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.
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“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.
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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.