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.