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

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
November 22, 2024

Israel’s Genocide in Gaza Continues After ICC Arrest Warrants, with Attacks on Hospital, Shelters
Nov 22, 2024

In Gaza, Israel’s deadly attacks are continuing a day after the ICC issued historic arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. In north Gaza, the beleaguered Kamal Adwan Hospital warns it will turn into a mass grave if no medical supplies are allowed in as it remains besieged and under attack from Israeli forces. One attack shut down the main power generator Thursday, while ongoing bombing punctured the hospital’s water tanks. The hospital is still caring for 85 patients, including babies, children and patients in critical condition.

In Gaza City, rescuers searched the rubble today after at least 20 Palestinians, including children, were killed in an Israeli strike on a building housing displaced families. This is a relative of a young boy killed in the attack.

Ibrahim al-Dayeh: “This building has been hit three times. Three times. And every time, people were massacred. Most of it was gone. Nobody was left. All of them are martyred today. A whole family lays here. A whole family has been wiped away. I swear to God, the whole family is wiped from the civil registry, because of you, Israel. You kill civilians.”

Israeli Airstrikes in Lebanon Level Beirut Building, Kill 2 More Paramedics
Nov 22, 2024

In southern Lebanon, an Israeli air attack has killed another two paramedics, adding to the more than 220 health workers who have been killed by Israel in Lebanon. Separately, an airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs leveled at least one massive building earlier today.

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, a coalition of rights groups are suing the Dutch government for providing arms to Israel and failing to prevent genocide in Gaza.

U.S. House Passes Bill Allowing Trump to Silence Critics, Label Nonprofits as Terror Groups
Nov 22, 2024

The House of Representatives on Thursday approved H.R. 9495, dubbed the “nonprofit killer” by civil society groups. The measure would give the incoming Trump administration broad authority to go after its critics by revoking the tax-exempt status of any group it labels a “terrorist supporting organization,” with no evidence needed. The bill passed on a 219-184 vote, with 15 Democrats joining Republicans. H.R. 9495 has the support of the Anti-Defamation League and other Israel lobby groups. Critics warn the law would immediately target organizations fighting for Palestinian rights. The bill’s fate in the Senate remains uncertain. We’ll have more later in the broadcast.

***

“A Great Day for Justice”: Palestinian Lawyer Raji Sourani on ICC Arrest Warrants for Netanyahu & Gallant
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
November 22, 2024

We speak with the celebrated Palestinian human rights lawyer Raji Sourani after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over the war in Gaza. Israel called it “an antisemitic decision,” and the Biden administration said it rejects the charges on the grounds that the ICC does not have jurisdiction. But many other countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy and the Netherlands, have vowed to comply with the court’s decision, which obligates states party to the Rome Statute that established the court to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant if they enter their territory. Sourani, now in Cairo after fleeing Gaza when his house was bombed by Israel, applauds the ICC for withstanding intense pressure from Israel and the United States to carry out its mandate. “They feel they are fully immune, they are free to do whatever they can, they will never be held accountable, and why their appetite for crimes [is] growing like a snowball every day,” Sourani says of the Israeli government.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, we’re in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the U.N. climate summit, COP29. I’m Amy Goodman.

But we’re turning now to the International Criminal Court’s historic decision to indict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas commander Mohammed Deif. In a statement, the ICC said the Israeli leaders had “intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity,” unquote.

On Thursday, Netanyahu slammed the International Criminal Court for making what he called an “antisemitic decision,” unquote. The Biden administration also criticized the ICC. This is White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre.

PRESS SECRETARY KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: We fundamentally reject the court’s decision to issue arrest warrants for senior Israel officials. We remain deeply concerned by the prosecutors’ rush to seek arrest warrants and the troubling process errors that led to this decision. The United States has been clear that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over this matter.

AMY GOODMAN: But other nations, including Italy, the Netherlands and Canada, have vowed to comply with the ICC arrest warrants.

On Thursday, Nermeen Shaikh and I spoke to Raji Sourani, the founder and director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza. The award-winning human rights lawyer fled Gaza after Israel bombed his home. He is the winner of the Right Livelihood Award, as well as the Robert F. Kennedy International Human Rights Prize. He spoke to us from Cairo, Egypt. I asked him to respond to the International Criminal Court ruling.

RAJI SOURANI: This is a great day, great day for justice and dignity of man. It’s a great day for the rule of law. And this day makes us remember all these souls of children, women, civilians, all the destruction, all the starvation and displacements Gazans suffered for the last 13 months in this ongoing genocide, which broadcasted live on air at the real time to the whole world and costed us so far 44,000, has been killed. More than 70% of them are civilians. And not only that, but 140,000 has been injured. One-third of them will die because there is no access for medical equipment or medicine or even food. So, it’s a great day to have these genociders, finally, with arrest warrants and wanted for justice at the most important court on Earth.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Raji Sourani, could you respond to the way that the Israeli prime minister has responded to this news? The prime minister’s office declared in a statement on Thursday that the ICC’s “antisemitic decision” to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant is, quote, “equivalent to a modern Dreyfus trial.” Your response, Raji Sourani?

RAJI SOURANI: I mean, no new news in this. They are very arrogant. They are very jealous. The West, especially U.S. and Europe, made Israel feel they will never, ever they will be held accountable. They feel they are immune. They are doing all what they are doing and that they lied, and they don’t hide it. They attack children cancer hospitals at the daylight. They attack hospitals and doctors. They rape prisoners, by the army in the army detention centers. They kill women, children at the daylight. They starve people. They criminalized UNRWA, the body which should serve the Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip, the only body which is doing and delivering that. And nobody holds them accountable.

Look, last night, this ugly veto of the U.S. to the Security Council against ceasefire, just to stop genocide. By whom we are killed? By which bombs and missiles and airplanes? It’s American. It’s European. They feel they are fully immune, they are free to do whatever they can, they will never be held accountable, and why their appetite for crimes growing like a snowball every day. Like, now they are talking publicly, “We’ll clean Gaza from this 2-and-a-half million people, and we will settle in it, and the settlers will be there.” And they began to sell the land of Gaza to the settlers and to sell the apartments. And they declared their intention about West Bank and the cleaning of it. This is unprecedented that such state, Israel, having all these crimes, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, and just be dealt normally. This criminal, while he’s doing genocide, he came to the Congress, and he was received by everybody, and everybody was applauding him and his acts, more than the president of the United States. So, he’s a criminal. He deserves accountability.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Raji Sourani, founder and director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, where he was born. The award-winning human rights lawyer fled Gaza after Israel bombed his home last year. To see the full interview, go to democracynow.org. Raji was speaking to us from Cairo, Egypt.

***

House Approves “Nonprofit Killer” Bill, Most Dangerous Domestic Anti-Terrorism Bill Since PATRIOT Act
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
November 22, 2024

The House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday that would empower the Treasury Department to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit it deems has provided material support to a terrorist organization. A broad coalition of civil society groups have opposed the bill, warning that it would give the Trump administration sweeping powers to crack down on political opponents. H.R. 9495, the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, passed the House 219 to 184 largely along party lines, with 15 Democrats supporting the Republican majority. “This bill is essentially a civil rights disaster,” says Darryl Li, an anthropologist, lawyer and legal scholar teaching at the University of Chicago. Li, who recently wrote a briefing paper on the anti-Palestinian origins of U.S. terrorism law, says “anti-Palestinian racism is one of the great bipartisan unifiers in Congress.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. We’re broadcasting from the U.N. climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, but we’re looking at a bill that was passed in the House of Representatives Thursday. It was approved. It would empower the Treasury Department to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit it deems to have provided material support to a terrorist organization, without any evidence needed. If the bill becomes law, it could apply to a range of nonprofits, including unions, membership organizations, foundations and media organizations. A broad coalition of civil society groups have opposed the so-called nonprofit killer. H.R. 9495 passed the House 219 to 184, with 15 Democrats supporting the Republican majority. Earlier versions of the bill received broad bipartisan support, but following Donald Trump’s election, most Democrats withdrew their support.

For more, we go to East Lansing, Michigan, where we’re joined by Darryl Li. He’s an anthropologist, lawyer and legal scholar teaching at the University of Chicago. His analysis of the so-called nonprofit killer bill was published on Spencer Ackerman’s blog forever-wars.com. It’s headlined “The Most Dangerous Domestic Anti-Terrorism Bill Since the PATRIOT Act.”

OK, Darryl, why? Why is this so significant? Again, it was passed in the House. It now makes its way to the Senate.

DARRYL LI: Thank you for having me on, Amy.

As you mentioned, this bill is essentially a civil rights disaster, that would allow the government, under any administration — I want to be clear that this bill is terrible no matter who is president — but it would allow the government to shut down nonprofits on the smear of being terrorist-supporting organizations.

Now, obviously, the government, after decades of authoritarian “war on terror” policies, already has ample legal tools at its disposal to go after nonprofits, essentially, for any reason that it wishes. What this bill would do in addition, the thing that it would add and the thing that makes it so dangerous, and actually the most dangerous domestic terrorism law in a generation, is that it would essentially smuggle in through the back door a domestic terrorist group list for the first time. This is something that the United States, to this day, still doesn’t have. We have many, many lists of so-called foreign terrorist organizations, that are overwhelmingly Muslim and/or based in the Global South.

This law requires an accusation with no evidence, but a tie-in. It’s an accusation that nonprofits are supporting a group on one of the existing international terrorism lists. This is important to understand, because it explains why so many people on the right in Congress are comfortable signing on, because the bill is essentially discriminatory by design. Right-wingers and white supremacists in Congress can support this bill, with the assurance that their allies, right-wing extremist groups, are highly, highly unlikely to ever be targeted by this bill, because there isn’t going to — it’s much less likely that they will be smeared with an accusation of being tied to an international terrorist organization that’s already on one of the government lists. So, that’s why this particular coalition —

AMY GOODMAN: [inaudible]

DARRYL LI: — has come together. And it will — oh, go on.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk more about the origins of the bill, why Democrats supported the bill, and what it means now that it’s going to the Senate, how organizations are organizing around it.

DARRYL LI: Right. So, since October 7th, we’ve seen a whole bunch of outlandish anti-Palestinian pieces of legislation that have been designed to crush any protest or dissent around Palestine in the United States, while Congress, of course, continues to supply untold billions of dollars in weapons to Israel for its ongoing genocide in Gaza. This particular piece of legislation is the one that has gotten closest to becoming law. And initially, it did have significant bipartisan support, because, of course, anti-Palestinian racism is one of the great bipartisan unifiers in Congress.

With the efforts of civil society groups to ring the alarm and educate members of Congress about the dangers of this bill, not only for Palestine advocacy, but broadly, for any number of causes, and, of course, with the election of Donald Trump, more and more Democrats have awoken to the danger. So, right now the important thing, now that the bill has passed the House, is to ensure that it does not go anywhere in the Senate. So, it’s extremely important for people to keep up the pressure on the Democratic members of Congress, and especially those in the Senate, to block this bill in the remainder of this session and, of course, if it comes up in a future legislative session.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, next session — now, this already came up just a week or two ago, and now it has passed in the House. The Democrats control the Senate, but the Republicans will soon control the Senate.

DARRYL LI: That’s right, they will. But my understanding is that they’ll still need 60 votes to pass, so I don’t think the Republicans will have 60 senators, so there is still a chance that the bill can be blocked. But again, we can’t take it for granted. It requires all hands on deck and as much pressure as possible on the Senate Democrats to ensure that this bill doesn’t go anywhere.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, Darryl, it’s interesting that I’m talking to you here in Baku, Azerbaijan, because there have been scores of journalists, civil society, climate justice activists arrested in the lead-up to the COP. And for those who write about what’s happening in this authoritarian petrostate, they talk about the targeting of nonprofit groups. And that’s the beginning of going after these people who end up in jail. A number have said they’ve been brutalized in jail. Your final thoughts, Darryl?

DARRYL LI: Yeah, so, one thing that’s important for people to understand is that the Supreme Court has already said that material support for terrorism can include speech acts. It can include so-called coordinated advocacy. So it goes far beyond funding. And this is something that I think, for media organizations, in particular, should really be sort of raising the alarms in terms of the dangers of this bill for their work, in particular.

AMY GOODMAN: Darryl Li, we want to thank you so much for being with us, anthropologist, lawyer, legal scholar teaching at the University of Chicago. We’ll link to your article, “The Most Dangerous Domestic Anti-Terrorism Bill Since the PATRIOT Act.”

Coming up, we’ll look at Trump’s new pick for attorney general, Pam Bondi. Back in 20 seconds.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: This breaking news: Britain has just said it would comply, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or the former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant came to Britain, in arresting him.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
November 25, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/11/25/headlines

Kamal Adwan Hospital Director, Dr. Abu Safiya, Critically Injured by Israeli Drone Strike
Nov 25, 2024

In Gaza, Israel has repeatedly attacked the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia as Israel’s siege on northern Gaza continues. One drone strike injured the hospital’s director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who has repeatedly risked his life to keep the hospital open. Last month, his 8-year-old son Ibrahim died in an Israeli attack. On Saturday, Dr. Safiya spoke from a hospital bed in intensive care after the attack.

Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya: “They are targeting everyone. But, by God, this will not stop us from completing our humanitarian role, and we will continue to provide this service at any cost to us. We are still calling upon the world and will keep calling to the hope that there are those with consciences. I was injured in my place of work, and this is an honor for me to be injured in this place, since my blood is not better or more valuable than the rest of the martyrs. But this will not stop us, and we will continue to provide humanitarian service in a place known to the world. And we will provide it, God willing, no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes, no matter what, even if it costs our lives.”

Twelve other healthcare workers were injured at Kamal Adwan Hospital in another Israeli attack on Friday. Israel also bombed a building in Khan Younis in southern Gaza where several families were staying. At least nine people died, including children.

Ayman Abu Assi: “The world is unfair. We are being killed, and they are not doing anything. There is no food, water, and there is a besiege. And they kill us, and everyone is watching. We only have God. May their souls rest in peace, Ahmed, Mousa and all his friends. They were friends together when they were killed.”

Heavy rains and flooding are leading to more misery in Gaza. A Civil Defense spokesperson said Sunday, “Rainfall has caused severe damage to tents housing thousands of displaced people with water flowing inside the tents and damaging luggage and mattresses.”

Meanwhile, Hamas has announced an Israeli airstrike killed a female Israeli hostage in northern Gaza. The Israeli military did not “confirm or refute” the claim.

Israel Continues Deadly Assault on Lebanon Even as News of Ceasefire Deal Emerges
Nov 25, 2024

Israel is continuing to bombard Lebanon. On Saturday, an Israeli airstrike in central Beirut killed at least 29 people and injured 67 others. Survivors said no warning was issued before the attack.

Jomana Makkie: “What can I tell you? We escaped from Beirut’s southern suburbs, Dahiyeh, and we said we’d take shelter in Beirut because it’s safe. What happened in Dahiyeh has happened to Beirut. At least in Dahiyeh, there’s warnings, and people leave. In Beirut, it happens without warning, crime after crime, children killed. It’s enough, what happened in Gaza and what’s happening here and what happened in Dahiyeh.”

Hezbollah responded by firing about 250 projectiles into Israel. This all comes as new reports are circulating that the Israeli government has “agreed in principle” to a ceasefire in Lebanon.

Israel Likely Committed War Crime with U.S. Weapons by Targeting and Killing Journalists in Lebanon
Nov 25, 2024

In other news from Lebanon, Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of committing an apparent war crime by killing three journalists and injuring four others last month. Human Rights Watch found Israel killed the Lebanese journalists using an air-dropped bomb equipped with a U.S.-produced Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance kit in what the group said was “most likely a deliberate attack.”

“Another Step in Netanyahu’s Dismantling of Democracy”: Haaretz Newspaper Slams Israeli Sanction
Nov 25, 2024

The Israeli Cabinet has unanimously voted to sanction the Haaretz newspaper, saying the paper’s editorials “have hurt the legitimacy of the state of Israel and its right to self defense.” Under the move, the government will stop advertising in the paper and cut off communications with it. Haaretz responded by saying the decision is “another step in Netanyahu’s journey to dismantle Israeli democracy.”

In other news related to Israel, authorities in the United Arab Emirates have arrested three individuals after the body of an Israeli rabbi, Zvi Kogan, was discovered Sunday, three days after he went missing.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
November 26, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/11/26/headlines

Israel Continues Deadly Assault on Lebanon as Cabinet Votes on Ceasefire Deal
Nov 26, 2024

Israel’s military is continuing to bomb southern Lebanon and the capital Beirut, even as Israel’s security cabinet meets to discuss a ceasefire proposal with Hezbollah. On Monday, a massive explosion rocked residential buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs, following an Israeli warning on the social media site X for people to evacuate or face death. Similar Israeli attacks killed at least 31 people across Lebanon in just 24 hours. The continuing assault came as Lebanon’s foreign minister said he hoped Israeli leaders would agree to a ceasefire proposal later today. Under the deal, the Israeli military would withdraw from southern Lebanon within 60 days, while Lebanon’s army would deploy to border areas from which Hezbollah has launched rocket attacks on Israel.

In Italy, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called for more pressure on extremist members of the Israeli government who are unwilling to forge a ceasefire.

Josep Borrell: “On Lebanon, there is no excuses for a ceasefire. On the proposal agreement brokered by the U.S. and France, Israel has all security concerns. There is not an excuse for not implementing a ceasefire. Otherwise, Lebanon will fall apart.”

Josep Borrell also called on EU member states to honor the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Gaza. Borrell cited widespread support for an ICC arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin over war crimes committed in Ukraine.

Josep Borrell: “You cannot applaud when the court goes against Putin and remain silent when the court goes against Netanyahu.”

Syria’s government says Israeli airstrikes on Monday injured at least two people and damaged several bridges in Homs province near the Lebanese border. The Israeli military said it had targeted Iranian weapons smuggling routes through Syria to Hezbollah.

Israeli Attacks Kill 14 in Gaza; Bezalel Smotrich Calls for Palestinian Population to Be Halved
Nov 26, 2024

In Gaza, health officials report Israeli strikes killed at least 14 Palestinians and wounded 108 others over the latest 24-hour period. One strike hit a family home in northern Gaza’s Jabaliya. Another tore through a crowd of people gathered near a bakery in Gaza City.

The latest killings came as Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told a conference of Israeli settlers that Gaza’s population of more than 2.1 million should be drastically reduced. In remarks translated by Haaretz, Smotrich said, “It is possible to create a situation where Gaza’s population in two years will be less than half its current size.” Smotrich has called for Israel to effectively annex the West Bank and Gaza Strip and has called for the establishment of large new Israeli settlements.

***

War Crimes in Lebanon: Human Rights Watch Says Israel Used U.S. Arms to Kill 3 Journalists
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
November 25, 2024

Since October 2023, Israel has killed over 3,700 people in Lebanon, with most of the deaths occurring over the past 10 weeks. The attacks have forced more than 1 million people to flee their homes in Lebanon, where Israel has also repeatedly targeted journalists. In a new report, Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of committing an apparent war crime by killing three journalists and injuring four others last month, when it bombed the Hasbaya Village Resort in southern Lebanon, where more than a dozen journalists had been staying. The attack killed Ghassan Najjar and Mohammad Reda, both from Al Mayadeen TV, and Wissam Kassem, a cameraman from Al-Manar TV. Human Rights Watch has revealed Israel used an airdropped bomb equipped with a U.S.-produced Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance kit. “Journalists are civilians, and deliberately targeting journalists is a war crime,” says Human Rights Watch researcher Ramzi Kaiss.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Lebanon, where Israel has killed at least 31 people over the past 24 hours, ahead of a possible ceasefire. Israel’s security cabinet is expected to vote today on a ceasefire proposal. One Saudi news outlet has reported President Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron will announce a 60-day ceasefire in Lebanon later today. Under the deal, the Israeli military would withdraw from southern Lebanon within 60 days, while Lebanon’s army would deploy to border areas from which Hezbollah has launched rocket attacks on Israel. According to Israeli officials, the proposed deal would allow Israel to continue to operate inside Lebanon to remove what it views as threats by Hezbollah. Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib spoke earlier today in Rome.

ABDALLAH BOU HABIB: The country as a whole is paralyzed. And we wanted to finish this and to have a ceasefire. Hopefully tonight, by tonight, we will have this ceasefire.

AMY GOODMAN: Since October last year, Israel has killed over 3,750 people in Lebanon, with most of the deaths occurring over the past 10 weeks. The Israeli attacks have forced more than a million people to flee their homes in Lebanon. About 60,000 people in northern Israel have also been displaced.

Israel has also targeted journalists in Lebanon. In a new report, Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of committing an “apparent war crime” by killing three journalists and injuring four others last month. On October 25th, Israel bombed the Hasbaya Village Resort in southern Lebanon, where more than a dozen journalists had been staying. The attack killed Ghassan Najjar, a journalist and cameraman; Mohammad Reda, a satellite broadcast engineer — both from Al Mayadeen TV; and Wissam Kassem, a cameraman from Al-Manar TV. Human Rights Watch has revealed Israel used an airdropped bomb equipped with a U.S.-produced Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance kit.

To talk more about this new report and the latest in Lebanon, we’re joined in Beirut by Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher for Human Rights Watch.

Ramzi, thank you so much for being with us. Go back to that day of the killing of the three journalists and tell us what you have reconstructed, what you understand took place.

RAMZI KAISS: Hi, Amy. I couldn’t hear the question very clearly, just parts of it.

But I’m currently in Beirut. I came back yesterday evening. And just landing into Beirut, you could see plumes of smoke rising from Beirut’s southern suburbs. And just a few minutes ago, before showing up into this studio, there had been strikes on central Beirut about a kilometer to two kilometers away. And just a few minutes ago, as well, there had been 20 evacuation warnings that had been given to various buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs or Dahiyeh.

You might know that we’re — currently ceasefire negotiations are ongoing, the results of which are still not clear. There’s a sense of cautious optimism from U.S. officials and Lebanese officials. But as things stand now, and especially in the past few days, there has been dozens of strikes across Beirut, across the south, across the entire country. And so we’ll have to wait and see what happens or unfolds.

But the situation is very much one of war still, and we’re currently looking at, you know, over 3,700 people killed in Lebanon. This includes over 240 children. It includes over 222 health workers, over 700 women, and more than 40 hospitals damaged. And what the World Health Organization says is over 10% of Lebanese hospitals have been either ceased to operate or are partially functioning, and where more than 47% of attacks on healthcare workers have been fatal.

AMY GOODMAN: Ramzi, and if you could go back in time and tell us — reconstruct for us the day that the three journalists were killed?

RAMZI KAISS: Yeah, so, our investigation looked into the attack that took place on October 25, 2024. And what we found, that there was an Israeli strike on the southern Lebanese town of Hasbaya on a resort where at least — or, more than a dozen journalists had been staying, in the early hours of the day. It killed at least three journalists and injured at least four others. We found that this attack was most likely a deliberate attack on civilians and an apparent war crime.

We also found that the attack was conducted using an airdropped bomb with a U.S.-produced guidance kit, a Joint Direct Attack Munition, or a JDAM. Human Rights Watch researchers had visited the site of the attack. They had identified the remnants that were used as part of the attack. This included a remnant that was made by the U.S. company Boeing, in addition to another remnant that bore a numerical code that identified it as being produced by the U.S. company Woodard.

As part of our investigation, we spoke to at least eight people, including three journalists who were injured in the attack, including the owner of the resort where the journalists had stayed. We found that there was no military activity that was happening in the immediate area of the attack. There were no military forces or fighting. The journalists had been staying at the site since at least October 1, so at least 25 days before the strike happened. And they had made routine and repeated trips daily in the town of Hasbaya to a nearby hilltop where they were doing live reports. The hotel owner had told Human Rights Watch that the journalists had left and come back approximately the same time every day. Most of the cars that were present at the site were marked by “press” or “TV.”

All of this together leads us to the conclusion that the Israeli military knew or should have known that the site, the targeted building that was being struck, was one that contained journalists. Journalists are civilians, and deliberately targeting journalists is a war crime. The Israeli military initially, after the strike, said that they struck a building where terrorists were operating. But a few hours later, they said that the incident is under review.

And this is not the first time that we have documented the unlawful killing of journalists. We had previously documented an apparently deliberate attack on October 13th that killed Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah. It is also not the first time that we are documenting the use of U.S. weapons unlawfully in Lebanon. We had previously documented the unlawful use of U.S. weapons to kill aid workers — that killed aid workers earlier this year. And once again, we’re seeing them being used unlawfully, and this time journalists were the ones that paid the price.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ramzi, about the use of U.S. weapons, what are you calling for specifically of the U.S. government?

RAMZI KAISS: Yes. We’re calling on the U.S. government to suspend arms sales and military assistance to Israel, given that these weapons are being used unlawfully. We’re also calling on U.S. companies to end arms sales, recall already-sold weapons wherever possible, and stop all support services for already-sold weapons. In this case, the U.S. weapons were — in this case, U.S. weapons were used unlawfully in a deliberate attack on civilians, for which U.S. officials may be complicit — may be complicit in. And so, there’s a responsibility that the U.S. has under its own laws, but also under international law, to suspend arms sales where there’s a real threat, a real risk that these weapons will be used unlawfully.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We’ve also seen in recent days the International Criminal Court issue arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over war crimes in Gaza. Does the court have jurisdiction over crimes committed in Lebanon?

RAMZI KAISS: The court does not. And, in fact, one of the main calls that Human Rights Watch has been making is on the Lebanese government to provide the International Criminal Court with the jurisdiction to investigate crimes within its jurisdiction on Lebanese territory, regardless of who the perpetrator of these violations are. Lebanon is not a signatory to the Rome Statute but may provide the court with jurisdiction to investigate such crimes within its jurisdiction. We have previously made this call in relation to other investigations that Human Rights Watch has conducted. In April of this year, the government took this decision, instructing the Foreign Ministry to provide the court with jurisdiction under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute, but the Foreign Ministry never acted on the decision, and the government eventually reversed that decision, unfortunately.

So, currently, there needs to be a pathway for accountability in Lebanon. This is where the Lebanese government has a really significant role to play, that it has not yet. We’re also calling on the Lebanese government to convene or call for the convening of a special session at the U.N. Human Rights Council in order to establish an international fact-finding mechanism that can investigate, document, collect evidence and report on its findings in relation to violations of the laws of war in connection to the hostilities between — in Lebanon and northern Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Ramzi Kaiss, if you can talk about this possibility of a ceasefire and what exactly it would mean — you yourself live in Beirut — and how people would be affected? Does it mean there will be a mass flow of people back to their homes? What does all of this present? And how hopeful are the people of Lebanon right now?

RAMZI KAISS: Yeah, as I mentioned, there is some cautious optimism by U.S. officials, by Lebanese officials about the possibility of a ceasefire. But as we speak, strikes are currently ongoing in Lebanon. They are ongoing in the southern suburbs of Beirut, but, as well, in central Beirut, where about, you know, a few minutes ago, there had been a strike between one to two kilometers away. There have been ongoing, repeated evacuation warnings for buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut, and strikes are continuing to be reported in south Lebanon and across the country.

Whether a ceasefire or not takes place, the fact remains that in Lebanon more than 3,700 people have been killed, more than 240 children, more than 220 health and rescue workers, more than 700 women. Entire border villages have been detonated, have been destroyed and reduced to rubble. And there has been significant damages to the country’s health sector, with the large number of medical workers killed, the hospitals that have been damaged.

It’s not clear that many people in the south can return to their homes, given the vast damage that has happened, particularly in the border villages, where we have seen controlled demolitions, in some cases, of entire villages, in some cases, of large areas of those villages. We were speaking today with the mayor of one of the border villages, and he was expressing to us the anxiety that is had with returning to those villages because of what is not known, what is not known in terms of what is left of the villages, whether they’re going to be able to recognize it, but also in terms of what weapon remnants remain. These are villages that have also been struck by white phosphorus. They’ve been struck by high-explosive weapons.

And so, we have yet to see what will unfold with the ongoing ceasefire negotiations. But as things stand and given the high toll of people killed, of civilians killed, there also needs to be accountability for violations of the laws of war that have taken, that we have documented and that others have documented. This includes a deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate attacks on civilians, widespread use of white phosphorus, the unlawful attacks on civilian institutions, the use of booby-trapped devices. We’ll have to wait and see what comes about with regards to the ceasefire negotiations, but as things stand, strikes are ongoing on the country.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ramzi, what do you make of this decision of the Israeli government, even as they are entertaining the possibility of a ceasefire, ramping up these attacks in the past few days? What’s your sense of what their goal is here?

RAMZI KAISS: Yeah, it’s not clear, right? I mean, there has been a serious escalation in the scale of attacks, particularly with regards to strikes on the southern suburbs. We’ve seen dozens of strikes on the southern suburbs. There’s also been — you know, especially today with the evacuation warnings being issued to various buildings in the country — in some cases, strikes happening without evacuation warnings. To me, it’s not clear what all this message is. Hezbollah has also increased the number of rockets it’s fired into Israel, with yesterday firing over 300 rockets into various areas of north and central Israel. It’s not clear what this all means and whether the ceasefire will in fact take place. We’ll have to wait and see. But, you know, regardless, civilians are, unfortunately, paying the price, as more homes are being destroyed, as more buildings are being leveled, as more strikes are ongoing across the country.

AMY GOODMAN: Ramzi Kaiss, we want to thank you for being with us, Lebanon researcher for Human Rights Watch, speaking to us from Beirut, the latest report from Beirut headlined “US Arms Used in Israeli Strike on Journalists: Three Killed, Four Injured in an Apparent War Crime.”We’ll link to it.

***

Amnesty: Before Trump’s Term, Biden Must Change Policies on Asylum, Gitmo, Death Penalty, Gaza & More
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
November 26, 2024

We continue our conversation with Amnesty International USA executive director Paul O’Brien, who has written to President Joe Biden urging him for a number of policy changes before he leaves office in January. O’Brien’s letter calls for Biden to stop arms transfers to Israel and use U.S. leverage to end the war in Gaza; transfer detainees out of the Guantánamo Bay military prison and close the facility; commute the death sentences of people on federal and military death row; and restore asylum rights, which the administration severely curtailed this year. “He could do so much more,” O’Brien says of Biden’s last weeks in office.

Transcript

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

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Paul, I wanted to ask you about other things you mentioned in your letter, the issue of those folks on death row for federal crimes. Under President Trump’s first term, he oversaw the execution of 13 death row inmates, executing the most federal death row inmates of any president in more than a century. Talk about who is awaiting a death sentence now.

PAUL O’BRIEN: Thanks, yes, and those 13 executions happened in President Trump’s last six months. That’s what may be coming if we don’t see President Biden taking action now.

So, right now there are 44 men still on federal and military death row. One of those cases, Billie Allen, he was 19 when he [was sentenced for] a crime in 1998. There were deep flaws in his case, no DNA evidence, clear racism in his case. And yet, at the age of 47, more than half his life, he’s still there.

So, what we are asking President Biden to do is something he said he was going to work on in 2020. He said he was going to abolish the death penalty. All he’s done is put a moratorium during his administration. But that won’t mean anything once his administration ends. President Trump can simply end that moratorium and return to what he was doing at the end of his administration. So we need President Biden to commute those 44 sentences now.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Also, President-elect Trump has vowed to reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy. In what ways could President Biden help restore asylum at the border before his term ends?

PAUL O’BRIEN: Well, this is probably the greatest human rights crisis that is coming at us now, because President Trump has made clear he is going to immediately start engaging in mass deportations. President Biden, again, promised a human rights approach to immigration, and he has singularly failed to do so. In June, he passed an executive order which effectively shut down the U.S.-Mexico border and created this numerical cap on the number of people who can seek asylum.

There are many very specific things that he can do. During his administration, he set up the CBP One app. This is an app that people on the border can use to apply. I went down there and met with women, often mothers of young children, living in tents, waiting for this app to tell them when they could legally apply to enter the United States. And they were waiting month after month with no news. What he could do immediately is speed up the CBP One app process to get more people to legally apply for asylum, particularly for vulnerable populations.

But he could do so much more, as well, in these last couple of months. He could immediately stop expanding detention centers. He could shut down problematic detention centers and end the contracts of the companies that are running them. He could order the release of vulnerable populations who are in detention. He still has time to surge resources to address some of the backlogs that are now being experienced. And everything that he doesn’t do is going to make it easier for President Trump to fulfill his promises to initiate the biggest deportation in history.

AMY GOODMAN: Paul O’Brien, you’ve also called for the closing of Guantánamo. Explain.

PAUL O’BRIEN: It’s time, Amy. There are still 30 men there. President Biden has a window of opportunity right now. He can transfer all the detainees that are still there, already cleared for release, not charged with crimes, to countries where their human rights will be respected. He can halt unfair military commissions and help to resolve the pending cases that are there. All this can be done if he commits to closing Guantánamo once and for all during his last days in office. It can be done.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Gaza. Paul O’Brien, you’re executive director of Amnesty International USA. You’ve said, “Change course on Gaza: Stop arms transfers to the government of Israel in order to protect civilians and ensure U.S. weapons are not being used in violation of international law.” Senator Bernie Sanders, in the largest collection of U.S. senators, several dozen U.S. senators, they voted to stop arming Israel, but that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t the majority of the Senate, Paul.

PAUL O’BRIEN: That’s right. And this is what the United States must do now, and President Biden must show more leadership on this. It’s been weak rhetoric and weaker action since October 7 of 2023. He needs to send a clear message that the United States is no longer going to arm the killing of civilians in indiscriminate attacks, that we have documented time and again over the last more than a year now. He needs to use his remaining leverage to get a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. He needs to open up humanitarian access. And these will be the basis, we believe, and he needs to call for, the safe return of those remaining hostages. What is happening now to the Palestinian people has happened on President Biden’s watch, and he needs to take action to protect innocent lives in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA. We’ll link to your letter urging President Biden to “change course on critical human rights before end of term.” We’ll link to it at democracynow.org.

When we come back, we look at a new short documentary about the execution of a Texas death row prisoner. It’s called I Am Ready, Warden. Stay with us.

[break]

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
November 27, 2024

Israel Halts Assault on Lebanon as Ceasefire Takes Effect
Nov 27, 2024

A ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah has begun. Under the deal, Israel will withdraw troops from south Lebanon over a 60-day period, while Hezbollah will move its fighters and weapons to north of the Litani River. Lebanese troops plan to deploy to the south, which has been largely destroyed by 14 months of Israeli attacks.

In a joint statement, the U.S. and France said, “This announcement will create the conditions to restore lasting calm and allow residents in both countries to return safely to their homes.” Thousands of displaced residents of south Lebanon are returning home to find scenes of destruction. On Tuesday, Israel kept bombing the region, as well as Beirut, until just before the ceasefire took effect. Over the past 14 months, Israel has killed over 3,800 people in Lebanon and displaced more than a million. Israel has not yet urged residents displaced in northern Israel to return to their homes. Many question how long the cessation of hostilities will last. On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to keep attacking Lebanon if Hezbollah violates the deal.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “The length of the ceasefire depends on what happens in Lebanon. In full cooperation with the United States, we retain complete military freedom of action. Should Hezbollah violate the agreement or attempt to rearm, we will strike.”

2024 Becomes Deadliest Year for Humanitarian Aid Workers Due to Israel’s Assault on Gaza
Nov 27, 2024

In Gaza, Israel struck a school in Gaza City, killing at least 13 displaced Palestinians who had sought shelter in the Zeitoun neighborhood. Dozens were wounded in the attack. An Israeli airstrike on a home in the same neighborhood killed another seven people. Meanwhile, the United Nations reports this year is already the deadliest on record for aid workers, largely due to Israel’s war on Gaza. This is Lisa Doughten of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Lisa Doughten: “Since 7 October, more than 330 humanitarian workers have lost their lives. Most of them were UNRWA staff. Some were with their families in their homes. Others were at work in UNRWA offices and shelters. These numbers signal a disturbing lack of regard for the lives of civilians and humanitarian and U.N. workers. There’s no situation in recent history that compares.”

***

“Fragile” Ceasefire Begins in Lebanon After Israel Launched More Devastating Attacks
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
November 27, 2024

Nearly two months after Israel invaded Lebanon, a “fragile” ceasefire has been reached between Israel and Lebanon. Under the deal, Israel says it will withdraw troops from Lebanon’s south over a 60-day period, though Lebanese writer Lina Mounzer says “this is already being contradicted by the behavior and the directives of the Israeli army,” which continued to bomb Lebanese civilian areas through the waning hours of official hostilities. Thousands of displaced Lebanese are now returning to southern Lebanon, hoping that their homes are still standing. Many are mourning the nearly 3,800 Lebanese killed by U.S. weapons and Israeli warfare. While there is “relief” in the country, “people are finding it very difficult to celebrate,” says Mounzer. “The grieving process begins now.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: Thousands of displaced residents of southern Lebanon are returning home to find scenes of devastation after a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah came into effect earlier today. In the hours before the cessation of hostilities, Israel repeatedly struck areas of Beirut and southern Lebanon. Under the deal, Israel will withdraw troops from Lebanon’s south over a 60-day period, while Hezbollah will move its fighters and weapons to north of the Litani River. Lebanese troops will redeploy to the south.

In a joint statement, the U.S. and France said, quote, “This announcement will create the conditions to restore lasting calm and allow residents in both countries to return safely to their homes,” unquote.

Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati spoke earlier today.

PRIME MINISTER NAJIB MIKATI: [translated] Truly, it is a new day, concluding one of the most difficult stages of suffering that the Lebanese have experienced in their modern history. It actually was the most harsh, as well as hopeful. …

On this day, the 1,000-mile journey begins to rebuild what was destroyed and to complete strengthening the role of legitimate institutions, at the forefront of which is the army, on which we place great hopes to extend the state’s authority over the whole nation and strengthen its presence in the wounded south.

AMY GOODMAN: Over the past 14 months, Israel has killed over 3,800 people in Lebanon and displaced more than a million. Israel also killed the entire leadership of Hezbollah, including Hassan Nasrallah and two of his successors. Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel forced tens of thousands of Israelis to flee their homes.

We’re joined now by two guests. In Tel Aviv, in Israel, we’re joined by Gideon Levy, award-winning Israeli journalist, columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, where he’s a member of its editorial board. His latest book, The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe. And in Montreal, Canada, Lina Mounzer is with us, Lebanese writer, senior editor of the arts and literature magazine The Markaz Review.

You know, I remember just after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Lina, you were in our studio here, and you wrote about what it was like to see an attack on your country from afar, what it meant. Talk about the significance of the ceasefire now.

LINA MOUNZER: I mean, of course, you know, it’s a welcome relief for the entire country to have this ceasefire. At the same time, it leaves so much devastation behind, you know. And you spoke about in the last hours the Israelis’ continued bombing up until. I’m not sure that that conveys the level of barbarism. I mean, they were essentially carpet-bombing the south and Beirut and hitting all kinds of targets, and, you know, absolutely indiscriminately.

You know, Israelis always talk about targeted attacks, and people buy this. And it’s reported even that, you know, when innocent civilians die, it’s usually as a collateral damage to these targeted attacks. And, of course, there have been targeted assassinations. We’ve seen them. Already the idea that civilians are acceptable collateral damage to this kind of targeted assassination is already just a completely outrageous idea.

But, you know, yesterday, in the final hours of the ceasefire, I had a dear friend who lost his elderly parents. There was absolutely no warning. And they were targeted directly in their apartment, and based on, essentially, I suppose, erroneous AI information. And this is something that has happened to countless families over the course of these last 14 months. It was especially difficult. You know, I am in Montreal, but I was speaking to friends throughout the day. I was hearing the airstrikes. People were terrified. People were running on foot. There was absolutely no safe place to hide. It was truly like, you know, 24 hours that were just condensed horror. And it is absolute terrorism. It is barbarism. I don’t have any other words to describe it.

And so, there’s a lot of relief now as we go into the ceasefire. At the same time, there’s a lot of apprehension, because we’re not sure how long it’s going to last. It feels like a very fragile truce, essentially. And also, you know, people are coming back not just to devastated homes and devastated lands in the south, but they’re picking up the pieces of their lost families. There are a lot of people now who are going to be able to have funerals that they weren’t able to have, memorials that they weren’t able to have. You know, the grieving process begins now, not just for the country at large, but specifically for so many families who have lost their loved ones, including up until these final 24 hours. So, yes, there is relief, but there’s also a lot of apprehension and just an incredible amount of grief. Incredible amount of grief, you know? People are finding it very difficult to celebrate. A lot of people that I spoke to just said, “I have no energy to do anything today but just sit and cry,” you know? So, it is, again, very, very mixed feelings around this, but, of course, a lot of relief just at least that the killing is over, because it was just — it was just barbaric.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Lina, what do we know about the terms of this ceasefire or truce? And we’ve heard from Netanyahu and Biden, but Hezbollah has been silent until now. What do we know about their perspective?

LINA MOUNZER: I think Hezbollah spoke about it earlier. They did not release statements after the U.S. and Israel released their statements. They had kind of — they had spoken earlier just in agreeing, essentially, to this truce already, so I think that that was the statement that they gave, you know? That spoke on their behalf, essentially.

And what we know about — you know, I’ve heard so many different things about the terms of this truce, and I’ve read many different things. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure, because there’s so many contradictory things. But from what I read, yes, there is this idea that the Israelis are now going to withdraw, over 60 days, their troops. I mean, already they’ve been — people are going, flocking to the south to just see the destruction. And the Israelis have been threatening, you know, since yesterday that it’s not safe to return to the south: “You’re not allowed to return until we tell you to return.” So, already, you know, this idea that there’s going to be a restoration of some kind of Lebanese sovereignty over the land, this is already being contradicted by the behavior and the directives of the Israeli army.

And, you know, essentially, also what I’ve read and what I’ve seen is that Israel has the right to violate Lebanese sovereignty at any moment, should they decide that there is excuse enough. And, you know, when Israel acts with the impunity that we’ve seen it act with, and we know that it has the absolute, full backing of the United States, it’s also very difficult to feel safe as a Lebanese person or to feel that the terms of this truce are in any way safe, you know, or in any way provide some sense of security, because you know that at any point they can use any excuse that they like, and it will be accepted. You know, it will be accepted. There’s nothing that we can say on the world stage that is going to prevent violation, further violation, further carpet bombing.

So, there really is a sense of being completely exposed before the world and having no political recourse, essentially, being at the mercy of these larger powers, which, you know, they have demonstrated again and again their brutality over the last 14 months, not just in Lebanon, but much more largely in Gaza.

***

“Israel Wants Wars”: Gideon Levy on Lebanon Ceasefire, Gaza & Gov’t Sanctions Against Haaretz
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
November 27, 2024

We’re joined by Israeli journalist Gideon Levy as we continue our conversation on the Israeli-Lebanon ceasefire. We take a look at the mood within Israel, where Levy characterizes the Israeli public as “sour” about what is seen as a premature deal. “They would like to see more blood, more destruction in Lebanon,” says Levy. “Israel wants wars.” This retributive stance is still being felt in Lebanon, adds writer Lina Mounzer, who says Lebanese people are “very terrified of the day after” and do not feel that they have been awarded peace, despite the terms of the ceasefire. Meanwhile, the Israeli government has unanimously voted to sanction the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, claiming that its editorials “have hurt the legitimacy of the state of Israel and its right to self defense.” Haaretz has criticized the move, which comes just months after Israel banned the international media outlet Al Jazeera, as anti-democratic. Levy, a columnist for Haaretz, says the sanction makes it clear that Israelis cannot take the freedom of speech “for granted anymore.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Gideon Levy into this conversation in Tel Aviv. Gideon, if you could start off by responding to — there was a latest text from the Israeli negotiator Gershon Baskin, who wrote, “The ceasefire agreement which went into effect today is good news. The agreement is between Israel and the Government of Lebanon, not between Israel and Hezbollah. It seems that Hezbollah has been weakened enough,” it says — it seems that it’s been weakened enough that — let’s see if I can find this — that it’s “been weakened enough to end the war in Lebanon before the war in Gaza has ended.” Your response to this? And also, the response in Israel right now to — I think was about 4 a.m. that the ceasefire or the cessation of hostilities went into effect.

GIDEON LEVY: Yes, I wish I could tell you that Israel is happy about the ceasefire. I wish I could tell you that there is even a relief in Israel. But, unfortunately, in Israel, everyone — almost everyone is critical about this agreement. I guess many Israelis did not have enough — for sure, the right-wingers, for sure, most of the inhabitants of the north. They would like to see more blood and more destruction in Lebanon. And therefore, they are so sour today. And the other camp, as usual, is saying nothing. And even one of the opposition leaders, Benny Gantz, even criticized the ceasefire. He thought the war should go on. In other words, Israel wants wars. That’s the inevitable conclusion when you see reactions to a ceasefire which puts an end, at least partial end, to suffer in both sides, suffer which didn’t lead to anywhere. Israel didn’t achieve anything in this war. It will not achieve anything in the war in Gaza, 10 times or 1,000 times worse.

And here I must emphasize that nobody should have any illusions. Netanyahu has no intention to put an end to the war in Gaza. What happened in Lebanon will not happen soon in Gaza, because if he goes for an agreement in Gaza, he loses his government, and that’s his top priority. And Israel, at least part of Israel, has very serious intentions to resettle Gaza. Don’t underestimate those seculars. The sky is the limit for them. They just wait for Donald Trump to get into the office. And I will not be surprised if we’ll very soon, later, see settlements in Gaza.

In other words, nothing was solved yesterday except of the punishment of Lebanon, which came to its end, but also this is for a very limited time. I mean, when the prime minister speaks about the agreement, and all he has to say are threats about Lebanon and Hezbollah, that if any violation will take place, immediately Israel will attack again, so we are going from one war to the other and from one violent confrontation to the other, without even suggesting any other alternative. Nothing. Nobody speaks about diplomacy. Nobody speaks about touching the core issues, both in the north and in the south. Our friend from Lebanon, our Lebanese friend, just mentioned violations of the sovereignty of Lebanon. Anyone speaks about the fact that Israel, I’m sure, will continue to fly over Lebanon for intelligence, this will be kosher. This will be legitimate. And only the violation of Israeli sovereignty is never forgiven.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Gideon Levy, I wanted to ask you — in terms of the toll on the IDF now, over 800 soldiers have been killed in Gaza, about — the estimates are about 73 or 74 in Lebanon. And those are the only ones — the ones publicly acknowledged. What is the impact on Israel of continuing this war, on the economy of Israel, on migration, on tourism and the other aspects of economic life in Israel?

GIDEON LEVY: The price is enormous, but somehow Israelis accept it. This is this unbelievable phenomena in which people are ready to sacrifice their dearest ones — I mean, who is more than your son? — without seeing a real purpose. I mean, they all tell themselves that they were killed, sacrificed for the defense of Israel. But what kind of defense is it if you bomb a refugee camp in Gaza? What does Israel benefit out of it?

The economical crisis is one thing. I mean, you mentioned tourism. There is no tourism whatsoever. There are hardly any international airlines who fly in here. But there is a much heavier price: namely, turning Israel into a pariah state. [inaudible] very well from the United States, but everywhere else. It’s not only that Netanyahu and Gallant are now wanted all over the world. Every Israeli will feel it when he will go abroad now. Every Israelis everywhere will feel at least discomfort in the presenting himself, identifying himself as an Israeli. And still Israelis are ready to take this, only because they were told that we have to live from war to war, to live on our sword, and there is no other option, which is a total lie, because Israel never tried an alternative. But brainwash like brainwash.

AMY GOODMAN: Gideon, I don’t know if you can respond to this, but the Israeli Cabinet has unanimously voted to sanction your paper, Haaretz, saying its editorials, quote, “have hurt the legitimacy of the state of Israel and its right to self defense,” unquote. Under the move, the Israeli government will stop advertising in the paper, cut off all communications with Haaretz. Haaretz has slammed the decision, saying it, quote, “[is] another step in Netanyahu’s journey to dismantle Israeli democracy. Like his friends Putin, Erdoğan, and Orbán, Netanyahu is trying to silence a critical, independent newspaper. Haaretz will not balk and will not morph into a government pamphlet that publishes messages approved by the government and its leader,” unquote. This all comes six months after Israel banned Al Jazeera from operating in Israel and as the president-elect here in the United States, Donald Trump, threatens to go after major U.S. broadcasters and publications, calling the media the enemy of the people. Gideon, you serve on the editorial board of Haaretz. I know you can’t speak specifically about the sanctions against your paper, but can you talk broader about these threats to the press?

GIDEON LEVY: Sure. It’s not that I can’t, but we decided that this message that you just read now is our reaction as a newspaper. But I think that those sanctions tell much more about Israel and Israel’s government than about Haaretz.

And here, I think especially in the United States, who always speaks about the shared values, about the only democracy in the Middle East — so, first of all, it’s questionable if a state which rules in such a brutal way, in 5 million people, can it all be defined as a democracy? But let’s put the occupation and the apartheid aside. Even for us Jews in Israel, who used to live in a quite liberal democracy, things are changing right now, from day to day, from week to week. Legislations against freedom of speech, against the legal system, against any kind of human rights, against any minority are being ruled, and nobody says a word, and nobody can stop it, at least as long as this government is there.

So, what I would like to stress here, Amy, is that you have to also look at what’s going on within the Jewish Israel. It is changing while we are speaking. And the war in Gaza and Lebanon has a lot to do with it, because those two wars, with all the lack of legitimacy and brutality, also influence the domestic structure and the domestic system of Israel. And you see the outcome. I don’t take my freedom of speech — and I have freedom of speech, total freedom of speech, but I can’t take it for granted anymore.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us. And I want to give Lina Mounzer — just we have 30 seconds — but the last word on what you expect to happen from here, as you watch what has happened to your country, at least for this moment, from afar.

LINA MOUNZER: Look, we’re very terrified of the day after. Mr. Levy talked about the effect on internal Israeli politics. We’re also very afraid. Lebanon is a very fragile, you know, pluralist state. But at the same time, the Israelis also have known very much how to work on that, so they’ve been specifically bombing where the refugees have gathered. We’ve seen over the last few months that people have been turning away refugees. These refugees are largely Shia from south Lebanon and from the southern suburbs of Beirut. So, there’s been a lot of hostility that has incurred. So we’re really, really afraid of the day after in terms of, you know, the internal stability of the country and what’s going to happen to it.

And I just want to say, you know, to go back to this idea of collateral damage, this is something that the United States normalized in our region, in Iraq, the way to punish an entire country in order to change some sort of internal mechanism, which then devastates the country, because, of course, they have no idea what they’re doing, and this is not how you bring about change. So, we’re all also very afraid of now what’s going to happen to Lebanon internally as we go on and as the pieces are picked up, and a lot of anger and recrimination is going to start coming to the surface among the population. So, you know, as we say in Arabic, Allah yostor. Like, we have no idea what’s going to happen.

AMY GOODMAN: Lina Mounzer, we want to thank you for being with us, Lebanese writer and senior editor of the arts and literature magazine The Markaz, and Gideon Levy, award-winning Israeli journalist at Haaretz, author of the new book The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe. We thank you so much both for joining us, from Montreal and from Tel Aviv.

[admin]

“The Message”: Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Power of Writing & Visiting Senegal, South Carolina, Palestine
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
November 28, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/11/28 ... transcript

We spend the hour with the acclaimed writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose 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: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

In this holiday special, we spend the rest of the hour with the acclaimed writer and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of the new book The Message, which is based in part on a trip he took last year to the occupied West Bank and Israel. Coates 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,” unquote.

In his book, 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.

His current book, 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 Coates’ first collection of nonfiction since his 2017 book, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy.

Democracy Now!’s Juan González and I spoke to Ta-Nehisi Coates in October. I began by asking him about where the book begins: Senegal. I asked him to talk about a journey he took there with great trepidation.

TA-NEHISI COATES: 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 Coates, author of the new book The Message. In a minute, we’ll return to our conversation and talk about Israel and Palestine.

[admin]

“Forest of Noise”: Palestinian Poet Mosab Abu Toha on New Book, Relatives Killed in Gaza & More
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
November 29, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/11/29 ... transcript

In this special broadcast, we begin with an extended interview with Palestinian poet and author Mosab Abu Toha about the situation in Gaza and his new book of poetry titled Forest of Noise. He fled Gaza in December after being detained by the Israeli military, but many of his extended family members were unable to escape. He reads a selection of poems from Forest of Noise, while sharing the stories of friends and family still struggling to survive in Gaza, as well as those he has lost, including the late poet Refaat Alareer. He also describes his experiences in Gaza in the first months of the war, including being displaced from his home and abducted by the Israeli military, noting that the neighborhood in Jabaliya refugee camp that his family first evacuated to last year was bombed by the Israeli military just days ago. “Sometimes I want to stop writing because I’m repeating the same words, even though the situation is worse. The language is helpless,” Abu Toha says. “Why does the world make us feel helpless?”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: In this holiday broadcast, we begin the show with the acclaimed Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha from Gaza. Last year, he was detained by Israeli forces as he attempted to flee with his family from Israel’s bombardment of northern Gaza. While in detention, he was stripped naked and beaten. But after public pressure, Mosab Abu Toha was released two days later. He was eventually able to flee Gaza with his family.

Mosab Abu Toha recently published a new book of poetry, Forest of Noise. His previous award-winning book of poetry was titled Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza. Mosab Abu Toha is also a columnist, a teacher and founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza. His work has appeared in The New Yorker magazine, The New York Times and other publications.

I interviewed Mosab in our New York studio in late October. A few days before our interview, he posted a message on social media that read, quote, “I write with a heavy heart that my cousin Sama, 7 years old, has been killed in the air strike on their house along with 18 members of her family, which is my extended family,” he said. I asked Mosab to talk about Sama and the attack on their family.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: So, Sama is one of the five children of my aunt Asma, who was also injured, the mother, I mean, in the house. Sama was staying with her parents, with her siblings, with her grandmother, who happens to be my grandmother’s sister. And I used to call her grandmother, because my grandmother passed away when I was very young. So, my grandmother’s sister, with two of her daughters and her grandchildren, and two of her daughter-in-laws and the grandchildren are still buried under the rubble until this moment.

So, Sama was killed in the airstrike. And the only reason why my aunt and her other children, or even though they were wounded — the only reason why they were not killed is that they were staying close to the door, because the bomb, when it falls, it usually hits the middle of the house. So, my aunt Asma survived the airstrike with some injuries, along with her husband and other four children. And they had — by the way, they were — my aunt had to walk to the Israeli soldiers who were standing just a few meters away from the bombed house. So, just imagine a criminal killing you and then waiting for you until you are either dead or come to them limping. And she told me that she kissed their hands, begging them to leave them alone and if she could take with her some wheat flour from the house that she was keeping next to her because there is no food in Gaza.

So, Sama was 7 years old. And I remember something very clearly, which is that every time I visited my aunt’s house, especially during the Eid, you know, after the Ramadan and after the pilgrimage season — so, we have two big Eids, or feasts. So, I used to visit my aunt, and her children are there. And this photo is from — I think you showed it. But this is from the Eid. This is her dress. And my aunt would bring a sheet of paper and ask her daughters, including Sama, ”Yalla” — because I’m an English language teacher, so she said, ”Yalla, show Mosab. Show Mosab the new words that you have learned — the colors, the animals.” But now Sama — I mean, I did not have a chance to bid her farewell. This is my cousin. And I lost 31 members of my extended family, including three first cousins, two of them with their husband and children. I didn’t get the chance even to see them before they were buried. And I don’t know whether some of them had any part of their bodies intact after the airstrikes.

So, just imagine the magnitude of loss that I’m facing as a — I’m just one person. Some other people lost all their families. And we know about the new term “wounded child, no surviving family.” About more than 2,000 children had the same case. They were the only — the sole survivors of their family. I mean, what future is awaiting them? No one is asking this question.

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab Abu Toha is an award-winning poet and author. He has a new book of poetry out. It’s called Forest of Noise. Your descriptions now make me think of your little son. You came with your three children yesterday. Can you read the poem about your son and your daughter?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah, sure. So, by the way, this poem was written after May 2021 attacks. So, my son Yazzan was about 5 years old. My daughter Yaffa was 4 years old. And this is about them.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, this is very important, because you just said this was written in May 2021.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Half your poems in Forest of Noise are before last October 7th —

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Exactly, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — and the other half after.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Well, I mean, this tells you — this tells you a lot of things. So, this poem could be written today. And if it was written today, there are so many things that would not be present here, because this current genocide is so different from any other wars that Israel launched against the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.

“My Son Throws a Blanket Over My Daughter,” Gaza, May 2021.

At night, at home, we sit on the floor,
close to each other
far from the windows and the red
lights of bombs. Our backs bang on the walls
whenever the house shakes.
We stare at each other’s faces,
scared, yet happy,
that so far our lives have been spared.

The walls wake up from their fitful sleep,
no arms to wipe at their blurry eyes.
Flies gather around the only lit ceiling lamp
for warmth in the bitter night,
cold except when missiles hit
and burn up houses and roads and the trees,
the neighborhood next to us,
where Yazzan learned to ride his bike, scorched.

Every time we hear a bomb
falling from an F-16 or an F-35,
our lives panic. Our lives freeze
somewhere in-between, confused
where to head next:
a graveyard, a hospital,
a nightmare.
I keep my shivering hand
on my wristwatch,
ready to remove the battery
if needed.

My four-year-old daughter, Yaffa,
wearing a pink dress given to her by a friend,
hears a bomb
explode. She gasps,
covers her mouth with her dress’s
ruffles.
Yazzan, her five-and-a-half-year old brother,
grabs a blanket warmed by his sleepy body.
He lays the blanket on his sister.
You can hide now, he assures her.

And I have a video of that. It’s on my phone. I took a video of my son throwing a blanket. That’s how I couldn’t forget this moment.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you remind our viewers and listeners, who may not have seen you on Democracy Now!? First, soon after October 7th, we talked to you in Gaza. We then talked to you, or spoke to others about you, when you were taken by the Israeli military. Then, when you were released and made it with your family to Cairo, we spoke to you.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: We spoke to you in South Africa, and now you have come to the United States. But take us on that journey, how you got out. And remind us what happened when you were separated from your family and taken by the Israeli military.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: So, Amy, that interview that you did with me, it was October 12th. I can’t forget the date, because that was the last day I was in my house. I just finished my interview with you on October 12th. I think it was 3 p.m., which is eight hour, 8:00 morning here. I even didn’t pay attention to the time.

AMY GOODMAN: Right about now, New York time.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah. I mean, by the time I finished my interview with you, I went down. My father and mother, my brother Hamza and his children and his pregnant wife, my brother Mohammed and his wife, my sister Aya with her children, who is now pregnant, my sister Saja and my sister Sondos. So, about 25 people were in the house with me. So, I went down, and I found my father and my mother packing their bags. And when I talk about bags, I talk about children’s school bags. We don’t have suitcases, by the way, which is something that many people don’t understand why. Because we don’t have airports, we don’t need suitcases. We travel with our backpacks, my children’s kindergarten backpack. I stuff it with some clothes and some — I put some water bottle there. So, I found my parents packing their bags, and I asked them, “Where are you going?” And they said, “You know the Israelis just dropped some leaflets ordering the residents of Beit Lahia, about 90,000 people, to evacuate.” And that was the first time I found my parents, you know, leaving. And then I went upstairs. I didn’t know what to take with me. I only took with me the copy, one copy, the only copy that I had of my first poetry book. And I took a bottle of water and some clothes for my children.

And then we went to the refugee camp. And do you know where we stayed? We stayed in the same neighborhood that was bombed yesterday, where 150 people were killed. And I just told you about the names of the people who were killed, including Um Fathi, who I now remember that we got one hour of water from the tap when we were in the camp. And Um Fathi would tell the neighbors, “The water is on. The water is on. Fill your buckets.” So, I remember here. And then, when the bombing got intense in the refugee camp, we thought of going to an UNRWA school which is just a few hundred meters away from the neighborhood in the camp. So, we stayed in a school shelter in Jabaliya, which was later raided by the Israeli army. And by the way, a few days ago, the Israelis again visited that school, took the men out. And they have abducted so many, including my wife’s sister’s husband. He’s a brother-in-law to me. So, they took him. And one reason he stayed in the school, he’s a nurse. He couldn’t leave the refugees in the school without any nursing person. So, he was abducted, and he is left with three children. The youngest was born after October 7. So, when the bombing got intense, I had to leave the school with my wife and kids, especially because we had the chance to leave Gaza for Egypt.

And on the Salah al-Din Street, which was described by the Israelis as a safe passage, I was abducted by the Israeli soldiers. I was handcuffed and blindfolded. And before that, I had to remove all my clothes. I was naked for the first time in my life. And under gunpoint, two Israeli soldiers were pointing their guns at me and the person next to me. And then we were taken to a place we didn’t know. I mean, for me, as a Palestinian who was born in Gaza, I had never been to Palestine, which is now Israel. So, that was the first time for me to sleep in my country, as a detainee, as someone who was blindfolded and handcuffed, as someone who didn’t know whether his wife and children, who he left behind, were still breathing.

Just imagine. Not only was I taken, blindfolded and handcuffed and beaten and harassed and insulted — they kept saying bad words in Arabic. These are the only words they know in Arabic, insulting words. But also, I did not know whether my wife and kids, from whom I was separated, were still breathing, whether they went to a place that is safe. Because there is no place that is safe. Why? Because when there is occupation, there is nothing that’s called a safe place. And I had also to worry about my mother and father, who I left behind in the refugee camp, and my siblings and their children. I mean, I was torn. I was torn into a hundred pieces, thinking about myself, why are they taking me, where are they taking me. And I heard some young men screaming, you know. Some of them had to be separated from their pregnant wives. So, after three days, I was released. I was dropped at the same checkpoint.

AMY GOODMAN: There was international outcry —

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: — over you having been taken.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: As Mosab Abu Toha, not as a Palestinian. So, I think many people cared about me because I am a friend and a writer, but they did not maybe consider maybe doing the same thing with other people. It’s easier to get someone out than getting a whole population from under the military fist of the Israeli army. I mean, I just imagine if I was not a writer, if I was not a poet, if I did not have a publisher, if I did not have, you know, some journalism magazine that I wrote for. Just imagine no one knew about me. I would still have been under the Israeli custody. Maybe I could have died, just like Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, who was taken from Al-Awda Hospital, by the way, in November last year. And he was announced dead last October. He was the best surgeon in the Gaza Strip, and he was — he died. He was killed.

AMY GOODMAN: The Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha. When we come back, we’ll talk about his friend, the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer. He was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike last year.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We return to our October interview with Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, author of the new collection of poetry Forest of Noise.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about another man, another poet, but he didn’t make it, the Palestinian poet, the Islamic University professor, someone you knew, Refaat Alareer, last on Democracy Now! October 10th, 2023. Refaat was killed by an Israeli strike in December, along with his brother, sister and four of his nieces. This is Scottish actor Brian Cox reciting Refaat Alareer’s poem “If I Must Die.” And then I want you to share your poem, a sort of segue to Refaat’s, “If I Must Die,” a video that went viral.

BRIAN COX: If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up
above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale.

AMY GOODMAN: Scottish actor Brian Cox, you know, who played in Succession, reciting Refaat Alareer’s poem “If I Must Die” in a video that went viral. And you can go to democracynow.org to see our interview with Refaat just before he was killed. In your book, Mosab Abu Toha, Forest of Noise, talk about Refaat and then your kind of rejoinder to this poem.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: I mean, I knew Refaat as a professor at the Islamic University of Gaza. He did not teach me, but I would say that he taught me a lot, because when I was in my second year, he was in Malaysia doing — completing, finishing his Ph.D. And when he returned, I was already finishing my courses. But he was someone who led me to the We Are Not Numbers project that he co-founded, which is a project that offers some mentorship for young writers. I was in the beginning of my writing career. So, he introduced me to the group. And that is a picture that I took with the strawberries.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re showing an image of Refaat holding strawberries.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah, yeah. We picked that strawberry, that same strawberry together in Beit Lahia, in my father-in-law’s farm, from my father-in-law’s farm. So, yeah, I knew Refaat as a father. He was a wonderful father for his kids. And he was a lovely son of his parents. His parents still survive, I hope, in Gaza City. And he’s also a professor of English literature. And when we were talking about literature, he would talk about Arabic literature and also English literature. His favorite poet, I think, was John Donne. And in the Arabic language, he loved the classical Arabic poems, like Al-A’sha, like Imru’ al-Qais, like Ibn Hilliza. And he would recite some Arabic poems to me, and I was amazed, you know?

So, before Refaat was killed, he published his poem “If I Must Die,” and he posted it on his Instagram. And I read that poem when I was still in north Gaza. It was before I was abducted. And it was very heartbreaking for me, I mean, someone writing about his death and what he wishes his death to be like. And I couldn’t but try and write my own “If I Must Die,” but I did not call it “If I Must Die.” I wrote “If I Am Going to Die.” But after he was killed, I retitled the poem, which is now called “A Request.” “A Request: After Refaat Alareer.”

If I am going to die,
let it be a clean death,
no rubble over my corpse
no broken dishes or glasses
and not many cuts in my head or chest.
Leave my ironed untouched jackets
and pants in the closet,
so I may wear some of them again
at my funeral.

Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab Abu Toha, reading from his new second second book of poetry, Forest of Noise. Just months after Refaat was killed, his eldest daughter, Shaima Refaat Alareer, was also killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza, along with her husband and 2-month-old son, Refaat’s grandchild.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, just imagine. I mean, Refaat became a grandfather after he was killed. He became a grandfather after he was killed. And, I mean, something that breaks my heart, just as it must break everyone’s heart, is that when someone is killed, they even don’t know who was killed with them. They don’t know — I mean, Refaat did not know that his daughter Shaima and her husband, Abd al-Rahman Siyam, I think his name, and his grandchild were killed after him. I mean, I don’t know whether he knows about this, whether, I mean, he’s now feeling a lot of pain knowing about this.

So, it is a campaign of killing the father, the mother, the sister. I would call this not only a genocide. It is not only a genocide against a people, but it’s also a genocide against families, because when you look at the names of the people who are killed, you see the name of the father, the mother, the children, the grandchildren. It’s not about killing five people from the street or five people in the mosque or the school. It’s killing a whole family. When I tell you that I lost 31 members of my extended family, I talk about two first cousins with their husbands and their children. I’m not talking about my cousin, no. Her husband, their children, the youngest 2 or 4.

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab, how did you choose the title, Forest of Noise?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: In fact, the title of the book is the title of one of the poems, called “Forest of Noise,” in which I talk about the bullet holes from the bullets and from the bomb — I mean, also the bomb craters, that each bullet hole in our walls, in our hospitals, in our schools, is a forest of noise. It’s full of screams of the people who did not survive. The screams of people — I mean, I just talked my neighbor, Amar Abu Laila, who was killed by a bombshell. And his son is still bleeding in the house, because there is no hospital that can reach that area. So, even the bomb crater that was created by the bomb that killed his father is now being filled with the screams of this boy. There is no — there is no way for him to survive this if he continues to bleed. So, every bullet hole in our buildings, every bomb crater is a forest of noise. It has our history, that goes back to seventy — more than. It’s not only 76 years ago. It goes back to more than 76 years. It’s a forest of noise.

I’ve been living in Gaza all my life, and the only sound I could hear is the drones’ buzzing sound. That doesn’t mean that I could not hear the lapping of the waves. But, I mean, every single moment, there is the drones’ buzzing sound in the sky. There is the sound of the F-16 flying over us. There is one thing that many people don’t know, which is I’ve never heard the sound of an airplane, of a civilian airplane. I’ve never seen a civilian airplane in the sky over Gaza. So, it is everything —

AMY GOODMAN: Why?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: We don’t have an airport in Gaza. We don’t even receive visitors from abroad. So, there is no need for any airports in Gaza. We are living in siege. We can’t leave Gaza when we want. And we don’t receive — we don’t get visitors. And we don’t see — we don’t see airplanes in the sky, because Gaza is under siege. It’s under occupation.

AMY GOODMAN: And that goes to your book, Forest of Noise, where half the poems are written before October 7, 2023, and half are written after. Explain the before, and share one of your poems with us from before.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: I mean, life in Gaza after October 7th is not very, very different from the life before, but the difference is the intensity of the airstrikes, the coldness of the outside world seeing us being burned in the fire and buried in the rubble. I mean, for months, I mean, the difference is that before October 7th, when there is an Israeli airstrike, I mean, ambulances would race to the scene. I mean, fire trucks, people would gather to rescue whoever could be still breathing under the rubble. So, after October 7th, what happens is that ambulances get hit. Fire trucks get hit. Nurses and doctors get abducted from inside the hospitals and the clinics, to the extent that many people — and fuel has been cut. Water has been cut. Electricity has been cut, to the extent that even — and phone signal has been cut. So, just imagine you are bombed in your house, and you had your phone. I mean, you are lucky enough to have some battery in your phone. And there is no phone signal even to call your relatives and tell the ambulance that you are breathing and you have some children about to die under the rubble. You don’t have to get — you don’t have the chance, this chance of asking for help. This is what’s happening, what’s been happening after October 7. It’s not very different. The only difference is that there is no fuel like before. There are no ambulances. There is no medical equipment like before, even though we had a big lack in so many things. And the difference is that we have been documenting this for a year nonstop.

And I have one question: What has the Palestinian people in Gaza and also in the West Bank — what has the people in Palestine — what have they not done in order for the world to step in and stop all of this? We have written poetry. We have written essays. We have taken videos. We have created films. We have run from our schools to humanitarian areas, which also later get bombed. I mean, what is one thing — I would like to ask this question to the whole world: What is one thing that the Palestinians in Gaza did not do to survive? I mean, can someone blame us? When we go from — when we leave our house for a school shelter, we get bombed in a shelter. When we leave the school shelter to another one, we get bombed there. When we go from north to south, we get bombed there. When we try to leave Gaza, we can’t. I mean, I have a friend of mine who was hit by a piece of shrapnel, and he sent me a video. I still have it. There was maybe — you could fit your fist in his chest. I still have this video. And he was — he couldn’t leave Gaza. That was November last year. He couldn’t leave Gaza, because Israel controls who leaves Gaza, even through the Rafah border crossing. So, it’s not only about Egypt, you know, closing the border crossing. Israel has destroyed and occupied the Rafah border crossing since last May. So they control who gets in, who leaves, what kind of biscuit, what kind of water enters Gaza. And this is the case since before October 7.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you share with us your poem “Thanks” and describe how you came to write it?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: So, I wrote the poem “Thanks” in — again, in May 2021, after an airstrike hit a house that’s just next to us. And my mother was making a cake. Even though it was war, she was making cake. And when there was an airstrike, we thought it was a warning. So we left the house. We ran away. And the poem will tell you what happened. “Thanks (on the Eve of My Twenty-Second Birthday): After Yusef Komunyakaa.”

Thanks to my mother always, but
especially when she called for me
to join them at the table,
just seconds before shrapnel
cut through the window glass
where I stood watching distant air strikes.

My mother’s voice, the magnet of my life,
swaying my head just in time.
Plumes of smoke choked the neighborhood.
It was night and when we ran into the street,
Mother forgot the cake in the oven,
the bomb smoke mixed with the burnt chocolate
and strawberry.

And thanks to the huge clock tower’s bell
which saved my life. I was crossing the street
and my head, glued to my phone,
never heeded the honk of cars
or the wheels of vans
screeching onto the rough tarmac.
The bell tolled for me.
Sorry, Death, but it was the eve of my twenty-second birthday

and I had to be by the sea and listen to the lapping of waves,
the sound I last heard before my birth.

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab, can you look into this camera and share your message with the world, what you want the world to take away right now about what’s happening in your home, in Gaza?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: I mean, if the world cannot really help us, I hope that they will not continue to support the oppressor. If you can’t really stop this, why don’t you just go away? I mean, I wish the world was ignoring us. No, they are not ignoring us. No, they are contributing to our suffering and the genocidal campaign that Israel has been launching, not since last year, since 76 years.

I mean, maybe you just mentioned that Blinken says that in a few days, you know, the negotiations would start again. I mean, why don’t you say the same things about sending the weapons to Israel? Why don’t you say, “Oh, in a few days, we will try and send the Israelis some new weapons”? Why don’t you take your time and think about what these weapons are going to do? Why does it take time to resume negotiations and force the Israelis to stop their killing of my people? Why does it take time? Why is it difficult to stop this, but it’s easy to send more and more weapons? Just leave us alone.

AMY GOODMAN: Your choice of the last poem to share with our audience around the world. Would you like to share “The Moon” or “Right or Left” or “Under the Rubble”?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: So, this poem, “Under the Rubble,” was written after October 7th. “Under the Rubble.”

She slept on her bed,
never woke up again.
Her bed has become her grave,
a tomb beneath the ceiling of her room,
the ceiling a cenotaph.
No name, no year of birth,
no year of death, no epitaph.
Only blood and a smashed
picture frame in ruin
next to her.

In Jabalia Camp, a mother collects her daughter’s
flesh in a piggy bank,
hoping to buy her a plot
on a river in a far away land.

A group of mute people
were talking sign.
When a bomb fell,
they fell silent.

It rained again last night.
The new plant looked for
an umbrella in the garage.
The bombing got intense
and our house looked for
a shelter in the neighborhood.

I leave the door to my room open, so the words in my books,
the titles, and names of authors and publishers,
could flee when they hear the bombs.

I became homeless once but
the rubble of my city
covered the streets.

They could not find a stretcher
to carry your body. They put
you on a wooden door they found
under the rubble:

Your neighbors: a moving wall.

The scars on our children’s faces
will look for you.
Our children’s amputated legs
will run after you.

He left the house to buy some bread for his kids.
News of his death made it home,
but not the bread.
No bread.
Death sits to eat whoever remains of the kids.
No need for a table, no need for bread.

A father wakes up at night, sees
the random colors on the walls
drawn by his four-year-old daughter.

The colors are about four feet high.
Next year, they would be five.
But the painter has died
in an air strike.

There are no colors anymore.
There are no walls.

I changed the order of my books on the shelves.
Two days later, the war broke out.
Beware of changing the order of your books!

What are you thinking?
What thinking?
What you?
You?
Is there still you?

You there?

Where should people go? Should they
build a big ladder and go up?

But Heaven has been blocked by the drones
and F-16s and the smoke of death.

My son asks me whether,
when we return to Gaza,
I could get him a puppy.
I say, “I promise, if we can find any.”

I ask my son if he wishes to become
a pilot when he grows up.
He says he won’t wish
to drop bombs on people and houses.

When we die, our souls leave our bodies,
take with them everything they loved
in our bedrooms: the perfume bottles,
the makeup, the necklaces, and the pens.
In Gaza, our bodies and rooms get crushed.
Nothing remains for the soul.
Even our souls,
they get stuck under the rubble for weeks.

AMY GOODMAN: The Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha. His collection of poetry is Forest of Noise. He writes for The New Yorker magazine. He’s written for The New York Times and more.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 02, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/2/headlines

Israeli Attacks on Gaza Kill Hundreds over Bloody Weekend, Incl. Aid Workers, ICU Director, Reporter
Dec 02, 2024

Health officials in northern Gaza report Israeli attacks killed more than 200 people on Saturday. The dead included 40 members of the al-Araj family, who were killed in a single Israeli strike on a building in the Tel al-Zaatar neighborhood.

Israel has also killed a number of medical professionals and aid workers in recent days. On Friday, a drone killed Dr. Ahmed al-Kahlout, head of the intensive care unit at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia. A separate Israeli drone strike killed chef Mahmoud Almadhoun, who co-founded the Gaza Soup Kitchen that has fed Palestinians suffering hunger due to Israel’s blockade of food aid. Almadhoun was killed on his way to Kamal Adwan Hospital. On Saturday, Israel bombed a vehicle in Khan Younis, killing five people, including three aid workers with World Central Kitchen. Israel also killed a staff member of Save the Children on Saturday in an airstrike on Khan Younis.

Meanwhile, Maysara Ahmed Salah has become the 192nd journalist killed by Israel. He worked for the Quds News Network.

Attacks also continued on Gaza City, where residents of the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood gathered to clear the rubble and recover the bodies of loved ones killed in an overnight Israeli strike Saturday.

Mohammed al-Zaytouniyeh: “I want to tell the free people of the world that claim freedom and call on human freedom and peace. We ask, 'What has kept you silent for a year and a month?' People are undergoing a genocide, being killed, torn apart. Life is not possible here. It is hell. Other than the fact that there are no hospitals to take in the injured, nor are there cemeteries to take in the killed, nor are there people capable of pulling out bodies from under the rubble. What is the world waiting for? The free people of the world and its organizations, leaders, governments, what are you waiting for? Gaza is being annihilated. Gaza is being annihilated.”

U.S. Approves More Arms for Israel as Netanyahu’s Former Minister Says Israel Guilty of War Crimes
Dec 02, 2024

The Biden administration has reportedly approved another $680 million weapons sale to Israel, including thousands of additional joint direct attack munition kits and hundreds of small-diameter bombs. The deal is separate from the $20 billion arms sales recently approved by the U.S. Senate.

This comes as Israel’s former Defense Minister Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon has accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and committing war crimes in Gaza. Ya’alon, who served as Netanyahu’s defense minister from 2013 to 2016, made the accusations several times over the weekend, including in an interview on one of Israel’s biggest television channels.

Moshe Ya’alon: “To occupy, to annex, to cleanse, ethnic cleansing, look at the northern Gaza Strip and settle a Jewish settlement. That’s the point. There is no Beit Lahia. There is no Beit Hanoun. They are operating in Jabaliya and are essentially clearing the area of Arabs.”

France Says Israel Has Violated Lebanon Ceasefire 52 Times
Dec 02, 2024

Israel is continuing to strike Lebanon despite last week’s ceasefire. France has accused Israel of violating the ceasefire at least 52 times. Meanwhile, residents of southern Lebanon continue to return home to assess damage caused by Israel’s invasion, defying threats by Israeli forces not to travel south. This is Hamza al Outa, who ran a soup kitchen out of his home in the city of Baalbek, which was destroyed in the Israeli invasion.

Hamza al Outa: “This kitchen, where we used to cook in the month of Ramadan, we used to cook for special occasions to be able to feed orphans, residents and those in need that nobody is looking out for. … Two thousand five hundred people daily in Ramadan, 30 days, 2,500 people, used to eat the food from this kitchen. Are there rockets in this kitchen? What’s in this kitchen? They did not even show mercy to those in need. Even those in need, they did not spare. Where’s the mercy?”

Syrian Rebels Capture Aleppo in Surprise Offensive; Russia-Backed Syrian Gov’t Launches Air Attacks
Dec 02, 2024

In Syria, opposition forces are pushing toward Hama after launching a surprise offensive to seize most of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city. Syrian and Russian forces have launched air attacks on the rebel-held cities of Idlib and Aleppo, a city where rebels were driven out eight years ago by Bashar al-Assad’s forces. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports 446 people have been killed in Syria since Wednesday. The offensive is being led by an armed group called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which grew out of the Nusra Front, which had ties to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. We will have more on Syria later in the show.

NYPD Arrests 21 Anti-Genocide Protesters at Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade
Dec 02, 2024

Here in New York, police arrested 21 activists who disrupted the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thursday. The protesters briefly blocked off part of the parade route, unfurling a banner that read, “Don’t celebrate genocide! Arms embargo now. Free Palestine!” The following day, protests unfolded in malls and other retail sites across the U.S. as shoppers headed to stores for Black Friday sales. Palestinian rights groups had called on consumers to boycott Black Friday in protest.

**********

“Targeted & Assassinated”: Gaza Soup Kitchen Chef Mahmoud Almadhoun Killed by Israeli Drone
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 02, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/2/ ... transcript

Israel killed more than 200 Palestinians in Gaza on Saturday, including 40 members of a single family. The official death toll in Gaza is now over 44,000, although experts believe that is a vast undercount of the true figure. Israel’s onslaught has continued to kill medical and aid workers in recent days, including three people with World Central Kitchen, the head of the intensive care unit at Kamal Adwan Hospital, a staff member with Save the Children, as well as Mahmoud Almadhoun, who co-founded the Gaza Soup Kitchen that has fed Palestinians suffering hunger due to Israel’s blockade of vital food aid. Almadhoun was killed in an Israeli drone strike and is survived by seven children, including a newborn baby. His brother Hani Almadhoun joins Democracy Now! to discuss what he calls a targeted assassination. “My brother slowed down the ethnic cleansing of north Gaza, and that’s why he was taken out,” says Almadhoun. “This is a war against the civilians in Palestine.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

We turn now to Gaza. On Saturday, Israel killed more than 200 Palestinians in Gaza, including 40 members of a single family. In recent days, Israel killed three aid workers with [World Central] Kitchen, the head of the intensive care unit at Kamal Adwan Hospital, a staff member with Save the Children, as well as Mahmoud Almadhoun, who co-founded the Gaza Soup Kitchen that’s fed Palestinians facing hunger due to Israel’s blockade of vital food aid. Almadhoun was killed in an Israeli drone strike. He’s survived by seven children, the youngest just a newborn.

We’re joined right now in Washington, D.C., by Mahmoud Almadhoun’s brother, Hani Almadhoun. He works as the director of philanthropy at UNRWA USA. He co-founded the Gaza Soup Kitchen with his brother.

Thanks so much for being with us, Hani. Our deepest condolences on the loss of your brother, following the loss of your other brother last year in Gaza. Can you tell us about your brother and what happened this weekend?

HANI ALMADHOUN: Thank you, Amy.

My brother Mahmoud was targeted and assassinated in the morning of Saturday at 9 a.m. He left the house, walked about 30 yards, and a drone was waiting for him and just launched its rocket, killing him on the spot. He was headed to Kamal Adwan Hospital, where for the past three or four weeks he’s been supporting the hospital with food, delivering food for them, delivering produce from other parts of Gaza, and, you know, even blankets. Everything he had, he gave it to the hospital when he felt the bombs were falling nearby and he could no longer cook for them.

He was targeted. When the folks who tried to rescue him, or they thought they could save his life, they tried to take into the hospital, sniper fire fired at them. So they tried again. They were shot at. So, they decided, by then, it was too late. They wrapped him in a blanket, took him home, said final goodbye and buried him in a makeshift grave.

And this is my brother, the humanitarian, the father of seven, the youngest who still does not have a name because there is no office in Gaza to give people names or birth certificates. He was debating — the last argument he had was either to name her Aline or Kawthar. And now she will grow without a dad.

He is my partner. He is my buddy. He’s my young brother, who closed every video he’s ever sent me, “I send this with greetings and appreciation to my friends in the United States of America,” despite the fact that the bombs killed our brother Majed, American bombs. Every video he would send, he would say, “For my friends in the United States of America.” And now he was assassinated, and the target was him. There was nobody else. He is a full-time civilian.

In fact, we miss him dearly, and we’re still processing this, but I worry for his seven kids. The oldest one is Omar, who was targeted four days before the killing of my brother, and he is already receiving medical attention. So, you can imagine having to break the news to a kid who’s 14 years old, telling him that his dad has been killed and now he is the family provider. It’s overwhelming, Amy.

And sadly, my brother is no longer here. We continue to pray for him and tell people, you know, we are still there at the Gaza Soup Kitchen. We’re not closing shop, not because we want to make a statement, but because we want to make sure our families have food to eat. This is hunger and famine, both in north Gaza and south of Gaza. My brother slowed down the ethnic cleansing of north Gaza, and that’s why he was taken out.

AMY GOODMAN: You mentioned that at the end of every letter he would offer a shoutout to the people of the United States, despite the fact that it was the Israeli military which is armed by the United States that killed another of your brothers. Can you explain what happened last year, Hani?

HANI ALMADHOUN: So, last Black Friday, about November 24th, an American airplane — I believe it was F-16 — dropped a big bomb on our family’s house, killing my brother Majed, his wife Safa, his daughters Riman, Siwar, Omar and Ali, the youngest of him 7 years old. And it’s unfortunate because he’s also a shopkeeper. He did not deserve to be killed using American weapons. It took us a week to recover their bodies. And we just observed the salam, or anniversary, of their killing by Israel.

And now, just a day after that, a couple of days after the anniversary of their killing, we observe the killing of our brother Mahmoud. This was so shocking, because Mahmoud has been — he’s not a nameless and faceless Palestinian like a lot of our family members are. He’s been — established a profile. He’s written an op-ed to The Washington Post. He was on NBC, talked about the work, and people know him. He just solves problems. He started a medical point that was saving lives when Kamal Adwan Hospital was sieged and people could not go. His medical point will really provide lifesaving care. He started a school. It operated for two months. And he put the U.S. flag on the school, and in Hebrew it says, “Please do not bomb,” and it was also bombed. So, even the Israeli press is asking the army what happened there. There was nobody inside that school. They still bombed it. And actually, they hit where it says “do not bomb” next to the American flag, and the sign disappeared because of the explosion. And few days later, they take out Mahmoud, our brother.

And it’s sad, because this is a policy supported by a progressive president, unfortunately. This is — you know, I work and I support the amazing work of UNRWA. As you know, they’re trying to ban UNRWA. And now they’re not only banning UNRWA, the largest humanitarian actor inside Gaza, they’re also going after small shops like our family’s soup kitchen that provided meals for 600 families, found out a way to deliver produce to the hospital. And we believe that’s why he was targeted, because Kamal Adwan Hospital, they wanted to have it lifeless and people leave the north, and Mahmoud delayed that because he delivered flour and canned goods and diapers and baby formula. This is no longer about killing any Palestinian who’s hurting the Israelis. This became about killing any Palestinian who’s helping the Palestinians, like my brother, like the other chefs who were killed in the south.

But this is tragic. We’re not going to be intimidated. Obviously, we grieve for our brother. He’s a good guy, and, you know, we have to take responsibility for his kids and make sure they’re taken care of. But also we’re going to make sure we do this as long as we’re able to, because his memory, that’s what he wanted us to do. And we continue this legacy. That’s why I’m talking to you here.

And this is why I want to make sure people know that real families that we know, that love this country very dearly, are also getting targeted. This is no accident. And they have nothing on my brother, Amy. I feel sorry saying this, but in December, the Israeli army abducts any man in the north. They would release them after 24 hours, after they check their records. Twice, the Israelis abducted him, like the hundreds of Palestinians, and they would release him after 24 hours. That tells you they have no interest in him, but they targeted him because of the humanitarian and lifesaving work in north Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you further, Hani, about what’s happened at Kamal Adwan Hospital. Dr. Ahmed al-Kahlout, the director of the hospital’s intensive care unit, was also killed this weekend. If you could comment on what happened to him? And he was killed by an Israeli drone. Your brother, who was known as Chef Mahmoud Almadhoun, knew him very well. In fact, Dr. al-Kahlout had just asked him to help him find some tomato paste? I want to, before you answer, turn to Dr. Ahmed al-Kahlout speaking to Al Jazeera before he was killed.

DR. AHMED AL-KAHLOUT: [translated] The explosions shot shrapnel that can break bones. Israeli forces destroyed the water tanks and sewage system for the 10th time. That’s a real problem for the functioning of the hospital. The situation is very dire.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Dr. Ahmed al-Kahlout, who was killed this weekend, head of Kamal Adwan’s intensive care unit. Hani?

HANI ALMADHOUN: Yes, rest in peace, Dr. Ahmed al-Kahlout. He’s a friend of the family. He’s our neighbor. He was killed exactly a day before Mahmoud. In fact, he gave my — he was able to give my brother painkillers, because my dad, who’s 72 years old, was hurt two weeks ago by Israeli quadcopter, and we couldn’t find painkillers. The doctor said he didn’t want anything. He asked if Mahmoud can do him a favor and get him tomato paste. Can you imagine this hero saving lives and can’t find tomato paste? And Mahmoud said, “I’ll find it for you.” And he went to the hospital, and boom, that day, the guy was assassinated. He’s the head of the intensive care unit.

Mahmoud has developed a friendship with Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the hero doctor, solving problems for him. In fact, 10 days before Mahmoud’s assassination, he delivered filtered water for the hospital for their dialysis unit. Can you imagine a civilian figuring out how to deliver filtered water for the hospital, not just for drinking, but also to run the dialysis unit? You can’t imagine how important Mahmoud was for the hospital. The hospital already sent their condolences. They’re worried about lack of his support. In fact, yesterday the shipment of produce that Mahmoud ordered just got to the hospital. You know, they are out of fresh food. They’re eating pasta and rice that’s delivered by UNRWA and the World Health Organization.

But yesterday I was in a conference call with Dr. Hussam, and he said, “Out of the 50 items we need, these organizations are able to deliver six or seven,” and he’s frustrated because he’s not getting the help he needs. And, you know, I’ve met the doctors. They’re not seasoned by any measure. They’re just fresh out of medical school, trying their best, doing things that — even nurses in Gaza are doing operations now, because there’s nobody else to do these things. And it’s unfortunate we continue to do this.

And the cruelty, Amy, my brother survived this genocide for 420 days, and then he’s killed. And he was telling me the day before, “Hani, there might be good news. They’re talking about a ceasefire.” It’s one thing to be killed early in the war and not suffer as much, but he was killed toward, I hope, to be the tail end of it.

He does not deserve to be killed. And I inquire and I challenge the Israelis to publicly say why they targeted my brother. We have full confidence that he is the person we know. He’s a civilian dad who wanted to help his neighbors, and everybody knows him and supported him, and we pray for him.

But also, we want to make sure people there, you know, they can still do things. You know, why are they banning UNRWA? Why is the U.S. defunding the U.N. agency? This is no longer about October 7th and the horrors. This is about ethnically cleansing north of Gaza. The south is also facing starvations. We run a soup kitchen there. And we went from a $1,000 budget to $5,000 daily budget just to get people some rice, because food is not available. But we want to respond. Despite our pain, my cousins and nephews and sister-in-law is cooking for people in four out of the five soup kitchens we continue to run. We’re not going to close, because this is our family, this is our commitment. We don’t cook for people, we don’t eat ourselves.

This is not — and this is risky. You know, it should not be risky. It should not be an heroic act to get water to the hospital. And that’s why I remember the 230 UNRWA staff who were killed, and not just UNRWA. You’ve mentioned the Save the Children. You’ve mentioned other organizations who have lost their staff. And —

AMY GOODMAN: World Central Kitchen.

HANI ALMADHOUN: Yes, correct. And unfortunately that sometimes, you know, Israeli accusations run in the media as a fact, and that’s — nobody challenges whatever allegations are made, because, “OK, it’s good enough for me.” Nobody’s going to push back. And in the case of my brother, we’re pushing back as much as we can.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, of course, you are not the only one who’s accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing. Israel’s former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and committing war crimes in Gaza. He served as Netanyahu’s defense minister from 2013 to '16, made the accusations several times over television, including on one of Israel's biggest TV channels. This is what he said, and we’re going to end with your comment after this.

MOSHE YA’ALON: [translated] To occupy, to annex, to cleanse, ethnic cleansing, look at the northern Gaza Strip and settle a Jewish settlement. That’s the point. … There is no Beit Lahia. There is no Beit Hanoun. They are operating in Jabaliya and are essentially clearing the area of Arabs.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Israel’s former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. Your final comments, Hani?

HANI ALMADHOUN: This is our reality. This is the horrors my family faced. We’ve lost our brother last November. He is a full-time civilian, and they killed our brother. This is the price to pay for standing where we were raised. This is the memory of the Nakba. We learned our lesson from our grandparents who were ethnically cleansed. And now we refuse to do the same. But unfortunately, when they kill so many of our family members, our family relocated still in north Gaza, standing by, hoping that somebody watching, somebody listening, somebody from our government will definitely develop a conscience and try to save our people. This is no longer a war against terror. This is a war against the civilians in Palestine, including Gaza. Thank you so much.

AMY GOODMAN: Hani Almadhoun, again, our deepest condolences. Hani is director of philanthropy at UNRWA USA, co-founder of the Gaza Soup Kitchen with his brother, Chef Mahmoud Almadhoun. He was killed in an Israeli drone strike in Gaza on Saturday morning.

Coming up, we look at the surprise rebel offensive to retake the Syrian city of Aleppo. Back in 20 seconds.

***********

A New Front in Syria’s Civil War? Rebels Led by Former al-Qaeda Affiliate Take Over Aleppo
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 02, 2024

Syrian opposition forces have seized most of Aleppo after launching a surprise offensive in recent days that ousted government forces from the country’s second-largest city. The offensive is being led by an armed group called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a former al-Qaeda affiliate that cut ties with them in 2017. Syrian and Russian forces have retaliated with airstrikes on rebel-held areas, with the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reporting 446 deaths in Syria since Wednesday. The rebel advance into Aleppo is the most significant turn in the Syrian civil war since 2020, when rebel forces were forced to retreat to Idlib. The offensive was launched at a time when the key backers of Bashar al-Assad’s government — Russia, Iran and Hezbollah — are also focused on other conflicts. “It was a surprise offensive that people did not expect at all,” says Associated Press reporter Kareem Chehayeb.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

In Syria, opposition forces are pushing towards Hama after launching a surprise offensive to seize most of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city. Syrian and Russian forces have retaliated by launching air attacks on the rebel-held cities of Idlib and Aleppo, a city where rebels were driven out eight years ago by Bashar al-Assad’s forces. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports 446 people have been killed in Syria since Wednesday. The offensive is being led by an armed group called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which grew out of the Nusra Front, which had ties to al-Qaeda and the Islamic state. The rebel advance into Aleppo is the most significant turn in the Syrian civil war since 2020, when rebel forces were forced to retreat from Idlib. The offensive was launched at a time when the key backers of Assad’s government — Russia, Iran and Hezbollah — are also focused on other conflicts.

For more, we go to Beirut, where we’re joined by Associated Press reporter Kareem Chehayeb.

Thank you so much for being with us. Can you explain what you understand took place this weekend, Kareem?

KAREEM CHEHAYEB: So, it was a surprise offensive that people did not expect at all, this insurgency led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, but there were also other factions and armed groups, including those backed by Turkey. They swept through villages and towns across northwestern Syria, and they made their way into Aleppo. It really appeared early on that they faced virtually no resistance in their insurgency. And they collected vehicles and munitions left behind by the Syrian Army in parts of Idlib province that were under the government’s control.

Over the past two days, we’ve seen a counterinsurgency from the Syrian government, backed by Russia. They’ve launched airstrikes in the areas where the insurgents are present, whether it’s in Aleppo or in Hama, northern Hama province, but also in Idlib, including the city. And this is — the northwest of Syria is basically the last opposition-held bastion there. It appears also the Syrian government and the Army have created like a very strong defensive line in northern Hama. It seems soldiers are trying to sweep into the area to clear forces out. Numbers are still pretty murky, as well. The Syrian Army said today that their airstrikes alongside Russia killed some 400 insurgents. We’re not really sure about numbers of displacement, but there are concerns that it could be thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people displaced. We’re trying to get clarity from that as soon as we can.

And there’s a lot of questions surrounding the political implications in Syria. The Iranian foreign minister was in Syria yesterday, met with President Bashar al-Assad, reiterated Iran’s full commitment to supporting Syria, as it has for the entirety of this conflict over the past well over a decade now. And today, upon the Iranian foreign minister’s visit to Turkey with his counterpart, it appears they’re trying to kick off, you know, diplomatic talks, which has been sponsored by Russia, which has over the years tried to bring Turkey and Syria back together in terms of restoring diplomatic ties. So, the coming days will be very crucial in terms of what happens on the battlefield and whether there will be political implications to this surprise attack.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about the main group, that seems to have distanced itself from al-Qaeda, claims not to be sectarian? What is your understanding of this group?

KAREEM CHEHAYEB: So, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham did grow out of Jabhat al-Nusra, which was the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria. And they basically are the most powerful group in the northwest Syria, notably in Idlib province. Over the years we’ve seen that their leader, al-Julani, has tried to take on a different image. You know, they’ve tried to appeal to minority groups, and you can even sort of see this right now in how they’re going about areas in Aleppo that are majority Christian or Syrian Kurdish, and they’ve sort of said that they’re not there to harm them and that they are — you know, they’re all Syrians and so on, more of a nationalist kind of language in their approach. That being said, there is mixed reporting about how the militants are treating the local residents, so it’s still very unclear. We’re trying to get confirmation on that. But what we do know is that al-Julani and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, in particular, have tried to change their — change public perception about them, particularly from non-Muslim, non-Sunni minorities, notably the Christians, the Kurds and the Druze, in recent years.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to also ask you about your reporting. I mean, you’re talking to us from Beirut. You filed a report Sunday about an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon, this despite the ceasefire.

KAREEM CHEHAYEB: Yes. So, the ceasefire went into effect last week, but the next 60 days — the first phase of the ceasefire appears to be very rocky. So, during this period of time, Hezbollah is supposed to withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon to the north of the Litani. And the Israeli military has presence and control of dozens of villages and towns in southern Lebanon, and they’re still there. And the goal is for both of them to withdraw and to push deployment of the Lebanese army to ultimately become the sole armed presence of southern Lebanon alongside United Nations peacekeepers. That being said, there have been dozens of instances where Israel has struck parts of southern Lebanon and parts north of the Litani. There have been reports of Israeli jets, overflights, drone overflights, and this has pretty much frustrated the Lebanese government, the army.

Now, it’s really unclear what measures they’re going to take. Hezbollah has been very quiet on that front since the ceasefire. They’ve been focusing a lot on commemorating Hassan Nasrallah, their leader, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike back in September, doing some community work and that sort of thing. We do know that the army has been very public about these violations, particularly ones that have struck military personnel, and that they say they have complained, and the Lebanese government is doing the same, apparently.

This is a really big test for the new monitoring framework for the ceasefire, which is headed by the United States and is supposed to bring life back into this U.N. Security Council resolution from back in 2006 which they’re trying to have implemented right now. It’s really unclear what the Lebanese government is going to do beyond that, whether they’re trying to put the trust into the system and hope that Washington will ask the Israelis to maybe — you know, to stop these overflights and these attacks. It’s really unclear. But over the past few days, these issues are still continuing. And it has brought some doubt among some people in Lebanon about whether this ceasefire can hold.

AMY GOODMAN: Kareem, we’re going to have to leave it there.

KAREEM CHEHAYEB: The Israelis have not commented on —

AMY GOODMAN: We hope to do a post-show interview with you.

KAREEM CHEHAYEB: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Kareem Chehayeb is the Beirut-based journalist reporting on Lebanon, Syria and Iraq for the Associated Press.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 03, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/3/headlines

Israel Kills 12 in Renewed Attacks on Southern Lebanon, Threatening to Unravel Ceasefire
Dec 03, 2024

Israel has renewed its attacks on southern Lebanon, killing at least 12 people and threatening to further unravel Israel’s truce with Hezbollah. With the latest attacks, the U.N. says Israel has committed more than 100 ceasefire violations since agreeing to halt attacks last week. In response, Hezbollah said it had fired rockets at northern Israel as a retaliatory measure. Earlier today, Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz warned his military would no longer distinguish between Hezbollah and the Lebanese state if the ceasefire collapses.

Israeli Attacks on Gaza Lead to World’s Highest Rate of Child Amputees, U.N. Says
Dec 03, 2024

Israel has continued its unrelenting assault on Gaza, with attacks on the northern town of Beit Lahia today that killed at least eight people while leaving 20 others wounded. In Gaza City, dozens of civilians are feared trapped under the rubble of a four-story building leveled by an Israeli airstrike.

On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called the situation in Gaza “appalling and apocalyptic” and said Israel may be guilty of the “gravest international crimes.” The U.N. reports Israel has killed at least 341 humanitarian workers since it began its massive assault on Gaza nearly 14 months ago. Meanwhile, Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees in the world per capita, with many children forced to endure surgery without anesthesia due to Israel’s blockade. And the World Health Organization reports more than 10,000 cancer patients remain stranded in Gaza, awaiting permission from Israeli authorities to seek care abroad. This is Dr. Mohammed Abu Afsh, director of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society.

Dr. Mohammed Abu Afsh: “Tragically, even with the necessary authorizations, they cannot leave. The Rafah crossing is closed. The Erez crossing is closed. The Kerem Shalom crossing is closed. Every exit point around Gaza is shut down. How can these patients leave? They are enduring unimaginable suffering. A mechanism and solution must be devised to allow them to exit Palestine for treatment.”

Trump Threatens “Hell to Pay” as Hamas Says 33 Hostages Were Killed by Israeli Airstrikes
Dec 03, 2024

Hamas said Monday that 33 people held captive in Gaza had been killed by Israeli strikes since October of last year, while other hostages had gone missing. Among those said to have been killed was Omer Neutra, a 21-year-old Israeli American tank commander detained by Hamas after its fighters raided an Israeli army outpost. Hamas also released a video showing Israeli American Edan Alexander, a soldier taken captive by Hamas on October 7, calling on President-elect Trump to negotiate a ceasefire and prisoner exchange. Hamas’s announcements drew a threat of renewed violence from Trump, who wrote on his social media site, “there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East … Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America.” On Sunday, Trump hosted Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and their son Yair at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

14-Year-Old Becomes Youngest-Ever Palestinian Sentenced to Prison by Israel
Dec 03, 2024

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces have arrested at least 18 Palestinians over the past 24 hours. On Sunday, the youngest Palestinian ever to be imprisoned by Israel began a one-year sentence. Fourteen-year-old Ayham al-Salaymeh was convicted of throwing stones at Israeli settlers last year when he was just 12 years old. The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem reports the boy was subjected to violence and humiliating treatment during an interrogation.

Meanwhile, B’Tselem has uncovered repeated cases of severe abuse of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers in Hebron. Victims describe being randomly seized by soldiers as they went about their daily affairs. They were then beaten and subjected to severe abuse, sometimes in full view of the public and at other times inside military outposts.

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

“Acts of Massacre and Ethnic Cleansing”: Haggai Matar on Gaza War, ICC Arrest Warrants & More
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 03, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/3/ ... transcript

We’re joined in our New York studio by +972 Magazine journalist Haggai Matar to discuss the latest developments in Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. Matar is a former conscientious objector who previously refused to participate in Israel’s mandatory military service during the Second Intifada. At the time, says Matar, he was protesting war crimes committed by former chief of staff of the Israeli military Moshe Ya’alon, who is currently making headlines again after accusing the Israeli military of war crimes. For the Israeli public, which doesn’t “get the news that everyone else in the world is getting,” Ya’alon “just sounds like a madman,” says Matar. He urges protesters around the world to continue pressuring their governments and calling attention to Israel’s “horrific acts of massacre and ethnic cleansing” in an ongoing effort to hold Israel accountable and end its aggression in the region.

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.

Israel has renewed its attacks on southern Lebanon, killing at least 12 people, threatening to further unravel Israel’s truce with Hezbollah. With the latest attacks, the U.N. says Israel has committed more than 100 ceasefire violations since agreeing to a ceasefire last week.

Meanwhile, Israel has continued its unrelenting assault on Gaza, with attacks on the northern town of Beit Lahia today that killed at least eight people. Twenty others are wounded. In Gaza City, dozens of civilians are feared trapped under the rubble of a four-story building leveled by an Israeli airstrike. On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called the situation in Gaza “appalling and apocalyptic” and said Israel may be guilty of the “gravest international crimes.”

We’re joined now by the Israeli journalist and activist Haggai Matar. He’s an executive director of +972 Magazine and conscientious objector who refused to serve in the Israeli army. He has a new piece in The Nation out today, “For Those Who Know They Have Not Done Enough to Stop Israel’s War on Gaza.”

It’s nice to have you in studio. We usually speak to you in Tel Aviv, Haggai.

HAGGAI MATAR: It’s good to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: So, elaborate on that title in The Nation, the piece that you just wrote, for those who do not feel they’ve done enough.

HAGGAI MATAR: Sure, Amy. So, first, it started from a Yom Kippur reflection on myself of why have I not done enough. I’ve been running +972, co-directing Local Call in Hebrew, trying to fight for the rights of Palestinians and push back against the horrific acts of massacre and ethnic cleansing my country has been committing in Gaza. And yet it feels like it’s just not enough. And why have we not done enough? What could we possibly do more? So it started with a very personal reflection, trying to analyze the reasons of not doing enough, and then saying, “Well, we have to commit. We have to double down.”

And especially now with the upcoming Trump presidency, I think this is also a call to Americans saying your government is clearly not going to get any better at this in the near future. We need people on the ground mobilizing and taking action, supporting medias, trying to move the needle and pressuring Israel into ending these atrocities.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Haggai, I wanted to ask you about the International Criminal Court’s historic decision to indict Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. In a statement, the ICC said that the Israeli leaders had, quote, “intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival.” And how was this news received within Israel? And do you think it will have, in the long term, a major impact on Netanyahu and the policies of his government?

HAGGAI MATAR: Well, thank you, Juan. One of the most heartbreaking realities of the situation is that Israelis don’t get the news that everyone else in the world is getting, the images from Beit Lahia and from Jabaliya, the just atrocities that we’re seeing there, the death, the destruction, the starvation. That is not being shown on Israeli television, in Israeli newspapers.

And therefore, when something like this comes out, a decision from the ICC, basically, the response, from wall to wall — we’re talking about the entire Zionist politics, so that’s about 110 out of 120 members of the Knesset are just saying this is an antisemitic court, this is antisemitic media, like everyone is antisemitic, and, of course, you know, just offering complete support to Netanyahu, even the people who hate him the most.

An exception to that has been, in recent days, Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, a former chief of staff, was actually the chief of staff that sent me to two years in prison for his war crimes, now saying, “Yes, these warrants are justified.” The prime minister —

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to that —

HAGGAI MATAR: Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure.

AMY GOODMAN: — for one minute, the clip of the former defense minister, Moshe Ya’alon, accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing and committing war crimes in Gaza. Again, served as the defense minister of Netanyahu from 2013 to '16, made the accusations over the weekend in main television interviews on Channel 12, for example, one of Israel's biggest TV channels.

MOSHE YA’ALON: [translated] To occupy, to annex, to cleanse, ethnic cleansing, look at the northern Gaza Strip and settle a Jewish settlement. That’s the point. … There is no Beit Lahia. There is no Beit Hanoun. They are operating in Jabaliya and are essentially clearing the area of Arabs.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s a main Israeli channel, not actually Channel 12, Israel’s former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. Haggai Matar, does he speak to the Israeli public? And explain more the significance of who he is.

HAGGAI MATAR: So, Ya’alon was the chief of staff in the Second Intifada. That’s when I refused the draft because of his war crimes. We were at the time chanting at him, “One day we’ll see you at The Hague.” We never imagined it would be as a witness for the prosecution. To suddenly see him talking about the same sort of actions that he was doing, but clearly much, much worse right now, the ethnic cleansings, the starvation that he’s enforcing, is absolutely incredible.

He’s doing it as part of his attempt to fight against the Netanyahu drive for authoritarianism, so he’s been very active in the kind of so-called Israeli protests for democracy even before the war in Gaza. That has been his policy. I think he connects the dots, as one should, between the attack on democratic institutions inside of Israel and the ethnic cleansing and massacre and war crimes against Palestinians.

However, unfortunately, in interviews where he’s been going on Israeli television, basically, from wall to wall, journalists have been saying, “Are you mad? You are just endangering our soldiers. What are you talking about? There’s no war crimes.” So, because viewers don’t have the context of what has actually been happening, he just sounds like a madman to many people. But I do think it does cause some people pause to think, “Why would someone with his credentials make such serious accusations?”

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

Live Report: Activists Occupy Canadian Parliament Building to Protest Gaza War & Arming of Israel
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 03, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/3/ ... transcript

“Canada needs to stop arming Israel and implement an immediate arms embargo.” In Ottawa, over 100 Jewish activists began a sit-in inside a Canadian parliamentary building Tuesday to demand Canada stop arming Israel. Rachel Small, a member of the Jews Say No to Genocide Coalition and a member of the sit-in, says that the Canadian government’s claims that it is halting arms shipments to Israel are obfuscating the fact that Canadian weapons are still being transported via the United States. “We’re here to make sure that they … actually cut off the flow,” says Small. Such protest “is what we should be seeing more of,” adds Israeli journalist and former conscientious objector Haggai Matar.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: Haggai, you asked if people are doing enough. I want to break into this conversation with this breaking news. In Canada, about 150 Jewish activists and allies have just launched a protest inside the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa to demand Canada stop arming Israel.

We’re joined now by Rachel Small, a member of the group Jews Say No to Genocide Coalition.

Rachel, can you describe where you are and what you’re doing and what you’re calling for?

RACHEL SMALL: Thank you. We are in a Parliament Hill building. Right now we have completely taken over the lobby of this building, that has hundreds of parliamentarians’ office in here.

Our demand is clear: Canada needs to stop arming Israel and implement an immediate arms embargo. We know that every F-35 fighter jet, every Boeing Apache helicopter dropping bombs on Lebanon and Gaza right now is full of hundreds of Canadian components. We’re here as Jews to say this violence cannot continue in our name. And we’re here as people of conscience to say that the absolute bare minimum Canada needs to be doing right now is stop arming a genocide.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Haggai Matar, your response to these kinds of actions occurring abroad? Does this have an impact on the Israeli public?

HAGGAI MATAR: Well, first of all, I want to commend the activists on the ground now in Ottawa. It’s incredible. This is the exact kind of protest that people should be taking on in Canada, definitely in the U.S., which is the biggest supplier of weapons and funding and diplomatic support to Israel. So, yes, this is what we should be seeing more of.

I’m afraid that in Israel, again, these protests are usually seen as antisemitic or, in the case of Jews protesting, of self-hating Jews or people that are unhinged. That’s the way it’s being perceived. It’s our job as Jewish Israelis on the ground, talking in Hebrew, talking to people in our communities, to try and help them understand that it’s not the world that has gone mad, it’s us.

AMY GOODMAN: Interesting that the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, just met with President-elect Trump in Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Rachel Small, we’re looking at the group of people. One of them, I think, says “Jews for a Free Palestine.” What has been Trudeau’s position? And what’s going to happen to you this morning?

RACHEL SMALL: We have seen an unprecedented wave of resistance across Canada over the past 13 months, many, many thousands of people across the country not only petitioning their MPs, not only protesting, not only meeting with them, but actually holding blockades at weapons factories, doing just really everything we can to get Canada to stop arming Israel.

And that pressure has resulted in the Canadian government taking a stance that we would have not thought possible a year or two ago. They have committed to stop arming Israel. They have, in fact — the foreign affairs minister recently, in fact, said that Canadian weapons are not going to be going and used in Gaza.

Unfortunately, it’s not true. Unfortunately, we know that they have not tackled all the permits, and they have continued to conveniently send weapons to the U.S. without even requiring a permit. Those are going into every F-35 Israel is using. That is going into Israel’s primary weapons of war.

So we have backed the Canadian government into a corner where they know what the right stance is. They know they need to stop arming Israel. And we’re here to make sure they do it. The broad Arms Embargo Now coalition has come together across the country and has, in fact, gotten 45 parliamentarians to formally endorse the call for an arms embargo. We just need the government to step up and take that action to actually cut off the flow of all weapons to and from Israel. It’s the bare minimum they need to be doing.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Rachel Small, member of Jews Say No to Genocide Coalition. If you’re having a little trouble understanding her, she’s inside the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa. There are scores of people behind her, lead Canadian organizer with World — with the group World Beyond War. And in the studio with us in New York, though usually in Tel Aviv, is Haggai Matar, Israeli journalist, activist, executive director of +972 Magazine, a conscientious objector himself. Juan?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, Haggai, we only have about a minute left, but I wanted to ask you about President-elect Trump’s decision to select former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as the next U.S. ambassador to Israel. Huckabee is not only a leading U.S. Christian Zionist who’s openly advocated for Israel’s annexation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he declared in 2008 that there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian. What do you expect from this kind of ambassador from the new Trump administration?

HAGGAI MATAR: So, obviously, Trump appointments and Trump policies are terrifying to us and should be, too, to anyone who cares about the rights of Palestinians. I do want to also point out, however, Trump policies have an inherent contradiction. As an isolationist, Trump does not want to get involved in too many wars. As someone who wants to break deals with Saudi Arabia and Arab Gulf states, he may want to ensure that they don’t drift into the Iran-China field of influence. And those two policies, being pro-annexation and pro-settlements and pro-Israel and being pro-war and wanting to sign deals, they collide. And I think it’s our role on the left to kind of put a wedge in there and try and make sure that it becomes more and more apparent how those policies conflict with each other.

AMY GOODMAN: Haggai Matar, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Israeli journalist, activist, executive director of +972 Magazine, former conscientious objector, refused to serve in the Israeli army.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 04, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/4/headlines

Israel Bombs Gaza Food Distribution Center, Killing Palestinian Children
Dec 04, 2024

In Gaza, at least five people, including four children, were killed today in an Israeli drone strike on a food distribution center and a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp. Elsewhere, at least two people were killed when Israel bombed residential buildings in Deir al-Balah, where others remain missing under the rubble. In the Bureij refugee camp, Israeli warplanes struck a U.N.-run school sheltering displaced Palestinians, setting more than a dozen tents ablaze and killing a Palestinian medic. Meanwhile, in Beit Lahia, three medical workers were wounded on Tuesday, one of them critically, when Israel bombed the Kamal Adwan Hospital. The hospital’s director reported quadcopter drones were seen dropping bombs packed with shrapnel. It was Israel’s fifth attack on the hospital in recent weeks. In Khan Younis, a massive line formed Tuesday as Palestinians queued for rations of flour at a U.N.-run food distribution center. Many of them described long and fruitless days searching for bread or other staples amid Israel’s stifling blockade.

Lina al-Basiouni: “This bag of flour we received won’t last a month, not even with careful rationing. We appeal to the United Nations, UNRWA, UNICEF and all international organizations working to support displaced people or Palestinian refugees to preserve our cause, to help us, to do everything they can and dedicate all their efforts to help the displaced in Gaza, because our situation is so difficult.”

Canadian Peace Activists Hold Parliament Hill Protest to Demand Israel Arms Embargo
Dec 04, 2024

In Ottawa, Canada, over 100 Jewish peace activists staged a sit-in protest Tuesday inside a parliamentary building, demanding Canada stop arming Israel. At least 14 protesters were arrested and issued trespass notices. The Jews Say No to Genocide Coalition is demanding Canada cancel all active military export permits to Israel and close loopholes allowing weapons to reach Israel via the United States without requiring permits. They’re also calling on Canada to halt purchases of Israeli military hardware. Click here to see our interview with one of the protesters as the sit-in was taking place.

Syrian Armed Groups Advance on Hama City After Seizing Aleppo
Dec 04, 2024

Syria’s state news agency reports Syrian troops backed by Syrian and Russian warplanes are fighting fierce battles in the central Hama province, as rebels seek to build on their surprise takeover of Aleppo last week. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports the armed groups had captured several settlements just outside Hama city and have begun shelling some neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the Pentagon said Tuesday the United States had carried out strikes in eastern Syria in response to a rocket launch near a base housing U.S. troops. The Pentagon did not say who was responsible for the rocket attacks or who it had fired on. Elsewhere, Israel carried out an airstrike on a car near Syria’s capital Damascus on Tuesday. A Lebanese security source told Reuters the attack killed a senior Hezbollah figure responsible for liaising with the Syrian Army.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 05, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/5/headlines

Amnesty International Concludes Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza
Dec 05, 2024

Amnesty International has concluded that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. This is Amnesty researcher Budour Hassan.

Budour Hassan: “We have documented Israel’s perpetration of three out of the five prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention since the 7th of October. These include killing members of the group, causing them serious mental or bodily harm and inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction. For example, this would include the destruction of essential infrastructure, including homes, agricultural land, water and sanitation infrastructure and infrastructure indispensable to the civilian population. They also include the mass repeated displacement under inhumane and unsanitary conditions. And they also include the deliberate obstruction of entry of lifesaving supplies and aid.”

Israel is intensifying its attacks on Khan Younis in southern Gaza. An attack on an encampment in al-Mawasi, a so-called safe zone, killed at least 21 people. Survivors described a “fireball” that “incinerated” people, including mothers and their children. Palestinians who gathered to grieve the dead responded to the Amnesty report.

Iyad Abu Mustafa: “The time has come for the international community to move on all fronts to question and hold Israel to account for the crimes — war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide crimes — that it is carrying out.”

The massacre in al-Mawasi was just one of multiple deadly attacks launched by Israel over the past day, killing at least 48 people overall. Attacks on the Indonesian Hospital in northern Beit Lahia — which is also acting as shelter — set the facility’s water tanks ablaze.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces are continuing to attack southern Lebanon by air, in violation of a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah.

Syrian Gov’t Withdraws from Key City of Hama as Opposition Forces Advance
Dec 05, 2024

Syria’s government says it has withdrawn its forces from Hama as armed opposition fighters began entering the key Syrian city. It’s another major blow to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after opposition fighters last week seized Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city.

Armed groups now control much of Syria’s northern Idlib province, where civil defense workers report Russian airstrikes on five healthcare facilities have killed at least 18 people and injured nearly three dozen others. Doctors and paramedics at Aleppo University Hospital say they’re suffering severe shortages of personnel and medical supplies.

Abdul Razzak: “Hospitals are often put out of service. There’s a lack of staff and equipment. All hospitals are out of service due to the bombing of hospitals.”