Part 1 of 2
Throw Down for Peace
by Ralph Nader
RalphNaderRadioHour.com
Sep 21, 2024
https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/p/t ... -up-cities
Ralph welcomes back Hassan El-Tayyab, the Legislative Director for Middle East policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation to talk about the FCNL's recent lobbying efforts in support of a ceasefire in Gaza, as well as the recently-introduced bill to restore funding to UNRWA. Then, Ralph is joined by journalist Rachel Corbett to discuss her recent article for the NY Times Magazine "The For-Profit City That Might Come Crashing Down" about Próspera, the private, for-profit city off the coast of Honduras. Finally, our resident international-law expert Bruce Fein stops by to discuss Israel's recent coordinated attacks in Lebanon.
Hassan El-Tayyab is Legislative Director for Middle East policy and Advocacy Organizer at the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL). Previously, he was co-director of the national advocacy group Just Foreign Policy, where he worked to reassert Congressional war authority and promote human rights in the Middle East and Latin America. He played a major role in the successful passage of the War Powers Resolution to end US military aid to the Saudi-UAE coalition’s war in Yemen.
I've been reading a recent statement that the Friends Committee has put out on the Gaza situation. They just can't seem to keep up with the massive expansion of Israeli state terrorism and the death and destruction that's being wrought on hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians, families, children, mothers, fathers, and the civilian infrastructure. [Their] effort on Capitol Hill—which is a longstanding feature of the Friends Committee on Legislation—seems hopelessly overwhelmed by the AIPAC-led Israeli-government-can-do-no-wrong lobby.
Ralph Nader: We try to find common ground. As you know, the Quaker way is to believe that there's a spirit and light in everybody—whether we agree with them or not, we want to engage. And that's just a philosophy that we've had for over 80 years as an organization, and much longer than that as Quakers doing peace advocacy work going back hundreds of years. So we try to engage with everybody. Maybe we don't agree on the weapons shipments, but we can agree on sending US Navy hospital ships to the region.
Hassan El-Tayyab: If we care about peace, we have to throw down for peace. And not just support humanitarian aid, but actually get involved in the political end of this as well. Because we are spiraling. We're spiraling into a dark place if we don't get our act together.
Bruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.
There is no way that Israel was able to limit the distribution of the pages to Hezbollah, so they knew that they were taking a very high risk that civilians would be killed or injured—which is a violation of the Geneva Convention prohibition upon resorting to any military endeavor where the risk of harm to civilians is dramatically disproportionate to the military objective at issue.
Bruce Fein: Even with the low bar that many people present before the Biden administration, it is unsettling to see White House spokespeople day after day knowingly lying about Israel “complying with all laws.”
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Transcript
This is John Nichols of The Nation Magazine, and you're listening to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Scrovan, along with my co-host David Feldman. Hello there, David. Good morning. And, of course, the man of the hour, Ralph Nader. Hello, Ralph. Hello, everybody. More turbulence this week. We're closing in on a year since the October 7th attacks in Israel and the
subsequent escalation of Israel's assault on Gaza. One of the many casualties of this assault has been UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. UNRWA is the most significant direct provider of humanitarian aid in the territory, with more than 2 million Palestinian civilians relying on it for critical necessities and services.
The Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu accused 12 UNRWA staffers of aiding Hamas's attack on October 7th. And in response, the Biden administration and Congress halted all U.S. funding for UNRWA until March 2025. Critics of the move assert that Israel is conflating humanitarian aid with aiding and abetting violence. And even if those 12 staffers,
12 people among 13,000 UNRWA workers in Gaza, did what the Israeli government alleges, defunding UNRWA is an unjustified and disproportionate response that exacerbates the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Our first guest is Hassan El-Tayeb, Legislative Director for Middle East Policy at the French Committee on National Legislation.
We'll speak to him about how Gaza is being starved and his work lobbying the U.S. to reverse its knee-jerk reaction and restore UNRWA funding. Now, imagine a world designed by your favorite technocrat. a completely privatized Xanadu, a fever dream of unfettered capitalism, defined not by a constitution, but by a 4,000-page arbitration agreement,
without any pesky government regulations to limit the creative energy of this truly free enterprise ecosystem, a free market Gilligan's Island. If Elon Musk was Gilligan, Ayn Rand was Thurston Howell III, and Milton Friedman was Ginger. Well, dream no more. Such a place exists off the coast of Honduras in Prospera.
Prospera is a private for-profit city with its own government that courts foreign investors through low taxes and light regulation. And it's being built in a semi-autonomous jurisdiction known as ZED, a Spanish acronym for Zone for Employment and Economic Development. Our second guest, journalist Rachel Corbett, profiled Prospera for the New York Times Magazine. What did she find?
Is Prospera's goal of, quote, building the future of government privately run and for profit, unquote, working? Or is it just another banana republic? You won't want to miss our discussion with Rachel Corbett. And to close out the program, we welcome back our international legal expert, Bruce Fine,
to give us his take on the recent Israeli attack in Lebanon involving the coordinated blowing up of pagers and walkie-talkies, which not only killed a number of suspected Hezbollah members, but also many innocent civilians. As always, somewhere in the middle, we'll check in with our tireless corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhyber.
But first, our first guest contends that Gaza isn't starving. It's being starved. David? Hassan El-Tayeb is legislative director for Middle East Policy and advocacy
organizer at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, FCNL. Previously, he was co-director of the national advocacy group Just Foreign Policy, where he worked to reassert congressional war authority and promote human rights in the Middle East and Latin America. He played a major role in the successful passage of the War Powers Resolution to end U.S.
military aid to the Saudi-UAE coalition's war in Yemen. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, Hassan L. Tayeb.
Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, welcome, Hassan. I've been reading the recent statements that the Friends Committee has put out on the Gaza situation. They just can't seem to keep up with the massive expansion of Israeli state terrorism and the death and destruction that's being wrought on hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians, families, children, mothers,
fathers, and the civilian infrastructure. Your effort on Capitol Hill, which is a longstanding feature of the Friends Committee on Legislation, seems hopelessly overwhelmed by the AIPAC-led Israeli government can do no wrong lobby. You just seem to be hopelessly overwhelmed. And so I want to ask you some questions about how you escalate your lawful lobbying
with new strategies and tactics. The first one, is that Joe Biden and his cohorts are going along with Netanyahu's prohibition of the entry of U.S. war correspondents and other country war correspondents into Gaza. Netanyahu has blocked even Israeli reporters from Gaza, other than a few three-hour tours in a
armed vehicle that the Israelis have allowed some reporters but they can't freely report. They're just toured in and toured out. Are you making a major issue of this on Capitol Hill with your coalition? Ralph, thank you. Super important question. And absolutely, we're making an issue of this. It is critical that not only the American people,
but the entire world knows exactly what's going on in Gaza. And that can't happen without access to journalists. But we know that this is not a new thing, that the Israeli government has, one, killed many journalists, including Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed while reporting on the Israeli military invasion of Jenin.
And we still don't have justice for Shireen. We don't have justice for dozens of journalists that have been killed. Those are well-said statements. But I'm asking you, how are you making this a major issue politically in the United States. You have a coalition of 50 groups Yeah, absolutely.
So I can say that there's a lot of things going on right now. We're doing our best to keep up with everything. We've signed on to statements from committees to protect journalists and other groups like that and have been incorporating this in our direct lobbying, both with Congress and the administration. But obviously it's insufficient.
It hasn't happened yet and more needs to be done. And we're trying to find the levers we can to actually force the question. Some of that is really, we've been very focused on security assistance in particular as one of these levers to compel the Israeli government open things up, not just with journalists,
but to stop these gross violations of human rights. Okay, let's get down to that. For those who don't know what UNRWA is, it's the United Nations Relief Organization. that's been providing since 1948 to displaced Palestinian refugees, not just in Palestine, but Lebanon and Jordan, food, education, and health care.
And UNRWA has been a target of the Netanyahu terrorist regime. And they've been attacking UNRWA facilities, bombing the schools, the health clinics. They've killed over 200 UNRWA employees. And you and A coalition of 50 groups, 50 groups, wrote a letter to President Biden demanding that USAID 2 UNRWA, which has been going on for decades under Republican-Democratic administrations,
be restored. Because, first of all, Biden cut it off right after October 7th. Number two, the Congress, with the Republicans in the forefront, inserted an amendment that prohibiting the Biden regime from providing any further aid, along with Norway and Germany and other countries, to UNRWA in their critical life-saving function until April of next year.
So now you've sent a letter with 50 groups, call it a national coalition urging President Biden to restore UNRWA funding to aid Palestinians, dated February 14th, 2024. Did the Biden administration respond to your letter? Yeah, another good question. So Congress actually, they suspended funding to UNRWA till March 2025. So that was one.
We did not hear back from the Biden administration. I think they may have confirmed receipt of the note that we sent them, but I don't believe we got any formal response. We have been meeting with the State Department and other Biden administration officials about this, and we keep raising it in our coalition of faith groups.
You find these coalitions being rebuffed. So, actually, yeah, you know, and we escalate by working with Congress to introduce new legislation. I did want to touch on that. Because, as you know, Ralph, the people of Gaza aren't starving. They're being starved. And we've got over two million Palestinian civilians facing a manmade humanitarian
catastrophe with famine and disease spreading due to the lack of this aid access. And at the same time, the Biden administration and Congress are withholding U.S. funding to the largest aid organization in Gaza, which is UNRWA. And they've been working for over seven decades in the Gaza Strip, but also Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, West Bank,
And UNRWA is the backbone of all aid delivery and ensuring that people get the help that they need. So we need to turn this funding back on and do so quickly because it's not just famine now, it's also a polio epidemic and UNRWA is playing a lead role in some of these vaccinations.
There are some proactive steps that we're trying to take on the UNRRA situation that I think your listeners would really benefit from hearing about. Rep Carson, Rep Jayapal, and Rep Schakowsky are introducing a bill called the UNRRA Funding Emergency Restoration Act, and this would completely remove all congressional limitations on UNRWA funding immediately if passed,
and then call on the Biden administration to restore funding as well. I think this is absolutely critical that the US join the other 15 countries that had initially suspended support to UNRWA to resume funding. This includes US allies like the UK, the European Union, Canada, France, Germany, Australia, And again, as the largest contributor to UNRWA, the U.S.
has to join that group. Just a little background, you know, the decision to suspend this funding was made after, you know, we think it was a knee-jerk response to Israeli allegations in January of 2024 this year. Let's not get into that because I want you to talk about a lot of other things,
and we have a time factor here. You shouldn't even give that any credibility, by the way. The whole thing is a setup. Let's talk about Congress. We're talking with Hassan El-Tayyib. He's the legislative director for the Middle East Policy and Advocacy Effort of the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
That's the Quaker group of longstanding efforts over the decades to advance peace and wage peace. There are prominent Israeli and Palestinian peace advocates over the years, as you know, very prominent in Israel, former ministers, mayors of major cities, public intellectuals, people who formerly headed the Israeli FBI and the CIA.
And they are not allowed to have hearings on Capitol Hill since 1948. That's what AIPAC has blocked. And if you made an issue of this, your coalition has good contacts over there. You can get these prominent people to write a formal letter to the heads of the House Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and
the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee and ask to testify. All the witnesses are on one side for decades. Have you decided to make that an issue? Because it would produce a new dynamic in this country and it would be free to speak. Absolutely. Yeah, I think this is critical.
The fact that we don't have hearings that really reflect a balanced and rational perspective on this. And we've been making requests of all these different committees that you just mentioned to actually have committee hearings that center Palestinian human rights and regional de-escalation, diplomacy with Iran.
But we also intervene on specific hearings saying, why don't you have this individual? Maybe we're not gonna get the entire topic that we want, but make sure we lift up Palestinian voices and Israeli voices who actually want peace. Hassan, you know, they will not allow Americans, whether they're Jewish Americans or Arab Americans or Muslim Americans, to testify.
The only possible way you can get there is to get prominent Israeli and Palestinian peace advocates who have been working together for years, because they cannot be accused of anti-Semitism. which is a slur and a gag against free speech. It's now been weaponized, as you know, on college campuses and all over the country.
The only way you're going to get through is to have very prominent people, former prime ministers, former members of the Knesset, as I mentioned, in Israeli society, and leaders of Israeli human rights groups. You probably saw the December 13th New York Times op-ed, where 17 Israeli human rights groups demanded of Biden that he stop what they called,
quote, the catastrophe in Gaza, end quote. And you probably saw the more recent letter by six prominent Israelis, including retired prime ministers and national security people, demanding of Congress that they disinvite Netanyahu from speaking. These are the people that have the only chance to get hearings under both the Democratic Senate and the Republican Senate.
Are you ready to push for that? Because everything else is not working. Just to level set here, I agree with you that it's very difficult, but judiciary just featured Maya Barry from Arab American Institute at a committee hearing they did on stopping the spread of hate just yesterday.
granted that was a horrific hearing and they asked her some really downright racist and hateful questions but we are able to get some good arab american witnesses and you know that's one example but to your larger point completely agree it's been the focus of our advocacy and trying to make sure that We get better hearings,
we get better witnesses, and we get better questions asked of the witnesses during the hearings by members of Congress and congressional champions. So we are totally on the same page. Also, one body didn't mention is the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. also headed by co-chairman McGovern.
And we want them to use that platform to lift up the need for Palestinian human rights, protecting U.S. citizens in the West Bank, like Aisha Noor-Eggy, who was just slain by an Israeli sniper just about a week ago. So totally with you. And I think it's just absolutely critical to change the conversation.
Let's look at the access you're getting. Have you gotten access to the fanatical Republicans like Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Tom Cotton, who have basically said, kill them all over there, total support of the Israeli genocide? Do you ever have an opportunity to sit down and talk with them or their staff?
Or are you mostly talking to people who are semi-sympathetic to you? we are getting access to republicans and we lobby them we try to find common ground as you know the quaker way is to believe that you know we believe that there's the
spirit and light in everybody whether or not we agree with them or not we want to engage and that's just a philosophy that we've had for you know over 80 years as an organization and much longer than that as quakers doing peace advocacy work going back hundreds of years So, we try to engage with everybody.
Maybe we don't agree on the weapons shipments, but we can agree on sending us Navy hospital ships to the region. Give us some names who have you met? Have you met speaker? Mike Johnson? Have you met Lindsey Graham? Tom cotton. Members or staff either way.
yeah sometimes when i walk down the hall you know staff and members run the other way they're like oh my god we're going to hear from this piece nick which it's all gravy but yes we have met with massey we've met with graham we've met with grand
paul we've met with mike lee you know we're pushing initiatives like the hospital ships by rep adderholt another republican we've met with nancy mace a number of times You know, I could go on and on. We try to, like I said, we try to engage with everybody, even if they don't agree with us.
We still try to have the conversation. We try to bring Palestinians and Israelis into some of these meetings. And I think that's just absolutely critical. Even if we don't get to a good place, just having those conversations is just critical. And I got to say, a lot of people aren't engaging with Republicans on this issue.
And I think FCNL, you know, we're trying to fill that gap. And we think getting Christian voices in the mix, also to highlight the plight of Palestinian Christians in Gaza, in the West Bank, is really critical. And like I said, we try to find common ground where we can. You know, we're really grateful to Rep.
Massey for voting against the Israel security supplemental package. What about the Christian groups here? They're supposedly worried about what's left of the Christian population in Bethlehem and in West Bank and in Gaza. What is the position of the National Council of Churches based in New York?
Do they join your coalition or are they remaining silent month after month? Yeah, so National Council of Churches, they do work with us and they're on the board of Churches for Middle East Peace. So yeah, we do work with them. There's a whole bunch of other folks that I think are really wonderful to work with.
The Presbyterians, the Mennonites, Mary Knoll, yeah there's just like really a whole i could just keep going and going and the united methodists as well and so we're trying to build this faith coalition to push on a whole bunch of things whether it be the need for an immediate ceasefire and
hostage deal whether it be humanitarian access including the hospital ships including unrefunding halting arms sales to make sure that u.s weapons are never used to violate human rights regional de-escalation and also protecting palestinian christian communities in the west bank and gaza so those are all things that we're doing we're trying to reach
out to the trump campaign and the harris campaign to request a meeting to discuss five key demands that i just mentioned we're going to request those meetings with a whole bunch of faith groups so we're trying to engage and we think it's really important that the christian voices are being heard right now Well,
I'm sure many of our listeners now are saying to themselves, well, we certainly haven't read this in any of the media, newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, NPR, public broadcasting. Let me go to another initiative that I think our listeners would like you to describe. In early May, you went back to the Ramallah Friends School.
That's the Quaker school in Ramallah in the West Bank. And you talked with sixth graders and seventh graders, and you ask them why they support a ceasefire in their own words. And Mira in this grade six said, quote, I support the ceasefire because each child must have the right to live in peace and freedom.
The ceasefire will preserve the innocent lives of children, not to mention half of the population in Gaza are children, end quote. This leads me to a question, Hassan. Have you thought of encouraging the children in Palestine to communicate with the children in the United States and the children in Israel.
You know, children have a moral authority that's unique. They speak very often, much more truthfully and forthrightfully than their wayward adults. What do you think of that idea? And have you had it before I just mentioned? What do you think of that proposal because I think it might change the dynamics of the media here if
it's done in a consistent manner. That's a great suggestion, Ralph. And I think, yes, children weighing in on this is huge. They do have a moral authority and their voices are so needed right now. I went to Palestine. I went across the West Bank to the Ramallah Friends School in January.
This was the second trip I'd actually taken to the Ramallah Friends School. And I was just horrified by just the kind of traumas that the kids are dealing with. And so getting their voices out there is really critical. I will say that we sent a letter on behalf of the Ramallah Friends School students.
After October 7, a whole bunch of these Friends School students wrote a letter calling on US lawmakers to press for an immediate ceasefire. And so on behalf of them, we sent that up to Capitol Hill. And I think doing more things like that, whether it be engagement directly with US children and US students, and also Israeli students,
I think is critical. So totally in agreement. And if I may, I'd just love to share maybe a few of the things that these students told me. there was this one girl sixth grade palestinian student lena at ramallah friends she passed me a handwritten note in saying palestine is witnessing a genocide right
now a child's dying every five minutes of the day gaza needs a break the palestinian people are desperate for a ceasefire that's what she's calling for the third grade cousin of the ramallah friend school graduate who had been paralyzed by that hate crime attack in vermont
in he cried in front of his whole class he had this big assembly that i had done and he just threw tears he said please tell the american people like stop these crimes of hate against palestinians And he just broke down in tears again. His teacher gave him a big hug, and that really gutted me.
I mean, just seeing that. Not only did his cousin get shot and paralyzed in this hate crime, but he's also seeing the fact that the United States continues to send weapons to the israeli government that are being used to kill and name innocent civilians
in gaza to perpetuate these attacks in the west bank like the one on aishanor just a week or so ago and it's really devastating to see that so that's that's why i said i had my speech as you know ralph i like to talk as a lobbyist
I had my speech all ready to go in front of one of these assemblies. And I just said, you know, it's time for me to actually listen here, listen to what the students are saying and what they want is what a lot of us have been calling for, which is an immediate ceasefire, right?
They want an end to this war so we can move forward in peace and try to rebuild from here. But for its part, I think the United States needs to do more to put pressure on the Israeli government, suspend the security assistance, making sure that U.S. weapons are never used to violate human rights.
That's an understatement, Hassan, but you're known for your prudent understatements. Let's fill out the scene here. One of the reasons three out of four Israelis despise Netanyahu, not only because what he tried to do to break the independence of the judiciary, it's not only that he's under prosecution by Israeli prosecutors for political corruption,
it's that they accuse him of collapsing the sophisticated border security apparatus on October 7th, which opened the gates for the Hamas fighters to pursue a plan that was in the possession a year earlier of the Israeli security forces. They got the plan a year before and did nothing, and then collapsed the border,
still unexplained and still without an official Israeli investigation, which is blocked by Netanyahu. All this point was made in a letter by six prominent Israelis to Congress, urging Congress to disinvite Netanyahu. Well, as we're recording this conversation, the news is covering the latest threshold of war crimes by Israelis by blowing up booby-trapped agers in Lebanon.
And now they're blowing up two-way radios and other equipment, communications equipment in South Lebanon, leading to thousands of casualties, including people who have these pages in hospitals, supermarkets, strolling with their children down a pathway. So all this is challenging you, the Friends Committee, all those wonderful groups in your coalition, from all religions, peace groups, citizen groups,
to introspect and say, how are you going to take this peace movement to a higher, broader, deeper, and more effective level in Congress, on the Biden administration, and on the media? Otherwise, you are not going to make any headway. You cannot continue the way you are, Hassan.
I want to urge you to expand it and not just go through your list which makes everybody feel good because it's so just. It's all about Congress and the White House. That's where the pressure's got to be, and it's got to be with different arguments, different supporters from Israel and Palestine,
and a different attentiveness to the congressional press corps, which doesn't even bother covering you because they don't think you matter. I would say, Ralph, my mom agrees with you. I need to adjust in a big way, you know, and sorry to be cheeky here, but yeah, you're right. The peace movement needs to get more muscular.
We can't just be doing a rally on a Saturday where no press is present, right? We have to actually figure out how to be strategic, grow our base across the board. You know, I think some of folks in the peace movement really need to get more muscular on electoral politics.
I think things like the uncommitted campaign need to expand, not just to withhold votes, but to actually look at primary challenges for people that don't support human rights and know that that's working. But we need to do a lot more. And everyone listening, if we care about peace, we have to throw down for peace.
you know not just support humanitarian aid but actually get involved in the political end of this as well because we are spiraling you know we're spiraling into a dark place if we don't get our act together the couple silver linings i
wanted to flag because i don't want us to just be in darkness here is that one our ideas are just more popular than theirs like when you look at polling across the board The majority of Americans want the immediate ceasefire. They want a suspension of security assistance when they can be used to violate human rights against Palestinians,
and they want a way forward, right? So there's a larger coalition just waiting to be mobilized, and that's exactly what we need to be focused on. I'm trying and doing what I can, and we just need a lot more folks to weigh in. Tell our listeners your website.
How can they support what you're doing, ask for, get more information? Tell our listeners your website slowly and repeat it. Absolutely. Get involved and join us at FCNL.org. FCNL.org. You can take an action today calling for the ceasefire, no weapons, unrefunding at FCNL.org backslash ceasefire. And that's a link we set up so you can directly email Congress.
And as Ralph said, that is just step one. We need to do a lot more and really make sure that we get out of this endless cycle of violence. And I believe it can be done, but we got to be clear eyed that this is going to be a long haul effort.
It can't be done overnight, but I believe that we can make it happen. It cannot be a long haul effort because the Palestinians are running out of lives. Don't you understand that? You can't have an attitude for a long haul effort, maybe for a long haul peaceful conflict resolution of permanence,
but not with the issues that you've been raising. These are immediate haul efforts. And tell our listeners what FC stands for in case they don't. Didn't get the Ralph, I'm going to push back. Actually go ahead now. I totally get the urgency, right? And we have to have that immediate, like, let's get it done right now.
And that is what we're doing. But we also have to make sure we're building infrastructure. So we can sustain our peace movement and grow it for the long haul. That includes, you know, electoral engagement. That includes actual advocacy and getting serious because, you know, like you said, like the AIPAC lobby and all these other groups,
they've been at this for decades. And that's entrenched power. And I'm not going to sit here and pretend like we can undo that. you know, immediately when they're, you know, knocking off members of Congress like Bowman and Cori Bush, you know, and I think having that long-term perspective and looking at, you know,
these structural issues are going to have immediate impacts when they see that, oh my God, they're actually mobilizing in a serious way. But I agree with what you're saying as far as the urgency. That's good. Short haul, long haul. As we close, Hassan al-Tayyib, can you
Give the website and indicate what F and C stand for just so people can get clarity. Yeah, thank you all Ralph, Hannah, David, Steve for having me on. I'm just so grateful to have this time to chat. Our website is FCNL.org and it's Friends Committee on National Legislation.
We are the Quaker Peace Lobby in DC working for peace for over 80 years. oldest registered faith-based peace lobby in the country and i am really just grateful i can do this work and i'm going to keep doing it and i and i hope more
and more of us get involved again we're fcnl.org well thank you very much hassan and listeners you encounter a member of congress running for re-election in the coming weeks or a reporter or a tv producer Ask them why don't they cover the efforts of the peace lobby in this country, the many,
many groups with millions of members around the country who want our government to wage peace, to stop building the empire of war, destruction, which is going to boomerang back on us in many, many ways, apart from just busting the civilian budget so we can blow up areas around the world in contradiction of international law.
Geneva Conventions, and even U.S. statutes. Thank you very much, Hassan. Thank you. We've been speaking with Hassan El-Tayeb. We will link to his work at the Friends Committee on National Legislation at ralphnaderradiohour.com. Up next, we discuss a startup city in the original Banana Republic.