Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
November 6, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/shows/2024/11/6
Protests Erupt Across Israel After Netanyahu Fires War Chief Yoav Gallant
Nov 06, 2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant Tuesday in a surprise move that triggered large-scale protests across Israel. Gallant had publicly disagreed with Netanyahu over a temporary deal to exchange Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners; he also insisted Israel carry out a full investigation into the failures that led to Hamas’s October 7 attack — something Netanyahu rejected. Netanyahu appointed Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz to succeed Gallant. Katz recently led a successful campaign to cancel Israel’s agreements with the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. Earlier this year, he proposed creating an artificial island off Gaza’s coast where Palestinians could be forcibly relocated. In August, Katz called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, declaring, “This is a war on all fronts, and we must win it.” On Tuesday, protests erupted in Jerusalem near Netanyahu’s official residence calling for the prime minister to resign. Meanwhile, tens of thousands marched in Tel Aviv, where protesters blocked a major highway.
Itamar Berger: “We believe it has never ever been this urgent. We believe the worst threat on the very existence of the state of Israel is not posed by Iran or Hezbollah or Hamas, but by our own government. Our own government is doing whatever is within its power to destroy us from within.”
Palestinians Condemn Biden’s Support for Israeli Military as Assault on Gaza Continues
Nov 06, 2024
In the Gaza Strip, four Palestinians were killed when Israeli troops shelled a home southeast of Khan Younis. Elsewhere, an Israeli airstrike leveled an apartment building in Gaza City, killing five people. On Tuesday, Palestinians in Gaza observed the U.S. election with a mix of dread and resignation. This is Ikram Al Hamm, a Khan Younis resident who spoke to reporters surrounded by the rubble of her home, which was destroyed by Israeli attacks.
Ikram Al Hamm: “Here’s our destruction. The destruction of the Gaza Strip is at the hands of the Americans. All the explosive materials that America sends to Gaza only bring destruction. What can we benefit from America? What will we gain from it, from the U.S. elections? Did the U.S. president encourage us in any way? No, he stood against us, against our kids in the Gaza Strip and against our very lives. He destroyed us and the Gaza Strip.”
Israeli Raids on Occupied West Bank Kill 8, Wound Child and Photojournalist
Nov 06, 2024
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces have killed at least eight Palestinians in a series of raids that began on Monday. Two people were killed in the town of Tamoun, where Israeli troops were seen moving a body with an armored bulldozer. Elsewhere, at least four people were killed in the city of Qabatiya near Jenin. During the raid, photojournalist Rabie Al-Munir was shot in the abdomen and rushed to a hospital where he’s in stable condition. Palestinian medics said a 3-year-old child was also hospitalized after being bitten by an Israeli attack dog.
Israeli Strike on Residential Building Kills 20 in Beirut Suburb
Nov 06, 2024
Israel’s military is continuing its assault on towns and villages in southern Lebanon, where on Tuesday at least 20 people were killed and more than a dozen others wounded when an Israeli airstrike tore through a high-rise apartment building in the coastal town of Barja south of Beirut. The attack came without warning. Resident Moussa Zahran showed reporters the twisted wreckage of his home after he narrowly survived the attack, which left his young son and wife hospitalized when their home collapsed around them.
Moussa Zahran: “We were drinking coffee in the living room. These slabs that you see here weigh 100 kilograms. They fell on a 13-kilogram child. And all of these fell on my wife.”
NGOs Ask U.N. Human Rights Council to Probe Israel’s Assault on Lebanon
Nov 06, 2024
Today, a group of 12 NGOs, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, called on the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate abuses committed during Israel’s war on Lebanon, which has killed over 3,000 people. Jeremie Smith of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies said in a statement, “There’s a huge risk of the same types of atrocities occurring in Lebanon as in Gaza.”
U.K. Authorities Drop Terrorism Charges for Retired Academic Who Advocated for Palestinian Rights
Nov 06, 2024
In the U.K., police arrested Israeli filmmaker, activist and retired academic Haim Bresheeth under the British Terrorism Act after he gave a speech on Friday advocating for Palestinian rights during a protest. Bresheeth is a child of Holocaust survivors and founder of the Jewish Network for Palestine. Police accused him of “making a hate speech” but refused to answer questions from Bresheeth and his supporters when pressed over what specifically triggered the arrest. He was released without charge the next day. It’s the latest in a series of arrests in Britain under the Terrorism Act targeting people who voice criticism of Israel. At least three journalists have been detained and/or raided over their reporting.
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Linda Sarsour: Harris’s Embrace of Pro-Israel Policies at Odds with Democratic Base
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
November 6, 2024
In the Arab American-majority city of Dearborn, Michigan, Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris by over six percentage points, with third-party candidate Jill Stein capturing nearly one-fifth of the vote. During the primary elections, a majority of Democratic voters in Dearborn selected “uncommitted” over then-presumptive nominee Joe Biden, citing disapproval of the president’s handling of Israel’s aggression in the Middle East. “Uncommitted” voters continued to press the Harris campaign to shift its Israel policy as the election went on, but were routinely ignored. Democrats “made a calculation that they did not need Arab American, Muslim American and Palestinian American voters,” says Palestinian American organizer Linda Sarsour, who was in Dearborn on election night. We speak to Sarsour about the Harris campaign’s failure to secure the support of a previously key part of the Democratic base. “We are going to be in big trouble, and I blame that solely on the Democratic Party and one of the worst campaigns I have seen in my 23 years in organizing.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: I also wanted to address the issue of foreign policy. From Dearborn, Michigan, to talk about Donald Trump’s election, we want to go to Michigan, where we’re joined by Linda Sarsour, Palestinian American Muslim organizer, author of We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders, co-founder of MPower Action Fund. Yes, Dearborn, the Arab-majority city, Trump won 42% of the vote over Vice President Kamala Harris, who received 36%. Jill Stein received 18%. Stein campaigned calling for an arms embargo against Israel. And I also want to hear what Ralph Nader has to say about this.
Linda Sarsour, if you can respond? We spoke to you last night. Now a lot of the results are in. If you can comment on what happened and what a Trump presidency will mean for Israel-Palestine?
LINDA SARSOUR: I appreciated hearing Ralph Nader’s analysis, which I share. And this all goes to the feet of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party literally marginalized Arab American, Palestinian, Muslim American voters. Kamala Harris did not really, in my opinion, make any effort to really win over the votes of these demographics. Kamala Harris continued to parrot the usual talking points about humanitarian aid and about what’s happening, Gaza being devastated, without any action plan. She was asked many times, “Would you break from the policies of Joe Biden or in the ways in which Joe Biden has addressed the genocide in Gaza?” And she has said no multiple times.
Again, Donald Trump engaged in outreach in the Muslim American community. He went and visited mosques. He met with religious leaders. He had billboards all across Dearborn that were multilingual, in the language — in Arabic languages, in Bangla, in Urdu. And whether or not people agree with Donald Trump or whether or not — and you know me, Amy. I’m having déjà vu of 2016. I was a frontline organizer when Donald Trump was president, so I’m not looking forward to the next four years. But the Trump campaign did the outreach. They filled in a gap that was left by the Democratic Party.
And all Kamala Harris had to say in this election was “I will uphold international law. I will actually enforce the laws we already have on the books when it comes to military aid to any country violating human rights.” But the campaign made a calculation. They made a calculation that they did not need Arab American, Muslim American and Palestinian American voters, that they can actually win this election without this important electorate. They were too busy courting Liz Cheney and her friends instead of coming to Michigan and actually having deep, courageous conversations with the critics of the Kamala and Biden administration.
So, this is a devastating moment for our communities. Donald Trump is someone that we know very well. We don’t only know him on domestic policy. We know him also on foreign policy. He gave sovereignty to Israel over the Golan Heights. He declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel. There is an Israeli settlement that is named after Donald Trump. His son-in-law Jared Kushner believes that Gaza is this beautiful waterfront property. We are going to be in big trouble. And I blame that solely on the Democratic Party and one of the worst-run campaigns that I’ve seen in my 23 years in organizing.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Linda, I wanted to ask you something I asked earlier to some of our other guests. There was not a large outpouring of independent votes, but there definitely was a decline in the overall Democratic vote. Kamala Harris has apparently gotten 15 million votes less than sleepy Joe Biden did in 2020. I’m wondering, your sense was that those who stayed home, a reflection of some of the failures of the Democrats this time around?
LINDA SARSOUR: Absolutely. And the thing that people don’t want to talk about — and as you know, the Democratic Party is not a fan of mine, because they don’t like to listen to critics who actually are organizers and know how to mobilize communities. Somebody should ask the Democratic Party: How much money did you invest in Black and Brown-led organizations who do get-out-the-vote efforts, who engage and build power locally in communities? Somebody needs to ask them that question.
They spent a majority of their money on ads, on television ads, and really ignored the grassroots. I was on the ground in Pitt County, North Carolina. I was in Saginaw, Michigan. I was in Dearborn. I went to Georgia. And I did not see the type of field operation that is worthy of our communities. And Joe Biden had the Democratic House, Senate and White House in his first two years, and he couldn’t deliver on things like protecting and expanding voting rights. He blamed Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema for being obstacles to his agenda. He couldn’t even get two Democrats in line to pass legislation.
Lots of women across the country care about things like reproductive rights. Well, why didn’t the Joe Biden administration push Congress to codify Roe? We are in this situation because Democrats want to be in power, but they don’t know how to use their power once they are in office. And that is a failure of the party. And the party has to go back to its roots if it wants to move from here. You are either going to be loyal to your base, which majority supported ceasefire and support arms embargo against Israel, that support progressive issues, or you’re going to continue to try to recruit a constituency that does not exist, that did not turn out for you in this election. And I hope somebody in the campaign right now is sitting and reflecting on this, and hopefully some people are fired and no longer will be working for the party after this election.
AMY GOODMAN: Linda Sarsour is Palestinian American. Ralph Nader, you are Lebanese American. We only have a minute, but your response on the issue of the Democratic position, the Biden-Harris position on Israel, Palestine and Lebanon right now, and what you think has to happen? Because, in fact, the Democrats are in power right now, before Trump takes over.
RALPH NADER: Are you asking me?
AMY GOODMAN: I am.
RALPH NADER: Yeah. Well, Biden is projecting weakness. There are a lot of voters who want strength, and Trump understands that. And on the Middle East, he’s projecting incredible weakness. That’s why we call him Bibi Biden, and his secretary of state, Bibi Blinken. He’s giving Netanyahu whatever he wants — daily shipments of deadly weapons of mass destruction, diplomatic cover, veto in the U.N., pushing allied countries to get in line. He even refuses to demand that Netanyahu let American reporters into Gaza to report what’s going on. He won’t even allow airlifting at the request of American doctors who are over in Gaza, airlifting burned babies and amputee children for treatment in ready and able American hospitals. He is a co-combatant with the Palestinian holocaust and the genocide that’s going on. And Israel’s making no bones of this. Netanyahu wants the whole of Palestine, the West Bank, southern Lebanon to the Litani River. And it’s an all-go signal from Biden. So he’s projecting weakness here. He is weakly representing the mighty United States of America as if he’s an adjunct, a poodle for the Netanyahu regime.
AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there. That does it for this hour. I want to thank Ralph Nader, Linda Sarsour and John Nichols of The Nation.
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Rami Khouri: U.S. Voters Are Sick of Foreign Wars. Can Trump Strike a Grand Bargain in Middle East?
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
November 6, 2024
Palestinian American journalist and a senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut, as well as a nonresident senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC.
Shortly after Donald Trump was announced as the winner of the U.S. presidential election, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to social media to enthusiastically congratulate him. Meanwhile, the Israeli military continued its violent assault on Gaza, killing multiple Palestinians in strikes on apartment buildings and homes. We speak to Palestinian American journalist Rami Khouri about what we know of Trump’s pro-Israel policies and how Trump beat Kamala Harris for the presidency. “Trump out-dramatized Harris, and that’s how he won,” he says.
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.
One of the first world leaders to congratulate Donald Trump on his presidential victory was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He wrote a message online that read, quote, “Dear Donald and Melania Trump, Congratulations on history’s greatest comeback! Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America. This is a huge victory! In true friendship, yours, Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu.”
We’re joined right now by Rami Khouri, Palestinian American journalist, senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut, also a nonresident senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC.
Rami Khouri, welcome back to Democracy Now! Your response to the Trump victory and what this means for Israel-Palestine and for Lebanon and beyond?
RAMI KHOURI: I’m not surprised by the victory. We knew it was going to be very close, and we knew that a lot of voters were not precisely telegraphing what they were going to do. The nature of the whole electorate has changed. It keeps changing every four years, due to many reasons. And the main reason I think that Trump won is that he ran a campaign — much as people don’t like him, for valid reasons usually, he did run a campaign that emotionally connected with not only his supporters, but a lot of other Americans. And Kamala Harris was a rank amateur. She had no idea what she was doing at that level of politics, which she showed four years ago when she ran in the primaries for the Democratic presidency candidate and got nowhere. And she just — she didn’t really touch on the issues that matter, other than abortion and maybe immigration a little bit. But even there, she was just following Trump’s lead.
So it’s no surprise. Many people are shocked. The trouble with Trump is that he’s so unpredictable in many areas. But the difference between now and four years ago is that we’ve had four years of his presidency and we’ve had four years of his being outside the presidency talking about issues. So he’s not an unknown quantity like he was eight years ago. And many of the things that he is going to do, internally and internationally, are predictable, I think. So, I would just hold my horses and wait and see what happens.
The last point I’d make is that the role of the Gaza Israeli plausible genocide, as the International Court of Justice calls it, the role of that plausible genocide by Israel, which was heavily, heavily, enthusiastically, consistently and clearly supported by the United States clearly had an impact. American people have shown now, as they did when I was in college in the late '60s, that they don't want their country being involved in a great war overseas that kills thousands and thousands of people that doesn’t really relate to them. And this is a really powerful lesson. We can’t draw the conclusions yet of exactly what the Gaza war did, but it clearly has mobilized a constituency that goes way beyond Arab and Muslim Americans. And I was in Dearborn, Michigan, last weekend for three days at a convention of Arab Americans, and what I saw was really, really, very, very powerful.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, Rami, how do you see the Trump administration changing policy in the Middle East versus what Biden has done, once he gets into office?
RAMI KHOURI: You know, one of the fascinating things about watching this stuff go on for half a century now, as I have, is there are little changes here and there. So, last time Trump was in, he recognized Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem, the annexation of the Golan Heights. He closed the PLO offices. He stopped funding UNRWA. He did all kinds of things that Palestinians don’t like and justice supporters don’t like, and that Israelis like and the evangelical right-wing American Christian fanatic supporters of Israel like. He did a lot of these things, and then Biden kept most of them. He didn’t really change really any of them significantly. And then Biden got involved in this incredible plausible genocide, and Harris followed him completely. So, I don’t think there’s really much change. Looking back and empirically speaking, looking back over the last 40, 50 years, there are only minor cosmetic changes between Republican and Democratic administrations. The bottom line that all of them accept, with only the occasional minor adjustment, is that they will do almost anything that Israel wants, for many reasons, which we don’t have time to get into here. But the American political establishment is fully and enthusiastically supporting Israel, even in its plausible genocide.
The American public is not. So, there’s a moral issue that came out of the American people over the last year and a half. And it was not just Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in Dearborn, Michigan. It was people all over the country, progressive Jews, labor unions, students, the student movement. So, this is a movement that is still young. This is like Vietnam antiwar protests in 1965. It took a long time, another seven, eight years, to get the Vietnam War ended. And this is a similar situation.
How it impacts Trump is not clear. And this is where we have to really wait, because it’s very hard to predict what Trump is going to do. He cares about two things. He cares about drama, entertainment, and he cares about making deals. And the deals may be political deals, and they’re also commercial deals, for him and his family and his cronies and his friends and his supporters. And that’s what politicians do all over the world. There’s nothing illegal about that. It’s just how politics works in superficially democratic societies. But they are democratic, and the vote counts, and new people come to power, and they make deals, and they do dramatic things. Trump outdramatized Harris, and that’s why he won. He appealed to people’s emotions, and that’s how people vote. They don’t vote on, you know, is our democracy threatened. That was a very important line from Harris and all her millions of supporters on the American mainstream television, who look like idiots now, because they were — not because the message is bad, because the message doesn’t resonate with ordinary people all over the country, which is what we saw. So, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
I think the greatest arena that we should look at is that combination, which Trump sort of looked at a little bit, you know, when he was president — Iran, Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and the United States — that ring of powers that have — or, they’re not all powers — that ring of actors who all have important interests at play. He pulled out of the Iran agreement, the nuclear and sanctions removal agreement with Iran. And this is one of the triggers that brought this situation of war in the region about. And he also did the Abrahamic Accords with his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who knows about the Middle East as much as I know about underwater fishing in China, which is nothing. But the Abraham Accords are one of the things that set the stage for the continued conflict and the marginalization of Palestine, which set the stage for the October 7 attacks. So, if they don’t understand the connection among all of these issues and the growth of resistance movements in Yemen and Iraq and Lebanon and Palestine, if people don’t understand that, they’ll just come down to perpetual conflict.
I think if somebody can explain to Trump that he can be a great hero by making — a great hero to everybody by making a grand bargain that gives the Iranians, the Israelis, the Palestinians, the Saudis, everybody, what they really want, which is to live in peace and a normal life. And I think it’s attainable. I think it’s possible. But you’ve got to have the level of smart, sensitive and daring statesmanship, which we have not seen from Trump in a significant way. We’ve seen it very superficially, where it helps either his political constituents or helps Jared Kushner’s bank account in terms of deals, which he of course did with the Saudis. So, this is the position we’re in. We have to really wait and see. Is a second Trump presidency going to be more sophisticated and more meaningful than his first one? He is more experienced. And we’ll just have to wait and see.
AMY GOODMAN: On Saturday, Rami Khouri, the Palestinian youth movement organized a No Votes for Genocide protest. This is Sophie, a student here in New York City.
SOPHIE: I’m not voting for the capitalist ruling class, so I’m not voting for either Kamala or Trump. I don’t think they do anything for my people. Half of — I’m half-Bengali. Half of my family are Muslim Bengali immigrants. And they actually experienced their own genocide that was funded by the U.S. And I’ve never seen any of U.S. presidents do anything for the Global South, including Bangladesh, Pakistan or any of the Middle East. The argument that a vote for Jill Stein or Claudia and Karina or third party is a vote for Trump is really frustrating. I think it’s also — it’s not a vote for Trump or Kamala. It’s a vote for neither of them. And if Kamala loses, it’s her own damn fault. You know, like, this is the one thing that’s important to me. If she were to do anything for Palestine, I would consider voting for her.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that was a protest that happened just on Saturday. And I wanted to end, Rami Khouri, by asking you about what happened after President Trump won and he got his congratulations from Benjamin Netanyahu. Just before that, he fired the Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and he installed Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, who proposed creating an artificial island off Gaza’s coast where Palestinians could be forcibly relocated. Katz also called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, saying, “This is a war on all fronts, and we must win it.” Are you concerned, under Trump, that Netanyahu will follow through with annexing, for example, the West Bank?
RAMI KHOURI: Yes. I mean, we have to be concerned about Trump and Netanyahu and others doing really outrageous things. They’ve done them in the past, and they’ll do them again, unless somebody checks them. And this is the missing element in this situation in Palestine and in U.S.-Israel, U.S.-Middle East relations. The Israelis — Netanyahu is quite desperate right now, so he’s doing desperate things like this, only appealing to his right-wing fascist extremists in government and to their supporters overseas, who actually don’t know much about the details of the situation, but emotionally respond to this kind of process, where Israel is strong and protects itself and defends itself. So, yes, we have to be careful about what might happen. The response to the excesses of the Israeli—
AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds.
RAMI KHOURI: Yeah, the response has to be continued mobilization, protest, solidarity and justice for both Israelis and Palestinians simultaneously. That’s the winning formula. And bring in Iran, and everybody will be on board happily, including the Saudis, too.
AMY GOODMAN: Rami Khouri, Palestinian American journalist, senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut.