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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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“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.
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.”
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“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.
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“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.
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.
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“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.
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.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Thu Dec 12, 2024 10:34 pm
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.
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“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.
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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.
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.
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“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.
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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.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Thu Dec 12, 2024 10:39 pm
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.
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“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.
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.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Thu Dec 12, 2024 10:42 pm
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.
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.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Thu Dec 12, 2024 10:45 pm
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.”
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.”
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Thu Dec 12, 2024 10:50 pm
Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 06, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/6/headlines
Leader of Syrian Opposition Says HTS in Control of Hama as Groups Seeks to Overthrow Assad
Dec 06, 2024
In Syria, the leader of the powerful armed opposition group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — a former al-Qaeda affiliate — has declared that opposition forces have taken complete control of the central city of Hama. In an interview with CNN published today, Abu Mohammad al-Julani said his group’s ultimate goal is to overthrow Syria’s authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad. Armed groups now control Hama’s military airport and were seen freeing prisoners from the city’s jails. They’ve since pushed further south, claiming “complete and rapid control” of the northern suburbs of Homs, Syria’s third-largest city. Overnight, thousands of Homs residents fled toward Syria’s western coast. On Thursday, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement pledged its support to the embattled Syrian government, which faces one of the largest challenges to Bashar al-Assad’s authority in 13 years of bloody civil war.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Syrians displaced by violence are struggling to survive amid freezing temperatures. This is Shafiqa Saeeda, a Yazidi Syrian whose family fled to a camp in northern Syria.
Shafiqa Saeeda: “We were staying in al-Shahba. They said the Free Syrian Army would enter the area. We were afraid because there were women with us. We were afraid that they would kidnap them from us. … Our baby grandson was born on the third day here. We were sleeping outside. There was no tent or anything. We didn’t find anything to eat when we got hungry, and there were no ovens to cook. The baby was born here, and we named him Afrin, after our city.”
Israeli Forces Continue Deadly Attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital, Killing 4 Staff
Dec 06, 2024
The Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza has again come under intense attack by Israeli forces, who stormed the beleaguered facility, making arrests and ordering others to evacuate. Kamal Adwan’s director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, also reports many deaths and injuries from Israeli strikes, including four medical workers who were killed. Abu Safiya, who himself was severely wounded in an Israeli attack last month, called the situation “catastrophic.”
“The Ghost of Famine Is Here”: Al-Mawasi Soup Kitchen Strives to Feed Thousands in Southern Gaza
Dec 06, 2024
In southern Gaza, a director of a soup kitchen in al-Mawasi, in Khan Younis, says many families rely solely on one meal per day from his operation, after the World Central Kitchen paused its Gaza distributions following an Israeli airstrike that killed three of its workers last weekend.
Hani Abou al-Qassem: “Now the ghost of famine is beginning to appear here in the southern Gaza Strip. These families can’t afford even the low-priced materials and have no source of food except from this charity. Families are relying on this soup kitchen as their only means, as they found their haven in it. Currently, we are serving more than 800 families, equivalent to approximately 4,000 people.”
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Amnesty International: Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza with Full U.S. Support
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 06, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/6/ ... transcript
Amnesty International has released a landmark report that concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, making it the first major human rights group to do so. The nearly 300-page report examines the first nine months of the Israeli war on Gaza and finds that Israel’s actions have caused death, injury and mental harm on a vast scale, as well as conditions intended to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza. Both Israel and the United States have rejected Amnesty’s conclusion. Amnesty researcher Budour Hassan, who covers Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, dismisses the criticism and says, if anything, Amnesty’s intervention took too long because of how carefully the group gathered and verified its information. “We tried to be absolutely true to the definition of 'genocide' under the Genocide Convention,” says Hassan, who urges U.S. officials in particular to do more to stop the bloodshed. “If there is any country that has the capacity, the power and the tools to stop this genocide, it’s the United States. Not only has the United States failed to do so, it has consistently awarded Israel. It has consistently continued to flout the United States’ own laws in order to continue giving Israel the weapons — the very same weapons that are used by Israel to commit the genocide in Gaza.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: In a landmark report released Thursday, Amnesty International has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. It’s the first time a major human rights organization has labeled Israel’s actions in Gaza following the October 7th attacks of 2023 as genocide.
This is a video released by Amnesty International to accompany its new report. “'You Feel Like You Are Subhuman': Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza” is the name of this video. It features Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard and their Israel-Palestine researcher, Budour Hassan. It begins with a clip of former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
YOAV GALLANT: [translated] We are laying a complete siege on Gaza — no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.
AGNÈS CALLAMARD: For over a year, we’ve witnessed utter carnage unfolding right before our eyes in the occupied Gaza Strip, with no end in sight. Many have described this carnage as the first live-streamed genocide, day after day. What has your government done to prevent this genocide? What have your political leaders done? What are they doing now?
ON-SCREEN TEXT: “'You Feel Like You Are Subhuman': Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.”
NARRATOR: Israel has been waging an ongoing and devastating offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip. More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands injured, nearly 2 million displaced, neighborhoods flattened, aid and lifesaving supplies restricted — all sparking an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.
The term “genocide” has increasingly been used to describe Israel’s conduct in Gaza. But how can we assess whether what is happening is actually genocide? The first treaty to explicitly define and criminalize genocide in international law was adopted by the United Nations in 1948 in response to the atrocities of World War II. To prove genocide has taken place, you need to show that one or more acts prohibited by the Genocide Convention was carried out and that it was “committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” — in this case, Palestinians.
BUDOUR HASSAN: As part of Amnesty International’s research, 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.
NARRATOR: It is clear the Israel authorities have deliberately inflicted these conditions and knew they would inevitably result in a deadly mix of hunger and disease, which brings us to the other important component of the crime: the intent to destroy.
ISRAELI SOLDIER: [translated] Three, two, one.
PRESIDENT ISAAC HERZOG: It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not were — were not aware, not informed. It’s absolutely not true.
BUDOUR HASSAN: The racist, dehumanizing and genocidal statements call for the annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza and making Gaza unlivable. They provide evidence for Israel’s intent to physically destroy Palestinians. As part of Amnesty International’s research, we reviewed over 100 statements made by Israeli officials, and these statements clearly were echoed by Israeli soldiers on the ground.
BRIG. GEN. YOGEV BAR SHESHET: [translated] Whoever returns here, if they return here after, will find scorched earth — no houses, no agriculture, nothing. They have no future.
NARRATOR: Specific genocidal intent should be assessed through analyzing the most recent conflict, while taking into account a system of apartheid, a brutal occupation and the 17-year unlawful blockade of Gaza — a history of systematic human right violations built on the continuous dehumanization of Palestinians.
BUDOUR HASSAN: We have documented an unprecedented scale, speed and seriousness of inhumane acts in Gaza. Palestinians are facing overwhelming trauma and pain. We have interviewed parents digging up the remains of their children with their own hands. And we have documented the mixture of hunger and disease that has ravaged Gaza, all while the healthcare sector has collapsed completely.
AGNÈS CALLAMARD: This must stop. And for genocide to end, governments around the world must come together, and they must take action, resolute action. You must ask that they stop transferring weapons that are murdering children in their thousands and decimating entire Palestinian families. You must demand that justice be delivered, that all those responsible for the genocide be held to account. Perpetrators benefit from the inaction and the complicity of too many of our political leaders. No war criminals should ever be allowed to walk free, undisturbed, fearless. Let’s put all our instruments into action — national tribunals, universal jurisdiction, International Criminal Court. Governments must do everything in their power to end Israel’s genocide.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard, part of a video Amnesty released along with its 296-page report detailing Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the charge of genocide, describing the report as, quote, “fabricated” and “based on lies.” This is Israeli Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sharren Haskel.
SHARREN HASKEL: Amnesty International thinks that you’re stupid, because they think that in the 101 pages report that they actually produce, you will not read them. In this report, they actually altered and changed the legal terms and definition for what is a genocide, because Israel doesn’t meet those criterias. So Amnesty International had to alter it.
AMY GOODMAN: The U.S. State Department also said they, quote, “disagree” with Amnesty’s report and continue to find allegations of genocide “unfounded.”
For more on the report, we’re joined by Amnesty International researcher on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Budour Hassan. She’s joining us from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
Budour, we saw you in this video report. If you can respond to what the Israeli government and the U.S. said, and tell us more about why Amnesty has taken this position, the first among international major human rights organizations, that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza?
BUDOUR HASSAN: Thank you for having me again, Amy.
Actually, if anything, the question that should be asked: Why did it take Amnesty this long to produce this report? Not why we have adopted this approach in the first place. And one answer to that is, if anything, we tried to be absolutely true to the definition of “genocide” under the Genocide Convention, but also to follow suit with the jurisprudence on genocide, including the main decisions taken by the International Court of Justice on what is genocide. And because we are talking about strict and narrow definitions, our report, and those who can read the legal section — and apparently the Israeli spokesperson failed to read that — will see that we absolutely adopt the definitions and the jurisprudence taken by the International Court of Justice, especially on the interpretation of what is specific intent.
And, in fact, this is why also it took us so long to produce this report, because we wanted to produce something that can be used by those who want to charge Israel with genocide. We wanted to produce strong enough evidence both for the commission of the prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention — in this case, killing Palestinians deliberately, inflicting them life-changing injuries, and inflicting upon them also conditions, destructive conditions, of life that would cause their slow death.
And we found that when we analyzed this conduct — and we based our analysis both on evidence collected on the ground through our fieldworkers, who have been working tirelessly on the ground in Gaza since the 7th of October, and also on the analysis of satellite imagery, on the analysis of all publicly available evidence that we could reach — we found that these prohibited acts were indeed committed.
And the next question was whether these acts were committed intentionally and with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians as a protected group or as such. And then we again followed the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice, which is how you infer specific intent. You do infer it through two types of evidence. You do look at the pattern of conduct that the Israeli military has been adopting, which include the scale, severity and seriousness of attacks, the repetition of the attacks, the cumulative effects of these attacks, the totality of evidence that you can find on the ground. And secondly, you also look at the direct evidence, which is the statements that we heard from Israeli officials.
At Amnesty, we looked at more than 100 statements issued by Israeli officials, including 22 statements issued by high-ranking Israeli officials and military officers responsible for the war and security cabinets and responsible what is happening on the ground. We then looked at how these dehumanizing, derogatory and racist statements that called specifically for the destruction and annihilation of Gaza, for equating Palestinians in Gaza, all of them, to Hamas, and for calling for the large-scale destruction of life in Gaza — we saw how these statements were echoed by Israeli soldiers. We verified 62 videos in which soldiers appear to be echoing these statements while celebrating the destruction of Palestinian universities, mosques and agricultural lands.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go directly to the U.S. State Department, who — they have said they disagree with the conclusions of Amnesty’s report. This is an exchange between reporters Prem Thakker and Said Arikat in the State Department press briefing with State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel.
VEDANT PATEL: What I can say, as a spokesperson of the U.S. government and as a spokesperson of this administration, is that the findings of — the accusations of genocide, we continue to believe those to be unfounded. … to provide as it relates to that.
SAID ARIKAT: So, if you’ll indulge me just a little bit.
VEDANT PATEL: Sure.
SAID ARIKAT: I mean, look, we have seen almost 2 million people being forcibly moved from one place to another. This morning — this morning — al-Mawasi was bombed, an area that Israel designated as safe haven for people to go to. They bombed it. They killed 20 people. What does it take? Does it have — do the whole population of Gaza have to be annihilated for you to term it genocide? What are we waiting for on this issue, Vedant?
VEDANT PATEL: Said, I’m just not going to get into —
SAID ARIKAT: Oh, sure. Fine.
VEDANT PATEL: — this rhetorical hypothetical.
PREM THAKKER: So, we’ve seen the targeting of thousands of journalists, medical staff, humanitarian workers, infrastructure workers; the total decimation of agriculture, religious sites, homes, residential blocks; the destruction of neighborhoods, memories, bloodlines. Northern Gaza is ethnically cleansed to a great extent. Doctors, including from America, say that they’ve seen kids deliberately sniped. How many acts of genocide does it take to make a genocide?
VEDANT PATEL: So, look, I am just — I appreciate what you’re trying to do with the way that you phrased that question, but let me just say again unequivocally that the allegations of genocide, we find to be unfounded.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel responding to journalists Prem Thakker of Zeteo and Said Arikat of Al-Quds. If you can respond, Budour Hassan, as you sit there in the occupied West Bank, as you sit there in Ramallah, having just been a major part of producing this report of Amnesty International?
BUDOUR HASSAN: One question that was addressed was how long would it take for the United States to acknowledge the severity of what’s happening in Gaza. The United States administration is not only denying that a genocide is happening in Gaza, it’s denying that human rights violations are being committed by the Israeli authorities in Gaza.
And we know, Amy, probably in four or five years’ time, those very same people who are now denying that a genocide is happening, once they become retired officials, they will say, “It happened under our watch, and we did nothing to stop it.” And they will probably give speeches in which they are awarded money in order to come and say, “We knew that this was happening. We could not stop it.” And unfortunately, this has been happening so often.
And this is — if anything, it’s a damning indictment of the United States’ failure to stop Israel’s violation. If there is any country that has the capacity, the power and the tool to stop this genocide, it’s the United States. Not only has the United States failed to do so, it has consistently awarded Israel. It has consistently continued to flout the United States’ own laws in order to continue giving Israel the weapons — the very same weapons that are used by Israel to commit the genocide in Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, this reminds me of 30 years ago almost exactly, when Madeleine Albright was secretary of state and Bill Clinton was president, and they were continually challenged about what was happening in Rwanda. And they refused to use that term “genocide,” because if they did — well, can you talk about what it would mean, what it would trigger, if they used the word “genocide”? And by the way, in that case, they would later apologize and say they were wrong.
BUDOUR HASSAN: But what would these apologies — how would these victims read the apologies?
AMY GOODMAN: Right. Forget the apology. Talk about —
BUDOUR HASSAN: And I think it’s not only the guilt of —
AMY GOODMAN: Forget the apology. Talk about what it would mean if they use the word “genocide.” What does that trigger internationally, in terms of the world bodies, at the U.N., and the response?
BUDOUR HASSAN: Obviously, considering that genocide is a crime under the ICC statute, and considering that we’re talking about something that is absolutely prohibited — genocide is never justifiable, not even in an armed conflict, which means that those who continue to arm Israel while it is committing genocide are guilty of being complicit. And complicity in genocide is also prohibited under the Genocide Convention. So, the States, part of why they are denying not only that genocide is being committed, but that war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity are also being committed, is that they don’t want to risk being accused of complicity in these crimes.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Budour, you are in Ramallah. You’re in the occupied West Bank. If you can talk about what’s happening in the West Bank right now, with members of the war cabinet talking about wanting to annex the whole area? What is actually happening on the ground?
BUDOUR HASSAN: Not to deflect the question, Amy, but just because this report that we worked on was not just addressed to the international community or the court, it was mainly addressed to the victims, I would just ask you to give me just a couple of seconds really just to talk about the victims.
We interviewed 212 people in Gaza, including victims of airstrikes. People who lost their entire families agreed to speak to us to share their experiences, their grief. We went back to interview some of those we interviewed way back in October and November. We went back to interview them in October this year to tell them about the report. And we saw how even a year — after a year had passed since they lost the entirety of their families, the scars of their loss never left them. One of the parents whom we interviewed again told us, “I don’t want people’s sympathy. I want my children back.” And we know that no one can really bring his children back, but he also added that “At least what we can do and what I want you to do is to fight as hell for me to get the justice that my children deserve.” This is a parent who lost his wife, all of his three children, his sister and his parents. And these stories happened all over again.
We also talked to people who face daily humiliation while they are waiting on queues for bread, for clean water for hours upon hours, people who were displaced repeatedly. Some were displaced for 12 times. And if anything, why these people would agree to talk to you is because they are waiting for justice, is because they believe that at least it is our duty to bear witness to the ongoing carnage and to name it for what it is: genocide.
Now, concerning what’s happening in the West Bank, I think all the attempts of Israel is to annex more and more land from the West Bank, including through military orders, including through designating land in the West Bank as state land. It’s part of Israel’s onslaught, and full-throttled onslaught, on Palestinian existence, on this land, on Palestinian memory, on Palestinian presence. This fight, this onslaught, takes many shapes, many forms. In Gaza, we see it in the form of genocide. In the West Bank, we see it in the form of slow but really clear dispossession and mass displacement. More than 300 households have been displaced in the West Bank since the 7th of October, 2023. But what is common between these — among this architecture of dispossession, displacement, dehumanization, be it in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, or the Gaza Strip, is Israel’s ongoing attempt, with the support of the United States, to erase Palestinians from this land.
AMY GOODMAN: Budour Hassan, I want to thank you so much for being with us and also comment that today is the anniversary of the death of Refaat Alareer. He was killed one year ago today in an Israeli strike. His last tweet, “The Democratic Party and Biden are responsible for the Gaza genocide perpetrated by Israel.” Refaat Alareer is known around the world. He was a professor at Islamic University and an award-winning poet. Budour Hassan, thank you so much for being with us, Amnesty International researcher on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We will link to Amnesty’s report, which has just concluded Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. The report is called “'You Feel Like You Are Subhuman': Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.”
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“All That Remains”: As Gaza Faces Child Amputee Crisis, New Film Tells Story of 13-Year-Old Leyan
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 06, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/6/ ... transcript
Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinian territory since October of last year has killed tens of thousands of people and wounded over 100,000 more, leaving many with life-altering injuries. The United Nations said this week that Gaza now has the highest per-capita rate of child amputees in the world, with many children forced to endure surgery without anesthesia. For more, we look at All That Remains, a new film from Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines that follows the story of 13-year-old Leyan Abu al-Atta as she recovers from having her leg amputated due to an Israeli airstrike. “It changed the trajectory of her life forever … but it didn’t even register on international media’s reporting because of all the massacres that were going on,” says Rhana Natour, director and producer of All That Remains. While Leyan’s family was able to raise awareness about her case and secure a medical evacuation out of Gaza to the United States, it did not happen soon enough, and doctors were forced to amputate her leg in order to save her life. Natour says this still represents a better outcome than what is available for most victims in Gaza. “For every Leyan that is able to leave Gaza, there are hundreds, if not thousands, who are not able to leave,” she says.
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 a grim statistic from Gaza. On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees per capita anywhere in the world, with many children forced to endure surgery without anesthesia. In September, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, said each day in Gaza 10 children are losing one or both of their legs.
Last weekend, after months of waiting for approval from Israel, eight injured Palestinian children from Gaza arrived in Chicago for medical treatment. It was the largest medical evacuation of injured Palestinian children to the United States.
We turn now to a new film from Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines that brings this story to life. It’s called All That Remains. It follows the story of Leyan, Leyan Abu al-Atta, 13-year-old girl whose leg was amputated after she was severely injured in an Israeli strike on Deir al-Balah, in Gaza, last December.
RAGHDA ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] Leyan was like a butterfly. She flew here and there. She was very active and didn’t like to stay put.
AYOUB ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] Leyan loves fashion. She loves to dress up.
LEYAN ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] Today I have for you a poem by Tamim Al-Barghouti.
AYOUB ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] She likes to write and recite poetry.
LEYAN ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] “In Jerusalem graves are arranged, as if they are lines of the city’s history.”
Hi, guys. I’m getting ready for school because we have a test: math.
AYOUB ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] Leyan was injured on a Saturday, December 2nd.
LEYAN ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] Check this out, people. This is after I got myself ready.
AYOUB ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] The doctor told us we had to choose between the girl or her leg.
ALI ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] What happened to Leyan weighs very heavily on me.
RAGHDA ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] To make her feel better, I tell her, “It isn’t just you. It’s this kid, that kid, that kid. And that’s just who we know.”
AYOUB ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] I took her cellphone to see what she used to film. I wanted to see how she used to be, because I was so sad for her. What touched me when I saw her videos was that she was so ambitious. She was excited about the future and loved to document everything. This made me feel I wanted to see her like she was before, not confined to a bed.
LEYAN ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] I was awake, but I felt like I was in a dream. It didn’t feel real.
My name is Leyan Ali Musa Abu al-Atta. I’m in Egypt, and we’re getting ready to go to America tomorrow.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s 13-year-old Leyan al-Atta. In this next clip from the Fault Lines documentary All That Remains, Leyan’s parents and her older brother describe what happened after she was injured in this Israeli strike on Deir al-Balah.
ALI ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] It was like Leyan was fading away before our eyes, and we were watching our hopes and dreams being destroyed.
ICU! ICU!
AYOUB ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] Her leg looked almost amputated. The doctor told us that the majority of her leg’s tendons were cut. Ten to 15 centimeters of her bones were missing.
RAGHDA ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] There wasn’t any equipment for the doctors to perform proper surgery. The doctor came out and said that the girl was in very bad condition. It was clear on his face.
LEYAN ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] I had a high fever that never went away. And my leg suddenly turned black and blue.
I can’t breathe! Enough already!
RAGHDA ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] We didn’t know what to do. The girl was dying.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s a clip from All That Remains, a new Al Jazeera Fault Lines documentary. Leyan is now in Philadelphia. She’s being treated at Shriners Hospital.
For more, we’re joined from Washington, D.C., by Rhana Natour. She’s the director and producer of All That Remains.
Rhana, this is a devastating film. Yes, it’s the story of one little girl and her unbelievable courage, but take us on that journey from the day last December when she was injured in this airstrike and then how she and her mom got out of Gaza to Egypt and ended up in Philly.
RHANA NATOUR: You know, Leyan was injured in an airstrike, in an artillery strike on a mosque that happened to be by the school where she was sheltering. And it changed the trajectory of her life forever, and her loved ones’ and her family’s life, but it didn’t even register on international media’s reporting because of all the massacres that were going on.
And after that strike, her family saw that her leg was at risk of being amputated. And they couldn’t get the care they needed, to get the medical care to prevent that amputation from happening. So, her brother, her older brother Ayoub, launched a social media campaign. He reached out to every journalist in Gaza in an effort to make a public plea to get his sister out of Gaza. And they were successful. But it was too late. Her leg was amputated because gangrene had reached up to her leg and was going to kill her if she didn’t amputate that leg.
And Leyan — for every Leyan that is able to leave Gaza, there are hundreds, if not thousands, who are not able to leave. A medical evacuation out of Gaza and her eventual medical evacuation to the U.S. for medical treatment, it’s what I call a lucky ticket for the profoundly unlucky. But it was the best shot that Leyan had at a future. It was the best shot that Leyan had for the chance, even just the chance to be able to walk again on prosthetics.
AMY GOODMAN: So, her leg was amputated in Cairo because —
RHANA NATOUR: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: — gangrene threatened her life, when she got out —
RHANA NATOUR: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: — of Gaza, her mother making this devastating decision to leave her other children and her husband, who remain under, to say the least, enormous danger in Gaza, but to be with Leyan?
RHANA NATOUR: Yes, exactly. These evacuations are essential, because the medical system in Gaza is collapsing. But what this does is it means that these families are ripped away from their support system at the exact moment they need it most, when they have a very sick child that needs medical treatment.
At the beginning of this journey of making the film, we thought we were following a medical journey. We wanted to know all about her treatments. And we realized soon after that this was about more than that, that this was not just about a girl who wanted to walk again, but that this was about a girl who wanted to make sure that her life didn’t go unlived, that she didn’t just languish in a hospital bed, and that this was a journey and something that changed the entire trajectory of this family.
Every single member of this family’s life changed as a result of this injury. Her mother had to make the decision. She did not want to leave Gaza, but she had to, to give — to try to save her daughter’s life, essentially. She left behind an 8-year-old boy, who suddenly didn’t have a mom. She left behind her husband, who remains in Gaza today. And we were able to document, with the help of Media Town Productions, who documented the family that Leyan left behind, this 360-degree perspective of what this injury did, because it’s not just an injury that’s physical to one girl, but it’s a traumatic injury of separation for an entire family.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to another clip from your documentary, Rhana, All That Remains, where we hear from the renowned surgeon Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, who spent more than a month in Gaza working with Doctors Without Borders in the early days of Israel’s assault there.
DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, this is a photo that I took of our operating room after I finished. And the anesthetist is waking the child up, and one of the nurses is writing the child’s name on the box that has their amputated limb. And you can see the box where the limb is in it. This is a limb that’s unsalvageable and needed amputation. This is a surgery that I did on the hand to try to salvage the limb. This is a 14-year-old boy called Amadan [phon.]. So, there are lots of reasons why I take these photographs. Sometimes the memories are so horrendous that you need to see it to believe that it did happen.
It was really the scale, so the scale of children’s amputations. Half of my cases were always children. The delay that was happening in taking patients to the operating room meant that these wounds became infected and gangrenous, and you had to do amputations to save the children’s lives. And as the war progressed and children knew of other children who had lost their limbs, they would come to the operating room screaming, “Don’t take my leg away! Don’t take my leg away!”
Children are not small adults. There’s a difference in the way you treat them. The child’s body is programmed to grow. Even the injured child’s body is programmed to grow. A child that has a war-related amputation needs between nine and 12 surgeries by the time they reach adult age. This growing child needs a new prosthetic every six months, as their body outgrows the length of the prosthesis.
This problem is so complex. So you need to create a system that ensures that these children have the most productive life possible. It is of paramount importance that we continue to plan for tomorrow, because genocide is about there not being a tomorrow. There is a tomorrow for these children. And our job is to make sure that they do not spend the rest of their lives in pain and misery as a result of this injury.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s renowned surgeon Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, who spent more than a month in Gaza working with Doctors Without Borders. You can see our interviews with him at democracynow.org. But that’s from the film All That Remains, that’s produced and directed by Rhana Natour.
So, let’s talk about the number of Palestinian children who have lost their limbs. In fact, you document in a piece that you write, Rhana — you tell the story of another teenager, little young girl, named Layan also, who lost both her limbs. The Leyan who is in this documentary is at Shriners in Philadelphia right now, and Layan Albaz is at Shriners in Chicago, Rana.
RHANA NATOUR: That’s correct. And I think what — when I first started reporting on this issue, I thought that the mountain that these kids were climbing medically was getting them access to a prosthetic limb and making sure that they had specialized care from specialized doctors who would be able to make that all happen.
What I soon learned, with the story of Layan Albaz, which I document in the Atavist magazine, is that these injuries are incredibly complicated and difficult to treat in the best of circumstances, even before these specialists that are renowned throughout the entire world. And why? The reason is because, A, children, historically, didn’t typically survive these injuries, and they are surviving multiple very severe and complicated injuries.
To give you an idea of Layan Albaz, she has an above-the-knee amputation on one knee and a below-the-knee amputation in another knee. She had limbs that — she’s a victim of a blast injury. So, these limbs have been eviscerated. The limbs, the bones, the muscles, the tissue, the tendons, the skin, there’s a specialist for each of those things, because they all have to work together in order to accommodate a prosthetic.
And when she finally was able to walk on a prosthetic, I was able to witness what that therapy looks like. She’s operating basically two different instruments at the same time. She has to learn how to master two different instruments, because she has a mechanical knee on one side and she has a prosthetic that looks completely different on the other side, because the injuries look completely different. It is very, very, very difficult.
AMY GOODMAN: So, we have to wrap up right now. We have 30 seconds. The documentary All That Remains, just utterly heartbroken with the divided family. And the most — the strongest figure in this film is this little girl, is Leyan, who is comforting her mother, who came with her, her dad who’s still in Gaza, her brothers. Her spirit is astounding.
RHANA NATOUR: It absolutely is. I mean, these kids survived bombs being dropped on them, buildings falling on them, shrapnel ripping through their body. And they survived all of this, and they still have the fight to fight for their future and demand they have one. It sounds like it’s a depressing story, but I promise you it’s a hopeful one.
AMY GOODMAN: Rhana Natour, I want to thank you for being with us, director and producer —
RHANA NATOUR: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: — of the Fault Lines documentary film All That Remains. And all should see it. We’ll also link to your article in Atavist called “Coming to America.”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 06, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/6/headlines
Leader of Syrian Opposition Says HTS in Control of Hama as Groups Seeks to Overthrow Assad
Dec 06, 2024
In Syria, the leader of the powerful armed opposition group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — a former al-Qaeda affiliate — has declared that opposition forces have taken complete control of the central city of Hama. In an interview with CNN published today, Abu Mohammad al-Julani said his group’s ultimate goal is to overthrow Syria’s authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad. Armed groups now control Hama’s military airport and were seen freeing prisoners from the city’s jails. They’ve since pushed further south, claiming “complete and rapid control” of the northern suburbs of Homs, Syria’s third-largest city. Overnight, thousands of Homs residents fled toward Syria’s western coast. On Thursday, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement pledged its support to the embattled Syrian government, which faces one of the largest challenges to Bashar al-Assad’s authority in 13 years of bloody civil war.
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Syrians displaced by violence are struggling to survive amid freezing temperatures. This is Shafiqa Saeeda, a Yazidi Syrian whose family fled to a camp in northern Syria.
Shafiqa Saeeda: “We were staying in al-Shahba. They said the Free Syrian Army would enter the area. We were afraid because there were women with us. We were afraid that they would kidnap them from us. … Our baby grandson was born on the third day here. We were sleeping outside. There was no tent or anything. We didn’t find anything to eat when we got hungry, and there were no ovens to cook. The baby was born here, and we named him Afrin, after our city.”
Israeli Forces Continue Deadly Attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital, Killing 4 Staff
Dec 06, 2024
The Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza has again come under intense attack by Israeli forces, who stormed the beleaguered facility, making arrests and ordering others to evacuate. Kamal Adwan’s director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, also reports many deaths and injuries from Israeli strikes, including four medical workers who were killed. Abu Safiya, who himself was severely wounded in an Israeli attack last month, called the situation “catastrophic.”
“The Ghost of Famine Is Here”: Al-Mawasi Soup Kitchen Strives to Feed Thousands in Southern Gaza
Dec 06, 2024
In southern Gaza, a director of a soup kitchen in al-Mawasi, in Khan Younis, says many families rely solely on one meal per day from his operation, after the World Central Kitchen paused its Gaza distributions following an Israeli airstrike that killed three of its workers last weekend.
Hani Abou al-Qassem: “Now the ghost of famine is beginning to appear here in the southern Gaza Strip. These families can’t afford even the low-priced materials and have no source of food except from this charity. Families are relying on this soup kitchen as their only means, as they found their haven in it. Currently, we are serving more than 800 families, equivalent to approximately 4,000 people.”
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Amnesty International: Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza with Full U.S. Support
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 06, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/6/ ... transcript
Amnesty International has released a landmark report that concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, making it the first major human rights group to do so. The nearly 300-page report examines the first nine months of the Israeli war on Gaza and finds that Israel’s actions have caused death, injury and mental harm on a vast scale, as well as conditions intended to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza. Both Israel and the United States have rejected Amnesty’s conclusion. Amnesty researcher Budour Hassan, who covers Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, dismisses the criticism and says, if anything, Amnesty’s intervention took too long because of how carefully the group gathered and verified its information. “We tried to be absolutely true to the definition of 'genocide' under the Genocide Convention,” says Hassan, who urges U.S. officials in particular to do more to stop the bloodshed. “If there is any country that has the capacity, the power and the tools to stop this genocide, it’s the United States. Not only has the United States failed to do so, it has consistently awarded Israel. It has consistently continued to flout the United States’ own laws in order to continue giving Israel the weapons — the very same weapons that are used by Israel to commit the genocide in Gaza.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: In a landmark report released Thursday, Amnesty International has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. It’s the first time a major human rights organization has labeled Israel’s actions in Gaza following the October 7th attacks of 2023 as genocide.
This is a video released by Amnesty International to accompany its new report. “'You Feel Like You Are Subhuman': Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza” is the name of this video. It features Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard and their Israel-Palestine researcher, Budour Hassan. It begins with a clip of former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
YOAV GALLANT: [translated] We are laying a complete siege on Gaza — no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.
AGNÈS CALLAMARD: For over a year, we’ve witnessed utter carnage unfolding right before our eyes in the occupied Gaza Strip, with no end in sight. Many have described this carnage as the first live-streamed genocide, day after day. What has your government done to prevent this genocide? What have your political leaders done? What are they doing now?
ON-SCREEN TEXT: “'You Feel Like You Are Subhuman': Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.”
NARRATOR: Israel has been waging an ongoing and devastating offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip. More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands injured, nearly 2 million displaced, neighborhoods flattened, aid and lifesaving supplies restricted — all sparking an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.
The term “genocide” has increasingly been used to describe Israel’s conduct in Gaza. But how can we assess whether what is happening is actually genocide? The first treaty to explicitly define and criminalize genocide in international law was adopted by the United Nations in 1948 in response to the atrocities of World War II. To prove genocide has taken place, you need to show that one or more acts prohibited by the Genocide Convention was carried out and that it was “committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” — in this case, Palestinians.
BUDOUR HASSAN: As part of Amnesty International’s research, 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.
NARRATOR: It is clear the Israel authorities have deliberately inflicted these conditions and knew they would inevitably result in a deadly mix of hunger and disease, which brings us to the other important component of the crime: the intent to destroy.
ISRAELI SOLDIER: [translated] Three, two, one.
PRESIDENT ISAAC HERZOG: It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not were — were not aware, not informed. It’s absolutely not true.
BUDOUR HASSAN: The racist, dehumanizing and genocidal statements call for the annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza and making Gaza unlivable. They provide evidence for Israel’s intent to physically destroy Palestinians. As part of Amnesty International’s research, we reviewed over 100 statements made by Israeli officials, and these statements clearly were echoed by Israeli soldiers on the ground.
BRIG. GEN. YOGEV BAR SHESHET: [translated] Whoever returns here, if they return here after, will find scorched earth — no houses, no agriculture, nothing. They have no future.
NARRATOR: Specific genocidal intent should be assessed through analyzing the most recent conflict, while taking into account a system of apartheid, a brutal occupation and the 17-year unlawful blockade of Gaza — a history of systematic human right violations built on the continuous dehumanization of Palestinians.
BUDOUR HASSAN: We have documented an unprecedented scale, speed and seriousness of inhumane acts in Gaza. Palestinians are facing overwhelming trauma and pain. We have interviewed parents digging up the remains of their children with their own hands. And we have documented the mixture of hunger and disease that has ravaged Gaza, all while the healthcare sector has collapsed completely.
AGNÈS CALLAMARD: This must stop. And for genocide to end, governments around the world must come together, and they must take action, resolute action. You must ask that they stop transferring weapons that are murdering children in their thousands and decimating entire Palestinian families. You must demand that justice be delivered, that all those responsible for the genocide be held to account. Perpetrators benefit from the inaction and the complicity of too many of our political leaders. No war criminals should ever be allowed to walk free, undisturbed, fearless. Let’s put all our instruments into action — national tribunals, universal jurisdiction, International Criminal Court. Governments must do everything in their power to end Israel’s genocide.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard, part of a video Amnesty released along with its 296-page report detailing Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the charge of genocide, describing the report as, quote, “fabricated” and “based on lies.” This is Israeli Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sharren Haskel.
SHARREN HASKEL: Amnesty International thinks that you’re stupid, because they think that in the 101 pages report that they actually produce, you will not read them. In this report, they actually altered and changed the legal terms and definition for what is a genocide, because Israel doesn’t meet those criterias. So Amnesty International had to alter it.
AMY GOODMAN: The U.S. State Department also said they, quote, “disagree” with Amnesty’s report and continue to find allegations of genocide “unfounded.”
For more on the report, we’re joined by Amnesty International researcher on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Budour Hassan. She’s joining us from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
Budour, we saw you in this video report. If you can respond to what the Israeli government and the U.S. said, and tell us more about why Amnesty has taken this position, the first among international major human rights organizations, that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza?
BUDOUR HASSAN: Thank you for having me again, Amy.
Actually, if anything, the question that should be asked: Why did it take Amnesty this long to produce this report? Not why we have adopted this approach in the first place. And one answer to that is, if anything, we tried to be absolutely true to the definition of “genocide” under the Genocide Convention, but also to follow suit with the jurisprudence on genocide, including the main decisions taken by the International Court of Justice on what is genocide. And because we are talking about strict and narrow definitions, our report, and those who can read the legal section — and apparently the Israeli spokesperson failed to read that — will see that we absolutely adopt the definitions and the jurisprudence taken by the International Court of Justice, especially on the interpretation of what is specific intent.
And, in fact, this is why also it took us so long to produce this report, because we wanted to produce something that can be used by those who want to charge Israel with genocide. We wanted to produce strong enough evidence both for the commission of the prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention — in this case, killing Palestinians deliberately, inflicting them life-changing injuries, and inflicting upon them also conditions, destructive conditions, of life that would cause their slow death.
And we found that when we analyzed this conduct — and we based our analysis both on evidence collected on the ground through our fieldworkers, who have been working tirelessly on the ground in Gaza since the 7th of October, and also on the analysis of satellite imagery, on the analysis of all publicly available evidence that we could reach — we found that these prohibited acts were indeed committed.
And the next question was whether these acts were committed intentionally and with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians as a protected group or as such. And then we again followed the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice, which is how you infer specific intent. You do infer it through two types of evidence. You do look at the pattern of conduct that the Israeli military has been adopting, which include the scale, severity and seriousness of attacks, the repetition of the attacks, the cumulative effects of these attacks, the totality of evidence that you can find on the ground. And secondly, you also look at the direct evidence, which is the statements that we heard from Israeli officials.
At Amnesty, we looked at more than 100 statements issued by Israeli officials, including 22 statements issued by high-ranking Israeli officials and military officers responsible for the war and security cabinets and responsible what is happening on the ground. We then looked at how these dehumanizing, derogatory and racist statements that called specifically for the destruction and annihilation of Gaza, for equating Palestinians in Gaza, all of them, to Hamas, and for calling for the large-scale destruction of life in Gaza — we saw how these statements were echoed by Israeli soldiers. We verified 62 videos in which soldiers appear to be echoing these statements while celebrating the destruction of Palestinian universities, mosques and agricultural lands.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go directly to the U.S. State Department, who — they have said they disagree with the conclusions of Amnesty’s report. This is an exchange between reporters Prem Thakker and Said Arikat in the State Department press briefing with State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel.
VEDANT PATEL: What I can say, as a spokesperson of the U.S. government and as a spokesperson of this administration, is that the findings of — the accusations of genocide, we continue to believe those to be unfounded. … to provide as it relates to that.
SAID ARIKAT: So, if you’ll indulge me just a little bit.
VEDANT PATEL: Sure.
SAID ARIKAT: I mean, look, we have seen almost 2 million people being forcibly moved from one place to another. This morning — this morning — al-Mawasi was bombed, an area that Israel designated as safe haven for people to go to. They bombed it. They killed 20 people. What does it take? Does it have — do the whole population of Gaza have to be annihilated for you to term it genocide? What are we waiting for on this issue, Vedant?
VEDANT PATEL: Said, I’m just not going to get into —
SAID ARIKAT: Oh, sure. Fine.
VEDANT PATEL: — this rhetorical hypothetical.
PREM THAKKER: So, we’ve seen the targeting of thousands of journalists, medical staff, humanitarian workers, infrastructure workers; the total decimation of agriculture, religious sites, homes, residential blocks; the destruction of neighborhoods, memories, bloodlines. Northern Gaza is ethnically cleansed to a great extent. Doctors, including from America, say that they’ve seen kids deliberately sniped. How many acts of genocide does it take to make a genocide?
VEDANT PATEL: So, look, I am just — I appreciate what you’re trying to do with the way that you phrased that question, but let me just say again unequivocally that the allegations of genocide, we find to be unfounded.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel responding to journalists Prem Thakker of Zeteo and Said Arikat of Al-Quds. If you can respond, Budour Hassan, as you sit there in the occupied West Bank, as you sit there in Ramallah, having just been a major part of producing this report of Amnesty International?
BUDOUR HASSAN: One question that was addressed was how long would it take for the United States to acknowledge the severity of what’s happening in Gaza. The United States administration is not only denying that a genocide is happening in Gaza, it’s denying that human rights violations are being committed by the Israeli authorities in Gaza.
And we know, Amy, probably in four or five years’ time, those very same people who are now denying that a genocide is happening, once they become retired officials, they will say, “It happened under our watch, and we did nothing to stop it.” And they will probably give speeches in which they are awarded money in order to come and say, “We knew that this was happening. We could not stop it.” And unfortunately, this has been happening so often.
And this is — if anything, it’s a damning indictment of the United States’ failure to stop Israel’s violation. If there is any country that has the capacity, the power and the tool to stop this genocide, it’s the United States. Not only has the United States failed to do so, it has consistently awarded Israel. It has consistently continued to flout the United States’ own laws in order to continue giving Israel the weapons — the very same weapons that are used by Israel to commit the genocide in Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, this reminds me of 30 years ago almost exactly, when Madeleine Albright was secretary of state and Bill Clinton was president, and they were continually challenged about what was happening in Rwanda. And they refused to use that term “genocide,” because if they did — well, can you talk about what it would mean, what it would trigger, if they used the word “genocide”? And by the way, in that case, they would later apologize and say they were wrong.
BUDOUR HASSAN: But what would these apologies — how would these victims read the apologies?
AMY GOODMAN: Right. Forget the apology. Talk about —
BUDOUR HASSAN: And I think it’s not only the guilt of —
AMY GOODMAN: Forget the apology. Talk about what it would mean if they use the word “genocide.” What does that trigger internationally, in terms of the world bodies, at the U.N., and the response?
BUDOUR HASSAN: Obviously, considering that genocide is a crime under the ICC statute, and considering that we’re talking about something that is absolutely prohibited — genocide is never justifiable, not even in an armed conflict, which means that those who continue to arm Israel while it is committing genocide are guilty of being complicit. And complicity in genocide is also prohibited under the Genocide Convention. So, the States, part of why they are denying not only that genocide is being committed, but that war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity are also being committed, is that they don’t want to risk being accused of complicity in these crimes.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Budour, you are in Ramallah. You’re in the occupied West Bank. If you can talk about what’s happening in the West Bank right now, with members of the war cabinet talking about wanting to annex the whole area? What is actually happening on the ground?
BUDOUR HASSAN: Not to deflect the question, Amy, but just because this report that we worked on was not just addressed to the international community or the court, it was mainly addressed to the victims, I would just ask you to give me just a couple of seconds really just to talk about the victims.
We interviewed 212 people in Gaza, including victims of airstrikes. People who lost their entire families agreed to speak to us to share their experiences, their grief. We went back to interview some of those we interviewed way back in October and November. We went back to interview them in October this year to tell them about the report. And we saw how even a year — after a year had passed since they lost the entirety of their families, the scars of their loss never left them. One of the parents whom we interviewed again told us, “I don’t want people’s sympathy. I want my children back.” And we know that no one can really bring his children back, but he also added that “At least what we can do and what I want you to do is to fight as hell for me to get the justice that my children deserve.” This is a parent who lost his wife, all of his three children, his sister and his parents. And these stories happened all over again.
We also talked to people who face daily humiliation while they are waiting on queues for bread, for clean water for hours upon hours, people who were displaced repeatedly. Some were displaced for 12 times. And if anything, why these people would agree to talk to you is because they are waiting for justice, is because they believe that at least it is our duty to bear witness to the ongoing carnage and to name it for what it is: genocide.
Now, concerning what’s happening in the West Bank, I think all the attempts of Israel is to annex more and more land from the West Bank, including through military orders, including through designating land in the West Bank as state land. It’s part of Israel’s onslaught, and full-throttled onslaught, on Palestinian existence, on this land, on Palestinian memory, on Palestinian presence. This fight, this onslaught, takes many shapes, many forms. In Gaza, we see it in the form of genocide. In the West Bank, we see it in the form of slow but really clear dispossession and mass displacement. More than 300 households have been displaced in the West Bank since the 7th of October, 2023. But what is common between these — among this architecture of dispossession, displacement, dehumanization, be it in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, or the Gaza Strip, is Israel’s ongoing attempt, with the support of the United States, to erase Palestinians from this land.
AMY GOODMAN: Budour Hassan, I want to thank you so much for being with us and also comment that today is the anniversary of the death of Refaat Alareer. He was killed one year ago today in an Israeli strike. His last tweet, “The Democratic Party and Biden are responsible for the Gaza genocide perpetrated by Israel.” Refaat Alareer is known around the world. He was a professor at Islamic University and an award-winning poet. Budour Hassan, thank you so much for being with us, Amnesty International researcher on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We will link to Amnesty’s report, which has just concluded Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. The report is called “'You Feel Like You Are Subhuman': Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.”
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“All That Remains”: As Gaza Faces Child Amputee Crisis, New Film Tells Story of 13-Year-Old Leyan
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 06, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/6/ ... transcript
Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinian territory since October of last year has killed tens of thousands of people and wounded over 100,000 more, leaving many with life-altering injuries. The United Nations said this week that Gaza now has the highest per-capita rate of child amputees in the world, with many children forced to endure surgery without anesthesia. For more, we look at All That Remains, a new film from Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines that follows the story of 13-year-old Leyan Abu al-Atta as she recovers from having her leg amputated due to an Israeli airstrike. “It changed the trajectory of her life forever … but it didn’t even register on international media’s reporting because of all the massacres that were going on,” says Rhana Natour, director and producer of All That Remains. While Leyan’s family was able to raise awareness about her case and secure a medical evacuation out of Gaza to the United States, it did not happen soon enough, and doctors were forced to amputate her leg in order to save her life. Natour says this still represents a better outcome than what is available for most victims in Gaza. “For every Leyan that is able to leave Gaza, there are hundreds, if not thousands, who are not able to leave,” she says.
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 a grim statistic from Gaza. On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees per capita anywhere in the world, with many children forced to endure surgery without anesthesia. In September, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, said each day in Gaza 10 children are losing one or both of their legs.
Last weekend, after months of waiting for approval from Israel, eight injured Palestinian children from Gaza arrived in Chicago for medical treatment. It was the largest medical evacuation of injured Palestinian children to the United States.
We turn now to a new film from Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines that brings this story to life. It’s called All That Remains. It follows the story of Leyan, Leyan Abu al-Atta, 13-year-old girl whose leg was amputated after she was severely injured in an Israeli strike on Deir al-Balah, in Gaza, last December.
RAGHDA ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] Leyan was like a butterfly. She flew here and there. She was very active and didn’t like to stay put.
AYOUB ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] Leyan loves fashion. She loves to dress up.
LEYAN ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] Today I have for you a poem by Tamim Al-Barghouti.
AYOUB ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] She likes to write and recite poetry.
LEYAN ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] “In Jerusalem graves are arranged, as if they are lines of the city’s history.”
Hi, guys. I’m getting ready for school because we have a test: math.
AYOUB ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] Leyan was injured on a Saturday, December 2nd.
LEYAN ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] Check this out, people. This is after I got myself ready.
AYOUB ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] The doctor told us we had to choose between the girl or her leg.
ALI ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] What happened to Leyan weighs very heavily on me.
RAGHDA ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] To make her feel better, I tell her, “It isn’t just you. It’s this kid, that kid, that kid. And that’s just who we know.”
AYOUB ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] I took her cellphone to see what she used to film. I wanted to see how she used to be, because I was so sad for her. What touched me when I saw her videos was that she was so ambitious. She was excited about the future and loved to document everything. This made me feel I wanted to see her like she was before, not confined to a bed.
LEYAN ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] I was awake, but I felt like I was in a dream. It didn’t feel real.
My name is Leyan Ali Musa Abu al-Atta. I’m in Egypt, and we’re getting ready to go to America tomorrow.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s 13-year-old Leyan al-Atta. In this next clip from the Fault Lines documentary All That Remains, Leyan’s parents and her older brother describe what happened after she was injured in this Israeli strike on Deir al-Balah.
ALI ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] It was like Leyan was fading away before our eyes, and we were watching our hopes and dreams being destroyed.
ICU! ICU!
AYOUB ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] Her leg looked almost amputated. The doctor told us that the majority of her leg’s tendons were cut. Ten to 15 centimeters of her bones were missing.
RAGHDA ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] There wasn’t any equipment for the doctors to perform proper surgery. The doctor came out and said that the girl was in very bad condition. It was clear on his face.
LEYAN ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] I had a high fever that never went away. And my leg suddenly turned black and blue.
I can’t breathe! Enough already!
RAGHDA ABU AL-ATTA: [translated] We didn’t know what to do. The girl was dying.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s a clip from All That Remains, a new Al Jazeera Fault Lines documentary. Leyan is now in Philadelphia. She’s being treated at Shriners Hospital.
For more, we’re joined from Washington, D.C., by Rhana Natour. She’s the director and producer of All That Remains.
Rhana, this is a devastating film. Yes, it’s the story of one little girl and her unbelievable courage, but take us on that journey from the day last December when she was injured in this airstrike and then how she and her mom got out of Gaza to Egypt and ended up in Philly.
RHANA NATOUR: You know, Leyan was injured in an airstrike, in an artillery strike on a mosque that happened to be by the school where she was sheltering. And it changed the trajectory of her life forever, and her loved ones’ and her family’s life, but it didn’t even register on international media’s reporting because of all the massacres that were going on.
And after that strike, her family saw that her leg was at risk of being amputated. And they couldn’t get the care they needed, to get the medical care to prevent that amputation from happening. So, her brother, her older brother Ayoub, launched a social media campaign. He reached out to every journalist in Gaza in an effort to make a public plea to get his sister out of Gaza. And they were successful. But it was too late. Her leg was amputated because gangrene had reached up to her leg and was going to kill her if she didn’t amputate that leg.
And Leyan — for every Leyan that is able to leave Gaza, there are hundreds, if not thousands, who are not able to leave. A medical evacuation out of Gaza and her eventual medical evacuation to the U.S. for medical treatment, it’s what I call a lucky ticket for the profoundly unlucky. But it was the best shot that Leyan had at a future. It was the best shot that Leyan had for the chance, even just the chance to be able to walk again on prosthetics.
AMY GOODMAN: So, her leg was amputated in Cairo because —
RHANA NATOUR: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: — gangrene threatened her life, when she got out —
RHANA NATOUR: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: — of Gaza, her mother making this devastating decision to leave her other children and her husband, who remain under, to say the least, enormous danger in Gaza, but to be with Leyan?
RHANA NATOUR: Yes, exactly. These evacuations are essential, because the medical system in Gaza is collapsing. But what this does is it means that these families are ripped away from their support system at the exact moment they need it most, when they have a very sick child that needs medical treatment.
At the beginning of this journey of making the film, we thought we were following a medical journey. We wanted to know all about her treatments. And we realized soon after that this was about more than that, that this was not just about a girl who wanted to walk again, but that this was about a girl who wanted to make sure that her life didn’t go unlived, that she didn’t just languish in a hospital bed, and that this was a journey and something that changed the entire trajectory of this family.
Every single member of this family’s life changed as a result of this injury. Her mother had to make the decision. She did not want to leave Gaza, but she had to, to give — to try to save her daughter’s life, essentially. She left behind an 8-year-old boy, who suddenly didn’t have a mom. She left behind her husband, who remains in Gaza today. And we were able to document, with the help of Media Town Productions, who documented the family that Leyan left behind, this 360-degree perspective of what this injury did, because it’s not just an injury that’s physical to one girl, but it’s a traumatic injury of separation for an entire family.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to another clip from your documentary, Rhana, All That Remains, where we hear from the renowned surgeon Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, who spent more than a month in Gaza working with Doctors Without Borders in the early days of Israel’s assault there.
DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, this is a photo that I took of our operating room after I finished. And the anesthetist is waking the child up, and one of the nurses is writing the child’s name on the box that has their amputated limb. And you can see the box where the limb is in it. This is a limb that’s unsalvageable and needed amputation. This is a surgery that I did on the hand to try to salvage the limb. This is a 14-year-old boy called Amadan [phon.]. So, there are lots of reasons why I take these photographs. Sometimes the memories are so horrendous that you need to see it to believe that it did happen.
It was really the scale, so the scale of children’s amputations. Half of my cases were always children. The delay that was happening in taking patients to the operating room meant that these wounds became infected and gangrenous, and you had to do amputations to save the children’s lives. And as the war progressed and children knew of other children who had lost their limbs, they would come to the operating room screaming, “Don’t take my leg away! Don’t take my leg away!”
Children are not small adults. There’s a difference in the way you treat them. The child’s body is programmed to grow. Even the injured child’s body is programmed to grow. A child that has a war-related amputation needs between nine and 12 surgeries by the time they reach adult age. This growing child needs a new prosthetic every six months, as their body outgrows the length of the prosthesis.
This problem is so complex. So you need to create a system that ensures that these children have the most productive life possible. It is of paramount importance that we continue to plan for tomorrow, because genocide is about there not being a tomorrow. There is a tomorrow for these children. And our job is to make sure that they do not spend the rest of their lives in pain and misery as a result of this injury.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s renowned surgeon Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, who spent more than a month in Gaza working with Doctors Without Borders. You can see our interviews with him at democracynow.org. But that’s from the film All That Remains, that’s produced and directed by Rhana Natour.
So, let’s talk about the number of Palestinian children who have lost their limbs. In fact, you document in a piece that you write, Rhana — you tell the story of another teenager, little young girl, named Layan also, who lost both her limbs. The Leyan who is in this documentary is at Shriners in Philadelphia right now, and Layan Albaz is at Shriners in Chicago, Rana.
RHANA NATOUR: That’s correct. And I think what — when I first started reporting on this issue, I thought that the mountain that these kids were climbing medically was getting them access to a prosthetic limb and making sure that they had specialized care from specialized doctors who would be able to make that all happen.
What I soon learned, with the story of Layan Albaz, which I document in the Atavist magazine, is that these injuries are incredibly complicated and difficult to treat in the best of circumstances, even before these specialists that are renowned throughout the entire world. And why? The reason is because, A, children, historically, didn’t typically survive these injuries, and they are surviving multiple very severe and complicated injuries.
To give you an idea of Layan Albaz, she has an above-the-knee amputation on one knee and a below-the-knee amputation in another knee. She had limbs that — she’s a victim of a blast injury. So, these limbs have been eviscerated. The limbs, the bones, the muscles, the tissue, the tendons, the skin, there’s a specialist for each of those things, because they all have to work together in order to accommodate a prosthetic.
And when she finally was able to walk on a prosthetic, I was able to witness what that therapy looks like. She’s operating basically two different instruments at the same time. She has to learn how to master two different instruments, because she has a mechanical knee on one side and she has a prosthetic that looks completely different on the other side, because the injuries look completely different. It is very, very, very difficult.
AMY GOODMAN: So, we have to wrap up right now. We have 30 seconds. The documentary All That Remains, just utterly heartbroken with the divided family. And the most — the strongest figure in this film is this little girl, is Leyan, who is comforting her mother, who came with her, her dad who’s still in Gaza, her brothers. Her spirit is astounding.
RHANA NATOUR: It absolutely is. I mean, these kids survived bombs being dropped on them, buildings falling on them, shrapnel ripping through their body. And they survived all of this, and they still have the fight to fight for their future and demand they have one. It sounds like it’s a depressing story, but I promise you it’s a hopeful one.
AMY GOODMAN: Rhana Natour, I want to thank you for being with us, director and producer —
RHANA NATOUR: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: — of the Fault Lines documentary film All That Remains. And all should see it. We’ll also link to your article in Atavist called “Coming to America.”
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim
by admin » Thu Dec 12, 2024 10:57 pm
Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 09, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/9/headlines
Bashar al-Assad Ousted as Syrian Leader Following 12-Day Offensive
Dec 09, 2024
In a development that could reshape the Middle East, armed opposition groups have overthrown Bashar al-Assad in Syria following a lightning 12-day offensive. Assad has resigned and fled to Russia, where he has been granted asylum. Assad’s family had ruled Syria with an iron grip for over 50 years.
Thousands of Syrians living in exile have poured back into the country, while tens of thousands of prisoners held by the Assad government have been freed. At the Sednaya prison in Damascus, rescue workers are now trying to access underground cells at the site, which has been described as a “human slaughterhouse.”
The uprising was led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a group listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations. Members of the group spoke on Sunday after seizing Syria’s state television.
Syrian rebel: “In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful, by the grace of God Almighty, the city of Damascus has been liberated. The tyrant Bashar al-Assad has been toppled, and all the unjustly detained persons from the regime’s prisons have been released.”
A deal has been reached to allow Syria’s Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali to remain in his position to oversee the state’s institutions until a transition government is formed.
Many Syrians across the globe held celebratory rallies to mark the fall of Assad. Sabri Chikhou took part in a rally in London.
Sabri Chikhou: “We are going towards democracy and building a new Syria with a new system, democratic system. And we will depend on society and establishment, not to the single regime who control every part in our country.”
Israel & U.S. Bomb Syria as Questions Swirl over Future of Post-Assad Syria
Dec 09, 2024
Many questions remain as to what will happen next in Syria, which has been devastated by a 13-year civil war that has been fueled in part by numerous foreign countries, including Russia, Iran, the United States, Turkey and Israel.
The U.N. Security Council will hold an emergency meeting today on Syria. The U.N. Syrian envoy, Geir Pedersen, has called for an inclusive transitional government to restore a unified Syria.
Geir Pedersen: “All armed actors on the ground maintain good conduct, law and order, protect civilians and preserve public institutions. Let me urge all Syrians to prioritize dialogue, unity and respect for international humanitarian law and human rights as they seek to rebuild their society.”
Israel responded to the uprising in Syria by invading and seizing part of Syria’s Golan Heights in violation of a 1974 agreement with the Syrian government. Israel also bombed a number of areas, including a Syrian air base and weapons depots. The United States carried out dozens of airstrikes inside Syria targeting areas held by the Islamic State. Meanwhile, in northern Syria, Turkish-backed armed groups have seized the city of Manbij, which had been controlled by U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces. We will have more on Syria after headlines.
Israel Kills Dozens in Gaza; Electricity, Oxygen & Water Cut at Kamal Adwan Hospital
Dec 09, 2024
In news from Gaza, an Israeli attack on Rafah killed at least 10 Palestinians who had lined up to buy flour. In a separate attack, Israel struck a home, killing nine members of the same family in the Bureij refugee camp. Most of the victims were reportedly women and children. On Friday, an Israeli strike in the Nuseirat camp killed at least 20 Palestinians, including at least six children and five women. Survivors had to be pulled from the rubble.
Radi Abdulfatah: “There was suddenly an explosion. This was not an explosion; this was a tsunami. Like you see, it took not only one house, but many. There was fire and flames, flames that burned us. They burn us. They damage us. They cut us in pieces. There were bodies in pieces. I was pulled from under the rubble yesterday, and I have stitches in my head.”
Meanwhile, the head of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza is warning the lives of more than 100 patients are at risk after Israeli attacks cut off the hospital’s supply of electricity, oxygen and water. On Friday, Israeli troops stormed the hospital compound.
Pope Francis Unveils Nativity Scene of Jesus in Crib Lined with a Palestinian Keffiyeh
Dec 09, 2024
Pope Francis has repeated his call for a ceasefire in Gaza. On Saturday, the pope unveiled this year’s nativity scene at the Vatican. It portrays baby Jesus in a crib lined with a Palestinian keffiyeh. At the ceremony, a top Palestinian official praised the pope for his “ongoing efforts to end the genocide in Gaza and his steadfast support for the Palestinian cause.” Over the weekend, Pope Francis also called on U.S. authorities to commute the sentences of prisoners on death row.
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“Assad Is Gone”: Writer Yassin al-Haj Saleh on Syria, His 16 Years in Prison & Wife’s Disappearance
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 09, 2024
“We needed to turn this page. … We’ve been under this inhuman condition for 54 years.” Following a lightning 12-day offensive, armed opposition groups have overthrown President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and his family’s five-decade rule in Syria. Assad has fled to Russia, where he has been granted asylum, while tens of thousands of political prisoners have been freed. The uprising was led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a Turkish-backed group listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations. The release of prisoners from conditions of “hunger, humiliation, extreme despair” is a welcome and hopeful sign for the new balance of power in Syria, says the writer, dissident and political prisoner in Syria from 1980 to 1996, Yassin al-Haj Saleh, but it remains to be seen if others who were disappeared during the Syrian civil war, including al-Haj Saleh’s wife Samira, will be recovered or their fates identified.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We spend the hour looking at the fall of the Syrian government and its impact on the Middle East and worldwide, after armed forces entered the capital city of Damascus Sunday, bringing an end to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and his family’s more than 50-year rule.
Armed opposition groups have overthrown al-Assad’s regime in Syria following a lightning 12-day offensive. Assad has fled to Russia, where he’s been granted political asylum. Assad’s family had ruled Syria with an iron grip for more than half a century.
Thousands of Syrians living in exile have poured back into Syria, while tens of thousands of prisoners held by the Assad government have been freed. At the Sednaya prison in Damascus, rescue workers are now trying to access underground cells at a site that’s been described as a “human slaughterhouse.”
The uprising was led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a Turkish-backed group listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations. Members of the group spoke on Sunday after seizing Syria’s state television station.
SYRIAN REBEL: [translated] In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful, by the grace of God almighty, the city of Damascus has been liberated. The tyrant Bashar al-Assad has been toppled, and all the unjustly detained persons from the regime’s prisons have been released. The Fatah Damascus Operation Room calls upon the mujahideen brothers and citizens to preserve all the properties of the free Syrian state. Long live a free and independent Syria for all Syrians of all sects.
AMY GOODMAN: As video showed prisoners streaming out of Assad’s notorious prisons, others celebrated inside Assad’s luxurious presidential palace. Scenes of celebration erupted across major Syrian cities. These are just a few voices from Aleppo, from Homs and from the capital Damascus.
SYRIAN 1: [translated] This is something else. Something else. May God help this country. And congratulations to all.
SYRIAN 2: [translated] This is the happiest day of my life. We were reborn. This is the day when the believers rejoice with God’s victory. Thank God. He gave us more than we deserve. Just some advice: Be united, and do not allow foreigners to come between you.
SYRIAN 3: [translated] Our happiness is immense. It’s priceless. Thank God we have no losses and no one has harmed anyone. We are just happy with our victory. We are also happy for the prisoners who have been released after years in prison. May God protect the rebels and grant them victory.
SYRIAN 4: [translated] First of all, I thank God for granting us the chance to see this place once more. After 10 years of fleeing Homs, I am returning today with my head held high in pride. Homs is free now. This is the Homs we dreamed of.
SYRIAN 5: [translated] I am a mechanical engineer. For years we have been waiting for this day. We have been resisting. We have been enduring. We have been holding on. And we’ve been waiting for this day until the regime fell. And finally, the regime has fallen. From now on, the Syrian people are one! The Syrian people are one! The Syrian people are one! The Syrian people are one!
AMY GOODMAN: Israel responded to the uprising in Syria by invading and seizing part of Syria’s Golan Heights and bombed a Syrian air base and weapons depots.
The United States carried out dozens of airstrikes inside Syria targeting areas held by the Islamic State. Meanwhile, in northern Syria, Turkish-backed armed groups have seized the city of Manbij, which had been controlled by U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces.
President Joe Biden welcomed the Assad regime’s downfall as a “historic opportunity.”
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: After 13 years of civil war in Syrian and more than half a century of brutal authoritarian rule by Bashar Assad and his father before him, rebel forces have forced Assad to resign his office and flee the country. We’re not sure where he is, but there’s word that he’s in Moscow. At long last, the Assad regime has fallen.
AMY GOODMAN: For more on all of this, we begin in Paris with Yassin al-Haj Saleh, a Syrian writer, dissident, former political prisoner. He was jailed in Syria for 16 years, from 1980 to 1996. He’s the author of several books, including The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy, also co-founder of the award-winning independent media platform AlJumhuriya.net.
Welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us, Yassin. If you can respond? You were out in the streets of Paris yesterday celebrating with many other Syrians. Assad is now in Russia, where he’s been granted asylum. Your response to what has happened and the lightning speed, would you say, that it’s happened in this last phase of the overthrow of the Assad regime?
YASSIN AL-HAJ SALEH: Hello, Amy, and thank you for having me.
So, among hundreds of people yesterday, I was at the Republic Square in Paris. We were overwhelmed by emotions, mine, I guess, similar to everybody else, crying, laughing and breathing. It was a rare moment of convergence of mourning and happiness and just feeling alive.
On the personal level, I lived almost all my life under this genocidal regime, and I felt as if tight hands were on my neck, on my throat, and for the first day I regained the ability to breathe. So, it is a great day, glorious day.
Everybody, I guess — of course, myself included — have many layers of feeling about this day. We need to turn out this dirty, criminal, discriminatory, fascist and very reactionary — I guess this is the right word to describe the Assad regime, because many in the West thinks that it is modernist, this is progressive. Far from it. So, we needed to turn out this page. And we are sure that many pages with difficulties, with hardships, with crisis, with struggles, with problems are ahead of us.
But the forever is over. And yesterday was the first day of history with all its problems and tensions and, of course, I mean, apprehensions. So, it was a mixed feeling. And there are many elements for hope. And, of course, there are other elements that I’d like to talk about, if you will allow me.
AMY GOODMAN: Yes. Why don’t you continue? But why don’t you start off by grounding us in your own experience? I mean, we’re sitting here looking at the Sednaya prison, the freeing of thousands of prisoners, many women, as you see them being told that they are now free. If you can talk about your own experience? Tell us about the Sednaya prison and its significance, and talk about why people were imprisoned.
YASSIN AL-HAJ SALEH: So, in my years in jail, I was not in Sednaya prison. And in those days, in the 1980s and ’90s, it was not the slaughterhouse as Amnesty International said some seven years ago, early 2017, I guess, in a very good report. It was before Sednaya. It was Tadmor prison, in which I spent only my last year of the 16 years, after I finished my sentence, by the way. I mean, look, I was arrested in 1980. I was, among hundreds of my comrades, brought to Supreme State Security Court only in April 1992, so at that time I was in jail for 11 years and four months. It took two years to get a sentence, and I got a sentence of 15 years. Instead of being released — by the way, the day before yesterday was the 44th anniversary of my arrest. Instead of being released in 1995, I was sent with 30 other people to Tadmor prison for an extra year. And Tadmor prison is the Sednaya of today. It is the most brutal jail in Syria. It is — well, it is a torture camp; it is not a prison. It is like Sednaya today.
These places are the factories to manufacture the essence of power in Syria. They are places of torture, of hunger, of humiliation and of extreme despair. And I believe that tens of thousands — you know that now we have 131 people, at least, we don’t know about their fate. So, many of them may be killed. The league of Sednaya prison former prisoners released a report a year and a half ago, I guess, and they took that maybe 30,000 to 35,000 were killed in Sednaya prison, mostly under torture, and some of them were executed. And many, I believe, died of hunger and of diseases.
So, it is — we’ve been under this inhuman condition for 54 years, which is more that a half of the whole Syrian history as a modern polity. Syria appeared only after the First World War. And more than half of its history is under the Assad rule, very thuggish, very corrupt. And you saw that it was rotten from inside. It fell in 11 days, without its foreign protectors, Russians, Iranians, the thugs of Hezbollah and other sectarian militias. The regime, we overwhelmed, so it fell in 11 days, because it is extremely rotten from inside.
So, this was my experience. And I feel very hopeful for the future of Syria because of the release of prisoners, because they gave — they have given the top priority for releasing these prisoners from many places, in Aleppo, in Hama, in Homs and now in Damascus, especially this torture camp of Sednaya.
AMY GOODMAN: Today, Yassin, is the 11th anniversary of the disappearance of your wife. Can you explain what happened to her?
YASSIN AL-HAJ SALEH: Well, because Syria, especially in 2013, so the third year of the Syrian uprising, is the most brutal, the most painful, the most tragic year of our struggle. So, Syria, by that time, let’s remember that it was the intervention, military intervention, of Hezbollah in Syria. It is the year of the appearance of Daesh, ISIS. It is the year of the chemical massacre. It is the year of the sordid American-Russian deal to absolve the regime from violating the international law, and disarming, taking away its chemical weapons. We find now that they were aware all the time that the regime kept a lot of chemical weapons. So, they were happy, or they were not unhappy, that these arms were used against — only against the Syrian people, now they are targeting them.
So, because Syria, by that year, was turning to a paradise of immunity and unaccountability, many factions seized the opportunity and started to act like the regime. Daesh is one of them. Another, Salafi military formation called Jaysh al-Islam in eastern Ghouta was one. And they took Samira, my wife, Samira Khalil, with Razan Zaitouneh, internationally known human rights activist and very good writer; Wael Hamada, her husband; and Nazem Hammadi, a lawyer and a poet. This happened today 11 years ago.
And for me, it is — as much as I am happy of the liberation of the bigger parts of my country, at the same time I see it as a criterion to judge these new developments now to liberate my wife and my friends, or to know about their fate, and to bring the culprits before justice. This is very important. We know the criminals by names.
And this is an opportunity for me just to say these simple words. This should end now. It is like releasing thousands of people from jail and trying to find out about the fate of others. Samira is one of these people. Samira and Razan and Wael and Nazem are among these people. And we need to know. We need them among us. We need to know about their fate. And we need to see a measure of justice. This will tell if the future of Syria will be better than its past.
AMY GOODMAN: I have a final question, Yassin. In one of your posts, you write, quote, “We can’t embrace HTS’s military effectiveness against the regime while ignoring its ideology.” In this last minute we have, if you can explain, one of the groups, the leading group, that overthrew the Assad regime?
YASSIN AL-HAJ SALEH: Amy, this was written in January 2013, so 11 years ago. And someone digged it out and published it, republished it on X.
So, of course, as you see, they are very effective militarily, but they have an ideology. And this is one reason why I am a bit worried, because this is one — this tension between the Islamic formation of the new liberators and the general seat of nationalism is one of my sources of worries.
Beside that, Assadism is not yet dead. Assad is gone, very cheaply and very — he showed how sordid and how trivial he was, but Assadism is still there in the form of sectarianism, corruption, thuggery, security complexes. Still we don’t know the fate about them.
And unhealthy — a third reason why I am a bit worried is a brutally unhealthy regional and international environment. You mentioned that the Israelis seized some Syrian lands. And they bombed in Damascus after Damascus was taken from the regime. This is colonial — I am not surprised by it, but Israel has been a plague for us for decades and for generations. But this will not go away from the Syrian memory.
AMY GOODMAN: Yassin al-Haj Saleh —
YASSIN AL-HAJ SALEH: If I have time —
AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds.
YASSIN AL-HAJ SALEH: OK. So, the reasons why I am a bit hopeful — I talked about my worries — is that the release of prisoners, the return of displaced people, from Turkey — from within the country, the camps are almost empty, and from Turkey and from Lebanon. And I guess many people from Europe are planning to go back. It is a Syrianized thing — it is not like what happened in Iraq 20, 21 years ago. The Syrians did it, and with minimal violations so far. I guess this is a sort of basis to build on for a better future.
AMY GOODMAN: Yassin al-Haj Saleh, Syrian writer, former political prisoner from 1980 to 1996, author of several books, including The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy. He was speaking to us from Paris.
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Syrians Are Celebrating Fall of Assad, Even as “the Bigger Picture Is Grim”: Scholar Bassam Haddad
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 09, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/9/ ... transcript
The fall of the Assad family’s 50-year regime in Syria brings with it “many more questions than answers,” says the executive director of the Arab Studies Institute, Bassam Haddad. While the regional and global implications are “not good,” as Israel in particular is celebrating the loss of Assad’s material support for Palestinian and Lebanese armed resistance, Haddad says the immediate relief of those suffering under Assad’s totalitarian regime should not be ignored or invisibilized. Haddad also discusses the political prospects for the rebel forces led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which he says will likely form a coalition with other groups as the future of Syria is determined in the coming days and weeks.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue to look at how the Assad family has lost control of Syria after more than half a century of brutal dictatorship, following a rapid advance of rebel fighters. Today, U.N. Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on Syria. The U.N. Syrian envoy, Geir Pedersen, said an inclusive transitional government is needed to restore a unified Syria.
GEIR PEDERSEN: All armed actors on the ground maintain good conduct, law and order, protect civilians and preserve public institutions. Let me urge all Syrians to prioritize dialogue, unity and respect for international humanitarian law and human rights as they seek to rebuild their society.
AMY GOODMAN: Israel responded to the Syrian uprising by invading and seizing parts of Syria’s Golan Heights in violation of a 1974 agreement with the Syrian government. Israel also bombed a number of areas, including a Syrian air base and weapons depots. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria was a “direct result” of Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] This is a historic day in the history of the Middle East. Assad’s regime is a central link in Iran’s Axis of Evil. This regime has fallen. This is a direct result of the blows we inflicted on Iran and Hezbollah, the main supporters of the Assad regime. This created a chain reaction throughout the Middle East.
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, the United States carried out dozens of airstrikes inside Syria targeting areas held by the Islamic State. And in northern Syria, Turkish-backed armed groups have seized the city of Manbij, which had been controlled by U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces.
For more, we go to Philadelphia, where we’re joined by Bassam Haddad, associate professor at George Mason University, author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience. He’s the co-founder and editor of the Jadaliyya ezine and is executive director of the Arab Studies Institute at George Mason University. His forthcoming book, Roots, Dynamics, and Transformation of the Syrian Uprising.
Professor Haddad, first, your response to what took place this weekend?
BASSAM HADDAD: Thank you, Amy. It’s good to be with you again.
The first thing I’d like to say is that there are so many more questions than answers, so it’s important — especially today, so it’s important to keep that in mind as we go along. I would like to be analytical, but there is no way to avoid the importance and the value of watching what happened and what it means, the collapse of the regime after 54 years — or 71, if you want to consider the Ba’athist rule — what it means to ordinary Syrians who have actually been living under this regime for so many decades.
It is a moment that if you look at all the news, that cannot be overlooked and cannot be trumped by analysis of the bigger picture at this very moment, although the bigger picture is grim, is very problematic, and it’s really important for us to get to it, and I hope we can get to it today. But it is not something that we could underestimate, given the brutality of the regime, not least its lack of ability completely to govern in the past several years, at least after 2019, 2020, and its inability to provide the infrastructure, social services and the basic needs for its people, which actually did play a role in the very rapid march of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham into all of the major cities of Syria.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain HTS, its history, and Julani, its leader, and what you’re most concerned about right now.
BASSAM HADDAD: Well, you know, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is a coalition of a lot of groups, primarily Jabhat al-Nusra,which everyone loves to say it’s al-Qaeda-affiliated, although there’s been some sort of break. Nonetheless, it is what it is. As Yassin al-Haj Saleh said, he is worried about the ideology of HTS and some of the potential consequences. And if Yassin al-Haj Saleh is worried about HTS, where Yassin al-Haj Saleh called Hezbollah thugs, you can imagine what — or, how worried everyone else is about the future. But we will get to that.
HTS has actually acted in a manner that is not alone. HTS cannot move out of Idlib and could not have moved out of Idlib without Turkish approval. And even the Turkish government cannot make this decision alone. So, the question is: Who did Turkey connect with, coordinate with, to produce this issue or this campaign or this operation? The second question is: Were there any connections between the ceasefire in Lebanon and what Turkey did today or 10 days ago or right before the coordination took place or around then? And what kind of also coordination took place between Turkey and Russia, as well as between Russia and the potential group HTS and otherwise? Because they apparently, from recent reports, they have actually allowed the Russians to keep their air base. This has to be checked. So, there are a lot of questions.
And I wanted to insist again that at this point, although we can keep going and talk about the regional and global implications, which are not good, but I would like to insist on seizing this moment to recognize what it means for millions of Syrians who are actually very happy that this has happened. Many others are concerned, including those who are actually celebrating. They are concerned about the future. They’re concerned about how this took place, where this is going to go, who’s going to be in the lead. And many are concerned about what this means to the expanding, global, superpower, imperialist, American-Israeli hegemony, domination in the region, in the absence or far weakened, what we call, the Axis of Resistance. This is not a small issue, and it will become part of the major headlines very, very soon.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk more about this. What would — the amount of Syrian participation in reshaping Syria, will that be challenged because of the international support Syria will need to rebuild, that will include the U.S., players like the Gulf Arab monarchies? Turkey will also be, as you pointed out, and already is, deeply involved. Will that push what happens to Syria in a certain direction?
BASSAM HADDAD: Again, I must reiterate the importance of having so many questions with very, very few answers, because we do not know exactly how this was coordinated and with whom and what are the trade-offs that have actually already been in place.
But it’s going to be a phase, the next phase — or, this current phase is actually not the phase that we can focus on, because, according to the best analysis, the current configuration is not going to be transferred into the next phase. The political and economic and the military configuration today, the people that actually have the guns and are in control, are not likely themselves alone, maybe part of a coalition, a bigger coalition, a more diverse coalition, but not alone, move forward.
There’s so much trepidation in Syria. There’s so much trepidation in Turkey, by the United States, by many of the Arab states that are powerful and will probably be somewhat relied on to help rebuild Syria, about the singularity of a particular group, HTS, and how it need not and should not be the only player in the field. But the questions right now are just that. It’s very difficult to recognize where things are going.
But we do know that the United States and Israel are extremely comforted. Israel, yesterday on Channel 13, called what happened an “accomplishment.” And this “accomplishment” is something that will allow Israel to move forward with its genocide on Gaza, along with the United States. The United States is not just complicit; it’s a full partner in this genocide. And much bigger issues will come to fore in the coming weeks.
And the jubilation, while it’s important today for the people who have been under the boot of the regime — and we cannot underestimate this, no matter how concerned you are about imperialism and global political economy and so on. This has to be recognized, because one of the things that will actually cause me trouble and will cause my phone to blow up in just a few minutes by my own friends is that a lot of people who overemphasize the question of imperialism on a day like this or on a week like this, unfortunately, unwittingly, make the Syrian people invisible, as if they are not important and only global power politics is. And that is something that I would like to caution against.
Despite the fact that, yes, we can analyze that what has just happened is a triumph for global power, like the United States, for imperial designs, for conservative Arab states in the region, for normalizers in the region, and certainly for Israel or anyone who would like to weaken any sort of resistance — forget even Iran and Hezbollah — in the region to these kinds of plans that are not just about land theft and political domination, but also about economic plans and prescriptions that will disempower the working classes in the region and continue to do so.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk more about HTS and whether you believe it will be one of the leading partners in a new Syria, its background, its running of Idlib, how Idlib, that whole area, was run?
BASSAM HADDAD: I mean, honestly, HTS, first of all, wasn’t in complete control of Idlib. It was the dominant power in Idlib. There are various groups in Idlib that were actually also somewhat powerful. HTS has been able to govern, for the most part.
It is not likely that HTS will ever singularly rule Syria. This is something on which there is regional and international consensus, if not even domestic consensus. Despite everything that we have seen, Syrian society is among the most secular of Arab societies. And even if affinity with conservatism in Islam has grown considerably in the past few years or decades or even more, there is no appetite for what HTS has been advocating for, including its recent — recent as in in the past several years or in 2014, '15, ’16 — a sort of discourse that is exclusionary. Now it says it's repudiating this discourse. Now it’s actually trying to make sure that its forces do not repress, although what we have seen in many parts of Syria are various forms of exclusion, destruction of alcohol stores, burning of Christmas trees and things of the sort, that supposedly HTS has repudiated and tried to correct the path. This new vision or approach of HTS is interesting. It’s probably also coordinated with those who gave it the carte blanche to move forward. In all cases, the HTS is not the kind of apple pie that — well, in Syria, it won’t be apple pie, it’ll be knafeh — that Syrians are looking for.
And in the very, very near future, as the new government is established, as the new military formula is formed and reformed, we will discover that there will be attempts to broaden the coalition and potentially also avoid the horrible mistake that the United States did after its fraudulent and brutal invasion of Iraq in 2003, which is to completely dismantle the state, the ruling party, the army and so on, because that had created the kind of chaos that actually ended up being counterproductive for the invading power and beyond. So, I think it will be a different path than we have seen in Iraq. It will also be a more difficult path, because Syria does not possess the kind of resources like Iraq’s oil at least, or part of it, because it’s not all within the control of the government right now.
So, Syria will have an even more challenging future, economically, socioeconomically and politically. And what I fear is that within a short period, Syria will be off the news, and we will see what I was talking about earlier, the analytical framework of what that means to the region, quite soon actually, as developments take place.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Bassam Haddad, we want to thank you for being with us. Of course, we’re going to continue to follow this, founding director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program at George Mason University. We will link to your work at democracynow.org.
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“Remarkable Moment”: After Fleeing Syria, “For Sama” Director Waad Al-Kateab Celebrates End of Assad
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 09, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/9/ ... transcript
“Whatever’s coming next, I don’t believe at all that [it] would be worse than what we’ve been through, what we lived through,” says Syrian activist and filmmaker Waad Al-Kateab as she celebrates the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship to Syrian opposition groups. Al-Kateab, who was forced to flee her hometown of Aleppo with her family in 2016 and now resides in the United Kingdom, says the end of Assad’s rule has reignited the “dream of a free Syria.” Her Oscar-nominated documentary film For Sama, released in 2019, offered a rare glimpse into Syria’s civil war. The devastating personal account was filmed over the course of five years during the uprising in Aleppo and is dedicated to Al-Kateab’s daughter Sama.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue to look at the fall of the Assad regime with activist and award-winning filmmaker Waad Al-Kateab. She was forcibly displaced from her hometown of Aleppo with her family in 2016. Her Oscar-nominated film For Sama, released in 2019, offered a rare glimpse into Syria’s civil war. The devastating account was filmed over the course of five years, starting in 2011 during the uprising in Aleppo. Amidst airstrikes and attacks on hospitals, Waad falls in love with one of the last remaining doctors in Aleppo, gets married, has a baby girl Sama, to whom the film is dedicated. When protests against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad first began in 2011, she was a young economics student who began filming on a cellphone. This is a clip from For Sama.
WAAD AL-KATEAB: [translated] Sama, things have got so bad now. Your dad can’t leave the hospital, so we live here now. This is our room. Behind those pictures are sandbags to protect from shelling.
Yes, I’m coming.
We do our best to make it feel like home.
AMY GOODMAN: The sound of a bomb. We now go to London, where we’re joined by Waad Al-Kateab, Syrian filmmaker, activist, co-founder of Action For Sama.
Your thoughts today? As we listen to the bomb exploding as you’re with your baby, tell us where that was in Aleppo and what your hopes are for the future, Waad?
WAAD AL-KATEAB: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. And just really, I don’t have maybe the right words really to explain. I’ll do my best. Sorry.
But, like, for years, for these last 13 years, I don’t think any Syrian have seen the light at the end of the tunnel. There was something, it was keeping us moving forward, keeping us fighting. And we just, like, didn’t want to lose. And, you know, today, what happened, and this feeling today is just something. I’m over the moon, in one second, happy, dancing, laughing, and then so much crying and pain and grief and mourning, I think. It’s just — I’m so happy and grateful for where we are today.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about what hope you have for the future, how you see a new Syria emerging, and who will be the players, and how people like you, an activist deeply involved with Syria, though you left, forced out of Aleppo, what, like eight years ago, what your plans are? Will you return?
WAAD AL-KATEAB: Yeah, I mean, since the Syrian revolution started in 2011, that was the time when I and so many other Syrians have felt that we belong to this country, we can fight for this country, we can own our country. And, you know, today, we do have the same feeling exactly as 2011. This conversation about what’s going to happen next, who’s going to rule, how the government would look like, all of this conversation, we were thinking about that like 11 and like 13 years ago, as well. And the last five, six, seven years, I think it was just so much of no end and no hope, no justice.
And, you know, today, when we are looking at all of this, yes, there is concern. Yes, there is so much things to worry about. And there’s a huge work to be done. There’s a long path forward. But we can’t, like, forget or not acknowledge and not feel. And this is now a moment, a remarkable moment, in our history, in our life in Syria.
Whatever is coming next, I don’t believe at all that would be worse than what we’ve been through, what we lived through, this for 13 years of being sieged in our own cities, being bombed, being attacked, hospitals, schools, prisoners, people who are detained. Whatever this future would hold, you know, if we managed to go through this, if we are now on the other side — and we are — I don’t believe that whatever happened will be worse than what we’ve been through already.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned now about the possibilities, for example, HTS, the leading the way for the overthrow of Assad; the leader of HTS, Julani, what he represents? How will everyday Syrians or Syrian civil society control the future?
WAAD AL-KATEAB: Yeah, I mean, there’s definitely concern, but they are coming on a long list of concern. For me, this is one thing which is definitely important and fair, but, again, there’s much more things to be looking at, especially today, which I think you mentioned that earlier on, when Israel, you know, at al-Jolan area and the bombing of some areas and stuff in Syria, the Turkish involvement, the U.S. involvement. Like, there’s so many players who are working on Syria. HTS is definitely one of these players.
And it is, like, what we see on the ground, and this is — I think it’s something, even for us, we’re still trying to process and understand. For years, you know, these statements, even when it’s like much less, different from how HTS think, it used to be only statements. It was not matching what was going on on the ground. Today, what we’ve seen in the last, like, 11, 12 days, it was just something so much different, in everything, not just the statements, and how this group and other groups who are — were leading this battle today are thinking, but also on the ground. We all have connection there, and we’ve heard from so many people. We’re looking at all the footage that’s coming out. We did already set up, like, groups where we are organizing what’s going on in the new liberated cities. And what we are hearing from people on the ground are very much similar to what we have seen in the statements.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, let me ask you —
WAAD AL-KATEAB: I have so much hope —
AMY GOODMAN: The voices of Syrian women are so often underrepresented. Your journey from student activist to award-winning filmmaker has been extraordinary. How do you see your role fitting into the future as a storyteller and an advocate? We have 30 seconds.
WAAD AL-KATEAB: Yeah, I think we’ve seen this dream of free Syria like 13 years ago, and we thought at some point this will never be happening. Today, it is happening. It’s real. We have so much work to be done. We have so much lobbying within our community. You know, like, the Syrian people were divided by the Syrian regime for years, and now is the time to live together, to move forward, to think together, to see this future that’s coming together. And this is now the reality of the situation. So, yes, so much hope, so much amazing feeling, and our hearts still with everyone who’s still waiting for their beloved ones who they were disappeared in Assad’s prisons for so many years.
AMY GOODMAN: And how old is your daughter today?
WAAD AL-KATEAB: My daughter now is 9, and my second daughter is 7.
AMY GOODMAN: Waad Al-Kateab, I thank you so much for being with us, award-winning Syrian filmmaker, her film, For Sama. This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 09, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/9/headlines
Bashar al-Assad Ousted as Syrian Leader Following 12-Day Offensive
Dec 09, 2024
In a development that could reshape the Middle East, armed opposition groups have overthrown Bashar al-Assad in Syria following a lightning 12-day offensive. Assad has resigned and fled to Russia, where he has been granted asylum. Assad’s family had ruled Syria with an iron grip for over 50 years.
Thousands of Syrians living in exile have poured back into the country, while tens of thousands of prisoners held by the Assad government have been freed. At the Sednaya prison in Damascus, rescue workers are now trying to access underground cells at the site, which has been described as a “human slaughterhouse.”
The uprising was led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a group listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations. Members of the group spoke on Sunday after seizing Syria’s state television.
Syrian rebel: “In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful, by the grace of God Almighty, the city of Damascus has been liberated. The tyrant Bashar al-Assad has been toppled, and all the unjustly detained persons from the regime’s prisons have been released.”
A deal has been reached to allow Syria’s Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali to remain in his position to oversee the state’s institutions until a transition government is formed.
Many Syrians across the globe held celebratory rallies to mark the fall of Assad. Sabri Chikhou took part in a rally in London.
Sabri Chikhou: “We are going towards democracy and building a new Syria with a new system, democratic system. And we will depend on society and establishment, not to the single regime who control every part in our country.”
Israel & U.S. Bomb Syria as Questions Swirl over Future of Post-Assad Syria
Dec 09, 2024
Many questions remain as to what will happen next in Syria, which has been devastated by a 13-year civil war that has been fueled in part by numerous foreign countries, including Russia, Iran, the United States, Turkey and Israel.
The U.N. Security Council will hold an emergency meeting today on Syria. The U.N. Syrian envoy, Geir Pedersen, has called for an inclusive transitional government to restore a unified Syria.
Geir Pedersen: “All armed actors on the ground maintain good conduct, law and order, protect civilians and preserve public institutions. Let me urge all Syrians to prioritize dialogue, unity and respect for international humanitarian law and human rights as they seek to rebuild their society.”
Israel responded to the uprising in Syria by invading and seizing part of Syria’s Golan Heights in violation of a 1974 agreement with the Syrian government. Israel also bombed a number of areas, including a Syrian air base and weapons depots. The United States carried out dozens of airstrikes inside Syria targeting areas held by the Islamic State. Meanwhile, in northern Syria, Turkish-backed armed groups have seized the city of Manbij, which had been controlled by U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces. We will have more on Syria after headlines.
Israel Kills Dozens in Gaza; Electricity, Oxygen & Water Cut at Kamal Adwan Hospital
Dec 09, 2024
In news from Gaza, an Israeli attack on Rafah killed at least 10 Palestinians who had lined up to buy flour. In a separate attack, Israel struck a home, killing nine members of the same family in the Bureij refugee camp. Most of the victims were reportedly women and children. On Friday, an Israeli strike in the Nuseirat camp killed at least 20 Palestinians, including at least six children and five women. Survivors had to be pulled from the rubble.
Radi Abdulfatah: “There was suddenly an explosion. This was not an explosion; this was a tsunami. Like you see, it took not only one house, but many. There was fire and flames, flames that burned us. They burn us. They damage us. They cut us in pieces. There were bodies in pieces. I was pulled from under the rubble yesterday, and I have stitches in my head.”
Meanwhile, the head of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza is warning the lives of more than 100 patients are at risk after Israeli attacks cut off the hospital’s supply of electricity, oxygen and water. On Friday, Israeli troops stormed the hospital compound.
Pope Francis Unveils Nativity Scene of Jesus in Crib Lined with a Palestinian Keffiyeh
Dec 09, 2024
Pope Francis has repeated his call for a ceasefire in Gaza. On Saturday, the pope unveiled this year’s nativity scene at the Vatican. It portrays baby Jesus in a crib lined with a Palestinian keffiyeh. At the ceremony, a top Palestinian official praised the pope for his “ongoing efforts to end the genocide in Gaza and his steadfast support for the Palestinian cause.” Over the weekend, Pope Francis also called on U.S. authorities to commute the sentences of prisoners on death row.
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“Assad Is Gone”: Writer Yassin al-Haj Saleh on Syria, His 16 Years in Prison & Wife’s Disappearance
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 09, 2024
“We needed to turn this page. … We’ve been under this inhuman condition for 54 years.” Following a lightning 12-day offensive, armed opposition groups have overthrown President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and his family’s five-decade rule in Syria. Assad has fled to Russia, where he has been granted asylum, while tens of thousands of political prisoners have been freed. The uprising was led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a Turkish-backed group listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations. The release of prisoners from conditions of “hunger, humiliation, extreme despair” is a welcome and hopeful sign for the new balance of power in Syria, says the writer, dissident and political prisoner in Syria from 1980 to 1996, Yassin al-Haj Saleh, but it remains to be seen if others who were disappeared during the Syrian civil war, including al-Haj Saleh’s wife Samira, will be recovered or their fates identified.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We spend the hour looking at the fall of the Syrian government and its impact on the Middle East and worldwide, after armed forces entered the capital city of Damascus Sunday, bringing an end to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and his family’s more than 50-year rule.
Armed opposition groups have overthrown al-Assad’s regime in Syria following a lightning 12-day offensive. Assad has fled to Russia, where he’s been granted political asylum. Assad’s family had ruled Syria with an iron grip for more than half a century.
Thousands of Syrians living in exile have poured back into Syria, while tens of thousands of prisoners held by the Assad government have been freed. At the Sednaya prison in Damascus, rescue workers are now trying to access underground cells at a site that’s been described as a “human slaughterhouse.”
The uprising was led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, a Turkish-backed group listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Nations. Members of the group spoke on Sunday after seizing Syria’s state television station.
SYRIAN REBEL: [translated] In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful, by the grace of God almighty, the city of Damascus has been liberated. The tyrant Bashar al-Assad has been toppled, and all the unjustly detained persons from the regime’s prisons have been released. The Fatah Damascus Operation Room calls upon the mujahideen brothers and citizens to preserve all the properties of the free Syrian state. Long live a free and independent Syria for all Syrians of all sects.
AMY GOODMAN: As video showed prisoners streaming out of Assad’s notorious prisons, others celebrated inside Assad’s luxurious presidential palace. Scenes of celebration erupted across major Syrian cities. These are just a few voices from Aleppo, from Homs and from the capital Damascus.
SYRIAN 1: [translated] This is something else. Something else. May God help this country. And congratulations to all.
SYRIAN 2: [translated] This is the happiest day of my life. We were reborn. This is the day when the believers rejoice with God’s victory. Thank God. He gave us more than we deserve. Just some advice: Be united, and do not allow foreigners to come between you.
SYRIAN 3: [translated] Our happiness is immense. It’s priceless. Thank God we have no losses and no one has harmed anyone. We are just happy with our victory. We are also happy for the prisoners who have been released after years in prison. May God protect the rebels and grant them victory.
SYRIAN 4: [translated] First of all, I thank God for granting us the chance to see this place once more. After 10 years of fleeing Homs, I am returning today with my head held high in pride. Homs is free now. This is the Homs we dreamed of.
SYRIAN 5: [translated] I am a mechanical engineer. For years we have been waiting for this day. We have been resisting. We have been enduring. We have been holding on. And we’ve been waiting for this day until the regime fell. And finally, the regime has fallen. From now on, the Syrian people are one! The Syrian people are one! The Syrian people are one! The Syrian people are one!
AMY GOODMAN: Israel responded to the uprising in Syria by invading and seizing part of Syria’s Golan Heights and bombed a Syrian air base and weapons depots.
The United States carried out dozens of airstrikes inside Syria targeting areas held by the Islamic State. Meanwhile, in northern Syria, Turkish-backed armed groups have seized the city of Manbij, which had been controlled by U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces.
President Joe Biden welcomed the Assad regime’s downfall as a “historic opportunity.”
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: After 13 years of civil war in Syrian and more than half a century of brutal authoritarian rule by Bashar Assad and his father before him, rebel forces have forced Assad to resign his office and flee the country. We’re not sure where he is, but there’s word that he’s in Moscow. At long last, the Assad regime has fallen.
AMY GOODMAN: For more on all of this, we begin in Paris with Yassin al-Haj Saleh, a Syrian writer, dissident, former political prisoner. He was jailed in Syria for 16 years, from 1980 to 1996. He’s the author of several books, including The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy, also co-founder of the award-winning independent media platform AlJumhuriya.net.
Welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us, Yassin. If you can respond? You were out in the streets of Paris yesterday celebrating with many other Syrians. Assad is now in Russia, where he’s been granted asylum. Your response to what has happened and the lightning speed, would you say, that it’s happened in this last phase of the overthrow of the Assad regime?
YASSIN AL-HAJ SALEH: Hello, Amy, and thank you for having me.
So, among hundreds of people yesterday, I was at the Republic Square in Paris. We were overwhelmed by emotions, mine, I guess, similar to everybody else, crying, laughing and breathing. It was a rare moment of convergence of mourning and happiness and just feeling alive.
On the personal level, I lived almost all my life under this genocidal regime, and I felt as if tight hands were on my neck, on my throat, and for the first day I regained the ability to breathe. So, it is a great day, glorious day.
Everybody, I guess — of course, myself included — have many layers of feeling about this day. We need to turn out this dirty, criminal, discriminatory, fascist and very reactionary — I guess this is the right word to describe the Assad regime, because many in the West thinks that it is modernist, this is progressive. Far from it. So, we needed to turn out this page. And we are sure that many pages with difficulties, with hardships, with crisis, with struggles, with problems are ahead of us.
But the forever is over. And yesterday was the first day of history with all its problems and tensions and, of course, I mean, apprehensions. So, it was a mixed feeling. And there are many elements for hope. And, of course, there are other elements that I’d like to talk about, if you will allow me.
AMY GOODMAN: Yes. Why don’t you continue? But why don’t you start off by grounding us in your own experience? I mean, we’re sitting here looking at the Sednaya prison, the freeing of thousands of prisoners, many women, as you see them being told that they are now free. If you can talk about your own experience? Tell us about the Sednaya prison and its significance, and talk about why people were imprisoned.
YASSIN AL-HAJ SALEH: So, in my years in jail, I was not in Sednaya prison. And in those days, in the 1980s and ’90s, it was not the slaughterhouse as Amnesty International said some seven years ago, early 2017, I guess, in a very good report. It was before Sednaya. It was Tadmor prison, in which I spent only my last year of the 16 years, after I finished my sentence, by the way. I mean, look, I was arrested in 1980. I was, among hundreds of my comrades, brought to Supreme State Security Court only in April 1992, so at that time I was in jail for 11 years and four months. It took two years to get a sentence, and I got a sentence of 15 years. Instead of being released — by the way, the day before yesterday was the 44th anniversary of my arrest. Instead of being released in 1995, I was sent with 30 other people to Tadmor prison for an extra year. And Tadmor prison is the Sednaya of today. It is the most brutal jail in Syria. It is — well, it is a torture camp; it is not a prison. It is like Sednaya today.
These places are the factories to manufacture the essence of power in Syria. They are places of torture, of hunger, of humiliation and of extreme despair. And I believe that tens of thousands — you know that now we have 131 people, at least, we don’t know about their fate. So, many of them may be killed. The league of Sednaya prison former prisoners released a report a year and a half ago, I guess, and they took that maybe 30,000 to 35,000 were killed in Sednaya prison, mostly under torture, and some of them were executed. And many, I believe, died of hunger and of diseases.
So, it is — we’ve been under this inhuman condition for 54 years, which is more that a half of the whole Syrian history as a modern polity. Syria appeared only after the First World War. And more than half of its history is under the Assad rule, very thuggish, very corrupt. And you saw that it was rotten from inside. It fell in 11 days, without its foreign protectors, Russians, Iranians, the thugs of Hezbollah and other sectarian militias. The regime, we overwhelmed, so it fell in 11 days, because it is extremely rotten from inside.
So, this was my experience. And I feel very hopeful for the future of Syria because of the release of prisoners, because they gave — they have given the top priority for releasing these prisoners from many places, in Aleppo, in Hama, in Homs and now in Damascus, especially this torture camp of Sednaya.
AMY GOODMAN: Today, Yassin, is the 11th anniversary of the disappearance of your wife. Can you explain what happened to her?
YASSIN AL-HAJ SALEH: Well, because Syria, especially in 2013, so the third year of the Syrian uprising, is the most brutal, the most painful, the most tragic year of our struggle. So, Syria, by that time, let’s remember that it was the intervention, military intervention, of Hezbollah in Syria. It is the year of the appearance of Daesh, ISIS. It is the year of the chemical massacre. It is the year of the sordid American-Russian deal to absolve the regime from violating the international law, and disarming, taking away its chemical weapons. We find now that they were aware all the time that the regime kept a lot of chemical weapons. So, they were happy, or they were not unhappy, that these arms were used against — only against the Syrian people, now they are targeting them.
So, because Syria, by that year, was turning to a paradise of immunity and unaccountability, many factions seized the opportunity and started to act like the regime. Daesh is one of them. Another, Salafi military formation called Jaysh al-Islam in eastern Ghouta was one. And they took Samira, my wife, Samira Khalil, with Razan Zaitouneh, internationally known human rights activist and very good writer; Wael Hamada, her husband; and Nazem Hammadi, a lawyer and a poet. This happened today 11 years ago.
And for me, it is — as much as I am happy of the liberation of the bigger parts of my country, at the same time I see it as a criterion to judge these new developments now to liberate my wife and my friends, or to know about their fate, and to bring the culprits before justice. This is very important. We know the criminals by names.
And this is an opportunity for me just to say these simple words. This should end now. It is like releasing thousands of people from jail and trying to find out about the fate of others. Samira is one of these people. Samira and Razan and Wael and Nazem are among these people. And we need to know. We need them among us. We need to know about their fate. And we need to see a measure of justice. This will tell if the future of Syria will be better than its past.
AMY GOODMAN: I have a final question, Yassin. In one of your posts, you write, quote, “We can’t embrace HTS’s military effectiveness against the regime while ignoring its ideology.” In this last minute we have, if you can explain, one of the groups, the leading group, that overthrew the Assad regime?
YASSIN AL-HAJ SALEH: Amy, this was written in January 2013, so 11 years ago. And someone digged it out and published it, republished it on X.
So, of course, as you see, they are very effective militarily, but they have an ideology. And this is one reason why I am a bit worried, because this is one — this tension between the Islamic formation of the new liberators and the general seat of nationalism is one of my sources of worries.
Beside that, Assadism is not yet dead. Assad is gone, very cheaply and very — he showed how sordid and how trivial he was, but Assadism is still there in the form of sectarianism, corruption, thuggery, security complexes. Still we don’t know the fate about them.
And unhealthy — a third reason why I am a bit worried is a brutally unhealthy regional and international environment. You mentioned that the Israelis seized some Syrian lands. And they bombed in Damascus after Damascus was taken from the regime. This is colonial — I am not surprised by it, but Israel has been a plague for us for decades and for generations. But this will not go away from the Syrian memory.
AMY GOODMAN: Yassin al-Haj Saleh —
YASSIN AL-HAJ SALEH: If I have time —
AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds.
YASSIN AL-HAJ SALEH: OK. So, the reasons why I am a bit hopeful — I talked about my worries — is that the release of prisoners, the return of displaced people, from Turkey — from within the country, the camps are almost empty, and from Turkey and from Lebanon. And I guess many people from Europe are planning to go back. It is a Syrianized thing — it is not like what happened in Iraq 20, 21 years ago. The Syrians did it, and with minimal violations so far. I guess this is a sort of basis to build on for a better future.
AMY GOODMAN: Yassin al-Haj Saleh, Syrian writer, former political prisoner from 1980 to 1996, author of several books, including The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy. He was speaking to us from Paris.
*********
Syrians Are Celebrating Fall of Assad, Even as “the Bigger Picture Is Grim”: Scholar Bassam Haddad
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 09, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/9/ ... transcript
The fall of the Assad family’s 50-year regime in Syria brings with it “many more questions than answers,” says the executive director of the Arab Studies Institute, Bassam Haddad. While the regional and global implications are “not good,” as Israel in particular is celebrating the loss of Assad’s material support for Palestinian and Lebanese armed resistance, Haddad says the immediate relief of those suffering under Assad’s totalitarian regime should not be ignored or invisibilized. Haddad also discusses the political prospects for the rebel forces led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which he says will likely form a coalition with other groups as the future of Syria is determined in the coming days and weeks.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue to look at how the Assad family has lost control of Syria after more than half a century of brutal dictatorship, following a rapid advance of rebel fighters. Today, U.N. Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on Syria. The U.N. Syrian envoy, Geir Pedersen, said an inclusive transitional government is needed to restore a unified Syria.
GEIR PEDERSEN: All armed actors on the ground maintain good conduct, law and order, protect civilians and preserve public institutions. Let me urge all Syrians to prioritize dialogue, unity and respect for international humanitarian law and human rights as they seek to rebuild their society.
AMY GOODMAN: Israel responded to the Syrian uprising by invading and seizing parts of Syria’s Golan Heights in violation of a 1974 agreement with the Syrian government. Israel also bombed a number of areas, including a Syrian air base and weapons depots. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria was a “direct result” of Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] This is a historic day in the history of the Middle East. Assad’s regime is a central link in Iran’s Axis of Evil. This regime has fallen. This is a direct result of the blows we inflicted on Iran and Hezbollah, the main supporters of the Assad regime. This created a chain reaction throughout the Middle East.
AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, the United States carried out dozens of airstrikes inside Syria targeting areas held by the Islamic State. And in northern Syria, Turkish-backed armed groups have seized the city of Manbij, which had been controlled by U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces.
For more, we go to Philadelphia, where we’re joined by Bassam Haddad, associate professor at George Mason University, author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience. He’s the co-founder and editor of the Jadaliyya ezine and is executive director of the Arab Studies Institute at George Mason University. His forthcoming book, Roots, Dynamics, and Transformation of the Syrian Uprising.
Professor Haddad, first, your response to what took place this weekend?
BASSAM HADDAD: Thank you, Amy. It’s good to be with you again.
The first thing I’d like to say is that there are so many more questions than answers, so it’s important — especially today, so it’s important to keep that in mind as we go along. I would like to be analytical, but there is no way to avoid the importance and the value of watching what happened and what it means, the collapse of the regime after 54 years — or 71, if you want to consider the Ba’athist rule — what it means to ordinary Syrians who have actually been living under this regime for so many decades.
It is a moment that if you look at all the news, that cannot be overlooked and cannot be trumped by analysis of the bigger picture at this very moment, although the bigger picture is grim, is very problematic, and it’s really important for us to get to it, and I hope we can get to it today. But it is not something that we could underestimate, given the brutality of the regime, not least its lack of ability completely to govern in the past several years, at least after 2019, 2020, and its inability to provide the infrastructure, social services and the basic needs for its people, which actually did play a role in the very rapid march of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham into all of the major cities of Syria.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain HTS, its history, and Julani, its leader, and what you’re most concerned about right now.
BASSAM HADDAD: Well, you know, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is a coalition of a lot of groups, primarily Jabhat al-Nusra,which everyone loves to say it’s al-Qaeda-affiliated, although there’s been some sort of break. Nonetheless, it is what it is. As Yassin al-Haj Saleh said, he is worried about the ideology of HTS and some of the potential consequences. And if Yassin al-Haj Saleh is worried about HTS, where Yassin al-Haj Saleh called Hezbollah thugs, you can imagine what — or, how worried everyone else is about the future. But we will get to that.
HTS has actually acted in a manner that is not alone. HTS cannot move out of Idlib and could not have moved out of Idlib without Turkish approval. And even the Turkish government cannot make this decision alone. So, the question is: Who did Turkey connect with, coordinate with, to produce this issue or this campaign or this operation? The second question is: Were there any connections between the ceasefire in Lebanon and what Turkey did today or 10 days ago or right before the coordination took place or around then? And what kind of also coordination took place between Turkey and Russia, as well as between Russia and the potential group HTS and otherwise? Because they apparently, from recent reports, they have actually allowed the Russians to keep their air base. This has to be checked. So, there are a lot of questions.
And I wanted to insist again that at this point, although we can keep going and talk about the regional and global implications, which are not good, but I would like to insist on seizing this moment to recognize what it means for millions of Syrians who are actually very happy that this has happened. Many others are concerned, including those who are actually celebrating. They are concerned about the future. They’re concerned about how this took place, where this is going to go, who’s going to be in the lead. And many are concerned about what this means to the expanding, global, superpower, imperialist, American-Israeli hegemony, domination in the region, in the absence or far weakened, what we call, the Axis of Resistance. This is not a small issue, and it will become part of the major headlines very, very soon.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk more about this. What would — the amount of Syrian participation in reshaping Syria, will that be challenged because of the international support Syria will need to rebuild, that will include the U.S., players like the Gulf Arab monarchies? Turkey will also be, as you pointed out, and already is, deeply involved. Will that push what happens to Syria in a certain direction?
BASSAM HADDAD: Again, I must reiterate the importance of having so many questions with very, very few answers, because we do not know exactly how this was coordinated and with whom and what are the trade-offs that have actually already been in place.
But it’s going to be a phase, the next phase — or, this current phase is actually not the phase that we can focus on, because, according to the best analysis, the current configuration is not going to be transferred into the next phase. The political and economic and the military configuration today, the people that actually have the guns and are in control, are not likely themselves alone, maybe part of a coalition, a bigger coalition, a more diverse coalition, but not alone, move forward.
There’s so much trepidation in Syria. There’s so much trepidation in Turkey, by the United States, by many of the Arab states that are powerful and will probably be somewhat relied on to help rebuild Syria, about the singularity of a particular group, HTS, and how it need not and should not be the only player in the field. But the questions right now are just that. It’s very difficult to recognize where things are going.
But we do know that the United States and Israel are extremely comforted. Israel, yesterday on Channel 13, called what happened an “accomplishment.” And this “accomplishment” is something that will allow Israel to move forward with its genocide on Gaza, along with the United States. The United States is not just complicit; it’s a full partner in this genocide. And much bigger issues will come to fore in the coming weeks.
And the jubilation, while it’s important today for the people who have been under the boot of the regime — and we cannot underestimate this, no matter how concerned you are about imperialism and global political economy and so on. This has to be recognized, because one of the things that will actually cause me trouble and will cause my phone to blow up in just a few minutes by my own friends is that a lot of people who overemphasize the question of imperialism on a day like this or on a week like this, unfortunately, unwittingly, make the Syrian people invisible, as if they are not important and only global power politics is. And that is something that I would like to caution against.
Despite the fact that, yes, we can analyze that what has just happened is a triumph for global power, like the United States, for imperial designs, for conservative Arab states in the region, for normalizers in the region, and certainly for Israel or anyone who would like to weaken any sort of resistance — forget even Iran and Hezbollah — in the region to these kinds of plans that are not just about land theft and political domination, but also about economic plans and prescriptions that will disempower the working classes in the region and continue to do so.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk more about HTS and whether you believe it will be one of the leading partners in a new Syria, its background, its running of Idlib, how Idlib, that whole area, was run?
BASSAM HADDAD: I mean, honestly, HTS, first of all, wasn’t in complete control of Idlib. It was the dominant power in Idlib. There are various groups in Idlib that were actually also somewhat powerful. HTS has been able to govern, for the most part.
It is not likely that HTS will ever singularly rule Syria. This is something on which there is regional and international consensus, if not even domestic consensus. Despite everything that we have seen, Syrian society is among the most secular of Arab societies. And even if affinity with conservatism in Islam has grown considerably in the past few years or decades or even more, there is no appetite for what HTS has been advocating for, including its recent — recent as in in the past several years or in 2014, '15, ’16 — a sort of discourse that is exclusionary. Now it says it's repudiating this discourse. Now it’s actually trying to make sure that its forces do not repress, although what we have seen in many parts of Syria are various forms of exclusion, destruction of alcohol stores, burning of Christmas trees and things of the sort, that supposedly HTS has repudiated and tried to correct the path. This new vision or approach of HTS is interesting. It’s probably also coordinated with those who gave it the carte blanche to move forward. In all cases, the HTS is not the kind of apple pie that — well, in Syria, it won’t be apple pie, it’ll be knafeh — that Syrians are looking for.
And in the very, very near future, as the new government is established, as the new military formula is formed and reformed, we will discover that there will be attempts to broaden the coalition and potentially also avoid the horrible mistake that the United States did after its fraudulent and brutal invasion of Iraq in 2003, which is to completely dismantle the state, the ruling party, the army and so on, because that had created the kind of chaos that actually ended up being counterproductive for the invading power and beyond. So, I think it will be a different path than we have seen in Iraq. It will also be a more difficult path, because Syria does not possess the kind of resources like Iraq’s oil at least, or part of it, because it’s not all within the control of the government right now.
So, Syria will have an even more challenging future, economically, socioeconomically and politically. And what I fear is that within a short period, Syria will be off the news, and we will see what I was talking about earlier, the analytical framework of what that means to the region, quite soon actually, as developments take place.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Bassam Haddad, we want to thank you for being with us. Of course, we’re going to continue to follow this, founding director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program at George Mason University. We will link to your work at democracynow.org.
**********
“Remarkable Moment”: After Fleeing Syria, “For Sama” Director Waad Al-Kateab Celebrates End of Assad
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 09, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/9/ ... transcript
“Whatever’s coming next, I don’t believe at all that [it] would be worse than what we’ve been through, what we lived through,” says Syrian activist and filmmaker Waad Al-Kateab as she celebrates the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship to Syrian opposition groups. Al-Kateab, who was forced to flee her hometown of Aleppo with her family in 2016 and now resides in the United Kingdom, says the end of Assad’s rule has reignited the “dream of a free Syria.” Her Oscar-nominated documentary film For Sama, released in 2019, offered a rare glimpse into Syria’s civil war. The devastating personal account was filmed over the course of five years during the uprising in Aleppo and is dedicated to Al-Kateab’s daughter Sama.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue to look at the fall of the Assad regime with activist and award-winning filmmaker Waad Al-Kateab. She was forcibly displaced from her hometown of Aleppo with her family in 2016. Her Oscar-nominated film For Sama, released in 2019, offered a rare glimpse into Syria’s civil war. The devastating account was filmed over the course of five years, starting in 2011 during the uprising in Aleppo. Amidst airstrikes and attacks on hospitals, Waad falls in love with one of the last remaining doctors in Aleppo, gets married, has a baby girl Sama, to whom the film is dedicated. When protests against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad first began in 2011, she was a young economics student who began filming on a cellphone. This is a clip from For Sama.
WAAD AL-KATEAB: [translated] Sama, things have got so bad now. Your dad can’t leave the hospital, so we live here now. This is our room. Behind those pictures are sandbags to protect from shelling.
Yes, I’m coming.
We do our best to make it feel like home.
AMY GOODMAN: The sound of a bomb. We now go to London, where we’re joined by Waad Al-Kateab, Syrian filmmaker, activist, co-founder of Action For Sama.
Your thoughts today? As we listen to the bomb exploding as you’re with your baby, tell us where that was in Aleppo and what your hopes are for the future, Waad?
WAAD AL-KATEAB: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. And just really, I don’t have maybe the right words really to explain. I’ll do my best. Sorry.
But, like, for years, for these last 13 years, I don’t think any Syrian have seen the light at the end of the tunnel. There was something, it was keeping us moving forward, keeping us fighting. And we just, like, didn’t want to lose. And, you know, today, what happened, and this feeling today is just something. I’m over the moon, in one second, happy, dancing, laughing, and then so much crying and pain and grief and mourning, I think. It’s just — I’m so happy and grateful for where we are today.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about what hope you have for the future, how you see a new Syria emerging, and who will be the players, and how people like you, an activist deeply involved with Syria, though you left, forced out of Aleppo, what, like eight years ago, what your plans are? Will you return?
WAAD AL-KATEAB: Yeah, I mean, since the Syrian revolution started in 2011, that was the time when I and so many other Syrians have felt that we belong to this country, we can fight for this country, we can own our country. And, you know, today, we do have the same feeling exactly as 2011. This conversation about what’s going to happen next, who’s going to rule, how the government would look like, all of this conversation, we were thinking about that like 11 and like 13 years ago, as well. And the last five, six, seven years, I think it was just so much of no end and no hope, no justice.
And, you know, today, when we are looking at all of this, yes, there is concern. Yes, there is so much things to worry about. And there’s a huge work to be done. There’s a long path forward. But we can’t, like, forget or not acknowledge and not feel. And this is now a moment, a remarkable moment, in our history, in our life in Syria.
Whatever is coming next, I don’t believe at all that would be worse than what we’ve been through, what we lived through, this for 13 years of being sieged in our own cities, being bombed, being attacked, hospitals, schools, prisoners, people who are detained. Whatever this future would hold, you know, if we managed to go through this, if we are now on the other side — and we are — I don’t believe that whatever happened will be worse than what we’ve been through already.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned now about the possibilities, for example, HTS, the leading the way for the overthrow of Assad; the leader of HTS, Julani, what he represents? How will everyday Syrians or Syrian civil society control the future?
WAAD AL-KATEAB: Yeah, I mean, there’s definitely concern, but they are coming on a long list of concern. For me, this is one thing which is definitely important and fair, but, again, there’s much more things to be looking at, especially today, which I think you mentioned that earlier on, when Israel, you know, at al-Jolan area and the bombing of some areas and stuff in Syria, the Turkish involvement, the U.S. involvement. Like, there’s so many players who are working on Syria. HTS is definitely one of these players.
And it is, like, what we see on the ground, and this is — I think it’s something, even for us, we’re still trying to process and understand. For years, you know, these statements, even when it’s like much less, different from how HTS think, it used to be only statements. It was not matching what was going on on the ground. Today, what we’ve seen in the last, like, 11, 12 days, it was just something so much different, in everything, not just the statements, and how this group and other groups who are — were leading this battle today are thinking, but also on the ground. We all have connection there, and we’ve heard from so many people. We’re looking at all the footage that’s coming out. We did already set up, like, groups where we are organizing what’s going on in the new liberated cities. And what we are hearing from people on the ground are very much similar to what we have seen in the statements.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, let me ask you —
WAAD AL-KATEAB: I have so much hope —
AMY GOODMAN: The voices of Syrian women are so often underrepresented. Your journey from student activist to award-winning filmmaker has been extraordinary. How do you see your role fitting into the future as a storyteller and an advocate? We have 30 seconds.
WAAD AL-KATEAB: Yeah, I think we’ve seen this dream of free Syria like 13 years ago, and we thought at some point this will never be happening. Today, it is happening. It’s real. We have so much work to be done. We have so much lobbying within our community. You know, like, the Syrian people were divided by the Syrian regime for years, and now is the time to live together, to move forward, to think together, to see this future that’s coming together. And this is now the reality of the situation. So, yes, so much hope, so much amazing feeling, and our hearts still with everyone who’s still waiting for their beloved ones who they were disappeared in Assad’s prisons for so many years.
AMY GOODMAN: And how old is your daughter today?
WAAD AL-KATEAB: My daughter now is 9, and my second daughter is 7.
AMY GOODMAN: Waad Al-Kateab, I thank you so much for being with us, award-winning Syrian filmmaker, her film, For Sama. This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.
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