
Sep 27, 2024
Israel continues to bombard Lebanon, killing at least 25 people so far today, including a family of nine in the border town of Shebaa. Israel has killed over 700 people in Lebanon since Monday.
In an apparent flip-flop, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday evening he does support a U.S.-led temporary ceasefire effort, though he’s done nothing to slow down Israel’s assault and Israeli officials have threatened to launch a ground invasion. Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib addressed the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday.
Abdallah Bou Habib: “Lebanon is living through a crisis that threatens its very existence. The future of our people and our prosperity are in peril, and this is a situation that requires international intervention on an urgent basis before the situation spirals out of control with a domino effect, making the crisis impossible to contain.”
The U.N. says some 30,000 people have fled Lebanon for Syria in recent days. Meanwhile, Syrian media says an Israeli airstrike from the occupied Golan Heights earlier today killed five Syrian soldiers on its border with Lebanon.
Israel Kills at Least 14 Palestinians in Another Attack on Gaza School Shelter
Sep 27, 2024
Israel’s assault on Gaza continues with another airstrike on a school sheltering displaced families in Jabaliya, which killed at least 14 people Thursday.
Rami Abdul-Nabi: “Where are these people supposed to go? They are not here for leisure or fun. These are people whose homes were destroyed in the north, in Beit Lahia, Jabaliya base, Beit Hanoun. This is a question for the international community, which has double standards. We demand the international organizations, the international community, the United Nations to provide us with safe places.”
Israel’s Defense Ministry said Thursday it secured another $8.7 billion in funding from the United States. Israel has killed over 41,500 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7 and wounded 96,000 others, according to official numbers.
100+ U.S. Lawmakers Demand Biden Admin Investigate Israel’s Killing of U.S. Activist Ayşenur Eygi
Sep 27, 2024
More than 100 U.S. lawmakers have signed on to a letter by Washington Congressmember Adam Smith demanding an independent investigation into Israel’s killing of Turkish American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi earlier this month in the occupied West Bank. Eygi’s family has also demanded the U.S. investigate, after the Biden administration said it would instead rely on Israel’s internal probe.
Cornell University Student Facing Deportation for Participating in Gaza Solidarity Protest
Sep 27, 2024
A Cornell University student is facing deportation to the United Kingdom after administrators suspended him for taking part in a campus protest calling on Cornell to divest from companies that support Israel’s assault on Gaza. Momodou Taal, a Ph.D. student in Africana studies, says he was advised to leave the U.S. “promptly” after his academic suspension led Cornell’s immigration office to cancel his F-1 student visa. Democracy Now! spoke with Momodou Taal on Thursday.
Momodou Taal: “Yes, it’s about freedom of speech, but that cannot be divorced from Palestine. The issue why we’re facing such repression and such repressive tactics is because it’s about Palestine. It’s because you’re speaking anti-Israel and anti-Israel’s genocide in Gaza. These issues are not, like, separate. So, absolutely, I think I’m a visible person. I’m quite outspoken on this issue. And I think this is the reason why I’m being targeted.”
Acclaimed Author Jhumpa Lahiri Declines Noguchi Award over Museum’s Keffiyeh Ban
Sep 27, 2024
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri has declined the prestigious Noguchi Museum award, after the museum recently fired three employees for wearing a keffiyeh. Lahiri, who teaches at Barnard, was one of many academics who signed on to a letter in May expressing support for Gaza solidarity protesters on campus.
“No War Criminals in NYC”: Activists Take Aim at Netanyahu Ahead of Contested UNGA Speech
Sep 27, 2024
Protests targeting Benjamin Netanyahu took place across New York City Thursday as he arrived in town ahead of his address to the U.N. General Assembly this morning. Yesterday morning, activists blocked traffic near the U.N. headquarters, unfurling a banner that read “NO WAR CRIMINALS IN NYC–STOP THE GENOCIDE!” before police began arresting people. More protests and arrests took place throughout the day and into the night. This is Jodie Evans, co-founder of CodePink.
Jodie Evans: “He’s executing state-sponsored terrorism. The fact that he was allowed to land in this city and he is staying in a hotel and he is not arrested is a shame on everyone in power in the United States and in the city.”
***************
Report from Beirut: Israel Is “Targeting Everyone” in Bombing Campaign, Killing 700+ in Just Days
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 27, 2024
We get an update from Lebanon, where the death toll from Israeli airstrikes has risen to over 700 since Monday, following a series of explosions involving pagers and walkie-talkies in Beirut and southern Lebanon last week. The Israeli military reiterated its troops were preparing for a ground invasion of Lebanon if tensions continue to escalate. Multiple Israeli tanks and armored vehicles have appeared across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. As the Biden administration claims it’s working toward a ceasefire in Lebanon, Israel is set to receive a new military aid package from the United States totaling some $8.7 billion. “People are really scared,” says Mona Fawaz, professor of urban planning at the American University of Beirut. “Israel does these so-called targeted assassinations, which, sadly, much of the Western press has been celebrating, and they talk about Israelis’ ingenuity. In fact, it’s targeting everyone.” Fawaz discusses the context for Lebanon’s crisis, organizing to shelter and survive the bombing, and the Israeli messaging about evacuation orders and Hezbollah.
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 go now to Lebanon, where Israeli strikes have already killed at least 25 people today, including a family of nine in the border town of Shebaa, bringing the death toll to over 700 since Israel began its indiscriminate bombing on Monday. Israel’s strikes follow a series of explosions involving booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies in Beirut and southern Lebanon last week that killed at least 37 people and injured more than 3,500.
In an apparent flip-flop, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel shares the aims of the U.S.-led initiative for a temporary ceasefire, which has also been backed by France, by Canada, by Saudi Arabia, by UAE, by the European Union and others. This comes after Netanyahu had publicly rejected the ceasefire proposal and vowed Israel will carry on, with “full force,” attacks on Lebanon. Netanyahu spoke Thursday as he landed here in New York, where he’s scheduled to address leaders of the U.N. General Assembly.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] My policy, our policy, is clear: We are continuing to hit Hezbollah with full force, and we will not stop until we achieve our goals — first and foremost, returning the residents of the north safely to their homes.
AMY GOODMAN: Netanyahu’s remarks came as the Israeli military reiterated its troops are preparing for a possible ground invasion of Lebanon if tensions continue to escalate. Earlier today, Israeli tanks and armored vehicles were seen crossing Israel’s northern border into Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Lebanese officials say the number of displaced people fleeing Israel’s attacks has likely surpassed a quarter of a million, with tens of thousands sheltering in evacuation centers, in schools that have been closed in Beirut and across Lebanon.
Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly Thursday, the Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib urged all parties to agree to a ceasefire, as he said the worsening violence threatens Lebanon’s very existence. He said a U.S.-, France-led proposal for that temporary truce was an opportunity to generate momentum to take steps toward ending the crisis.
ABDALLAH BOU HABIB: [translated] Lebanon is living through a crisis that threatens its very existence. The future of our people and our prosperity are in peril, and this is a situation that requires international intervention on an urgent basis before the situation spirals out of control with a domino effect, making the crisis impossible to contain. It will be impossible to extinguish the flame of this crisis, which will transform into a black hole that will engulf regional, international peace and security. The crisis in Lebanon threatens the entire Middle East if the situation remains as it currently is and if the world remains immobile.
AMY GOODMAN: As the Biden administration claims it backs a ceasefire in Lebanon, Israel says it’s set to receive a new military aid package from the United States totaling some $8.7 billion.
For more, we go to Beirut, where we’re joined by Mona Fawaz, professor of urban planning at American University of Beirut. She’s also an activist.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Can you talk about what’s happening on the ground, with tens of thousands of people taking shelter in schools and other places, a quarter of a million people displaced? You yourself are involved with helping to house people. What’s happening?
MONA FAWAZ: Hi, Amy. And thanks for covering all of this.
So, really, everyone here in Beirut is under — actually, in Lebanon, is under extreme duress. Since Monday, we’ve had more than, the Ministry of Health just announced, 747 deaths. That is in three days, actually — more than half the people killed back in 2006 during the entire war. That means that people fled the south really very, very quickly, and the Beqaa. And so, the normal trickle down is instead huge flows of people who are traveling across stranded roads, spending hours and hours on trips that normally would just take 45 minutes.
And, of course, people are fleeing because they’ve just been watching for a whole year a genocide unfold in Gaza, and they’ve been hearing members of the Israeli political class and the generals repeating over and over again that they’re turning Beirut into another Gaza. So that means that people are really scared. And Israel is pounding the south and the Beqaa with one raid after another. And they’re also deploying all sorts of tactics to scare people, throwing leaflets, taking over the public phone station to robot call people and issue calls telling everyone to evacuate our classrooms, our homes. Everyone was getting these calls on Monday and Tuesday.
So, it’s really a lot of stress that you have to deal with, in the background of a country that for the last 11 years have suffered one shock after the other. So, that population, one in five of whom is actually still a Syrian refugee, has also lost 80% — 80% of its population is below the poverty line since we went bankrupt in 2019. We haven’t had a president since 20— for two years now, actually. So, there is a — we have had to basically try and help each other in a context which is really very severe.
And as you pointed out, the schools are closed. Our kids are home, because the schools are being used in shelter. One in two schools in Beirut is actually a shelter right now, and more than 40% of all the public schools in Lebanon have been turned into shelter.
And it’s getting closer and closer to us. I mean, Israel does these so-called targeted assassinations, which, sadly, much of the Western press has been celebrating, and they talk about Israelis’ ingenuity. In fact, I mean, it’s targeting everyone. It’s touching everyone. Just yesterday, there was an attack in Beirut, and it wounded one of my architecture students, a fourth-year architecture student at the American University of Beirut. So, I mean, these are not fighters; these are civilians. She just lived on the wrong street, because Israel decided to do that. Last Monday’s attack killed about 50 people.
I mean, I guess I’m just trying to show the extent to which people are trying to get involved, make a difference, help each other, but really in a very, very difficult context. And, yes, of course, most of the people I know are actually involved in trying to help people. So, most of us are sheltering family members or friends or people we know in our own homes. We also are fundraising for the Civil Defense, because Israel has been actually targeting ambulances, claiming that the wounded are fighters, but that means that the Civil Defense, which is basically the first responders, are losing their lives and their ambulances. And so we’re trying to fundraise for them. We’re trying to fundraise for medications. And because I work in a lab that normally would do a lot of urban visualization on housing and rent, we’re actually really mapping the violence, and then also all the schools, and trying to coordinate the action of solidarity by showing where the schools are, who can take aid where, so as, basically, the university can play that role of coordination and support for solidarity movements.
AMY GOODMAN: Israel says it’s warned tens of thousands of people — I think even the information minister of Lebanon — to move, they say, anyone who’s living near a Hezbollah facility or where weapons are stored. How do people know this, Professor Fawaz?
MONA FAWAZ: Of course, people cannot know where Hezbollah has weapons. And, of course, Israel can claim anything it wants. In fact, they’ve been sending bombs in all sorts of neighborhoods and areas of the country where it’s very unlikely that Hezbollah has any weapons. And the point is to basically set people against the party and to basically make it seem as if the war is just the result of Hezbollah’s belligerence.
In practice, there has been ridiculous videos showing people hiding weapons under their mattresses. It’s actually really condescending picture — cartoons oriented towards the Lebanese people, telling them, “Hey, you know the person who hid the bomb under your sofa? Can you — do you remember that guy? He was a Hezbollah.” This is ridiculous. I mean, people don’t know, and that is actually increasing the fear.
And it’s basically meant to be divisive, because the Lebanese society, at the base, is already quite divided on many issues, and also to put people into — under more duress, to just say, “OK, we surrender. You can do whatever you want.” No one can ever say no to mighty Israel and its sponsors.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, you’re a professor of urban planning. Can you explain the scale of the destruction in Lebanon due to Israel’s attacks right now? You’re documenting the frequency of the attacks, the demolition of infrastructure. We just have a minute.
MONA FAWAZ: Well, since last October, we have been documenting the strikes on daily basis and showing where they go and how. And our evidence is very clear. It shows that Israel has hit Lebanon, until last week, four times more often and way more, way deeper. In the last week, of course, the numbers have gone up the roof, and it is impossible to count how much of the demolition has actually happened. So we are working to geo-sat that, because, as in previous wars, we will have to support the effort of reconstruction. But some of the villages on the edges of Lebanon are basically fully flattened.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Mona Fawaz. Please stay safe, professor of urban planning at the American University of Beirut.
Next up, we look at the “Anatomy of a Smear Campaign Against Rashida Tlaib.” We’ll speak with Prem Thakker of Zeteo and Steve Neavling, an investigative reporter at Detroit Metro Times. It all started with an interview the Detroit congressmember did with the Detroit Metro Times. Then CNN got a hold of it. Stay with us.
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 27, 2024
Lebanon Calls for Int’l Community to Intervene as Israel’s Attacks Kill 700+ in a Matter of Days
Sep 27, 2024
Israel continues to bombard Lebanon, killing at least 25 people so far today, including a family of nine in the border town of Shebaa. Israel has killed over 700 people in Lebanon since Monday.
In an apparent flip-flop, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday evening he does support a U.S.-led temporary ceasefire effort, though he’s done nothing to slow down Israel’s assault and Israeli officials have threatened to launch a ground invasion. Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib addressed the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday.
Abdallah Bou Habib: “Lebanon is living through a crisis that threatens its very existence. The future of our people and our prosperity are in peril, and this is a situation that requires international intervention on an urgent basis before the situation spirals out of control with a domino effect, making the crisis impossible to contain.”
The U.N. says some 30,000 people have fled Lebanon for Syria in recent days. Meanwhile, Syrian media says an Israeli airstrike from the occupied Golan Heights earlier today killed five Syrian soldiers on its border with Lebanon.
Israel Kills at Least 14 Palestinians in Another Attack on Gaza School Shelter
Sep 27, 2024
Israel’s assault on Gaza continues with another airstrike on a school sheltering displaced families in Jabaliya, which killed at least 14 people Thursday.
Rami Abdul-Nabi: “Where are these people supposed to go? They are not here for leisure or fun. These are people whose homes were destroyed in the north, in Beit Lahia, Jabaliya base, Beit Hanoun. This is a question for the international community, which has double standards. We demand the international organizations, the international community, the United Nations to provide us with safe places.”
Israel’s Defense Ministry said Thursday it secured another $8.7 billion in funding from the United States. Israel has killed over 41,500 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7 and wounded 96,000 others, according to official numbers.
100+ U.S. Lawmakers Demand Biden Admin Investigate Israel’s Killing of U.S. Activist Ayşenur Eygi
Sep 27, 2024
More than 100 U.S. lawmakers have signed on to a letter by Washington Congressmember Adam Smith demanding an independent investigation into Israel’s killing of Turkish American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi earlier this month in the occupied West Bank. Eygi’s family has also demanded the U.S. investigate, after the Biden administration said it would instead rely on Israel’s internal probe.
Cornell University Student Facing Deportation for Participating in Gaza Solidarity Protest
Sep 27, 2024
A Cornell University student is facing deportation to the United Kingdom after administrators suspended him for taking part in a campus protest calling on Cornell to divest from companies that support Israel’s assault on Gaza. Momodou Taal, a Ph.D. student in Africana studies, says he was advised to leave the U.S. “promptly” after his academic suspension led Cornell’s immigration office to cancel his F-1 student visa. Democracy Now! spoke with Momodou Taal on Thursday.
Momodou Taal: “Yes, it’s about freedom of speech, but that cannot be divorced from Palestine. The issue why we’re facing such repression and such repressive tactics is because it’s about Palestine. It’s because you’re speaking anti-Israel and anti-Israel’s genocide in Gaza. These issues are not, like, separate. So, absolutely, I think I’m a visible person. I’m quite outspoken on this issue. And I think this is the reason why I’m being targeted.”
Acclaimed Author Jhumpa Lahiri Declines Noguchi Award over Museum’s Keffiyeh Ban
Sep 27, 2024
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri has declined the prestigious Noguchi Museum award, after the museum recently fired three employees for wearing a keffiyeh. Lahiri, who teaches at Barnard, was one of many academics who signed on to a letter in May expressing support for Gaza solidarity protesters on campus.
“No War Criminals in NYC”: Activists Take Aim at Netanyahu Ahead of Contested UNGA Speech
Sep 27, 2024
Protests targeting Benjamin Netanyahu took place across New York City Thursday as he arrived in town ahead of his address to the U.N. General Assembly this morning. Yesterday morning, activists blocked traffic near the U.N. headquarters, unfurling a banner that read “NO WAR CRIMINALS IN NYC–STOP THE GENOCIDE!” before police began arresting people. More protests and arrests took place throughout the day and into the night. This is Jodie Evans, co-founder of CodePink.
Jodie Evans: “He’s executing state-sponsored terrorism. The fact that he was allowed to land in this city and he is staying in a hotel and he is not arrested is a shame on everyone in power in the United States and in the city.”
***************
Report from Beirut: Israel Is “Targeting Everyone” in Bombing Campaign, Killing 700+ in Just Days
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 27, 2024
We get an update from Lebanon, where the death toll from Israeli airstrikes has risen to over 700 since Monday, following a series of explosions involving pagers and walkie-talkies in Beirut and southern Lebanon last week. The Israeli military reiterated its troops were preparing for a ground invasion of Lebanon if tensions continue to escalate. Multiple Israeli tanks and armored vehicles have appeared across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. As the Biden administration claims it’s working toward a ceasefire in Lebanon, Israel is set to receive a new military aid package from the United States totaling some $8.7 billion. “People are really scared,” says Mona Fawaz, professor of urban planning at the American University of Beirut. “Israel does these so-called targeted assassinations, which, sadly, much of the Western press has been celebrating, and they talk about Israelis’ ingenuity. In fact, it’s targeting everyone.” Fawaz discusses the context for Lebanon’s crisis, organizing to shelter and survive the bombing, and the Israeli messaging about evacuation orders and Hezbollah.
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 go now to Lebanon, where Israeli strikes have already killed at least 25 people today, including a family of nine in the border town of Shebaa, bringing the death toll to over 700 since Israel began its indiscriminate bombing on Monday. Israel’s strikes follow a series of explosions involving booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies in Beirut and southern Lebanon last week that killed at least 37 people and injured more than 3,500.
In an apparent flip-flop, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel shares the aims of the U.S.-led initiative for a temporary ceasefire, which has also been backed by France, by Canada, by Saudi Arabia, by UAE, by the European Union and others. This comes after Netanyahu had publicly rejected the ceasefire proposal and vowed Israel will carry on, with “full force,” attacks on Lebanon. Netanyahu spoke Thursday as he landed here in New York, where he’s scheduled to address leaders of the U.N. General Assembly.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] My policy, our policy, is clear: We are continuing to hit Hezbollah with full force, and we will not stop until we achieve our goals — first and foremost, returning the residents of the north safely to their homes.
AMY GOODMAN: Netanyahu’s remarks came as the Israeli military reiterated its troops are preparing for a possible ground invasion of Lebanon if tensions continue to escalate. Earlier today, Israeli tanks and armored vehicles were seen crossing Israel’s northern border into Lebanon.
Meanwhile, Lebanese officials say the number of displaced people fleeing Israel’s attacks has likely surpassed a quarter of a million, with tens of thousands sheltering in evacuation centers, in schools that have been closed in Beirut and across Lebanon.
Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly Thursday, the Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib urged all parties to agree to a ceasefire, as he said the worsening violence threatens Lebanon’s very existence. He said a U.S.-, France-led proposal for that temporary truce was an opportunity to generate momentum to take steps toward ending the crisis.
ABDALLAH BOU HABIB: [translated] Lebanon is living through a crisis that threatens its very existence. The future of our people and our prosperity are in peril, and this is a situation that requires international intervention on an urgent basis before the situation spirals out of control with a domino effect, making the crisis impossible to contain. It will be impossible to extinguish the flame of this crisis, which will transform into a black hole that will engulf regional, international peace and security. The crisis in Lebanon threatens the entire Middle East if the situation remains as it currently is and if the world remains immobile.
AMY GOODMAN: As the Biden administration claims it backs a ceasefire in Lebanon, Israel says it’s set to receive a new military aid package from the United States totaling some $8.7 billion.
For more, we go to Beirut, where we’re joined by Mona Fawaz, professor of urban planning at American University of Beirut. She’s also an activist.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Can you talk about what’s happening on the ground, with tens of thousands of people taking shelter in schools and other places, a quarter of a million people displaced? You yourself are involved with helping to house people. What’s happening?
MONA FAWAZ: Hi, Amy. And thanks for covering all of this.
So, really, everyone here in Beirut is under — actually, in Lebanon, is under extreme duress. Since Monday, we’ve had more than, the Ministry of Health just announced, 747 deaths. That is in three days, actually — more than half the people killed back in 2006 during the entire war. That means that people fled the south really very, very quickly, and the Beqaa. And so, the normal trickle down is instead huge flows of people who are traveling across stranded roads, spending hours and hours on trips that normally would just take 45 minutes.
And, of course, people are fleeing because they’ve just been watching for a whole year a genocide unfold in Gaza, and they’ve been hearing members of the Israeli political class and the generals repeating over and over again that they’re turning Beirut into another Gaza. So that means that people are really scared. And Israel is pounding the south and the Beqaa with one raid after another. And they’re also deploying all sorts of tactics to scare people, throwing leaflets, taking over the public phone station to robot call people and issue calls telling everyone to evacuate our classrooms, our homes. Everyone was getting these calls on Monday and Tuesday.
So, it’s really a lot of stress that you have to deal with, in the background of a country that for the last 11 years have suffered one shock after the other. So, that population, one in five of whom is actually still a Syrian refugee, has also lost 80% — 80% of its population is below the poverty line since we went bankrupt in 2019. We haven’t had a president since 20— for two years now, actually. So, there is a — we have had to basically try and help each other in a context which is really very severe.
And as you pointed out, the schools are closed. Our kids are home, because the schools are being used in shelter. One in two schools in Beirut is actually a shelter right now, and more than 40% of all the public schools in Lebanon have been turned into shelter.
And it’s getting closer and closer to us. I mean, Israel does these so-called targeted assassinations, which, sadly, much of the Western press has been celebrating, and they talk about Israelis’ ingenuity. In fact, I mean, it’s targeting everyone. It’s touching everyone. Just yesterday, there was an attack in Beirut, and it wounded one of my architecture students, a fourth-year architecture student at the American University of Beirut. So, I mean, these are not fighters; these are civilians. She just lived on the wrong street, because Israel decided to do that. Last Monday’s attack killed about 50 people.
I mean, I guess I’m just trying to show the extent to which people are trying to get involved, make a difference, help each other, but really in a very, very difficult context. And, yes, of course, most of the people I know are actually involved in trying to help people. So, most of us are sheltering family members or friends or people we know in our own homes. We also are fundraising for the Civil Defense, because Israel has been actually targeting ambulances, claiming that the wounded are fighters, but that means that the Civil Defense, which is basically the first responders, are losing their lives and their ambulances. And so we’re trying to fundraise for them. We’re trying to fundraise for medications. And because I work in a lab that normally would do a lot of urban visualization on housing and rent, we’re actually really mapping the violence, and then also all the schools, and trying to coordinate the action of solidarity by showing where the schools are, who can take aid where, so as, basically, the university can play that role of coordination and support for solidarity movements.
AMY GOODMAN: Israel says it’s warned tens of thousands of people — I think even the information minister of Lebanon — to move, they say, anyone who’s living near a Hezbollah facility or where weapons are stored. How do people know this, Professor Fawaz?
MONA FAWAZ: Of course, people cannot know where Hezbollah has weapons. And, of course, Israel can claim anything it wants. In fact, they’ve been sending bombs in all sorts of neighborhoods and areas of the country where it’s very unlikely that Hezbollah has any weapons. And the point is to basically set people against the party and to basically make it seem as if the war is just the result of Hezbollah’s belligerence.
In practice, there has been ridiculous videos showing people hiding weapons under their mattresses. It’s actually really condescending picture — cartoons oriented towards the Lebanese people, telling them, “Hey, you know the person who hid the bomb under your sofa? Can you — do you remember that guy? He was a Hezbollah.” This is ridiculous. I mean, people don’t know, and that is actually increasing the fear.
And it’s basically meant to be divisive, because the Lebanese society, at the base, is already quite divided on many issues, and also to put people into — under more duress, to just say, “OK, we surrender. You can do whatever you want.” No one can ever say no to mighty Israel and its sponsors.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, you’re a professor of urban planning. Can you explain the scale of the destruction in Lebanon due to Israel’s attacks right now? You’re documenting the frequency of the attacks, the demolition of infrastructure. We just have a minute.
MONA FAWAZ: Well, since last October, we have been documenting the strikes on daily basis and showing where they go and how. And our evidence is very clear. It shows that Israel has hit Lebanon, until last week, four times more often and way more, way deeper. In the last week, of course, the numbers have gone up the roof, and it is impossible to count how much of the demolition has actually happened. So we are working to geo-sat that, because, as in previous wars, we will have to support the effort of reconstruction. But some of the villages on the edges of Lebanon are basically fully flattened.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you for being with us, Mona Fawaz. Please stay safe, professor of urban planning at the American University of Beirut.
Next up, we look at the “Anatomy of a Smear Campaign Against Rashida Tlaib.” We’ll speak with Prem Thakker of Zeteo and Steve Neavling, an investigative reporter at Detroit Metro Times. It all started with an interview the Detroit congressmember did with the Detroit Metro Times. Then CNN got a hold of it. Stay with us.
- admin
- Site Admin
- Posts: 37523
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Thu Oct 10, 2024 9:00 pm
Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 30, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/9/30/ ... transcript
Israel Kills Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah; Netanyahu Addresses U.N. Despite Growing Pariah Status
Sep 30, 2024
Lebanon is marking three days of mourning after Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah Friday in a massive attack that leveled multiple high-rise apartment buildings in a suburb south of Beirut. Nasrallah had led Hezbollah since 1992 and was widely considered one of the most powerful figures in the Middle East. Multiple news outlets report Israel likely used U.S.-made 2,000-pound BLU-109 bombs in the attack. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both described Nasrallah’s death as a “measure of justice.” But on the streets of Beirut, Lebanese residents vowed to keep resisting the Israeli attacks.
Françoise Azori: “You won’t be able to destroy us, whatever you do, however much you bomb, however much you displace people. We will stay here. We won’t leave. This is our country, and we’re staying. Do whatever you want to do. We don’t care.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the order to kill Nasrallah shortly after giving a speech at the United Nations General Assembly here in New York. As he was being introduced at the U.N., dozens of diplomats walked out of the General Assembly hall in protest.
Iran responded to the assassination of Nasrallah by seeking an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, warning Israel is “pushing the entire region into an all-out catastrophe.” A prominent general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was also killed in Friday’s attack on Nasrallah.
Over the past 24 hours, Israeli strikes in Lebanon killed at least 105 people, bringing the death toll over the past two weeks to more than 1,000, with 6,000 people injured. The Israeli attacks have also displaced about 1 million people in Lebanon. More than 100,000 people have fled from Lebanon to Syria. Earlier today, Israel killed the head of Hamas in Lebanon along with his wife, son and daughter in a strike on their home in a Palestinian refugee camp. In a separate strike inside Beirut, Israel killed three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Fears are now growing Israel may soon launch a ground invasion of Lebanon. Earlier today, Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Qassem, vowed the group is ready to confront an Israeli invasion.
Israeli Airstrikes in Gaza Kill More Displaced Palestinians, Journalist Wafa al-Udaini
Sep 30, 2024
In Gaza, Israel is continuing to attack schools where displaced Palestinians have sought shelter. Earlier today, an Israeli warplane bombed a school in Beit Lahia, killing at least two people. In Deir al-Balah, another Israeli strike killed Palestinian journalist Wafa al-Udaini and three of her family members, including two children. On Sunday, at least four people were killed in northern Gaza in another Israeli strike on a school turned shelter.
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Israeli Assassination of Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah “Shocked All of Lebanon.” What Happens Next?
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 30, 2024
Israel is expanding its attacks across the Middle East, bombing more sites in Yemen and Lebanon over the weekend after carrying out a massive attack in the suburbs of Beirut on Friday that killed longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other top commanders of the militant group. Nasrallah led Hezbollah for more than three decades and was considered one of the most powerful figures in the region. Israel likely used U.S.-made 2,000-pound bombs in Friday’s attack that leveled several high-rise apartment buildings, with a death toll estimated in the hundreds. U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both called Nasrallah’s killing “a measure of justice” while saying they were against further escalation of the war. “The news really shocked all of Lebanon, both supporters and people who oppose him,” says Associated Press reporter Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut, who notes about 1 million people inside Lebanon are now displaced by the fighting. “The airstrikes aren’t stopping; they’re continuing. And now people are anticipating a ground invasion.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: News reports from northern Israel show Israeli military tanks massing along the Israel-Lebanon border after Israel launched its first attack in central Beirut. Earlier today, Israel struck a building near the busy Cola Bridge intersection of the Lebanese capital after carrying out a massive attack Friday on a Beirut suburb that assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. He led Hezbollah for more than three decades and was considered one of the most powerful figures in the Middle East.
Israel likely used U.S.-made bombs in Friday’s attack that leveled several high-rise apartment buildings. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both called the killing of Nasrallah a, quote, “measure of justice.”
Meanwhile, Monday’s attack targeted senior figures in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Palestinian militant group. The strike leveled another apartment building.
MOAMEN AL-KHATIB: [translated] We are Palestinian firefighters and rescuers from the camps in Lebanon who came to help our brothers after the raid that happened here in Ain Ed Delb. We have been here since yesterday, since the incident. We have not left the site, and we will remain here until we complete the entire mission, God willing. There’s still people under the rubble, people we have not been able to rescue yet. We are doing everything we can to save them as quickly as possible.
AMY GOODMAN: Also today, Israel killed the head of Hamas in Lebanon along with his wife, son and daughter in a strike on their home in a Palestinian refugee camp.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the order to kill Nasrallah shortly after giving a speech before the U.N. General Assembly. Before his remarks, dozens of diplomats walked out of the U.N. General Assembly hall in protest.
Today, Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Qassem, vowed to fight on, saying the group is prepared for a long war, in his first speech since Nasrallah was killed.
SHEIKH NAIM QASSEM: [translated] Israel is committing massacres in all areas of Lebanon and choosing villages one by one until there is no village or house that does not have traces of Israeli aggression in it. It is attacking civilians, health organizations, al-Risala Scouts, all those who are in the streets and all those who are staying in their homes, including children, women and the elderly. These people are not fighting the fighters but rather are killing and committing massacres against civilians and innocents. … The Islamic resistance will continue to confront the Israeli enemy in support of Gaza in Palestine, in defense of Lebanon.
AMY GOODMAN: Over the past 24 hours, Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed at least 105 people, bringing the death toll over the past two weeks to over 1,000, with 6,000 people injured. The Israeli attacks have displaced about a million people in Lebanon. More than 100,000 have fled from Lebanon to Syria, according to the United Nations.
Meanwhile, Israel forces launched a wave of airstrikes on Yemen Sunday, targeting the city of Hodeidah for the second time in recent months, in response to missile fires by Houthi militants.
This comes as more than a thousand Israelis protested in Tel Aviv on Saturday to call on Prime Minister Netanyahu to refocus his efforts on securing the release of hostages in Gaza, where the death toll from nearly a year of Israeli attacks is nearing at least 42,000.
For more, we begin in Beirut to speak with Kareem Chehayeb, the Beirut-based journalist reporting on Lebanon, Syria and Iraq for the Associated Press. His recent piece is headlined “What to know after Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.”
Kareem, welcome to Democracy Now! Well, why don’t you tell us about the significance of this assassination and who exactly the Hezbollah leader was?
KAREEM CHEHAYEB: So, this assassination really rattled all of Lebanon. Hassan Nasrallah for decades led Hezbollah and oversaw significant developments within the militant group, oversaw, you know, ending Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon, Hezbollah’s sort of transformation into having a more heavy involvement in Lebanese politics with MPs, parliamentarians, ministers and so on, and also led Hezbollah when it began to expand more regionally, notably in Syria, where they played a pivotal role in keeping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power.
The news really shocked all of Lebanon, both supporters and people who oppose him. I recall I was on the streets here in Beirut when the news happened. And, you know, some of the supporters were screaming. They were [inaudible] shocked by the news. And, you know, they thought that this was a leader — some told me that they felt like he was immortal almost. And, of course, his assassination, on top of a handful of Hezbollah leaders, seven senior leaders, over the past eight days, really rattled the organization. Even the deputy leader Naim Qassem said so today. But he said that they’re going to regroup and appoint a new leader soon. It’s unclear when. And it’s definitely something that rattled the region, for sure.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu speaking this weekend.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] Nasrallah was not just another terrorist. He was the terrorist. He was the axis of the axis, the main engine of Iran’s “axis of evil.” He and his people were the architects of the plan to destroy Israel. … As long as Nasrallah was alive, he would have quickly rebuilt the capabilities we took from Hezbollah. Therefore, I gave the directive, and Nasrallah is longer with us.
AMY GOODMAN: If you can respond, Kareem, to what the Israeli prime minister said after the assassination, and also what has happened since, both the killing of a top-level Iranian commander along with Nasrallah and now the head of Hamas in Lebanon with his family?
KAREEM CHEHAYEB: So, you know, a lot of people, after the assassination of Nasrallah, sort of wondered, you know, “What happens next now?” The Israeli government maintains that their goal is to secure their north for their residents to return. And, you know, since the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, other senior officials have been assassinated, as well. And the airstrikes, you know, aren’t stopping; they’re continuing. And now people are anticipating a ground invasion.
And, of course, experts say that Iran is sort of in a policy dilemma. You know, Iran has dealt with several attacks that are widely blamed on Israel, including a strike on a consulate building in Syria and the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in late July. Iran hasn’t necessarily responded in such a decisive way. And the question is, you know: What are Tehran’s red lines? We don’t know how they’re going to respond to that and what this means for the region. What we do know is that, you know, they’ve sort of maintained that they’re going to keep piling diplomatic pressure. This is according to statements from different Iranian government officials. But the big question is: Given the severity of this attack, you know, will this eventually not just widen the war in Lebanon, but also have a regional component? Iran has, you know, proxies in Yemen and Iraq, and there’s a lot of speculation as to whether they will be involved or not. So, there is a really big sort of gap as to what happens next in this very intense phase of the war.
AMY GOODMAN: Kareem, we’re speaking to you in Beirut. So, you’re not only a journalist covering all of this, you’re a resident there. Can you describe what the blast was like in the suburb on Friday, and then this Beirut-based blast that just took place?
KAREEM CHEHAYEB: Yeah. The airstrike in the Beirut southern suburbs that killed Hassan Nasrallah was probably one of the most, if not the most, intense strike thus far in this conflict. You know, eyewitnesses and others, even as actually close to this office, heard eight to 10 explosions. There were multiple airstrikes. And it leveled several buildings, several buildings to the ground. It was a very shocking experience for many here. A lot of people were panicking. And it definitely sparked a wave of displacement. A lot of people in the Beirut southern suburbs immediately fled their homes and went in large groups to other neighborhoods in Beirut to find safety.
And then, the strike yesterday near the Cola Bridge, you know, this is a — it’s a very central part of the city. It’s very busy during the day. You know, it’s a critical point for public transportation, as well. And this is the most central part of Beirut where Israel has struck so far in this conflict. And, you know, a lot of the questions now among people here is, you know: Where else will be hit, given that it appears that central parts of the city could be possible targets and this is not limited to just the south or the east of Lebanon anymore? So, there’s a lot of fear and anxiety and confusion among residents all over Beirut, where over the past previous months where the fighting was mostly limited to southern Lebanon, you didn’t really feel that so much.
AMY GOODMAN: And we just have reports — I mean, and this has been going on for days — of Israeli tanks amassing along the border. What is the response of the Lebanese to what is taking place? I mean, Lebanon has one of the most, if not the highest percentage refugee population in the world. Now a million people are displaced. Many are trying to go into Syria right now.
KAREEM CHEHAYEB: Yes. So, you know, the Lebanese government has sounded the alarm on a massive displacement. Prior to this recent intense escalation, I guess, you know, there was over 100,000 displaced people. Now that number is almost a million, in such short period of time. The Lebanese government is struggling to keep up. Remember, this is a country that’s going through an economic crisis. The government is essentially broke. And the United Nations is trying to get as much funds as it can to support. And a lot of what’s helping these displaced people here is just the goodwill of a lot of people, community initiatives and so on. A lot of people I speak to in Beirut and elsewhere are doing their best, but they are questioning how sustainable it is, you know, within just a couple of weeks. And yes, it does seem like a larger number are going to Syria, as well. So, it’s indicative of the desperation taking place. And, of course, you know, a possible ground invasion is certainly the talk of the town right now, and people are wondering what the consequences will be, whether it means this war will last for a much longer time and it will widen, further widen the displacement.
So, you know, it is definitely a critical time. The Lebanese government is trying to sort of push a recent U.S.-led initiative for a temporary ceasefire for 21 days. The French foreign minister is in town, met with the prime minister and the speaker of Parliament. And, you know, it appears that the message that they’re sending is that they are willing to, you know, go about this ceasefire and try to put an end to this war as quickly as possible. The question is whether Hezbollah at the same time — you know, whether they will change their approach to this. You know, Hezbollah have maintained, even after Nasrallah’s assassination, that they will stop once there’s a ceasefire in Gaza. And they accuse the Israelis and the American government of basically wanting them to set up a deal independent of Gaza. So the question really is: How can this diplomatic gridlock be broken? And I think we could be at a major turning point right now, given the heightened developments.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you see Lebanese troops joining or replacing Hezbollah militants on the border?
KAREEM CHEHAYEB: There is certainly a lot of speculation that has come about the fate of Lebanon politically and with the war after Nasrallah’s assassination. There are allied groups to Hezbollah that have been involved in the south since the beginning — you know, for example, the Fajr Brigades of the Islamic Group, which is the branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas early on, as well, here in Lebanon were involved, as well. And, you know, the question, of course, is: If there’s a ground invasion, will more groups allied that have some sort of weapons be involved? It appears that most experts say that it might actually be more about the allies of Hezbollah outside of Lebanon, whether the Houthis in Yemen or the Iran-backed militias in Iraq will be much more involved. So, that is sort of the big question right now, given a possible ground invasion.
AMY GOODMAN: Kareem Chehayeb, we want to thank you for being with us, speaking to us from Beirut, journalist covering Lebanon, Syria and Iraq for the Associated Press. We’ll link to your piece, “What to know after Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.”
When we come back, we’ll be joined by Gideon Levy in Tel Aviv, the award-winning Israeli journalist and author, columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, a member of its editorial board. One of his latest pieces in the Haaretz newspaper, “Israel’s Barbaric Glee Over Nasrallah’s Assassination Is a New Low for Israeli Society.” Back in 20 seconds.
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Gideon Levy: “Israel’s Barbaric Glee over Nasrallah’s Assassination Is a New Low for Israeli Society”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 30, 2024
We speak with Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy in Tel Aviv, who says the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday was met with “barbaric glee” by much of Israeli society. “We are getting down and down, lower and lower, believing more and more in only one thing, namely in killing and destructing,” says Levy, who warns that Israel is very likely to launch a ground invasion of Lebanon next and continue expanding the war as long as it enjoys unlimited U.S. support. The ongoing escalation in the region comes after a year of “only bombing and refusing any kind of diplomacy,” Levy says.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.
As Israel strikes central Beirut, Yemen and Gaza after the massive attack Friday in the Beirut suburb that killed the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, one of the most powerful figures in the region, we’re joined by Gideon Levy. He is Israeli journalist, author, columnist for Haaretz, as well as a member of its editorial board. His latest piece, “Israel’s Barbaric Glee Over Nasrallah’s Assassination Is a New Low for Israeli Society.”
Gideon, thanks so much for joining us again. If you can start off by talking about what happened on Friday? You have Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, ascending the podium at the U.N. General Assembly. Apparently right after, he gave the go-ahead for the assassination of Nasrallah. Right before he came up on the podium, dozens of world leaders walked out. If you can talk about the significance of this decision and then the bombing of Yemen and, of course, the continuation of the assault on Gaza?
GIDEON LEVY: You know, Amy, listening to your program is enough. Israel is shooting here, and Israel is assassinating there, and Israel is bombing here, and Israel is bombing there. Where are we aiming to? I mean, all those operations might be [inaudible], to them, are justified. But what comes next?
This thought that Israel can solve everything by force and that war is always the first answer for everything must change, because, otherwise, we will really find ourselves one day totally lonely in the world. Even the United States, which supports Israel still blindly and automatically — and I must emphasize on your show that the United States is a full partner for everything that Israel is doing in the last year, including the massacre in Gaza — even the United States will wake up one day. And then what?
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about the assassination of Nasrallah. You’re talking to us from Tel Aviv. And the response in Israel?
GIDEON LEVY: I’ll give you a few examples. In one of the main channels of Israeli TV, a reporter, live, was distributing chocolates. That’s the spirit in Israel. That’s the spirit. Another important columnist wrote, “We smashed him like a lizard.” And if this is the atmosphere, this is the mindset, this is the zeitgeist even, so it will be very hard to change things, because we are getting down and down, lower and lower, believing more and more only in one thing, namely in killing and destructing.
AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can talk about what Netanyahu’s strategy is and if he has one other than a military strategy? You have the tanks, Israeli tanks, amassing on the border. Do you see a ground invasion of Lebanon happening at this point? What does this mean? Does he just want to deplete Hezbollah or completely wipe it out?
GIDEON LEVY: I can’t see a scenario in which Israel is not going for a ground operation. First, it will be, as usual, presented as a very, very limited one, limited in time, limited in territory. We’ve been in those shows many times. And then it will get complicated, and then we’ll have to widen it and expand the time that we stay there. As usual, we are getting into those things without having any clue, any idea how we will get out of it. Look at Israel in Gaza. Nobody has a clue how we are getting out of Gaza. [inaudible] Gaza. Israel is going to repeat the same mistake with Lebanon, using the excuse or the passiveness of the world, which allows Israel to do now whatever it wants.
Netanyahu, I think, is also now in euphoria after what is perceived in Israel as wonderful successes, James Bond successes, first with the pagers and with the walkie-talkies and then with all the assassinations. This is perceived in Israel as an enormous success. So, being riding on this success, I guess nothing will stop Israel to get into a ground operation.
And then, you know there will be a moment that a regional war might become a factor, might become a reality. And then what, when Iran might come in? And with all those risks seem what? Unimportant? Unreal? And if Iran comes into the picture, what’s next? We will bomb Iran?
This whole mindset of bombing and bombing for one year now, and only bombing, and refusing any kind of diplomacy — remember, there were deals to release the hostages. Israel said no. Ceasefire, Israel said no. Lebanon ceasefire, Israel says no. This will not guarantee the security of Israel, not to speak about the price the other side is paying. But even the security of Israel will not get better. We are now in a less good situation than one year ago. I can tell you that in Tel Aviv, we are more scared than we were one year ago.
AMY GOODMAN: The U.S. military said Sunday it’s increasing its air support capabilities in the Middle East, putting troops on heightened alert. ABC News’s Martha Raddatz interviewed White House national security communications adviser John Kirby on This Week Sunday and asked about the reports.
JOHN KIRBY: There’s a contingency of additional forces in the region right now to help us with any possible contingencies that might come up.
MARTHA RADDATZ: Dozens more?
JOHN KIRBY: Certainly —
MARTHA RADDATZ: I mean, I know we have 40,000 troops in the region already.
JOHN KIRBY: Yeah, I don’t want to get into the exact numbers or who these guys are, but we did — we did deploy some additional forces into the region. I would tell you that there’s other options available, as well, in terms of adding and enhancing that force posture.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you talk, Gideon Levy, about a regional war. Right before Netanyahu spoke at the U.N., as you said, there was this discussion that the U.S. and France was leading with Saudi Arabia and others to have a ceasefire, and then Hassan Nasrallah is assassinated. Is this more than Israel engaging in a regional war, but trying to bring the U.S. into it, as well? Netanyahu is known as a close Trump ally and friend. How that would affect the U.S. elections, as well? And right before Netanyahu spoke at the United Nations, you have Israel saying Thursday it had secured another $8.7 billion in aid from the United States to support its ongoing military efforts. We’re going to end with this question of whether Israel could continue what it does if the U.S. stopped the weapons flow.
GIDEON LEVY: But the U.N. — but the U.S. does not stop —
AMY GOODMAN: If the U.S. stopped.
GIDEON LEVY: — the weapons. That’s the point. The U.S. is saying one thing and acting exactly to the opposite direction. Can you believe that a major superpower is telling Israel to stop the war and in the same time it is supplying it with weapons and bombs and ammunition? What is Israel supposed to do? Why not to shoot and to bomb, to continue to do this, if the Americans are supplying it in an unconditioned way? No conditions.
So, this hypocrisy must come to its end. The United States is supporting the war, is supporting Israel. The bombs that were falling on the bunker of Nasrallah were American bombs. The bombs that fall on Gaza are American bombs. The children who were killed, 17,000 of them, in Gaza were killed by American ammunition. And America, the United States, cannot say that it is against killing children, because it is a partner.
AMY GOODMAN: Gideon Levy, we want to thank you so much for being with us, award-winning Israeli journalist, author, columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, also on their editorial board. We’ll link to your latest pieces, including “Israel’s Barbaric Glee Over Nasrallah’s Assassination Is a New Low for Israeli Society.”
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Trita Parsi on Israel’s Nasrallah Assassination and Why Netanyahu Still Wants War with Iran
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 30, 2024
As the Middle East gets ever closer to an all-out war, we speak with Iranian American analyst and author Trita Parsi about Iran’s response in the aftermath of Israel’s assassination of longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The powerful Lebanese militia is closely aligned with Iran and is part of the “Axis of Resistance” of forces in the Middle East opposed to Israel that also includes Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen. “Israel has quite successfully cornered Iran,” says Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “At this point, if Iran does almost anything, it will risk triggering the larger regional war that Netanyahu wants and that the Iranians have tried to avoid.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! We’re going to turn to Washington, D.C., right now for more on all of this, to look at how Iran could respond to the Israeli strike Friday in Lebanon that killed the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. We go to Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He’s just written a piece for Zeteo headlined “Nasrallah Assassinated: What Happens Next?”
Trita, thanks for joining us again. What happens next? And can you respond to the assassination of the longtime Hezbollah leader — since what? 1992 — Hassan Nasrallah?
TRITA PARSI: So, a lot of eyes are, of course, on Iran and trying to figure out what Iran is going to do next. But we have to recognize that Israel has quite successfully cornered Iran. Iran played the long game, tried to avoid a direct confrontation with Israel, absorbed a lot of hits, but in the process of playing the long game, its options have become fewer, weaker and more dangerous. At this point, if Iran does almost anything, it will risk triggering the larger regional war that Netanyahu wants and that the Iranians have tried to avoid.
As a result, I think our eyes should actually be on what Israel does next, whether it will go through with an invasion — we’re already seeing reports now that some commando raids have been conducted inside of Lebanon by the Israelis, probably in preparation for a land invasion — as well as what Israel plans to do with the Houthis. If it reaches a point in which the Iranians conclude that Israel’s strategy is to take out some of these entities before going to Iran itself, that may trigger the Iranians to act now in the hope of actually having better options now rather than waiting.
But other than that, the Iranians seem to be of the mindset that they do not want to get in a direct engagement because of their own internal problems. Iran is faced with a significant anger from the population over the abuse and repression of the Iranian regime, particularly in the protests of two years ago. It does not believe that it actually can afford a war of this kind. Instead, its priorities are to try to see if it can get a deal with United States on the nuclear issue, reduce tensions, lift some of the sanctions, improve the economy, in order to reduce the distance between the society and the government. The last thing they want in that context is a war with Israel that will most likely increase that distance and the anger of the population.
AMY GOODMAN: In addition to the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah on Friday, Israel killed the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the deputy commander Abbas Nilforoushan, who was killed in that Nasrallah strike, a seminal or a key figure in the Iran-Iraq War. Can you talk about his significance and then the role of the new Iranian president, seen as a reformist?
TRITA PARSI: So, Iran has taken quite a lot of hits. Nilforoushan is just the latest commander that has been killed by the Israelis, not just since October 7th, but over the course of several years, in Syria and in Lebanon itself. And this is part of their long game in terms of not necessarily reacting to each and every one of these, because they know that Israel is in a stronger position and Israel has an interest of having a confrontation sooner rather than later.
But again, that strategy, that long-term strategy, only works if there’s also a short game. And Iran’s short game seems to be losing right now, given how Israel has managed to crack the communications system of Hezbollah, take out the top echelon of its commanders and put Hezbollah in a very, very weak position.
AMY GOODMAN: So, the U.S. struck Hodeidah in Yemen. And the Houthis, now the question is how they will respond. Can you talk about Iran’s relationship with the Houthis, with Hamas and with Hezbollah?
TRITA PARSI: I think one of the things that has not been acknowledged, at least not in the Western narrative, about October 7th is that it clearly came at a very bad time for the Iranians and for Hezbollah itself. I think, actually, there’s been privately quite a lot of irritation in Tehran with Hamas, because it obviously did not coordinate any of that with the Iranians. The Iranians, Hezbollah were not even aware of the plans that Hamas had for that attack. And the reason, again, is because it forced a confrontation with Israel at a much earlier stage than what the Iranians and Hezbollah were ready for. Lebanon’s economy was in complete disaster. Iran had its own problems. They were not looking for a fight. Hamas’s calculation was completely different.
And it also shows you the distance that does exist between these different entities. Iran and Hezbollah are much, much closer to each other, whereas Hamas is a more recent addition to Iran’s axis and a very problematic one in terms of their relationship. They have had several fallouts. Hamas originally was quite a strong enemy of Iran. Then you have the Houthis, who is a very different entity, does its own thing, is part of the axis, essentially, but has made it very clear it is not taking any orders from Iran. It’s been quite critical publicly of Iran, arguing that Iran has been far too risk-averse and that Iran should have entered into this fight much, much sooner, rather than watching from afar and not aiding Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis to an extent that they believe that Iran should have.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to finally ask about — the same question I put to Gideon Levy in Tel Aviv, Trita. You’re Iranian American. You’ve been writing extensively books on U.S., Iranian, Israel policy. Among your books, Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy, your first book Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel, and the United States. Do you feel that the Israeli prime minister is attempting to pull Iran into a war with the United States, as the number one sponsor, the United States, of the military in Israel?
TRITA PARSI: I don’t think there is any doubt that that is Netanyahu’s game plan. And the reason why he has been successful in the last couple of weeks is not because of any particular action by the Israelis — although, of course, they’ve scored some major successes. It’s because of the posture of the Biden administration. Biden has chosen to be so deferential, more deferential than any other American president has been to Netanyahu. And as a result, despite all of the talk of wanting to avoid a larger regional war, which clearly is in the U.S. interest to avoid, Biden has adopted a posture in which he essentially says that that’s what he wants to avoid, but then he provides the Israelis with the weapons, the political protection, the diplomatic support and the arms and money to be able to pursue exactly the escalation that Biden says that he does not want.
That’s the big difference that has happened here now, that the United States has now, under Biden, chosen to completely be in support of whatever Netanyahu wants to do. And Netanyahu’s plan for quite some time has been to reverse the balance in the Middle East, to make sure that Israel is once again enjoying a much stronger and favorable position in the region by cutting down many of the different challengers to Israel that exist in the region. Reversing that balance is not something that Israel can do on its own. It can only do so by bringing in the United States into the war, whether it is directly or in the manner that Biden has been supporting everything that Israel is doing.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, you have U.S. troops. You have the warships in the eastern Mediterranean, in the Gulf. You have U.S. soldiers in Jordan, around 50,000 overall U.S. soldiers in the area. If this is intensified, how do you see this playing out in the U.S. election? Do you actually think — I mean, after Netanyahu addressed the U.S. Congress and got more applause than any president in U.S. history — what, more than 50 standing ovations — he went down to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump — this will serve Trump in this election?
TRITA PARSI: Whether one thinks that Trump is going to be different or not from what Biden has done or what Harris may do, reality is, I think, that if you have this explosion taking place in the region with the U.S. itself getting dragged into the war before the elections, it will serve Trump. The Biden administration have gone out and said that they’ve been working 24 hours without any rest to try to secure a ceasefire for more than 10 months now, and they have absolutely nothing to show for it except for constantly giving Israel more weapons and arms.
And if that may not push away some of the more loyal supporters of the centrist elements of the Democratic Party, I think it does significantly risk losing a lot of the people who have been on the fence, who have given Biden the benefit of the doubt, certainly were willing to give Kamala Harris the benefit of the doubt. But if this disaster happens, I think those voters, that voting bloc — which I’m not talking about the Arab Americans or the Gen Z or the Muslim Americans, but that other voting bloc that is more on the fence on this — they may also be lost as a result of this.
AMY GOODMAN: Trita Parsi, I want to thank you for being with us, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. We’ll link to your piece in Zeteo, “Nasrallah Assassinated: What Happens Next?” Author of a number of books, including Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy.
Next up, Hurricane Helene tears through the southeastern United States as scientists say climate change rapidly intensifies hurricanes. We’ll speak with climate activist and scientist Peter Kalmus in North Carolina, one of the states hit hardest by the storm. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Third World War” by Kris Kristofferson. The politically conscious singer and actor died Saturday at the age of 88. He once said, quote, “I was in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas. I’ve argued for Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the United Farm Workers. I’ve been a radical for a long time. I guess it’s too bad. I’d be more marketable as a right-wing redneck. But I got into this to tell the truth,” Kris Kristofferson said.
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 30, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/9/30/ ... transcript
Israel Kills Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah; Netanyahu Addresses U.N. Despite Growing Pariah Status
Sep 30, 2024
Lebanon is marking three days of mourning after Israel assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah Friday in a massive attack that leveled multiple high-rise apartment buildings in a suburb south of Beirut. Nasrallah had led Hezbollah since 1992 and was widely considered one of the most powerful figures in the Middle East. Multiple news outlets report Israel likely used U.S.-made 2,000-pound BLU-109 bombs in the attack. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both described Nasrallah’s death as a “measure of justice.” But on the streets of Beirut, Lebanese residents vowed to keep resisting the Israeli attacks.
Françoise Azori: “You won’t be able to destroy us, whatever you do, however much you bomb, however much you displace people. We will stay here. We won’t leave. This is our country, and we’re staying. Do whatever you want to do. We don’t care.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the order to kill Nasrallah shortly after giving a speech at the United Nations General Assembly here in New York. As he was being introduced at the U.N., dozens of diplomats walked out of the General Assembly hall in protest.
Iran responded to the assassination of Nasrallah by seeking an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, warning Israel is “pushing the entire region into an all-out catastrophe.” A prominent general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was also killed in Friday’s attack on Nasrallah.
Over the past 24 hours, Israeli strikes in Lebanon killed at least 105 people, bringing the death toll over the past two weeks to more than 1,000, with 6,000 people injured. The Israeli attacks have also displaced about 1 million people in Lebanon. More than 100,000 people have fled from Lebanon to Syria. Earlier today, Israel killed the head of Hamas in Lebanon along with his wife, son and daughter in a strike on their home in a Palestinian refugee camp. In a separate strike inside Beirut, Israel killed three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Fears are now growing Israel may soon launch a ground invasion of Lebanon. Earlier today, Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Qassem, vowed the group is ready to confront an Israeli invasion.
Israeli Airstrikes in Gaza Kill More Displaced Palestinians, Journalist Wafa al-Udaini
Sep 30, 2024
In Gaza, Israel is continuing to attack schools where displaced Palestinians have sought shelter. Earlier today, an Israeli warplane bombed a school in Beit Lahia, killing at least two people. In Deir al-Balah, another Israeli strike killed Palestinian journalist Wafa al-Udaini and three of her family members, including two children. On Sunday, at least four people were killed in northern Gaza in another Israeli strike on a school turned shelter.
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Israeli Assassination of Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah “Shocked All of Lebanon.” What Happens Next?
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 30, 2024
Israel is expanding its attacks across the Middle East, bombing more sites in Yemen and Lebanon over the weekend after carrying out a massive attack in the suburbs of Beirut on Friday that killed longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other top commanders of the militant group. Nasrallah led Hezbollah for more than three decades and was considered one of the most powerful figures in the region. Israel likely used U.S.-made 2,000-pound bombs in Friday’s attack that leveled several high-rise apartment buildings, with a death toll estimated in the hundreds. U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both called Nasrallah’s killing “a measure of justice” while saying they were against further escalation of the war. “The news really shocked all of Lebanon, both supporters and people who oppose him,” says Associated Press reporter Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut, who notes about 1 million people inside Lebanon are now displaced by the fighting. “The airstrikes aren’t stopping; they’re continuing. And now people are anticipating a ground invasion.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: News reports from northern Israel show Israeli military tanks massing along the Israel-Lebanon border after Israel launched its first attack in central Beirut. Earlier today, Israel struck a building near the busy Cola Bridge intersection of the Lebanese capital after carrying out a massive attack Friday on a Beirut suburb that assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. He led Hezbollah for more than three decades and was considered one of the most powerful figures in the Middle East.
Israel likely used U.S.-made bombs in Friday’s attack that leveled several high-rise apartment buildings. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both called the killing of Nasrallah a, quote, “measure of justice.”
Meanwhile, Monday’s attack targeted senior figures in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Palestinian militant group. The strike leveled another apartment building.
MOAMEN AL-KHATIB: [translated] We are Palestinian firefighters and rescuers from the camps in Lebanon who came to help our brothers after the raid that happened here in Ain Ed Delb. We have been here since yesterday, since the incident. We have not left the site, and we will remain here until we complete the entire mission, God willing. There’s still people under the rubble, people we have not been able to rescue yet. We are doing everything we can to save them as quickly as possible.
AMY GOODMAN: Also today, Israel killed the head of Hamas in Lebanon along with his wife, son and daughter in a strike on their home in a Palestinian refugee camp.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the order to kill Nasrallah shortly after giving a speech before the U.N. General Assembly. Before his remarks, dozens of diplomats walked out of the U.N. General Assembly hall in protest.
Today, Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Qassem, vowed to fight on, saying the group is prepared for a long war, in his first speech since Nasrallah was killed.
SHEIKH NAIM QASSEM: [translated] Israel is committing massacres in all areas of Lebanon and choosing villages one by one until there is no village or house that does not have traces of Israeli aggression in it. It is attacking civilians, health organizations, al-Risala Scouts, all those who are in the streets and all those who are staying in their homes, including children, women and the elderly. These people are not fighting the fighters but rather are killing and committing massacres against civilians and innocents. … The Islamic resistance will continue to confront the Israeli enemy in support of Gaza in Palestine, in defense of Lebanon.
AMY GOODMAN: Over the past 24 hours, Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed at least 105 people, bringing the death toll over the past two weeks to over 1,000, with 6,000 people injured. The Israeli attacks have displaced about a million people in Lebanon. More than 100,000 have fled from Lebanon to Syria, according to the United Nations.
Meanwhile, Israel forces launched a wave of airstrikes on Yemen Sunday, targeting the city of Hodeidah for the second time in recent months, in response to missile fires by Houthi militants.
This comes as more than a thousand Israelis protested in Tel Aviv on Saturday to call on Prime Minister Netanyahu to refocus his efforts on securing the release of hostages in Gaza, where the death toll from nearly a year of Israeli attacks is nearing at least 42,000.
For more, we begin in Beirut to speak with Kareem Chehayeb, the Beirut-based journalist reporting on Lebanon, Syria and Iraq for the Associated Press. His recent piece is headlined “What to know after Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.”
Kareem, welcome to Democracy Now! Well, why don’t you tell us about the significance of this assassination and who exactly the Hezbollah leader was?
KAREEM CHEHAYEB: So, this assassination really rattled all of Lebanon. Hassan Nasrallah for decades led Hezbollah and oversaw significant developments within the militant group, oversaw, you know, ending Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon, Hezbollah’s sort of transformation into having a more heavy involvement in Lebanese politics with MPs, parliamentarians, ministers and so on, and also led Hezbollah when it began to expand more regionally, notably in Syria, where they played a pivotal role in keeping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power.
The news really shocked all of Lebanon, both supporters and people who oppose him. I recall I was on the streets here in Beirut when the news happened. And, you know, some of the supporters were screaming. They were [inaudible] shocked by the news. And, you know, they thought that this was a leader — some told me that they felt like he was immortal almost. And, of course, his assassination, on top of a handful of Hezbollah leaders, seven senior leaders, over the past eight days, really rattled the organization. Even the deputy leader Naim Qassem said so today. But he said that they’re going to regroup and appoint a new leader soon. It’s unclear when. And it’s definitely something that rattled the region, for sure.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu speaking this weekend.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] Nasrallah was not just another terrorist. He was the terrorist. He was the axis of the axis, the main engine of Iran’s “axis of evil.” He and his people were the architects of the plan to destroy Israel. … As long as Nasrallah was alive, he would have quickly rebuilt the capabilities we took from Hezbollah. Therefore, I gave the directive, and Nasrallah is longer with us.
AMY GOODMAN: If you can respond, Kareem, to what the Israeli prime minister said after the assassination, and also what has happened since, both the killing of a top-level Iranian commander along with Nasrallah and now the head of Hamas in Lebanon with his family?
KAREEM CHEHAYEB: So, you know, a lot of people, after the assassination of Nasrallah, sort of wondered, you know, “What happens next now?” The Israeli government maintains that their goal is to secure their north for their residents to return. And, you know, since the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, other senior officials have been assassinated, as well. And the airstrikes, you know, aren’t stopping; they’re continuing. And now people are anticipating a ground invasion.
And, of course, experts say that Iran is sort of in a policy dilemma. You know, Iran has dealt with several attacks that are widely blamed on Israel, including a strike on a consulate building in Syria and the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in late July. Iran hasn’t necessarily responded in such a decisive way. And the question is, you know: What are Tehran’s red lines? We don’t know how they’re going to respond to that and what this means for the region. What we do know is that, you know, they’ve sort of maintained that they’re going to keep piling diplomatic pressure. This is according to statements from different Iranian government officials. But the big question is: Given the severity of this attack, you know, will this eventually not just widen the war in Lebanon, but also have a regional component? Iran has, you know, proxies in Yemen and Iraq, and there’s a lot of speculation as to whether they will be involved or not. So, there is a really big sort of gap as to what happens next in this very intense phase of the war.
AMY GOODMAN: Kareem, we’re speaking to you in Beirut. So, you’re not only a journalist covering all of this, you’re a resident there. Can you describe what the blast was like in the suburb on Friday, and then this Beirut-based blast that just took place?
KAREEM CHEHAYEB: Yeah. The airstrike in the Beirut southern suburbs that killed Hassan Nasrallah was probably one of the most, if not the most, intense strike thus far in this conflict. You know, eyewitnesses and others, even as actually close to this office, heard eight to 10 explosions. There were multiple airstrikes. And it leveled several buildings, several buildings to the ground. It was a very shocking experience for many here. A lot of people were panicking. And it definitely sparked a wave of displacement. A lot of people in the Beirut southern suburbs immediately fled their homes and went in large groups to other neighborhoods in Beirut to find safety.
And then, the strike yesterday near the Cola Bridge, you know, this is a — it’s a very central part of the city. It’s very busy during the day. You know, it’s a critical point for public transportation, as well. And this is the most central part of Beirut where Israel has struck so far in this conflict. And, you know, a lot of the questions now among people here is, you know: Where else will be hit, given that it appears that central parts of the city could be possible targets and this is not limited to just the south or the east of Lebanon anymore? So, there’s a lot of fear and anxiety and confusion among residents all over Beirut, where over the past previous months where the fighting was mostly limited to southern Lebanon, you didn’t really feel that so much.
AMY GOODMAN: And we just have reports — I mean, and this has been going on for days — of Israeli tanks amassing along the border. What is the response of the Lebanese to what is taking place? I mean, Lebanon has one of the most, if not the highest percentage refugee population in the world. Now a million people are displaced. Many are trying to go into Syria right now.
KAREEM CHEHAYEB: Yes. So, you know, the Lebanese government has sounded the alarm on a massive displacement. Prior to this recent intense escalation, I guess, you know, there was over 100,000 displaced people. Now that number is almost a million, in such short period of time. The Lebanese government is struggling to keep up. Remember, this is a country that’s going through an economic crisis. The government is essentially broke. And the United Nations is trying to get as much funds as it can to support. And a lot of what’s helping these displaced people here is just the goodwill of a lot of people, community initiatives and so on. A lot of people I speak to in Beirut and elsewhere are doing their best, but they are questioning how sustainable it is, you know, within just a couple of weeks. And yes, it does seem like a larger number are going to Syria, as well. So, it’s indicative of the desperation taking place. And, of course, you know, a possible ground invasion is certainly the talk of the town right now, and people are wondering what the consequences will be, whether it means this war will last for a much longer time and it will widen, further widen the displacement.
So, you know, it is definitely a critical time. The Lebanese government is trying to sort of push a recent U.S.-led initiative for a temporary ceasefire for 21 days. The French foreign minister is in town, met with the prime minister and the speaker of Parliament. And, you know, it appears that the message that they’re sending is that they are willing to, you know, go about this ceasefire and try to put an end to this war as quickly as possible. The question is whether Hezbollah at the same time — you know, whether they will change their approach to this. You know, Hezbollah have maintained, even after Nasrallah’s assassination, that they will stop once there’s a ceasefire in Gaza. And they accuse the Israelis and the American government of basically wanting them to set up a deal independent of Gaza. So the question really is: How can this diplomatic gridlock be broken? And I think we could be at a major turning point right now, given the heightened developments.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you see Lebanese troops joining or replacing Hezbollah militants on the border?
KAREEM CHEHAYEB: There is certainly a lot of speculation that has come about the fate of Lebanon politically and with the war after Nasrallah’s assassination. There are allied groups to Hezbollah that have been involved in the south since the beginning — you know, for example, the Fajr Brigades of the Islamic Group, which is the branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas early on, as well, here in Lebanon were involved, as well. And, you know, the question, of course, is: If there’s a ground invasion, will more groups allied that have some sort of weapons be involved? It appears that most experts say that it might actually be more about the allies of Hezbollah outside of Lebanon, whether the Houthis in Yemen or the Iran-backed militias in Iraq will be much more involved. So, that is sort of the big question right now, given a possible ground invasion.
AMY GOODMAN: Kareem Chehayeb, we want to thank you for being with us, speaking to us from Beirut, journalist covering Lebanon, Syria and Iraq for the Associated Press. We’ll link to your piece, “What to know after Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.”
When we come back, we’ll be joined by Gideon Levy in Tel Aviv, the award-winning Israeli journalist and author, columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, a member of its editorial board. One of his latest pieces in the Haaretz newspaper, “Israel’s Barbaric Glee Over Nasrallah’s Assassination Is a New Low for Israeli Society.” Back in 20 seconds.
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Gideon Levy: “Israel’s Barbaric Glee over Nasrallah’s Assassination Is a New Low for Israeli Society”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 30, 2024
We speak with Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy in Tel Aviv, who says the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday was met with “barbaric glee” by much of Israeli society. “We are getting down and down, lower and lower, believing more and more in only one thing, namely in killing and destructing,” says Levy, who warns that Israel is very likely to launch a ground invasion of Lebanon next and continue expanding the war as long as it enjoys unlimited U.S. support. The ongoing escalation in the region comes after a year of “only bombing and refusing any kind of diplomacy,” Levy says.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.
As Israel strikes central Beirut, Yemen and Gaza after the massive attack Friday in the Beirut suburb that killed the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, one of the most powerful figures in the region, we’re joined by Gideon Levy. He is Israeli journalist, author, columnist for Haaretz, as well as a member of its editorial board. His latest piece, “Israel’s Barbaric Glee Over Nasrallah’s Assassination Is a New Low for Israeli Society.”
Gideon, thanks so much for joining us again. If you can start off by talking about what happened on Friday? You have Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, ascending the podium at the U.N. General Assembly. Apparently right after, he gave the go-ahead for the assassination of Nasrallah. Right before he came up on the podium, dozens of world leaders walked out. If you can talk about the significance of this decision and then the bombing of Yemen and, of course, the continuation of the assault on Gaza?
GIDEON LEVY: You know, Amy, listening to your program is enough. Israel is shooting here, and Israel is assassinating there, and Israel is bombing here, and Israel is bombing there. Where are we aiming to? I mean, all those operations might be [inaudible], to them, are justified. But what comes next?
This thought that Israel can solve everything by force and that war is always the first answer for everything must change, because, otherwise, we will really find ourselves one day totally lonely in the world. Even the United States, which supports Israel still blindly and automatically — and I must emphasize on your show that the United States is a full partner for everything that Israel is doing in the last year, including the massacre in Gaza — even the United States will wake up one day. And then what?
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about the assassination of Nasrallah. You’re talking to us from Tel Aviv. And the response in Israel?
GIDEON LEVY: I’ll give you a few examples. In one of the main channels of Israeli TV, a reporter, live, was distributing chocolates. That’s the spirit in Israel. That’s the spirit. Another important columnist wrote, “We smashed him like a lizard.” And if this is the atmosphere, this is the mindset, this is the zeitgeist even, so it will be very hard to change things, because we are getting down and down, lower and lower, believing more and more only in one thing, namely in killing and destructing.
AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can talk about what Netanyahu’s strategy is and if he has one other than a military strategy? You have the tanks, Israeli tanks, amassing on the border. Do you see a ground invasion of Lebanon happening at this point? What does this mean? Does he just want to deplete Hezbollah or completely wipe it out?
GIDEON LEVY: I can’t see a scenario in which Israel is not going for a ground operation. First, it will be, as usual, presented as a very, very limited one, limited in time, limited in territory. We’ve been in those shows many times. And then it will get complicated, and then we’ll have to widen it and expand the time that we stay there. As usual, we are getting into those things without having any clue, any idea how we will get out of it. Look at Israel in Gaza. Nobody has a clue how we are getting out of Gaza. [inaudible] Gaza. Israel is going to repeat the same mistake with Lebanon, using the excuse or the passiveness of the world, which allows Israel to do now whatever it wants.
Netanyahu, I think, is also now in euphoria after what is perceived in Israel as wonderful successes, James Bond successes, first with the pagers and with the walkie-talkies and then with all the assassinations. This is perceived in Israel as an enormous success. So, being riding on this success, I guess nothing will stop Israel to get into a ground operation.
And then, you know there will be a moment that a regional war might become a factor, might become a reality. And then what, when Iran might come in? And with all those risks seem what? Unimportant? Unreal? And if Iran comes into the picture, what’s next? We will bomb Iran?
This whole mindset of bombing and bombing for one year now, and only bombing, and refusing any kind of diplomacy — remember, there were deals to release the hostages. Israel said no. Ceasefire, Israel said no. Lebanon ceasefire, Israel says no. This will not guarantee the security of Israel, not to speak about the price the other side is paying. But even the security of Israel will not get better. We are now in a less good situation than one year ago. I can tell you that in Tel Aviv, we are more scared than we were one year ago.
AMY GOODMAN: The U.S. military said Sunday it’s increasing its air support capabilities in the Middle East, putting troops on heightened alert. ABC News’s Martha Raddatz interviewed White House national security communications adviser John Kirby on This Week Sunday and asked about the reports.
JOHN KIRBY: There’s a contingency of additional forces in the region right now to help us with any possible contingencies that might come up.
MARTHA RADDATZ: Dozens more?
JOHN KIRBY: Certainly —
MARTHA RADDATZ: I mean, I know we have 40,000 troops in the region already.
JOHN KIRBY: Yeah, I don’t want to get into the exact numbers or who these guys are, but we did — we did deploy some additional forces into the region. I would tell you that there’s other options available, as well, in terms of adding and enhancing that force posture.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you talk, Gideon Levy, about a regional war. Right before Netanyahu spoke at the U.N., as you said, there was this discussion that the U.S. and France was leading with Saudi Arabia and others to have a ceasefire, and then Hassan Nasrallah is assassinated. Is this more than Israel engaging in a regional war, but trying to bring the U.S. into it, as well? Netanyahu is known as a close Trump ally and friend. How that would affect the U.S. elections, as well? And right before Netanyahu spoke at the United Nations, you have Israel saying Thursday it had secured another $8.7 billion in aid from the United States to support its ongoing military efforts. We’re going to end with this question of whether Israel could continue what it does if the U.S. stopped the weapons flow.
GIDEON LEVY: But the U.N. — but the U.S. does not stop —
AMY GOODMAN: If the U.S. stopped.
GIDEON LEVY: — the weapons. That’s the point. The U.S. is saying one thing and acting exactly to the opposite direction. Can you believe that a major superpower is telling Israel to stop the war and in the same time it is supplying it with weapons and bombs and ammunition? What is Israel supposed to do? Why not to shoot and to bomb, to continue to do this, if the Americans are supplying it in an unconditioned way? No conditions.
So, this hypocrisy must come to its end. The United States is supporting the war, is supporting Israel. The bombs that were falling on the bunker of Nasrallah were American bombs. The bombs that fall on Gaza are American bombs. The children who were killed, 17,000 of them, in Gaza were killed by American ammunition. And America, the United States, cannot say that it is against killing children, because it is a partner.
AMY GOODMAN: Gideon Levy, we want to thank you so much for being with us, award-winning Israeli journalist, author, columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, also on their editorial board. We’ll link to your latest pieces, including “Israel’s Barbaric Glee Over Nasrallah’s Assassination Is a New Low for Israeli Society.”
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Trita Parsi on Israel’s Nasrallah Assassination and Why Netanyahu Still Wants War with Iran
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 30, 2024
As the Middle East gets ever closer to an all-out war, we speak with Iranian American analyst and author Trita Parsi about Iran’s response in the aftermath of Israel’s assassination of longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The powerful Lebanese militia is closely aligned with Iran and is part of the “Axis of Resistance” of forces in the Middle East opposed to Israel that also includes Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen. “Israel has quite successfully cornered Iran,” says Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “At this point, if Iran does almost anything, it will risk triggering the larger regional war that Netanyahu wants and that the Iranians have tried to avoid.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! We’re going to turn to Washington, D.C., right now for more on all of this, to look at how Iran could respond to the Israeli strike Friday in Lebanon that killed the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. We go to Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He’s just written a piece for Zeteo headlined “Nasrallah Assassinated: What Happens Next?”
Trita, thanks for joining us again. What happens next? And can you respond to the assassination of the longtime Hezbollah leader — since what? 1992 — Hassan Nasrallah?
TRITA PARSI: So, a lot of eyes are, of course, on Iran and trying to figure out what Iran is going to do next. But we have to recognize that Israel has quite successfully cornered Iran. Iran played the long game, tried to avoid a direct confrontation with Israel, absorbed a lot of hits, but in the process of playing the long game, its options have become fewer, weaker and more dangerous. At this point, if Iran does almost anything, it will risk triggering the larger regional war that Netanyahu wants and that the Iranians have tried to avoid.
As a result, I think our eyes should actually be on what Israel does next, whether it will go through with an invasion — we’re already seeing reports now that some commando raids have been conducted inside of Lebanon by the Israelis, probably in preparation for a land invasion — as well as what Israel plans to do with the Houthis. If it reaches a point in which the Iranians conclude that Israel’s strategy is to take out some of these entities before going to Iran itself, that may trigger the Iranians to act now in the hope of actually having better options now rather than waiting.
But other than that, the Iranians seem to be of the mindset that they do not want to get in a direct engagement because of their own internal problems. Iran is faced with a significant anger from the population over the abuse and repression of the Iranian regime, particularly in the protests of two years ago. It does not believe that it actually can afford a war of this kind. Instead, its priorities are to try to see if it can get a deal with United States on the nuclear issue, reduce tensions, lift some of the sanctions, improve the economy, in order to reduce the distance between the society and the government. The last thing they want in that context is a war with Israel that will most likely increase that distance and the anger of the population.
AMY GOODMAN: In addition to the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah on Friday, Israel killed the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the deputy commander Abbas Nilforoushan, who was killed in that Nasrallah strike, a seminal or a key figure in the Iran-Iraq War. Can you talk about his significance and then the role of the new Iranian president, seen as a reformist?
TRITA PARSI: So, Iran has taken quite a lot of hits. Nilforoushan is just the latest commander that has been killed by the Israelis, not just since October 7th, but over the course of several years, in Syria and in Lebanon itself. And this is part of their long game in terms of not necessarily reacting to each and every one of these, because they know that Israel is in a stronger position and Israel has an interest of having a confrontation sooner rather than later.
But again, that strategy, that long-term strategy, only works if there’s also a short game. And Iran’s short game seems to be losing right now, given how Israel has managed to crack the communications system of Hezbollah, take out the top echelon of its commanders and put Hezbollah in a very, very weak position.
AMY GOODMAN: So, the U.S. struck Hodeidah in Yemen. And the Houthis, now the question is how they will respond. Can you talk about Iran’s relationship with the Houthis, with Hamas and with Hezbollah?
TRITA PARSI: I think one of the things that has not been acknowledged, at least not in the Western narrative, about October 7th is that it clearly came at a very bad time for the Iranians and for Hezbollah itself. I think, actually, there’s been privately quite a lot of irritation in Tehran with Hamas, because it obviously did not coordinate any of that with the Iranians. The Iranians, Hezbollah were not even aware of the plans that Hamas had for that attack. And the reason, again, is because it forced a confrontation with Israel at a much earlier stage than what the Iranians and Hezbollah were ready for. Lebanon’s economy was in complete disaster. Iran had its own problems. They were not looking for a fight. Hamas’s calculation was completely different.
And it also shows you the distance that does exist between these different entities. Iran and Hezbollah are much, much closer to each other, whereas Hamas is a more recent addition to Iran’s axis and a very problematic one in terms of their relationship. They have had several fallouts. Hamas originally was quite a strong enemy of Iran. Then you have the Houthis, who is a very different entity, does its own thing, is part of the axis, essentially, but has made it very clear it is not taking any orders from Iran. It’s been quite critical publicly of Iran, arguing that Iran has been far too risk-averse and that Iran should have entered into this fight much, much sooner, rather than watching from afar and not aiding Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis to an extent that they believe that Iran should have.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to finally ask about — the same question I put to Gideon Levy in Tel Aviv, Trita. You’re Iranian American. You’ve been writing extensively books on U.S., Iranian, Israel policy. Among your books, Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy, your first book Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel, and the United States. Do you feel that the Israeli prime minister is attempting to pull Iran into a war with the United States, as the number one sponsor, the United States, of the military in Israel?
TRITA PARSI: I don’t think there is any doubt that that is Netanyahu’s game plan. And the reason why he has been successful in the last couple of weeks is not because of any particular action by the Israelis — although, of course, they’ve scored some major successes. It’s because of the posture of the Biden administration. Biden has chosen to be so deferential, more deferential than any other American president has been to Netanyahu. And as a result, despite all of the talk of wanting to avoid a larger regional war, which clearly is in the U.S. interest to avoid, Biden has adopted a posture in which he essentially says that that’s what he wants to avoid, but then he provides the Israelis with the weapons, the political protection, the diplomatic support and the arms and money to be able to pursue exactly the escalation that Biden says that he does not want.
That’s the big difference that has happened here now, that the United States has now, under Biden, chosen to completely be in support of whatever Netanyahu wants to do. And Netanyahu’s plan for quite some time has been to reverse the balance in the Middle East, to make sure that Israel is once again enjoying a much stronger and favorable position in the region by cutting down many of the different challengers to Israel that exist in the region. Reversing that balance is not something that Israel can do on its own. It can only do so by bringing in the United States into the war, whether it is directly or in the manner that Biden has been supporting everything that Israel is doing.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, you have U.S. troops. You have the warships in the eastern Mediterranean, in the Gulf. You have U.S. soldiers in Jordan, around 50,000 overall U.S. soldiers in the area. If this is intensified, how do you see this playing out in the U.S. election? Do you actually think — I mean, after Netanyahu addressed the U.S. Congress and got more applause than any president in U.S. history — what, more than 50 standing ovations — he went down to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump — this will serve Trump in this election?
TRITA PARSI: Whether one thinks that Trump is going to be different or not from what Biden has done or what Harris may do, reality is, I think, that if you have this explosion taking place in the region with the U.S. itself getting dragged into the war before the elections, it will serve Trump. The Biden administration have gone out and said that they’ve been working 24 hours without any rest to try to secure a ceasefire for more than 10 months now, and they have absolutely nothing to show for it except for constantly giving Israel more weapons and arms.
And if that may not push away some of the more loyal supporters of the centrist elements of the Democratic Party, I think it does significantly risk losing a lot of the people who have been on the fence, who have given Biden the benefit of the doubt, certainly were willing to give Kamala Harris the benefit of the doubt. But if this disaster happens, I think those voters, that voting bloc — which I’m not talking about the Arab Americans or the Gen Z or the Muslim Americans, but that other voting bloc that is more on the fence on this — they may also be lost as a result of this.
AMY GOODMAN: Trita Parsi, I want to thank you for being with us, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. We’ll link to your piece in Zeteo, “Nasrallah Assassinated: What Happens Next?” Author of a number of books, including Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy.
Next up, Hurricane Helene tears through the southeastern United States as scientists say climate change rapidly intensifies hurricanes. We’ll speak with climate activist and scientist Peter Kalmus in North Carolina, one of the states hit hardest by the storm. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Third World War” by Kris Kristofferson. The politically conscious singer and actor died Saturday at the age of 88. He once said, quote, “I was in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas. I’ve argued for Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the United Farm Workers. I’ve been a radical for a long time. I guess it’s too bad. I’d be more marketable as a right-wing redneck. But I got into this to tell the truth,” Kris Kristofferson said.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Thu Oct 10, 2024 9:07 pm
Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 01, 2024
Hezbollah Denies Reports Israeli Troops Have Invaded Southern Lebanon
Oct 01, 2024
The Lebanese Health Ministry says Israeli airstrikes killed at least 95 people and wounded 172 others on Monday, as Israel’s army said it was carrying out what it called “limited and targeted raids” into southern Lebanon. Hezbollah, however, denied that Israeli forces had begun an invasion. The conflicting accounts came as Hezbollah fighters fired salvos of rockets into Israel, including an attack on the headquarters of Israel’s intelligence service outside Tel Aviv. Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati says his nation is now facing “one of the most dangerous phases of its history,” and called on the United Nations to step up aid to 1 million Lebanese people displaced by Israel’s assault. In Washington, President Biden said Monday he wanted a ceasefire in Lebanon; however, the Pentagon contradicted Biden’s remark just hours later. A readout of a call between U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant shows the two war leaders “agreed on the necessity of dismantling attack infrastructure along the border.” After headlines, we’ll go to Beirut for the latest.
Syria Says Israeli Strikes on Damascus Kill 3 Civilians Including TV News Anchor
Oct 01, 2024
Syrian media is reporting an Israeli airstrike on the Syrian capital Damascus killed three civilians and wounded nine others. It was reportedly the third such attack in recent days. The Syrian Arab News Agency said its presenter Safaa Ahmad was among those killed in Israel’s latest air raid.
Overnight Israeli Airstrike Kills More Displaced Palestinians, Including Children
Oct 01, 2024
In the Gaza Strip, an Israeli airstrike on a home in the Nuseirat refugee camp late Monday killed more than a dozen people. Witnesses say at least seven of the dead were children.
Umm Hassan al-Durra: “They targeted 14 sleeping people, young, adults and children. What can I tell you? They were not doing anything. They were sleeping.”
Israel Releases Palestinian Dr. Khaled Alser, Half a Year After Abducting Him from Gaza Hospital
Oct 01, 2024
On Monday, Israeli authorities released Palestinian surgeon Dr. Khaled Alser from prison, months after he was abducted by Israeli forces during a raid on Gaza’s Nasser Hospital in March. Dr. Alser is among dozens of doctors, nurses and paramedics held by Israel who, according to Human Rights Watch, have faced widespread torture and abuse in Israeli custody.
***************
Fears Grow over Israeli Ground Invasion as Israel Orders Residents in 25 Lebanese Villages to Flee Homes
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 01, 2024
Lebanese Prime Minsiter Najib Mikati says Lebanon is now facing “one of the most dangerous phases of its history,” as the Israeli military claims to have begun launching “limited and targeted raids” in southern Lebanon. However, Hezbollah has denied that Israeli soldiers have actually entered Lebanon. The possible Israeli ground operation comes after two weeks of Israeli attacks on Lebanon that have killed over 1,000 people and forced over a million Lebanese to evacuate. While Biden called for a ceasefire, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday and affirmed U.S. support for Israeli actions along Lebanon’s border. “Israel is ultimately undermining U.S. interests in the Middle East,” says Beirut-based political and security analyst Ali Rizk. “Benjamin Netanyahu … wants to go down in history as the person who was able to successfully defeat the major enemy of Israel.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Israel is claiming it’s sent ground troops into southern Lebanon, but Hezbollah and U.N. peacekeepers say the Israeli invasion has not yet begun. Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati says Lebanon is now facing, quote, “one of the most dangerous phases of its history,” unquote. The Israeli military has described its actions as, quote, “limited and targeted raids” in southern Lebanon.
This all comes after two weeks of Israeli attacks on Lebanon that have killed over a thousand people, including longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated in a massive Israeli bombing on Friday. According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, Israeli attacks killed at least 95 people on Monday alone. Earlier today, Israel ordered residents in 25 southern Lebanese villages to leave their homes and head north.
The United States has given mixed messages on Israel’s escalating attack. This is President Biden being questioned Monday at the White House.
REPORTER: Israel may be now launching a limited operation into Lebanon. Are you aware of that? Are you comfortable with their plan?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I’m more aware than you might know, and I’m comfortable with them stopping. We should have a ceasefire now.
AMY GOODMAN: While Biden called for a ceasefire, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Austin later said, quote, “I made it clear that the United States supports Israel’s right to defend itself. We agreed on the necessity of dismantling attack infrastructure along the border,” unquote.
We go now to Beirut, where we’re joined by Ali Rizk. He’s a political and security analyst based in Beirut, contributor to Responsible Statecraft and other outlets.
Thanks so much for being with us, Ali. Can you start off by talking about what you understand is happening on the border? What’s clear is Israel continues to bomb Lebanon. What isn’t clear is if it’s begun a ground invasion. What do you understand?
ALI RIZK: Well, as you mentioned, Hezbollah, the media spokesman for Hezbollah has denied those Israeli claims about Israel entering south Lebanon, entering Lebanese territory. I spoke to a Hezbollah source a few hours ago, and he also underscored that the Israelis had attempted last night but were forced to retreat in face of some immense firepower from Hezbollah. So, it does appear — you know, both sides appear to be claiming that, you know, there are different claims. Israel is saying that it has entered or it had entered Lebanese territory. That’s being denied by Hezbollah, which said it forced Israel into retreat.
But we do appear to be headed towards more and more escalation. I think that the Israelis are going to go ahead with the ground incursion or try to attempt that ground incursion. And I think that that’s why they’re using some of that increased firepower. You just mentioned in your report about how some villages were identified that they will be bombarded. I think all of this indicates where we are headed. And I believe that, you know, we do have some weeks and possible months ahead of some real dangerous escalation.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, you’ve mentioned the word “escalation,” but the reality is that the Netanyahu government appears hell-bent on continuing to expand the conflict, with all of its targeted assassinations, the bombings and now the potential for invasion in Lebanon. It’s almost as if they’ve put aside Gaza and the hostages that are in Gaza and have decided to provoke a widespread war. What’s your assessment?
ALI RIZK: Indeed. I think what you said is very accurate. You have to remember that before October 7, the Israeli government had set its sights and was focused mostly on Lebanon. In fact, many people say that because it was so focused on Lebanon, it didn’t pay enough attention to the Gaza front, and that’s what facilitated the Hamas operation on October 7.
I think that a lot of this is also related to Benjamin Netanyahu’s legacy. Benjamin Netanyahu, I think, wants to go down in history as the person who was able to successfully defeat the major enemy of Israel, the mortal enemy. You have to remember that it was Hezbollah which, many people believe, defeated Israel back in 2006. In the best-case scenario for Israel, that conflict ended in a draw. And Netanyahu’s image was also shattered by October 7. He used to be described as “Mr. Security.” That reputation was left in tatters. So I think what Netanyahu is trying to do right now is to rebuild his legacy, number one, by saying, “Look, I defeated Hezbollah. I took out the number one leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who was like Israel’s nemesis.” And number two, I think that he’s trying to repair that damage which was done to his own reputation as being “Mr. Security.”
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, who spoke to reporters at the United Nations.
AYMAN SAFADI: The prime minister came here today and said that Israel is surrounded by those who want to destroy it, an enemy. We’re here, members of a Muslim Arab committee mandated by 57 Arab and Muslim countries, and I can tell you here, very unequivocally, all of us are willing to right now guarantee the security of Israel in the context of Israel ending the occupation and allowing for the emergence of a Palestinian state, independent state, along the term and preference that you all agree.
He is creating that danger because he simply does not want the two-state solution. And if he does not want the two-state solution, can you ask the Israeli officials what is their endgame, other than just wars and wars and wars? I’m telling you, all of us in the Arab world here, we want a peace in which Israel lives in peace and security, accepted, normalized with all Arab countries, in the context of ending the occupation, withdrawing from our territory, allowing for the emergence of an independent sovereign Palestinian state on June 4, 1967, lines with occupied Jerusalem as capital. That is our narrative. That is. And we will guarantee Israel’s security in that context. Can you ask Israelis what’s their narrative, other than “I’m going to continue go to war. I’m going to kill this and kill that and destroy this and that”?
The amount of damage that the Israeli government has done, 30 years of efforts to convince people that peace is possible, this Israeli government killed it. The amount of dehumanization, hatred, bitterness will take generations to navigate through.
So, ultimately, the question is — we want peace, and we’ve laid out a plan for peace. Ask any Israeli official what is their plan for peace, you’ll get nothing, because they are only thinking of the first step — “We’re going to go destroy Gaza, enflame the West Bank, destroy Lebanon” — and after that, they have no plan. We have a plan. We have no partner for peace in Israel. There is a partner for peace in the Arab world.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Jordan’s foreign minister speaking Friday at the United Nations. Ali Rizk, if you can talk about his comments and also where Arab countries now stand on Israel’s bombing of Lebanon, of Syria, and continued, of course, the attacks on Gaza?
ALI RIZK: I think what we just heard is a clear example of how Israel is ultimately undermining U.S. interests in the Middle East. Here we have the foreign minister, a senior official in one of Washington’s Middle East allies, and look at these statements saying that Netanyahu is not a partner for peace, that we are ready for peace, Netanyahu is doing this, Netanyahu wants more conflict. But as long as the United States continues to provide this support, this unconditional support for Israel, that is going to further disrupt, I think, the ties the U.S. enjoys with its Middle East allies, be it Jordan, Egypt or other countries. So, I think this just goes to show how costly that situation is. And I recall David Petraeus, the famous American general, he mentioned in 2010 that our outright support for Israel is doing damage in terms of our ties with the Arab moderate allies.
Now, regarding your question about where these Arab countries stand when it comes to the Israeli escalation on the Gaza front and on the Lebanese front, look at the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Look at what he said recently. He said that normalization now is off the table. Again, that brings me back to the issue of U.S. interests. I think one of the major, major areas of focus for the Biden administration is to reach a normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel. But due to Benjamin Netanyahu’s stubbornness and due to his extreme policies, he has made that virtually impossible, and hence he’s disrupting the U.S. plans for the region.
But, and what astonishes me is that the United States is continuing with this full-fledged support for the Israeli side. As you mentioned earlier on, the Biden administration said — Biden said he wanted a ceasefire, the time is for a ceasefire in Lebanon. And then we had that about-face and the Pentagon saying that we share or we support the Israeli goals when it comes to the southern Lebanese front. So, we see the United States being dragged more and more, being manipulated by Netanyahu more and more. Unfortunately, I don’t see a clear end in sight for this from now until the American elections.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And do you see the potential for Netanyahu to keep the provocations up to force, somehow or other, Iran to respond and widen this war even further?
ALI RIZK: I believe so. And I think that’s why you’re not seeing a very rash or very escalated reaction, be it from Iran or be it from Hezbollah itself. When I say “escalatory action,” I’m referring here to possible attacks on civilian areas, residential areas. I think that Netanyahu is waiting for an excuse in order to plunge the whole region into an all-out war. And I think that he believes — and I think that he’s correct in this particular estimation — that the United States is going to support him should that scenario unfold. That’s why he’s pushing for that. He knows he can count on the Biden administration to come to its aid if we have a wider conventional war in which Iran becomes involved, in which Hezbollah unleashes all of its firepower. And I believe that Iran, Hezbollah and other players are aware of this. That’s why they are being somewhat restrained and measured in the actions they’re taking.
AMY GOODMAN: Ali, if you can talk about your own family in Lebanon? How are you dealing with all of this? Can you talk about what’s happening in Beirut right now?
ALI RIZK: First of all, in the operation which took out Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, I was about 15 minutes’ walking distance away from the site of that explosion. I was here in 2006 for most of that war. But what I heard the other day is something completely different, the explosions, the sound of the explosion. I was there, by the way, with my two young daughters, who were obviously, as you can imagine, very much in a state of shock, given what took place, given that we were rather close to that location. And many people are in a state of fear in my own home. I live, fortunately, in a rather safe area, relatively, in Beirut, on the outskirts of Beirut. And I have about maybe seven or eight guests in my home who have fled the areas which were subject to bombardment.
There are many different, many other similar cases to mine, you know, people being forced to flee their homes, be it in southern Beirut or in southern Lebanon. And we’re seeing the same, the same approach, the same Israeli approach, the bombardment which led to the displacement and immense suffering of civilians. We’re seeing it repeated here at a certain scale in Lebanon, as well.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And also, this is not the first time that Israel has attacked Lebanon. Could you talk about the previous occupations and invasions and the impact that that has had on the Lebanese people?
ALI RIZK: Obviously, the Lebanese people have suffered a lot as a result of Israeli occupation and Israeli operations. We had the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982. They reached Beirut back then. They withdrew, stood in that area in the south, which was occupied until 2007, until they were forced to leave due to the operations of Hezbollah. And 2006, as I said, I remember that particularly well, immense bombardment. Back then, the Israelis destroyed the infrastructure. They started by destroying Beirut’s international airport. They destroyed bridges. They disconnected Lebanese areas from one another, deliberately, I think — not “I think” — deliberately, indeed, targeting civilians. And I think that is a strategy which we are accustomed to in Israeli conduct or in Israeli warfare, whereby they try to focus on civilians in an attempt to make the civilians lash out against the parties, like Hezbollah in the case of Lebanon or like Hamas in the case of Gaza.
But I think that, more importantly, when it comes to Lebanon, the Israelis do have some rather bitter memories. As I was telling you, in 2000, they were forced to leave. And in 2006, as I was stating in a previous answer, Hezbollah fought Israel to a standstill, and you can even say that Hezbollah actually defeated Israel. There was a commission which was established by the Israelis in the aftermath of 2006, which was called the Winograd Commission, and this commission was in order to look into the faults and the mistakes which were committed by the Israelis. And I think that is an admission that the Israelis indeed committed big mistakes and did not succeed in that particular war.
Bearing that in — or, with that in mind, we have to wait and see how Israel will fare this time around. I think that the Israelis believe that given the immense blows they have delivered to Hezbollah — and I am going to admit Hezbollah was dealt some very severe, unprecedented blows with the detonation of the pagers and the assassination of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah — I think they believe that this time it may be a bit easier to go ahead with that ground operation. But from what I’ve heard, in the late hours of last night, they did encounter some fierce resistance from Hezbollah, which prevented them from entering into Lebanese territory.
AMY GOODMAN: Ali Rizk, we want to thank you for being with us, political, security analyst based in Beirut, Lebanon, contributor with Responsible Statecraft, the online magazine of the Quincy Institute.
Next up, shipping ports from Maine to Texas shut down at midnight as 45,000 dockworkers launch their first strike in almost half a century. We’ll also hear more from Julian Assange making his first public comments after being released from the Belmarsh Prison. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Men Jibalina,” “From Our Mountains,” by Sima Kanaan. The song originates from the Algerian War of Independence.
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 01, 2024
Hezbollah Denies Reports Israeli Troops Have Invaded Southern Lebanon
Oct 01, 2024
The Lebanese Health Ministry says Israeli airstrikes killed at least 95 people and wounded 172 others on Monday, as Israel’s army said it was carrying out what it called “limited and targeted raids” into southern Lebanon. Hezbollah, however, denied that Israeli forces had begun an invasion. The conflicting accounts came as Hezbollah fighters fired salvos of rockets into Israel, including an attack on the headquarters of Israel’s intelligence service outside Tel Aviv. Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati says his nation is now facing “one of the most dangerous phases of its history,” and called on the United Nations to step up aid to 1 million Lebanese people displaced by Israel’s assault. In Washington, President Biden said Monday he wanted a ceasefire in Lebanon; however, the Pentagon contradicted Biden’s remark just hours later. A readout of a call between U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant shows the two war leaders “agreed on the necessity of dismantling attack infrastructure along the border.” After headlines, we’ll go to Beirut for the latest.
Syria Says Israeli Strikes on Damascus Kill 3 Civilians Including TV News Anchor
Oct 01, 2024
Syrian media is reporting an Israeli airstrike on the Syrian capital Damascus killed three civilians and wounded nine others. It was reportedly the third such attack in recent days. The Syrian Arab News Agency said its presenter Safaa Ahmad was among those killed in Israel’s latest air raid.
Overnight Israeli Airstrike Kills More Displaced Palestinians, Including Children
Oct 01, 2024
In the Gaza Strip, an Israeli airstrike on a home in the Nuseirat refugee camp late Monday killed more than a dozen people. Witnesses say at least seven of the dead were children.
Umm Hassan al-Durra: “They targeted 14 sleeping people, young, adults and children. What can I tell you? They were not doing anything. They were sleeping.”
Israel Releases Palestinian Dr. Khaled Alser, Half a Year After Abducting Him from Gaza Hospital
Oct 01, 2024
On Monday, Israeli authorities released Palestinian surgeon Dr. Khaled Alser from prison, months after he was abducted by Israeli forces during a raid on Gaza’s Nasser Hospital in March. Dr. Alser is among dozens of doctors, nurses and paramedics held by Israel who, according to Human Rights Watch, have faced widespread torture and abuse in Israeli custody.
***************
Fears Grow over Israeli Ground Invasion as Israel Orders Residents in 25 Lebanese Villages to Flee Homes
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 01, 2024
Lebanese Prime Minsiter Najib Mikati says Lebanon is now facing “one of the most dangerous phases of its history,” as the Israeli military claims to have begun launching “limited and targeted raids” in southern Lebanon. However, Hezbollah has denied that Israeli soldiers have actually entered Lebanon. The possible Israeli ground operation comes after two weeks of Israeli attacks on Lebanon that have killed over 1,000 people and forced over a million Lebanese to evacuate. While Biden called for a ceasefire, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday and affirmed U.S. support for Israeli actions along Lebanon’s border. “Israel is ultimately undermining U.S. interests in the Middle East,” says Beirut-based political and security analyst Ali Rizk. “Benjamin Netanyahu … wants to go down in history as the person who was able to successfully defeat the major enemy of Israel.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Israel is claiming it’s sent ground troops into southern Lebanon, but Hezbollah and U.N. peacekeepers say the Israeli invasion has not yet begun. Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati says Lebanon is now facing, quote, “one of the most dangerous phases of its history,” unquote. The Israeli military has described its actions as, quote, “limited and targeted raids” in southern Lebanon.
This all comes after two weeks of Israeli attacks on Lebanon that have killed over a thousand people, including longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated in a massive Israeli bombing on Friday. According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, Israeli attacks killed at least 95 people on Monday alone. Earlier today, Israel ordered residents in 25 southern Lebanese villages to leave their homes and head north.
The United States has given mixed messages on Israel’s escalating attack. This is President Biden being questioned Monday at the White House.
REPORTER: Israel may be now launching a limited operation into Lebanon. Are you aware of that? Are you comfortable with their plan?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I’m more aware than you might know, and I’m comfortable with them stopping. We should have a ceasefire now.
AMY GOODMAN: While Biden called for a ceasefire, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Austin later said, quote, “I made it clear that the United States supports Israel’s right to defend itself. We agreed on the necessity of dismantling attack infrastructure along the border,” unquote.
We go now to Beirut, where we’re joined by Ali Rizk. He’s a political and security analyst based in Beirut, contributor to Responsible Statecraft and other outlets.
Thanks so much for being with us, Ali. Can you start off by talking about what you understand is happening on the border? What’s clear is Israel continues to bomb Lebanon. What isn’t clear is if it’s begun a ground invasion. What do you understand?
ALI RIZK: Well, as you mentioned, Hezbollah, the media spokesman for Hezbollah has denied those Israeli claims about Israel entering south Lebanon, entering Lebanese territory. I spoke to a Hezbollah source a few hours ago, and he also underscored that the Israelis had attempted last night but were forced to retreat in face of some immense firepower from Hezbollah. So, it does appear — you know, both sides appear to be claiming that, you know, there are different claims. Israel is saying that it has entered or it had entered Lebanese territory. That’s being denied by Hezbollah, which said it forced Israel into retreat.
But we do appear to be headed towards more and more escalation. I think that the Israelis are going to go ahead with the ground incursion or try to attempt that ground incursion. And I think that that’s why they’re using some of that increased firepower. You just mentioned in your report about how some villages were identified that they will be bombarded. I think all of this indicates where we are headed. And I believe that, you know, we do have some weeks and possible months ahead of some real dangerous escalation.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes, you’ve mentioned the word “escalation,” but the reality is that the Netanyahu government appears hell-bent on continuing to expand the conflict, with all of its targeted assassinations, the bombings and now the potential for invasion in Lebanon. It’s almost as if they’ve put aside Gaza and the hostages that are in Gaza and have decided to provoke a widespread war. What’s your assessment?
ALI RIZK: Indeed. I think what you said is very accurate. You have to remember that before October 7, the Israeli government had set its sights and was focused mostly on Lebanon. In fact, many people say that because it was so focused on Lebanon, it didn’t pay enough attention to the Gaza front, and that’s what facilitated the Hamas operation on October 7.
I think that a lot of this is also related to Benjamin Netanyahu’s legacy. Benjamin Netanyahu, I think, wants to go down in history as the person who was able to successfully defeat the major enemy of Israel, the mortal enemy. You have to remember that it was Hezbollah which, many people believe, defeated Israel back in 2006. In the best-case scenario for Israel, that conflict ended in a draw. And Netanyahu’s image was also shattered by October 7. He used to be described as “Mr. Security.” That reputation was left in tatters. So I think what Netanyahu is trying to do right now is to rebuild his legacy, number one, by saying, “Look, I defeated Hezbollah. I took out the number one leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who was like Israel’s nemesis.” And number two, I think that he’s trying to repair that damage which was done to his own reputation as being “Mr. Security.”
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, who spoke to reporters at the United Nations.
AYMAN SAFADI: The prime minister came here today and said that Israel is surrounded by those who want to destroy it, an enemy. We’re here, members of a Muslim Arab committee mandated by 57 Arab and Muslim countries, and I can tell you here, very unequivocally, all of us are willing to right now guarantee the security of Israel in the context of Israel ending the occupation and allowing for the emergence of a Palestinian state, independent state, along the term and preference that you all agree.
He is creating that danger because he simply does not want the two-state solution. And if he does not want the two-state solution, can you ask the Israeli officials what is their endgame, other than just wars and wars and wars? I’m telling you, all of us in the Arab world here, we want a peace in which Israel lives in peace and security, accepted, normalized with all Arab countries, in the context of ending the occupation, withdrawing from our territory, allowing for the emergence of an independent sovereign Palestinian state on June 4, 1967, lines with occupied Jerusalem as capital. That is our narrative. That is. And we will guarantee Israel’s security in that context. Can you ask Israelis what’s their narrative, other than “I’m going to continue go to war. I’m going to kill this and kill that and destroy this and that”?
The amount of damage that the Israeli government has done, 30 years of efforts to convince people that peace is possible, this Israeli government killed it. The amount of dehumanization, hatred, bitterness will take generations to navigate through.
So, ultimately, the question is — we want peace, and we’ve laid out a plan for peace. Ask any Israeli official what is their plan for peace, you’ll get nothing, because they are only thinking of the first step — “We’re going to go destroy Gaza, enflame the West Bank, destroy Lebanon” — and after that, they have no plan. We have a plan. We have no partner for peace in Israel. There is a partner for peace in the Arab world.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Jordan’s foreign minister speaking Friday at the United Nations. Ali Rizk, if you can talk about his comments and also where Arab countries now stand on Israel’s bombing of Lebanon, of Syria, and continued, of course, the attacks on Gaza?
ALI RIZK: I think what we just heard is a clear example of how Israel is ultimately undermining U.S. interests in the Middle East. Here we have the foreign minister, a senior official in one of Washington’s Middle East allies, and look at these statements saying that Netanyahu is not a partner for peace, that we are ready for peace, Netanyahu is doing this, Netanyahu wants more conflict. But as long as the United States continues to provide this support, this unconditional support for Israel, that is going to further disrupt, I think, the ties the U.S. enjoys with its Middle East allies, be it Jordan, Egypt or other countries. So, I think this just goes to show how costly that situation is. And I recall David Petraeus, the famous American general, he mentioned in 2010 that our outright support for Israel is doing damage in terms of our ties with the Arab moderate allies.
Now, regarding your question about where these Arab countries stand when it comes to the Israeli escalation on the Gaza front and on the Lebanese front, look at the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Look at what he said recently. He said that normalization now is off the table. Again, that brings me back to the issue of U.S. interests. I think one of the major, major areas of focus for the Biden administration is to reach a normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel. But due to Benjamin Netanyahu’s stubbornness and due to his extreme policies, he has made that virtually impossible, and hence he’s disrupting the U.S. plans for the region.
But, and what astonishes me is that the United States is continuing with this full-fledged support for the Israeli side. As you mentioned earlier on, the Biden administration said — Biden said he wanted a ceasefire, the time is for a ceasefire in Lebanon. And then we had that about-face and the Pentagon saying that we share or we support the Israeli goals when it comes to the southern Lebanese front. So, we see the United States being dragged more and more, being manipulated by Netanyahu more and more. Unfortunately, I don’t see a clear end in sight for this from now until the American elections.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And do you see the potential for Netanyahu to keep the provocations up to force, somehow or other, Iran to respond and widen this war even further?
ALI RIZK: I believe so. And I think that’s why you’re not seeing a very rash or very escalated reaction, be it from Iran or be it from Hezbollah itself. When I say “escalatory action,” I’m referring here to possible attacks on civilian areas, residential areas. I think that Netanyahu is waiting for an excuse in order to plunge the whole region into an all-out war. And I think that he believes — and I think that he’s correct in this particular estimation — that the United States is going to support him should that scenario unfold. That’s why he’s pushing for that. He knows he can count on the Biden administration to come to its aid if we have a wider conventional war in which Iran becomes involved, in which Hezbollah unleashes all of its firepower. And I believe that Iran, Hezbollah and other players are aware of this. That’s why they are being somewhat restrained and measured in the actions they’re taking.
AMY GOODMAN: Ali, if you can talk about your own family in Lebanon? How are you dealing with all of this? Can you talk about what’s happening in Beirut right now?
ALI RIZK: First of all, in the operation which took out Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, I was about 15 minutes’ walking distance away from the site of that explosion. I was here in 2006 for most of that war. But what I heard the other day is something completely different, the explosions, the sound of the explosion. I was there, by the way, with my two young daughters, who were obviously, as you can imagine, very much in a state of shock, given what took place, given that we were rather close to that location. And many people are in a state of fear in my own home. I live, fortunately, in a rather safe area, relatively, in Beirut, on the outskirts of Beirut. And I have about maybe seven or eight guests in my home who have fled the areas which were subject to bombardment.
There are many different, many other similar cases to mine, you know, people being forced to flee their homes, be it in southern Beirut or in southern Lebanon. And we’re seeing the same, the same approach, the same Israeli approach, the bombardment which led to the displacement and immense suffering of civilians. We’re seeing it repeated here at a certain scale in Lebanon, as well.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And also, this is not the first time that Israel has attacked Lebanon. Could you talk about the previous occupations and invasions and the impact that that has had on the Lebanese people?
ALI RIZK: Obviously, the Lebanese people have suffered a lot as a result of Israeli occupation and Israeli operations. We had the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982. They reached Beirut back then. They withdrew, stood in that area in the south, which was occupied until 2007, until they were forced to leave due to the operations of Hezbollah. And 2006, as I said, I remember that particularly well, immense bombardment. Back then, the Israelis destroyed the infrastructure. They started by destroying Beirut’s international airport. They destroyed bridges. They disconnected Lebanese areas from one another, deliberately, I think — not “I think” — deliberately, indeed, targeting civilians. And I think that is a strategy which we are accustomed to in Israeli conduct or in Israeli warfare, whereby they try to focus on civilians in an attempt to make the civilians lash out against the parties, like Hezbollah in the case of Lebanon or like Hamas in the case of Gaza.
But I think that, more importantly, when it comes to Lebanon, the Israelis do have some rather bitter memories. As I was telling you, in 2000, they were forced to leave. And in 2006, as I was stating in a previous answer, Hezbollah fought Israel to a standstill, and you can even say that Hezbollah actually defeated Israel. There was a commission which was established by the Israelis in the aftermath of 2006, which was called the Winograd Commission, and this commission was in order to look into the faults and the mistakes which were committed by the Israelis. And I think that is an admission that the Israelis indeed committed big mistakes and did not succeed in that particular war.
Bearing that in — or, with that in mind, we have to wait and see how Israel will fare this time around. I think that the Israelis believe that given the immense blows they have delivered to Hezbollah — and I am going to admit Hezbollah was dealt some very severe, unprecedented blows with the detonation of the pagers and the assassination of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah — I think they believe that this time it may be a bit easier to go ahead with that ground operation. But from what I’ve heard, in the late hours of last night, they did encounter some fierce resistance from Hezbollah, which prevented them from entering into Lebanese territory.
AMY GOODMAN: Ali Rizk, we want to thank you for being with us, political, security analyst based in Beirut, Lebanon, contributor with Responsible Statecraft, the online magazine of the Quincy Institute.
Next up, shipping ports from Maine to Texas shut down at midnight as 45,000 dockworkers launch their first strike in almost half a century. We’ll also hear more from Julian Assange making his first public comments after being released from the Belmarsh Prison. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Men Jibalina,” “From Our Mountains,” by Sima Kanaan. The song originates from the Algerian War of Independence.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Thu Oct 10, 2024 9:17 pm
Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 02, 2024
Netanyahu Vows to Retaliate After Iran Fires Hundreds of Missiles at Israel
Oct 02, 2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to retaliate after Iran fired at least 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in response to repeated Israeli attacks on Lebanon and the assassination of several Hezbollah leaders. Video posted online shows some of the missiles striking at or near the Nevatim Airbase, which houses Israel’s U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets. Israel says the only death from the attacks was a Palestinian man who was killed by falling debris in the occupied West Bank.
At the White House, President Biden responded by saying the United States will help Israel “exact severe consequences.” On Tuesday, a Pentagon spokesperson said U.S. forces had aided Israel in thwarting Iran’s attack.
Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder: “During the attack, the U.S. military coordinated closely with the Israeli Defense Forces to help defend Israel. U.S. Navy destroyers deployed to the Middle East region supported the defense of Israel by firing approximately a dozen interceptors against the incoming Iranian missiles.”
7 Killed, 16 Wounded in Shooting and Stabbing Attack in Tel Aviv
Oct 02, 2024
In Tel Aviv, Israeli police said at least seven people died in a shooting and stabbing attack on Tuesday. Israeli authorities claimed the attack was carried out by two people from the occupied West Bank — one was shot dead, the other was seriously wounded.
Hezbollah Says Its Fighters Repelled Israeli Troops Invading Southern Lebanon
Oct 02, 2024
In Lebanon, Hezbollah says its fighters have repelled incursions by Israeli forces attempting to invade southern Lebanon. Israeli media reports at least two Israeli soldiers were killed and 18 others wounded near the Lebanese border town of Odaisseh. Meanwhile, Israel’s military ordered more residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs to evacuate their homes. The U.N. says more than 1 million people across Lebanon have been uprooted by Israel’s assault.
Israel Bombs Gaza School and Orphanage, Killing Displaced Palestinians
Oct 02, 2024
In the Gaza Strip, Palestinian health officials say Israeli attacks have killed 79 Palestinians and wounded more than 80 others over the past 24 hours. In one strike, Israeli fighter jets bombed a school turned shelter in Gaza City’s Tuffah neighborhood, killing at least 13 people, including children. Israeli forces also bombed the al-Amal orphanage west of Gaza City, killing six Palestinians and wounding many others.
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Regional War Feared as Biden Backs Israel’s Threat to Retaliate After Iranian Missile Attack
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 02, 2024
Israel has announced it is sending more troops into southern Lebanon as the Middle East moves closer to a full-scale regional war. On Tuesday, Iran fired at least 180 ballistic missiles at Israel that Iran says targeted Israeli military and security sites, a response that comes after a series of escalating Israeli attacks in recent months against Hezbollah, Hamas and Iranian leaders. The United States aided Israel in intercepting many of the Iranian missiles on Tuesday, and President Joe Biden has vowed to support Israel in further retaliation. “From what I can gather, the Iranian assertion about targeting military and security facilities is correct,” says Israeli analyst Ori Goldberg in Tel Aviv. “While things were supposedly in control while Israel was going from glory to glory killing its enemies and getting the bad guys, there was also a deep sense of insecurity and a lack of control right at home.” We also speak with Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost, who says there is an ongoing debate inside the Biden White House between those who want to pull back from a regional war and the hawks who see this as an opportunity to reshape the Middle East. “The U.S. doesn’t know where it’s going,” says Ahmed.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Israel has announced it’s sending more troops into southern Lebanon as the Middle East moves closer to a full-scale regional war. On Tuesday, Iran fired at least 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in an attack that Iran said targeted Israeli military and security sites. Video online shows some of the missiles striking at or near the Nevatim Airbase, which houses Israel’s U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets. Israel is vowing to retaliate. Israel says the only death from the attacks was a Palestinian man who was killed by falling debris in the occupied West Bank, in Jericho.
President Biden responded to the Iran attack by saying the United States will help Israel, quote, “exact severe consequences,” unquote. On Tuesday, the United States aided Israel in intercepting many of the Iranian missiles.
Iran’s attack came in response to Israel’s escalating attacks on Lebanon and Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday. There have been a number of other developments in the region.
In southern Lebanon, Hezbollah fighters are claiming they attacked Israeli troops near the town of Odaisseh. Two Israeli soldiers were killed, 18 others wounded. Earlier today, Hezbollah denounced Israel for bombing the offices of Al-Sirat, a television network based outside of Beirut.
In Gaza, Al Jazeera reports Israeli forces have killed at least 79 Palestinians over the past day alone. In Tel Aviv, Israeli police said seven people died in a shooting and stabbing attack on Tuesday. Police said the attack was carried out by two men from the occupied West Bank — one was shot dead, the other seriously wounded.
And at the United Nations here in New York, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres issued a terse statement, saying, quote, “I condemn the broadening of the Middle East conflict, with escalation after escalation. This must stop. We absolutely need a ceasefire,” he said. Earlier today, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz announced he’s banning the U.N. secretary-general from entering Israel, saying he’s, quote, “persona non grata due to his unwillingness to condemn Iran,” unquote.
We’re joined now by two guests. Akbar Shahid Ahmed is the senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost. He’s based in Washington, D.C. And in Tel Aviv, we’re joined by the Israeli political analyst Ori Goldberg, who’s written extensively on Iran and Israel. His recent piece for New Lines Magazine is titled “Why Israelis Do and Don’t Want War with Hezbollah.”
Ori, let’s begin with you in Tel Aviv. Can you talk about what yesterday was like in Tel Aviv with the 180 missiles, what happened to them, how many you understand were intercepted, and then what Israel is promising to do next?
ORI GOLDBERG: Yesterday was scary. I spent 40 or 45 minutes with my three children and our dog in a shelter. There were many explosions that we could hear. We had no idea what was happening. But reports began to come out almost immediately that there were no casualties, except for one unfortunate Palestinian.
From what I can gather, the Iranian assertion about targeting military and security facilities is correct. All over the country, including in the center near Tel Aviv and in the Tel Aviv suburbs, such facilities were the targets. There were some civilian homes that were hit by bomb blasts.
Once again, it was scary, but it was also compounded by the horrible attack in Jaffa and by a general sense that while things were supposedly in control while Israel was going from glory to glory killing its enemies and getting the bad guys, there was also a deep sense of insecurity and a lack of control right at home. The Jaffa attack was quite traumatic. It still hasn’t really been covered extensively in the Israeli press, except for providing the names of some of the casualties. But generally, the sense was that Israel was not in control. I think that was one of the reasons for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s various statements about Iran having committed a grave mistake and about how Israel will punish it and retaliate.
Generally, there’s this sense of a surreal reality, if you will, where, on the one hand, Israel, again, seems to be doing great things and going great guns and finally getting some closure and fighting terrorism, but, on the other hand, there is a sense of impending doom and an inevitability of this impending doom when it comes to Israel’s potential actions in the future.
AMY GOODMAN: An AJ+, Al Jazeera Plus, reporter, Mohammad Alsaafin, wrote in social media, quote, “Israeli journalists and most Western journalists in Israel are abiding by the Israeli military censor, so this is a very useful thread. It seems like Nevatim got hit very hard. It’s the base where US munitions are sent.” Ori Goldberg, your response?
ORI GOLDBERG: I would assume that’s true. Of course, as Israeli citizens, we’re not entitled to know the results and implications of the Iranian strike. These bits of information are heavily censored, as are, by the way, reports about what is happening to Israeli forces in Lebanon.
Again, the Iranians have shown, and they already showed in April, that they are quite aware of where Israel’s main security facilities are. And their use of ballistic missiles this time apparently made it easier for them to create further impact. Many of the missiles were intercepted, but certainly not all of them.
It also seems like the Iranians knew exactly what they were doing. This wasn’t an inaccurate attack or not an indication of Iranian weakness, as some official Israeli spokespersons have tried to suggest. This was actually quite an accurate attack. And in that sense, I don’t think it was a retaliation to the assassination of Nasrallah. I actually think of it more as a shot across the bow. I think the Iranians were concerned, profoundly. And I think one of the reasons that the IRGC and the generals in Tehran won the day and persuaded the supreme leader to retaliate, after having lost to the republicans, pragmatists, moderates — call them what you will — who had, since Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination, convinced the leader not to retaliate, the reason there was a retaliation this time is because I think they were genuinely concerned that Israel might strike in Iran after it was done with Lebanon. I think, again, this was meant as a shot across the bow, as a message to Israel, saying, “Calm yourselves.” Right? “Take a breather.”
Will Israel retaliate? Likely. I think this is being decided right now in strenuous dialogue between D.C. and Jerusalem. But in the Iranian case, I really think this was not meant as a declaration of war. I think the nature of the attack demonstrates that quite effectively. I think it was meant as a message to Israel. I don’t know if that message was received.
AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, President Biden said, quote, “Based on what we know now, the attack appears to have been defeated and ineffective.” He added, “The U.S. military actively supported Israel’s defense.” Biden added, “Make no mistake, the United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel.” Can you talk about, Ori, the U.S. role in the region, from arming Israel’s assault on Gaza — last night, and there was almost no news of this in the mainstream U.S. corporate media, 79 people killed in the last, what, 24 hours in Gaza, so that assault continues — from what’s going on in Gaza to calling Israel’s assassination of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah “a measure of justice”? If you could comment?
ORI GOLDBERG: The U.S. role in enabling Israel’s campaign in Gaza and Israel’s rampage in Lebanon at the moment is undoubtedly crucial. The U.S. has allowed Israel to do this, just as it could have stopped Israel from doing it, and it decided not to do that. I think there are various reasons for America’s or the Biden administration’s support for Israel. I think a lot of them, again, have to do with historical baggage and with patterns seemingly set in stone after 76 years of Israel’s existence. I think it’s very, very hard to shake off old habits. I will assume that a Harris administration will not adopt the approach that the Biden administration adopted.
Having said that, I think there’s a real debate right now among the punditry about whether Gaza itself was a platform for initiating and generating a regional war with Iran at the behest of the United States in cooperation with Israel or whether this is the result of ongoing escalation, where there is less strategy and less forethought. I tend towards the second school. Looking at Israel’s behavior, I fail to discern any kind of plan, and perhaps even any rhyme or reason in the way Israel has been acting.
Israel has always adopted a very tactical mindset. We have never excelled at strategy. This time around, it seems like Israel approached what was happening in Lebanon as an attempt at redemption — that’s certainly true for the IDF — after the year of spectacular failures in Gaza. But also, I think Israel found itself in tactical heaven. Having managed to assassinate Nasrallah, suddenly a lot of other targets were surfacing. And it’s very important to understand that this is the way Israel approaches developing situations on the ground in the Middle East. Israel looks for targets. If these people surface, Israel hits them. Consequences, implications, midterm, definitely long-term considerations, these are usually almost completely irrelevant. Israel focuses on closure. I know that’s a little hard to accept. One thinks of Israel as a strategic powerhouse. But it really isn’t. And precedent, again, on the ground seems to suggest that that is true.
As for the United States, I think the United States has a very bad history with Hezbollah specifically, and the United States has a long memory, that goes back to the embassy suicide bombing attack in 1983. And that, I think, explains why the Biden administration spoke of Nasrallah’s assassination as a “measure of justice.” However, this strategy or this reasoning seems to be imploding, because for the first time Lebanon finds itself without a militia powerful enough to hold the country together. I think neither the United States nor Israel consider the implications of Israel’s rampage. I think they’re standing before a situation that could very rapidly devolve into war.
However, one last point, this war will likely not be a ground war. It won’t be that sort of offensive. It will be a projectile war based on missiles for some time yet. I don’t think the U.S. desires that kind of war. I think that’s true for both a Harris administration and a Trump administration. And again, I expect that in the conversations being held right now between Washington and Jerusalem, there is an attempt to find some sort of retaliatory measure for Israel that will not escalate this further.
AMY GOODMAN: During last night’s CBS News vice-presidential debate here in New York, Republican Senator JD Vance, Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Tim Walz both voiced support for Israel, but Walz criticized Donald Trump for pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal. This is what he said.
GOV. TIM WALZ: When Donald Trump was in office, it was Donald Trump who — we had a coalition of nations that had boxed Iran’s nuclear program in, the inability to advance it. Donald Trump pulled that program and put nothing else in its place. So Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon than they were before, because of Donald Trump’s fickle leadership. And when Iran shot down an American aircraft in international airspace, Donald Trump tweeted, because that’s the standard diplomacy of Donald Trump. And when Iranian missiles did fall near U.S. troops and they received traumatic brain injuries, Donald Trump wrote it off as headaches.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Senator Vance, the U.S. did have a diplomatic deal with Iran to temporarily pause parts of its nuclear program, and President Trump did exit that deal. He recently said, just five days ago, the U.S. must now make a diplomatic deal with Iran, because the consequences are impossible. Did he make a mistake? You have one minute.
SEN. JD VANCE: Well, first of all, Margaret, “diplomacy” is not a dirty word. But I think that something that Governor Walz just said is quite extraordinary. You yourself just said Iran is as close to a nuclear weapon today as they have ever been. And, Governor Walz, you blame Donald Trump. Who has been the vice president for the last three-and-a-half years? And the answer is your running mate, not mine. Donald Trump consistently made the world more secure.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Senator Vance and, before him, Tim Walz. Akbar Shahid Ahmed also joins us, senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost. He’s in Washington, D.C. His recent piece headlined “Israel Is Preparing a Risky Incursion into Lebanon — as Biden Stands By.” And he’s working on a book on the Biden administration’s Gaza policy called Crossing the Red Line. Akbar, if you can respond to the U.S., President Biden, the Biden-Harris administration’s response to what’s happening in Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and with Iran right now?
AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Thanks, Amy.
The Biden administration is in a place they definitely did not want to be a year ago at the start of this war, right? They thought they were going to prevent a regional war, demonstrate support for Israel and not pay a huge political cost. On all those fronts, they’ve largely failed, other than, arguably, the demonstrating support for Israel. Where they are now is they feel, “Look, we are five weeks from a presidential election. We don’t want to be seen as abandoning a U.S. partner.” So they’re really emphasizing this sense of we’re defending Israel.
But I think it gets to something Ori was talking about, which is: Is there a strategy here, or is this just tactics? Right? The administration can say, “Look, we’ve stopped Israelis from being killed. We’ve sent Israel defensive and huge offensive equipment.” But where are they actually going, and how are they deescalating tensions? That was something we didn’t see from Governor Walz. It’s not something we’ve heard from the Biden administration as Israel has begun its ground invasion of Lebanon. And I think when we’re at a point where there’s 40,000 and a growing number of U.S. troops in the region, and there is a sense that Israel’s actions are inextricably linked to a green light from the U.S., there’s a real responsibility for Washington here.
From their point of view, for Biden administration officials, there is an internal debate. Many are extremely cautious and are saying, “Look, this is the moment to try to use our leverage over Israel, which is overwhelming and unique, to rein them in.” But there is a small and very influential segment, Amy, of hawkish Biden administration advisers who say, “Look, Israel has decimated Hezbollah’s leadership to a large degree. We dislike Iran. We don’t want them to have so much influence in the region. Why not sort of keep escalating further?” The question is: Where does that lead us? And I think the administration hasn’t given us an answer yet.
AMY GOODMAN: What’s going on in the White House? Who are the parties around Biden? And what role does Kamala Harris play, the vice president?
AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Yeah. I think the closest person to President Biden on these matters is someone called Brett McGurk. This is the White House Middle East coordinator. He’s not a well-known figure in the way that, say, Secretary of State Tony Blinken is, but he is someone who in many ways is emblematic of U.S. foreign policy thinking in the Middle East over the last 20 years — right? — which many folks would say is a pretty dubious record. This is someone who came up in the Bush administration administering Iraq. He’s very much pushing the “Let’s kneecap Iran right now. And this is our moment.” I think there’s folks at the Pentagon — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Blinken are, to a degree, more cautious, but this internal debate is so being fought in the room with the president personally. And what we know and what we’ve seen from the president publicly is he wants to yet again demonstrate support for Israel publicly, and it’s not clear, even privately, if he’s considering any route of using the influence he has — right? — of saying, “OK, we will not give you U.S. military equipment. We will pull back some of our troops from the region.”
Inside the White House, there’s also a lot of anxiety about Vice President Harris’s electoral prospects, as you can imagine. There’s a real sense that they’ve made a decision on the Gaza ceasefire question and the broader question in the Middle East, which is they’re not going to make a huge diplomatic push before the election. This idea they had that they were going to achieve a deal, bring home hostages, send aid to Palestinians, stop the bombing and the starvation, that’s all out the window at this point, right? The shiny new thing is a Lebanon incursion, opportunity and sort of hoping Gaza doesn’t reach the top headlines.
And I think that’s why you get to a point of risk where Senator Vance was able at the vice-presidential debate to say, “The world looks pretty chaotic right now, and it’s not former President Trump who’s in charge. It is President Biden.” And that’s an argument that the Trump campaign is very deliberately using to reach out to Americans in the middle and specific groups who feel alienated, whether it’s Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, younger voters. And polls do show us recently, Amy, that an increasing majority of Americans are worried about a growing war and want to see greater U.S. diplomacy. We’re not seeing a greater public demand for more weapons or more troops being sent to the region.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about the possibility, do you see, of Israel striking Iran, specifically perhaps nuclear sites?
AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: You know, I’ll think back to a pretty scary phrase I heard from a well-placed U.S. official, Korea, Korea bureaucrat working on Middle East policy. This person said to me at the beginning of this week — you know, he described how people inside government who track these issues are, quote, “stunned and shocked.” And then he said, “We feel we’re enabling a,” quote, “nihilistic regional murder spree.” Now, that’s very strong language, right? A murder spree. But what it tells you is that there’s a real sense within government that the U.S. is not going to provide a veto on Israeli actions. I think there is concern about: Does it strike nuclear sites, and does Iran lash back in a way that’s impossible to control? That the sense of a “no” from the U.S., I think, is — it’s very questionable. It’s not a guarantee.
What you could see the U.S. doing is urge Israel to strike something that looks strategic but is not necessarily a red line for the Iranians where they feel they have to respond to a huge degree. But that carries its own risks. We’ve seen the Iranians come out and say, “Not only would we, in response, target Israel; we would target U.S. partners across the region and potentially cripple the global economy.” Right? They’ve talked about targeting Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, other partners who are critical, to end global energy supplies. So, I think the U.S. doesn’t know where it’s going, but its commitment is very clear in that it wants to send a message to Iran that’s overwhelming and military.
AMY GOODMAN: Akbar Shahid Ahmed, I want to ask you to stay with us as we talk more about the debate, particularly the last response of JD Vance around the issue of January 6th and the insurrection and President Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. We’ll also be talking about abortion and climate change and more. Akbar is the senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost, joining us from D.C. We’ll link to your pieces on Lebanon and Gaza.
And we want to thank Ori Goldberg for joining us. Ori Goldberg, Israeli political analyst and scholar who’s written extensively on Iran, Israel and the relationship between religion and politics in the Middle East. We’ll link to your piece in New Lines Magazine, “Why Israelis Do and Don’t Want War with Hezbollah.” Your recent piece for The Nation, “For Israeli Protesters, Palestine Might as Well Not Exist.”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 02, 2024
Netanyahu Vows to Retaliate After Iran Fires Hundreds of Missiles at Israel
Oct 02, 2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to retaliate after Iran fired at least 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in response to repeated Israeli attacks on Lebanon and the assassination of several Hezbollah leaders. Video posted online shows some of the missiles striking at or near the Nevatim Airbase, which houses Israel’s U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets. Israel says the only death from the attacks was a Palestinian man who was killed by falling debris in the occupied West Bank.
At the White House, President Biden responded by saying the United States will help Israel “exact severe consequences.” On Tuesday, a Pentagon spokesperson said U.S. forces had aided Israel in thwarting Iran’s attack.
Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder: “During the attack, the U.S. military coordinated closely with the Israeli Defense Forces to help defend Israel. U.S. Navy destroyers deployed to the Middle East region supported the defense of Israel by firing approximately a dozen interceptors against the incoming Iranian missiles.”
7 Killed, 16 Wounded in Shooting and Stabbing Attack in Tel Aviv
Oct 02, 2024
In Tel Aviv, Israeli police said at least seven people died in a shooting and stabbing attack on Tuesday. Israeli authorities claimed the attack was carried out by two people from the occupied West Bank — one was shot dead, the other was seriously wounded.
Hezbollah Says Its Fighters Repelled Israeli Troops Invading Southern Lebanon
Oct 02, 2024
In Lebanon, Hezbollah says its fighters have repelled incursions by Israeli forces attempting to invade southern Lebanon. Israeli media reports at least two Israeli soldiers were killed and 18 others wounded near the Lebanese border town of Odaisseh. Meanwhile, Israel’s military ordered more residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs to evacuate their homes. The U.N. says more than 1 million people across Lebanon have been uprooted by Israel’s assault.
Israel Bombs Gaza School and Orphanage, Killing Displaced Palestinians
Oct 02, 2024
In the Gaza Strip, Palestinian health officials say Israeli attacks have killed 79 Palestinians and wounded more than 80 others over the past 24 hours. In one strike, Israeli fighter jets bombed a school turned shelter in Gaza City’s Tuffah neighborhood, killing at least 13 people, including children. Israeli forces also bombed the al-Amal orphanage west of Gaza City, killing six Palestinians and wounding many others.
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Regional War Feared as Biden Backs Israel’s Threat to Retaliate After Iranian Missile Attack
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 02, 2024
Israel has announced it is sending more troops into southern Lebanon as the Middle East moves closer to a full-scale regional war. On Tuesday, Iran fired at least 180 ballistic missiles at Israel that Iran says targeted Israeli military and security sites, a response that comes after a series of escalating Israeli attacks in recent months against Hezbollah, Hamas and Iranian leaders. The United States aided Israel in intercepting many of the Iranian missiles on Tuesday, and President Joe Biden has vowed to support Israel in further retaliation. “From what I can gather, the Iranian assertion about targeting military and security facilities is correct,” says Israeli analyst Ori Goldberg in Tel Aviv. “While things were supposedly in control while Israel was going from glory to glory killing its enemies and getting the bad guys, there was also a deep sense of insecurity and a lack of control right at home.” We also speak with Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost, who says there is an ongoing debate inside the Biden White House between those who want to pull back from a regional war and the hawks who see this as an opportunity to reshape the Middle East. “The U.S. doesn’t know where it’s going,” says Ahmed.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Israel has announced it’s sending more troops into southern Lebanon as the Middle East moves closer to a full-scale regional war. On Tuesday, Iran fired at least 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in an attack that Iran said targeted Israeli military and security sites. Video online shows some of the missiles striking at or near the Nevatim Airbase, which houses Israel’s U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets. Israel is vowing to retaliate. Israel says the only death from the attacks was a Palestinian man who was killed by falling debris in the occupied West Bank, in Jericho.
President Biden responded to the Iran attack by saying the United States will help Israel, quote, “exact severe consequences,” unquote. On Tuesday, the United States aided Israel in intercepting many of the Iranian missiles.
Iran’s attack came in response to Israel’s escalating attacks on Lebanon and Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday. There have been a number of other developments in the region.
In southern Lebanon, Hezbollah fighters are claiming they attacked Israeli troops near the town of Odaisseh. Two Israeli soldiers were killed, 18 others wounded. Earlier today, Hezbollah denounced Israel for bombing the offices of Al-Sirat, a television network based outside of Beirut.
In Gaza, Al Jazeera reports Israeli forces have killed at least 79 Palestinians over the past day alone. In Tel Aviv, Israeli police said seven people died in a shooting and stabbing attack on Tuesday. Police said the attack was carried out by two men from the occupied West Bank — one was shot dead, the other seriously wounded.
And at the United Nations here in New York, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres issued a terse statement, saying, quote, “I condemn the broadening of the Middle East conflict, with escalation after escalation. This must stop. We absolutely need a ceasefire,” he said. Earlier today, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz announced he’s banning the U.N. secretary-general from entering Israel, saying he’s, quote, “persona non grata due to his unwillingness to condemn Iran,” unquote.
We’re joined now by two guests. Akbar Shahid Ahmed is the senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost. He’s based in Washington, D.C. And in Tel Aviv, we’re joined by the Israeli political analyst Ori Goldberg, who’s written extensively on Iran and Israel. His recent piece for New Lines Magazine is titled “Why Israelis Do and Don’t Want War with Hezbollah.”
Ori, let’s begin with you in Tel Aviv. Can you talk about what yesterday was like in Tel Aviv with the 180 missiles, what happened to them, how many you understand were intercepted, and then what Israel is promising to do next?
ORI GOLDBERG: Yesterday was scary. I spent 40 or 45 minutes with my three children and our dog in a shelter. There were many explosions that we could hear. We had no idea what was happening. But reports began to come out almost immediately that there were no casualties, except for one unfortunate Palestinian.
From what I can gather, the Iranian assertion about targeting military and security facilities is correct. All over the country, including in the center near Tel Aviv and in the Tel Aviv suburbs, such facilities were the targets. There were some civilian homes that were hit by bomb blasts.
Once again, it was scary, but it was also compounded by the horrible attack in Jaffa and by a general sense that while things were supposedly in control while Israel was going from glory to glory killing its enemies and getting the bad guys, there was also a deep sense of insecurity and a lack of control right at home. The Jaffa attack was quite traumatic. It still hasn’t really been covered extensively in the Israeli press, except for providing the names of some of the casualties. But generally, the sense was that Israel was not in control. I think that was one of the reasons for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s various statements about Iran having committed a grave mistake and about how Israel will punish it and retaliate.
Generally, there’s this sense of a surreal reality, if you will, where, on the one hand, Israel, again, seems to be doing great things and going great guns and finally getting some closure and fighting terrorism, but, on the other hand, there is a sense of impending doom and an inevitability of this impending doom when it comes to Israel’s potential actions in the future.
AMY GOODMAN: An AJ+, Al Jazeera Plus, reporter, Mohammad Alsaafin, wrote in social media, quote, “Israeli journalists and most Western journalists in Israel are abiding by the Israeli military censor, so this is a very useful thread. It seems like Nevatim got hit very hard. It’s the base where US munitions are sent.” Ori Goldberg, your response?
ORI GOLDBERG: I would assume that’s true. Of course, as Israeli citizens, we’re not entitled to know the results and implications of the Iranian strike. These bits of information are heavily censored, as are, by the way, reports about what is happening to Israeli forces in Lebanon.
Again, the Iranians have shown, and they already showed in April, that they are quite aware of where Israel’s main security facilities are. And their use of ballistic missiles this time apparently made it easier for them to create further impact. Many of the missiles were intercepted, but certainly not all of them.
It also seems like the Iranians knew exactly what they were doing. This wasn’t an inaccurate attack or not an indication of Iranian weakness, as some official Israeli spokespersons have tried to suggest. This was actually quite an accurate attack. And in that sense, I don’t think it was a retaliation to the assassination of Nasrallah. I actually think of it more as a shot across the bow. I think the Iranians were concerned, profoundly. And I think one of the reasons that the IRGC and the generals in Tehran won the day and persuaded the supreme leader to retaliate, after having lost to the republicans, pragmatists, moderates — call them what you will — who had, since Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination, convinced the leader not to retaliate, the reason there was a retaliation this time is because I think they were genuinely concerned that Israel might strike in Iran after it was done with Lebanon. I think, again, this was meant as a shot across the bow, as a message to Israel, saying, “Calm yourselves.” Right? “Take a breather.”
Will Israel retaliate? Likely. I think this is being decided right now in strenuous dialogue between D.C. and Jerusalem. But in the Iranian case, I really think this was not meant as a declaration of war. I think the nature of the attack demonstrates that quite effectively. I think it was meant as a message to Israel. I don’t know if that message was received.
AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, President Biden said, quote, “Based on what we know now, the attack appears to have been defeated and ineffective.” He added, “The U.S. military actively supported Israel’s defense.” Biden added, “Make no mistake, the United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel.” Can you talk about, Ori, the U.S. role in the region, from arming Israel’s assault on Gaza — last night, and there was almost no news of this in the mainstream U.S. corporate media, 79 people killed in the last, what, 24 hours in Gaza, so that assault continues — from what’s going on in Gaza to calling Israel’s assassination of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah “a measure of justice”? If you could comment?
ORI GOLDBERG: The U.S. role in enabling Israel’s campaign in Gaza and Israel’s rampage in Lebanon at the moment is undoubtedly crucial. The U.S. has allowed Israel to do this, just as it could have stopped Israel from doing it, and it decided not to do that. I think there are various reasons for America’s or the Biden administration’s support for Israel. I think a lot of them, again, have to do with historical baggage and with patterns seemingly set in stone after 76 years of Israel’s existence. I think it’s very, very hard to shake off old habits. I will assume that a Harris administration will not adopt the approach that the Biden administration adopted.
Having said that, I think there’s a real debate right now among the punditry about whether Gaza itself was a platform for initiating and generating a regional war with Iran at the behest of the United States in cooperation with Israel or whether this is the result of ongoing escalation, where there is less strategy and less forethought. I tend towards the second school. Looking at Israel’s behavior, I fail to discern any kind of plan, and perhaps even any rhyme or reason in the way Israel has been acting.
Israel has always adopted a very tactical mindset. We have never excelled at strategy. This time around, it seems like Israel approached what was happening in Lebanon as an attempt at redemption — that’s certainly true for the IDF — after the year of spectacular failures in Gaza. But also, I think Israel found itself in tactical heaven. Having managed to assassinate Nasrallah, suddenly a lot of other targets were surfacing. And it’s very important to understand that this is the way Israel approaches developing situations on the ground in the Middle East. Israel looks for targets. If these people surface, Israel hits them. Consequences, implications, midterm, definitely long-term considerations, these are usually almost completely irrelevant. Israel focuses on closure. I know that’s a little hard to accept. One thinks of Israel as a strategic powerhouse. But it really isn’t. And precedent, again, on the ground seems to suggest that that is true.
As for the United States, I think the United States has a very bad history with Hezbollah specifically, and the United States has a long memory, that goes back to the embassy suicide bombing attack in 1983. And that, I think, explains why the Biden administration spoke of Nasrallah’s assassination as a “measure of justice.” However, this strategy or this reasoning seems to be imploding, because for the first time Lebanon finds itself without a militia powerful enough to hold the country together. I think neither the United States nor Israel consider the implications of Israel’s rampage. I think they’re standing before a situation that could very rapidly devolve into war.
However, one last point, this war will likely not be a ground war. It won’t be that sort of offensive. It will be a projectile war based on missiles for some time yet. I don’t think the U.S. desires that kind of war. I think that’s true for both a Harris administration and a Trump administration. And again, I expect that in the conversations being held right now between Washington and Jerusalem, there is an attempt to find some sort of retaliatory measure for Israel that will not escalate this further.
AMY GOODMAN: During last night’s CBS News vice-presidential debate here in New York, Republican Senator JD Vance, Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Tim Walz both voiced support for Israel, but Walz criticized Donald Trump for pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal. This is what he said.
GOV. TIM WALZ: When Donald Trump was in office, it was Donald Trump who — we had a coalition of nations that had boxed Iran’s nuclear program in, the inability to advance it. Donald Trump pulled that program and put nothing else in its place. So Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon than they were before, because of Donald Trump’s fickle leadership. And when Iran shot down an American aircraft in international airspace, Donald Trump tweeted, because that’s the standard diplomacy of Donald Trump. And when Iranian missiles did fall near U.S. troops and they received traumatic brain injuries, Donald Trump wrote it off as headaches.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Senator Vance, the U.S. did have a diplomatic deal with Iran to temporarily pause parts of its nuclear program, and President Trump did exit that deal. He recently said, just five days ago, the U.S. must now make a diplomatic deal with Iran, because the consequences are impossible. Did he make a mistake? You have one minute.
SEN. JD VANCE: Well, first of all, Margaret, “diplomacy” is not a dirty word. But I think that something that Governor Walz just said is quite extraordinary. You yourself just said Iran is as close to a nuclear weapon today as they have ever been. And, Governor Walz, you blame Donald Trump. Who has been the vice president for the last three-and-a-half years? And the answer is your running mate, not mine. Donald Trump consistently made the world more secure.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Senator Vance and, before him, Tim Walz. Akbar Shahid Ahmed also joins us, senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost. He’s in Washington, D.C. His recent piece headlined “Israel Is Preparing a Risky Incursion into Lebanon — as Biden Stands By.” And he’s working on a book on the Biden administration’s Gaza policy called Crossing the Red Line. Akbar, if you can respond to the U.S., President Biden, the Biden-Harris administration’s response to what’s happening in Israel, Gaza, Lebanon and with Iran right now?
AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Thanks, Amy.
The Biden administration is in a place they definitely did not want to be a year ago at the start of this war, right? They thought they were going to prevent a regional war, demonstrate support for Israel and not pay a huge political cost. On all those fronts, they’ve largely failed, other than, arguably, the demonstrating support for Israel. Where they are now is they feel, “Look, we are five weeks from a presidential election. We don’t want to be seen as abandoning a U.S. partner.” So they’re really emphasizing this sense of we’re defending Israel.
But I think it gets to something Ori was talking about, which is: Is there a strategy here, or is this just tactics? Right? The administration can say, “Look, we’ve stopped Israelis from being killed. We’ve sent Israel defensive and huge offensive equipment.” But where are they actually going, and how are they deescalating tensions? That was something we didn’t see from Governor Walz. It’s not something we’ve heard from the Biden administration as Israel has begun its ground invasion of Lebanon. And I think when we’re at a point where there’s 40,000 and a growing number of U.S. troops in the region, and there is a sense that Israel’s actions are inextricably linked to a green light from the U.S., there’s a real responsibility for Washington here.
From their point of view, for Biden administration officials, there is an internal debate. Many are extremely cautious and are saying, “Look, this is the moment to try to use our leverage over Israel, which is overwhelming and unique, to rein them in.” But there is a small and very influential segment, Amy, of hawkish Biden administration advisers who say, “Look, Israel has decimated Hezbollah’s leadership to a large degree. We dislike Iran. We don’t want them to have so much influence in the region. Why not sort of keep escalating further?” The question is: Where does that lead us? And I think the administration hasn’t given us an answer yet.
AMY GOODMAN: What’s going on in the White House? Who are the parties around Biden? And what role does Kamala Harris play, the vice president?
AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: Yeah. I think the closest person to President Biden on these matters is someone called Brett McGurk. This is the White House Middle East coordinator. He’s not a well-known figure in the way that, say, Secretary of State Tony Blinken is, but he is someone who in many ways is emblematic of U.S. foreign policy thinking in the Middle East over the last 20 years — right? — which many folks would say is a pretty dubious record. This is someone who came up in the Bush administration administering Iraq. He’s very much pushing the “Let’s kneecap Iran right now. And this is our moment.” I think there’s folks at the Pentagon — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Blinken are, to a degree, more cautious, but this internal debate is so being fought in the room with the president personally. And what we know and what we’ve seen from the president publicly is he wants to yet again demonstrate support for Israel publicly, and it’s not clear, even privately, if he’s considering any route of using the influence he has — right? — of saying, “OK, we will not give you U.S. military equipment. We will pull back some of our troops from the region.”
Inside the White House, there’s also a lot of anxiety about Vice President Harris’s electoral prospects, as you can imagine. There’s a real sense that they’ve made a decision on the Gaza ceasefire question and the broader question in the Middle East, which is they’re not going to make a huge diplomatic push before the election. This idea they had that they were going to achieve a deal, bring home hostages, send aid to Palestinians, stop the bombing and the starvation, that’s all out the window at this point, right? The shiny new thing is a Lebanon incursion, opportunity and sort of hoping Gaza doesn’t reach the top headlines.
And I think that’s why you get to a point of risk where Senator Vance was able at the vice-presidential debate to say, “The world looks pretty chaotic right now, and it’s not former President Trump who’s in charge. It is President Biden.” And that’s an argument that the Trump campaign is very deliberately using to reach out to Americans in the middle and specific groups who feel alienated, whether it’s Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, younger voters. And polls do show us recently, Amy, that an increasing majority of Americans are worried about a growing war and want to see greater U.S. diplomacy. We’re not seeing a greater public demand for more weapons or more troops being sent to the region.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about the possibility, do you see, of Israel striking Iran, specifically perhaps nuclear sites?
AKBAR SHAHID AHMED: You know, I’ll think back to a pretty scary phrase I heard from a well-placed U.S. official, Korea, Korea bureaucrat working on Middle East policy. This person said to me at the beginning of this week — you know, he described how people inside government who track these issues are, quote, “stunned and shocked.” And then he said, “We feel we’re enabling a,” quote, “nihilistic regional murder spree.” Now, that’s very strong language, right? A murder spree. But what it tells you is that there’s a real sense within government that the U.S. is not going to provide a veto on Israeli actions. I think there is concern about: Does it strike nuclear sites, and does Iran lash back in a way that’s impossible to control? That the sense of a “no” from the U.S., I think, is — it’s very questionable. It’s not a guarantee.
What you could see the U.S. doing is urge Israel to strike something that looks strategic but is not necessarily a red line for the Iranians where they feel they have to respond to a huge degree. But that carries its own risks. We’ve seen the Iranians come out and say, “Not only would we, in response, target Israel; we would target U.S. partners across the region and potentially cripple the global economy.” Right? They’ve talked about targeting Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, other partners who are critical, to end global energy supplies. So, I think the U.S. doesn’t know where it’s going, but its commitment is very clear in that it wants to send a message to Iran that’s overwhelming and military.
AMY GOODMAN: Akbar Shahid Ahmed, I want to ask you to stay with us as we talk more about the debate, particularly the last response of JD Vance around the issue of January 6th and the insurrection and President Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. We’ll also be talking about abortion and climate change and more. Akbar is the senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost, joining us from D.C. We’ll link to your pieces on Lebanon and Gaza.
And we want to thank Ori Goldberg for joining us. Ori Goldberg, Israeli political analyst and scholar who’s written extensively on Iran, Israel and the relationship between religion and politics in the Middle East. We’ll link to your piece in New Lines Magazine, “Why Israelis Do and Don’t Want War with Hezbollah.” Your recent piece for The Nation, “For Israeli Protesters, Palestine Might as Well Not Exist.”
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