Cashing in on the War in Gaza
by Ralph Nader
Oct 19, 2024
https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/p/c ... ar-in-gaza
Ralph welcomes back William Hartung of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. They'll discuss the Cost of War Project's latest reports on US military spending in support of Israel, and the humanitarian costs of the war in Gaza. Then, Ralph is joined by Palestinian writer and analyst Sumaya Awad to discuss the mass civil disobedience at the New York Stock Exchange, which was organized by Jewish Voice for Peace to protest the weapons manufacturers that are making millions off the genocide in Gaza.
William Hartung is an expert on the arms industry and US military budget, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex, and the co-editor of Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War.
In all my years of watching the operations of Washington—including the Bush/Cheney criminal invasion of Iraq—I have never seen such a servile position by top officials of an administration to a foreign power. Not even close. They are humiliating the United States of America. They are jeopardizing the United States of America—because as you know, the Department of Defense, CIA, NSA have studies and scenarios of blowback. So this war in the Middle East is gonna come back to the US in terms of reprisal and retaliation. And we are not able to anticipate that because we think, as the ruling empire in the world, that we're invulnerable. But we're not invulnerable.
Ralph Nader: The Biden administration is living in the past. They’ve got this “Israel, right or wrong” ideology. They think it's a political detriment to criticize Israel, and the fact that the younger generation is not locked into that point of view. But I think they’re going to hurt themselves more by enabling the war crimes that Israel is committing than they would by taking a stand. And of course, they keep trying to say that they're pushing for a ceasefire…But as long as they're doing the weapons and the financing, that is laughable.
William Hartung: It's just stunning. Given the record of this century—two failed wars, $8 trillion spent, hundreds of thousands killed—and yet they could say with a straight face, “We need a dominant military.” As if that’s the tool that's gonna solve any of these problems, rather than make them worse.
William Hartung: Sumaya Awad is a Palestinian writer and analyst based in New York City, and she is the spokesperson for Jewish Voice for Peace’s mass civil disobedience event at the New York Stock Exchange. Ms. Awad directs strategy and communications for the Adalah Justice Project, and she is a cofounder of the Against Canary Mission Project, which defends student activists targeted by blacklists for their Palestinian rights advocacy. She is the co-author of Palestine and Elections and co-editor of Palestine: A Socialist Introduction.
There were over 200 arrests—the majority of them anti-Zionist Jewish New Yorkers, who want to send a clear message both to the US government and the American people that Israel weaponizes their identity in order to justify crimes against humanity and that they are not okay with this. That they refuse for their identity and Jewish people to be weaponized in this way. And that in fact, what Israel is doing and what the US government is funding and politically backing is actively making this country and certainly the rest of the world unsafe not just for Jewish people, but for others.
Sumaya Awad: We are strategizing about how to push back against the role of AIPAC and the grip of AIPAC. I think the reality is that there are many people in Congress that are actually benefiting financially from what is happening in Gaza. We know that at least 50 members of Congress have links to the military-industrial complex—whether that's through stocks or other things. And so it's about unraveling this network, these connections between our government, the way it's profiting from the genocide and then what that means in terms of these elections across the country.
Transcript
Listeners who want to know the history before October 7th, 2023, back to 1948,
ought to read the book, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Professor Khalidi, retired Columbia University, a bestseller and worthy of that status. And Hannah, you have an announcement to make.
I sure do, Steve. It's tort law day season. The leaves are falling. The air is brisk. And on Saturday, October 26th at 12 p.m. Eastern, the American Museum of Tort Law is hosting its free virtual panel on blockbuster torts. You can register at tortmuseum.org. And Ralph has a little bit more to say about it. Ralph?
Yeah, this is a wonderful compressed education, listeners, so you bring yourself up to date on one of the great pillars of private law in our country, the civil justice system under the law of torts, the law of wrongful injury, and the remedies you have to go to court, have a trial by jury, get compensation for your losses,
as well as generate deterrence for safer behavior and disclose information through processes of depositions that alert people to various hazards like the opiate drugs, the oil spills, the defective motor vehicles, and many other products that need to be recalled. This is a very good event. It's free, and you'll learn about mass torts, litigation, its pluses and minuses.
You'll learn about the connection between artificial intelligence and harm to people by an expert, and you'll also learn about something most people are not aware of, that most crimes, including street crimes and corporate crimes, are also violations of tort law. And so if the prosecutors and the law enforcers in the Justice Department and
around the country don't do their job on issues like police brutality or cancerous toxic waste emissions by corporations, people can initiate their own lawsuits before trial by jury under the law of torts. So learn all about it. Tell your friends, relatives, coworkers. October 26th, Saturday, 12 noon, Eastern Time, free of charge by Zoom.
And now on to the show. Let's face it. As much as we on this program have posed, exposed, and decried the last year's genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, we are also accomplices. And that's because our tax dollars help pay for this slaughter. If we want our government to divest from this genocide,
one of our first steps must be a brutally honest accounting of what exactly we've been paying for. Our first guest today, William Hartung, is a longtime contributor to Brown University's Costs of War Project, and he has co-authored a recent paper on the cost of U.S. military aid to Israel and its parallel military buildup in the Middle East.
This report tells us what $22 billion has brought us over the past year. And a companion paper analyzing the full humanitarian costs of the war in Gaza describes, quote, the chains of impact leading towards indirect deaths. caused by Israeli military operations in Gaza and the West Bank.
It examines the impact on population health of the destruction of public infrastructure, livelihood sources, reduced access to healthcare, water and sanitation, and environmental damage. So Mr. Hartung will give us a full accounting. And some of those tax dollars are going straight to American manufacturers like Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin. Since last October,
Jewish Voice for Peace has been staging mass civil disobedience events in New York, including at Grand Central Station and the Statue of Liberty, and other cities, demanding the United States stop funding Israel's genocide in Gaza. This past Monday, hundreds of activists from Jewish Voice for Peace gathered outside the New York
Stock Exchange to protest the weapons manufacturers that are making millions of dollars off the genocide in Gaza. That brings us to our second guest, Samaya Awad. Ms. Awad is a Palestinian writer and spokesperson for this latest demonstration. We'll speak to Ms. Awad about the event and the reactions to it. As always, somewhere in the middle,
we'll check in with our irrepressible corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhyber. But first, the human costs of war in Gaza are even greater than we think. David. William Hartung is an expert on the arms industry and U.S. military budget and a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
He was previously the director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy and the co-director of the Center Sustainable Defense Task Force. He's the author of Prophets of War, Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex, and the co-editor of Lessons from Iraq, Avoiding the Next War.
Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, William Hartung. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you very much, Bill. You've been proven right year after year in your analysis, and we want to get the depth of it in a few moments. Now, in all my years of watching the operations of Washington,
including the Bush-Cheney criminal invasion of Iraq, I have never seen such a servile position by top officials of administration to a foreign power, not even close. They are humiliating the United States of America. They are jeopardizing the United States of America because, as you know, the Department of Defense, CIA, NSA have studies and scenarios of blowback.
So this war in the Middle East is going to come back to the U.S. in terms of reprisal and retaliation. And we are not able to anticipate that, because we think, as the ruling empire in the world, that we're invulnerable. But we're not invulnerable, and our defense and national security agencies have very realistic scenarios of any
possible counterattacks. Now, with that background, William Hartung, you've written a very revealing article for Forbes magazine. this month, and you participated in the costs of war and the human costs of war at Brown University. And so I want to put this question to you. How do you get a handle as a citizenry in a presumed democratic society?
to challenge these entrenched illegalities that are resulting in the risk of a wider war involving Iran in the Middle East with a blowback to the United States. How do you get a handle on it, representing a majority of Americans now who want a ceasefire and an arms suspension to Israel?
Well, I think part of the problem is that democracy is at the speed. People don't feel like they can make a difference and they're not weighing in as strongly as they should. But I think also the Biden administration is living in the past. They've got this Israel right or wrong ideology.
They think it's a political detriment to criticize Israel. In fact, the younger generation is not locked into that point of view. I think he's going to hurt himself more by enabling the war crimes that Israel is committing than they would by taking a stand. And of course, they keep trying to say that they're pushing for a ceasefire.
They're trying to get not being more responsible. But as long as they're giving them the weapons and the financing, then that is laughable. And, you know, every time Blinken or one of those officials says they want a rules-based international order, they can't be taken seriously. And, in fact, I think possibly for years to come,
this is going to hurt the United States standing in the world, diplomacy. people's ability to believe anything or efficient say. So, of course, the first issue is the suffering of the Palestinians. And there was a companion paper to the one I worked on about the human cost, which found that, you know,
the 40,000 direct deaths are just the beginning. The author believes over 60,000 people have died of starvation. There's disease. There may be 10,000 bodies that they still haven't dug out of the rubble. And now they're, of course, spreading deaths and refugees in Lebanon and West Bank.
I think they would love to take the Harris Biden administration into backing them in a war on Iran. And all this is backwards. It's our tax dollars financing this, but Netanyahu is setting the pace. If he attacks Hamas or Hezbollah and they respond, the Biden response is, well, we have to defend Israel.
But Netanyahu is the aggressor here. So that doesn't make any sense. And the question is, how far are they going to go? Are they ever going to stand up to him? And I think only much larger levels of public pressure. I think politicians who are kind of mired in ideology,
the only thing they would understand is if they'd lose their job. And, you know, I don't, we don't take positions as an organization on elections, but people need to make their voices heard and understand also that elections are just one step in the process. On that point, Bill,
they're going the wrong way if they want to win the election, because they're losing votes in the swing states here, like Michigan. It's not just Arab Americans or Muslim Americans. There are a lot of people now who are ready to stay home. They don't have to vote for Trump. They don't have to vote for the Green Party.
They just stay home. And with the Electoral College and razor-thin polls between Harris and Trump, you would think they would be more sensitive to the domestic electoral consequences in the remaining days until November 5th. But they're not. I've had doctors ask, why isn't Biden at least airlifting some of these children, these babies that have horrible burns,
and are dying, or amputees shot by snipers, airlifting them to U.S. hospitals. I mean, never mind the humanity of it. You would think they'd want to do it just in terms of public relations, and they're not even doing that. And the Congress has no fiscal restraints. Tell us about your study on, since October 7th,
how much Congress has shoveled, knee-jerk, without hearings, over the Biden dissent to Israel. Well, we found $17.9 billion in military aid, another $5 billion for stepped-up military operations in the region. And that's probably a low estimate because the U.S. government has been so non-transparent. We're probably missing things. And of course, the costs are going up every day.
It was before they agreed to send the missile banner to Israel, the 100 troops. You know, every time Israel takes another step forward, the U.S. gets behind them. So I mentioned in my article, at the beginning of the Bush invasion of Iraq, Lawrence Lindsay, an economic advisor, said it might cost $200 billion.
And he was slapped on the wrist. The administration said, oh, no, it'll be $50 billion. It was a trillion dollars or more. Now, it doesn't automatically mean that this will go that way, but it means the government inevitably understates the cost of war. And, of course, if our troops get involved,
there's going to be money to take care of the veterans and, you know, possibly aid to help reconstruct the territory that we helped Israel destroy, which is ironic, of course. So the cost could be huge. There's still a push to send more to Ukraine.
They're pushing the Pentagon budget close to a trillion dollars to deal with like a caricature of the military threat they claim is posed by China. And diplomacy is in the backseat. I mean, if anything, this century should have proven that force is not the answer. It wasn't the answer to Iraq. It wasn't the answer to Afghanistan.
It made matters worse. Well, on that point you just made, the Biden-Blinken duo have not engaged in any arms control negotiations. A lot of the nuclear arms control treaties with Russia and others have been very severely shaken or suspended or their time is expired for renewal. Nothing going on. No ongoing nuclear arms or other arms control treaties.
There are no peace negotiations underway in the Middle East. No peace negotiations by the U.S. underway in Ukraine, Russia. The more you add it up... More you wonder, it is not just Trump that's unstable and berserk as he goes around the country. The actual performance and lack of performance and total surrender of U.S.
executive power to Netanyahu's regime represents a different kind of on-the-ground instability and going berserk. It is almost inconceivable, Bill, to try to explain what's going on here. Why are they going this far? What is their thinking here? They're operating like servants of a foreign power. If the Foreign Registration Act applied to government officials,
they'd have to register Biden and Blinken as foreign agents of the Israeli regime. Hands down, evidence. How do you explain it? Well, it's irrational in the sense that it's not good for anyone. It's not good for the future of Israel. It's not good for the possibility of peace in the Middle East.
Even if they eliminate Hamas, they're creating a generation of anger that could well create another one. Just as ISIS grew after Al Qaeda was someone on its back heel. So I think it's kind of a case of ideology kills. They're trapped. in an earlier mindset that says you must support Israel at all costs.
I don't know if they believe this notion that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. How is it possible when you have people under occupation? I think Netanyahu is the worst case of an Israeli prime minister we've seen in a long time.
And of course, part of this is about his survival and not about the people that he clearly doesn't care about. So it's baffling. I agree. You know, when I was a student, you know, we talked about American empire, economic exploitation, and creating, you know, military dominance in the world.
Even if that's what you were aiming for, this is not going to achieve that. This is going to hasten the decline and lack of influence in the United States, hurt our reputation in the world, hurt our economy. This is the 100th year since the birth of James Baldwin.
And one of the things he said that stuck with me from when I was a teenager was, You know, in a system of oppression, of course, the oppressed are severely damaged. But the oppressors are also damaged because they essentially distort themselves and sacrifice their humanity. And I think that's where we're at right now.
And you either have to stand up or not. You know, we can't let this stand. Well, let's talk about the human costs now in that area. So someone asks you, given all you know about the direct and indirect costs of the war, what's your estimate of death and injury? Because that will change the dynamics.
The press will have a higher sense of urgency. even citizen groups, a higher sense of urgency. Maybe the government would have a higher sense. Maybe there'd be more people in Congress. If they know that 400,000 have died, maybe a million in the next few months will total a million deaths of the 2.3
million Gazans in an area twice the size of the District of Columbia. Packed, crowded, forced into brutal marches. What estimate are you willing to give, absent, you know, strict epidemiological analysis, which are not possible until the war stops, the genocide of the Palestine Holocaust? Well,
the researcher who did the human cost chapter put it at about four times as many indirect deaths as direct, so maybe 160,000 or so, with the understanding that we cannot really know, given that reporters can't get in, human rights people can't get in. But even so, many more people have died indirectly and directly,
and that will continue even if the bomb is set tomorrow because it's disease, it's starvation, it's lack of health care, and not to mention the trauma psychologically of having your family killed, your neighborhood destroyed, you know, living in rubble as a refugee. You know, the cost, human and otherwise, will last for many, many years. I mean,
we're still, you know, paying the cost of helping the vets who served in Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD and traumatic brain injuries and So, never when a war started, the government ever mentioned the fact that the cost can go on forever, both to individuals and the war cells and even our own personnel. So, it's just stunning.
Given the record of this century, two failed wars, $8 trillion spent, hundreds of thousands killed. They can say with a straight face, we need a dominant military. Is this the tool that's going to solve any of these problems and make them worse? Well, privately, Netanyahu must wonder how lucky he is. Here he is before October 7th,
despised by three out of four Israelis for trying to destroy the independence of the judiciary. He's under prosecution by Israeli prosecutors for corruption. He's just not popular. in Israel until October 7, and he's looking at this world, and he's king of the hill. He's twirling the U.S. government around his finger.
He's about to start another war in Iran. The two volleys by Iran produced no damage. Explain to our listeners, the first volley was flagged, and the second one produced some material damage at military bases, but didn't kill anybody except the Palestinian in the West Bank who was hit by falling debris.
What do you mean when Iran sent all these missiles months ago and they flagged it? Well, I think, you know, prior to that, I don't believe Netanyahu let this happen, but I think what Hamas did was terrific. But at this point, the death toll is about 100 Palestinians, every Israeli that died in the Hamas attack,
which is indiscriminate and therefore a war crime. And the Iranian response, I think, was meant for domestic violence, to say we did something, but not to do major damage to Israel and escalate the war. But at this stage, we don't know what will be escalating the war. It's out of control.
If there's any conflict, I can remember it, you know, in decades. And so to let Netanyahu set the pace and follow behind is just irresponsible and unconscionable. Well, how do you, as an observer of Congress, how do you explain the minimal number of members of Congress like Bernie Sanders
and Senator Von Hollen from Maryland and Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar and a few others are standing up and demanding ceasefire and suspension of arms? But they're in a distinct minority, even among their own Democratic Party. And, of course, the Republican Party, under McConnell and Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House,
just are openly using language that says, kill them all. In fact, Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton, two senators, essentially said that. How do you explain that their positions are contrary to the public opinion in the United States, which is turning against the Israeli-Palestinian holocaust? I mean, it's not like they're hooraying public opinion back home. It's not happening.
How do you explain to our listeners the situation in Congress now? Well, I think, you know, despite the opinion polls, they're in fear for their political lie. If you look what happened to Jamal Baldwin and Cori Bush, about the money that came in against them, even if you look at the students who were being suspended, you know,
for basically exercising free speech and being on the right side of history, it's a very dangerous moment. I remember after 9-1-1 taking a lot of heat from fighting back against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This seems worse to me. You know, I was a student activist at the end of the apartheid period.
You know, we weren't getting suspended. We weren't getting dopped. We weren't getting vilified. We weren't living in universes that ran more like autocracies than democracies. So it's almost like a virus that has yet to be eradicated. And, you know, people need to stand up. And there are organizations certainly, you know, skiing through the Palestine and, you know,
give a voice to peace, but also groups that have been working prior to that, like the Poor People's Campaign, which was anti-militarism building a flank. I think basically we need to go far, far beyond the traditional peace movement and basically realize that this is about the future of this country.
Is it going to be a democracy or isn't it? Can it become a better democracy? You know, people need to figure out what level of risk they're willing to take and they need to take it. But it's so different from how we've been trained to operate. I mean, we live in kind of this infotainment society.
People have felt for a long time you can't really get the government to do big, important things. and of course people who have been down and out i mean you know white male life expectancy is down and many of them have lost their careers and they're being
didn't scapegoat who haven't been answered and some of them are gravitating to that so you know unfortunately the the forces of hate have this imploded message and to convince people that we can you know, build a better country, which takes time, also takes a different attitude that it's not going to happen tomorrow, but it's worth the fight.
And so I think it's going to have to be more like some of the movements that have changed for the country, be it slavery, be it women's suffrage, be it the civil rights movement, environmental movement, LGBTQ movement. Those things involved people organizing for years before the moment came and the public got on board.
I mean, of course, now we don't have a lot of time giving Climate crisis. So, you know, Dr. King talked at the end of his life about the fierce urgency of now. It couldn't be more apt than the situation we're in.
But I do believe that, you know, a lot of people think, oh, you know, fighting is grim. I don't want to hear about it. Actually, people know about it. It's affecting them. The only way to feel better is to try to be something about it. And that's the kind of ethos you have to inject it.
And it's going to take, I think, some old-fashioned face-to-face meetings with your colleagues, friends, and I think also capture the stories of how people have beaten great odds before, the inspirations of greatest people. So we need all of that now. And, you know, whether we can do it in time, we don't know, but that's not the point.
The point is to make the effort. Well, the historical analogy is the Vietnam War, which Congress dilly-dallied and supported the Johnson administration, for example. And then the pressure from the public demonstrations and marches and pressures on members of Congress led Congress to end the Vietnam War. They simply cut off the money. to the Republican administration.
I think it was 1974. They said, we're done. No more money for the Vietnam War. And then the US had to get out. That's the sequence, listeners, that we have to emulate on this situation if there's time. In your Forbes article, and I urge listeners to pick up William Hartung's Forbes article of October 15th, 2024,
called The Human Costs of the Gaza War Are Even Greater Than You Think, you have this harrowing paragraph. You say, Further escalation is a distinct and dangerous possibility. The decision to deploy a battery of US THAAD anti-missile systems to Israel, along with 100 US support personnel, is the next step in that process. In essence,
President Biden is given the power over whether or not the war escalates to Benjamin Netanyahu. When Israel attacks Hezbollah or Iran, the Biden administration pledges to help defend it against the inevitable counterattack. This policy of, quote, Netanyahu right or wrong, which rewards his reckless behavior, with yet more support, must stop. Without a sharp reversal in US policy,
the human and economic costs of supporting Israel's war could easily spiral out of control." Those are your words. Early in the genocidal invasion of Gaza, Biden would lecture publicly Netanyahu to let humanitarian trucks in. He's not even doing that now. We're seeing mass starvation and mass death from lack of clean water and no medicine and health care.
Now, why does he have to go that far in giving Netanyahu and his genocidal army the green light to block thousands of humanitarian aid trucks paid for by the US taxpayer from going into Gaza? Why does he have to go that far? I don't think there's a rational answer. I mean, in some cases,
people in power with their eyes, they believe they're on high, they're trying to get money to cut the considerable action. But as you said in Raza, it's impossible to do that given the scale of the production. So, I would put that in the mind for the folks that are supporting this war that we have to fight.
They never had a psychological state of consciousness. If they're not paying attention, they have to build it and resume the bank. Bill Hartung, you've studied over the years and written about the military-industrial complex. Tell us the role of Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, General Dynamics,
and others who are making a lot of money selling all these arms to the Middle East and elsewhere. What's their role in the influence game over the Biden administration? Well, in the current conflict, they almost don't have to lift a finger because Biden is so all in and so pressured by the Israel lobby.
So they're mostly, the big companies mostly cashing the check. But the tech folks in California, like Peter Thiel, Palantir, they actually had their board meeting in Israel to show support for the war. And when asked about whether he cared about how his weapons were being used, Peter says, oh, we don't keep track of that.
We trust the Israelis. So it's kind of a split. I mean, it's kind of the new tech folks. They're all in, shamelessly so. And I think the big companies would rather just catch the check and not be associated in the public eye with the war. What about the interest, technically speaking,
of these arms manufacturers in testing new forms of weaponry by shipping these weapons to the Israelis? They like to get feedback from the field, don't they? Well, but they're not the ones driving the train in this case. But they will, as they did in Ukraine, once the war starts,
they'll claim that their weapons are the greatest things in flight spread. But in Ukraine, actually, some of their drones, the Wall Street drones, were so poor that they stopped using them and bought Chinese drones. But certainly, you know, they will capitalize after the fact, either as a marketing tool.
But in the case of Israel, there's no need for them to weigh in. There's so much ideology and so much lobbying already. They don't need to lift a finger. Well, in case our listeners at this point, Bill Hartung, feel that there's nothing they can do, they're frustrated, they're fearful, they're anxious, there is something you can do, listeners.
It's called Congress. Congress can stop this cold, and you are outnumbering those 535 senators and representatives. Probably about 20 or 25% already would like an arms cutoff and a ceasefire and moving towards serious peace negotiations over there. Stop the genocide, stop the Palestinian Holocaust. So there it is. Congress is in recess.
They're going around shaking hands, smiling before the election. Hold on to their hand and give them your peace of mind. Tell them exactly what you want done in no uncertain terms and that you're not going to go away. Congress can cut this off and stop it cold. Anna?
Mr. Hartung, could you put the last fiscal year's spending in some historical context? How does it compare to previous years and does the nature of the spending change recently?
Well, the aid to Israel is far and away the highest in the history of the U.S. relationship with the Israeli military. The Pentagon spending as a whole is pushing towards a trillion dollars, which is sort of similar to where it was at the peak of the Iraq and Afghan wars
when there were hundreds of thousands of troops on the sea. And if the hawks have their way, a trillion is just a sign on the highway going higher. So we really need to push back. I mean, we've got natural disasters. We've got the danger of disease. We've got poverty. We've got to invest in education.
You know, there's all kinds of things we need to keep our country strong and resilient. And if we're going to pour so much money into weapons of war, we're not going to be able to do that. This is the first year ever that interest on the debt was higher than even the Pentagon budget.
So, you know, if we're going to make a difference, we have to shift priorities within that budget. And we can't let the Pentagon get in the flu's eyes. And the looming danger, Bill, if there's blowback, there's an attack like 9-11 on the U.S., the forces of concentrated power, both corporate and government,
will try to suppress all dissent and shove aside the priorities you just mentioned to deal with climate violence. to deal with preparedness for coming pandemics and to deal with the normal necessities of life for tens of millions of Americans. That is the danger,
and that is the message that citizens have got to communicate to their senators and representatives, that they are, by a rubber stamp supporting of the terrorist Netanyahu regime, inviting disaster back into the United States. And they're going to be held responsible.
This is not just a conflict far away that people can look at on social media and network television. It's going to come back here, as it already has, in distorting public budgets, depriving the necessities of life for tens of millions of impoverished people, and the crumbling of our public service infrastructure.
Before we end, Bill Hartung, is there anything else you want to say? Just that people should act, and if they don't want to act alone, there's good organizations like the French Media Foundation. There's Action Corps. Josh Paul, who designed over all this, just started a new organization focused on the Hill,
which I think is called something like Change America. There's Dawn, which is the group that was founded by Jamal Khashoggi before his murder. So sometimes that can be helpful to help you focus your pressure, get a sense of what's happening on the Hill. You don't have to feel like you're acting alone.
And there's Code Pink, which lobbies every day on the Hill. There's Veterans for Peace with 100 chapters around the country. There are many organizations, listeners, you can choose to support and swell their ranks. Remember, it's our sovereign power that has been delegated to 535 elected officials in the U.S. Congress.
And it's about time to pull in the reins. Thank you very much, William Hartung. Thank you. We've been speaking with William Hartung. We will link to his work at the Quincy Institute at ralphnederradiohour.com. In an effort to strike at the economic heart of the genocide in Gaza, Jewish Voice for Peace demonstrated at the New York Stock Exchange.
When we come back, we're going to hear how that all went down. But first, let's check in with our corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhyber.
From the National Press Building in Washington, D.C., this is your Corporate Crime Reporter Morning Minute for Friday, October 18,
2024.
I'm Russell Mokhyber. The world's largest corporations have racked up $700 billion in monetary penalties linked to regulatory infringements in 45 countries since 2010. Major banks, especially those based in the United States and Europe, account for more than one-third of the penalties. Ninety-five parent companies have received $1 billion or more in penalties.
These are some of the revelations from data contained in Violation Tracker Global, a new website created by Good Jobs First, which previously produced similar databases focused on the United States and the United Kingdom. Violation Tracker Global documents more than 50,000 regulatory penalties imposed on 1,600 multinational corporations and their
subsidiaries by over 700 regulatory agencies and courts in 45 of the world's largest economies. For the Corporate Crime Reporter, I'm Russell Mokhyver.
Thank you, Russell. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. I'm Steve Skrovan, along with David Feldman, Hannah, and Ralph. On October 14th, roughly 500 protesters descended on the New York Stock Exchange to, in the words of our next guest, send a message to the American people that our government is using our tax dollars
to fund a genocide. David? Sumaya Awad is a Palestinian writer and analyst based in New York City, and she is the spokesperson for the Jewish Voice for Peace mass civil disobedience event at the New York Stock Exchange. Ms. Awad directs strategy and communications for the Adala Justice Project,
and she is a co-founder of the Against Canary Mission Project, which defends student activists targeted by blacklists for their Palestinian rights advocacy. She is the co-author of Palestine and Elections and co-editor of Palestine, A Socialist Introduction. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, Sumaya Awad. Thank you. It's great to be here. So, Maya,
you were very much engaged in this unprecedented protest in front of the New York Stock Exchange, spearheaded by Jewish Voice for Peace. As you know, they did a demonstration at the Statue of Liberty. They did a huge demonstration at Grand Central Station. And now they're focusing on the military-industrial complex and the profiteering from war by
protesting before the New York Stock Exchange, and over 200 of them were arrested. I don't think there's been that amount of civil disobedience in decades in front of the New York Stock Exchange. Tell us about the reaction to it, both when it was occurring with the police and whether you think it got adequate
coverage in newspapers like the New York Times, Washington Post, or the television and radio. This is quite an unprecedented, well-organized protest. Yeah, thanks, Ralph. This was what we think, this was the largest civil disobedience protest in front of the New York Stock Exchange to happen. And it was very powerful and sending, you know,
a clear message that there are companies, there are arms manufacturers that are profiting, that are making tens of millions of dollars off of the murder of Palestinians and Palestinian children. There are over 200 arrests, the majority of them anti-Zionist Jewish New Yorkers who want to send a clear
message both to the US government and the American people that Israel weaponizes their identity in order to justify crimes against humanity and that they are not okay with this, that they refuse for their identity as Jewish people to be weaponized in this way.
And that in fact, what Israel is doing and what the US government is funding and politically backing is actively making this country and certainly the rest of the world unfaithful, not just for Jewish people, but for others, because the safety of Palestinians is connected to the safety of other people.
We've seen this firsthand of this country when we see the destruction of the South and the Southeast from these hurricanes, the fact that infrastructure in the US is falling apart, healthcare, et cetera. Meanwhile, we have money, billions of dollars to send to Israel to commit war crimes, to commit the genocide. In terms of the media, you know,
there was a lot of media there, you know, and for sure it disrupted everyday life down there and in front of the stock exchange. I think there are obviously some of the mainstream news that did not cover this or did not cover this adequately because they don't want to show that Israel does not
in fact represent all Jewish people. They don't want to show that it is becoming more and more mainstream to be against what Israel is doing. Well, you know, we've had protests at the New York Stock Exchange during our political campaigns, and we've had hundreds and hundreds of people. And we look up,
and people in the Stock Exchange and the neighboring buildings were looking out the window, and some of them were coming by and chatting. Did you get any feedback from people from the New York Stock Exchange complex down there? So it's a great question.
We didn't have a lot of people stop and join in chanting, stop and ask questions, stop and show support. I don't know how many of them were from the New York Stock Exchange. It was also Indigenous Peoples Day on Monday. So I think a lot of the usual foot traffic down there was maybe decreased a bit,
but we did have a lot of people stop and support. I couldn't tell you where they were coming from. And did you all have pro bono lawyers who managed to follow you down to wherever you were booked and had you released? Or did you have to stay overnight in jail? What was the follow-up by the police arrest?
So the police brought in over four buses to take the arrested protesters, including two MCA buses that they repurposed for this. Everyone got out and we did have pro bono lawyers from the movement with us the whole time at the New York Stock Exchange.
And then who came with us to one police plaza, which is where the protesters were being held. And they all got out within that night. And did you have any other citizen groups in New York City or members of the large New York City Council come and support you? Yes, we had multiple electeds there, actually,
both from the New York City Council, like Alexa Diaz, and we had members of the New York State Senate and the New York State Assembly, like Zohran Mabdani from the New York State Assembly, and New York State Senator Jabari Bruceport was also there. Claire Valdez was also there.
All of these are electeds that come from the GSA chapter in New York, the Democratic Socialists of America, on a city and state level. You know, Somalia, there are at least 16 Israeli human rights groups, ranging from the Breaking the Silence and Refuse Next Reservists, who protested Netanyahu's imperial policies, to Beth Salem, the great civil rights group,
to Rabbis for Human Rights. They put a notice in the New York Times on December 13th, 2023, open letter to President Biden titled, Stop the Human Catastrophe in Gaza. Do your groups ever connect with these brave Israeli human rights groups who are obviously under a lot of pressure now to stay quiet? Yes, of course.
And many of these groups are really doing tremendous, tremendous work. Many of the groups in the Palestine movement, including Jewish Voice for Peace, including Palestinian advocacy groups, like the one that I actually represent, Adana Justice Project, work closely and are in conversation with organizations like Beth Salem and others
that are making it clear that what Israel is doing is wrong and that they are against it, even on the inside. And as far as strategy in Congress, because I know you're doing all these grassroots protests in order to put pressure on Congress, which can cut off appropriations for these arms shipments to Israel and leverage
the Biden administration. There's never been any testimony before Congress by prominent Israeli and Palestinian peace advocates since 1948, the establishment of the State of Israel. They've never been given a voice. AIPAC has dominated the Congress. And there is the House Foreign Relations Committee, the House Armed Services Committee, and their counterparts.
need to be given a request by many of these prominent peace advocates in Israel. Some of them are former generals, former mayors, major cities, ministers in the government, former heads of the Israeli CIA and FBI, public intellectuals, very prominent, who despise the Netanyahu regime. Are you making any effort, and Jewish Voice for Peace, and if not now,
to get formal invitations sent to these congressional committees by these prominent Israeli and Palestinian peace advocates who have been working together for years to resolve that conflict. Have you thought about that as an approach which would break the grip of AIPAC and actually get a lot of media?
Who's going to deny the authenticity and experience of these prominent Israelis? Yeah, I mean, it's a great point. And I think that it's a strategy that is on the list of strategies being explored. And I can say with confidence that all of our groups have explored and have used every single tool at our disposal,
especially in the last year. I think that with Congress, with the role of AIPAC and the fact that they've already spent so much money and taken, you know, Cori Bush, they've gotten Cori Bush to lose her election using their money and Jamal Bowman and who knows what's next.
And so we are strategizing about how to push back against the role of AIPAC and the grip of AIPAC. I think the reality is that there are many people in Congress that are actually benefiting financially from what is happening in Gaza. We know that at least 50 members of Congress have links to the military industrial complex,
whether that's through stocks or other things. And so it's about unraveling this network, these connections between, you know, our government, the way it's profiting from the genocide, and then what that means in terms of these elections across the country. So I hope that begins to answer that question. Let's look at the election.
What do you and Jewish Voice for Peace and others think about the Biden administration's presence of full-throttle support, unwavering support for whatever the Netanyahu terrorism does in that region, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, elsewhere, maybe Iran? Do you think the Biden administration is going to lose more votes than gain more
votes by this estranged position and refusal to demand a ceasefire? Because a lot of people are going to stay home. They may not vote for Trump and protest to Biden or for the Green Party, which is a peace agenda party. They just stay home.
How are you reading the pluses and minuses for the election of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz? So I can't say much about the elections, but I can say is that I think successive US administrations, US government administrations have all largely had the same line when it comes to
support for Israel and the blank check that the US sends to Israel, whether they are democratic or Republican administration. And I think what we're seeing this year is similar to that, except that The fact that the majority of Americans across party lines have shown that they are critical of Israel,
that they are openly saying and questioning why we send weapons to Israel, and that the arms embargo campaign or movement is gaining ground. More and more Americans across party lines support an arms embargo. And I think all of that goes to show that there is disillusionment with our government.
And that people are increasingly seeing that our government is not actually following the will of the people. And perhaps this is something we've always known, but I think on the issue of Palestine, on the issue of Israel's occupation, that hasn't been the case in the past, but it is now.
The people are seeing that the government is not actually listening to what the majority of Americans want on this. And it's choosing to go forward while giving us like hollow rhetoric about a ceasefire or hollow rhetoric about humanitarian rights. Well, you know, in our interview with William Hartung, I mentioned the analogy of the Vietnam War,
which dragged on year after year, and it was ended when Congress cut off the money in 1974. They just said to the Republican president, no more money, end of Vietnam War. Isn't that your ultimate goal, Congress? Our ultimate goal, yes, is an arms embargo, is for there to be a full arms embargo.
Congress has the power to make that happen. I mean, obviously the sitting president has the power to make that happen very quickly, but Congress has the power to put the pressure on to make that happen. And that is the only way to really get Israel to commit to a full ceasefire and for
the US to stop sending these bombs that are killing Palestinians. So that is, that is our ultimate goal right now. I think ceasefire at this moment comes with arms embargo. There's no other way to get a ceasefire without an arms embargo at the moment. Well, I think another approach that you might take, if you haven't already,
is to join with Jim McGovern and dozens of members of the House who are now cosigning a letter to demand, along with the demands by the established press, to open up Gaza to reporters. from the United States, all foreign countries, and Israel. They are barred by Netanyahu, even Israeli reporters. If you had war correspondents in Gaza,
it would change the dynamics and what Israel's genocidal policies can get away with. Are you supporting all these major newspapers and press organizations who put a full-page ad in the Washington Post in July demanding to open Gaza demanding that Netanyahu allow reporters into Gaza. Are you joining that effort too? I mean,
we definitely support any effort to get journalists into Gaza because that is one of many ways to show the world what is happening. At the same time, we also recognize that we need these media outlets to take seriously and to protect and show support for palestinian journalists who are in gaza you know palestinians
in gaza who are reporting on this and who are risking their lives every day and are being killed for doing it so of course we support the efforts to get journalists and and to lift this ban on journalists because the fact that there is a ban means
you know what what else are they hiding we already think so much on our phone screens and on our televisions. And yet there's more to be covered and Netanyahu doesn't want that. And of course, making sure that we take seriously the work, the effort, the risks that Palestinians in Gaza are taking to show us what is happening.
Well, it's good that you focused on the killing of Palestinian journalists. Over 160 Palestinian journalists and even larger numbers of their immediate family have been targeted by the Israeli military regime. And they've also done everything possible to destroy the communication systems by these brave journalists during all the bombardments that go on day after day.
Let's go to Steve for a question. Samaya, how do you explain to your friends or people who are adamant supporters of Israel that this war, what's going on now, is not good for Israel ultimately? How do you articulate that? I mean, well, I think the bottom line is that any state,
any society that is saying that the only way for them to be safe is to exterminate, to ethnically cleanse another people, that there are some serious question marks about what that means. And I think, you know, Ilan Papad, the famous Israeli historian, wrote in his book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, he wrote something along the lines of,
you know, Israel will eventually dig its own grave. And I think that's what we're seeing right now. The way that this genocide is being carried out, the violence, the brutality of all of it, many have said it's like nothing that we've seen in recent history. And something like that doesn't just happen. That leaves a mark.
You can't just scrub that away. And I think we're starting to see things fall apart within Israel. I mean, no society that is built on genocide and ethnic cleansing, that is built on the occupation of another people, on this really brutal supremacy and racism, that should not exist. right? We should not allow that to exist.
Apartheid should not exist. And so I think we seriously need to think if we want to build a society that is safe for everyone, that is not built on what your religion is, what your ethnicity is, then it means we need to rethink what Israel is and what it stands for and how it came to be. Well,
if any listeners want further elaboration, there was a long article in the New York Times this past Sunday, which is getting a lot of attention, written by a doctor who's come back from Gaza and several dozen other doctors. American doctors and healthcare workers back from Gaza describing their firsthand observation of the massacre, the slaughter,
and the sniper murders, including little children being brought to hospitals with bullets in their heads or in the left side of their back. So this is calculated slaughter of children that's going on. And listeners may want to read that long article that was in Sunday's New York Times. David? David Friedman,
who was Donald Trump's ambassador to the UN, and Jared Kushner have both talked about relocating the Palestinians, ethnically cleansing Gaza and moving them to the Negev. What do you know about this? I mean, I know that it won't happen because I think that as we've seen from the last year, that Palestinians, not just last year,
last 75 plus years, that Palestinians are not going to all leave their land because this is their land. They're not just people that can go to another Arab country. And I think these claims that, you know, this is just a simple transfer or this is what should happen if they want to stay alive,
this reflects not just the deep racism, but the fact that Palestinians are not seen as humans and not seen as equals. And I think as a result, we're seeing what's happening right now, which is just becoming a full regional war. And I don't think that's going to go away.
I think the only way for things to truly deescalate, that's the word that the US government keeps using, deescalate, deescalate, while they continue to fund escalation. The real way to deescalate is for there to be a ceasefire. And I think, like I said earlier, and I'm going to repeat it again, that with a ceasefire,
that means an arms embargo, if we're serious about a ceasefire. Now, of course, the Israelis are applying the Gaza massacre strategy to southern Lebanon and all the way to Beirut and Tripoli. In the north, they're basically using the same technique, blowing up cafes, blowing up apartment buildings, saying, oh, there's a Hezbollah guy.
And they blow up and kill hundreds of people, children, women, innocent civilians in the way they're laying waste to Lebanon. which the Biden administration calls our ally. The Biden administration is allowing this to happen and giving all kinds of weapons of support to destroy one of our allies, Lebanon, in the Middle East,
as part of the servility of the B.B. Biden, B.B. Blinken regime. Anna?
This week's protest was organized for Indigenous Peoples Day. America is a settler colonial state. The parallels have been drawn between America's foundations and the foundations of the Israeli state. It seems like there's this... Dual tension. America, you know, we should be able to look at a settler colonial state committing ethnic cleansing
and see the horrors that we committed and and see a moral obligation to step in and not repeat our own horrific mistakes. But there also must be some reluctance on the part of Americans to confront the gruesome reality. Could you speak to that piece of your strategy?
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think that the contradictions of like, you know, the US honoring indigenous people's day while actually still actively within the United States oppressing and repressing indigenous, the indigenous rights movement and many indigenous communities across the US sort of shows why, like you're saying,
it's the leap to get them to get the US government to take seriously the settler colonialism happening in Palestine. I think it turns out the American people, it's a little bit, a little bit more complicated because I think, I think actually a lot of the American public does not know enough about what is happening in Palestine.
I think this past year has given, you know, there's been more coverage on this than there has been in probably the last few decades, especially with the use of social media. So people are able to see things on their own without having to resort to the mainstream news, which is, you know, as we know, we're biased, understatement.
But I think that there's still a lot of ignorance and there's still a big role that Islamophobia and sort of the fear mongering about the quote, quote terrorists that keeps a lot of people from being able to see what is happening for what it is. And, and, you know,
Ralph just mentioned Lebanon and I think like with Israel's invasion of Lebanon, what Israel is doing with Lebanon and the way that it's provoking Iran. A lot of people seem to be more supportive of what Israel is doing in Lebanon while they're still criticizing what Israel is doing in Gaza.
And I think that's part of that same mindset of, you know, how deep rooted Islamophobia is and that the results of like the post dead off war America and how that the propaganda that's sort of seeped into American society around this. So I hope that sort of starts to answer that question. Well,
to those millions of Americans who don't care what's going on over there, they ought to care about what's going on over here as a result of what's going on over there, and not just the crashing of civil liberties and free speech, but the serious distortion of public budget priorities away from domestic needs in our country,
blowing up areas around the world as part of the U.S. empire, consider Iraq, for example. and what happened in Afghanistan and Libya and elsewhere, and the very real possibility is going to be blowback, as the Department of Defense and CIA and others have been studying scenarios of counterattacks, and that will completely convulse our country, as 9-11 did.
So, citizens of the USA, you've got a few weeks to buttonhole your senators, representatives who are campaigning frantically every day in your community. Give them your opinion, give them your demands, and tell them you want to have town meetings where you set the agenda.
And they come, and they listen to you, and receive your instructions as they return to Capitol Hill. Thank you very much, Samaya, for all your work and the work of Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now, and many other organizations who are collaborating because they have a uniform interest in peace and justice and are opposing,
with all their civic strength, the destruction of our own democratic society by the concentrated powers of big government and their big business servants. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. Thank you.