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

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by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 07, 2024

Dozens Killed in Gaza as Israel Bombs Mosque, School and Homes on Anniversary of Oct. 7 Attacks
Oct 07, 2024

Israel’s military has ordered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to evacuate their homes or face death, as it launches a fresh ground offensive in the northern Gaza Strip. The latest mass evacuation order came on the first anniversary of the start of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza following Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7. Over the weekend, at least 26 Palestinians were killed after Israeli forces attacked a mosque and a school sheltering displaced people in Deir al-Balah. Elsewhere, at least nine children were among 17 people killed when Israel’s military bombed the Jabaliya refugee camp. Many residents were unable or unwilling to leave their homes.

Um Ahmed Fadous: “I am staying here. Where else would I go? I want to die here. As long as they say that evacuation is forbidden, where will I go? We are staying. If they want us to die, so be it! … And I suffer from osteoarthritis. Where do I go?”

Gaza Journalist Hassan Hamad Killed by Artillery Fire After Threats from Israeli Officer
Oct 07, 2024

On Sunday, an Israeli artillery shell struck the home of 19-year-old journalist Hassan Hamad in Jabaliya, killing him. In recent weeks Hamad had received death threats via WhatsApp from an Israeli number; he also received phone calls and text messages from an Israeli officer ordering him to stop filming. Hassan Hamad is at least the 175th Palestinian journalist killed in Gaza since last October. He’s among at least 41,900 Palestinians killed over the past year in Gaza; another 97,000 have been injured, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry — though those figures are certain to be a vast undercount.

Massive Explosions Rock Beirut and Southern Lebanon as Israel Steps Up Bombing Campaign
Oct 07, 2024

Dozens of massive explosions rocked the Lebanese capital overnight Sunday, marking Israel’s heaviest bombardment on Beirut and the city’s southern suburbs since Israel widened its war on Lebanon two weeks ago. Earlier today, Israeli warplanes bombed a fire station in the town of Baraachit, killing at least eight people. Hezbollah fired rockets at the Israeli port city of Haifa, wounding at least 10 people. Israeli’s assault has now displaced 1.2 million people in Lebanon. After headlines, we’ll go to Beirut for the latest.

“Netanyahu Dragged Israel into Never-ending War”: Hostage Families Protest on Oct. 7 Anniversary
Oct 07, 2024

In Israel, the loved ones of hostages took to the streets over the weekend, blocking traffic in Tel Aviv and holding protests marking the first anniversary of October 7. Over 1,100 people were killed in Israel in the Hamas-led attacks a year ago, while at least 250 were taken hostage. Around 100 of the hostages remain in Gaza, though only 70 of them are still believed to be alive. One hundred five hostages were released by Hamas during a temporary ceasefire in November. This is Yael Or, whose cousin Dror Or was killed one year ago but whose body remains held in Gaza.

Yael Or: “Why are they still in Gaza a full year later? Because of Netanyahu. Netanyahu wants to stay in power forever. And to do that, he has dragged Israel into eternal, never-ending war. This means that our hostages have been abandoned in Hamas death tunnels deep under Gaza. Netanyahu has committed crime against his own people.”

Later in the broadcast, we’ll speak with Israeli peace activist Maoz Inon, who lost both his parents in the October 7 attack.

President Macron Halts French Weapons Exports to Israel
Oct 07, 2024

French President Emmanuel Macron says France is no longer sending arms to Israel and called on other nations to halt deliveries of weapons.

President Emmanuel Macron: “However, we also try to be consistent. And when we call for ceasefires — this is the case for Gaza, this was also the case for Lebanon last week — well, we try not to call for a ceasefire while continuing to deliver weapons of war. And I think it’s just consistency.”

Meanwhile, in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Vice President Kamala Harris defended U.S. military aid to Israel, which soared to a record $17.9 billion over the past year.

New Reports Reveal U.S. Ignored Warnings of Israeli Plans to Decimate Gaza, Attack Aid Convoys
Oct 07, 2024

A senior Pentagon official warned the White House last October that Israel’s plan to uproot more than a million Palestinians from their homes in Gaza would be a humanitarian disaster and could violate international law, leading to war crime charges against Israel. That’s according to Reuters, which reports the warning came in an October 13 email to the White House from Dana Stroul, then the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East. Stroul wrote that an assessment by the Red Cross predicting a “humanitarian catastrophe” from Israel’s mass expulsion order had left her “chilled to the bone.” Despite those concerns and similar dire warnings from the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, the White House expedited the transfer of weapons to Israel, including thousands of precision-guided missiles and 2,000-pound bombs.

Meanwhile, Drop Site News is reporting Secretary of State Antony Blinken last October signed off on a plan by Israel to bomb trucks bringing humanitarian aid into Gaza. Blinken’s approval came after he joined an emergency meeting of Israel’s war cabinet at the Israeli military’s headquarters in Tel Aviv last October 16 and 17. After the talks, Cabinet member Bezalel Smotrich said, “We in the cabinet were promised at the outset … that aid trucks hijacked by Hamas and its organizations would be bombed from the air, and the aid would be halted.”

Protesters Take to the Streets Across the Globe to Mark One Year of Israel’s Genocidal War on Gaza
Oct 07, 2024

Hundreds of thousands of protesters marched in cities across the world Saturday to demand an end to Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza and its widening war on Lebanon. Huge crowds flooded the streets of London; Berlin; Paris; Istanbul; Melbourne; Cape Town, South Africa; and Karachi, Pakistan, in solidarity with Palestinians. Here in the United States, protesters rallied in downtown Washington, D.C., near the White House. This is Anyssa Dhaouadi of the Palestinian Youth Movement.

Anyssa Dhaouadi: “Our role here in the United States, and specifically here in Washington, D.C., is to uplift the demand for an arms embargo on Israel and is to demand that our politicians, the Biden administration and the next administration, whoever that may be, to end all U.S. aid and end its complicity in this genocide. We know that without the financial backing and the diplomatic cover that the U.S. is providing on Israel, we know that this genocide would not have been possible.”

Photojournalist Sets Self on Fire to Protest Media Complicity in Gaza Genocide
Oct 07, 2024

At Saturday’s Gaza rally near the White House, photojournalist Samuel Mena Jr. of Arizona was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries after he lit his arm on fire in an act of protest. Ahead of his self-immolation, Mena spoke of his guilt over participating in biased media coverage of Gaza, writing, “How many Palestinians were killed that I allowed to be branded as Hamas? How many men, women, and children were struck with a missile cosigned by the American media?”

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Israeli Peace Activist Maoz Inon Lost His Parents on October 7. He’s Calling for an End to War & Occupation.
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 07, 2024

Today is the first anniversary of the October 7 attack on Israel, when Hamas’s military wing broke out of Israeli-constructed barrier fencing in the Gaza Strip. In the ensuing firefight, an estimated 1,200 people died. About 250 people were taken hostage and brought back to Gaza in a bid to pressure Israel to release some of the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners it holds in Israeli custody. While more than half of the hostages were exchanged this way through subsequent deals, Israel’s primary response to the incursion was the launch of a full-scale assault on the already-besieged Gaza Strip. Conservative estimates place the number of Palestinians killed at over 41,000. More recent projections suggest that this number may have reached the hundreds of thousands.

Meanwhile, in Israel, many families of remaining hostages continue to deride Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for refusing to accept a ceasefire deal that would return their family members, contending that Netanyahu is exploiting their loved ones and putting them in danger in order to manufacture a regional war. “Those who believe in war, they are naive, because they have been failing again and again and again,” says Israeli peace activist Maoz Inon, who has been advocating for a ceasefire and an end to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories for the past year. His parents, Bilha and Yakovi, were among those killed on October 7.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Israel intensified its attacks on Lebanon and Gaza over the weekend. In Lebanon, Israel launched its heaviest bombardment to date on Beirut and the city’s southern suburbs. In Gaza, Israel ordered more than 300,000 Palestinians in northern Gaza to flee ahead of a new Israeli offensive as the official death toll in Gaza nears 42,000 — the numbers are expected to be actually much higher.

Israel’s latest mass evacuation order came on the one-year anniversary of the start of its brutal war on Gaza following Hamas’s attack on October 7th. Almost 1,200 people died in that October 7th attack, and about 250 people were taken hostage, of which some 100 remain in Gaza, though many of them are believed to have died in captivity. Vigils are being held across Israel today with many calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

On Sunday, I reached the Israeli peace activist Maoz Inon. He lost both of his parents, Bilha and Yakovi Inon, in the October 7th Hamas attack. His parents lived on a kibbutz, a farming collective just north of the Gaza border. They were 78 and 76 years old.

Maoz Inon has spent much of the past year calling for peace. He recently wrote online, quote, “True security will only be achieved when the other side also enjoys security and stability. Morally, we cannot justify the killing of innocent people as part of the fight against terrorism. The harm to hundreds of innocent civilians is neither reasonable nor acceptable. These efforts should bring an end to the war in Gaza, return the hostages, end the occupation, and achieve a political-security agreement alongside reconciliation.”

Maoz has spent the last year working side by side with Palestinian activists. He recently met with the pope. And he also had a side meeting when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress. He and our guest coming up, Aziz Abu Sarah, addressed Democratic congressmembers who refused to attend Netanyahu’s joint congressional address.

We spoke to Maoz Inon just after he addressed one of the largest gatherings yesterday in Tel Avivi.

AMY GOODMAN: Maoz, thank you for joining us. Our condolences on this first anniversary of the death of your parents last October 7th. Can you share your reflections, as you did on the stage in Tel Aviv that you’ve just come off of, on this painful day?

MAOZ INON: We must move from thoughts, from prayers, from crossing our fingers for the Israelis and Palestinians to we must move to action, because everything I’ve seen coming happened, and even worse. And if we won’t start act now, we’re going to miss. We’re going to miss this year, which was the most bloodiest year in hundred years of conflict. But it can go — can be so much worse, and the numbers of casualties, the amount of suffering, of destruction can reach to a place we cannot imagine, like we could not imagine October 7th the day before.

So, we must move to action, and we must do it now. And we must stop debating who’s right and who’s wrong, if I’m pro-Palestinian or pro-Israelis. If you want the conflict to end, you must support the peacemakers. You must force an immediate ceasefire. You must force a dialogue to release the hostages and Palestinian prisoners. And we must — the world must force a dialogue between Israel to Palestine to Lebanon and the region.

AMY GOODMAN: Maoz, can you tell us about your parents, how as a result of their deaths a year ago, you became one of the most prominent Israeli peace activists today?

MAOZ INON: My parents were loving parents. They were just supporting and caring for me and my four siblings and for their 11 grandchildren. And in October — now we are in October, and it’s the season my father would sow wheat in the fields. For 60 years, my father was a farmer. For 60 years, he was sowing wheat in the fields of Israel. And it doesn’t matter how devastating the year before was, if it was through floods or a drought. He would always sow again. And I would keep asking him, “Daddy, what are you doing? Why don’t you give up? How come you don’t do something else?” And he would keep telling me, “[inaudible], Maoz, my son, next year will be better. Next year will be better. And I have the agency to make it better.” So, we all have the agency to make the future better.

And I shared it also, so many places, that I had a dream. And in my dream, I saw the path to peace and reconciliation. I saw it in my dreams. And my mom was a very, very talented mandala painter. She painted thousands of mandalas. And from all the thousand mandalas she ever painted, she gave me only one, eight years ago. And there, she wrote, “We can fulfill all our dreams if we’ll have the courage to chase them.” My mom gave me the ability to dream. What, unfortunately, all the current global politicians lack, the ability to dream of a better future. They are just debating and fighting over the past and the present, but they are not building, shaping, envisioning us a better future. So, my mom gave me the possibility to dream and the courage, the courage to chase my dream. And this is what I’m doing. I’m continuing their legacy. This is how they raised me.

AMY GOODMAN: Maoz, early Sunday, an Israeli strike on a mosque in Gaza killed at least 19 people. Meanwhile, massive explosions have rocked Beirut, marking the most violent night of attacks since Israel started its military offensive against Lebanon late last month. Peace, many fear, is less attainable than ever. What do you think have been the biggest roadblocks to a ceasefire? What is needed now to end the bloodshed?

MAOZ INON: Amy, we are at the footsteps. We are at the footsteps not just of a regional war, of a global war, I’m afraid. But we can choose to hope over beyond this precipice to a better future. And we need to start dialogue, dialogue with our enemies, like the European nations, the founders of the EU, proved, between Italy and France, Germany and Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg, only few years after the Second World War, where they were fighting among each other and killing 10 millions of each other. They realized that the only way to prevent the next war is making the enemies of the past into the partners of the future. This is humanity’s legacy. But I don’t know. Those who believe in war, they are naive, because they have been failing again and again and again. So we now must force our leaders, our politicians to give us concrete answers, what is what they are envisioning for the future and how they’re going to take us there. It’s cannot be by bombs.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re about to show clips of The Path Forward, a film that was made about you and your work with the Palestinian peace activist Aziz Abu Sarah. You lost your parents a year ago. He lost his brother after he was imprisoned by Israel when he was a young man. The activism and work you’ve done together — he reached out to you right after your parents were killed — ultimately meeting with the pope, addressing congressmembers who refused to be there in the joint session of when Netanyahu addressed the U.S. Congress?

MAOZ INON: It means the world to me. It means the world to me, because we are modeling, Aziz and I, but so many other Israelis and Palestinians, so many others — we are modeling a radical reconciliation. We are modeling a radical better future. And we see how it’s being spread.

AMY GOODMAN: What does it mean to you that President Biden continues to send billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to Israel, to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?

MAOZ INON: And he also said that he’s crossing his fingers for us, for the hostages. I’m not an American citizenship, so I cannot criticize your leaders. And it’s not about blue or red, Republican or Democrat. If the American people and Biden administration are such a good friend of Israel, how can they explain that Israel today is as weak as ever. We are as weak as ever. All our borders are breached. The society from the inside is falling apart. And the hostages are left to die in Gaza. So, if your actions are not effective, it’s not a reason to give up, and it’s definitely not a reason to keep doing the same thing. It’s a reason to change your action. And this what you must — President Biden, you must change your action. You must force a ceasefire.

AMY GOODMAN: Where does ending the occupation fit into this?

MAOZ INON: That’s a must. Of course, that’s a must. There are two people between the river to the sea. There will be no security and safety to one without the other. There will be no shared — no recognition and acknowledgment to one if not to the other. If there will be no equality and dignity to both people, there will be to none. So, that’s a must. This is something that, again — so, we are waiting. Maybe at the last three months of his term, he will push for a U.N. council resolution to force the end of the occupation. So, now is the time to do it.

AMY GOODMAN: How many of the hostage families feel the way you do?

MAOZ INON: More and more. And again, I can give you numbers of hostages’ families. I can give you numbers of bereaved families from October 7 that keep approaching us and telling me, “Maoz, we are standing with. Maoz, you are right. You were right from the first time.” And the only way — now the discourse is changing to understand and acknowledge that the only way to bring the hostages back is to stop the war. That’s the only way. And we will stop the war, and then they will be able — Hamas will be able to give them oxygen and water and food, and then to start a negotiation. But military pressure is killing them.

AMY GOODMAN: What gives you the most hope as you stand after addressing this largest venue in Tel Aviv on this first anniversary of the death of your parents?

MAOZ INON: I think that we start shifting the discourse. And this is what’s needed, to shift the discourse from war to peace. And when I was — I was saying the same words, Amy, few days after my parents died, that we must stop the war, we must bring the hostages — that should be the first priority — and we must start a peace process. This is what I was saying from day one. But at the beginning, no one was willing to listen to me, in Israel and overseas. And now I have no time in my day and night to answer, to answer and get all those requests to speak, to be interviewed from Israelis and internationally. So we are shifting the discourse.

And we are working very hard. We are working very hard. But I won so many brothers and sisters in the last year. That started with losing my parents. But I won so many brothers and sisters, Palestinian, Israelis, from the international community. And my brothers and sisters, they are not giving me hope; we are making hope together.

AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli peace activist Maoz Inon. His parents, Bilha and Yakovi Inon, were killed in the October 7th Hamas attack one year ago today.

Coming up, we’ll speak to the man he travels the world with, Palestinian peace activist Aziz Abu Sarah. Maoz and Aziz are featured in the new documentary The Path Forward. The film’s co-director, the Oscar-nominated Julie Cohen, will also join us. Stay with us.

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“The Path Forward”: Palestinian and Israeli Activists Working Toward Peace Featured in New Film
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 07, 2024

The Path Forward is a new documentary that weaves together the voices of Palestinians and Israelis in their efforts for peace and reconciliation. The short film features the stories of Israeli and Palestinian peace activists who have worked together before and after October 7 and Israel’s relentless war on Gaza. We play excerpts from The Path Forward and speak to one of the activists featured, Aziz Abu Sarah, as well as to co-director Julie Cohen. “People who believe that war is the only way, what scares them the most is people who are modeling a different future,” says Abu Sarah. “Our route to freedom is a joint route.”

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.

As we continue to mark the one-year anniversary of the Hamas October 7th attack on Israel and the beginning of Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza, we turn now to The Path Forward, a new short film that features the stories of Israeli and Palestinian peace activists who have joined together calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the occupation. This is a trailer for The Path Forward.

YAEL BRAUDO-BAHAT: All of us want to stop the killing of our children, our children and your children.

MAOZ INON: We are crying for the world to act now, before it will be too late.

ON-SCREEN TEXT: From their deepest pain.

MAOZ INON: What happened to my parents on October 7th, some nights I cry throughout the night.

AZIZ ABU SARAH: If somebody kills your brother, you want to hurt whoever hurts your family.

ON-SCREEN TEXT: They found their greatest purpose.

MAOZ INON: Every relationship that I will be able to build with Palestinians, it’s very meaningful.

AZIZ ABU SARAH: It didn’t matter to me that his parents were Jewish. Those who were killed were my people, too.

PROTESTERS: Salaam, peace, shalom!

JOMANA KARADSHEH: At this time of great pain, you choose to be together.

YAEL BRAUDO-BAHAT: If not now, when?

AHMED FOUAD ALKHATIB: I wanted to break the cycle of incitement, hatred, violence, revenge, rinse and repeat.

ALON-LEE GREEN: How can we move further away from this hashtag #StandWithPalestine or I hashtag #StandWithIsrael?

SALLY ABED: If we are not able to grieve the loss of our humanity together, we will never be able to plan a future together.

MAOZ INON: Those who believe that bombs will bring safety, they are naive. They are naive.

RIMAN BARAKAT: We lost our compass of humanity, and we need to bring that back.

AMI DAR: The idea that I should care more about a dead child who happens to be of someone who shares my nationality, as opposed to someone who does not, is insane to me.

PROTESTERS: No more war! No more war! No more war! No more war!

AMY GOODMAN: The Path Forward includes the stories of Palestinian peace activist Aziz Abu Sarah and Israeli peace activist Maoz Inon, who we just interviewed on this show. His parents, Bilha and Yakovi Inon, were killed in the October 7th attack. In this clip, The Path Forward, Aziz begins by talking about reaching out to Maoz after news of Maoz’s parents death a year ago today.

AZIZ ABU SARAH: It didn’t matter to me that Maoz’s parents were Jewish. That’s not part of the calculation. When people talk about October 7th, it’s Israelis versus Palestinians. It didn’t feel to me Israelis versus Palestinians. Those who were hurt, those who were killed were my people, too.

MAOZ INON: I just replied immediately, “Thank you for being there.”

AZIZ ABU SARAH: A few days later, he made a post on Twitter.

MAOZ INON TWEET: “I am not crying for my parents — I am crying for those who will lose their lives in this war.”

AZIZ ABU SARAH: He doesn’t want revenge, and he doesn’t want what’s happened to him to cause more people to suffer. And I said it took me eight years to come to that point. When my brother Tayseer died, he was 19 years old, and I was 10 years old. He was arrested on suspicion of throwing rocks. He was beaten up in prison by an Israeli soldier, which caused internal injuries. He died as a result of those injuries. It’s still painful. A few days after Maoz’s parents were killed, just I can’t imagine stepping out of your pain to think of somebody else’s pain, to think of what other people are going through. It takes so much of a humanity of someone to do that. So I wrote him that, and he sent me a message right away, saying, “Let’s talk.”

MAOZ INON: I knew that my life has changed dramatically. It’s not just what happened to my parents, my childhood friends and Israelis. I knew that a war was just about to happen, and a war that we have never experienced before in our lifetime. So, every contact, every bridge, every relationship that I knew that I will be able to build with Palestinians, it’s very meaningful, just for me, Maoz, as a person, but for the region.

AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt from The Path Forward, featuring Maoz Inon, who lost his parents a year ago today, and Aziz Abu Sarah, Palestinian peace activist, who’s joining us now from Greenville, South Carolina. He’s also author and founder of MEJDI Tours and a resident of East Jerusalem. When Aziz Abu Sarah was 9 years old, as you just heard, his older brother Tayseer died soon after his release from an Israeli prison of internal injuries suffered after he was tortured in prison. And here in New York, Julie Cohen is with us, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker who’s made many films, including RBG, My Name Is Pauli Murray, Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down. Julie is a Jewish American and co-directed The Path Forward with Mo Husseini, a Palestinian American writer.

We thank you both for being with us. Aziz, your thoughts on this October 7th anniversary?

AZIZ ABU SARAH: It’s been a hard morning already just listening to news. And I’ve talked to Maoz already this morning, been in touch with some friends. But it’s been not just the anniversary of October 7th; it’s this whole year has been like a nightmare that I keep wishing I can wake up and just forget all about it and assume that — you know, believe that it was just a dream, just a nightmare. And unfortunately, it hasn’t.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed. So much pain, so much suffering. So many people I know, both Palestinians and Israelis and Lebanese, are suffering. My family are all in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. Every time I get a phone call, I’m terrified of receiving horrible news. It’s been impossible to have a normal life in this last year. It is impossible to have a normal life. So, it’s just a reminder of how far we’ve gotten in a negative way, in a terrible way.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Julie Cohen, can you talk about focusing on Aziz and Maoz, Palestinian and Israeli peace activists, in this year of so much suffering?

JULIE COHEN: Yeah. I mean, you know, it’s a day of grief today. As Aziz says, there’s this sort of ongoing nightmare to wake up to every day. For me personally and for Mo, my directing partner in this, in a way, finding and sharing the voices of Aziz and Maoz and other pairs like them, because there are many, many more like this, is the greatest comfort to the nightmare and possibly, you know, the only hope, in our minds, of a solution, of a moving forward, of looking at the horrendous situation the world is in, people who have suffered the greatest pain, like Aziz and Maoz, who take that pain and think, “Wait a second. How can we go for,” as Maoz said earlier, “radical reconciliation, radical peace, a radical search for justice?” Like, in some ways, looking for love and compassion and sharing pain and sharing grief is better than the “militaristic solutions,” quote-unquote, which have failed us again and again and again. And so, we just wanted to bring their voices forward, because they seem useful and constructive in a world where there is too little usefulness right now.

AMY GOODMAN: In your film, you have woven throughout this a peace march of Palestinian and Israeli Jewish women that happened on October 4th, three days before last year’s October 7th. One of the people leading this march was Vivian Silver, the well-known Canadian Israeli peace activist, who would die on her kibbutz. We have interviewed her son, demanding a ceasefire from the beginning, as Maoz and Aziz have.

JULIE COHEN: Yes. You know, it’s a sadness almost that more of us weren’t aware of this march when it originally happened on October 4th, how little American news coverage this got, that the fact that a couple thousand women, Palestinian and Israeli Jewish women, together, linking arms, singing, calling, crying out for peace. And I think what’s so beautiful is how many of the activists, including those featured in our film, did not react to everything that was to come just a few days later by pulling apart, but it actually strengthened their resolve, you know, to, like, know this shows that what we need is something new and different, and let’s work together towards building improvement, building a better world.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask Aziz if you feel more or less hope. Right now you have Israel in the most massive, deadly bombardment of Lebanon that we have seen in decades. You have the bombing of Iran. You have Iran’s missiles on Israel. You have the bombing of — Israel’s bombing of Syria, Israel’s bombing of Yemen. As we wrap up, what gives you hope?

AZIZ ABU SARAH: Well, I want to just say something before I tell you what gives me hope, is Vivian was a dear friend who I’ve known for many, many years and was a mentor for me. And that image of Israelis and Palestinians marching together has not changed. That’s what gives me hope.

I was in Jerusalem just three weeks ago, and we went marching in Al-Auja, in a Palestinian village in the West Bank that the water was diverted away from the village to a settlement. And Israelis arrived from Tel Aviv, Israelis arrived from Jerusalem, Israelis arrived from all over, joining Palestinians, and we marched together. And I saw something powerful, is even though we were only a few hundred, the fear of those who opposed us — you know, the army and the police — even though we were extremely peaceful, compliant, we didn’t want to confront anyone, we marched with messages that says we refuse to be enemy, water rights for everyone, this kind of very universal language. And they were terrified. And in some ways, that gave me a little hope, because I can see how people who believe that war is the only way, what scares them the most is people like us. What scares them the most is people who are modeling a different future, that we’re able to say, “Look, we don’t hate each other. We can work together.” And so, it was no surprise that the police came and gave traffic tickets to everyone, pretty much, who arrived. It was no surprise that the military was trying to provoke us, because they were terrified that we are showing what the possibility is.

So I do have hope, and my hope is not in leaders or politicians who claim to be leaders. My hope is about the people who are like us, my colleagues, Israelis and Palestinians, who are refusing to fall into “If I’m Palestinian, I must hate all Israelis or Jews,” or “If I’m Israeli, I must hate all Palestinians,” and realizing that we are on the same side, those of us who believe in equality and justice and peace. And those who don’t yet, our mission is to convince those who don’t yet to join us and realize that bombing somebody else, killing a civilian, killing a human being is never going to be the way to bring you safety and security and that our route to freedom is a joint route.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, we just have 30 seconds. The Path Forward, where can it be seen, Julie?

JULIE COHEN: You should be following myself, @filmmakerjulie, and @mohu on our socials. We’re moving towards more screenings of this film and getting it out where everyone can see it online very soon because of the urgency of Aziz and Maoz’s message and all the others that are involved in this really significant work.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Julie Cohen, co-directed The Path Forward with a Palestinian writer, Mo Husseini. And I want to thank Aziz Abu Sarah, Palestinian peace activist, featured in the film.

Coming up, we go to Durban, South Africa, where we’ll be joined by Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha. Then to Beirut. Stay with us.

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Palestinian Poet Mosab Abu Toha: One Year After Oct. 7, U.S. Is Still Arming Israel’s Slaughter in Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 07, 2024

The Palestinian poet and author Mosab Abu Toha, who fled Gaza in December after being detained by the Israeli military, is releasing his second book of poetry, Forest of Noise, next week. We speak to him one year into Israel’s relentless slaughter in his home of the Gaza Strip as he notes, “It is really devastating to think that after a year, the world is still thinking about October 7 only, rather than about the years and decades before October 7 and the many and long, long days and weeks that followed October 7.” Abu Toha also pays tribute to his former student, Hatem al-Zaaneen, who was recently killed while collecting firewood for his family, and shares the status of his own surviving family members in Gaza, who have been displaced once again as they seek safety from unrelenting Israeli bombardment.

Transcript

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

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

We turn now to look at Gaza as Israel’s military has launched a new offensive on northern Gaza. Over the weekend, Israel ordered more than 300,000 Palestinians to flee. Israel’s latest mass evacuation order came on the one-year anniversary of the start of its brutal war on Gaza following Hamas’s attack on October 7th. Over the weekend, Israeli forces attacked a mosque and a school sheltering displaced people in Deir al-Balah, killing at least 26 Palestinians. The official death count in Gaza is nearing 42,000 but believed to be much higher.

We’re joined now by Mosab Abu Toha, Palestinian poet and author. He left Gaza in December after being detained by the Israeli military. His essay in The New York Times, published Sunday, is headlined “Gaza’s Schools Are for Learning, Not for Dying.” And his latest piece for The New Yorker magazine is “The Pain of Travelling While Palestinian.” He’s a columnist, teacher, founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza, author of the award-winning book titled Things You Mays Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza. His second book of poetry will be out next week. It’s titled Forest of Noise.

Mosab, welcome back to Democracy Now! We talked to you right after you came out of Gaza. We also spoke to you in Gaza. You had been detained by the Israeli military. Your thoughts on this anniversary of both the Hamas attack and the beginning of the slaughter of Palestinians by the Israeli military in Gaza?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Thanks so much, Amy, for hosting me and for this platform.

My thoughts is that whereas the Israelis were able to bury their dead after October 7th, there are just thousands of Palestinians who — either whose bodies were not found because of the Israeli airstrikes, the intense Israeli airstrikes, and others whose bodies were left under — still under the rubble of their houses. I lost 30 members of my extended family, three first cousins, two of whom with their husbands and their children, and I haven’t been able to bid them farewell. Some of them, they have nothing in their bodies left for me to locate them. And many of them are still under the rubble, because there is no fuel, there is no equipment to remove the rubble from above the bodies. So, it is really devastating to think that after a year, the world is still thinking about the October 7th only, rather than about the years and decades before October 7 and the many and long, long days and weeks that followed October 7.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can respond to the pope calling for a ceasefire in Lebanon, in Gaza, the French President Macron calling for an end to weapons sales to Israel, the U.S. continuing those weapons sales — though President Biden has said he wants a ceasefire — and these latest attacks in Gaza?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: I mean, it’s really funny when someone says that we need to achieve a ceasefire as soon as possible — this is what President Biden and Kamala Harris are asking for — but at the same time they never stop sending bombs to Israel. And they never even took any measures to stop Israel from invading humanitarian areas and from targeting humanitarian aid trucks when they enter Gaza. So, instead of monitoring whatever bombs and weapons get into Israel — not only sending Israel weapons, but instead of monitoring whatever bombs Israel is using against the civilian population and even the tent areas, where there are only tents there, there is even no house, there are even no houses there — so, instead of monitoring the weapons that are getting into Israel and the kind of weapons that Israel is dropping, they’re keeping very close eyes on the kind of trucks and the kind of foods and biscuits and luncheon canned food into Gaza.

And this is something that I wish I could hear after Palestine was occupied in 1948. Weapons should have stopped being sent to Israel not in 2023 or 2024. It should have been stopped, you know, after 1948. And they should have called for a ceasefire, you know, and the halt of settlement construction in the West Bank and the expansion of settlements. They should have called for all of this, not only for a ceasefire, because a ceasefire does not lead to peace. There should be justice. And all those who care about Palestinian lives, why don’t you recognize them as a people, as people who should have their political rights, not only to look at them as victims of Israeli terrorism?

AMY GOODMAN: You were a teacher in Gaza. So many schools in Gaza have been hit. So many were turned into shelters and then still hit by the Israeli military. You write in your New York Times column, “On Saturday morning, I learned from my school’s WhatsApp group that my most talented student, Hatem al-Zaaneen, had been killed in Beit Hanoun, where Israel that day carried out strikes.” Can you talk, as we wrap up, about your students, about your colleagues, those who are dead and alive, your own family, and how it’s coped with, leaving Gaza today?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Just honor my student, his name is Hatem al-Zaaneen. I would like to pronounce his name the way he —

AMY GOODMAN: I’m sorry.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: — used to tell me his name when I first met him. Hatem’s hope was to join me in the States when he grows up. I promised him, literally, when he was — he was one of the only students, one of the few students who kept in touch with me when I was in Syracuse doing my M.F.A. two years ago. And he kept in touch. “When are you going to come back? I need you to teach me. I love all teachers, but I want you to teach me. I love your teaching.” And I told him, “You know, when you grow up, you should come to this country. It’s very beautiful. People here are really beautiful, and the universities are really magnificent.” And I told him, “I will help you apply for a scholarship to come to the States.” He was very, very brilliant. And he won a short story competition, and I still have the video on my phone of him reciting the short story that he picked for the contest. I mean, this is Hatem.

And he was not — I mean, first, I thought he was killed in a municipality building where he was sheltering with his family. But later, a teacher corrected this to me, early today, that Hatem was looking for firewood to help his family bake and cook food. And Israel is not only blocking the entrance of food trucks, but they are also killing people who are looking for ways to survive. So, children like Hatem and my siblings and their children, they are not living. They are only spending their time trying to survive.

And there’s no place that’s safe in Gaza. Very important, Amy. You mentioned that Israel ordered people in north Gaza, about — I mean, Gaza used to have about 1 million people, but now with the evacuations, now I think the number is about 400,000 people, including my father, three of my siblings and their children. Today, they ordered — and also my wife’s family, all of them are in north Gaza right now, and they are looking for ways to evacuate, but they don’t know where. So, they ordered Beit Lahia, Jabaliya and Beit Hanoun to evacuate. And an hour after that, they ordered three areas in Khan Younis in south Gaza to evacuate. So, the thing is not about evacuating. So, people are evacuating from north Gaza to south Gaza, and then they find themselves bombed in south Gaza. So they are cramming people there.

And I thought — I was asked a lot of times by friends, dear friends of mine, after October 7th, “Why are you not going south? The Israelis are telling you to go south. Why don’t you go south?” I told them, “Well, do you have any guarantee that I will make it alive south?” And then, the second question, “Do you guarantee that I will be safe in south Gaza? Is there any place that’s called safe?” And safety is not about not being killed by shrapnel or by airstrikes. Safety is about finding food, finding water, finding medicine. There is nothing in south Gaza even. So, wherever you go, there is nothing that’s called a humanitarian area.

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab, we are going to have you back on to talk about your new book of poetry. I want to thank you so much for being with us today. Mosab Abu Toha, Palestinian —

MOSAB ABU TOHA:Appreciate it.

AMY GOODMAN: — poet and author. His new book, out next week, is called Forest of Noise. He’s speaking to us today from Durban, South Africa. South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel to the International Court of Justice.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah. Just to — if I have a moment, I am here to participate in a poetry festival that I was invited to. And I’m based right now in upstate New York.

AMY GOODMAN: Thank you, Mosab.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Appreciate it.

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Report from Beirut: Israel Intensifies Bombardment of Lebanon, Displacing 1.2 Million
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 07, 2024

Today marks both the first anniversary of the October 7 attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip and one week since Israel began its ground invasion of the neighboring country of Lebanon. Israel’s brutal military response to the Hamas-led October 7 incursion has shown no sign of slowing down as the United States, its primary supplier of military aid, continues to commit weapons, funding and rhetorical support to its deadly assault on Arab populations in Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon. Over 1,000 Lebanese civilians have been killed and over a million displaced as they flee the encroaching violence. From Beirut, we speak to Rima Majed, a professor at the American University of Beirut, who highlights the disruption to daily life that Israeli warfare has created. “This is really a huge catastrophe, and it’s not a humanitarian one. It is a political catastrophe, and it’s a social catastrophe. And this would not have happened … if it wasn’t for the [international] backing and the arming of Israel.”

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We end today’s show in Lebanon, where Israel has launched its heaviest bombardment to date on Beirut and the city’s southern suburbs. Earlier today, Israeli warplanes bombed a fire station in southern Lebanon, killing at least eight people. Israeli’s assault has now displaced 1.2 million people in Lebanon. Many have fled to Beirut from the south.

DISPLACED BEIRUT RESIDENT: [translated] We have been displaced for 10 days now. We don’t have food with us. We were not able to even go and bring new clothes. We left our homes and came here. Every night, there’s a strike. You cannot sleep. We came here, and we are unable to go back from where we came. Our situation is terrible. If someone is able to find any way to get out of the country, they should. It’s better than living on aid.

AMY GOODMAN: On Sunday, Hezbollah fired rockets at the Israeli port city of Haifa.

In Beirut, we’re joined by Rima Majed. She’s an assistant professor of sociology at the American University of Beirut.

You’re speaking to us from Beirut, where these massive explosions rocked the city over the weekend, marking the most violent night of Israeli attacks in recent weeks. We’re hearing reports of Israeli strikes pounding southern Beirut and a massive airstrike on Sunday near the city’s international airport. Describe what it’s like to be there, Rima.

RIMA MAJED: Thank you so much, Amy.

I mean, it’s, of course, horrible to be here. I mean, our nights are very long. Unfortunately, the heaviest bombing happens at night when people are getting ready to go to bed. But the past weekend and the weeks before have been really horrible. I mean, this week, it’s been mainly Beirut, but the south, the Beqaa and other areas have been very heavily hit in the weeks before. The situation is really very, very, very dire. I mean, I can go on for hours describing how horrible this whole situation is.

I mean, this is also a country where there is already — it’s a country that’s already suffering from multiple crises in the past five years, from one of the worst financial crises in the world, you know, the port explosion in 2020, of course COVID and its aftermath, earthquake last year, and a political deadlock that — where at the moment we have no president, a caretaker government, and a Parliament that has not convened since the beginning of this war. So we are talking about a situation that is very difficult.

And what I want to talk about is the effects of these bombs are massive, not just at — I mean, of course, at the humanitarian scale, but, I mean, I think the humanitarian aspect is something that people have become — I mean, it’s become very, very dehumanizing to just focus on humanitarianism. I mean, we’re talking about bare life here. I mean, all we care about is for people to just have shelter and food and be safe. We’re forgetting about, I mean, lives of millions of people that are put on hold, dreams that are put on hold, you know, social worlds that are disrupted and everyday life that has changed in drastic ways overnight. I mean, I made it to this studio very late because I couldn’t drive from a distance that is very close to here that usually takes three or four minutes. It took me 45 minutes, and I couldn’t continue the road. I had to be picked up on a motorbike to get here because of how crammed the city has become.

So, the effects of this are going to be immense for months, if not years, to come. Israel is using a tactic that we’ve seen in Gaza. It’s razing whole areas. I mean, Dahiyeh, the southern suburb of Beirut, and many areas in the south and the Beqaa are being completely destroyed, which means people will have nowhere to go, to go back to. But also, I mean, these orders of evacuation are also — I mean, it’s the same absurdity that my friends in Gaza are describing. I mean, we tell people to evacuate, but go where? It’s very hard to find shelter in these conditions. People are sleeping in the streets. Winter is coming. It’s starting to rain in Beirut. We’re starting to talk about the possibility of epidemics spreading. So, this is really a huge catastrophe. And it’s not a humanitarian one. It is a political catastrophe, and it’s a social catastrophe.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Professor Majed —

RIMA MAJED: And this would not have happened if it wasn’t for the —

AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead.

RIMA MAJED: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: This wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for?

RIMA MAJED: If it wasn’t for the backing and the arming of Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: And your response — we have just a minute — to Israel saying they’re just destroying, trying to destroy Hezbollah; they’re telling everyone else to leave to protect them?

RIMA MAJED: Yeah, we’ve heard the same thing in Gaza: They’re just trying to destroy Hamas. I mean, two things. First, it’s important to understand who Hezbollah is. Hezbollah, of course, is a political and military organization, but Hezbollah also has a social base, and these are not people that are involved in military action.

AMY GOODMAN: Rima, we have just 15 seconds.

RIMA MAJED: But the other thing that I want to highlight is that the war with — the war with Lebanon — the war of Israel on Lebanon has not started with the creation of Hezbollah in ’82. Israel has invaded Lebanon way before ’82. Hezbollah was created as a result of the Beirut invasion in ’82. So, the aim, I think, is not just Hezbollah, but the aim is to kill any possible resistance to a state that is —

AMY GOODMAN: Rima Majed, we’re going to leave it there —

RIMA MAJED: — that has no borders and that is expansionist.

AMY GOODMAN: — from the American University of Beirut, but we’re going to do Part 2 and post it online at democracynow.org. Stay with us, please. I’m Amy Goodman.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 07, 2024

Five Children Among the Dead as Israel Bombs Homes in Deir al-Balah
Oct 08, 2024

In Gaza, another 25 Palestinians have been killed as Israel’s unrelenting war on the besieged Palestinian territory enters its second year. On Monday night, Israeli strikes in central Gaza hit houses in the Bureij refugee camp in the city of Deir al-Balah, killing five children and two women.

Abu Muhammad al-Maqadma: “The war is against civilians and children? Women? The elderly? Who is this war against? What do we have in the Gaza Strip? Do we have aircraft carriers at sea or F-35 planes? What do we have? We have always been unarmed people. All Arab and European countries know that we are oppressed and lost our rights.”

With the latest killings, the official death toll from one year of Israel’s war is approaching 42,000, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. That would mean Israeli attacks have killed one out of every 55 people living in Gaza, though the figure is likely a significant undercount. More than 16,700 of the dead are children.

Israeli Forces Kill 12-Year-Old Child and 66-Year-Old Man in Raids on Occupied West Bank
Oct 08, 2024

In the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society says Israeli forces detained another 30 Palestinians overnight during raids on Hebron, Nablus, Bethlehem and occupied East Jerusalem. The group reports Israel has arrested more than 11,200 Palestinians across the West Bank over the past year. On Monday, two West Bank Palestinians were killed in separate Israeli raids. Twelve-year-old Hatem Ghaith was fatally shot in the abdomen by Israeli forces in a raid on the Qalandiya refugee camp. And in the city of Dura, Israeli troops fatally assaulted 66-year-old Ziad Abu Hlail as they raided his home to arrest his son. His widow Basma recounted the fatal assault.

Basma Abu Hlail: “We were asleep at 4 a.m. when the army surrounded the house and arrested my son. They took him out of the house. His father wanted to run after him, but they didn’t let him. They pushed the door into him, and he fell and died. He became a martyr. We called the ambulance, and it didn’t arrive.”

Israel Orders Expulsion of Lebanon’s Southern Coast, Expands Attacks on Beirut Suburbs
Oct 08, 2024

Israel has expanded its attacks on southern Lebanon as it continues to strike Beirut’s suburbs. The Israeli military said it has deployed more troops into southwest Lebanon, which followed intense overnight bombardment. In response, Hezbollah has launched a series of missile attacks into northern Israel, including the city of Haifa. Meanwhile, Israel has issued expulsion orders to about one-quarter of the population on Lebanon’s southern coastline ahead of a planned maritime attack. This all comes as the World Health Organization has expressed concern over intensifying Israeli attacks on healthcare workers and hospitals across Lebanon, which have so far forced the closure of at least five healthcare facilities. The WHO is also warning of disease outbreaks due to the overcrowded conditions in shelters for displaced people.

Mourners in Michigan Hold Funeral for Hajj Kamel Ahmad Jawad, Killed by Israeli Strike in Lebanon
Oct 08, 2024

In Dearborn, Michigan, thousands of mourners gathered at the Islamic Center of America on Sunday to remember Hajj Kamel Ahmad Jawad, a 56-year-old husband, father of four and Lebanese American who was killed by an Israeli airstrike on his hometown of Nabatieh, Lebanon, one week ago. Jawad’s family says he’d chosen to remain near the city’s main hospital to help the elderly, disabled and those who couldn’t afford to flee Israel’s bombs. In a statement, his daughter Nadine Jawad wrote, “His life is one of over 50,000 lost at the hands of Israeli aggression across the Middle East. The fact that he was an American citizen should not make his story more important than others. As Muslims, we believe that every life matters. If my dad’s story stands out to you, every other civilian murdered by the Israeli regime should as well.”

“Every Life a Universe”: On Oct. 7, Jewish Activists Mourn, Pray and Demand End to Gaza Genocide
Oct 08, 2024

Here in New York, Jewish activists and allies gathered Monday for a vigil on the first anniversary of October 7 to mourn Israelis and Palestinians who have been killed and to call for an end to the Israeli massacre in Gaza and beyond. Participants performed prayers and read out the names of those whose lives have been lost. Democracy Now! spoke to Eva Borgwardt of the group IfNotNow at the vigil.

Eva Borgwardt: “So, the motto is 'every life a universe,' and it’s from 'pikuach nefesh,' which says that to destroy a life is to destroy an entire world, and to save a life is to save an entire world. And our government is not treating every single life as a universe. They’re treating Palestinian lives as less sacred.”

That was Eva Borgwardt, national spokesperson of the group IfNotNow. Another speaker who joined a later rally of Israeli Americans who are relatives of hostages in Gaza also spoke.

Adi: “My name is Adi, and I’m an Israeli American. A year ago, I was here in New York with my mother anxiously texting our family in Be’eri as they were trapped in their homes listening to the sounds of a massacre outside, abandoned by the Israeli government to fend for themselves. My uncle was murdered, together with a hundred other kibbutz members, and 31 members were kidnapped to Gaza. The brutality did not start a year ago, but for me and most of the people I know from my region in the world, this year was like a magnifying glass to the unimaginable damage of oppression, occupation, war and violence. … Now take this loss as I feel today, and multiply it by millions and millions, the millions of Palestinians, Lebanese, Israelis, Iranians, millions of hundreds who lost lives, lost loved ones, body functions, their homes, food, shelter, things with sentimental values, a million little connections lost forever. I want to scream. Scream. None of them are my enemy. I want nothing but peace and healing for all of them.”

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“The Message”: Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Power of Writing & Visiting Senegal, South Carolina, Palestine
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 07, 2024

We spend the hour with the acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose new book The Message features three essays tackling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, book bans and academic freedom, and the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. The Message is written as a letter to Coates’s students at Howard University, where he is the Sterling Brown Endowed Chair in the English department. As part of the research for the book, Coates traveled to Senegal and visited the island of Gorée, often the last stop for captured Africans before they were shipped to the Americas as enslaved people. Coates also visited a schoolteacher in South Carolina who faced censorship for teaching Coates’s previous book, Between the World and Me, an experience he says showed him the power of organizing. “That, too, is about the power of stories. That, too, is about the power of narratives, the questions we ask and the questions we don’t,” Coates says of the community’s response.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: Vigils and memorials were held across the globe Monday and this weekend on the first anniversary of October 7th to mourn Israelis and Palestinians who have been killed over the past year. The anniversary comes as Israel is widening its assault on Gaza and sending more troops into Lebanon.

Today, we spend the hour with the acclaimed writer, the journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of the new book The Message, based in part on a trip he took last year to the occupied West Bank and Israel. Ta-Nehisi compares Israel’s apartheid system to that of Jim Crow here in the United States. He writes, “It occurred to me that there was still one place on the planet — under American patronage — that resembled the world that my parents were born into.”

In his book, Ta-Nehisi Coates also writes about traveling to Senegal, where he visited the slave trade memorial at Gorée Island, and going to South Carolina, where school officials tried to ban his book Between the World and Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015.

The Message is written as a letter to his students at Howard University, where Ta-Nehisi Coates is the Sterling Brown Endowed Chair in the English department. The Message is Ta-Nehisi’s first collection of nonfiction work since his 2017 book, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy.

Ta-Nehisi, welcome back to Democracy Now! Last time, during the pandemic, you were in another studio, so it’s great to be with you in our New York studio.

I wanted to read one of your quotes: “We are plagued by dead language and dead stories that serve people whose aim is nothing short of a dead world. It is not enough to stand against these dissemblers. There has to be something in you, something that hungers for clarity. And you will need that hunger, because if you follow that path, soon enough you will find yourself confronting not just their myths, not just their stories, but your own.” Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Message.

We’re going to talk a lot about what’s happening in the Occupied Territories, in Gaza, in the West Bank. But I wanted to start where you go in The Message first, and that is to Senegal.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about this journey that you actually took with great trepidation.

TA-NEHISI COATES: I did. I did. As you said, you know, we’ll spend a lot of time talking about the Occupied Territories and Israel and the West Bank, but it’s good to start here because the two parts are kind of paired to each other.

African Americans are a group of people who have lived under the weight of an artifice or creation, a kind of mythology of what Africa is in our minds. All of the myths of racism, all the justifications for enslavement, all the justifications for Jim Crow, at the end of the day, they have their origins in these constructions of Africa as this savage place, the idea that, you know, having been brought here, we’re better off — very, very typical of, you know, colonizing and conquering a movement. And one of the things we’ve done to push back is create our own narratives, our own journeys, our own ideas of what Africa is. My very name comes out of that, which I’m very uncomfortable with, as I talk about in the book. And —

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about it.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Oh boy. Oh Lord. I wrote it. I should be very comfortable talking about it. You know, I was born in 1975, and that was a period in time coming out of Black Power, coming out of “Black is beautiful,” like really discovering this idea that our sense of beauty, our nose, our lips, our names, our heritage, we had the right to take control over that, including our history.

And so, my name is an ancient Egyptian name that refers to the ancient kingdom of Nubia. The notion was that, put very, very crudely, that if the West had its kings and queens, if it had its great monuments, if it had its great ideas, so did we. And part of growing older, part of, you know — and I actually talk about this in Between the World and Me — part of becoming a writer, actually, is, like, our job is to be skeptical of clean stories. And I learned that very, very early on. And The Message is kind of a continuation of that.

Of course, the ultimate, I would say, I guess, climax in that journey is going to see the continent itself and moving past myth, moving past the idea of constructed narratives, even when they’re liberatory, even when they’re emancipationist, to see the people themselves. And that is what took me to Dakar. And that is what I think took so long for me to go to Dakar.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of what most surprised you in the trip, could you talk about that?

TA-NEHISI COATES: Yeah. What most surprised me is a thing that will not surprise any African American watching this interview. It was my deep sorrow. It was my deep, deep, deep sorrow. And I think, like, much of what I just said in answer to Amy’s question, I had already intellectualized before I went, and so I was already thinking about this. But thinking about something and being confronted with it is a totally, totally different thing. As the great Mike Tyson said, everybody’s got a plan until they got punched. And as soon as that plane started descending out of the clouds over Dakar and I saw the buildings rising up, I was being punched. It is one thing to think about the Middle Passage, to think about your ancestors theoretically. It is quite another to literally sit on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean and look out and understand that this was, if even only symbolically, last stop.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And when you went to Gorée, you decided that you did not want to have any of the tour guides —

TA-NEHISI COATES: No.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — that you wanted to wander around on your own.

TA-NEHISI COATES: No, but it —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Talk about that experience.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Juan, by then, it was like day three. And so, I understood that as much as I thought I was going to see the continent, I was actually going to see some sort of departed version of myself, you know, from hundreds of years ago. I was walking with ghosts the whole time. And I just — I didn’t want to be talked to.

My family is from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, not too far from Ocean City, for anybody who knows that geography. It’s like right on the Atlantic Ocean. And so, to get back to Senegal, to get to Dakar, which is itself right on the tip of the continent, you know, I would look out, and I would have these moments, and I would say, “My god!” You know what I mean? “There’s part of me all the way on the other side, and then there’s part of me that’s here.”

And so, again, Gorée is a place that has a lot of story and a lot of myth around it. And I had read about that. I thought I was fully prepared. But I’m going to tell you, brother, you get on that boat, and that boat pulls off, and you think about all your ancestors. And it was 7 a.m. in the morning, and I was alone on that boat. And it is a very, very different experience.

AMY GOODMAN: And back to your name, Ta-Nehisi?

TA-NEHISI COATES: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And also, which goes to your parents, as well —

TA-NEHISI COATES: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — and their influence on you. Your dad, a former Black Panther, ran a publishing — a publishing press right in your house.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Yeah, yeah, no. And I think, like, what they were really trying to do — and this actually goes to the core of what the book is about. How do you tell your own story? How do you free yourself from a history, from novels, from film, from television, an entire architecture that is designed to tell you that you are exactly where you belong because of who you are, because of what you are, either because of your genes, because God said, you know, you belong there? How do you construct something different?

And one of the things I’m trying to confront in the book is, I think perhaps step one is almost to make a mirror image of the people that have put you in that situation: “Well, you say we’re this. We’re actually that.” But I think one of the most difficult things is to free yourself entirely of that structure and to construct your own morality, your own stories, your own ideas, that don’t necessarily depend on those who have put you in the situation to begin with.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the structure of your book is addressed to your students at Howard. The decision to choose that form for your book?

TA-NEHISI COATES: You know, I was, to be honest with you — I have not said this anywhere — I was very worried about that, because I had done that. Like, I had written this letter in Between the World and Me, and I thought people were going to say, “Oh my god, he’s going to do this again. What? Between the World and Me again?”

But the fact of the matter is, I am always trying to achieve intimacy with the reader. That’s the primary job. You know, I would tell my students all the time, “Look, you are dealing with readers who could be doing anything else. They could be on their smartphones. They could be playing video games. They could be watching movies. They could be watching TV, be somewhere making love. They could be doing anything but reading you. And so, you have a responsibility to make them feel a sense of intimacy and immediacy.” And I was lucky in the sense that, you know, these were very, very real conversations that I had had with my students, so I had something to pull from, and also the fact of just the letter form allowed me to do that and allows me to get a kind of intimacy with my reader.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about George Orwell, “Why I Write,” and —

TA-NEHISI COATES: That’s a great essay.

AMY GOODMAN: — connecting politics and language in the promise you made to your students at Howard. Between the World and Me was written to your son Samori.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: This, to the students.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Yeah. So, we usually start, actually, with “Politics and the English Language.” That’s the first essay that I have them read, you know, just to think about language as a political thing. You know, we live in this world where I feel that oftentimes we are taught — not that everybody subscribes to this — that art lives over here and politics lives over here, and that politics itself is actually very, very limited, that it happens every two or four years — it’s in the voting booth, it’s who you decide to vote for, it’s what issues you decide to activate on. But one of the arguments that I make in The Message is that there’s an entire architecture outside of the world of mean politics that determines how politicians actually talk, the choices they give, you know, etc. Why does Kamala Harris feel the need, for instance, to say that she has a gun? What is that actually based on? And I would say it is based on archetypes of femininity. I would say it’s based on archetypes of race, archetypes of the cowboy. And where do those archetypes come from? They come from our art. They come from our literature. They come from our film, our TVs, our commercials. And at their base, they ultimately come from writing, because somebody has to write those ultimately. And in that world, things that seem separated from politics never really are. And so, I wanted to start that book — or, this book, The Message, with that Orwell quote, because that’s like one of the things he kind of is obsessing with in that essay.

And at the same time, there’s this beautiful tension that I often feel, which is, in a different world, you know, he would just write beautiful stories. He would just play with language for the hell of playing with language. But he doesn’t live in that world. And I don’t feel that my students live in that world. They live in a world of, as we’ll talk about, genocide, apartheid, segregation, global warming, you know, Category 5 hurricanes, flood on one coast, fire on the other. These are immediate issues. And I don’t believe that they, as writers, we, as writers, have the luxury of sort of sitting back in our salons and in our living rooms simply constructing beautiful language for the hell of constructing beautiful language. It has to be engaged with something.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ta-Nehisi, from Senegal, you take us to Columbia, South Carolina. Why that choice?

TA-NEHISI COATES: Well, I was writing this in a time where this wave of book bannings was happening. And I always wanted to write about that, but I felt that — I was worried about making the writer the center of the book banning, because even though the work is directed at the writer, the writer is actually not the person that suffers under the book ban. The teachers suffer under the book ban. It’s the teachers who are under threat for losing their job. It’s the teachers who get harassed. It’s the librarians who are under threat of losing their jobs, the librarians who get harassed. It’s the students who lose the ability to have access to different worlds and different ways of thinking. And I was trying to figure out how I could write this in such a way so that I would not be the center of it.

Luckily, you know, I ended up in conversation with a teacher by the name of Mary Wood from Chapin, South Carolina, went to Chapin High School, where she teaches and where she was trying to teach Between the World and Me and got into some amount of trouble for that. And she invited me down, you know, just to go to a hearing. And that’s what I did. And it was quite eventful. It was not the world that I expected. It was not the audience I expected. It was interesting to see how much support actually was rallied behind her, even though she’s in a deep red area in a deep red state. And so, that, too, is about the power of stories. That, too, is about the power of narratives, the questions we ask and the questions we don’t.

AMY GOODMAN: You write, in The Message, about this experience in South Carolina, “I see politicians in Colorado, in Tennessee, in South Carolina moving against my own work, tossing books I’ve authored out of libraries, banning them from classes, and I feel snatched out of the present and dropped into an age of pitchforks and bookburning bonfires. My first instinct is to laugh, but then I remember that American history is filled with men and women who were as lethal as they were ridiculous.”

TA-NEHISI COATES: That’s right.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, if —

TA-NEHISI COATES: We got one running for president right now, you know? Lethal and ridiculous.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, you talk about the area you were in, 70-30 split, 70% for Trump. And yet — and this is what you were just talking about — this 30%, how surprised you were by the minority, the power of it when it’s mobilized.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Yeah. You know, it’s like one of these things. Like, again, like, this goes back to how we construct language. It’s either a blue or red district, right? Even purple doesn’t quite, like, carry the quite — you know, like the real context. They think it’s red. OK, battle’s over. Why am I here? You know? But 30% — if 30% activated around an actual issue, it’s actually a lot of people. You know what I mean?

And it was like — like, I could not have known that without seeing it. Like, you have to — and this is, like, one of the messages I have for my students in the book. You have to walk the land. You can’t sit on your butt reading reports — you know what I mean? — and even reading books like this one, and say, “Hey, I’m going to be a writer.” You have to have actual experiences. And so, I have to walk in that room and meet this white woman in her seventies, you know, who tells me, in the wake of George Floyd, “We organized a reading group at our church for Black authors, and I love Colson Whitehead. Oh my god! Have you read him?” You know, like, I have to have that experience with somebody. You know, I have to have that shock, you know? And so, I just feel like it was, like, really, really important in The Message to actually model the work that I was articulating or model the lessons that I was actually articulating for my students.

AMY GOODMAN: When you just referred to President Trump, can you elaborate further?

TA-NEHISI COATES: He looks ridiculous, but he is in fact quite lethal. You know? And I think, certainly in 2016, there was great, great temptation to laugh. You know what I mean? You hear these things, you know, you hear him say certain things, you see him in certain places, and there’s a kind of dismissiveness. But what we actually are dismissing is a kind of darkness that I think lurks deep, deep within all of us and can actually be appealed to. It’s not comfortable to say that you can win through hate. It’s not comfortable to say that you can win through anger. It’s not comfortable to say, historically, it actually has been very effective, electorally, to pick out weak people or people who are not in the most advantaged political space and to demonize them and use them as a tool, that that actually has been quite effective for people in pursuit of power. We would rather think that good wins all the time, that people see the best in each other. It reifies our notions of what America is, our stories that we tell ourselves of what America is, but it doesn’t correspond with the actual history and the truth.

AMY GOODMAN: Ta-Nehisi, we’re going to break. And then, when we come back to your new book, The Message, we’re going to talk about Israel and Palestine. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.

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Ta-Nehisi Coates: I Was Told Palestine Was Complicated. Visiting Revealed a Simple, Brutal Truth
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 07, 2024

As the war on Gaza enters its second year and Israel expands its attacks on Lebanon, we continue our conversation with the acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. His new book, The Message, is based in part on his visit last year to Israel and the occupied West Bank, where he says he saw a system of segregation and oppression reminiscent of Jim Crow in the United States. “It was revelatory,” says Coates. “I don’t think the average American has a real sense of what we’re doing over there — and I emphasize 'what we're doing’ because it’s not possible without American support.”

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 Juan González.

Last night here in New York, hundreds of activists — Jewish and Jewish allies and Palestinians — rallied in Union Square for a vigil on the first anniversary of October 7th to mourn Israelis and Palestinians who have been killed and to call for an end to the Israeli massacre in Gaza and beyond. People performed prayers. There were rabbis there. And they read out the names of those who have lost their lives. One of those who spoke, I talked to afterwards, Eva Borgwardt. She is a spokesperson for the group IfNotNow.

AMY GOODMAN: Right now people are wearing signs that say “No U.S. money for bombs.” And talk about the motto of this October 7th vigil.

EVA BORGWARDT: So, the motto is “every life a universe,” and it’s from ”pikuach nefesh,” which says that to destroy a life is to destroy an entire world, and to save a life is to save an entire world. And our government is not treating every single life as a universe. They’re treating Palestinian lives as less sacred.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you get so involved with this issue?

EVA BORGWARDT: I got involved through the Ferguson uprising. And I was watching Black and Palestinian activists trading tips on Twitter about how to deal with tear gas, and it became clear that Palestinians in the West Bank are facing a military charged with policing, and Black Americans are facing a militarized police force. And that was my entry point, where I said, “I need to organize my community,” which was unable — or, which was limited in being able to show up for the civil rights fight of our time, for the Black Lives Matter movement, because they were upset about the messaging for a free Palestine in those protests. And so, I’ve spent the last 10 years of my life working on building the movement of Jewish Americans who are calling for equality, justice and a thriving future for all, no matter where people live.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Eva Borgwardt of the group IfNotNow, one of hundreds of people here in New York City in Union Square for two large rallies on the anniversary of October 7th. Our guest today is Ta-Nehisi Coates, the prize-winning journalist and author of the new book, The Message, in part about a visit he took last year, organized by the Palestine Festival of Literature, PalFest, to the West Bank and Israel. Talk about this whole journey you took. You were part of the PalFest, and then you also stayed.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Yeah. And I guess, to be honest, my journey began 10 years ago, when I published “The Case for Reparations.” And there was a section — again, as a writer, as a journalist, you’re always trying to make people feel things, make things real. And there was a section where I offered an analog for reparations, for how it could possibly look. And it was from West Germany to the state of Israel — and I need to be very specific about that — not to Holocaust survivors, but to the state of Israel itself. And that part of that essay came under quite a bit of critique — and what became clear to me was, deservedly so. It took 10 years for me to get it fixed, because writing takes a long time, you know? But I knew I had to — like, that I was going to have to go at some point. You know, I knew it wouldn’t be enough for me to, you know, appear at a rally, do a slogan, whatever.

And long story short, I began talking to PalFest in 2016, finally got there in 2023, just in time for The Message. I spent five days with them, mostly traveling through the Occupied Territories and through East Jerusalem as a Palestinian would, getting a sense of what their daily life was. And then, the next five days I spent mostly in the company of a group called Breaking the Silence, former IDF veterans who are against the occupation, and I saw the country largely through the views of an Israeli, how they move through the world, how they move through Jerusalem, how they move through the roads. But I also, again, spent a lot of time actually talking more to Palestinians.

It was revelatory. It was — I don’t think the average American has a real sense of what we’re doing over there — and I emphasize “what we’re doing” because it’s not possible without American support. I have heard people say over and over again, “There are great evils happening the world, states across the world perpetrating evils against whole groups of people. Why pick on Israel?” And the thing I say is, “I’m an American. This is the thing that we have our fingerprints on.” Those bombs over Gaza, the planes that drop bombs on Gaza, the plaques that I saw, for instance, in Jerusalem, all of that is America. And we are going around the world propping ourselves up as the font of democracy. We are going around the world propping Israel up as the only democracy in the Middle East. This is a deep, deep fiction, a very, very dangerous fiction that must be addressed. And that’s what I tried to do in the book.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: You write in the book, quote, “It occurred to me that there was still one place on the planet — under American patronage — that resembled the world that my parents were born into.” Can you elaborate?

TA-NEHISI COATES: Yes. And I think I talked about it the last time I was here, actually. These are the words I have even now, and they are probably insufficient to what a Palestinian would offer who experiences this, but the words that come to me are “segregation.” When you are on the West Bank, there are separate roads. There are roads for Israeli settlers and citizens of Israel, and there are roads for Palestinians. These roads are not separate and equal; these roads tend to be separate and unequal. It tends to take longer to get where you want to go if you’re a Palestinian. If you enter a city like Hebron, for instance, Hebron is quite literally segregated. There are streets that Palestinians cannot walk down. There are streets that Israeli settlers are given complete and free movement of. Moving throughout the West Bank in general, there are checkpoints everywhere for Palestinians. These checkpoints are sometimes normal checkpoints that they know are there. Sometimes checkpoints appear out of the blue, what they call flying checkpoints. Your basic movement is constantly in peril.

The justice system, which is deeply familiar for African Americans today, is quite literally segregated. There is a civil justice system that the minority of Israeli settlers, as Israeli citizens, enjoy, and then there is an entirely separate justice system that Palestinians on the West Bank are subject to. You can be arrested, for instance, as an Israeli citizen, and you are, you know, due all the due rights that we are familiar with. You have to be told what the charges are, etc. If you are arrested as a Palestinian, you can just be taken. In another political context, we would call those hostages, because nobody has to say why you’re taken, nobody has to say what you were taken for, nobody has to inform your family. You are under the jurisdiction of the military.

It has been this way since 1967. And the word we use for that is “occupation,” which is a kind of a deeply vanilla word that does not actually describe what is going on. How a country that maintains this separate and unequal system, how a country that does not even allow the, quote-unquote, “Palestinian citizens” of the state full equality with its Jewish Israeli citizens is allowed to refer to itself as a democracy is a mystery to me. And the closest analog I can think of is the time in which the United States of America referred to itself as a democracy even as it was disenfranchising whole swaths of Black people in the Southern states. And so, when I say Jim Crow, when I say segregation, that is because that is the period that immediately comes to mind for me.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about being stopped by an Israeli soldier, Ta-Nehisi.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Oh, well, we were stopped all the time, to be clear, you know, because we were on the roads. We were constantly stopped. You know, I was — you know, you just kind of got used to it after a while, which was also weirdly familiar. But I think the instance you’re referring to is when I was in Hebron, which is a flashpoint for anybody that’s been over there.

I was walking down a street attempting to patronize a Palestinian vendor, and a guard, IDF guard or IDF soldier, stopped out — he was young enough to be my son — stopped out and asked me what was my religion. It was clear that I had to state my religion in order to pass. When I told him that I was not religious, he asked what my mother’s religion was. When I told him my mother wasn’t particularly religious, he asked what my grandmother’s religion was. And this is a very, very important thing, because when you start asking what my mother and grandmother’s religion is, you are referring to something beyond do I accept Christ as my personal savior or what god I pray to. You are asking a deeper question about my ancestry. And it became clear that if I did not give the right answer to that question, I would not be allowed to pass.

I highlight this because when you hear Palestinian and Palestinian American activists make the charge of racism, this is what they’re talking about. Why does who my grandmother or my mother worshiped matter, if we’re strictly talking about a god? Not that it would be right even in that sense. But when you hear the charge of racism, this is what people are referring to.

AMY GOODMAN: Ta-Nehisi, this is a powerful book, and you went on CBS This Morning recently to talk about the publication of it. And I want to go to that interview —

TA-NEHISI COATES: Oh, that will be fun.

AMY GOODMAN: — on CBS This Morning. The New York Times is now reporting CBS News has rebuked one of the morning anchors, Tony Dokoupil, over what he did in that interview to you, and, maybe you could also say, to his fellow anchors as he dominated this. CBS executives said the interview fell short of the network’s editorial standards. This is an excerpt of that interview.

TONY DOKOUPIL: Ta-Nehisi, I want to dive into the Israel-Palestine section of the book. It’s the largest section of the book. And I have to say, when I read the book, I imagine if I took your name out of it, took away the awards and the acclaim, took the cover off the book, the publishing house goes away, the content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist. And so, then I found myself wondering, “Why does Ta-Nehisi Coates, who I’ve known for a long time, read his work for a long time, very talented, smart guy, leave out so much?” Why leave out that Israel is surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it? Why leave out that Israel deals with terror groups that want to eliminate it? Why not detail anything of the First and the Second Intifada, the cafe bombings, the bus bombings, the little kids blown to bits? And is it because you just don’t believe that Israel, in any condition, has a right to exist?

TA-NEHISI COATES: Well, I would say the perspective that you just outlined, there is no shortage of that perspective in American media. That’s the first thing I would say. I am most concerned always with those who don’t have a voice, with those who don’t have the ability to talk. I have asked repeatedly in my interviews whether there is a single network, mainstream organization in America with a Palestinian American bureau chief or correspondent who actually has a voice to articulate their part of the world. I’ve been a reporter for 20 years. The reporters of those who believe more sympathetically about Israel and its right to exist don’t have a problem getting their voice out. But what I saw in Palestine, what I saw on the West Bank, what I saw in Haifa, in Israel, what I saw in the South Hebron Hills, those were the stories that I have not heard.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Ta-Nehisi, you sitting on the set of CBS This Morning with the former football player, now anchor, Nate Burleson, Gayle King, very well known, both African American anchors, and Tony Dokoupil. He dominated the discussion, talking about your book belonged, could be found in an extremist’s backpack. Talk about the backlash on this, the aftermath of this, and also who you felt was most wronged in this.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Well, it wasn’t me. I mean, at that point, let me tell you, it was not me, you know? It certainly — and I don’t know that it was anybody on that set. Look, I think there is a meta-conversation that happens here, where we end up — because we’re media, where we end up talking about media and media politics. But I do think it’s really important to broaden the frame from the few people that were there, and talk about what was actually excluded and who was actually excluded from that conversation by the very structure itself. I just don’t want to lose sight of that.

I don’t really have a problem with a tough interview. You know, I knew what I wrote. You know, I knew I’d be confronted. You know, was he rude? Was he aggressive? You know, like, I can’t really get into that. Like, it’s not really something that I think too much about.

The question I would ask, though, is: How often on CBS, on NBC, on ABC, or on any major news organization, do you see someone who is a defender of the Israeli state project get confronted in that kind of way, given a tough interview in that kind of way? When was the last time you saw, for instance, a defender of Israel, a defender of Zionism confronted with the fact that major human rights organizations say that Israel is practicing apartheid? How do you defend that? When is the last time you’ve seen an interviewer, how often do you see interviewers — because I don’t want say it never happens — how often do you see interviewers say, “Listen, we have the former head of Human Rights Watch that says you are practicing genocide right now in Gaza. How do you respond to that?” How often do you — how often do you see that? How often do you see, “How do you define yourself as a democracy when fully half the people under your rule are not equal?”

There is no problem with confronting me. You know, I would like to see some other people confronted. And the second part of that is: Who gets to do the confronting in the first place? I have said, and I will continue to say, I am a little uncomfortable with this role and a little uncomfortable with the publicity, not because I feel like I do not know, but because I feel like there are people who are going through this experience and who have gone through this experience, who know so much more, who are completely out of the frame. And those are Palestinians and Palestinian Americans. So, it’s not just the issues that are raised in the confrontation. The question I would ask is, you have to imagine a world where a Palestinian American journalist could be on a mainstream show like CBS This Morning and confront someone who wrote a book that, say, defended Israel or defended Zionism with that kind of aggression. It’s fine if I get it, but I want to live in that world, too, you know?

And that really is, you know, like, one of the things I was really, really trying to get at in the book, in The Message, you know? It’s the questions we ask. It’s the stories we get to tell and the stories that we don’t tell. And perhaps most importantly, it’s who gets to tell them and who doesn’t. And I just — I really feel this passionately. This is not about me. This is not about Tony. This is not about Gayle. This is not about Nate. We’re going to be fine. It’s the people who are invisible. It’s the people who were not in that set — you know, on that set to begin with, who were not part of that conversation.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ta-Nehisi, this criticism that you weren’t sufficiently taking into account the history, when the reality is here we are on the anniversary of the October 7th attacks, and very little discussion occurs about what was Gaza like before October 7th of last year and how were the residents of Gaza being treated, essentially, in an open-air prison.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Yes, no, I completely agree. Look, I love the young lady who was saying earlier in the lede in, “Every life is a universe.” I truly, truly believe that. And so, you know, as I’ve said before, like, there really is no part of my politics that has the ability to look at October 7th and not mourn the death, the massacre, the atrocities perpetrated. I just wish that some of my countrymen — especially my countrymen, especially Americans who are responsible for this, who are propping this up — had that same sort of compassion and that same sort of energy for October 6th, October 5th, etc.

You know, this kind of abstracting events outside of their historical context is really necessary to the political order, because it allows us to justify ourselves and not have to think harder or not have to ask much deeper questions. You really have to be able to hold both. And I know that that sounds a bit cliché, but I truly do believe that you have to, you know, believe in this idea that I actually just heard today, that every life is a universe. You know, I think that’s a really, really beautiful articulation, you know? And that has to be true for all life. That has to be true on October 7th, you know, and loudly said, but it has to be true on 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 also.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And also, I wanted to go back for a second, because we are running out of time, and ask you about —

TA-NEHISI COATES: I’m sorry my answers are so long.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah — about President Trump and the upcoming election. The great surprise to me, all these years now, is the enormous support that Donald Trump still has among huge swaths of the American public. To what do you attribute this?

TA-NEHISI COATES: Darkness. There’s a darkness in all of us. I mean, this is — this is not new. You know? And if you just took American history from the perspective of an African American, and I suspect from the perspective of the Indigenous people of this continent, what they would tell you is there is nothing new in people using power, in people using the worst tropes in the world to win and to dominate. For any Black person that grew up in the South from — I don’t know — 1876 to 1964 and probably beyond — I’m being very conservative by saying that — this is what politics was. Like, this is just what we grew up under.

And so, I think maybe we thought, or we allowed ourselves to believe, that somehow we had escaped the gravity of history. But no people, no country escapes the gravity of history. We live within it. We are part of it. And so, I think it’s a very, very dangerous thing that our leaders led us to believe in 2016 that this was like a thing that could not happen in America, you know, whereas had we looked at history from another perspective, we would know that this actually is very American. You know, that doesn’t make us inhuman or somehow demonically evil; on the contrary, it just makes us human. It means that we’re subject to, you know, the darkness in our souls like any other group of people would be.

AMY GOODMAN: Ta-Nehisi, I wanted to go to that point you say of who gets heard. We were at the Democratic convention. Everywhere we were interviewing people —

TA-NEHISI COATES: I saw you out there.

AMY GOODMAN: We saw you in the background.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Yes, yes, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: We were interviewing the delegate from, what, Michigan, from Florida and from Connecticut —

TA-NEHISI COATES: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — who unfurled a banner in the Florida delegation that said “Stop arming Israel.”

TA-NEHISI COATES: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: You were there as we were interviewing them in the hallway. When we were outside, when they were about to begin the sleep-in overnight, demanding that Kamala Harris allow a Palestinian American to speak, you were there. And then, the next day, you wrote a piece in Vanity Fair about your experience, “A Palestinian American’s Place Under the Democrats’ Big Tent?” the piece looking at the “uncommitted” movement and their unsuccessful efforts to have such a speaker. This is Ruwa Romman of the uncommitted movement. She’s a Palestinian American Georgia state representative. This is part of what she would have said if she was chosen.

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

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the Georgia state Representative Ruwa Romman. And needless to say, there was not a Palestinian American voice on the stage. Last night, Kamala Harris did an interview with 60 Minutes — at least they played it last night. This is what she had to say about Israel-Palestine.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: When we think about the threat that Hamas, Hezbollah presents, Iran, I think that it is, without any question, our imperative to do what we can to allow Israel to defend itself against those kinds of attacks. Now, the work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles, which include the need for humanitarian aid, the need for this war to end, the need for a deal to be done which would release the hostages and create a ceasefire. And we’re not going to stop in terms of putting that pressure on Israel and in the region, including Arab leaders.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris speaking on 60 Minutes last night. As we wrap up, you were just talking about Trump. Talk about what the position of the Biden-Harris administration is right now. They did hold two separate commemorations yesterday. President Biden was at the White House, and he lit a candle and also, I also, crossed himself right after. And Kamala Harris, the vice president, in the Naval Observatory, planted a tree, a pomegranate tree.

TA-NEHISI COATES: Well, you know, that’s good and appropriate, you know. Like I said, we don’t want to have a politic that does not take life serious and does not take loss of life serious. On the larger question, and maybe even as an extent of that, but we have to take all life seriously. I don’t think we’re doing that. This is morally untenable.

What I saw was — and this is the first time I’ve ever said this or put this in this frame, and maybe the uncommitted delegates understood this — there was as much a moral gap between what I saw in Chicago, that is to say, to go on stage and promote these values of diversity, humanity, big tent, and to exclude the peoples whose families are being bombed right now, as it was in the early 1960s and before, when the Democratic Party claimed to be for the working man and the working person while millions of workers all through the South were effectively in a system of indentured servitude, and they refused to give those people political representation. It is a gigantic moral gulf, that is troubling, disappointing, heartbreaking and deeply, deeply personally upsetting.

AMY GOODMAN: Ta-Nehisi Coates, award-winning journalist, author, professor. His new book is The Message. That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman in New York, with Juan González in Chicago.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 09, 2024

Israeli Soldiers Push into Gaza’s Jabaliya Refugee Camp, “Firing at Anyone Who Moves”
Oct 09, 2024

Israel’s military has once again invaded the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, its third such offensive in the last year. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society says the assault has left dozens of people dead or injured, as soldiers “fire at anyone who moves.” The Palestinian Ministry of Health reports Israeli troops surrounded the Kamal Adwan Hospital and gave medical workers 24 hours to completely empty the hospital of patients and staff. Israel issued similar orders to the Indonesian and Al-Awda hospitals. The orders threaten to collapse the healthcare system for an estimated 400,000 Palestinians who remain trapped in northern Gaza.

In central Gaza, mourners gathered in Deir al-Balah earlier today to pray for 17 people killed when Israel bombed tents housing displaced people in the Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps. This is Ragab al-Khalidy, who carried the body of his young nephew Hossam, who was killed in the attack.

Ragab al-Khalidy: “They were sleeping safely. Why are they targeted with two rockets? What fault did they commit to be targeted with two rockets? Why should we have to get them out of the fire?”

Israeli Bombs Rain Down on Lebanon as Hezbollah Says It Repelled Israeli Border Incursions
Oct 09, 2024

Israel’s military continued its devastating attacks on Lebanon overnight, with massive explosions reported in Beirut’s southern suburbs and the Beqaa Valley. The bombings compounded the misery of displaced families, many of whom have been forced to find shelter in open-air encampments in Beirut’s streets.

Rabih Ayoub: “We fled from the bombing, from the rockets that were coming at us. Our homes were destroyed. Come and see the people who are displaced here. They have been humiliated.”

Amira: “Is there anyone who is not scared of war? Especially that we have a child with us. God help us, and God help the people.”

Earlier today, Hezbollah said its fighters repelled two incursions of Israeli troops attempting to invade southern Lebanon. Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem said in a statement the group was prepared to negotiate a ceasefire with Israel.

Israeli PM Netanyahu Warns Lebanon Could Face “Destruction and Suffering Like Gaza”
Oct 09, 2024

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directly addressed the people of Lebanon in an English-language video message, boasting that Israel had killed Hashem Safieddine, who was meant to replace assassinated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Netanyahu warned Lebanon’s nearly 6 million inhabitants they could face “destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Do you remember when your country was called the pearl of the Middle East? I do. So, what happened to Lebanon? A gang of tyrants and terrorists destroyed it. That’s what happened. Lebanon was once known for its tolerance, for its beauty. Today, it’s a place of chaos, a place of war.”

Syria Says Israeli Strike on Damascus Killed 7 Civilians
Oct 09, 2024

Syrian media is reporting seven civilians were killed and 11 others injured Tuesday in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in a suburb west of the capital Damascus. Women and children were reportedly among the dead. Israeli officials claimed the attack was aimed at killing a Hezbollah official involved in weapons trafficking.

U.N. Chief Warns Israel Against Blocking UNRWA’s Work Aiding Palestinian Refugees
Oct 09, 2024

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres says he’s written directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning him against dismantling the U.N. agency tasked with providing food, healthcare and social services to Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Two bills under consideration in Israel’s parliament would prevent UNRWA from continuing its essential work. Guterres said passage of the legislation would “be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.”

Secretary-General António Guterres: “Without UNRWA, the delivery of food, shelter and healthcare to most of Gaza’s population would grind to a halt. Without UNRWA, Gaza’s 660,000 children would lose the only entity that is able to restart education, risking the fate of an entire generation. And without UNRWA, many health, education and social services would also end in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”

Israeli Defense Minister Cancels Plans to Meet in Washington, D.C., with Pentagon Chief
Oct 09, 2024

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has canceled plans to travel to Washington, D.C., to meet with his U.S. counterpart, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Israeli media is reporting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blocked Gallant’s visit because he first wants to speak with President Biden about Israel’s plans to attack Iran, in response to Iran’s missile attack last week.

Palestinian Activist Issa Amro and British Israeli Architect Eyal Weizman Win Right Livelihood Awards
Oct 09, 2024

Prominent Palestinian human rights defender Issa Amro has received the 2024 Right Livelihood Award for the work of his organization, the Hebron-based Youth Against Settlements. The group, based in the occupied West Bank, was recognized for its “steadfast non-violent resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation, promoting Palestinian civic action through peaceful means.” Amro has been detained by Israeli forces several times over his activism, beaten and tortured in Israeli prisons. Other Right Livelihood winners include British Israeli architect Eyal Weizman, who accepted the award on behalf of Forensic Architecture, which has mapped out possible war crimes committed by the Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip and Palestinian territories. Click here to see our interviews with Eyal Weizman and Issa Amro. The other Right Livelihood Award laureates for 2024 are Indigenous human rights and environmental activist Joan Carling of the Philippines and Anabela Lemos, a Mozambican environmental activist.

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“The First Live-Streamed Genocide”: Al Jazeera Exposes War Crimes Filmed by Israeli Troops Themselves
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 09, 2024



A new documentary from Al Jazeera takes a look at evidence of war crimes in Gaza in the form of social media posted by Israeli soldiers recording and celebrating their own attacks on Palestinians. We play excerpts from the film Investigating War Crimes in Gaza, now available online, and speak to two of the journalists involved in its production, director Richard Sanders and Gaza-based correspondent Youmna ElSayed. “Israelis themselves were telling us precisely what they were doing and why they were doing it,” says Sanders about the evidence the team reviewed. “They don’t think it’s complicated. They don’t think it’s nuanced. Their rhetoric is often overtly genocidal.” ElSayed adds, “They’ve had all the courage to do that because they know that they are not even going to be condemned.”

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Health officials in Gaza say the death toll from Israel’s war has now topped 42,000, though many fear the actual death toll is far higher. We begin today’s show looking at how Israeli troops have repeatedly filmed themselves committing and celebrating war crimes in Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit has just released a documentary on Israeli war crimes, based in part on social media posts from Israeli soldiers themselves. The documentary begins with the Palestinian novelist Susan Abulhawa, as well as footage of the Al-Awda school massacre in July, when Israeli troops killed at least 31 people at a school sheltering displaced Palestinians. The moment the bomb exploded was captured on video by someone recording a youth soccer game in the Al-Awda school courtyard.

SUSAN ABULHAWA: The West cannot hide. They cannot claim ignorance. Nobody can say they didn’t know. We live in an era of technology, and this has been described as the first live-streamed genocide in history. And I believe that to be true.

ISRAELI SOLDIER: [translated] That blew me away!

SUSAN ABULHAWA: They are conducting a genocide now with glee. They’re setting their atrocities to music and putting them on catchy reels on TikTok. Ordinary Israelis see what their military is doing and celebrate it.

NARRATION: A crowd is singing, “May your village burn!”

SUSAN ABULHAWA: It’s not just fringe elements who see this and think it’s a good thing.

PRESIDENT ISAAC HERZOG: When a nation protects its home, it fights. And we will fight until we’ll break their backbone. … It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible.

AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt from a new documentary on Israeli war crimes made by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit. That last speaker was the Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

This is another clip from the documentary. We hear from Human Rights Watch’s associate director for the Middle East and North Africa, Bill Van Esveld [sic]. The clips begin with video posted online by the Israeli 202nd Paratroopers Battalion that shows a possible war crime of the shooting of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza. This is a graphic warning.

YOUMNA ELSAYED: As troops leave Gaza, they place commemorative videos online.

ISRAELI SOLDIER: [translated] When they meet the 202nd battalion, they are going to regret being born.

YOUMNA ELSAYED: This video documents the activities of the 202nd Paratroopers Battalion.

CHARLIE HERBERT: I’m just going to halt this here. I’m going to play this back again. This is extraordinary. The fact that he’s put this onto video, he’s released this on YouTube, to me, is kind of quite extraordinary, that degree of impunity.

YOUMNA ELSAYED: The video shows two other instances where unarmed men are shot by snipers.

CHARLIE HERBERT: Of course I don’t know the context of what happened before. I don’t know what happened two minutes before that. They may have been involved in contacting and shooting at Israeli forces, and they may have been legitimate targets. But it sure doesn’t look like it to me.

AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt from a new documentary on Israeli war crimes made by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit.

We’re joined now by two guests. Youmna ElSayed is a correspondent for Al Jazeera who is based in the Gaza Strip. And Richard Sanders is the director of Al Jazeera I-Unit’s new feature-length documentary, Investigating War Crimes in Gaza.

Youmna, let’s begin with you, as you narrate this film. If you can talk about the video footage that we see, that is actually taken by Israeli soldiers themselves?

YOUMNA ELSAYED: Yes. Thank you for having me on your show again, Amy.

Of course, Israeli soldiers in Gaza taking these videos and posting them on different social media platforms, they haven’t been — they’ve had all the courage to do that because they know that they are not even going to be condemned by posting these videos. They are showing off how much they dehumanize Palestinians, how much they kill. They destroy their properties. They completely torture them and dehumanize them in different ways, whether they’re children, they’re men, they’re women. They brag about it, and they’re very proud of their doings.

And all this comes back to the fact that the Israeli army acts with complete impunity, and they know that even these videos being posted online, they won’t even be shown in other Western news outlets to point out how horrific these videos have actions committed by the Israeli army towards the civilians. On the contrary, Benjamin Netanyahu comes out and says, “We are the most moral army in the world,” when in reality they are the most inhumane army in the world.

As a journalist, as a civilian in any war zone, I am supposed to have the guarantee that a soldier from any other — any other place in the world, any other nationality in the world, as long as he carries that term, that definition that he is a soldier, he must have morals, he must have ethics that he would not hurt me as an unarmed civilian, as a journalist, as a paramedic. But in Gaza, for them, every single Palestinian, as long as you are a Palestinian, you are a legitimate target.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: I just want to issue a slight correction: The person in the first clip that we showed from the documentary was not Bill Van Esveld of Human Rights Watch, but, rather, Charlie Herbert, a retired British major general.

So, Richard Sanders, if we could turn to you, talk about the origins of this documentary, the fact that it begins with the Palestinian novelist Susan Abulhawa saying we are “in an era of technology, and this has been described as the first live-streamed genocide in history.” I mean, in a way, the film itself documents precisely how it is a live-streamed genocide. If you could elaborate?

RICHARD SANDERS: Well, thank you for having me, Amy.

Yes, and that’s precisely why we begin the film with those comments from Susan Abulhawa. The essential point of the whole film is no one can hide. The Israelis themselves were telling us precisely what they were doing and why they were doing it. The film is rooted in these soldiers’ videos, of which there are thousands and thousands. And we didn’t pick particularly damaging examples. They’re all like that. I mean, one thing that’s very striking is, what you don’t see in these videos is combat, or very rarely. There’s very little combat. Every now and then you see soldiers expending an enormous amount of ammunition, but they’re frequently standing up, and there’s clearly no incoming. So, that’s what you would think soldiers would want to post online, but they don’t.

Now, it’s not only soldiers’ videos, of course, we have in the film. There is Israeli media, Israeli politicians and Israeli social media. We’re not picking – again, as Susan says at the beginning of the film, we’re not picking unrepresentative examples. In the West, there is sometimes this rhetoric — even when people aren’t overtly supportive of the Israelis, there is this rhetoric of “it’s complicated,” “it’s nuanced,” “it’s difficult.” And what we’re really saying in this film is listen to Israelis. Listen to Israelis. They don’t think it’s complicated. They don’t think it’s nuanced. Their rhetoric is often overtly genocidal. It’s certainly frequently all about ethnic cleansing. They couldn’t have been clearer about what they were doing. And if we are ignorant, we’re willfully ignorant.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Richard Sanders, how do you interpret the fact that these videos were made and posted so liberally by Israeli soldiers themselves? I mean, the obvious question is: To what extent did they think they were totally immune from any kind of repercussions as a consequence of what they were doing, which, you know, if you see those clips that you show in the documentary, are so obviously war crimes? In fact, the international legal expert whom you spoke to said that it’s very uncommon to have clips like this. He said “a treasure trove which you very seldom come across … something which I think prosecutors will be licking their lips at.” So, if you could just, you know, talk about that, how — what do you make of the fact that soldiers themselves so openly, transparently and widely distributed their own acts that could be construed as war crimes?

RICHARD SANDERS: They clearly felt this would be popular in Israel. They were competing for clicks, you know. And they were right. These videos were popular. You know, they were using some of the photos they took of themselves on dating apps. And yes, as you say, it speaks to an astonishing sense of impunity. I mean, the clip you’ve played there, where you actually see unarmed men being shot, that’s fairly unusual, but even so, that was put on YouTube by the people who did it.

Now, you know, what we very much hope is that this material — and, of course, there’s an awful lot of material additionally which isn’t in the film — this material will be of use to the ICC. It’s quite interesting, within Israel, if you follow Hebrew-language social media, there’s been a panicky deleting of social media accounts over the last few days. But it’s too late. We’ve got it all saved.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to another clip from your new Al Jazeera Investigates documentary, when we see Israeli soldiers, in footage that they themselves shared, talking about the complete destruction of the Shuja’iyya refugee camp in Gaza.

ISRAELI COMMAND: [translated] Butterfly station, this is command. We’re launching Operation 8th Candle of Hanukkah, the burning of Shuja’iyya neighborhood. Let our enemies learn and be deterred. This is what we’ll do to all our enemies, and not a memory will be left of them. We will annihilate them to dust. Command out.

YOUMNA ELSAYED: The destruction of buildings is regularly featured, often set to music.

BILL VAN ESVELD: You see huge blocks getting blown up, universities getting blown up.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, that clip ended with Human Rights Watch, Bill Van Esveld. Richard, could you respond to what we saw there? And also, you know, what most surprised you as you were researching this documentary? I mean, there’s extremely disturbing testimony that we hear. And just a couple of examples: a man who says he was forced to lie on a decomposing corpse, as well as another in a detention center in southern Israel who witnessed a young inmate being raped by a dog.

RICHARD SANDERS: To be absolutely honest with you, nothing surprised me. It’s what I would have imagined was happening inside Gaza. I would say, imagine 40 years ago, before social media and, you know, before every camera — every phone had a camera. This would all have been done in the dark. But, in a sense, it makes no difference, as we say in the film, because they’ve posted it all online.

One of — the only thing, I would say, that surprises me — I’m not surprised that the Israeli soldiers feel complete impunity and so on, but the fact that higher up the chain of command and in the government, they clearly feel the same impunity, as well. No one has come down the line and cracked down on this and said, “Stop doing it.” It’s quite clear that Israeli politicians and Israeli military commanders feel that they enjoy complete impunity for what they’re doing in the Gaza Strip, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring — go back to Youmna Elsayed. Last year, we spoke with you in Gaza shortly after an Israeli airstrike had just killed the family of your colleague, Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh. He learned of the deaths of his wife, son, daughter and grandson while reporting live on the air. The Israeli strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp killed at least 25 people in total. And Wael Dahdouh had fled to the refugee camp with his family after Israel ordered residents of northern Gaza to vacate their homes. This, Youmna, is what you said then.

YOUMNA ELSAYED: When we say there is no safe place in Gaza, we’re not lying. We’re not being biased. We’re not exaggerating. The north, Gaza City, and the south, they’re all just the same in terms of bombardment, in terms of targeting, and in all the life conditions.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was last October. Before this, we spoke to you, Youmna, in 2021 when you were reporting in Gaza and Israel bombed and leveled a 12-story building that housed the offices of media organizations that you worked for, including the Associated Press and Al Jazeera. Israel claimed, without evidence, the building was being used by Hamas operatives.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think the message is that was delivered to the media by this attack on the main media offices, Al Jazeera and AP, where you work, other media organizations, now Tony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, saying he was not told of any direct evidence of Hamas working in this building?

YOUMNA ELSAYED: Yes, and I’m sure that there isn’t going to be any. I mean, the Israeli army, when it has the proof for anything to back its story, it provides it, one, at once, instantly. I mean, it wants to back its stories. It has to. OK? But it’s not a coincidence that three towers hosting media offices would be completely destructed. This is no coincidence. I mean, this is just a deliberate targeting to the media voice in the Gaza Strip.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Youmna Elsayed in 2021. You notice there we’re not seeing her face, because the media building that we would talk to her in was blown up, that housed Al Jazeera, that housed AP. And then speaking again after — well, at this point, we’re talking about something like 174 journalists and media workers killed in Gaza. If you can talk about the significance of this and, in your reporting on this documentary, the killing of journalists in addition to doctors and nurses, paramedics and ambulance drivers, Youmna?

YOUMNA ELSAYED: Well, Amy, I’ve always said this, and I continue saying it, that every single time there is a war or a conflict in the Gaza Strip, military escalation, something that was so much easier than what we have been going through for the past year, this ongoing genocide, there was always an attack on the journalists and their offices in the Gaza Strip. In 2021, the largest three towers, media buildings, housing all media offices in Gaza, were completely destroyed. Al-Johara had over 50 media offices; al-Sharouk tower, the same; and Al Jazeera and the AP, as well, in that tower alone. This is Israel’s first approach towards journalists and their offices in Gaza at the beginning of any war. It’s always to try to make their job as difficult and as impossible as ever.

And it’s not just in wars and military escalations. I mean, at the protests of the Great March of Return, when we used to cover these protests, and these protests were taking place in the borders — on the borders and from the Palestinian side, where there’s a buffer zone of 300 meters away from that security fence, that was infiltrated on the 7th of October. When someone approached those 300 meters away from the security fence, they were shot. And we were labeled as journalists. And even away from that area, we would be targeted with gas grenades, that drones came and dropped them over our head. So, it was not a coincidence at any of those times.

This time — we have always spoken for many years about the suppression and oppression and violations and aggression of the Israeli army towards Palestinian journalists. But this year or last year, this suppression and oppression and fight against the freedom of press has not only been against the Palestinian journalists. If you’ve seen, it has reached and affected all international journalists, as well, because Israel has banned them from entering the Gaza Strip. And no matter how much letters they have issued, no matter what kind of pressure they have tried to put on the Israeli government to allow them to enter the Gaza Strip to do their legitimate responsibility and work, they were banned. They were declined. So, that oppression, that we have been speaking about for years, has also affected the international journalists today.

But on the other hand, the violation, the aggression against the Palestinian journalists, because we are Palestinian and we are inside the Gaza Strip, has been unprecedented, the killing. One hundred seventy-five Palestinian journalists, until today, have been killed. How many others, dozens others have been injured, and our families threatened and killed and injured? Unimaginable numbers.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us, Youmna ElSayed, Al Jazeera correspondent based in the Gaza Strip, though speaking to us from London, and Richard Sanders, director of Al Jazeera I-Unit’s new feature-length documentary, Investigating War Crimes in Gaza.

Next up, we’ll be joined by the acclaimed Palestinian photographer Motaz Azaiza, who repeatedly risked his life to document Israel’s war on Gaza. Stay with us.

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Motaz Azaiza, Acclaimed Journalist from Gaza, on Photographing War & Making “Art from the Pain”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 09, 2024

“I never expected the world will know my name [because of] a genocide of my people,” says Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza, who gained international acclaim for his work during the first 108 days of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza. Since evacuating in January, Azaiza has brought his advocacy for Palestinian rights around the world. Democracy Now! speaks to him from Washington, D.C., where he has just wrapped up a nationwide speaking tour titled “Gaza Through My Lens” in support of UNRWA USA. “Israel is targeting our children. Israel is targeting our babies, targeting our mothers, targeting our families. I just want to show the whole world so maybe I can bring help to my people through my photography,” Azaiza says.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: Mona Miari and Zafer Tawil, performing this past weekend in Brooklyn at an event honoring our next guest. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We’re joined now by the acclaimed Palestinian photographer Motaz Azaiza, who at the age of 25 has become world-known for documenting Gaza. For the first 108 days of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza, Azaiza risked his life to show the world what was happening. In doing so, he gained over 17 million Instagram followers and emerged as one of the most prominent photojournalists in the world. Since evacuating, Azaiza has become a global advocate for Gaza. GQ Middle East magazine named Azaiza its “Man of the Year.” Time put him on its list of 100 most influential people of 2024. And he’s been nominated for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.

AMY GOODMAN: Motaz Azaiza is in the United States as part of a nationwide speaking tour titled “Gaza Through My Lens,” with UNRWA USA, the nonprofit that supports the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. In moment, he’ll join us from Washington, D.C. But this is the video produced by UNRWA USA describing Motaz’s work with the agency. The clip begins with UNRWA USA’s Mara Kronenfeld, but first Laila Mokhiber.

LAILA MOKHIBER: Gaza is one of the most beautiful places in the world, and that beauty was documented by a young photographer named Motaz Azaiza for years, eager to show the world his culture, his people, its rainbows, its sunsets, its sea.

MARA KRONENFELD: Even with this blockade, there was so much life in Gaza. And we thought, “We need somebody on the ground who can show us that life and also, of course, can show us the importance of education and health and shelter assistance that UNRWA is providing to those in Gaza.”

LAILA MOKHIBER: When I eventually was looking for a photographer on the ground to capture stories, to help show the people of the United States the real stories of Palestine refugees, I convened some of Gaza’s greatest around a table at Al Deira Hotel, a place I’ll forever cherish and miss. Among us were the late Dr. Refaat Alareer and others.

MARA KRONENFELD: Laila collected many applications. One was a lovely woman named Amjad, and one was Motaz. That day that those two were selected changed us in so many ways as an organization, and, frankly, changed us each personally, as well. Seeing Motaz suffer, along with all Palestinians in Gaza, and see him — and I’ll never forget this — seeing him holding a bloodied child, a girl, and taking her, speeding, to the hospital, and he had never learned to drive before that moment.

NAHED ELRAYES: Nobody in Gaza, in all of Palestine, chooses to be a hero. This includes Motaz. Once, I asked him over ice cream, “What is the number one thing you wish the world knew about Gaza?” And this nerdy photographer, whose favorite thing was capturing people’s faces and pretty sunsets, he just had this sad look in his eye, and he said, “That we’re human.” He never wanted to be a hero. He just wanted to survive.

AMY GOODMAN: A video by UNRWA USA about our next guest, the acclaimed Palestinian photographer Motaz Azaiza. He’s joining us now from Washington, D.C.

Motaz, it’s great to have you with us on Democracy Now! I wanted to go to the picture of — that introduces you on this tour that you took across the United States. You’re sitting in the rubble. So, of course, this is not a photograph that you took, but a picture that a photographer took of you, the photographer Fouad, who was killed. Can you tell us about Fouad and then talk about your work for that 108 days in Gaza since October 7th?

MOTAZ AZAIZA: Thank you for having me, Amy.

His name is Fouad Abu Khamash, and he was a volunteer with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. He was doing his volunteer work documenting the work of the PRCS on the ground saving lives and transferring the injured people to the hospital. He was a dreamer. And that day, it was like a massacre, when he took this picture for me in my town. I was documenting this massacre, and he just shouted to me, “Motaz, just I’ll take a picture of you.”

It was then two months Fouad was killed beside, like, four of his colleagues in the PRCS. They didn’t know that the Israeli tanks will be on Salah al-Din main road in Deir al-Balah city, didn’t expect it. And they just found the Israeli tank in front of them. And he was inside the ambulance. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a body for Fouad and other colleagues. Yeah, they opened fired on the ambulance. They killed everyone inside.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Motaz, I want to go now to another photo of yours. This one is of a young girl stuck under rubble after her eight-story building was bombed by Israeli warplanes. Time magazine named it one of its top 10 photos of 2023. The woman lost seven of her family members. She was evacuated to Tunisia. She’s now facing the amputation of her leg. So, tell us about this woman and how you’ve come to advocate for her.

MOTAZ AZAIZA: Actually, she’s a young girl. She’s now 18 years old. And there was, like — the Israeli occupation bombed the eight-story building in Nuseirat refugee camp. So, I was there with other colleagues documenting what’s happening, and Civil Defense beside civilians are trying to help to save people from under the rubble. More than 180 people got killed that day. In this moment, we were, like, hearing her shouting, but nobody was seeing her. So I used the low shutter speed on my camera and a small hole so we can find her, and we found her. Everyone is trying to get her out. But, unfortunately, she’s now really facing amputation for her leg.

Let’s say, I feel at least she’s lucky that the world now sees her picture. Everyone, like, saw her picture from the world. But there are others, thousands of children, thousands of young girls, thousands of women, thousands of elderly, that nobody is looking to them, and they really need help. So, I’m trying my best, through the pictures, through the images of the people, to help them themselves, because, yeah, this picture has been selected by the Time as one of the top 10 pictures around the world for 2023, but the person in the picture needs the help. Not just like I want to be recognized for the picture. We need to help the human themselves. I want to save the lives through the pictures.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Motaz, I want to ask you about your journey, how you became a photographer. You never wanted to become a war photographer. That is what you’ve ended up becoming. But talk to us about how you became interested in photography and how you documented life in Gaza through photography.

MOTAZ AZAIZA: Photography was my passion since 2014. I started to practice photography. I had my first camera in 2015. My cousin sent it to me. He was living in the U.S., Miami. And I hope he’s now safe from the hurricanes that’s happening there. [Inaudible], be safe.

I started to take pictures for the life, the simple life in Gaza. I started to take portraits. I started to be a dreamer who wanted to travel the world, take pictures, and everyone knows his name. But I never expected the world will know my name beside a genocide of my people. So, I was always trying to make art from the pain, and the beautiful pictures in a place that, like, every month there is aggression, every time there is a bombing, every time there is people losing their lives by the Israeli airstrikes, by the Israeli snipers.

I was, like, a volunteer since, like, 2016 with the PRCS. I was having my camera. In 2018, I got shot in my left femur by taking just pictures, because I was near to the borders with the PRCS, trying to save lives, because this a thing I — like, I’m loving. I’m trying to use myself to save my people and, the same thing, to take pictures.

So, I kept practicing photography, but every time the war grabbed me to it. I’ve been always trying to avoid taking pictures of war, but this is my life. This is our lives. So, you can’t run from the war that’s happening in your home. And this is what I did. I used, in this time and every time — this is not my first time to document a war. I documented massacres since, like, 2017 with my camera, and 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022, 2023 in May, in 2023 on October. So, I’ve been always trying to take — to capture the beauty, but it’s impossible to run from the war in my country.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Motaz, I mean, the images before October and after are so striking. I want to now show a photo of a toddler gravely injured in a strike. If you can tell us what happened to this 2-year-old child named Jood? The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund has evacuated him to Chicago. You know, on your trip, you met a child in Dallas for the 5K run who had been evacuated. I saw you in Brooklyn when you met a little boy who had been evacuated, who was gravely injured. Tell us about Jood.

MOTAZ AZAIZA: I remember that day when I took the picture for Jood. I used my imagination. Like every young boy, his dream, like, to be like Spider-Man. But this boy was deeply injured, and his hands and his legs were like — he can’t move. And, like, I don’t know, in this moment, I remember that this boy, he will be a lot like Superman and Spider-Man. But, like, I saw, like, his image, the the moves of, like, Spider-Man, but at the same time he’s injured, he can’t move. He lost his mom. He lost his family. And his father, he didn’t come to the hospital yet. He was, like, low on the ground. There is no free space or a space for him to find a bed in the hospital.

So, I took this picture. I shared the story. And thank God, this picture, it was like a reason to save his life. So, he’s now getting treatment. He’s now in the U.S. with his father. And I’m happy for him. But in the same time, I’m really sorry for the thousands of children that I wish to take a picture for everyone to show the world that Israel is targeting our children. Israel is targeting our babies, targeting our mothers, targeting our families. I just want to show the whole world so maybe I can bring help to my people through my photography.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Motaz, can you talk about what it was like for you, yourself, to have to flee Gaza? Do you still have family there? Describe your journey out.

MOTAZ AZAIZA: Yeah, my whole family is there. My whole relatives is there. I’m originally from Deir al-Balah city. I’m originally from Gaza Strip. So, my whole family is still there.

It wasn’t an option for me to leave; it wasn’t an option for me to stay. In the last days before I leave, I’ve been suffering to find food, to find tents for, like, in order if something happened. Israeli tanks, it’s like at the end of my street. And I was, like, suffering, and I stopped doing my work, like, just to find water, to find food, to find diesel for the car. So everything was really complicated and the risks so high.

After I lost two of my colleagues, Hamza al-Dahdouh, the son of Wael al-Dahdouh, and Mustafa Thuraya, the drone — friend who was taking the drone shots for me, it was really hard for me to stay, and there was no protection for me as a journalist. And I don’t want to lose, like, a part of my body to just show the world and to lose my life, to lose my parents, and I already lost 25 of my family, my relatives, 18 of my friends. I lost my whole life. So, I don’t think — I didn’t think that day, like, I need to lose more. For me, OK, maybe I will sacrifice my life if it will do a change. But I’m seeing more than 175 journalists got killed in front of the whole world, and nothing changed.

And I got refused by Israel to leave twice. It wasn’t easy. And I thought maybe when I will go out, I will make more changes. I will do something more on the ground to be between the people. And here I am. It’s been a year I’m trying to do something to stop this, or at least to protect the civilians.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Motaz, as we talked about this weekend, that moment that was so moving of you taking off your press flak jacket, with your colleagues around you, taking off the jacket with you as a kind of communal effort, when you left, with your parents and siblings, ultimately, Gaza.

MOTAZ AZAIZA: I wish I took the jacket with me. It wasn’t allowed, because it’s like — at the border, they believe that it’s a kind of armor, so you can’t take it. But it was a thing that I have from day one with me. It wasn’t going to protect me if Israel decided to target me with, like, drones or with snipers.

AMY GOODMAN: You had gotten calls on your phone, Motaz?

MOTAZ AZAIZA: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that.

MOTAZ AZAIZA: Yeah, it was calls from no caller ID, but it’s known, for Gazans, no caller ID, that means the IDF, so — or the IOF. So, yeah, they were, like, asking me to not go there, ordered me, like, to not go there, to not — OK, show something else. Don’t go into this area. And you will be killed if you go in there. Stick to the sea. You are not doing the right work. You should do something else.

And I believe the millions of the people who follow me, this made some protection for Motaz, that the whole world is watching him. And if something happens, it’s in front of the millions of the people. So, I felt that maybe the millions that made them speak to me in a way that it’s not just, “OK, we will kill you or do something to you.”

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Motaz, finally, you went earlier this year, in April, to the pro-Palestinian student encampment at Columbia University. Your response to the protests and what you’d like to see happen here?

MOTAZ AZAIZA: I would like to see everyone standing for us, standing for the humanity, standing for the right of Palestinians in their land. I want to see the white people, the Black people, everyone here in the U.S. standing for the right — on the right side of history. I want to see everyone just standing for humanity. Stop watching us being killed. Stop paying your taxes and sending it for Israel as weapons to kill the Palestinians, who even don’t have an army. And, like, just support us to get our rights in our land, to get our free Palestine. It’s not hard. It can be done, but we need a real stand with Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: Motaz Azaiza, we want to thank you so much for being with us, acclaimed Palestinian photographer, who documented the first 108 days of Israel’s assault on Gaza. Thank you so much, joining us from Washington, D.C.

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Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 10, 2024

Israeli Attack on Deir al-Balah School Shelter Kills Dozens; Northern Gaza Siege Targets Hospitals
Oct 10, 2024

In Gaza, an Israeli air attack on a school turned shelter in central Deir al-Balah killed at least 28 people. Reporters describe chaotic scenes at Al-Aqsa Hospital, where victims — most of them women and children — are being treated.

Meanwhile, Israel is escalating its bloody siege on northern Gaza. Doctors at three hospitals are struggling to care for patients after Israel ordered their evacuation. Al Jazeera reports Israeli ground troops have surrounded Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia and are threatening staff and patients. Israel also ordered the evacuation of Al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals. The group Medical Aid for Palestinians says it has removed newborn babies from Kamal Adwan but that ambulances are being detained at military checkpoints as they attempt to reach Gaza City. The humanitarian group warned, “The world must act before Gaza is erased entirely.” The WHO also said it was prevented by Israel yesterday from carrying out the forced evacuations. Kamal Adwan doctors warn 30 infants in the neonatal unit will die if Israel does not end its attack. And UNRWA is warning “Gazans are yet again teetering on the edge of a man-made famine” as a result of Israel’s latest siege on northern Gaza.

More Journalists Killed in Gaza; Al Jazeera Reporter Describes Being Chased by Israeli Quadcopter
Oct 10, 2024

Israel’s attacks on journalists continue, as well. On Wednesday, an airstrike on the Jabaliya refugee camp killed Al-Aqsa cameraman Mohammed al-Tanani and injured the reporter Tamer Lubbad. Al Jazeera Arabic camera operator Fadi al-Wahidi was also injured while covering attacks on Jabaliya, shot in the neck by an Israeli quadcopter. This is his colleague, journalist Anas al-Sharif, detailing the attack.

Anas al-Sharif: “Suddenly, a quadcopter drone appeared above the broadcast vehicle and the place where we were, and it started firing directly at us, at the broadcast vehicle and at the colleagues and team who were with me. My colleague Fadi was next to me, so we started running. As soon as we began to run from the location, the drone started chasing us and the entire crew, firing directly at us. A bullet hit my colleague Fadi’s neck directly, and he immediately passed out and fell to the ground.”

Another Al Jazeera cameraman, Ali al-Attar, also remains in critical condition after being shot earlier this week while reporting in Deir al-Balah.
In Khan Younis, Israel killed at least five members of the same family, three of them children, including a 7-month-old baby. This comes as a new report by the International Rescue Committee reveals over 50,000 Palestinian children in Gaza have been orphaned or separated from their parents over the past year.

Israeli attacks on the occupied West Bank are also ongoing, killing at least five Palestinians Wednesday, including the leader of the group Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade in Nablus. Separately, new U.N. data show there was an average of four incidents of settler violence every day against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since October 7, 2023.

Israel Kills Five More Health Workers in Lebanon as Ongoing Bombardment Displaces Over 1 Million
Oct 10, 2024

Israel’s bombardment of southern Lebanon killed five paramedics Wednesday. Israel has killed at least 115 health workers in Lebanon over the past several weeks. The U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon called for an immediate halt to attacks to create space for a political solution.

Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert: “The joint call for a 21-day ceasefire, as launched by the U.S. or led by the U.S. and France, I think is still on the table and very relevant, and so we should not dismiss it. I don’t think that new initiatives will add to it. I mean, the many appeals and calls for a ceasefire are crystal clear. We need a window for diplomatic efforts to succeed.”

Over 1 million people in Lebanon have been displaced since Israel launched its deadly campaign.

Ali Shoeib: “I have been here from the south for eight days. I sent my family two to three days before me. My wife gave birth, so I came here for my family. I will go back south again. We will not leave our land. It is an expensive land. We are offering martyrs. We are offering blood.”

Israel has also launched more strikes in Syria targeting Homs and Hama provinces.

Biden Reaffirms “Ironclad” Support on Call with Netanyahu as Israel Prepares to Attack Iran
Oct 10, 2024

Israel is expected to launch an imminent attack on Iran, after Tehran struck Israeli military bases with ballistic missiles on October 1. Iran’s attacks, which targeted Israeli security sites, came amid Israel’s escalating attacks and acts of terror against Lebanon, and after its assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. This is Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Yoav Gallant: “Whoever attacks us will be hurt and will pay a price. Our attack will be deadly, precise and, above all, surprising. They will not understand what happened and how it happened. They will see the results.”

On Wednesday, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in their first call in nearly two months. A White House readout of the call highlights Biden’s statement of his “ironclad” support for Israel. It makes no mention of ceasefire.

Brown University Votes Against Divesting from Israeli War Machine, Rejecting Student Demands
Oct 10, 2024

In a blow to the student Palestinian solidarity movement, Brown University voted against divesting from 10 companies that are complicit in Israel’s occupation of — and war on — Palestinian territories. In a social media post condemning the news, the Brown Divest Coalition warned, “All settler colonial institutions will fail.” Students across the country are marking a Week of Rage with die-ins, walkouts and other actions to protest one year of genocide in Gaza and Israel’s escalating war on Lebanon.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 11, 2024

Lebanese PM Calls for Ceasefire After Israeli Strike Kills 22 in Beirut; IDF Targets U.N. Peacekeepers
Oct 11, 2024

Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati is calling for a U.N. resolution demanding an “immediate” ceasefire as Israel intensifies its assault on Lebanon. Israeli airstrikes on Thursday killed at least 22 people and injured more than 100 others in a crowded residential area of Beirut. Survivors recounted the terror of Israel’s overnight strikes as they surveyed the damage to their homes.

Ala’a Baydoun: “I was praying. We heard the first strike, and I thought it was in my house. The second one was much more powerful than the first one. People went down barefoot. They were screaming. We didn’t know anything at the start. I went to see where the strike was, and I saw that in my house the glass and windows had shattered. We came and saw the scene. It was a horrifying scene. It was something unbelievable.”

Meanwhile, U.N. chief António Guterres condemned multiple targeted shootings of U.N. peacekeepers by Israel in southern Lebanon. At least two peacekeepers have been injured. Such attacks violate international law. A U.N. official warned the safety of more than 10,400 peacekeepers in Lebanon was “increasingly in jeopardy” from Israel’s attacks. This is Andrea Tenenti, spokesperson for the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon.

Andrea Tenenti: “We are there because the Security Council has asked us to be there. So we are staying, until the situation becomes impossible for us to operate. … This is not a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. This is becoming a regional conflict, something that we have been saying for a very long time. And if it’s a regional conflict, everybody will be involved. So it’s a duty for everyone to stop it, because we’ve already seen just in the last few weeks how many people have been killed here — more than the conflict in 2006 in just a few weeks.”

This comes amid fresh warnings of a deteriorating health crisis in Lebanon due to massive displacement and the Israeli targeting of health facilities and workers. After headlines, we’ll speak with a U.S. doctor in Beirut who has been volunteering in Gaza and Lebanon.

Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital Warns Children Will Die If Forced to Evacuate
Oct 11, 2024

In Gaza, medical authorities report Israeli attacks killed at least 63 Palestinians Thursday as Israel continues its siege on the northern strip. The situation at three hospitals in northern Gaza remains critical as medical workers struggle to respond to forced expulsions ordered by Israel. Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, filmed this video from inside the intensive care unit Thursday.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya: “We are here under threat, because our hospital will go out of service due to the continuous threats to evacuate the hospital and due to the lack of entry of fuel to the Kamal Adwan Hospital. From here, from the middle of the intensive care unit, I call on all the international organizations and humanitarian organizations and the international community to stop the occupiers from implementing their decision to evacuate the Kamal Adwan Hospital and ceasing its services. Stopping the Kamal Adwan Hospital from providing services means the ending of these children’s lives.”

Charges of War Crimes in Gaza Pile Up as Israel Continues Its Genocidal War with Impunity
Oct 11, 2024

A United Nations commission has concluded for the second time this year that Israel is “committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”

In related news, the Belgium-based Hind Rajab Foundation this week filed what it called an “unprecedented and historic complaint” with the International Criminal Court against 1,000 Israeli soldiers for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Gaza.

Al Jazeera Cameran in Critical Condition; Gaza Mourns Beloved Teacher and Journalist Omar Al-Balaawi
Oct 11, 2024

Al Jazeera says its camera operator Fadi al-Wahidi remains in critical condition after he was shot in the neck by an Israeli sniper while reporting from Jabaliya. It’s been a bloody week for media workers in Gaza. Journalist Omar Al-Balaawi, who was also a celebrated teacher to Gaza’s children, was shot and killed by Israeli forces, also in Jabaliya, on Wednesday. Over the past year, Al-Balaawi kept his beloved English classes going amid displacement, the destruction of his home and the death of his family members.

Israel Detains U.S. Journalist Jeremy Loffredo over Reporting on Iranian Attacks on Israel
Oct 11, 2024

In Israel, a court has reportedly ordered the release of U.S. journalist Jeremy Loffredo after he was detained earlier this week and held on alleged “suspicion of serious security offenses” after he reported on Iran’s ballistic missile attacks on military and intelligence sites in Israel. Four other journalists were also detained with Loffredo but released soon after. Loffredo is reportedly being barred from leaving Israel for now.

Cornell Grad Student Wins Reprieve from Deportation over Gaza Protests
Oct 11, 2024

In Ithaca, New York, a Ph.D. student is no longer at risk of deportation for his Gaza solidarity activism after Cornell allowed him to reenroll, thereby extending his visa. Cornell had suspended Momodou Taal for taking part in a campus protest calling on Cornell to divest from Israel, but a public pressure campaign demanded the Ivy League school end their political campaign against Taal. In a statement, Momodou Taal said, “I have no regrets. There will never come a time where I say to myself that I went too hard for Gaza. We still haven’t done near enough to stop the genocide.”

Students are continuing to organize across college campuses with protests, vigils and other actions under the banner of a “Week of Rage” to mark one year of war against Gaza.

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“Death Is Everywhere”: Doctor Who Volunteered in Gaza and Lebanon Condemns Israeli Attacks on Hospitals
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 11, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/10/11 ... transcript

As the Israeli military continues its assaults on Gaza and Lebanon, which have included the targeting of hospitals and ambulances and the killing of medical personnel, among other violations of international law, we speak to a doctor currently volunteering in Beirut. Dr. Bing Li is an emergency medicine physician and U.S. Army veteran who also volunteered at Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza earlier this year. Li recounts her experiences in Gaza, where “it feels like death is everywhere,” and warns that Israel’s latest forced evacuation, of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, is “essentially a death sentence” for patients, including children in the hospital’s intensive care unit. Now in Lebanon, Li describes how providers are scrambling to increase healthcare capacity in anticipation of additional attacks.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: A team of United Nations experts has accused Israel of committing war crimes and the crime of extermination for its, quote, “relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities,” unquote. This comes as medical authorities in Gaza report Israel has killed at least 63 more Palestinians amidst an intensifying siege on the northern Gaza Strip.

The situation at three hospitals in northern Gaza remains critical as medical workers struggle to respond to forced expulsions ordered by Israel. The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, filmed this video from inside the intensive care unit on Thursday.

DR. HUSSAM ABU SAFIYA: [translated] We are here under threat, because our hospital will go out of service due to the continuous threats to evacuate the hospital and due to the lack of entry of fuel to the Kamal Adwan Hospital. From here, from the middle of the intensive care unit, I call on all the international organizations and humanitarian organizations and the international community to stop the occupiers from implementing their decision to evacuate the Kamal Adwan Hospital and ceasing its services. Stopping the Kamal Adwan Hospital from providing services means the ending of these children’s lives.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined right now by Dr. Bing Li, an emergency medicine physician based in Arizona who worked at the Indonesian Hospital in the north of Gaza as a volunteer with Rahma Worldwide. Dr. Li is a U.S. Army veteran. She’s joining us now from Beirut, Lebanon, where she’s working to increase healthcare capacities as a volunteer with MedGlobal.

Dr. Bing Li, thank you so much for being with us. If you can start on the situation in Gaza?

DR. BING LI: Thank you, Amy.

So, the situation, especially in north Gaza, has been incredibly heartbreaking for those of us that volunteered and met many of the people that work in north Gaza in these three hospitals, and for me at Indonesian Hospital, where I spent two weeks.

These people that chose to stay in north Gaza — the doctors, the nurses, the administrators, even the janitors — they stayed because they knew that they needed to be there for their patients. They are the most impressive people, the most courageous and the most principled people that I have ever met, and it has been incredibly hard to hear their stories right now. They are people that never complain, that have unlimited patience, that showed us generosity. Usually when I ask them, “How are you doing? Are you OK?” they always say, “Thank God, I am fine.” There’s no complaint. The other day, one of them reached out to me to ask how I was doing because of the hurricanes, and he was concerned that in the U.S. that it wasn’t safe because of these hurricanes that are happening.

And what is happening now, this is the first time that I have heard many of these people be concerned, to show complaints. The medical director at Indonesian Hospital, he says that there are over 40 patients that are trapped inside the hospital, that it is unsafe for them to go anywhere, unsafe for them to step outside to try to evacuate these patients. They are running out of food, running out of water. There already was such a limited amount of medical supplies and medications during the time that we were working there in June, and those are now running out. They’re running out of fuel for electricity, for the ventilators that keep patients breathing on machines.

There are 17 staff that are trapped with them that are just doing daily what they can. They’ve been trapped now for five days, unable to leave the hospital. And the other doctors are unable to come in to relieve them, because, one of them told me, he was trying to travel to the hospital to be there, and in front of him he saw an ambulance get struck by a missile, and so it was unsafe for him to continue passing.

They tell me that it feels like death is everywhere. The smell of death is everywhere. They have nowhere safe to go. One of the medical students, a 20-year-old who has been — that worked every day very hard, always trying to take care of patients, he’s telling me that his family has been displaced now four times in the past three days, that there are bombs going off constantly around them in the homes next door. They’re not sure where they might go next.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about —

DR. BING LI: There’s been —

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about the group Medical Aid for Palestinians, who says it’s removed newborn babies from Kamal Adwan, but that ambulances are being detained at military checkpoints as they attempt to reach Gaza City. The humanitarian group warned, “The world must act before Gaza is erased entirely.” Now, Dr. Bing Li, you did not work at Kamal Adwan, but it was your referral center for OB-GYN and pediatric cases. Your response to this news of the infants?

DR. BING LI: This is incredibly concerning. We must remember that when we say that a hospital, especially in north Gaza, is being told to evacuate, it’s not the same as you’re going from one hospital that is fully functional to another hospital that is fully functional, because the healthcare system has been devastated to this extent. Both Kamal Adwan Hospital and Indonesian Hospital, they have been forced to close multiple times. Not only have they been directly hit by bombs, but then they are occupied by a ground invasion, and so it becomes unsafe to continue to operate.

And then, what is impressive is that the healthcare administrators, the healthcare leaders come together, and they open up these hospitals in one week, in two weeks’ time. When we arrived at Indonesian Hospital, they were able to open up two floors, the ER and the surgical floor, within two weeks of the occupying force having left.

So, with this piecemeal way that people are coming together and making things work, we rely on these different hospitals to work together. So, Kamal Adwan Hospital was the only hospital that was receiving pediatric patients, that could take very sick patients into their ICU. They have a nutrition center to help the extremely malnourished children that can’t be released, that would die without IV support and die without hospital nutritional support. And they also took in the OB patients, the pregnant women and the neonatal patients.

So, as an ER physician, it’s very concerning to me to hear that there are children that are this young, that are babies, infants, that are being told they need to evacuate to be transported to other facilities, because I think this is impossible. There is nowhere else for them to go. This was the only facility that was in that area. And I know that the U.N. forces and the Palestinian Red Crescent, that has been trying to get up to that area to try to evacuate these patients, they’ve not been allowed through.

Another point that many people do not realize when they hear about north Gaza and south Gaza is that they are completely divided. It is about as hard to get from outside Gaza into south Gaza as it is to get from south Gaza to north Gaza. There is a whole new border, a whole military blockade between the north and the south. And that is why we say that it’s different. Virtually no aid, virtually no help is allowed into north Gaza at this time. And so, these children that are being told to evacuate, these patients, there simply isn’t the infrastructure, there isn’t the equipment present and the safety present for them to go anywhere, for them to be put on an ambulance and safely be transported to another facility, that doesn’t exist. It’s essentially a death sentence for these infants, for these very young children that need a high level of care, that need IC levels of care.

AMY GOODMAN: This is the director of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Ramesh Rajasingham.

RAMESH RAJASINGHAM: Critical items are awaiting approval for entry. Our access is restricted. For example, yesterday, OCHA and the World Health Organization tried to reach northern Gaza to support the Kamal Adwan Hospital after Israeli authorities offered its immediate evacuate. And after receiving a green light from the Israeli authorities for the mission, the team was forced to wait at a holding point for hours, and ultimately the mission had to be aborted. And that’s not an unusual practice. In September, less than 10% of coordinated missions to the north were facilitated by the Israeli authorities.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the director of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Ramesh Rajasingham. Dr. Bing Li, if you can respond to that and also the U.N. chief António Guterres saying he’s written directly to the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, warning him against dismantling the U.N. agency tasked with providing food and healthcare and social services to Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank? Two bills under consideration in Israel’s parliament would prevent UNRWA from continuing its essential work. Guterres said passage of the legislation would be “a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.” As you worked in these hospitals in the north and south of Gaza, the role of UNRWA in helping them?

DR. BING LI: So, it’s extremely, extremely alarming that already when we were working in these hospitals, there’s already so little aid, so little supplies that are coming in. To take away what little is left is, essentially, again, a death sentence for anybody there who requires medical care, who requires this kind of help. When we were working in north Gaza — so, already in South Gaza — I spent two weeks in the south, when we first arrived. It’s already a very difficult place to work. It’s already overburdened. There’s already very few supplies. And then, when you go to the north, there’s even a fraction of that.

And I’m not surprised that the border has been difficult, that aid hasn’t been getting through, because I know we waited for hours, both ways, to be able to — allowed through. It’s extremely difficult for medical aid, for these teams to make it through. I think we were the first team in many months to make it to that area of the north.

And to dismantle UNRWA, which is the main support, the main lifeline for these Palestinians — even before the war, they were the ones that fed 50% of the population, provided services, provided education — it’s just another example of the violation of humanitarian law and these humanitarian rights.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Bing Li, I want to get to Lebanon — we only have a few minutes — where you are right now. Interestingly, you worked at Indonesian Hospital, which was originally set up by Indonesia for Gaza. And in the south of Lebanon, the two U.N. peacekeepers who were shot, who were injured, are Indonesian U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon. But you’re in central Beirut, where a mass explosion rocked the city. Dozens of people were killed, more than a hundred injured. Can you describe the situation on the ground there?

DR. BING LI: So, a lot of anxiety, a lot of families that don’t know what is going to happen next, where they should go, if they should try to stay.

I’m here with MedGlobal at the moment, and we’re helping to build the healthcare capacity of Lebanon. I’m working with the Ministry of Public Health to try to bring in more supplies to help support the capacity of some hospitals that have been identified as those that will be most helpful in case these crises continue to happen, in case there continue to be mass casualties. And when this blast in Beirut happened, I was actually in Sidon, which is — in Saida, which is south, maybe about an hour south of Beirut, and talking to hospitals about their needs, doing needs assessments, and seeing what kind of services we can provide to those hospitals.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you so much for being with us, emergency medicine physician based in Arizona, who worked at the Indonesian Hospital in the north of Gaza and as a volunteer with Rahma Worldwide. She’s now in Beirut, Lebanon, volunteering with MedGlobal. Dr. Li is a U.S. Army veteran.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 14, 2024

U.S. to Send Anti-Missile Defense System & 100 Troops to Israel
Oct 14, 2024

The Biden administration is sending an advanced anti-missile defense system and 100 U.S. troops to Israel as Israel prepares to launch retaliatory strikes against Iran. In a statement, a Pentagon spokesperson said, “This action underscores the United States’ ironclad commitment to the defense of Israel, and to defend Americans in Israel, from any further ballistic missile attacks by Iran.” The missile defense system is known as THAAD, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense. Over the past year, the U.S. has sent over 50,000 tons of armaments and military equipment to Israel, but this marks the first significant deployment of troops to Israel over the past year. A new study by the Cost of War Project at Brown University estimates the U.S. has spent nearly $23 billion during that time on the Israeli military and related operations.

Israel Bombs Tent Encampment at Gaza Hospital & School Shelter in Latest Massacres
Oct 14, 2024

In news from Gaza, Israeli warplanes bombed a tent encampment on the grounds of Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Deir al-Balah early this morning. At least four Palestinians were killed and dozens were injured as the bombing set off a massive fire in an area packed with tents housing displaced people who had sought safety at the hospital. Survivors said they lost everything in the fire.

Umm Mahmoud Wadi: “At 1:10 a.m., we woke up in shock to find a fire rising here. What can I say? I quickly ran with my daughters. I woke them up and quickly rushed to Al-Aqsa Hospital. What can I say? Everything has burned. Everything. As you see, I’m a mother of seven daughters. Where shall I go? My tent has collapsed, destroyed. All our clothes and belongings are gone. Who should we speak to? Where is the safety? We are calling on all countries, the whole world, to stand by our side and stop the war on us. We are exhausted. We’ve had enough.”

The attack came hours after Israel bombed a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in the Nuseirat refugee camp. At least 22 people were killed in the attack. The U.N. reports it had planned to use the site, the Mufti School, to give out polio vaccinations today.

On Saturday, another Israeli airstrike in the Nuseirat refugee camp killed a family of eight — a mother, father and their six children, with the youngest being just 8 years old.

Israeli Siege in Northern Gaza Continues as Netanyahu Considers “Surrender or Starve” Policy
Oct 14, 2024

On Friday, Israeli strikes on the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip killed at least 20 people and injured dozens. Israel’s intensifying attacks on northern Gaza come as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering implementing a “surrender or starve” policy in the area. On Friday, Doctors Without Borders said thousands of residents are trapped in Jabaliya. The group said, “Nobody is allowed to get in or out. Anyone who tries is getting shot.” One Palestinian diplomat, Majed Bamya, decried the Israeli siege, saying, “What is happening in northern Gaza now is a genocide within the genocide.”

Hezbollah Drone Strike on Israeli Army Base Kills 4 Soldiers, 60+ Injured
Oct 14, 2024

In news from Israel, four Israeli soldiers died in a Hezbollah drone strike on an army base in Binyamina, south of Haifa. More than 60 people were injured in the attack, which struck a dining hall at the base.

Israel Accused of Committing War Crimes by Attacking U.N. Peacekeepers in Lebanon
Oct 14, 2024

Israel is continuing to attack Lebanon, killing scores of people over the weekend. Meanwhile, Israel is facing international condemnation after repeatedly attacking U.N. peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon. Five members of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, have been injured in recent days. The U.N. has also accused Israel of forcibly entering and destroying part of a UNIFIL base near the Israeli border. Israel denied the claim. On Thursday, Israeli troops fired at a UNIFIL watchtower. The U.N. has rejected calls by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to remove the peacekeeping forces. On Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned attacks against peacekeepers “may constitute a war crime.”
On Friday, the leaders of France, Italy and Spain issued a joint statement saying the Israeli attacks on peacekeeping forces are “unjustifiable” and should “immediately come to an end.” Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati also decried the attacks on the U.N. troops.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati: “The attack on UNIFIL forces by Israel is a crime condemned by us and is directed at the international community, whose sanctity is being violated and whose existence is being threatened by targeting the United Nations security forces.”

Spanish PM Urges EU Nations to Suspend Trade and Arms Deals with Israel
Oct 14, 2024

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is urging the European Union to suspend its free trade agreement with Israel. Sánchez spoke earlier today in Barcelona.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez: “I believe that the European Commission, the government of all Europeans, must respond once and for all to the formal request that two European countries made, Spain and Ireland, nine months ago and suspend the free trade agreement with the government of Israel. … And the international community must immediately suspend the shipment of weapons to Israel, as Spain has done, for a very simple but also overwhelming reason, that without weapons, there is no war.”

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“Every Day Is a Breaking Point”: North Gaza Desperate for Medicine, Fuel, Food, Water & Shelter
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 14, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/shows/2024/10/14

We get another update on Israel’s brutal siege and bombing in the north of the Gaza Strip, where hospitals are desperate for supplies. “Every day is a breaking point. Every day is a desperate rush for food, water, fuel and medicine and shelter,” says Dr. Samer Attar, who has volunteered four times as a surgeon in north Gaza, most recently in June. “It never ends. Every day you wake up to more and more of it. That’s just what makes it so horrifying.”

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.

As Israel is intensifying its siege on northern Gaza, Doctors Without Borders said in a statement Friday five of its staff members were trapped in Jabaliya. One of its members reported about 20 people were killed in an airstrike on Al-Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital.

For more, we go to Dr. Samer Attar, who has volunteered four times as a surgeon in north Gaza with Doctors Without Borders and other groups, most recently in June. Dr. Attar has worked in north Gaza at Al-Awda Hospital, like we just heard from one of its directors, and Kamal Adwan Hospital. He has also worked in south Gaza at European Hospital, Nasser Hospital and Al-Aqsa Hospital.

Can you describe, Doctor, what you are hearing on the ground, as we just listened to the director of Al-Awda and how desperate the situation is in Jabaliya?

DR. SAMER ATTAR: Every day the — every day the news is desperate. Every day you wake up to text messages and videos from nurses and doctors who I worked with, who we all worked with. And even last night we got the horrifying videos of people being bombed and burned alive in front of Al-Aqsa Hospital. So every day is a breaking point. Every day is a desperate rush for food, water, fuel and medicine and shelter.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to the Kamal Adwan Hospital. And this is a clip of a doctor who was there describing what’s going on on the ground within this hospital, where you, Dr. Samer Attar, have also worked.

DR. HANY HAMAD: [translated] What is happening is a process of attrition, a siege and artillery shelling. Tanks are present, and the occupation forces are stationed at the walls of these schools. They are surrounding Shadia Abu Ghazala School, Al-Faluja School and Hafsa bint Omar Government School. The army is now at the rear walls of these schools. We hope the world intervenes to lift the siege on the Jabaliya camp, find solutions for the wounded, and provide the necessary medical supplies to these injured people.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Hany Hamad, a doctor, describing what’s happening. And now we’re going to go to a doctor inside the Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of the hospital, in another video.

DR. HUSSAM ABU SAFIYA: [translated] We are facing a new challenge and a catastrophic situation that will worsen in the coming hours if there is no fuel supply for emergency services. We are now talking about a sensitive department that provides advanced health services, and we have 24 hours left. It’s not just Kamal Adwan Hospital; Al-Awda in the Indonesian Hospital are also on the verge of running out of the remaining fuel. We are facing a genuine health disaster if fuel is not delivered, as it would result in a catastrophe. We hope there will be attentive ears that will listen to us and assist in enhancing health services.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, describing what’s going on in his hospital. Dr. Samer Attar, you worked there, as well as other places in north Gaza. Explain what’s actually happening, Israel dividing Gaza, the north off from the rest of Gaza, and what this means for the people inside, and the targeting, in particular, of these hospitals.

DR. SAMER ATTAR: Yeah, I know the people in that video. I worked with them. They’re just truly remarkable.

But when we worked in the north, I mean, that whole area has always been cut off. When you work in that area, you feel cut off from the rest of the world. You might as well be at the top of Mount Everest, because they’re always waiting for fuel, they’re always waiting food. Some days we had — we just didn’t have the equipment we needed to do what we needed to do, so no gowns, no drapes. Instruments weren’t sterile.

There would be so many people trying to get through the front door after a bombing attack, there’d be no place to step. The floors would be smeared with blood and body parts, and you’d be stepping over dead bodies to try to get to the living. And most people died. I mean, some days the most you could do was just hold people’s hand and look them in the eye as you watch them die, either because they were malnourished, they were starving, or we had no blood to give them. Every day it felt like that. Every day in the north felt like that.

And the directors there only got a chance to breathe once a shipment of fuel and medicine and food came in. And that was always a — that was always a Hail Mary. That was always — always felt like it was last minute. And now that it’s really cut off and they’re not getting supplies in, they’re not getting fuel in, they’re not getting medicines in, they’re not getting food in, now they’re really desperate, because before — before, people would arrive last minute. They would arrive before the point of no return. And nada seems to be happening.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk specifically about the children in these hospitals, the number of children who have died, who are maimed, who have had amputations — well over a thousand now are alive but amputated — the situation there, and this latest situation where one of the hospitals was the site of what was supposed to be a vaccination program today?

DR. SAMER ATTAR: Yeah, that’s — I mean, you leave all of them behind. That’s the hard part. You hate to see anyone suffer or die, but when you’re just seeing innocent kids, it’s — it’s not just the physical wounds, too. I remember one little girl. She was caught in an airstrike, and she was buried alive for 12 hours next to her dead parents. And then she got dug out, and we had to perform emergency surgery on her leg. There was another little girl, 5 years old. She came in with both legs just mangled after an explosion, and the mom was begging us not to amputate her legs. And we both knew the — we both knew her legs weren’t going to make it, but, I mean, those are the conversations we have to have. And I remember another 7-year-old girl came in with her arm just missing. Her arm was just — it was blown off. And the surgeon across from me, just a very stoic, unemotional, strong, resilient surgeon, just broke down in tears. Just he had had it after six months, just couldn’t take it anymore.

So, that toll is very exacting. I mean, the physical wounds, you can get to heal. You can get an amputation wound to heal. But it’s the psychic scars of seeing your parents buried alive, or you’re buried alive, and they’re dead, and you’re looking at them. Everyone in Gaza, every bed you go to, has a horrifying story of loss, of losing a home, losing a loved one, losing a limb, losing an eye. And it never ends. And just every day you wake up to more and more of it. And that’s just what makes it so horrifying.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play a clip from your New York Times opinion short documentary that you created, Dr. Samer Attar, in your diary of two weeks volunteering in Gaza.

DR. SAMER ATTAR: The World Health Organization has documented 450 attacks on the healthcare system since October 7. The staff of this hospital told me they were stripped to their underwear and handcuffed. And after one attack…

HOSPITAL STAFF: They killed them by gunshot, two hygienists and one nurse.

DR. SAMER ATTAR: I’m sorry.

Israel says Hamas hides in these facilities.

This is the entrance to the emergency room of Indonesian Hospital, which is currently nonfunctional.

When this hospital was bombed, it was reported that at least a dozen people were killed. But that’s a massive understatement, because when this CT scanner was destroyed, countless Gazans were given a death sentence. This patient, this patient, both of these patients, every single one of these patients needs a CT scan to diagnose their injury.

DOCTOR: For this patient, in normal situation, we need to brain CT.

DR. SAMER ATTAR: So, just keep an eye on him and make sure nothing bad happens. And if it does, we do our best?

DOCTOR: We cannot do anything.

AMY GOODMAN: As we begin to wrap up, Dr. Samer Attar, that is a clip from an editorial, video editorial, you did for The New York Times. And here, you’re also talking about medical workers being shot and handcuffed. Explain.

DR. SAMER ATTAR: Yeah, hospitals should be safe. Hospitals represent havens for communities. They represent a community’s capacity to heal and recover. And it’s not a political issue. It’s a medical one. Hospitals shouldn’t be targeted. Hospitals shouldn’t be used for military purposes. They should be places where, if you’re sick or injured, you can go and be treated without having to worry about being bombed in the hospital or in front of the hospital. I mean, I can’t emphasize that point any more than just having said what I said.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much for being with us, Dr. Samer Attar, volunteered four times as a surgeon in north Gaza with Doctors Without Borders and other organizations, most recently in June. He is a surgeon at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, we go to Tel Aviv to speak with the Israeli journalist Meron Rapoport, and then we’ll talk about Israel’s attack on UNIFIL. Stay with us.

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“Surrender or Starve”: Israel Weighs Plan to Liquidate Northern Gaza as Siege on Jabaliya Intensifies
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 14, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/10/14 ... transcript

We speak with the reporter who revealed the Israeli plan to displace or kill the entire Palestinian population of north Gaza. Israeli Major General Giora Eiland has proposed ordering everyone in northern Gaza to evacuate within one week, after which Israel will conduct a total siege on the area and deem anyone who remains an eligible target for military attack. “Are we talking about Israel committing an extermination of hundreds of tens of thousands of people if they will choose to stay?” asks Meron Rapoport, editor and writer at Local Call and columnist at +972 Magazine, who says many areas in Gaza have already been ordered to evacuate and are not receiving new aid deliveries. “We have the sense here that this plan is being actually implemented without being officially adopted.”

Transcript

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

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

Israel’s intensifying attacks and siege on northern Gaza comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering implementing a “surrender or starve” policy in the area.

We’re joined now by the Israeli journalist Meron Rapoport, recently wrote an article for +972 headlined “A plan to liquidate northern Gaza is gaining steam.” Meron is an editor and writer at the independent Israeli news site Local Call, a columnist at +972 Magazine. On Saturday, he was awarded the prestigious Golden Dove for Peace by the International Research Institute Disarmament Archive in Rome, Italy. In his acceptance speech, he said, “Although journalism alone cannot bring peace, it can open spaces of humanity.”

We welcome you, Meron, to Democracy Now! If you can start off by talking about what you are saying, what the policy of Israel now is in Gaza, the separation of Gaza, what it means as you talk about the starving of Gaza?

MERON RAPOPORT: Hello.

Of course, we don’t know exactly what is the Israeli plan now. The general’s plan, what is called the plan offered by ex-Major General Giora Eiland, speaks about offering the Palestinian northern Gaza, north of the Netzarim Corridor, meaning all Gaza City and its surrounding, offering them a week to evacuate Gaza and go south to the humanitarian area, what is called, near the Mawasi, near Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza. And then, after a week, there will be a total siege on northern Gaza, and a siege meaning no food, no water, no electricity, no medicine, nothing. And in a week time, all those who stay will be considered terrorists that could be hit. The idea is that the civil population will leave, only the Hamas militants will stay, and therefore Israel will be able to clean this area. This is the plan by General Eiland.

The plan was not adopted officially, neither by the government, although it is said that Netanyahu is considering it, and nor by the army officially. The operation now in Jabaliya that we heard about is officially not part of this plan, but it does seem that many parts of this plan are being implemented on the ground. We heard that there’s no supplies coming into northern Gaza at all in the last two weeks. We are seeing this evacuation order to the population of northern Gaza and to the hospitals in northern Gaza. So, we have the sense here that this plan is being actually implemented without being officially adopted.

AMY GOODMAN: One of the people who escaped the Jabaliya refugee camp told the Financial Times, “It seems that the Jabalia camp will be deleted from Gaza’s geography.” If you can talk more about the intentions of Israel right now? I mean, just in the last week, more than 150 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes around the camp, thousands more trapped, Israel encircling the area, leaving only one exit. And what do — as we speak to you in Tel Aviv, you’re an Israeli journalist. What does the Israeli population understand what’s happening in Gaza? In the United States, in the corporate broadcast media, you hardly see anything about Gaza now. It’s much more focused on Lebanon. And these major networks do not keep repeating that Israel does not allow international journalists into Gaza.

MERON RAPOPORT: So, again, the Israeli public is also much focused on Lebanon, but even — and certainly after what happened last night, when a drone attack on an army base in Binyamina, which is some hundred kilometers south of the Lebanese border, killing four soldiers. So, the whole attention is on Lebanon. And this is maybe one of the reasons that we see this attack in Jabaliya, because the international attention is on Lebanon, and not in Gaza.

Anyhow, even before that, there was very little attention in the Israeli media and Israeli public to the consequences of the Israeli attacks on Gaza. And if there was some attention, it was mainly seen as what Israel is doing is right, that destroying Gaza, destroying physically Gaza City and its neighborhoods and the camps around it, is a logical thing to do as a response to October 7, because if there will be no Gaza, then there will be no threat. That is how very, very many Israelis see it. So, this is, generally speaking, the Israeli response.

People don’t really understand the connection between this and returning the hostages, don’t see a connection with this and continuing of the war. I think there is a large support for this, although, I must say, of course, the images are not shown on Israeli TV. People don’t see, you know, children burning alive in Gaza, as in the Arab world and elsewhere maybe people see. So, the whole of the information is not in front of most of the Israeli public.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to a piece that you wrote in +972. Haaretz also wrote about this “surrender or starve” plan that was proposed last fall by Major General Eiland. Explain who Major General Eiland is, the idea that anyone who remains behind would face hunger and be treated as Hamas operatives and legitimate military targets, as you’ve described, Meron, and what exactly this will constitute in Gaza.

MERON RAPOPORT: Again, the plan by Major General Eiland, and the ex-general, is, as I said, to give the population a week, an opportunity to leave within a week, and then there will be a siege, and those who stay will be considered as terrorists.

Eiland himself is not really a right-wing, in the sense he’s not part of the religious right. He’s not even a supporter of Netanyahu. He comes from a military background, even what is in Israel considered center-left background. So, he is not a fanatic supporter of Netanyahu, not at all.

He says, he claims in all his interviews that this conforms — that this plan conforms with international law, that siege is a legitimate way of war, as long as you give the population, the civil population, time to leave. What does not exist, really, in his plan — and I think it’s not by chance it’s not detailed in his plan — is, first of all, what will happen with this population if they will leave. Will they be able to come back? Because this is not written in the plan. It says only that they will have to leave, they will be given humanitarian aid, but there’s no promise that they will be able to come back even in a month’s time, two months’ time, three months’ time to their homes. So, this is not there. So, therefore, the fear for another Nakba is there.

And more importantly is, he does not detail what will happen if most of the population, as we see now in the description we heard just now, most of the population refuses to leave. It refuses because it saw what happened to the people who left in the beginning of the war, that there is no safe shelter in Gaza, neither in the south. They refuse also for political reasons, because they’re afraid that this is the beginning of a new Nakba and the idea is to really clean Gaza and maybe open it to resettlement by Israelis. So, he does not say what will happen if tens of thousands, if maybe even hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will decide to stay after this week. What will happen to them? Will Israel starve a half a million people, 300,000 people, 200,000 people? Nobody really knows the exact number of the people north of Netzarim Corridor, in the northern part of Gaza Strip. So, what are we talking about here? Are we talking about Israel committing an extermination of hundreds, of tens of thousands of people if they will choose to stay? This is not detailed in his plan, and I think it’s not by chance it’s not detailed.

AMY GOODMAN: [inaudible] low-lying, really somewhat low-tech drone that Hezbollah sent into Israel, near Haifa. Explain the significance of Binyamina, this military base that houses the Golani Brigade, and the deaths of four Israeli soldiers and the wounding of 60, what this means for Israel right now.

MERON RAPOPORT: I think, of course, the base itself is not that important. It’s a relatively small base, quite far from the border. It’s a training base. It’s not a combat — it’s not for combat units. It’s for training. So the base itself is not extremely important.

But the fact that a drone arrived so far, almost a hundred kilometers from the Lebanese border, and was very precise, hitting a dining room in this army base, you know, what it made is the whole euphoria that was very present in Israel after the pager attacks, after the assassination of Nasrallah and all the leadership of Hezbollah, where most Israelis thought that here Israel is winning the war, that the war will be over, that the Hamas and Hezbollah will surrender and that Iran will back off — what we are seeing now, that this is far from over. And the fact that Hezbollah, after being hit so hard, is still able to hit at the heart of Israel is, of course, very destabilizing, you know, this state of euphoria that was — existed for a few weeks, but I think now it’s dissipating.

AMY GOODMAN: Meron Rapoport, I want to thank you for being with us, editor and writer at the independent Israeli news site Local Call, columnist at +972 Magazine, his piece headlined “A plan to liquidate northern Gaza is gaining steam,” and writes for The Nation magazine.

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Israel Attacks U.N. Peacekeeping Forces as U.S. Sends 100 Troops Anticipating Conflict with Iran
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 14, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/10/14 ... transcript

Israel is facing international condemnation after repeatedly attacking U.N. peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon. At least five members of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, have been injured in recent days. The U.N. also accused Israel of forcibly entering and destroying part of a UNIFIL base near the Israeli border after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called to remove the peacekeeping forces from the region. “The message of Israel is we don’t care about anything except Israel, and we will destroy the whole region if we need to,” says Rami Khouri, a Palestinian American journalist and senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut. This comes as the U.S. sends troops to Israel in anticipation of a conflict with Iran. “This is a terrible trajectory, and people will fight back against it.”

Transcript

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

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

We end today’s show looking at Israel’s intensifying attacks on Lebanon, where officials said Sunday Israeli strikes across Lebanon during the weekend killed at least 50 people. Israel is facing international condemnation after repeatedly attacking U.N. peacekeeping forces in southern Israel. At least five members of UNIFIL — that’s the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon — have been injured in recent days. U.N. has also accused Israel of forcibly entering and destroying a part of the UNIFIL base near the Israeli border and rejected calls by the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to remove the peacekeeping forces from the region. On Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Guterres warned attacks against peacekeepers, quote, “may constitute a war crime.”

For more, we go to Boston, where we’re joined by Rami Khouri, Palestinian American journalist, senior public policy fellow at American University of Beirut.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Rami. In these last six minutes that we have, if you can talk about the significance of the attack on the U.N. base, the injuring of the two U.N. Indonesian peacekeepers? The UNIFIL is made up of peacekeepers from a number of different countries, including Indonesia and Italy and other places. Essentially, is this attack on the United Nations?

RAMI KHOURI: Yes, that’s true. It’s essentially an attack on the U.N. It’s an attack against the modern system of the rule of law that the victorious powers in World War II set up after 1945, the U.N., development agencies, humanitarian law codes, all kinds of things that were supposed to make the world safe from another genocide as happened in Nazi Germany.

And the message of Israel is “This is nonsense. None of this makes sense to us. We’re not going to respect any of this stuff. People can make up any laws. They can make up any courts. They can do whatever they want around the world. The people of Israel” — and there’s a difference between the people of Israel and the Jewish people, because not all Jewish people in the world agree with this. But the people of Israel seem to accept fully the policy of the Israeli government now to kill and burn alive and torture people in Palestine, and now in Lebanon, in any way they want to achieve what the Israeli government says is its security.

But this is a flawed policy, because what we’ve seen around the region for years is that this kind of savagery only brings about greater responses and greater determination to fight it, now to the point where the state of Iran — not just a militia somewhere, but the government of Iran — is involved in the battle, and the U.S. is sending more troops and anti-aircraft defense systems to Israel and expanding its bases around the region.

So, the message of Israel is “We don’t care about anything except Israel, and we will destroy the whole region if we need to.” And this is something that is possible. I don’t think it’s going to happen, but a regional conflagration with the U.S. and Iran now facing off against each other, and Iran and Israel firing missiles back and forth at each other, and Hezbollah and Iran both showing that they have the technology to evade Israel’s air defense systems and hit precise targets — and they’re still only hitting military targets; they haven’t gone after civilians as the Israelis have. This is the bigger picture that we have to look at in the region.

And the Israelis don’t seem to understand that the Palestinian people and Lebanese people and Iranians and everybody else in the region are human beings just like the Israelis and Jewish people are human beings. And they should go back to Masada, the great fortress overlooking the Dead Sea, where in 73 A.D. the Jewish forces there preferred to die by suicide rather than to be killed or taken slaves by the Romans who had laid siege to them. And now the situation is reversed, that the Israelis are the Romans. They’re laying siege to parts of Gaza. They’re destroying parts of Lebanon. They’re threatening Iran. And the people are not going to surrender. They will die. And many of them are dying. People, doctors, as you just heard, saying, “We’re not going to evacuate our hospitals. We’ll die with our patients.” This is a human reaction. It’s not a Palestinian or an Arab or an Islamic or — it’s a human reaction that the Jewish people showed the world in their history and in their biblical texts, which are widely adopted, that this is how human beings survive. They survive by defending their dignity and their physical life.

And this is where we are now in this battle. And the U.N. is one of the targets. UNRWA is something that Israel has been trying to shatter for years. They don’t allow Guterres to come into Israel anymore. This is a terrible trajectory. And people will fight back against it.

AMY GOODMAN: Rami, in this last minute we have, you now have, in light of all of this, still the U.S. is sending 100 troops — this is completely new — and this anti-missile THAAD system, and this in the midst of this, to say the least, extremely significant election, which is neck and neck between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Harris very close in these battleground states that have large Arab American, Lebanese American, Muslim American communities, like Michigan. What is the effect of this?

RAMI KHOURI: We’ve seen the effect already, that not only Arab and Muslim Americans, but a coalition that they have created with Black Americans and Hispanic Americans, progressive Jews, church groups, labor unions, academics — a big coalition has emerged, focused on the refusal, as Americans, to be a part of a genocidal war by Israel against Palestinians. Americans don’t want this to be their legacy. They don’t want this to be their policy.

And they’re saying, “Well, we’ll vote for somebody else. We don’t care who’s president,” because there’s not much difference between Kamala Harris and Biden and Trump and anybody else. They’ve been killing Palestinians and Arabs since the Zionist movement started a hundred years ago, which aimed to get the Palestinians out of Palestine and replace them with a Jewish state, which has happened. They have a Jewish state. They want to keep expanding, it seems. And this is not going to work. This is a recipe for catastrophe.

So, the Americans sending more arms is what America does in its foreign policy, as its primary means of —

AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds, Rami.

RAMI KHOURI: Yeah. So, American militarism and Israeli barbarism are only going to create a catastrophe for everybody. And now that Gaza may influence the American election —

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, Rami Khouri, journalist. Thanks for joining us.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 15, 2024

Israeli Attacks Kill 55 in Gaza as WHO Begins Second Round of Polio Vaccinations
Oct 15, 2024

Israel has intensified its ground assault on the northern Gaza Strip, where an estimated 400,000 people remain trapped amid a dire humanitarian situation. Over the past 24 hours, Israeli attacks have killed at least 55 Palestinians, including 10 people who were killed by an Israeli tank shell as they lined up for food at a distribution center in Jabaliya. Dozens more were wounded in the assault, children among them.

On Monday, the World Health Organization began its second round of an emergency polio vaccination campaign, after Israel’s assault decimated Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure, prompting a polio outbreak. Parents who brought their children to receive a booster dose said they have much more to fear than the spread of disease.

Alaa Afana: “Today, I came to vaccinate my children against polio. We administered the first dose, and now we’ve administered the second dose, as we are scared of diseases that are widely spread here in Gaza. However, with disease and this fear, we fear the occupation more, because even though we are protecting them and vaccinating them, the occupation is still bombing them.”

Gaza Teen Burned to Death in Israeli Strike on Hospital Identified as Sha’ban al-Dalou
Oct 15, 2024

One of the victims who burned to death after Israel bombed Al-Aqsa Hospital early Monday has been identified as 19-year-old Sha’ban al-Dalou. He was an engineering student at Gaza’s Al-Azhar University who just started his studies in September 2023. He had built the tent shelter his family was living in when Israel bombed them. At least four others were also killed in the fire.

Israeli Forces in Occupied West Bank Kill 2, Including Child, in Assault on Jenin
Oct 15, 2024

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces killed two Palestinians, including a child, and injured four others during an hourslong assault Monday on the city of Jenin and its refugee camp. Twenty-three-year-old Mahmoud Ma’moun Abu al-Rub died of gunshot wounds, as did 17-year-old Rayan Ibrahim al-Sayyed. Their killings bring the death toll from Israeli assaults on the West Bank over the past year to 755, including 165 children.

21 Killed, Including Children, in Israeli Strike on Northern Lebanon Village
Oct 15, 2024

In Lebanon, at least 21 people were killed Monday when Israel bombed a four-story apartment building in the northern village of Aitou. The U.N. Human Rights Commission reports 12 women and two children were among the victims. On Monday, a top UNICEF official warned of a “lost generation” of children in Lebanon, with some 400,000 youths among the estimated 1.2 million people displaced by Israel’s bombs. This is Jalal Ferhat, a 40-year-old father of five whose family crossed Lebanon’s border into Syria Monday seeking refuge.

Jalal Ferhat: “There are strikes in our neighborhood and destruction, and they struck near my house. I have children. You can’t just stay where you are. We tried going to another place. We moved from Baalbek, where they struck near my house. We had to leave again. I have children. You can’t stay. We are going to Syria because it could be safer than where we are.”

Netanyahu Again Threatens UNIFIL as European Leaders Condemn Israeli Attacks on Peacekeepers
Oct 15, 2024

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubled down Monday on his warnings to the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, telling U.N. peacekeepers to “heed Israel’s request and to temporarily get out of harm’s way.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “The charge that Israel deliberately attacked UNIFIL personnel is completely false. It’s exactly the opposite. Israel repeatedly asked UNIFIL to get out of harm’s way.”

Netanyahu’s remarks came after Israeli troops fired on a UNIFIL watchtower and destroyed part of a UNIFIL base near the Israeli border. At least five UNIFIL members have been injured by Israel’s assaults. Despite the repeated attacks, UNIFIL’s chief has said peacekeepers would remain in their positions. On Monday, Britain, France, Germany and Italy issued a joint statement calling Israel’s attacks on peacekeepers a violation of international law, and the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell condemned Israel’s attacks on UNIFIL as “unacceptable.”

Josep Borrell: “The 27 members agreed on asking Israelis to stop attacking UNIFIL. Many European members are participating in this mission. Their work is very important. It’s completely unacceptable, attacking United Nations troops.”

USAID Routinely Meets with Israeli Officials at Sde Teiman, Site of Israeli War Crimes and Torture
Oct 15, 2024

The Guardian is reporting USAID officials have been holding regular meetings with Israeli counterparts at Israel’s notorious Sde Teiman prison since late July, after the Israeli agency overseeing aid relocated to the military base. Sde Teiman has been labeled a “torture camp” where Palestinians abducted by Israeli soldiers in Gaza have described harrowing physical, sexual and psychological abuse. The Guardian says it’s not clear if the USAID employees have observed the part of the base that is used as a torture camp, but affected officials told the newspaper, “I can’t sleep at night knowing that it’s going on,” and that Israel’s relocation of its aid coordination group to the prison “seems like trolling.” Click here to see our past coverage of Sde Teiman and the reports on it.

Jewish Activists Take on NYSE as Antiwar Protesters Disrupt Army Conference over Gaza Genocide
Oct 15, 2024

Here in New York City, hundreds of Jewish activists and their allies rallied outside the New York Stock Exchange Monday demanding an Israeli arms embargo and an end to war profiteering by companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. Police forcibly removed peaceful protesters as they blocked the entrance to the stock exchange, arresting over 200 people. After headlines, we’ll speak with Elena Stein, director of organizing and strategy for Jewish Voice for Peace, who was detained at Monday’s action.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., activists with CodePink disrupted an annual conference at the Association of the U.S. Army.

CodePink protester: “The blood of hundreds of thousands of people is on your hands. Your pockets seep in the blood of Palestinians, of people in the Global South. From the Philippines to the Congo to Haiti, we have 800 military bases decimating the planet and decimating people. The future that you talk about, we have no future. You all are making a killing off of killing.”

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Ex-U.S. Army Major Who Resigned over Gaza Warns Against Biden Sending 100 U.S. Troops to Israel
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 15, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/10/15 ... transcript

The Biden administration is sending an advanced anti-missile defense system and 100 U.S. troops to Israel in advance of expected retaliatory strikes against Iran. This marks the first significant deployment of American troops to Israel since the beginning of its assault on Gaza, though the U.S. has spent an estimated tens of billions of dollars on the Israeli military and related operations. “The irony here is the Iranian missile attack is only going to happen if we help Israel strike Iran first,” says Win Without War’s Harrison Mann. With the deployment of troops to Israeli military installations, says Mann, “Israel now has its own sort of American human shields” and “a new mechanism to drag America into a war with Hezbollah and Iran.” Mann, who is Jewish, is a former U.S. Army major who resigned from his position at the Defense Intelligence Agency in protest of U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza, a decision he says was inspired by student antiwar protests on U.S. campuses.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: The Washington Post is reporting Israel is planning to launch retaliatory strikes against Iran within the next three weeks, ahead of the U.S. election. Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israeli military and security sites on October 1st. At the time, Iran said the strikes were retaliation for the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in an explosion in Tehran in July on the day of the inauguration of the new Iranian president. According to the new report in The Washington Post, Israel is now considering striking military sites inside Iran, but not Iran’s oil or nuclear facilities.

This comes as the Biden administration is sending an advanced anti-missile defense system and 100 U.S. troops to Israel in advance of Israel’s attack on Iran. In a statement, a Pentagon spokesperson said, quote, “This action underscores the United States’ ironclad commitment to the defense of Israel, and to defend Americans in Israel, from any further ballistic missile attacks by Iran,” unquote. The missile defense system is known as THAAD, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense. Over the past year, the U.S. has sent over 50,000 tons of armaments and military equipment to Israel, but this marks the first significant deployment of U.S. troops to Israel over the past year. A new study by the Cost of War Project at Brown University estimates the U.S. has spent nearly $23 billion on the Israeli military and related operations over the past year.

We’re joined now by Harrison Mann, a former U.S. Army major who worked at the DIA. That’s the Defense Intelligence Agency. Mann, who is Jewish, resigned to protest U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza. He’s now a senior fellow at Win Without War, a network of activists and organizations working for a more peaceful, progressive U.S. foreign policy.

Harrison Mann, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you can talk about the significance of what the U.S. is doing right now, sending the THAAD missiles and the 100 U.S. troops?

HARRISON MANN: Yeah. Thanks, Amy.

This deployment, I think, sends a very strong message, unfortunately, to the Netanyahu government, which is that if you continue to escalate with Iran, you will be rewarded with the protection of additional U.S. systems and troops. And it also, unfortunately, sends the message that, you know, we’ve seen the people burning in tents, and we’ve seen you publicly muse about starving everybody in northern Gaza to death, and that’s not a deal breaker.

In terms of the capability that this provides, the radar that this system depends on, the AN/TPY-2, has actually already been located in southern Israel since 2008, operated by U.S. troops. So, that detection capability is already there. We’re now sending a battery that has about six launchers with a total of 48 interceptors. And the reason that I want to mention that number is, really, all that we’ve added materially is the ability to shoot down another 48 ballistic missiles if Iran adds them to a barrage. So, I see this, in many ways, as a symbolic show of support that can be easily neutralized if Iran just fires more missiles next time.

And then, the other issue here is that we are, indisputably, putting more U.S. troops at risk by sending them to Israel. They’re going to be operating out of Israeli military installations. And we’ve seen, both with the October 1 Iranian attack and then more recent Hezbollah attacks, that Israel’s adversaries can penetrate its air defenses and can strike targets within Israeli bases. So, we have to be very clear that these troops are entering a combat zone. They are going to be at risk, especially as escalation continues. And unfortunately, they’ve been sent there, I think, with no consultation with Congress, with no clear legal justification, without the argument that they are needed to go there for urgent self-defense needs.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Harrison Mann, I wanted to follow up specifically on that issue. Is it your sense that to send troops like this into an existing war, in effect, combat, that — what the requirements are in terms of Congress’s approval?

HARRISON MANN: Yeah, to introduce troops into hostilities, per the 1973 War Powers Act, you either need an authorization from Congress, or there needs to be some urgent and imminent self-defense threat. In this case, the supposed self-defense threat is an Iranian missile attack. But the irony here is the Iranian missile attack is only going to happen if we help Israel strike Iran first.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I also wanted ask you about a report in The New York Times, a front-page article, the lead article in The New York Times today, which talks about the — Israel’s use of Palestinian detainees as human shields in Gaza, forcing the detainees to, according to The New York Times, to go into tunnels, in case they were booby-trapped, ahead of Israeli troops, in essence, using them as potential victims in order to protect Israeli troops.

HARRISON MANN: Yeah. So, this is based off the reporting and investigations from a Israeli group called Breaking the Silence. I had the honor of meeting their CEO, Nadav Weiman, when he was in D.C. a couple months ago. And he told me about this very project and his efforts to document this process. So, I can say it is very real. It’s, unfortunately, a systemic practice by Israeli troops, kidnapping Palestinians, sometimes putting GoPros on them, putting Israeli uniforms on them, so if they go up to an enemy position, they are going to look like Israeli soldiers.

And at this point, this is kind of the least offensive and illegal thing that we have the Israeli Defense Forces doing in this conflict. So, again, going back to the THAAD deployment, I wish we were not reinforcing and encouraging this behavior as the U.S. government.

AMY GOODMAN: What is your sense, Harrison Mann, of why President Biden is doing this? He is not a — it is not as if he embraces Netanyahu, though, certainly, in terms of sending weapons, he has done that to the fullest. He recognizes he is clearly a Trump ally. Clearly, Netanyahu wants Trump to win. Trump is former president of the United States who could face prison if he doesn’t win, and Prime Minister Netanyahu could face prison if he is no longer prime minister. Their fates are intertwined. So, why is Biden embracing him in this way?

HARRISON MANN: Yeah. The administration for the past year has adhered to this bear hug strategy, the idea being that we have to keep giving Israel support and protection, and that’s the only way we can get them to listen to us. I think it’s obvious that that has not worked. The thinking right now is that by offering this system to Israel’s defense, we can at least convince them to avoid striking more sensitive targets in Iran, like nuclear facilities or oil infrastructure. And, you know, that might actually succeed in the short term, but we have to understand, once these troops and this system is deployed in Israel, I don’t know what incentive Netanyahu has to continue keeping his word and not keep escalating.

And if you’re asking why would we keep supporting or why would the president keep supporting Netanyahu, even when he knows that he’d rather have a Republican president, Donald Trump, in office, I think they just can’t imagine another strategy. And it’s really unfortunate to see that this administration — and to a certain extent, the Harris campaign — would rather risk her election than distance themselves from Israel and from the genocide.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what is your sense of the impact of this recent decision to deploy these batteries to Israel, the impact that’s going to have on Iran or other enemies of Israel in the region?

HARRISON MANN: Yeah. So, in the near term, I don’t think it’s going to have a big impact, because Iran knows where these troops will be deployed, and if it responds to Israel’s next strike, it can probably successfully avoid hitting them or avoid hitting near them. Unfortunately, as the escalation continues and if we move beyond symbolic messaging strikes to an actual war of annihilation, these troops are going to become targets, even if it’s by accident, right? They probably have a survivability plan. That means they displace to another location in a combat situation. So, we’re going to get to a point where even if they want to avoid killing Americans, Iran and Hezbollah may do so by accident.

And then, the other side of this is that Israel now has its own sort of American human shields that it can leverage to try and avoid a certain level of attacks from Iran, knowing that Iran does not want to kill Americans. And it knows it’s got a new mechanism to drag America directly into war with either Hezbollah or Iran, since now it’s much more likely that U.S. troops can be killed on Israeli soil.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you something that’s not exactly in your wheelhouse, but I’m just curious what you think as a former official at the Defense Intelligence Agency about Donald Trump calling for the National Guard or the U.S. military to be deployed on U.S. soil to target what he called “radical left lunatics.” Trump made the call during an interview on Fox News. This is what he said.

DONALD TRUMP: I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the — and it should be very easily handled by — if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response, Harrison Mann?

HARRISON MANN: Yeah, I’ll just say, as somebody who’s had friends and colleagues who were deployed to D.C. in 2020 or been deployed on the border mission, I trust the noncommissioned officers and officers in the Army and the National Guard to not be aggressive against political activity. But I think the danger here is that if you do this deployment, which units might not refuse, you’re then in a situation with really unclear guidance about what you’re supposed to do with protesters or what you’re supposed to do with whatever group the president has told you to target. So, I think, fortunately, our forces know the right thing to do. But when they end up in a situation with very unclear or maybe contradictory guidance between what the president is saying publicly and their own commanders are telling them, you have the risk of unintentional violence or uncontrolled violence.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Harrison Mann, we are just going into a segment on one of the largest arrest actions outside the New York Stock Exchange. Over 200 Jewish activists and their allies were arrested, calling for the U.S. to stop arming Israel. As a former U.S. Army major who resigned to protest U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza, as a Jewish American, your thoughts? And also, how activists on the outside, in the streets — I often think about Dan Ellsberg when I think of this, you know, who was at the Pentagon and the RAND Corporation and talked about seeing those protesters outside. You were on the inside. What does this mean — you’re out now, but many of your colleagues are still in — when they see these kind of mass actions?

HARRISON MANN: Yeah. First, I appreciate that you mentioned that I’m Jewish, too. And with respect to these protesters and my own advocacy, I think it’s incredibly important for American Jews to talk about this, especially to demonstrate that Israeli Zionism is not the same as Judaism, and the actions of the Israeli state do not represent all Jews and certainly don’t represent American Jews, because, unfortunately, that’s a claim that both Israeli politicians and American politicians like to make, which is that if you care about Jews, you have to support what Israel is doing in Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon right now, and that’s just patently untrue.

And then, I can tell you, both myself and some of the other officials who publicly resigned, we were influenced and affected by protest activity that we saw. In our case, in terms of the timing, the student protests were extremely affecting in feeling like — I’ll just speak for myself — that I could no longer justify staying silent, when we had 19-year-olds going to get beat up and risk their futures for this cause. So, I can’t promise that this is going to fix everything, but the people on the inside of our institutions do, in aggregate, notice this activism.

AMY GOODMAN: Harrison Mann, I want to thank you for being with us, a former U.S. Army major, a Jewish American, who resigned to protest U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza. He’s now a senior fellow at Win Without War, a network of activists and organizations working for a more peaceful, progressive U.S. foreign policy.

When we come back, we’ll be joined by one of those activists outside the New York Stock Exchange, believed to be one of the largest mass arrests there in U.S. history. She was arrested. She’s with Jewish Voice for Peace. Stay with us.

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“Stop Profiting Off Genocide”: 200 Arrested at Jewish Voice for Peace Protest at NY Stock Exchange
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 15, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/10/15 ... transcript

“There is nothing antisemitic about fighting for people’s right to live,” says Jewish Voice for Peace organizer Elena Stein, who on Monday joined hundreds of protesters arrested to block entrances to the New York Stock Exchange. We discuss the historic mass protest, which called for an Israeli arms embargo and an end to war profiteering by companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. “We are filled with horror beyond words and are attempting to embody just an ounce of that refusal,” Stein says of the moral urgency of protesting Israel’s actions in the Middle East, which she describes as a “war of extermination … done with U.S. cover.” She says JVP chose the stock exchange in order to draw attention to the role of U.S. financial and corporate interests in arming the Israeli military.

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 Juan González.

Protests over the U.S. arming Israel are continuing. On Monday morning, more than 200 Jewish activists and their allies were arrested as they blocked entrances to the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street. The protesters were calling for an Israeli arms embargo and end to war profiteering by companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.

PROTESTERS: Let Gaza live! Stop arming Israel! Stop arming Israel! Let Gaza live! Let Gaza live! Stop arming Israel! Stop arming Israel! Let Gaza live! Let Gaza live! Stop arming Israel!

AMY GOODMAN: The protest was organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, which said the action was the largest act of civil disobedience in history outside the New York Stock Exchange. Participants in the protest included descendants of Holocaust survivors, as well as Emmy Award-winning comedian Eric André, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras, the acclaimed artist Nan Goldin, the Oscar-nominated actress Debra Winger and the artist Molly Crabapple. Police forcibly removed many of the peaceful protesters, including our next guest, Elena Stein. She’s director of organizing and strategy for Jewish Voice for Peace. She was arrested, held for eight hours.

Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us, Elena. There’s a very dramatic picture of you being taken out, held, carried by police on your back. You’re wearing the T-shirt you’re wearing right now, “Stop Arming Israel.” Explain what this action was all about.

ELENA STEIN: First of all, thank you so much for having me, Amy and Juan. Been watching Democracy Now! every morning for about 15 years, so so appreciate everything you all do.

Yesterday, 500 Jewish New Yorkers and friends shut down business as usual at the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, demanding — you know, the epicenter of global capital — demanding that the U.S. stop arming Israel and stop profiting from genocide.

And, you know, as we arrived in the morning, we were learning the news that just that night Israel had bombed the Al-Aqsa Hospital and had set at least 30 tents ablaze full of people who had already been displaced, who still had IVs in their arms from being at the hospital, burning people alive. And this comes after days and days of massacring whole families in the Jabaliya refugee camp as part of the larger strategy to block off, to starve, to essentially complete the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, where 400,000 people are.

This is being called a genocide within a genocide. People are posting their final goodbyes. So we are filled with horror beyond words and are attempting just to embody just an ounce of that refusal in our actions.

And, of course, what’s so important for all of us here in the U.S. to understand is that this is being done with U.S. bombs, those bombs that are massacring family after family in this war of extermination — because, make no mistake, that is the goal: extermination. It is being done with U.S. bombs, with U.S. weapons and with U.S. cover, with shielding Israel from accountability at any international institution.

Now, the Biden administration wants you to believe that the reason the U.S. is arming and funding and covering the Israeli government like this is for the sake of Jewish safety. Right? This is the moral cover that they use. This is the justification used to cloak the entire enterprise.

And so, we are there to say we reject this myth, this sick myth, with every fiber of our beings. We refuse to let our histories, our identities, our traditions be used to torture, to starve, to massacre, to erase Palestinians. And we are there to say the true interests of the Biden administration, the true interests of the U.S. government are this: its own imperial interests and its own financial interests. And so, we are there to say to the U.S., “Stop arming Israel. Stop profiting from genocide.”

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Elena, could you talk about why you chose the stock exchange? Because the reality is that every war that the United States has ever fought, some people have made money off of, some sector of American capitalism. And in this case, could you talk about the arms makers and the huge, obscene amounts of money they are making from this war, companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin?

ELENA STEIN: That’s exactly right. So, most know that every year the U.S. sends $3.8 billion in military funding to Israel. Now, first thing to know is that this is an unprecedented amount of money. There is no amount of public taxpayer money going annually to any other country like this.

The next thing to know is that none of that money is used — when we hear the word “aid,” we might think, “Oh, that’s for recovery from a natural disaster or for housing or education.” No, all of this money has to be used on the Israeli military, for military purposes. And not only that, but all that money has to be used then back in the United States on U.S. defense contractors, on U.S. weapons corporations. So we see here that the entire enterprise has the goal of propping up the U.S.’s war economy.

Now, $3.8 billion is just the amount of money typically going in taxpayer public funding. It is nothing to say of the billions going in private funding. But this year, the U.S. sent — in public funding, the U.S. government sent 18 — 18 — billion dollars in taxpayer funds to the Israeli military. There are no words to describe how unprecedented this is.

And so, when we say that it’s all in the service of propping up the U.S.'s war economy, it works. This year, the stock prices of weapons manufacturers were skyrocketing. Last year, if you were to invest $10,000 in Raytheon, right now you would have $18,000, in just one year. That's an 80% return in one year. Raytheon is the firm making the bunker buster bombs, that are prohibited from use in civilian areas, that Israel is currently using right now in southern Lebanon.

Now, not only that, 50 — over 50, at least, members of Congress and their spouses are invested in Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, two of the leading weapons manufacturers. So, we can see they are, quite literally, profiting from this genocide. And these are the people who are voting on increased funding and arms to the Israeli military. Our elected officials should never be able to profit off of genocide. They are there to carry out, supposedly, the will of the people.

And you think about this: Just last week, Hurricane Helene ravaged communities across Appalachia — right? — killing hundreds of people, displacing thousands. This is just one week before Hurricane Milton did the same, ravaged Florida. And before the wreckage could even be accounted for after Hurricane Helene, FEMA reported a $9 billion shortfall. At the exact same time, President Biden announced that he’d be releasing another $8.7 billion in military funding to the Israeli military. This is almost the exact same amount of money. So what we are seeing is that, quite literally, the United States government is choosing to massacre en masse Palestinians over supporting our communities here in the United States who are trying to recover from this devastating climate crisis, as well as the chronic disinvestment from their communities.

And so, that’s why we were there with 500 people yesterday to say, outside of Wall Street, this epicenter of global capital — and, yes, as you said, Juan, you know, Wall Street has been profiting off of genocide, every genocide of this country since the founding of this country, since the founding genocides. Wall Street was actually built as the first marketplace to trade enslaved people kidnapped from the shores of Africa in — and then traded in 1711 on Wall Street by the European settlers, who had also carried out the genocide against the Indigenous people of Manahatta. And we were there yesterday on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and so that’s part of why this history is so important to root in.

And we pay homage to the many movements that have been protesting Wall Street ever since, from ACT UP, that actually had its founding protest on Wall Street in 1987, delaying the bell — and, actually, one of the organizers of that demonstration was with us yesterday in jail, which is so meaningful — to Occupy Wall Street to many Palestinian-led demonstrations at Wall Street this year. And so, that is why we were there, to say, all together, fund FEMA, not genocide; fund housing, not genocide; fund healthcare, not genocide.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Sumaya Awad of Adalah Justice Project. She’s a Palestinian who participated in the protest you were arrested at the New York Stock Exchange. She’s speaking here to CBS News.

SUMAYA AWAD: We refuse for our government to continue doing this, using our tax dollars while our country is suffering from climate disaster, from lack of healthcare.

AMY GOODMAN: I also want to turn to 82-year-old Ros Petchesky, a MacArthur fellow, former anti-Vietnam War activist, current member of Jewish Voice for Peace. On Monday, she was one of the oldest people to chain herself to the Wall Street gates. She told CBS why she participated in the protest.

ROSALIND PETCHESKY: A lot of our resources are going to war. Jews have a long tradition of opposing war.

AMY GOODMAN: Ros Petchesky is a professor emeritus at Hunter. As we hear those voices, Elena, you yourself are the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. Talk about that, how that informs your activism today, as the back of your T-shirt, that says “Stop Arming Israel” on the front, says “Not in Our Name.”

ELENA STEIN: The day that my grandmother’s entire family and village was massacred in a different genocide, the Holocaust, my grandmother just happened to be absent. I grew up knowing this fact and understanding that it means that, first of all, I’m not supposed to be here. My life is a fluke. And I also grew up agonizing over the question of “Where were the neighbors?” Why did they just stand by? Why didn’t they hurl their bodies between the killers and my family? And so, today, it’s with all of my Jewish ancestors at my back, the one who survived, my grandmother, and all those who didn’t, that we, I and all of them together, say loudly, more profoundly than ever before, “We refuse to be neighbors who just stand by.”

And I think so many of us in these demonstrations, especially as we watch the Israeli government cynically use the excuse, use the conflation of Judaism and Zionism — let’s be clear, Judaism is our rich thousands-year-old tradition; Israel is a 76-year-old apartheid state. The cover has been pulled off Israel. People can see it for what it is and for the Zionist project and the project of ethnic cleansing and genocide and the full, the full expansionist goals that it has, and it will use any means it can to make that project a reality. And the only excuse they have left, the only cover they have left, is to call any resistance to it antisemitism. We refuse this. There is nothing antisemitic about fighting for people’s right to live, to live on their land, to thrive, to be safe at home. We refuse to let our traditions, our identities, our histories be used to allow for the mass torture, the mass starvation, the massacre and the erasure of Palestinians.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The protest on Monday was the latest in a long string of nonviolent protests led by Jewish Voice for Peace — at Grand Central Terminal during rush hour, at the Statue of Liberty, at the Manhattan Bridge. Do you feel the Biden administration is hearing your voice?

ELENA STEIN: May it be so. Listen, the Biden administration is watching all of us. They have watched the needle move. I mean, two-thirds — the polls are showing that two-thirds of Americans now want an arms embargo. Two-thirds of Americans are saying that they don’t want arms to go to Israel. This is astonishing. And let’s understand it for what it is, which is an extraordinary win by the Palestinian-led movement for Palestinian liberation. And, of course, we see the Biden administration not listening. We see Congress not listening. All of us are asking, “Why is this?”

Well, first of all, it’s because we don’t live in a democracy. They don’t have to listen to us. It is for their own imperial and financial interests. It is for their own interests in controlling the region, which have been broken open and uncovered in so many of the interviews you’ve done here on Democracy Now! And it’s for their financial interests and financial gain, because we know of the corporate control of this country.

And so, we see this moment of — I mean, to be quite honest, we see a lot of despair and a lot of hopelessness right now, especially as Israel expands its war of extermination deeper into Gaza and then throughout Lebanon and, you know, bombing Lebanon and Syria and Yemen and the West Bank, and the risk, the threat to soon be bombing Iran at the same time. To watch them not just listen but to expand it at the same time is truly extraordinary, and to feel so many millions more terrorized as they’re watching their loved ones in these other countries now fleeing for their lives, as well.

And we refuse to give up. Right? We take inspiration from all of the movements that came before us that never gave up after one year of not winning. We take inspiration especially from the Palestinian struggle, that has been here fighting for 76 years and has never thrown in the towel because it is such an uphill battle. And all of us here in the belly of the beast, where we know is in control of these arms and this funding, we must do the exact same. We cannot give up. We must double down right now. And even if the path to that arms embargo is getting increasingly muddled as we see them refuse to listen to us, we know that what all of us must be doing is applying this pressure from every angle possible, and that every single one of us has a role to play.

AMY GOODMAN: Elena Stein, I want to thank you for being with us. She is the Jewish Voice for Peace director of organizing strategy, a descendant of a Holocaust survivor. On Monday morning, she was arrested along with about two [sic] other Jewish activists and allies in one of the largest acts of — 200 Jewish activists and allies in one of the largest acts of civil disobedience the New York Stock Exchange has seen, demanding the U.S. stop arming Israel.

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Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 16, 2024

U.S. Threatens to Cut Military Assistance If Israel Keeps Withholding Aid for Gaza
Oct 16, 2024

Oxfam and over 35 other humanitarian groups have issued a dire warning about Israel’s siege on northern Gaza. In a statement, the groups said, “The Israeli forces’ assault on Gaza has escalated to a horrifying level of atrocity. Northern Gaza is being wiped off the map.” Israel has barred nearly all food into the area, while attacks on displaced people continue.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has sent Israel a written warning that the U.S. may cut off military assistance if Israel does not boost humanitarian aid access to Gaza within the next 30 days. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote, “We are now writing to underscore the U.S. government’s deep concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, and seek urgent and sustained actions by your government this month to reverse this trajectory.”

The Biden administration has continued to arm Israel despite findings by its own experts at USAID and the State Department that Israel has routinely impeded delivery of food and medicine to Gaza, in violation of U.S. law. On Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Matt Miller faced numerous questions about U.S. policy. This is Reuters journalist Humeyra Pamuk.

Humeyra Pamuk: “Given you are already saying humanitarian assistance is very low, and putting in front of Israel a bunch of concrete measures on how to improve it, why are you waiting for another 30 days to implement the law?”

Matthew Miller: “Because we believe it’s appropriate to give them a chance to cure the problem.”

Humeyra Pamuk: “Other outlets have reported that — Reuters has reported all the way back in April that officials from this department have assessed in internal memos that Israel, quote, 'is persistently and arbitrarily impeding aid in Gaza.' So, if the law is already being, like, I mean — if it’s already doing it, why is the United States waiting?”

Matthew Miller: “So, first of all, that has not — so, we’ve been over this before, I know, from this podium. There are people that reach that conclusion, and there are people inside this building who reach the opposite conclusion. So I think it’s important to state that for the record.”

Israel Bombs Municipal Building in Lebanon, Killing 6, Including Mayor of Nabatieh
Oct 16, 2024

In Lebanon, Israel attacked a municipal building in the southern town of Nabatieh, killing six people, including the town’s mayor. The BBC reports the mayor and other city workers were killed while holding a meeting to discuss coordinating aid for civilians remaining in the area. Israel also bombed the village of Qana, striking a healthcare center and several homes, killing at least 15 people. Israel also bombed the southern suburbs of Beirut just hours after the U.S. State Department said it opposes the “scope and nature” of Israel’s attacks on Beirut.

As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismisses calls for a ceasefire, the U.N. Refugee Agency is warning 25% of Lebanon is now under forced evacuation orders from Israel.

Rema Jamous Imseis: “Israeli airstrikes and Israeli evacuation orders continue to increase the areas impacted. So, now that we have over 25% of the country under a direct Israeli military evacuation order, just yesterday we had another 20 villages issued with an evacuation order in the south of the country.”

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Israel Is Routinely Shooting Children in the Head in Gaza: U.S. Surgeon & Palestinian Nurse
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 16, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/10/16 ... transcript

As the official death toll in Gaza passes more than 42,400, the true number may be impossible to know until Israel’s war is over. But medical workers who witnessed the carnage in Gaza’s hospitals are speaking out. We speak with Dr. Feroze Sidhwa about his op-ed in The New York Times that features harrowing stories from dozens of healthcare workers and CT scans of children shot in the head or the left side of the chest. The Times called the corresponding images of the patients too graphic to publish. “I personally wish that Americans could see more of what it looks like when a child is shot in the head, when a child is flayed open by bombs,” says Sidhwa. “I think it would make us think a little bit more about what we do in the world.” We also speak with Palestinian nurse Rajaa Musleh, who worked at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. “I will never forget the dogs were eating the dead body inside Shifa Hospital at the front of the emergency department. This will be stuck on my mind for my whole life,” says Musleh. “My message for the whole world: We are human beings. We are not numbers. We have the right to receive healthcare inside Gaza.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: As the official death toll in Gaza passes more than 42,400, the true number may be impossible to know until Israel’s war is over. But medical workers who witnessed the carnage in Gaza’s hospitals are speaking out.

We begin today’s show with a surgeon who volunteered at the European Hospital in Khan Younis and wrote a devastating opinion piece in The New York Times headlined “65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza.”

In a minute, we’ll be joined by Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, who begins the piece writing, quote, “I worked as a trauma surgeon in Gaza from March 25 to April 8. I’ve volunteered in Ukraine and Haiti, and I grew up in Flint, Mich. I’ve seen violence and worked in conflict zones. But of the many things that stood out about working in a hospital in Gaza, one got to me: Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or the chest, virtually all of whom went on to die. Thirteen in total.

“At the time, I assumed this had to be the work of a particularly sadistic soldier located nearby. But after returning home, I met an emergency medicine physician who had worked in a different hospital in Gaza two months before me. 'I couldn't believe the number of kids I saw shot in the head,’ I told him. To my surprise, he responded: 'Yeah, me, too. Every single day,'” he said.

The piece quotes dozens of healthcare workers and includes three X-rays or CT scans of pediatric patients who were shot in the head or the left side of the chest. The person who provided the scans was Dr. Mimi Syed, who worked in Khan Younis from August 8th to September 5th and said the children usually arrived at the hospital either dead or in critical condition after suffering a single shot.

On Tuesday, The New York Times opinion section editor issued a statement refuting claims circulating online that the images were altered, saying the editors had, quote, “photographs to corroborate the CT scan images,” but, quote, “because of their graphic nature, we decided these photos — of children with gunshot wounds to the head or neck — were too horrific for publication.”

For more, we’re joined by Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, the trauma and general surgeon who wrote this piece. He also spearheaded an open letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris signed by 99 U.S. medical professionals who served in Gaza, testifying to the unprecedented scale of the healthcare catastrophe and calling for an immediate ceasefire and the end to all U.S. support for Israel.

We are also joined in Chicago by Rajaa Musleh, the country representative in Gaza of MedGlobal, a medical humanitarian aid group. She previously worked as a nurse at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, let’s begin with you. Thank you for joining us in the studio. We heard from you in Gaza and spoke to you right when you came out. This is very significant, this New York Times op-ed, first that the Times agreed to run it, and then the controversy around it, what they published and what they didn’t publish. Tell us the story.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah, the Times piece was interesting. Actually, the opinion section reached out — the visual opinion team reached out to me and asked me to write the piece. And, you know, so we came up with the idea together. And that was after we wrote an open letter, like you mentioned. We wrote one in October, but we also wrote one in July to the Biden administration. That was when the Times reached out to me and said, “Can we get information about exactly who wrote or who saw what in Gaza?” So we did. We designed a poll. I got everybody to answer it that I could. And we went on from there.

You know, the controversy that you mentioned about the images is just manufactured nonsense. It’s got no connection to reality whatsoever. These pictures are — there’s no reason to doubt them at all. Furthermore, I’ve seen the full CT scans. I’ve seen the photos of the actual wounds on the children. It’s not surprising. And these were common injuries in Gaza. I mean, like, almost everybody saw the same thing. Everybody saw kids get shot in the head. Almost everybody saw severely malnourished children.

And yeah, so, it seems like the piece has had an effect. It seems like it’s making its way around and people are seeing it, and they’re kind of horrified by what they see, which they should be.

AMY GOODMAN: And then, talk about the whole issue of whether to show the dead or dying children and their injuries.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah. So, that was never — so, in the piece as I wrote it, that was never part of the plan, I guess you would say. But after — once all this nonsense about people saying the images are faked came out, The New York Times, I guess they — and I wasn’t involved in that decision at all, but they had to decide whether or not to put, you know, the picture they’re talking about. She’s probably a 4- or 5-year-old girl. Her eyes are closed. She has a breathing tube down. And she has a bullet wound right here. There’s some brain matter that you can see on her hair. You know, I’m a trauma surgeon, so I’m used to seeing things like that, but I can understand what they mean when they say that they’re too horrific to publish. I personally wish that Americans could see more of what it looks like when a child is shot in the head, when a child is flayed open by bombs. I think it would make us think a little bit more about what we do in the world.

AMY GOODMAN: Did the Times also do a news piece on this, given the level of the scans you had, the pictures you had?

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah, we collected a lot of documentary evidence from people who — or, from healthcare workers who had been in Gaza quite a bit. And all of them have quite a bit more. Yeah, everyone takes a lot of photographs and videos and things like that when they’re there. And they’re all date- and location-stamped. They’re not faked.

I don’t know if the Times news section has reached out to other people who — because, you know, their names are mostly public. I don’t know if they’ve reached out to them or not for specific comment about specific things.

I have been contacted by, I don’t think I’m exaggerating if I say, dozens of journalists since coming back from Gaza, news journalists, saying that “We want to publish about the children being shot in the head, the extent of malnutrition, especially small infants dying of malnutrition and dehydration.” And they all say that they need an overwhelming — they need a way of just kind of overwhelming their editors’ skepticism. They need just a humongous mass of evidence. So, like, I know — I probably shouldn’t name them, but I know editor — or, I know journalists at the Post, at the Times, at BBC —

AMY GOODMAN: The Washington Post.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Sorry, The Washington Post, yes — who have been working on such stories for months, but still not out, despite having massive amounts of evidence.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Dr. Sidhwa — Dr. Sidhwa, what is the implication of so many children being shot in the head, when you would assume that if children are, as the Israelis claim, unfortunate collateral damage of their bombing attempts to kill militants in Gaza, how — what does this mean to you, that so many children are being found to be shot in the head?

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah, it’s a good question. So — excuse me. So, you know, as physicians and nurses, we can’t say that this particular child or that particular child was shot on purpose or by Israel or somebody else. That’s not what we can possibly do. We’re not war crimes investigators.

But I think it’s pretty clear that when there’s a pattern of, if in every catchment — in the catchment area of every hospital in Gaza, every time any international has been around, for an entire year, on a daily basis, a child has been shot in the head in a place of 2 million people, it seems unlikely to me that that’s an accident. You know, if you look at the differential of killing between Ukraine and Israel — it depends on what day you calculate it, but the differential is literally hundreds of times. The rate of killing of children in Gaza is hundreds of times higher than it is in Ukraine. So, it’s very hard for me to believe that this is just a byproduct of a war that’s being fought in otherwise just ways. I find that hard to believe.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you mentioned other battles in other wars. Your experience in those other war zones, what is the difference from what you see, aside from the children being shot in the head, other specific differences between what’s happening in Gaza and what you’ve seen in other places?

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Well, there’s a few. One is the massive level of destruction. Not only have the hospitals been attacked, the universities, it’s getting down to the level of destroying the water, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure and concentrating an entire population on the Mawasi — in the Mawasi area, which is basically just the beach of Gaza. Oxfam wrote a report where they estimated that when there were 500,000 people in the Mawasi area, there was one toilet for every 4,130 people there. That’s just totally outrageous. I mean, those numbers don’t exist anywhere else on the planet. Now there might be a million. Nobody really knows how many people have been pushed to the Mawasi. But these are just totally outrageous numbers.

So, you have a largely child population. Gaza is very young. It’s been incredibly concentrated. It’s been starved for a year. And the winter rains are coming, which are going to lift, you know, all the sewage and everything up out of the ground. Every sewage plant has been destroyed. Ninety percent of the water, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure has been destroyed. And the healthcare system has been destroyed. So, that’s pretty unique in my experience.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, and I also wanted to ask you — you recently were supposed to speak at Columbia Medical School, but your event was canceled at the last minute. Could you talk about what happened?

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah. I wouldn’t call it my event, just because I wasn’t the organizer. But yeah, you know, I was invited with Adam Hamawy, who is an American veteran and a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, and Dr. Mark Perlmutter, who is an orthopedic and hand surgeon, a Jewish American — I think he’s been on Democracy Now!; he’s definitely been on Democracy Now! before — and Lana, whose name, last name, I just can’t pronounce, who is a surgical nurse who also was working in Gaza, and she was actually one of the first internationals to go into Gaza.

You know, we had a medical talk planned. It was a technical exercise in surgical and medical care in an extremely difficult setting. It wasn’t a political talk. But the organizers were smart. They recognized that it was very likely to be canceled at the last minute. It was canceled as we walked in the building, from what I can tell. And so, they had organized a bookstore down the street to be available. And so, smart on their part. It’s not surprising, but I think it’s pretty shameful, to be perfectly honest.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring in, in addition to Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, Rajaa Musleh, who is the country representative in Gaza of the medical humanitarian aid group MedGlobal. Earlier this year, she worked as a nurse at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. She’s currently joining us from Chicago.

Rajaa, thank you so much for being with us. You sheltered at Al-Shifa. And, of course, the head of Al-Shifa Hospital was arrested by the Israeli military. Can you describe what the situation was like then, when you were there, and what you understand, as you deal with Gaza every day, even as a nurse in Chicago, is happening now and what you’re calling for?

RAJAA MUSLEH: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Sorry.

Actually, I’m has trapped. I have trapped, actually, for hospital for more than 40 days. And what I’m witnesses in this period, actually, I can describe it as crimes, because we received at the hospital a huge number of injured persons coming to the emergency department, and the majority of the cases, unfortunately, women and children. And the massive of the injured for these cases was severe. It is the first time of my whole life I’m witness this kind of injury. Many people or many children come without legs, without arms. And even I’m witness a father, like, hold his children in two bags. This is the first time of my life I’m witness that severity of the bombing that using during this war.

The situation in Shifa Hospital was really very critical and very bad. There is no access to food, because there’s more than 80,000 IDPs inside the Shifa Hospital. There’s no electricity. They cut the electricity. They cut the water. And, you know, he situation was very bad.

One of the cases that I will never, ever forget it, for a girl, her age is 10 years. She was completely burned. Ninety percent of her body was burned. And she asked me to stay beside her and hold her hand, until the moment — I will never, ever forget her burned skin at my hands — until the moment I feel that, until the moment I feel guilty because I did not obey or stay beside her in the bed, because she requested that, and I did not do that; until the moment I feel guilty when she asked me about her mother and father and sister, brothers, and I cannot respond to her request, because the whole family has been killed during bombing her house.

I will never forget the dogs were eating the dead body inside Shifa Hospital at the front of the emergency department. This will be stuck on my mind for the whole life.

I will never, ever forget a boy, after the operation, his leg has been amputated, and he asked me to move his leg. What I should respond for a kid — his age is 9 years — when he asks me, “Just move my leg”? I pretend that I move his leg, and I ask him, “Is that OK?” He said, “Yes.” In this moment, I feel like my heart is broken, because the suffering of my people inside Shifa Hospital and in the whole Gaza Strip.

Now the situation on the ground, I receive calls from my colleagues from the north of Gaza. There’s no access to food, no access to water, no access to fuel for the hospitals to operate the centers or to operate the hospitals here in north Gaza. The situation is very, very critical.

I’m here in Chicago just to send my people’s message: We need ceasefire now. We need ceasefire now. Enough is enough. More than one year, and the people inside Gaza are suffering from and taste many types of death. Enough is enough. Three hundred sixty-five days, and the people inside Gaza taste all kind of death.

I’m witness the horrible of this war. I’m witness four wars before, and this war is completely different, the death everywhere, the suffering everywhere. The people just eat one time. They save the food for the children. And the children are suffering from malnutrition inside Gaza.

My message for the whole world: We are human beings. We are not numbers. We have the right to receive healthcare inside Gaza. We have the right to raise up our children. We have the right to return back our lives, our dignity. We have the right to rebuild our universities, our schools. We are human beings, and we are not numbers.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Rajaa Musleh, I wanted to ask you, the interactions you had, if any, with the Israeli soldiers. How did they treat the medical personnel, especially those who had come from other countries?

RAJAA MUSLEH: Yeah, actually, now we send the doctors from outside Gaza through Karem Abu Salem. But, you know, they prevent the Palestinian people, even they are American, to enter Gaza. So, all the people we send from outside Gaza go through Karem Abu Salem, because of Rafah border now is completely closed.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, as we hear this devastating description from Rajaa Musleh, who worked at Al-Shifa and is a Palestinian American nurse, comes from Gaza City, as you talk about the spaces being closed in this country — I mean, the lack of follow-up on your piece, when you try to speak at, for example, Columbia, it’s shut down. You have to go to a local independent bookstore. And yet the Times did publish this column. And what it’s meant, the kind of response that you’ve gotten? You haven’t stopped since you’ve come back, as you organize with doctors and nurses and medical personnel to describe what’s happening there. I also wanted to ask your response to the latest letter of the Biden administration, saying if they don’t stop — improve the situation in Gaza, if Israel doesn’t, the U.S. will cut off weapons — not this week or next week or the next week, but in a month.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah. So, I think the Times piece is significant in that it might represent a shift in elite opinion about just, like, Rajaa said, enough is enough, and how much more destroyed do they want Gaza to be? And that opens up some possibilities for us to be able to do things that can actually help the people of Gaza, and not just Gaza, but elsewhere, as well.

Like you mentioned, The Times of Israel, there was a letter leaked, apparently, to The Times of Israel that the Biden administration sent on Sunday — excuse me — to Ron Dermer and Yoav Gallant, the strategic affairs and defense ministers in Israel, saying that Israel has — needs to start immediately, but has up to 30 days to improve the humanitarian situation.

And they pointed out some interesting things in that letter. They said that in September, the lowest amount of aid that has ever — that’s gone into Gaza in the past year went in, in September, which means the least amount that has ever gone into Gaza. Of course, the Israelis will deny that, but it’s nevertheless quite obviously true.

And they raised the possibility of what they called consequences under NSM-20 and other American laws, meaning the laws that prevent the provision of arms to human rights abusers. Well, I think you played a Reuters journalist pointing out earlier there’s no reason to wait 30 days. It’s not like Israel hasn’t been attacking Gaza for a year. So, this has been going on for, like Rajaa said, long enough. We can stop sending them arms tomorrow, and the U.S. can lead an arms blockade against not just Israel, but Israel and all Palestinian and Lebanese armed groups. And that can stop, or at least dramatically decrease, the fighting, the death and the misery immediately.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a surgeon in California, the San Joaquin General Hospital, his New York Times op-ed, “65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza.” And Rajaa Musleh, country representative in Gaza of MedGlobal, a medical humanitarian aid group, previously worked as a nurse at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. She is a Palestinian from Gaza.

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Uncommitted Co-Founder Abbas Alawieh on U.S. Election & Family in Lebanon Fleeing Israeli Bombs
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 16, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/10/16 ... transcript

Less than three weeks from the election, Kamala Harris is campaigning in Michigan. Will she lose votes over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza and expanding war on Lebanon? Meanwhile, Republican candidate Donald Trump has opened a new campaign office in the swing state. “It feels like Vice President Harris is not doing what it takes to be both humane and compassionate and sensitive to the political realities in Michigan that are necessary to engage with in order to beat Donald Trump,” says Abbas Alawieh, co-founder of the “uncommitted” movement to change U.S. policy toward Israel and Gaza. “What are we even talking about as Democrats if we speak so much to the value of human life, of the dignity of workers, when our party’s official policy is to send more and more weapons to a fascist government that is on a killing spree?”

Transcript

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

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

Less than three weeks from the election, Kamala Harris is campaigning in Michigan. Will she lose votes over the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza and expanding war on Lebanon? Republican candidate Donald Trump has opened a new campaign office in the swing state.

For more, we’re joined by Abbas Alawieh. He is co-founder of the “uncommitted” movement, which grew out of concerns by Democrats over President Joe Biden’s policy toward Israel and Gaza. Abbas Alawieh is a former Capitol Hill chief of staff for Democratic Congressmember Cori Bush of Missouri, before that, former longtime congressional staffer. In recent weeks, his relatives in Lebanon have had to flee their homes over Israeli airstrikes.

Abbas, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. We also saw you at the Democratic convention leading the sit-in overnight, or sleep-in, if you will, outside the DNC, demanding a Palestinian American voice be heard on the stage, which the DNC did not agree to. But first, tell us about your family. Tell us what’s happening in Lebanon to your grandmother and everyone else there.

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

On my way in, I was on the phone with my family. These days, when it’s as hard as it is for Dr. Sidhwa and others to have the very — the kernels of truth that we can get from Gaza exposed, I’m finding myself relying more and more on the firsthand accounts of my family members on the ground to really understand what’s happening, because I think what gets lost in the thousands and thousands and thousands, the numbers of humans, of people, of universes, of people we know and love that are being harmed and killed, they’re not numbers. They’re real people.

I’ll tell you about my grandmother. My grandmother is an elderly person. She’s in her eighties. She has numerous health conditions. Her mobility is severely impaired. She’s been forced to flee four different times now since the increased aggression by the Israeli military against Lebanese civilians. She loves being in her home. She loves going out to the stoop, the few steps that she’s still able to take, so that she can enjoy the breeze. Right now she’s in a foreign place. She’s someone who feels like she’s at the end of her life. And she fears that maybe she won’t get to die in the home that she knows and loves. She’s in a foreign apartment, just sitting there waiting, as a lot of people are.

But that’s not the only experience we’re having. On my way in, I was talking to my aunt. My uncle had gone to Nabatieh. He’s a first responder. And at the top of your show, Amy, you were talking about the municipal building in Nabatieh, where my family is from, that was targeted by the Israeli military today. In that building, the mayor of Nabatieh was killed, as were numerous city officials. And my uncle was in that building. We couldn’t get a hold of him for a little bit. And we were able to get a hold of him. Some of his friends died, were killed. And this isn’t the first time he’s had friends killed as a first responder. As a first responder, five of his colleagues recently, as they were trying to administer — or, as they were trying get humanitarian aid out to people, they were seeking shelter in a church in Daraya in Lebanon, and the Israeli military bombed the church, that had only first responders in there.

You know, my family has very extensive experience — indeed, expertise — at surviving Israeli military violence. You know, southern Lebanon was occupied from 1982 until 2000. And so, I have family members who have endured the torture, the abuse, the targeting. What my family members are reporting now is a level of inhumanity, of violence, of belligerence that we haven’t seen before. People are afraid to show up to the sites that have been destroyed, because what the Israeli military is doing now is they’ll bomb whoever shows up to pull bodies out from under the rubble. And that’s what my uncle is. He’s a first responder whose job it is to show up and pull out the bodies from under the rubble. And now even people like him are being targeted, not once or twice, but systematically.

And so, I’m an American. I feel like I have a specific responsibility in the world, since my country is the one that is sending the weapons that are being used systematically to harm and kill civilians. And the best that I’m being told my government can offer is this leaked letter that you just referenced, the Biden administration officials warning the Netanyahu government that if they keep blocking that humanitarian aid, in 30 days they’ll strongly consider what happens with the weapons that we’re sending. Our leverage over the Israeli government is not about humanitarian aid. Our leverage with the Israeli government is about the weapons. The more weapons we send them, the more babies they kill. That’s just how it works. And so, stop sending the weapons.

What the folks in that municipal building where my uncle was in Lebanon, what they were doing is they were having a meeting about two trucks of humanitarian aid that had just gotten to Nabatieh. And they were — it was volunteers and first responders and city officials meeting, thinking together: How are they going to get this aid out? What happened? The people administering the aid were the ones targeted and harmed and killed and traumatized.

And so, our leverage with the Israeli government is not in how many humanitarian trucks get in. It’s in how many 2,000-pound bombs we send them to obliterate entire societies. I think our government would do better at actually using the leverage that it has.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Abbas, I wanted to ask you, in terms of the displacement, an estimated 1.2 million people just in a few weeks: Where are these folks supposed to go as Israel continues to advance into Lebanon?

ABBAS ALAWIEH: Yeah. Thank you for the question, Juan.

Virtually everyone I know in Lebanon has been displaced. Most of my family lives in south Lebanon or in the southern suburbs of Beirut or in Beirut, the city proper. You know, it’s a situation where in the immediate aftermath of the very intense escalation, we had family members, friends with literally nowhere to go, staying on whatever is available of the Beirut beach, you know, just staying there waiting, waiting for the bombs to stop.

You know, people are in these really weird situations where they’re trying to find somewhere else in Lebanon to go, and they’re being asked for a month’s rent — or, sorry, a year’s rent in advance if they are able — in order to be able to seek shelter. This is a country that, prior to this specific inhumane escalation by the Israeli military, was already in a state of economic freefall. Most of the people being harmed are people who either live in poverty or live with, you know, the complexities of human life.

I have a cousin just a few days ago who showed up to my aunt’s house after where he lives, in central Beirut, was bombed, and he showed up to my aunt’s house covered in debris, with him — it was him and his wife and their two college-age children. Both he and his wife are people who are blind.

And so, you know, think about the complexities of human life that we try to account for. I’m a Democrat, so we talk about, you know, the care economy. We talk about wanting to support people as they age, wanting to support people in their disabilities. People in all of their complexities are living through the complexities of their everyday life, and, simultaneously, the walls around them are caving in on them, are slamming down on their heads. What are we even talking about, as Democrats, if we speak so much to the value of human life, of the dignity of workers, when our party’s official policy is to send more and more weapons to a fascist government that is on a killing spree, on a baby-killing spree?

And so, it’s the realities of being displaced. It’s not just sort of I’ll move from one apartment to another. It’s everything around you. Your entire existence is uprooted. It’s a violent, violent reality.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Abbas —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I wanted —

AMY GOODMAN: Oh, go ahead, Juan.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you: What do you — what have you asked, you and others in the “uncommitted” movement, of the Harris campaign? What’s been their response? And what do you say to people who say, “Well, let’s get Harris elected into office, because Trump is too dangerous, and we’ll work on shifting her position once she’s in the White House”?

ABBAS ALAWIEH: My message to every Democratic voter who’s voting for Harris, to every person who identifies as a progressive, to every person who believes in the sanctity of every child, the sacredness of every child, of every elder, of every worker, the time to say that you will hold Harris accountable is not after the election. It’s now.

If you intend on voting for Harris — you know, the great leader and Palestinian American scholar Noura Erakat came out with a thread yesterday on Twitter where she’s urging everyone who is voting for Harris: Don’t vote for Harris in private. State publicly that you are voting for Kamala Harris, and be specific about how you will be accountable to the people, the Palestinian Americans who are currently — who currently have family enduring a genocide. How will you be accountable to them? How are you insisting, even through your vote, that you will hold Democrats accountable to stop the weapons that are flowing to harm and kill civilians?

So, that’s my message to every voter hearing this. If you’re going to vote for Harris, if you believe — I believe that we’ve got to block Donald Trump. If you believe that, then state that publicly and say, “And once we block Donald Trump, here’s how I will hold Harris accountable, that during her first hundred days, she must achieve a ceasefire, and the way to achieve a ceasefire is to stop sending the weapons.” So, we have to state that publicly.

And we have been doing everything we can to offer Vice President Harris opportunity after opportunity to meet the community that is experiencing this immense level of pain where they are. It just so happens that Vice President Harris needs every vote she can get in a state like Michigan. And a lot of us in Michigan are currently in a state of mourning, of mourning. My friend’s father, Hajj Kamel Jawad, was someone who was, you know, like the people today in Nabatieh, trying to get humanitarian aid to people, and was killed for doing so by an Israeli military airstrike. He was an American. This is a community in a state of grief. And so, as we have been urging the vice president’s team, please, please, meet with people who are directly impacted. Meet with Lebanese Americans and meet with Palestinian Americans who have had family killed over there by the bombs that the vice president’s and the president’s administration is sending.

What we’ve been told repeatedly is, “You know, the vice president is very busy. She’s on the campaign trail. She can’t really be meeting, taking meetings like that right now.” And then, the next day, we’ll see the vice president has met — you know, they put out a release saying she met with Muslim Americans, Arab Americans. But she only meets with people who have endorsed her campaign. That’s an inappropriate posture to have at this moment. If you are going to Michigan and asking these people for their vote, you need to recognize that Arab American and Palestinian American communities right now are in a state of grieving. And you have an obligation, a responsibility to sit down and hear from them.

We’ve heard over the past year repeated reports of the administration prioritizing meetings with the families of Israeli Americans who have family being held hostage in Gaza. It’s important that the administration hear from those families. Why is it — why is it that the president, that the vice president have not taken the time to sit down with Palestinian American families who have family over there? I have asked this question repeatedly of the vice president’s team. I was told that, you know, she’s spoken to some families in the past. She’s had sit-downs in the past. But also I was told explicitly that she has not sat down with a single Palestinian American family who has family killed in Gaza this year, in the year 2024. What are you waiting for, Vice President Harris?

And, you know, Amy, you had Dr. Sidhwa here. Those doctors, those U.S. medical workers, they have been asking Vice President Harris to sit down with them. She won’t do it. President Biden won’t do it.

And so, in my estimation, it feels like Vice President Harris is not doing what it takes to be both humane and compassionate and sensitive to the political realities in Michigan that are necessary to engage with in order to beat Donald Trump. And so, we — you know, everybody who’s going to try and beat Donald Trump despite that needs to make a public commitment now that they’ll hold Vice President Harris accountable, especially during her first hundred days, to stop the weapons from flowing to Netanyahu’s killing spree.

AMY GOODMAN: Abbas Alawieh, I want to thank you for being with us, co-founder of the “uncommitted” movement.

[admin]

CAN BIDEN REIN BIBI IN? As Israel sets its sights on Iran, the US declares nuclear targets out of bounds.
by Seymour Hersh
Oct 16, 2024


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on September 27. / Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images.

This week, according to a report in the Washington Post, an active and fully involved President Joe Biden finally set a limit on what Israel could do with the untold numbers of American bombs that Israel has recently been dropping on Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. The Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been debating how and when to respond to an earlier Iranian missile attack on Israel and an anxious world has been watching as the military madness of the Middle East, fueled by American weapons, continues to escalate.

Biden had stepped up, the Post reported, and told the Israelis that “he would not support an Israeli strike on nuclear-related areas” in Iran. Biden and Netanyahu had had their first talk in seven weeks, and the Israeli leader got the message. He agreed to limit Israel’s retaliation to military targets in Iran and avoid any nuclear or oil installations. The Post described the Israeli turnaround “as a sign of restraint” that could avoid a wider war. The newspaper’s assessment came amid what can already only be described as a wider war.

Why is Biden, on his way out of office, continuing to seek the limelight instead of doing all he can to promote the competence and strategic know-how of Kamala Harris, his vice president who is now struggling, amid some adverse internal polls, to defeat Donald Trump in an election three weeks away? If Harris does not win next month, Biden’s pettiness and need for attention in these last weeks will not be forgotten. Harris was on Biden’s call with Netanyahu, but she should have been taking the lead on all serious foreign policy matters in these weeks. Biden seems intent on upstaging his loyal vice president, and doing so on the front pages of the nation’s major newspapers.

The sad fact is that the president has lost the support of many young Americans through his continued backing, in the form of tens of billions of American dollars in military aid, of Ukraine’s war against Russia and Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Netanyahu has long believed that Iran is intent on becoming a nuclear power. In fact, as I reported in the New Yorker in 2011, the US intelligence community has concluded in two secret assessments, known as National Intelligence Estimates, that there is no evidence that any of the enriched nuclear materials in Iran have been diverted to a secret nuclear weapons program. There is no such program in Iran, although its nuclear industry continues to produce and store uranium that has been enriched to 60 percent. (Uranium at that level of enrichment has no medical use and is not powerful enough for a bomb, but publicly storing uranium at that level is seen not as an arbitrary choice by some nuclear arms control experts here. Rather, it can be understood as a chilling political message to enemies: “We have gone this far in response to provocation from Israel and other enemies without producing weapons-grade uranium, but we are capable of doing so.”)

There’s something bizarre in the spectacle of a US president negotiating with Israel about what targets to hit instead of doing whatever he can to stop further bombing. Why is a president of the United States negotiating with the leader of any nation, ally or not, about which targets his air force is going to attack next? And why are he and his foreign policy aides telling the media about it?

The tragic truth is that Biden and his foreign-policy team, headed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, will depart office having left the United States mired in wars in Ukraine and the Middle East with no immediate way out. Russia is more than holding its own in its war with Ukraine, with no end in sight, and is now in the process of upgrading Iran’s sophisticated S-300 air defense missile system with the next generation of technology, capable of tracking the most advanced ballistic missile firings.

I have been reporting on Iran’s suspected bomb program for more than two decades. In 2011 one of Iran’s senior diplomats confided to me that he was appalled by his country’s official lying about its secret purchase of what are known as dual-purpose goods: machinery that could be made capable of enriching raw uranium ore to the 5 percent level needed to drive a nuclear power plant, and but also to the 90 percent enrichment level needed to develop a nuclear bomb.

The hardline Iranian revolutionary government that came to power in 1979 after the overthrow of the pro-American Shah was convinced even a decade later that the path to nuclear arms would be blocked to Iran on the open market. The regime also believed, correctly, that any effort to buy the equipment and low-grade uranium ore needed to run a nuclear reactor for peaceful use could never take place on the open market. Its double-dealing efforts on the nuclear black market quickly became known to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a watchdog tasked with getting all nations to comply in peaceful uses of the atom. It was headed from 1997 to 2009 by Mohamed ElBaradei, an Egyptian diplomat who was skeptical that Iran was ever scrambling for weapons-grade uranium.

I got to know ElBaradei during his directorship, after he had concluded on behalf of the IAEA that the Iranian leadership had come to terms with its wrongdoing on the black market. At that point, Iran got IAEA approval to activate their one reactor for commercial energy use. The US and Israel remained skeptical but continued their close monitoring of the Iranian nuclear program at Natanz, Iran’s main enrichment center 200 miles southeast of Tehran. The goal of the surveillance was to ensure that none of the partially enriched uranium was diverted for use, once fully enriched, in a bomb. There has yet to be evidence, then or now, of a diversion of any enriched material at Natanz and any other Iranian nuclear site for potential military use.

In October 2015, after years of intense negotiations, there was a major breakthrough in the control of the bomb. The United States, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the European Union joined with Iran in signing a treaty putting restrictions—to be monitored by tamper- and radiation-resistant cameras—on all aspects of Iran’s nuclear operations, including enrichment and possible diversion activities. In return, the signatories agreed to ease an extreme set of sanctions that had been put in place on Iran, including those involving trade and transactions with the international financial system. One hundred billion dollars soon flowed into the Iranian treasury. The treaty, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was fiercely opposed by Donald Trump, who won the presidency the next year. Trump withdrew from the JCPOA agreement in the spring of 2018, to the dismay of most in the worldwide arms control community, after promising that he would negotiate a better deal. He did not do so before leaving office.

With the JCPOA gone, the rigid Iranian leadership surprised some by announcing it would continue the nuclear enrichment monitoring obligations that were imposed by its membership in the IAEA. Netanyahu continued his public insistence that Iran was cheating its way to a bomb.

There turned out to be a poorly understood condition to do with monitoring in the JCPOA treaty that has enabled many of Iran’s enemies to suggest in recent years that Iran’s nuclear officials have been cheating in an effort to move quickly to the bomb. Avril Haines, director of the Office of National Intelligence, reported to Congress last July that Iran has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.” Similarly, Rafael Grossi, the director general of the IAEA, angered some on his staff early this year when he claimed Iran was “not entirely transparent” about its nuclear program at an international meeting in Dubai. Grossi further distressed IAEA technical experts by saying that he and others were “concerned about the ability of my inspectors to be able to put the jigsaw puzzle together again.”

The inevitable impression left by such remarks was that Iran, no longer bound by the JCPOA strictures, was finding ways to accumulate weapons grade uranium and improve its potential to become the only other nuclear power in the Middle East besides Israel, which has yet to publicly acknowledge its nuclear capability. It is believed to have a fleet of more than one hundred warheads—likely far more than that—in storage or ready to be fired on command in underground bunkers. Inevitably Israel is concerned about any competing nuclear power in the Middle East, but nuclear parity is unlikely to occur anytime soon.

In a recent exchange, a former high-level IAEA official expressed exasperation to me at what he saw as the willingness of the senior managers in Vienna, home of the agency’s headquarters, to cast doubt publicly on the efficacy of the current IAEA camera coverage of Iran’s major nuclear facilities. The implication was that some of the vital camera coverage had been lost with the cancellation of the JCPOA. This was not so, he told me: the Iranian government is still required by the IAEA to provide round-the-clock camera coverage of the main “enrichment plant at Natanz” and other enrichment plants scattered around the nation. The office of Director General Grossi also gets reports, he said, “on the cyclonical machines”—centrifuges—“that spin at high speed to produce low-enriched fuel for commercial reactors and, at concentrations of 90 percent or more, fuel for nuclear weapons.”

The bottom line is that Iran is still producing large quantities of uranium that in some cases is being enriched to 60 percent of purity for reasons explained above, but there is no evidence of an active bomb program at any of the known Iranian nuclear research facilities. US and allied intelligence services have looked hard for evidence of an underground facility filled with scientists and technicians capable of fabricating a hotter-than-hell collection of spun-up uranium gas into a solid nuclear core that could be fitted into a bomb or a rocket. So far, I have been told, the US, even with the world’s best spotters of underground exhaust pipes, has yet to spot an Iranian underground nuclear weapons facility.

So there is no evidence of an Iranian nuclear bomb amid an awful lot of partially enriched uranium that is far from making a bomb that can go boom. Will such facts stop Netanyahu from his constant talking of the Iranian nuclear threat? Not likely. He has his own muse, and his own demons, and a lot of blood on his hands.

[admin]

GAZA AFTER A YEAR OF WAR. A new documentary chronicles destruction and abuse
by Seymour Hersh
Oct 08, 2024

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A Palestinian child is seen following the Israeli airstrike on Ibn Rushd School in Al-Zawaida, sheltering displaced people, in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on October 6. At least 24 Palestinians, including children, were killed, and 93 others injured early Sunday morning in two separate Israeli airstrikes. / Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images.

Last week Al Jazeera released Investigating War Crimes in Gaza. The 81-minute documentary is a searing indictment of the treatment of those who always suffer most in war—women and children—during Israel’s retaliation for the horrid murders Hamas inflicted inside Israel a year ago this week.

Israel’s initial ground attack failed to rescue all the Israeli hostages or to destroy the several hundred miles of the Hamas tunnel system. The ongoing air attacks have resulted in the indiscriminate killing of men, women, and children, day and night, in houses, apartments, and office buildings. Home to more than two million Palestinians, Gaza has been torn apart, with immense casualties from the bombings that have eventually left little sign of civilization: no hospitals, universities, markets, restaurants, or civic life.

The war in Gaza has extended into the West Bank and now to Lebanon. The Israeli leadership, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with religious fanatics in charge of key ministries, has edged the nation into economic misery, and they continue a campaign of assassinations and bombings. Sirens sounded throughout Israel yesterday morning—a tragic anniversary—as a few easily intercepted missiles were fired from a still operating tunnel by a remnant of Hamas. Hezbollah’s much more formidable arsenal of missiles remains operational, and capable of striking deep into Israel. The Israeli Air Force struck what were described as Hamas targets last weekend in Gaza, and the IDF continues the air and ground war against Hezbollah in Lebanon. There has been fear of an Israeli attack on Iran in retaliation for Iran’s missile attack on Israel following Israel’s assassinations of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last month in Lebanon and a senior Hamas official last summer in Tehran. Murder is in the air in the Middle East and there is no international leader—certainly no one in the Biden administration—with the standing and the will to keep it from happening.

In all of this, Netanyahu’s administration has been constantly supported by the Biden administration which has reportedly provided Israel $18 billion in military aid since last October 7. Biden remains publicly resolute in his support of Israel, as does Vice President Kamala Harris. His foreign policy aides, headed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, are now quiet. Blinken and his colleagues have spent the past several months telling Americans that a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas would happen, and some or all of the remaining hostages would be recovered. All along Netanyahu had other plans.

The destruction of Gaza, observed daily online and on television by the world, is the background for one the major themes of the documentary: the callous indifference of Israeli soldiers operating amid the devastation. There is little contact throughout with Hamas, which has been battered by Israeli bombing and has not posed a significant above-ground threat. There also is no evidence today of a continuing intense Israeli hunt for the remainder of the more than 250 hostages initially seized by Hamas and others. The usual signs of intense urban warfare in the Middle East—ambushes and door-to-door and house-to-house fighting—do not appear in the Al Jazeera documentary because the anticipated intense ground war with Hamas never came to be.

Instead we have video after video, taken by Israeli soldiers and relayed to family and friends, of bored Israeli soldiers ransacking the apartments and homes of Gazan families who fled in panic, perhaps because of an Israeli warning that their neighborhood was to be targeted. Such warnings did take place, but surely were not seen as a humanitarian gesture by Gazans who fled to the streets despite being terrified to venture outside.

The documentary showed that some apartments, once vacated, were ransacked by Israeli fighters, with flak jackets off, weapons down, and their cellphones filming away. With their commanding officers watching and participating, the Israeli soldiers filmed themselves pawing through the apartments, destroying appliances, smashing furniture, and making fun of Arab food. There is a hunt for money, and, as young males in wartime will do, a ransacking of the clothing of women and the usual fascination for women’s underwear that often is worn by a prancing IDF soldier as his colleagues record away.

The videos, which were forwarded by social media to friends and families back home, reek of contempt for Palestinians, as if all the men in Gaza and their wives and children were hardcore members of Hamas. The documentary shows us that they turned out to be big hits at the many early pro-war dance parties back home. There is not much dancing today in financially stricken Israel. Other scenes in the video show clusters of Israeli soldiers, in uniform and on duty in Gaza, standing in close quarters on the top of emptied buildings—no bombs were coming their way—and cheering as a cluster of apartment buildings ten or so stories high a few hundred yards away began to tremble, obviously because of unseen bombs set off below ground, and then slowly fold away.

As the journalist who broke the stories of the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam and of the photographs of sexual abuse of prisoners in Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison by untrained American Army Reserve prison guards, I understand that soldiers in combat do horrid things, including rape and murder, to noncombatants. But the Abu Ghraib photos were circulated only among the members of the unit on duty; they were not meant for outsiders, including the Army chain of command. It was understood that their actions, if made known to higher-ups at headquarters, would lead to prosecution.

That was not the case with the photos taken in Gaza and passed around widely, including among the soldiers’ commanding officers. Such evidence of enduring corruption among the officer class may be impossible to cure in the short term, given the degradation of Israel’s political and military leadership today.

There were other photos that I found far more troubling in the documentary, specifically the scenes of a forced march to the south, monitored by Israeli soldiers, by families who had found sanctuary in a hospital in Gaza City. The march was widely reported at the time, but the documentary added facts that were not known. The marchers—including young children and the elderly, some hobbling on crutches in the daytime heat—were ordered to wave a white flag in one hand and hold their IDs in another as they walked. Those who dropped either of these were not allowed to stop walking to retrieve the dropped goods. It was a form of gratuitous collective punishment seen rarely since World War II. It was shaming to watch.

A clandestine image of a forced march from a Nazi camp at the end of the second world war. Photograph: US Holocaust Memorial Museum

Netanyahu and the religious zealots in control today in Israel obviously have their eyes on Gaza and West Bank as real estate that will soon be open to the possibility of future settler domination. Just who will rule the two million or so surviving residents of Gaza is not known, but any such leadership will be approved by Israel. Self-rule is not going to happen for the desperate surviving Palestinians—if they are allowed to stay in Gaza. A precise death toll in the last year of the war is not yet possible; estimates vary today from the official Gaza health ministry count of more than 41,000 to academic projections four times as high.

Netanyahu has been clear in his view of the Palestinians’ future. Last October 28, he told Israeli troops about to go into battle: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.” It was a reference to a biblical command in which God gave the Israelites permission to entirely destroy an enemy known as the Amalekites. “And we do remember,” Netanyahu said.

17 Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. 18 When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and attacked all who were lagging behind; they had no fear of God. 19 When the Lord your God gives you rest from all the enemies around you in the land he is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you shall blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!

-- Deuteronomy 25

Chapter 15.3 of the first Book of Samuel has God commanding Samuel: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

Netanyahu is not alone in his modern day fanaticism. Last April 30, Bezalel Smotrich, the extremist Israeli finance minister and member of the security cabinet, who is a close associate of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the equally fanatical minister of national security, returned to the Bible in publicly calling for the “total annihilation” of Israel’s enemies. He specifically cited three cities in Gaza that should be destroyed. “There are no half measures,” he said before quoting Deuteronomy: “‘You will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. There is no place under heaven.’”

Smotrich ominously said that after Hamas is destroyed, Israel must “clear out, with God’s help, with one blow, wicked Hezbollah in the north, and really send a message that what will happen to those who harm the Jewish people is the same as those who tried to harm us in the past—they will be destroyed, destroyed, destroyed. And it will echo for decades to come.”

Netanyahu has begun bombing “wicked” Hezbollah in Lebanon. Can anyone doubt the fate of Gaza and the West Bank? I cannot. This is no longer the civilized Israel I have visited and reported upon for many decades.

Is anyone in the Biden White House paying careful attention to the words of Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir as America continues to ship more bombs and other arms to a deeply traumatized and terrorized Israel?