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

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“Dark Days”: Israeli Human Rights Leader Orly Noy on Israel’s War on Palestinians After Hamas Attack
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 09, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/9/ ... transcript

Israel has declared war on Hamas after Hamas fighters launched a surprise coordinated attack over the militarized border, the largest in decades. In a military operation titled “Al-Aqsa Storm,” as many as 1,000 fighters from Hamas broke out of the blockaded Gaza Strip and carried out an unprecedented attack inside Israel on Saturday morning. Hamas cited the desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the blockade of Gaza and increasing settler violence in the occupied West Bank as reasons for the move. Israel responded by pounding the Gaza Strip with airstrikes, which hit housing blocks, tunnels and a mosque. Over the past three days at least 1,300 people have died, including over 800 inside Israel and almost 500 in Gaza. We spend the hour discussing the unprecedented developments, starting in Jerusalem with Orly Noy, chair of the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem and editor of the Hebrew-language news site Local Call. “There is a really strong sense of demanding revenge within the Israeli public,” reports Noy, who says the attack catching Israel off guard is a massive military intelligence failure. “Once the immediate crisis is over, the Israeli public will be demanding answers from the government and Netanyahu.”

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.

Israel has ordered a complete siege of Gaza, two days after as many as a thousand Hamas fighters carried out an unprecedented attack Saturday morning, when Hamas fired thousands of rockets into Israel as militants broke through Israeli security barricades. Over the past three days, at least 1,300 people have died, including over 800 inside Israel, almost 500 in Gaza. One Israeli military spokesperson described Saturday as, quote, “by far the worst day in Israeli history,” unquote.

The surprise attack came almost 50 years to the day of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The Hamas attacked killed at least 44 Israeli soldiers, including several commanders. Over 250 people were killed at an Israeli music festival attended by mostly young people. Hamas militants also took about 100 hostages. Entire Israeli communities were forced to evacuate.

Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes have killed over 500 Palestinians in Gaza since Saturday, but the death toll is expected to soar, as Israel threatens to launch a ground war. Israel has called up 300,000 reservists, is sending heavy armor toward the Gaza border. This comes as the United States is sending more ammunition to Israel and warships to the region. Earlier today, Israeli airstrikes killed dozens of residents in the Jabaliya refugee camp.

Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has announced a total blockade on Gaza, including a ban on food, water, electricity and fuel. Israel has imposed a siege on Gaza for the past 16 years, largely cutting off the area from the rest of the world. Gaza has been widely described as an open-air prison.

Hamas named its military operation “Al-Aqsa Storm” in response to the desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Hamas also cited the blockade of Gaza and increasing settler violence in the occupied West Bank. The attack also came as Israel was moving to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia

In a moment, we’ll go to Israel and Gaza for response, but we begin with the voices of two parents — one in Israel, one in Gaza — whose lives have been devastated by this weekend’s violence. This is Yoni Asher, a 37-year-old father whose wife and two children have been taken hostage by Hamas.

YONI ASHER: Yesterday, while my wife, Doron, and two daughters, little girls, Raz and Aviv, 5-year-old and 2 years old, went visit my mother-in-law in Nir Oz — it’s a kibbutz near Gaza. And during the morning, I contacted my wife, and she told me on the phone that there are terrorists inside the house. Later on, I saw a video, the same video that was in the social media, in which I surely identified my wife, my two daughters and my mother-in-law on some kind of a cart, and terrorists of Hamas all around them. … I want to ask of Hamas: Don’t hurt them. Don’t hurt little children. Don’t hurt women. If you want me instead, I’m willing to come.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is a mother in Gaza, Sabreen Abu Daqqa, who survived after being trapped in rubble after an Israeli rocket hit her home. The attack killed three of her children.

SABREEN ABU DAQQA: [translated] I was at home, and suddenly we heard a sound, and everything fell over our heads. My children were next to me. One of them was next to my legs, and the others were next to me. My brother, Saber, was a bit further. Nothing happened to him. I was hiding between the sofa and the door, so there was no pressure on me, only on my leg. But I didn’t hear any sound coming from my children. I called them, but I didn’t hear a sound coming from them. Suddenly, I heard my brother Saber calling. The first moment I heard his voice, I shouted, and I said, “I’m here!” And when they recognized me, they started calming me down, and then they started removing the rubble from above me.

It took them three hours to remove the rubble above me, but my children died — Khaled died, Qais died, Mariam died. Assef went missing. When they pulled me out of the rubble, I saw everything damaged. The houses are damaged. That’s the only thing I saw. And then I went to the hospital. I found that everybody was injured, and we have many injured and dead people.

AMY GOODMAN: We spend the rest of the hour with four guests.

In Gaza City, Raji Sourani is an award-winning human rights lawyer, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza. He’s the 2013 Right Livelihood Award laureate, as well as in RFK Human Rights laureate. We hope to be talking to him soon in Gaza. The bombing is heavy, an unprecedented bombing, he said, in his area in Gaza.

Joining us from Mexico City, Ofer Cassif. He’s a member of the Israeli Knesset and the Hadash-Ta’al coalition. He was born in Rishon LeZion, Israel, which was hit by Hamas rocket strikes.

Here in New York, professor Rashid Khalidi is with us, the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, author of a number of books, including The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.

And joining us from Jerusalem, Orly Noy, Israeli political activist, editor of the Hebrew-language news site Local Call. She’s also the chair of B’Tselem’s executive board. B’Tselem is an Israeli human rights organization.

Orly, let’s begin with you in Jerusalem. Can you respond to all that has happened over the weekend, the surprise attacks, the 1,300 people dead at this point in Gaza and in Israel, and now the defense minister of Israel announcing a total siege of Gaza, as tanks and military equipment head down to Gaza?

ORLY NOY: Thank you, Amy. Thank you so much for having me.

These are very, very dark days in the area, both in Palestine and in Israel. We woke up Saturday morning to the sirens rushing us into the shelters. And gradually, as the picture cleared, it just became darker.

Amid the comparisons to the 9/11 attacks on the United States, some analysts, including former U.S. officials in government at the time, have already advised that Israel should heed lessons from the successes – and failures – of the U.S. response in the weeks and years that followed. Many of the actions taken in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks are ones that have haunted the United States for decades, and that could easily have been avoided if commitment to core democratic values and the rule of law had prevailed. Moreover, those same actions needlessly alienated allies and partners, eroding the strong base of support the United States enjoyed in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.

-- Policy Alert: Key Questions in Hamas’ Attack on Israel and What Comes Next, by Brianna Rosen and Viola Gienger

-- Iraq war: the greatest intelligence failure in living memory. On the tenth anniversary of the Iraq war, Panorama's Peter Taylor reveals the sources close to Saddam Hussein whose intelligence could have changed the course of history. by Peter Taylor

-- Context of 'January 2003: Classified Intelligence Assessments Warn of Dire Consequences to Iraq Invasion', by History Commons

-- Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, by Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Senate, Pat Roberts, Chairman; and John D. Rockefeller IV, Vice Chairman

-- Intelligence Team Members Ordered Silent in 9/11 Probe, by Shaun Waterman

-- Pentagon Revokes Clearance of "Able Danger" Officer, by Associated Press

We have been witnessing, since the heinous Hamas attack on civilians on Saturday morning, a long list of Israeli failures, that started even before the attack with the lack of intelligence information. We are talking about an intelligence operation that basically surveils every breath every Palestinian takes, both in the West Bank and in Gaza Strip, and they knew nothing about that planned attack. It continued to the chaos that has been going on for long hours, where hostages were held, where people were slaughtered, without the army or police forces coming to the rescue. And until today, there is still a tremendous amount of unclearness. People are still searching for their loved ones, with no organized body by the government to inform those worried people.

And, of course, the Israeli government is doing the only thing that Israel knows to do, which is revenge and more force and more death and more very random bombing of civilians in Gaza Strip. There is a very strong sense of demanding revenge within the Israeli public. And even if that can be understood, it does not by any means justify the brutal attacks, that will, of course, be fruitful, like any previous promise we’ve been given by the Israeli authorities to annihilate the terrorism and so on. This is just about revenge, which will end up just in more death and more violence and more blood.

AMY GOODMAN: One of the questions: Will this lead to the fall of the Netanyahu government? I mean, allied with the far right, for example, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security head, himself convicted in Israeli court 15 years ago of inciting hatred against Palestinians — he is the national security chief. Are there so many in the leadership here that have been so focused on — who are part of the Israeli settler movement on the West Bank, that they weren’t paying attention to Gaza?

ORLY NOY: Absolutely. This is one of the — I mean, first, it should be mentioned that Itamar Ben-Gvir was convicted with more than just a hatred towards Palestinians; he was convicted with supporting a terrorist organization. So he’s a convicted supporter of terrorism.

There is a tremendous amount of anger directed towards the government in general, and specifically toward Netanyahu and the leadership. We know now that most of the military troops that were supposed to be posted in the south protecting the southern borders have been relocated to protect the settlers in the West Bank. These are things that — I mean, right now the Israeli public is too much — too deep into the grief and shock, in a state of shock, but there will come a time that they will demand those answers from the government, and personally from Netanyahu. In the short, short term, it looks like we are going to a broad emergency coalition joined by Gantz and probably also Lapid. This is not unprecedented. Israel tends to unite politically around the leadership in times of crisis. But there is no doubt that once the immediate crisis is over, the Israeli public will be demanding answers from the government and from Netanyahu.

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“Do You Hear the Bombing?”: Gazan Human Rights Lawyer Raji Sourani Describes Israeli Siege of Gaza City
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 09, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/9/ ... transcript

“Do you hear the bombing?” asks our guest Raji Sourani in Gaza City, as Israel reportedly bombed the Islamic University of Gaza nearby him and intensified its bombardment after it declared war against Hamas. The award-winning human rights lawyer and director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza describes the situation in Gaza, where Israel has now cut off food and electricity, and responds to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling Gazans to leave, calling it “nonsense,” and asks, “Where to? We don’t have safe passage.”

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go from Orly Noy right now in Jerusalem — you can hear the wind blow on her mic as she talks to us about the Israeli reaction — to Raji Sourani, head of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza. I want to go to you quickly, Raji, because I understand you’re experiencing unprecedented bombing in your area. Can you describe what’s happening in Gaza? The media in the United States, there’s almost no one in Gaza to bring us voices of Gazans. Raji, can you hear us?

RAJI SOURANI: — the last 60 hours, I mean, Gaza subject to nonstop bombing. It’s ongoing all over the place. There is no single place you can call a safe haven in Gaza, airplane fighters, drones ruling all over the sky. And it’s your lottery number, whether it’s an apartment, whether it’s tower with hundreds of apartments, whether it’s a house, whether it’s a hospital, whether it’s a school, a shelter used by UNRWA. I mean, even the marketplace of Jabaliya, the biggest refugee camp in the Middle East for Palestinians — 300,000 Palestinians there — were bombed, and almost 80 have been killed, I mean, this morning, and tens injured in very, very critical situation. And all this is happening in the daylight, and no one is caring about that.

Netanyahu says Gazans should leave Gaza. Where to? Even we don’t have safe passage. And the minister of defense say, “We are going to cut electricity, water, food, oil” — everything, I mean, will be cut on Gaza. So, 2.4 million civilians in Gaza are subject to unprecedented situation, which it’s very genocidal.

It’s coming from the highest level in Israel. If they have a problem with Hamas, we have no problem. They can contact them. If they have with Jihad Islamic, with Fatah, with the fighters of the resistance, that’s fine. This is not our area of interest. But our area of interest, it’s the civilians, and the civilians who are really in the eye of the storm, and they are the subject for the Israeli ongoing crimes.

And still Mr. KK, the ICC prosecutor, keeps silent, doing nothing, moving nowhere in this conflict, and doesn’t hold Israel accountable for the ongoing crimes they committed over the course of years — suppression, oppression, killing, blockade, apartheid — name it. I mean, all the menu of the crimes are there, which listed at Rome Statute, and no one is moving. No one is moving to provide any level of protection toward Palestinian civilians.

Once and again, this is going on now. At the course of these 60 or 70 hours, I mean, we’re having hundreds of people have been killed. Just children, we have above 100 children have been killed. Women, almost the same number. And the worst yet to come. We are sure, and we know that.

AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli prime minister has told Gazans to leave. It’s unclear, of course, where you’d be able to go. Then they said that he was misunderstood, that he was saying you should leave the Hamas sites in Gaza. Can you respond to this, Raji Sourani?

RAJI SOURANI: This is nonsense. This is nonsense. He is leading Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. He is leading people who say Palestinians don’t exist, and who said, “Palestinians should leave. This is the land of Israel. This is the historical land of Israel, and we are taking over. There is no other state, and there is no other people. There is one people. There is one self-determination. It’s for the Israeli Jews.” So, he’s a big liar. It wasn’t a slip of tongue. He came after cabinet meeting and after a meeting with his top security and military people, and he was reading from a paper. So, it cannot be a mistake. He knows what he said, and he meant what he said. And I do believe what they are doing, deliberately, will lead to that, if this is continued and they don’t stop.

AMY GOODMAN: What level of support does Hamas have — Hamas is the government of Gaza — right now, since Saturday morning, the actions of the thousands or so Hamas fighters breaching the wall?

RAJI SOURANI: I don’t think it’s matter — I don’t think it’s matter of the people’s support or not. You have to know, when you are suppressed deeply by a criminal, belligerent occupation, when you are suffocated — do you hear? Do you hear the bombing?

AMY GOODMAN: We hear it.

RAJI SOURANI: And here right now the entire house shaking, while I’m talking to you. I’m living in the best area of Gaza — all right? — and should be away from every problem, but everything around us has been bombed. And you don’t know, never, your lottery number, when it can be. There is no safe haven in this place. I lived all my life in this part of the world. I lived the mathematics and the chemistry. But I never, ever witnessed anything as such. And I’m telling you, I mean, if the Israelis made it — and they did — the land incursion, situation will be much, much worse than this. Massacres will happen, I mean, to civilians.

AMY GOODMAN: You have heard, I assume, that Israeli tanks and military equipment are making their way to Gaza right now. So you’re being bombed by the air, but the question is: Will there be a total land invasion? Can you respond to what this means? Just to give people a sense, you’re talking about this strip of land, Gaza, that’s about the size of Detroit. There are about 600,000 people in Detroit. We’re talking about 2.4 million people. It’s one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. Raji, if you could take it from there?

RAJI SOURANI: Exactly, Amy. Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth, as you know. And if the army comes in, it will be like elephant in the garden. But I don’t think any would love to be a good victim. They want to strip us not from our own security. They don’t want to strip us from the food of our children. They were not satisfied of having this criminal, belligerent occupation. They are not satisfied with the blockade. They are not satisfied with the killing and the bombing and [inaudible] wars that’s been happening in the last 10 years. But they want to do more. I think it’s not human to be a good victim. We are the stones of the valley. We have been here since ever. We will continue here forever. And I think, I mean, if the Israelis did that, that means they are just melting the people of Palestine, of Gaza, just to be one body defending their very existence. This is our right and obligation. As the French say, resistance, it’s not only, I mean, right, it’s your dignity, Amy. And people shouldn’t be good victim for a criminal, belligerent occupation.

When Russia invaded Ukraine and occupied Ukraine, the whole world stopped, and they said, “We cannot support Russia, and we have to support the Ukrainians against the occupation of the Russians. And we will support them not only politically. We will support them with money. We will support them with arms. We will support them with all what we can.” And they asked all the free people of Europe and U.S. to go and join the forces and to join the resistance in Ukraine against the occupation.

I don’t know why Palestinians, if they die, are a criminal; if we think, we are a criminal and terrorist; if we do peaceful intifada, we are terrorists. And when the Israelis doing massacres, one after another, they’re just being supported, as had happened yesterday, by U.S. and by major European countries. It’s shame. It’s shame to leave Israel practicing the rule of jungle in this way against the Palestinian civilians.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m not sure if the —

RAJI SOURANI: All what we want — all what we want is simple and clear: end of occupation. We want dignity and freedom, period, like any other people on Earth.

AMY GOODMAN: Raji, I’m not sure if this is the blast we just heard, but Middle East Eye is reporting Israel just bombed the Islamic University of Gaza. Is that near you?

RAJI SOURANI: It’s exactly 800 meters from me. And that’s when I wasn’t able, Amy, to talk to you. I mean, the entire building was like collapsing on our head.

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Hamas Killed His Friend, But Knesset Member Cassif Says End the Occupation Now, All “Pay the Price”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 09, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/9/ ... transcript

We speak to Ofer Cassif, an Israeli Jewish Knesset member with the Hadash-Ta’al coalition, about Hamas’ surprise attack and Israel’s response. Cassif condemns the violence and killing of civilians “on both sides,” adding that both “Israelis and Palestinians pay the price of the arrogant, criminal, ongoing occupation that Israel refuses to end.” He then calls for an immediate end to occupation and of Israel’s “fascist subjugation” of Palestinians, an act which he says will “also liberate the Israelis.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring a Knesset member into this conversation. And this may be unusual in U.S. television to be joined by the leading Palestinian human rights lawyer in Gaza, Raji Sourani, and to also bring in Ofer Cassif, a member of the Israeli Knesset. Ofer, as you listened to Raji speak from Gaza and, before that, Orly Noy, the board chair of B’Tselem, the human rights organization — Ofer Cassif is a member of the Knesset with the Hadash-Ta’al coalition. You were born in Rishon LeZion, which was hit by rocket fire, Hamas rocket fire, on Saturday. Can you respond to what’s happening right now and the decision of the prime minister of Israel and the Cabinet to declare war on Hamas?

OFER CASSIF: Thank you for hosting me. And I would like to express my gratitude for the former speaker, Orly Noy, who’s a very good friend of mine. And, Raji, I wish you, Raji and all of you, security, peace and health, of course.

First of all, allow me to begin with some personal statements. My family lives in Israel. I’m at the moment in Mexico, before this war began, in a conference, in an international conference of leftist parties, including a delegation from Palestine. And we also had a press conference together, the Palestinian delegation and myself, because we share the ideas against the occupation and against war. I must say that, unfortunately, two days ago, I got a WhatsApp message from a very good friend of mine, who was hiding with her husband in the kibbutz. And she told me she was very afraid and she could hear the Hamas fighters outside. Unfortunately, those were probably the last words she ever wrote, because she was murdered with her husband just after she sent me that message — a very good friend of mine who was also against the occupation, a voter with our party. What I’m trying to say is that innocent people, innocent civilians on both sides, Israelis and Palestinians, pay the price of the arrogant, criminal, ongoing occupation that Israel refuses to end.

And I want to say something very, very clear and very, very blunt. Nothing, absolutely nothing, justify — can justify or legitimize the carnage that Hamas carried out in the towns and kibbutzim and the villages in the southern of Israel. Nothing can justify it. It is appalling. And even the occupation crimes, the crimes that Israel is guilty of, crimes of occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and the Nakba, those, either, cannot justify such carnage. At the same time, nothing, and absolutely nothing, can justify the massacre that the Israelis carries out now in Gaza, not even the crimes of Hamas.

So, what I would like to say, in the bottom line, following what Orly and Raji said — and I totally agree with them — the Palestinians deserve their rights. They deserve their national and individual rights. They reserve their rights to be realized, the right of self-determination, to enjoy their own independent sovereign state, their own government, their freedom of movement. They deserve to live in peace and security without the daily pogroms by fascist settlers under the auspices of the occupation forces and the encouragement of this fascist government of Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israelis deserve peace and security. They deserve to live in a state which doesn’t occupy, which doesn’t oppress, a state whose government is not a fascist and racist one.

And I would like to conclude, if I may, by saying and by taking the whole issue into and explaining it within a political frame. Israel wanted this violence. In 2017, Smotrich, who was then a member of the Knesset, but at the moment, unfortunately, this racist thug is a minister, a minister of finance, but, as well, minister within the Defense Ministry, he published six years ago — and it is explicit. You can read it. I mean, you can google and read it. It was entitled the “Subjugation Plan,” which boils down to three. First, the Palestinian Occupied Territories should be annexed to Israel as a whole, without granting basic rights to the Palestinians. Second, those Palestinians who do not agree to live under this subjugation are going to be expelled from their homeland. And third, those Palestinians who are going to resist are going to be killed. What we see now, and the coup, by the way, that the government of Israel has been carrying out within Israel, all of those are means to that goal. The goal is to realize this horrific, racist, colonialist, fascist plan of Smotrich’s. And the attack on Gaza is part of it. They use the terrible, horrifying, unacceptable carnage in the struggle of Israel as an excuse to attack Gaza as part of the realization of this fascist subjugation plan.

And we should stand together, join forces. All peace lovers, Palestinians and Israelis, Arabs, Jews, and the international community, must stand together and join forces to say to Israel, “You are going to end the occupation now. You are going to end the occupation. The Palestinians must be liberated.” The liberation of the Palestinian people is a just cause. It will also liberate the Israelis from the occupation, because although the plan — of course, the Palestinians are the victims primarily, but the Israelis are victims of the occupation, as well, as we just saw two days ago. So we must push and put the pressure on the government to end it. It’s up to the international community. It’s up to us to act together against all violence, in Gaza, in West Bank and in Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Ofer Cassif, we’re going to turn now to the leading Palestinian American professor, Columbia University, Rashid Khalid in a moment. We have to break. Ofer Cassif is a Knesset member in the Israeli parliament with the Hadash-Ta’al coalition. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in 30 seconds.

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Historian Rashid Khalidi: Palestinians “Living Under Incredible Oppression, … It Had to Explode”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 09, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/9/ ... transcript

In New York, we speak with Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, who lays out how this weekend’s extreme violence between Hamas and Israel will force “a paradigm shift.” Colonial powers will no longer believe they can force people to live under the conditions Israel has subjected Palestinians to and expect no retaliation of the oppressed, says Khalidi. “That idea has exploded as a result of the horrific events over the past two-and-a-half days,” says Khalidi, who calls the blockade of Gaza “a pressure cooker. It had to explode.” In response to the escalated conflict, the U.S. promised Israel would have “what it needs to defend itself,” pledging more military aid and munitions to Israel, already the largest annual recipient of U.S. military funding, as the Biden administration moved warships toward Israel. “We finance this occupation. We finance this violence,” says Khalidi, who calls on Biden to defuse the situation instead of escalating it. “You cannot make peace over the bodies of Palestinians.”

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.

Israel has ordered a complete siege of Gaza after Hamas broke out of the blockaded Gaza Strip Saturday, carried out an unprecedented attack by air, land and sea on Israel. Over the past three days, at least 1,300 people have died, including over 800 inside Israel, over 500 in Gaza. We’ve been to Gaza and Jerusalem. Now we’re joined here in New York by Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, author of a number of books, including The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.

Professor Khalidi, thank you for being with us. As you listened to voices of Orly Noy in Jerusalem, of Raji Sourani, the human rights lawyer in Gaza, the attack we heard on air live, and Ofer Cassif, the Knesset member of Israel, can you respond to what has taken place and what it looks like is about to take place? Israeli military equipment and tanks are headed down to Gaza now.

RASHID KHALIDI: I’m afraid that the horrific casualties among civilians, Israelis and, increasingly, Palestinians, is just the beginning of what’s going to be an awful, awful, awful massacre in Gaza. The desire for revenge after the killing of a very large number — hundreds, apparently — of innocent Israeli civilians is going to lead to a horrific massacre in Gaza of probably many, many more people than we can imagine. And I agree with what Raji said, of course, my friend Raji, who I hope is OK. And I agree with what Orly said and with what Ofer Cassif said. War crimes don’t justify other war crimes. And we are about to see horrific war crimes.

But I think there are two things that have to be added. This has to be put within the context. And the context is not just occupation. The context is settler colonialism and apartheid. The people of Gaza, the refugees in Gaza, originate in the areas where Hamas fighters were attacking in the last couple of days. Those were Palestinian towns and villages in 1948. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine led to the cooping up of what are now 2.4 million people in Gaza. Today is Indigenous Peoples’ Day in the United States. These are the Indigenous people of the southern parts of Israel that the Hamas fighters were attacking over the past few days. That’s the first thing.

The second thing is, I think that we’re about to see a paradigm shift. The idea that you can coop up 5 million people, put them behind walls, tighten the siege on them, use an eyedropper to allow them some food, some water, some electricity, that idea has exploded as a result of the horrific events of the past two-and-a-half days. This cannot continue. It’s not just a matter of occupation. We have to recognize that you cannot treat an entire people the way Israel, not just under this neofascist government, but under all of its previous governments, have treated them. You cannot expel three-quarters of a million people in 1948 and not expect the return of the repressed. You cannot commit daily violence against Palestinians — one Palestinian has died every day this year — in fact, slightly more — in the occupied West Bank. You cannot expect that not to lead to a reaction. The reaction will be violent. The reaction sometimes may include things that are unquestionably war crimes.

But that kind of pressure put on an entire people over three-quarters of a century will necessarily, inevitably bring a violent reaction. And this pressure cooker that the Palestinians are in, which the Hamas military commander listed — he said what they’re doing in Jerusalem, trying to take over the Al-Aqsa Mosque and turn it into a site of Jewish prayer, what they are doing in the occupied West Bank in terms of the effective annexation of more and more Palestinian land to Israel, and the application of Israeli law to Israelis and military law to Palestinians — apartheid, two legal systems in one place — the imprisonment of 5,000 Palestinians and the administrative detention of hundreds, and, finally, the siege of Gaza — when Gallant, Yoav Gallant, the minister of defense, announced that he was cutting off fuel, food, water and electricity to Gaza, he called the Gazans “human animals.” That’s 2.4 million people who are being treated as if they are animals. They’re not Hamas fighters. As Raji said, the fighters are one thing. Hamas is one thing. Hamas has imposed itself on the people of Gaza. The people of Gaza are the ones who are going to suffer. As in every one of these wars, almost all of the casualties are going to be civilians, that Israel has waged on Gaza. This will be the fifth or the sixth attack on Gaza. And I’m very, very afraid that Raji is right: We are going to see unparalleled massacres. But I think we have to see that this may be the end of an era, when people in Washington and people in Arab capitals assume you could just fly over Palestine, ignore it and pretend that we’re in a new Middle East of peace, while an entire people is living under this kind of incredible oppression, in a pressure cooker. It had to explode.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about what’s happening now. You have the Republicans attacking Biden, saying that it’s his support for Iran, making that $6 billion deal, unfreezing Iranian assets, that has allowed this to happen, The Wall Street Journal saying Iran is behind us, the White House pushing back, Blinken saying they don’t have the evidence at this point. What this means? And also Hezbollah on the border of Lebanon and the incursion this weekend, as well?

RASHID KHALIDI: Well, I mean, the possibility of a wider conflict should terrify everybody. And instead of moving aircraft carriers, the United States should be trying to defuse the situation. Instead, I think they’re blindly going ahead with the policies that they have followed in the past. You do not send presents, as President Biden has done, to an apartheid government that is moving towards basically destroying the protections of the Israeli constitution for Israeli Jews and annexing the West Bank. And that’s what this administration has been doing. That’s what previous administrations have done. We finance this occupation. We finance this violence. There are American weapons that are being used today, right now, in Gaza to kill innocent civilians in violation of U.S. law. And American politicians blithely talk as if they live on another planet.

I think, though, that the ground has shifted, and even though American politicians live in Never-Never Land, as far as Palestine is concerned, reality is going to intrude itself sooner or later. There is a widespread revulsion across the Arab world against what Israel does in Palestine. Authoritarian, dictatorial, absolute monarchies are trying to ignore that, ignore the feelings of their own people, the sentiments of their own people. That’s not going to work. You cannot make peace over the bodies of Palestinians. That’s not peace. That is the peace of the dead. And the kind of repression that is being exerted day in, day out — theft of land, expansion of settlements and so on — necessarily, inevitably is going to bring a reaction. So, whether the people living in Washington, D.C., and in their own alternative reality believe it today or tomorrow, sooner or later, I think that reality is going to dawn. But you cannot do this forever.

AMY GOODMAN: The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, just 10 days ago said, you know, it has been very quiet in the Middle East, which has allowed the U.S. to move on to other areas of the world. “Very quiet,” he said. And I’m wondering if you can comment on that. And do you think what led to this attack by Hamas fighters on Saturday had anything to do with Saudi Arabia and Israel normalizing relations at the behest of the United States?

RASHID KHALIDI: I don’t doubt that that was a factor. I think the basic factor was that people couldn’t live under these circumstances. And Hamas has basically acted in a way involving enormous brutality against the civilians, things that are unquestionably war crimes. But it has acted in a way to shatter that whole paradigm. I think people are thinking very carefully in places that have normalized with Israel.

... Finally, a number of jets from the Washington DC area were on an informal training flight over North Carolina on 9/11, a circumstance that took them away from the national capital airspace.

-- Covert Uses of Military Exercises; Amalgam Virgo: Cover Story for 9/11, from 9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA, by Webster Griffin Tarpley

The other thing that should be said — I think Orly mentioned this — this is a massive intelligence failure, on the part of American intelligence and especially on the part of the Israeli intelligence services. They had absolutely no idea this was coming. They transferred three battalions from the Gaza front to the West Bank to protect settler rampages against Palestinians, denuding the towns on the southern borders of the Gaza Strip of the people who could have defended against the attack by Hamas. This was one of the great deception operations in modern military history, and people are going to teach this. Leaving aside the war crimes, they’re going to teach this in military academies for years and years to come. This is on level with the 1973 war in terms of deception, and an entirely mistaken concept on the part of Israelis, thinking that you could do this to Gaza forever and that they would just lie down and take it.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Rashid Khalidi —

RASHID KHALIDI: — thinking that you can do it — sorry, go ahead.

AMY GOODMAN: This news just came out from Times of Israel, also from the Associated Press: Egyptian intelligence repeatedly told Israel Hamas was planning something big, warnings were discounted, this according to an intelligence official in Cairo.

RASHID KHALIDI: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: Your thoughts on this, in the last 30 seconds?

RASHID KHALIDI: It’s very similar to what happened before the 1973 war, when Israel was getting intelligence that the Egyptian and Syrian armies were planning a major attack. And the conception — the concepsia, in Hebrew — that these people would never do such a thing, they’re not capable of this, the arrogance that was involved in ignoring those intelligence reports in 1973 and in 2023 are among the things that led to this catastrophic outcome, which I think is going to change a lot of things in the Middle East in the months and years to come.

AMY GOODMAN: Rashid Khalidi, we want to thank you for being with us, Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University. His latest book, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine. Raji Sourani, Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, leading human rights lawyer, speaking to us from Gaza as the bombs went off. Ofer Cassif, member of the Israeli Knesset. And Orly Noy, board chair of B’Tselem, Israeli human rights organization. That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.

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Mustafa Barghouti: Israel’s Siege & Bombing of Gaza Are War Crimes. Is Ethnic Cleansing Next?
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
OCTOBER 11, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/11 ... rael_hamas

Transcript

As Israel prepares to launch a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, we continue our coverage of escalating conflict in the Middle East. We’re joined from Ramallah by Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian physician, activist and politician who serves as general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, also known as al-Mubadara, and is a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization Central Council. “I don’t want any Palestinian or Israeli civilian to be killed,” says Barghouti, who argues that a ground operation in Gaza would constitute a campaign of ethnic cleansing, and condemns Israeli occupation and settlement under far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as having destroyed any “prospective for a two-state solution.” Barghouti also discusses President Biden’s abnegation of responsibility toward Palestinian Americans, Egypt’s role in the conflict and the relationship within Palestine between the “totally marginalized” Palestinian Authority and groups like Hamas.

AMY GOODMAN: Gaza is on the verge of losing all electricity as Israel continues to bombard the territory while imposing a siege blocking the import of all fuel, food and electricity. The death toll from Israel’s massive bombing campaign has topped 1,055 Palestinians, with over 5,000 wounded. Meanwhile, the death toll in Israel has soared to 1,200 following Saturday’s shocking attack by Hamas militants. Another 2,400 Israelis have been wounded. Hamas is believed to be holding as many as 150 hostages. Israel is now preparing to launch a ground invasion of Gaza.

Tension is also growing along the Israel-Lebanon border, where Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters have repeatedly exchanged fire.

Earlier today, a U.S. plane carrying ammunition landed in Israel, a day after President Biden gave a speech at the White House where he reaffirmed U.S. support for Israel but made no reference to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, which has reportedly killed at least 260 children and 230 women since Saturday. According to press freedom groups, at least seven Palestinian journalists have also been killed.

Inside Gaza, residents say there’s no safe place for civilians to go. This is Samah Abo Latifa, who lost her brother in an Israeli airstrike.

SAMAH ABO LATIFA: [translated] We had fled from Abasan, escaping from death. There were continuous airstrikes over our heads. They told us to come to Khan Younis. We came to find death. If we stayed in our houses, we die. If we go on the streets, we die. O my beloved brother, he fled from one place to another. O my beloved brother, may your soul rest in peace. I have no people left, except for two. God bless them for me. I hope to carry their children. O my beloved brother, please, God, don’t take anyone else. This is enough. I can’t handle anymore. I hope I die before them all.

AMY GOODMAN: Samah Abo Latifa went on to describe the scope of Israel’s bombing campaign. She spoke from a nursery, where her family has taken refuge.

SAMAH ABO LATIFA: [translated] I’ve never seen airstrikes like this time, not in 2014, not in 2008. No war was like this time. I’ve never seen anything like this. Every minute and every second there are airstrikes. Every minute there are martyrs, in their houses, young people, children, all. I can’t talk. I swear I’m so tired. We have never witnessed strikes like this time. We thank God when the day is done. But they say it will be worse. We wonder what else could happen to us. The coming days could be harsher. Our hearts will ache more for the loss of our loved ones.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, tension is also high in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon. Hezbollah has claimed responsibility for firing an anti-tank at an Israeli military post earlier today. Israel has been shelling towns in southern Lebanon. Residents in northern Israel say they no long feel safe.

RACHEL KANDELL: It doesn’t feel very safe, because if they came into our house and they did anything they wanted, without any way of protecting ourselves, this is a very unsettled grounds. This is not — you know, this is Israel. We are in the 21st century. We should feel secure. We should feel like we have a home to go back to. And many people in Israel, unfortunately, are not in this space. They don’t have a house anymore. They don’t have families. The lines for the funerals are endless. There is so much pain, pain that is beyond explanation in words. This is truly a nightmare.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show with Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian physician, activist and politician who serves as general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative. He’s been a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council since 2006, also a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization Central Council. He’s joining us from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Dr. Barghouti, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you can give us the context for what’s happening right now, what you’re most concerned about? We’re talking to you in the occupied West Bank as hundreds of thousands of Israeli reservists are moving down to Gaza.

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: What concerns me most, Amy, is this process of dehumanizing Palestinians, in which Western government leaders, including President Biden, are participating, dehumanizing Palestinians to the level that the Israeli army minister called us animals. And Human Rights Watch was absolutely correct when they came out with a statement saying that this kind of description of Palestinians is nothing but a justification of war crimes on them. And that’s exactly what’s happening now.

The first two crimes that are happening is the Israeli blockade on Gaza, depriving 2.2 million people from water, food, electricity and medical supplies, depriving them from the possibility of normal life. Children are lacking water, are lacking milk. I get calls from our people there in Gaza constantly, patients who have kidney problems, in need for kidney dialysis, who could die in two, three days because they cannot get it, patients with cancer who lost treatment, and other sick people who are in very deep situation.

This is not the only situation. In addition to that, the second crime that is taking place is the bombardment of Gaza with terrible airstrikes. You have just said that it took the lives already of 1,000 innocent civilian Palestinians. It slaughtered no less than 260 children. But the worst thing is that 250,000 people already, quarter of a million people, have lost their homes. Thousands of houses have been destroyed. High-rise buildings have been smashed to earth. And the people don’t have a single space which can be safe for them. I heard an Israeli saying that she wants to be safe, and I want her to be safe, but they also should remember that also Palestinians need to live in peace and security. And that is what’s not there.

More than that, Israel turned back to using what was prohibited, which is white phosphorus. They used it, as you remember, in 2008 campaign on Gaza. Now they’re back to using it. It is a prohibited kind of weapon that is forbidden, but they use it openly and frankly.

The more important thing is that Netanyahu is saying that Palestinians should be evicted from Gaza. He’s preparing for a third war crime, which is ethnic cleansing of the population of Gaza. He said that every Palestinian in Gaza should leave their homes. He didn’t say where to. Maybe to the sea. But his spokesperson of the army made it clear. He said in a statement, which became the top line in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper — he said that all Palestinians in Gaza must evict to Egypt. These people, these criminals who committed ethnic cleansing against 70% of the Palestinian people in 1948, 70% of the population of Gaza were among these people who were evicted from Palestine. Now they are subjected to the possibility of another transfer, another kind of ethnic cleansing, that would empty Gaza so that Netanyahu can annex it.

Now I understand, after all these threats with ethnic cleansing, what Netanyahu meant when he said that he will change the map and the order of the area for 50 years to come. Now I understand what Netanyahu did when he carried a map of Israel in the United Nations, in front of the whole world community, a map of Israel that includes annexing the West Bank, which is occupied territory, annexing Gaza Strip, which is also occupied territory, and annexing East Jerusalem, including also the Golan Heights. Nobody said a single criticism to that, except maybe the German government. This is the reason — this is the background of what’s happening.

But let me also say that what we see now in Gaza is only a result of a protracted problem of 56 years of Israeli military occupation of Palestinian land. How many times on your show, Amy, and on other shows we said that the solution is to end the Israeli illegal occupation of Palestinians, that the solution is to stop what has become the worst system of apartheid ever, much worse apartheid than what revealed in South Africa at one point of time? How many times we said that building settlements in the Occupied Territories will destroy any prospective for two-state solution? How many times we complained about settlers’ violence and settlers’ terror against Palestinian communities?

I find that President Biden, unfortunately, practiced — excuse me for that, but I have to say it — Mr. Biden practiced racial discrimination between Americans who carry Israeli citizenship and Americans who carry Palestinian citizenship. I did not see him say that those who killed Shireen Abu Akleh, a very peaceful journalist who was Palestinian and American, and who was never held to accountability — nobody was indicted for killing her. He didn’t say a word about the American Palestinians in Turmus Ayya whose houses were burned and whose cars were attacked and whose lives were threatened by Israeli illegal settlers, some of whom also carry American citizenship.

I don’t want any Palestinian or any Israeli civilian to be killed. I am against that. I’m against killing children. But today and now Israel is preparing a huge ground operation on Gaza. If that happens, it will be a total disaster. If ethnic cleansing takes place, this will be a terrible, terrible, terrible disaster for everybody. And if the ground operations start, it will definitely lead to the explosion in the north and Hezbollah getting involved, and maybe this will lead to a whole regional war. I think what we need here is balanced, reasonable and responsible reactions, and not continuation of dehumanizing Palestinians, accusing Palestinians of responsibility even when Palestinians are killed.

I think that Netanyahu doesn’t care about his people. I think Netanyahu is the most corrupt, opportunistic politician ever. This man cares only about his position. He doesn’t even care about the 150 or 200 Israeli prisoners now in Gaza. If he cared about them, he would accept immediately a ceasefire. He would accept immediately a prisoners exchange, so that these people can come back home safe, and Palestinian prisoners would be released, some of whom have been in Israeli jails for 44 years. This is the solution, and not to escalate. But Netanyahu knows if any inquiry starts about what happened at the borders of Gaza, they will find him responsible for negligence, irresponsibility, lack of preparation, intelligence failure, military failure, political failure, and he will be sent out of the office, which means he will go to jail because of four cases of corruption against him. He knows that. And that’s why he’s ready to kill anybody to stay in his office. This man doesn’t care about lives of Palestinians or Israelis.

He didn’t care about the fact that he brought to his government fascists, like Smotrich, who doesn’t hide calling himself a fascist homophobe, and who said that “We will fill the West Bank with settlers and settlements so that Palestinians would lose any hope of a state of their own. And then they would have one of three choices: either to emigrate or accept a life of subjugation to Israeli rule or die.” That is the finance minister of Israel. And we didn’t hear any criticism to that, neither from Netanyahu nor from your foreign minister, Mr. Blinken, nor from any other Western leaders, who are now, unfortunately, participating in escalating the situation rather than calming it down.

The big question that Palestinians have — and this is my last point here — the big question that Palestinians have is: Why the double standard? Why the United States and Europe send to Ukraine $224 billion of equipment, of planes, of tanks, to fight what they say is occupation? And why in our case they are sending arsenal and money and support to the occupiers of Palestine? Why we don’t see any sanctions —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Dr. Barghouti, I want —

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: — to brutal forces and to stop the occupation?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Dr. Barghouti, I want to ask you — you’re in the West Bank. What’s been the response of the Palestinian Authority to the attacks on Gaza? And also, for our listeners and viewers, if you could talk about the escalation in attacks in the West Bank by both settlers and the Israeli army since this extreme right-wing coalition of Netanyahu came to power?

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Since the attacks started in Gaza by Israeli airstrikes, there were many, many demonstrations in the West Bank, mostly peaceful — peaceful, all peaceful and nonviolent demonstrations. And the Israeli army responded with gunfire. Up ’til this moment, 23 Palestian young people, mainly, were shot and killed by the Israeli army, without them engaging in any kind of military action.

And that has been our life. You know, one of the main reasons why the attack happened in Gaza by Hamas is the fact that during the last eight months, before this whole thing started, Israeli army and Israeli settlers killed 248 Palestinians, including 40 children. And now in addition to that, most roads in the West Bank are blocked. There is 650 military checkpoints, many of which are totally closed to Palestinians. The only passage to Jordan is almost closed all the time. And Palestinians live in clusters of ghettos separated from each other. And people are extremely worried about what might happen. We’ve just heard that the Israeli army is devoting a whole division with tanks for the possibility of reinvading every corner of the West Bank, as well.

So, the most difficult thing here is not only the army attacks on Palestinians, but also the settlers’ attacks. And these settlers are completely crazy. And they are completely criminal in their attitude towards Palestinians. They’ve already burned so many houses. They’ve already attacked so many villages. They’ve already killed so many Palestinians. And that’s the kind of fear and worry that we have.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And how should Egypt and other Arab countries in the region respond?

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Well, before I respond to your question, I have one little piece of good news, although it’s painful news. You mentioned the name of the journalist Salam Mima, who was one of the seven journalists who were killed by Israel. Luckily, but painfully, this journalist was found alive after 31 hours with her three children below the rubble of their destroyed house. Unfortunately, her husband died. She is injured, and her three children are injured. And you can imagine the horror that she went through being under the rubble for 31 hours. And only by luck, somebody heard her voice. And this raises the question: How many tens of Palestinians are now below the rubble, and nobody can try even to save them because the places are constantly bombarded?

Regarding Egypt, I would say that the Egyptians have two responsibilities. One is that they should not allow Israel to evict and ethnically cleanse Palestinians towards Egypt. This must not happen. And that, because I warn you: If Israel succeeds in evicting Palestinians from Gaza now and conducting ethnic cleansing, this would be an application of Smotrich, most extreme religious Jewish extreme position in the Israeli government. And it would mean that the next plan will be to ethnically cleanse the West Bank, as well, and throw Palestinians out of the West Bank to Jordan. These are not theoretical concepts. This is exactly what they said, what they speak about about Palestinians, especially now after all this process of dehumanization of Palestinians.

The other thing that Egypt must do is to provide support immediately to Gaza. We are ready to help ourselves, our people. We are ready to collect water, food supply, medications. My organization, in particular, militant Palestinian Medical Relief Society, is already engaging in preparing all these materials. We are ready to send them to Gaza, through Egypt even. But Israel says that they will bombard any supplies that come to Gaza. Here, I think it is the Egyptian and international responsibility to stop Israel and prevent that from taking place.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Barghouti, we have less than a minute, but I wanted to ask about the relationship between the PLO, the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas, well known for the tension between the two, to put it mildly.

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Well, as you know, Hamas, as well as Jihad, are Palestinian political groups, militant groups that are not in the PLO. But there are problems even inside the PLO. I think now the PA feels totally marginalized, not only because of what’s happening on the ground, but also because of Israel, that did everything to humiliate the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli army invades any spot that the Palestinian Authority should be in charge of, including Ramallah. And they cut off our tax revenue. We pay taxes to the Palestinian Authority through Israel, and Israel cuts away a lot of these resources.

So, the solution to this is nothing but unifying all Palestinians without exception. And you know my stand. I said it long time ago. What we need is, after this war ends, is immediate, free, democratic elections for Palestinians. And all polls show that neither Fatah nor Hamas will get a majority. Nobody else will get majority. It will be a pluralistic democratic system, through which groups like us, who are non-Fatah, non-Hamas, can try to do their best to push in the direction of democratic transformation, but also that would allow Palestinians to coexist peacefully in a good political system. At this very moment, this sounds very distant, mainly because not only the PA did not hold elections, but Israel and the United States all the time refused that we should have democratic, free elections. And that does not fit with all these calls everywhere and in other places about democracy. It’s another type, another form of double standard.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, speaking to us from Ramallah in occupied West Bank, Palestinian physician, activist, politician who serves as general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative.

Next up, to Tel Aviv to speak with the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy of Haaretz. Stay with us.

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Israeli Journalist Gideon Levy: Israel Should Lift Siege & Call Off Plans for Ground Invasion of Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
OCTOBER 11, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/11 ... rael_hamas

From Tel Aviv, we hear from award-winning Israeli journalist and author Gideon Levy, whose recent column for Haaretz is headlined “Israel Can’t Imprison Two Million Gazans Without Paying a Cruel Price.” Levy discusses the reaction within Israeli society toward Hamas’s unexpected attack and condemns the Netanyahu government for only mobilizing for further warfare rather than providing effective assistance to victims. “Nobody is leading Israel,” declares Levy, who also calls for Israel to lift its blockade of Gaza and accept that its campaign of eradicating Hamas is “impossible.” After decades of Palestinian subjugation under Israeli rule, “you can kill the current top people of Hamas, but you will not kill the ideology of Hamas,” says Levy.

Transcript

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

“Netanyahu Bears Responsibility for This Israel-Gaza War.” That’s the headline of an editorial in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The paper’s editors wrote, quote, “The disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Simchat Torah is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister, who has prided himself on his vast political experience and irreplaceable wisdom in security matters, completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession, when appointing Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir to key positions, while embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians,” the Haaretz editorial said.

We go now to Tel Aviv, where we’re joined by Gideon Levy, an award-winning Israeli journalist and author, columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, member of its editorial board. His most recent piece is headlined “Israel Can’t Imprison Two Million Gazans Without Paying a Cruel Price.”

Gideon Levy, if you can talk about how Israelis are responding right now, what you feel it’s important for people outside Israel, especially here in the United States, to understand and to do, at this point as 300,000 reservists move along the Gaza border?

GIDEON LEVY: Israel is basically shocked. At least in the first one or two days, you could feel it everywhere. Nobody expected this unprecedented situation. It broke many perceptions, both about Hamas, about the Palestinians, about their capabilities, and about ourselves and our capabilities. But this is now put aside. People are still digesting what happened. The more time passes, the more horrible scenes are exposed, day after day. I’ve been to the south the day before yesterday. And I can tell you — I’ve been so many times in the south in times of war — what I saw there was nothing like it happened in the past. But I must say that side by side with what I mention here, there is also a big sense of taking revenge, a big desire to take revenge. And hatred toward the Palestinians is growing up to very, very dangerous levels.

Same anger is also directed at the government, less than this at the army. But I think that the government, once this war will be over, hopefully soon, this government is going to pay a hell of a price, and it will — must go home. I don’t see the situation in which Netanyahu continues, and all the ministers around him, who are, all of them, no ones, fascists, and they, part of them, would even be defined in Europe as neo-Nazis, those people who called for all kind of terrible things to do and did nothing to make Israel prepared for any danger, and continue now to doing nothing. That’s so astonishing that we are now the fifth day after the war, and you don’t see the government. They are still preoccupied with their own political careers, with all kind of political manipulations. Nobody takes care of the situation. The army is preparing itself for a ground operation. But except of the army — I was in so many homes which were bombed, so many people who lost their beloved one. Nobody came to them. Nobody offers them any assistance.

Israel is really falling apart, from this point of view. And the man who governed Israel for the last 15 years is the one, and the only one, to be blamed, before anyone else. This goes without saying. And I guess at six after the war, as we say, million Israelis will go to the streets, and they will have only one demand: At least, Netanyahu, go home. If not, Netanyahu, go to court and be sentenced for this irresponsible policy that you have been committing.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Gideon Levy, I wanted to ask you — according to press reports, as many as 1,500 Palestinian fighters of Hamas were killed inside of Israel, so the enormous number of militants who were able to get into Israel. Could you talk about the decision of the government to relocate large portions of Israel’s army from the Gaza border to protect far-right settlers on the West Bank?

GIDEON LEVY: Sure. That’s one of the big failures on Saturday, not the only one, because the first failure is obviously the surprise, the strategic surprise. We are so proud about the most sophisticated intelligence in the world, with all kind of those elite units, with all the devices. They know everything. They understand everything. And then, an operation, which was prepared for one year by hundreds of militants, they didn’t hear about it. So that’s the first failure.

The second failure is obviously that the southern front with Gaza was totally abandoned, because we were busy with all the festivals of support of those crazy settlers, guarding them, but not only guarding them, collaborating with them with their pogroms among Palestinians. We have clear evidence that the army saw the pogroms and did nothing. And when the army is busy for years now, not only recently, only with running and chasing after Palestinian children who throw a stone, and after all kind of suspected Palestinians, when the army is overoccupied in standing in illegal checkpoints and penetrating to Palestinian homes in the middle of the night to arrest somebody without any legal basis, then this is the result you get. Instead of a professional, motivated, experienced army, you get a bunch of no ones who don’t know what to do in such a situation, because after the first shock, they were still — it took still hours and hours until the army showed up. And that’s unbelievable.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this issue of Netanyahu preparing for an invasion of Gaza, could you talk about the immense undertaking that this involves, having to go literally house by house or building by building in Gaza to find any of the hostages being held? The enormity of this project?

GIDEON LEVY: First of all, to go from building to building is impossible already, because there are many buildings still down. And I’m not sure how many buildings were left, for example, in the neighborhood of Rimal. To find the hostages alive, really, it’s nice for all kind of Hollywood films. I don’t see it happening, for sure not with this army with its capabilities, as we were witnessing it only on Saturday.

The invasion into Gaza has some other goals — namely, to put an end to the rule of Hamas. And this is another impossible mission, because you can kill the current top people of Hamas, you cannot kill the ideology of Hamas, and they will always be replaced.

Ground operation now is supported almost by all Israelis, because Israelis understand that we have to do something after this embarrassment, after this catastrophe. But in the same time, I must tell you, I can assure you that if Israel will go now for a ground operation, it will take a few weeks or maybe a few months. It will take so much blood of both Palestinians and Israelis, mainly Palestinians obviously. And by the end of this operation, you will invite me again to Democracy Now!, and you will see that we are standing exactly in the place that we stood one week ago, because as long as Israel continues to believe that Gaza — the problem of Gaza will be solved by the sword, solved by brutal force, by emotions of revenge — justified emotions — then we will get exactly to the same place. This vicious circle will not be solved by power, not be solved by tanks, and not will be — nor will it be solved by troops, only by political agreement and, above all and first of all, lifting this criminal siege, for God’s sake, after 17 years. This siege, what it was about, to guarantee the security of Israel. So, what happened out of the siege except of the suffer of — unbelievable inhuman suffer of 2 million people? What did it contribute to the security of Israel, this siege? You see the outcome.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have less than a minute, Gideon. I wanted to ask you the difference of the cry, the call of the families of the hostages, of older people, of young people, of children, the family members, one after another, talking about being, for example, a peace activist, and saying, “Please use restraint,” and the contrast between that and President Biden as he addressed the nation yesterday, deciding consciously, and in the readout of his conversation with Netanyahu a few minutes before he spoke, saying they did not call for restraint. Your response? How important is the president of United States’ position here? We have less than a minute.

GIDEON LEVY: In less than a minute, I can tell you, Amy, that last night when I was watching President Biden, I really envied you Americans that you have such a leader. I never thought so before last night. But last night, Biden was a real leader, someone that you can trust, because he was extremely sincere, and someone that you can rely on. If Netanyahu would have taken the same speech, he wouldn’t be Netanyahu. Netanyahu is busy with politics. And here comes this Biden and tells Israel what Israel wanted to hear. I would love him also to say some things about the Palestinian suffering, the Palestinian agony. He ignored it totally, and this is very regretful. But by the end of the day, this is what Israel needs now: some kind of leadership. And it totally lacks it. Nobody is around, really, to understand that we have to go for a new way. Nobody is there.

AMY GOODMAN: Gideon Levy, we want to thank you for being with us, award-winning Israeli journalist and author, columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, a member of its editorial board. We’ll link to your most recent piece, “Israel Can’t Imprison Two Million Gazans Without Paying a Cruel Price.” His books include The Punishment of Gaza.

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Report from Gaza: Two Palestinians Describe “Horror” on 6th Day of Israel Bombing Besieged Enclave
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
OCTOBER 12, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/12/gaza_update

Transcript

We speak with two Palestinians in Gaza City about Israel’s devastating bombing campaign while blocking all food, water and fuel from entering the besieged territory. The U.N. reports that all of Gaza’s 13 hospitals are only partially operational due to a lack of fuel and medical supplies as the International Red Cross warns “hospitals are going to be turned into graveyards.” The territory’s only power plant has stopped operating due to a lack of fuel, yet Israeli authorities are vowing to continue the siege of Gaza until Hamas releases the over 100 hostages it seized during its unprecedented attack on Saturday. Yousef Hammash, working with the Norwegian Refugee Council, says humanitarian workers “cannot secure ourselves to start to deliver assistance for the others” and warns locals barely have time to think about political responses as resources run out. “Within days, we will have nothing in Gaza.” While U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha asks, “Why don’t they come here and listen to us?” He adds that “Gaza has been the largest open-air prison in the world,” but with the closure of the passage between Gaza and Egypt, “now it has become a prison cell with no window.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: The International Red Cross has issued a dire warning about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, saying, quote, “Hospitals are going to be turned into graveyards.” Israel is continuing its devastating bombing campaign while blocking all food, water and fuel from entering the besieged territory. An Israeli ground invasion appears imminent. Gaza’s only power plant has stopped operating due to a lack of fuel. According to the United Nations, all of Gaza’s 13 hospitals are only partially operational due to a lack of fuel and medical supplies.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health says at least 1,350 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began bombarding the territory after Saturday’s surprise attack by Hamas. Meanwhile, the death toll in Israel has topped 1,300, including at least 200 Israeli soldiers. According to authorities in Gaza, Israeli attacks have killed at least 326 Palestinian children. The dead also include at least seven Palestinian journalists, 11 staffers at the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency and four medics. Earlier today, an Israeli strike killed 18 Palestinians in the Nuseirat refugee camp.

Many children are now seeking refuge in the courtyard at al-Shifa Hospital, which is considered to be one of the only safe places in Gaza. Remas Abu Tabeekh is an 11-year-old Palestinian girl.

REMAS ABU TABEEKH: [translated] I have spent my 11 years in fear and anxiety. We left our home and stayed in the streets. There are planes. It’s all scary. They are bombing us. Even while we’re here, they are bombing us, and we’re scared.

MOHAMED HALAS: [translated] As a 15-year-old child, I’m displaced from my home and came here to al-Shifa Hospital. We’re sleeping in the hospital with nonstop bombing above us. I hope that the world will have mercy on us.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Mohamed Halas, a 15-year-old Palestinian boy, speaking in the courtyard of the al-Shifa Hospital. Other Palestinians seeking refuge at the hospital called for the international community to help stop Israel’s bombardment.

TAYSEER HALAS: [translated] They slaughtered our children and destroyed our houses over our heads. And here we are, in the streets and hospitals. They’ve demolished all the houses on us and on the children and toddlers and women. And here we are, scattered. Let the world come and see how it is packed here. Dead bodies are stacked over each other, children and toddlers. No country is able to control Israel. Where is the United States? Where is the rest of the world? Let them say something. You don’t see how affected we are. We are homeless. We’re destroyed. It’s been five days with no food and water, and we don’t know where to go. Children are everywhere here and homeless. This is not right. Let the world support us. We are restless. We are poor people, the Palestinian people.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Israeli authorities are vowing to continue the siege of Gaza until Hamas releases the 150 or so hostages it seized during Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Saturday This is Yifat Zailer, an Israeli woman who fears six of her relatives, including a 9-month-old baby, were taken hostage.

YIFAT ZAILER: It all started Saturday morning, five days ago. Around 9:00 in the morning, we lost connection with my family that lives down south in kibbutz Nir Oz. … When the military finally entered the kibbutz and went through the houses to look for survivors, they didn’t find my aunt and uncle in their apartment, and they are considered missing, as well. So, this is the situation. Six members of my family right now are being held in Gaza. … Time is rushing. There’s a 9-months baby and a 3-year-old child, and my aunt has Parkinson’s disease. I want them back. We all want our family back.

AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Gaza, where we’re joined by two guests. Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet and author, columnist, teacher, founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza. His recent piece for The Washington Post is headlined “In Gaza, no one can believe their eyes.” He’s the author of the award-winning book, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza. And we’re joined by Yousef Hammash, an advocacy officer in Gaza for the Norwegian Refugee Council, lives in the Gaza Strip with his wife and two kids. He recently posted his video showing the destruction of Gaza.

YOUSEF HAMMASH: This is where people in Gaza used to flee from the northern and eastern part seeking safety. This is Gaza City, the center of Gaza City, where people used to consider it safety. This is just to prove that there is no place safe in Gaza. Destruction is everywhere. Where the people can go? Where we should go?

AMY GOODMAN: That was Yousef Hammash, advocacy officer in Gaza for the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Yousef, let’s begin with you. Describe the situation. What does a total siege of Gaza mean right now? From the hospitals to the schoolyards where people are taking refuge, describe it for us.

YOUSEF HAMMASH: So, the siege, in general, is nothing new for Palestinians who lives in Gaza. We are under the siege for more than 17 years. Then add to that the cycles of violence, the nonending cycles of violence.

Especially this war, we cannot compare it with whatever we witnessed before, the massive bombardment that we see, destruction everywhere. If you want to cross from a place to another place, it’s like a maze now. We couldn’t recognize the areas when we move from a place to another place. Thousands of people are getting killed.

Almost one-third of the population had fled their houses, seeking shelter at UNRWA school, which is now over — it got overrun. It’s above their capacity. Now people are lucky to have some relatives live in some areas considered safe, but, I’m really sorry, I don’t think there is a safe place in Gaza. But sometimes people go in from a place when it’s getting bombardment, especially from the north and eastern part of Gaza, seeking more safety in the center of Gaza City.

The situation is unacceptable. You cannot imagine. Again, what we have seen in Gaza, in the streets, in the daily, people under this war, we never imagined it before. This is something — a new level of devastating war in Gaza.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Yousef, could you describe, given that devastation and the number of people who have been injured and displaced, what is the condition of the medical facilities in Gaza? The Health Ministry has warned that the healthcare system has truly begun to collapse.

YOUSEF HAMMASH: So, the medical sector, in general, already had an issue because it hadn’t been upgraded since more than 17 years because of the siege and the blockade on Gaza. Now with the lack of electricity and the number of people who get injured, thousands of people injured, they are above the capacity of the hospitals. I was in Shifa Hospital, and I saw how they were treating, trying to provide medical treatment for injured people in the corridors in the hospital and the garden in front of the hospital, while it hosts also — people are also seeking shelter inside Shifa Hospital. Now with lacking electricity, this is affecting everything. This is — the entire process of the medical system is affected, while it’s already collapsing before. It’s a horrible situation. This is really horror. What we are seeing in Gaza now is really horror.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And what have you heard from Hamas about releasing the hostages or taking any steps to change the situation?

YOUSEF HAMMASH: Unfortunately, until now, we didn’t see anything on the horizon, either from the local or the de facto or even from outside. We don’t see a real intervention from outside or inside. No one is, as Gazans — I’m a Gazan. I am a refugee from Jabaliya camp. I don’t have enough space in my head to think about the political situation and what they are doing now. All what we are thinking, trying to provide safety and shelter for our own children. We cannot provide our daily need without water, without electricity, no internet connection. To do this interview, I had to come from the northern part of Gaza, where I live, where I am hosted now because I had to flee my house, to Gaza City in a church to find internet just to have a space to deliver the message from Gaza. There is nothing in the horizon, either from inside or the outside, for a solution. And that’s what make us terrified. We cannot stay in this situation longer. With lack of everything in Gaza, within days we will have nothing in Gaza. Now we have no electricity, no water, no food. But then we will lack food and others.

AMY GOODMAN: Yousef Hammash, you have described the sound, the panic everywhere. Also, you are with the Norwegian Refugee Council, and you mentioned you came from the Jabaliya refugee camp, which was bombed. If you can describe, where was it bombed? How many casualties? And also, you’re with NRC. You have 52 staff members who live and work in Gaza. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, says a total of 12 of its workers have been killed. How can you all function?

YOUSEF HAMMASH: So, first of all, to come from Jabaliya to Gaza City to do this interview, it was literally a maze. Wherever, any street you go, and you will find destruction. Rubble is everywhere. You find people are trying to move from here and there. It’s a chaotic situation.

Regarding our work as humanitarians, even our staff, and, I believe, other partners in Gaza, we cannot secure ourselves to start to interfere. And our role as humanitarian organizations, the Norwegian Refugee Council, is to serve people who were forced displaced. Now we are trying to secure ourselves, which is rare. I don’t have an accurate number, but I think the majority of our staff had to flee their houses, along with a lot — most of our partners here in Gaza or the U.N. agencies. We cannot secure ourselves to interfere. This is one of the immediate things that we need, an access for us as humanitarians to deliver assistance for people who are really in dire need. Before this war, more than half of the population was already on humanitarian aid. We have one of the highest rates of unemployment rates on the planet. Add to that this cycle of violence, people who were displaced with nothing. We need to serve these people. We are trying to evaluate how to interfere remotely with our partners, but until now we cannot secure ourselves to start to deliver assistance for the others.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: I’d like to bring in Mosab Abu Toha, who is also in Gaza, a Palestinian poet and author. He’s a columnist, teacher and founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza. His recent
piece for The Washington Post is headlined “In Gaza, no one can believe their eyes.” He is also the author of the award-winning book titled Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza. Mosab, welcome to Democracy Now! If you could describe the situation around you and speak specifically about the impact of what’s happening on children? You, yourself, have a 7-year-old daughter.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Well, in fact, I have three kids. The youngest is three-and-a-half years old.

The situation hasn’t changed. It started, as everyone knows, six days ago. The bombing never stopped. What is different this time is that every hour you hear about the deaths of dozens of people. Just last night in a refugee camp, Al-Shati refugee camp, about 15 people were pulled from under the rubble of their houses, while they were sleeping inside, thinking that they were safe. I was born in that refugee camp. And now I live in Beit Lahia City, which is a city in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. And the bombing hasn’t stopped. I can see from my window plumes of smoke rising up in the sky, just covering every house that it crosses.

And the children, of course, are victims. I mean, everyone in Gaza is a victim of what’s happening and what has been happening in Palestine and in Gaza for so many years. But the children especially have been the main victims of these terroristic attacks, whether it’s the sound of the explosions, the lights of the explosions, the shaking of the houses, the scenes on Facebook of so many limbless and beheaded people who were pulled from under the rubble of their houses. Just today — I mean, last night, my son, who is 3 years old, was sleeping, and there was bad bombing in the area. And he woke up, and he said, “Who did that?” And he said, “Let it stop.” I mean, that was the first time he was asking me to do that, as if I was responsible for the bombing.

So, I have nothing to do as a father. I have nothing to do as a neighbor or as a son. We are helpless here. We have been helpless all our lives, while the United States, unfortunately, is always stepping in to support Israel. And instead of trying to understand why what is happening is happening and to change it and offer solutions, they are just adding more fuel to the fire.

AMY GOODMAN: How do you respond to President Biden? Antony Blinken just arrived in Tel Aviv and had a news — made a statement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who say that terrorism will not be accepted. You have people like the far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said, “Palestinians have one of three options: only either to immigrate or accept a life of subjugation to Israelis, or die.” Can you respond to what has taken place and these statements?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Well, this is not very shocking to me. In fact, if Mr. Blinken could visit Tel Aviv and stay with the Israelis there, I’m so sorry to say that the Palestinian president cannot come to Gaza and visit us, because Israel would deny him permit. So there is a big difference between the supporters of Israel, the powers that are supporting Israel, and whoever wants to support the Palestinians, whether in Gaza or in the West Bank. I mean, why don’t they come here and listen to us? I have never heard of any president coming to Gaza and talking to us as people, the way that they come to Israel. And they are not only talking to them. They are providing them with assets. They are providing them with weapons. And they are trying these weapons on us.

And we have no option. I mean, where do we immigrate? We have been — we were born on this land. My parents were born on this land. My grandparents were born on this land. My great-grandparents were born here. But if you ask anyone in Israel, most of them would tell you that their grandparents were born somewhere else. And even I only have a Palestinian passport, which is really not very helpful when I leave Gaza — if I could leave Gaza. I mean, I remember one time when I went to the United States for the first time in 2019, I gave my passport to the officer at the airport, and they said, “Oh, your passport is expired.” And they were reading the wrong date, because in Arabic the dates are written from right to left, opposed to the English way of writing the dates from left or right. I panicked, in fact. He couldn’t read. He couldn’t read that this is a Palestinian passport. This is from an Arab country. It’s different from Europe and the United States. So, where do we go? And Netanyahu, on the second day of the escalation, asked the Palestinians in Gaza to leave. He said, “Leave now.” But where do we leave, and why should we leave? We have nowhere else to go.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Mosab, earlier today, Palestinian officials said that Secretary of State Blinken will meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday — that is to say, tomorrow. Could you respond to that and what you think might come out of that meeting?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Well, unfortunately, President Mahmoud Abbas couldn’t help with the situation in Gaza. I mean, if you want to help the Palestinians, you should come to Gaza — I mean, not necessarily these days. You could come, send any officials to the Gaza Strip and listen to our desires, listen to our basic needs. I don’t want you just to say, “I’m going to meet President Mahmoud Abbas,” with all due respect. He is the president of the Palestinian Authority. I think they are just meeting him because they want to show the world that we are meeting with Netanyahu and we are meeting with the Palestinian president. But this is not about — this is not going to save our lives.

Meeting with Netanyahu, I know they are supporting him economically, politically, militarily. But if he is going to meet with President Mahmoud Abbas, what is he going to tell him? Is he going to support him, send food trucks, medicine trucks to the Gaza Strip? Israel did threaten the Egyptians that if they are going to send any trucks into the Gaza Strip, they were going to bomb the trucks. And they did bomb the Rafah border crossing area, which led to Egypt shutting down the border crossing. And I did say in one time that Gaza has been the largest open air-prison in the world. Now it has become, with the closure of the two border crossings, between Gaza and Rafah — Egypt, sorry, and Gaza and Israel, now it has become a prison cell with no window.

AMY GOODMAN: Yousef, we have less than a minute to go. If you can talk about what needs to happen right now? The government media office has just released a statement warning the delay in response to the relief appeal is turning the besieged enclave into a mass grave.

YOUSEF HAMMASH: To be done immediately, we need to stop all of this massacres happening around us. And we need a longer-term solution. We cannot keep finding ourselves in this cycle of violence. I can keep calculating for an hour what I witnessed from the escalations, 2012, 2008, 2014, 2021, and I can keep calculating even the small escalation between them. We need a longer-term solution. The international community and the world leaders should stand ahead their responsibilities, ensuring a longer-term solution for Palestinians who live in Gaza. It start by immediate stop for this war and then lifting the blockade and finding a longer-term solution for us. This is unacceptable. We cannot keep finding ourselves — they made us feel be useless in front of our children. I agree with my neighbors, but it’s — what we are going through is traumatizing us, and I really believe we need years to recover from what’s going on now. This has to stop immediately.

AMY GOODMAN: Yousef Hammash is advocacy officer in Gaza for the Norwegian Refugee Council. Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet and author. We’ll link to his new piece in The Washington Post, “In Gaza, no one can believe their eyes.”

Coming up, we go to Tel Aviv to speak to a leading Israeli human rights attorney. Back in 30 seconds.

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Human Rights Lawyer Michael Sfard: “Israelis Must Maintain Their Humanity Even When Their Blood Boils”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/12 ... tional_law
OCTOBER 12, 2023

Transcript

Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer and expert on international human rights, calls for Israel to act within international law in response to Hamas’s attack on civilians Saturday. “My government is waging an attack that seems to be using war crimes to retaliate on war crimes,” says Sfard. “They want revenge, as if a revenge would bring back the dear ones that are gone.” Sfard says Israel should end its bombing and lift the blockade on Gaza because civilians do not deserve punishment for militant attacks. “Modern international law prohibits, with no exception, collective punishment.”

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: To talk more about the Israeli assault on Gaza, the siege and Hamas’s shocking attack on Israel, we’re joined by longtime Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard. He’s an expert on international human rights and international laws of war. He represents Palestinian and Israeli activists and human rights organizations. He’s also the author of the book The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine, and the Legal Battle for Human Rights. His new op-ed on Haaretz is titled “Israelis Must Maintain Their Humanity Even When Their Blood Boils.” Michael Sfard joins us in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Thank you so much for joining us, Michael, and welcome to Democracy Now! If you could talk about your piece that you wrote for Haaretz, “Israelis Must Maintain Their Humanity Even When Their Blood Boils”?

MICHAEL SFARD: Well, good morning to you, and thank you very much for having me.

These are terrible, terrible days, actually quite a nightmare that we’re living through, and my heart goes out to the previous interviewees from Gaza.

We have experienced a shock. I have to mediate to you the sentiment in the Israeli public, in the Israeli society. The attack on Saturday was a savage attack, targeting civilians, going from one house to another in civilian neighborhoods and killing, murdering women, children and elderly and innocent people, and also, in the scene of the party, killing hundreds of people. And the blood boils. And the blood boils. It’s not just that the blood boils, but also one feels a puncture in the heart, a hole in the stomach.

And now the question is: What do you do with that, with this, confronting this inhuman attack? Do you fill the punctured heart and the hole in your belly with cement, with concrete, or do you fill it with the warmth of compassion? And I’m afraid to say that many Israelis are extremely filled with rage and desire for revenge. And I, as a human rights lawyer — and in the last three decades I have been working tirelessly, dedicating my professional career to protect the rights of everyone, and especially Palestinian communities who are under occupation, under a regime of apartheid and under the very cruel blockade in Gaza — the only way that I know is to put a cry to adhere to the norms of international law. And I have to say I want to shout, but I understand that at this time there is very little space for a voice like that.

And when I hear the leaders of the state of Israel and the generals, and their rhetoric suggests that things that in the past they denied that the Israeli army is doing in the cycle of attacks on Gaza is now almost probably an official policy — targeting en masse inhabited areas, starving people as a method of warfare. I mean, this is — if what Hamas has done was a blatant war crime — and, I mean, the legal term is “war crime,” but, in fact, it’s a crime against humanity, not in the legal sense, but in the moral sense. It was an attack on everything that is human. To take hostage women with their children, elderly men and women on wheelchairs, this is just incomprehensible. But now my government is waging an attack that seems to be using war crimes to retaliate on war crimes. And this is definitely not what should be done now.

AMY GOODMAN: As a lawyer, as an Israeli, as a Jewish human rights lawyer, can you talk about what collective punishment means, legally and morally? I mean, I think about the Pittsburgh synagogue, which was the worst killing of Jews in the United States in many years; this brutal attack this weekend, the worst killing of Jews since the Holocaust. But the idea of the response being to attack an area of land that is the home to over 2 million people — in this case, 2 million Palestinians — if you can explain? When the shooter shot up the Pittsburgh synagogue, they didn’t destroy — U.S. authorities — his community, his neighborhood. They went after him. They tried him. Michael Sfard, can you respond?

MICHAEL SFARD: Yes. I mean, every moral, human moral system that I know rejects collective punishment, definitely modern ones, but also we find it in the Bible, that children should not bear the spoiled fruits that their fathers have eaten. I mean, there are many, many commandments even in the Bible, which is a very old system of norms, that says that people should individually be found responsible for crimes they are committing. And, of course, international law, modern international law, prohibits, with no exception, collective punishment. We have very clear language written into the Fourth Hague Regulations of 1907 and in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.

But I don’t think I need to reference to international treaties. It is something that each and every one of us has to have as an instinct, as a moral basic principle: People should bear responsibility for their deeds, and not their neighbors and not their people and not their sisters or brothers or mothers or fathers.

And it’s not the first time that Gazans are paying the price for things that are done by Hamas or by other groups in the Palestinian society, and not only in Gaza, but also in the West Bank. I mean, this is abhorrent, but this is exactly what’s going on. And under international law, it’s a war crime to inflict collective punishment definitely on civilians.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Michael, I mean, more Israeli citizens were killed Saturday than during the entire Second Intifada of 2000 to 2005. As Amy mentioned, more Jewish people were killed than — 1,300, over 1,300, since the Holocaust. Tony Blinken, secretary of state, speaking earlier today, invoked the experience of his stepfather who survived the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau. Now, if you could say — you’ve said it’s very important to understand the context under which Hamas’s attack took place. Do you believe, in Israel or elsewhere, there are enough people coming out with your position, condemning both Hamas’s attack as well as the occupation and Israel’s response in Gaza?

MICHAEL SFARD: There are people in Israel that feel — that have the same sentiment that I’ve voiced in my op-ed and I’m expressing here, but I have to be honest. I mean, we’re experiencing now a huge setback. I don’t know when there will be space for these kind of messaging in Israel or in Palestine, for that matter. Again, when the blood boils, people choose — and this is probably a human feature, but it’s not a good one. Humans have many, many good features, but they have a lot of bad ones. And this is a bad one. They want revenge, as if a revenge would bring back those, the dear ones that are gone.

And, yes, in reference to the Holocaust, people in Israel have a very special mental vocabulary. And the events of Saturday have immediately triggered the scenes of pogroms in Russia and Ukraine of the 19th century and, of course, the Holocaust, and the threat of annihilation, which is, of course, irrational, because we do — we have an army that had a huge, huge collapse, and, of course, one that would be investigated, an amazing failure, and yet the Israeli army is strong, and Israel is not under threat of annihilation. And yet this is exactly what people feel. And one has to understand that in order to understand the Israeli sentiment. People are feeling under threat of annihilation. And that is a part of our collective psychology. It’s not just benign. It’s not just something that we’ve grown into by chance. It’s something that is injected and indoctrinized from early age. I’m not different in that sense. I mean, I have to struggle with making these comparisons. And that allows the Israeli government and the Israeli army to do stuff that are just — that people should, in a normal circumstance, object to.

AMY GOODMAN: How do you respond, Michael Sfard, when you bring up the occupation, not as a justification for what happened this weekend, but saying that it is essential to understand and to resolve at this point, that these are not two equal nations where one invaded another? In the midst of all of this, Israel is responsible for what happens in the West Bank and Gaza.

MICHAEL SFARD: Yes, Amy, context is important. But I want to pause for a moment and say context is important in order to understand the root causes and in order to think of what is the way out, what is the way forward. But sometimes context is brought as a means to mitigate the horrific nature of what has happened. So, while I am ready and I will say some things about context, I do wish to say that what we’ve seen on Saturday has no justification whatsoever. It’s a crime. It’s inhuman. And this is something that — because every abhorrent crime in humanity’s history has a context, of course.

So, having said that, yes, Gaza is under occupation. And it’s not just any occupation. It’s an occupation coupled with a cruel blockade, blockade that put more than two-and-a-half million people for more than a decade and a half in a closed-up area, where Israel controls most borders and the airspace and the goods that flow in and the people that go in and out. And Israel retains Gaza on the verge of suffocation. And this is inhuman. And by the way, in the line of those responsible for this blockade, Israel stands first. But the line is long, and it includes the Western world that allows it. I can’t recall any other context in which the international community and the Western powers allowed such a blockade on millions of innocent people and not came over with a plan to end it. So, occupation and, yes, Israel is the strong power here, and, yes, Israel is the one that maintains that blockade. And if you look in the last decade and a half, it seemed like there was no reason for Israel to change its policy. America was fine with it. Europe was fine with that. The U.N. didn’t do much about it.

And I just hope — I hope, from this very deep pit that we’re in, that we will start now to — I mean, we’re now in the eye of the storm, so it is too early to say where we’re heading. But I — you know, I don’t pray; I’m not a religious person. But I desire that maybe from this calamity we will start crawling out of that pit. And we can try to do all these — trying to go through different roads. Eventually, the road map is right before us. It’s international law. It’s justice and human rights and respect for the dignity of all people and for their rights and for their collective rights, for the right of self-determination. There will be no end for this, no end to bloodshed, there will be no end to the conflict, without adhering to the principles that humanity has adopted throughout its long, scarred history of man-made catastrophes.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Michael, we have less than a minute, but if you could say something —

MICHAEL SFARD: My —

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Sorry to interrupt you — about the status of the Israeli hostages who have been taken by Hamas? What do you know about them, and what do you expect will happen? What do you know about what might happen?

MICHAEL SFARD: Well, one of the terrible things about the hostages situation is that Hamas would not provide any information about their condition. And that is an abuse, a psychological abuse, for the families. I mean, I heard all kinds of statements threatening to hurt them, to kill them. This is — I know very little. And unfortunately, my friends in Gaza, who are human rights — my colleagues in Gaza, I am not in — I fear for them, too, and I don’t know how they are, if they are safe, if they are alive.

You know, I just want to end with the following. My grandmother, my maternal grandmother, was a Holocaust survivor. She hid in the Warsaw Ghetto and then in the Aryan side of Warsaw for several years with her mother and sister. And she wrote an autobiography, where she wrote that probably the biggest challenge in the face of inhumanity, of being a victim of inhumanity, is to remain your own humanity. That’s the biggest challenge. And in this area, there are so many victims. So many victims. And the challenge is that those victims, that went through living hell, will retain their humanity.

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Sfard, I want to thank you for being with us, Israeli human rights lawyer. We’re going to link to your new article for Haaretz titled “Israelis Must Maintain Their Humanity Even When Their Blood Boils,” speaking to us from Tel Aviv.

Coming up, we speak with the Palestinian journalist Amjad Iraqi. Stay with us.

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Palestinian Journalist: Latest Violence Shatters Notion That Israeli Apartheid Is Sustainable
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
OCTOBER 12, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/12/amjad_iraqi

Transcript

Palestinian journalist and senior editor at +972 Magazine Amjad Iraqi believes Hamas breaking through the military border between Gaza and Israel has shattered the belief that the occupation is sustainable. Without being able to ignore Palestinians, Iraqi says, long-term reflection on Israel’s apartheid system is possible, but in the short term, the international community is indulging Israel’s desire for revenge. “Now for the far-right government, this massacre, as atrocious as it is, is for them a historic opportunity,” says Iraqi, who describes the desire of Israeli leadership to force out Palestinians or completely destroy Gaza in response to Saturday’s attack by Hamas. “There is no military solution to this issue, and the real problem in the end is this wider apartheid regime.”

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: “Palestinians and Israelis have grown accustomed to wars in the south in recent years. But the war that began in the early hours of Saturday, 7 October is nothing like the others.”

Those of the opening lines of a new piece in the London Review of Books by our next guest, the Palestinian journalist Amjad Iraqi, who joins us now from London. The article is headlined “’Get out of there now.” Amjad is senior editor at +972 Magazine and a policy member of Al-Shabaka. His latest piece for +972 is headlined “A psychological barrier has just been shattered in Israel-Palestine.”

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Amjad. Thank you so much for joining us. If you could explain why you think this invasion is different from the past, the 7th October one, and what psychological barrier has been broken?

AMJAD IRAQI: Thank you all for having me.

I think there’s no doubt that in many respects what we’ve been witnessing over the past couple of days is what is being described as a game changer. And there are two ways to kind of think about this. One is this kind of material and military shift that has just occurred by the fact that Hamas broke out of the Gaza Strip, a besieged enclave, both in terms of targeting the military infrastructure, but also the massacres that happened in these Israeli southern towns, that has really not only kind of broken this assumption of Gaza as this place that could maintain Palestinians and encage Hamas, but has really shaken the psychological barrier that exists in Israeli society and the Israeli establishment that the occupation is somehow sustainable, and that if they just keep enforcing the institutions of apartheid, that if they keep pounding Hamas and the Gaza Strip as often as possible, that somehow that is actually going to bring them security, that is going to bring safety, and through that, they can then continue to claim that Israel is a democracy, that Israel is a safe place for the Jewish people. And what we’ve witnessed with these atrocities that have happened is a complete shattering of that. It has broken to Israeli society that the Palestinians are not some distant problem, and that they cannot keep having the boot of their military apparatus upon them.

Unfortunately, as Michael was referring to earlier, I’m not sure how much this will have a lot of soul-searching and reflection, as right now we are seeing this complete desire to inflict total revenge on the Gaza Strip, from the political establishment to the media, all the way down. But I think that barrier that existed in the minds of Israeli society and the Israeli state that this system could work, I think, has really been broken by this assault.

AMY GOODMAN: You write, Amjad, in your +972 piece that these events will allow the most extremist elements within Netanyahu’s far-right administration to carry out as much of their agenda as possible. Can you respond, in particular, to what the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, convicted of supporting a terrorist organization and inciting hatred against Palestinians — what they want to happen now, and if you think that will become the dominant actions of the Netanyahu government, the war government, as they’re calling it right now, bringing in others into the government, as well, at this point?

AMJAD IRAQI: So, it’s no secret that the Israeli government now is really primarily being led by a gang of far-right demagogues, who have been very explicit for years, even before they arrived in office, about their ambitions for the Palestinians as a whole. And we’re seeing that being put out in full force over the past few months since the government has been in place, through the enabling and almost overt support of settler pogroms against West Bank towns and villages, and what is now eventually leading to the total expulsion of numerous Palestinian hamlets and people in order to make way for even more settler outposts and to even pave the way for more assertion of what they describe as Israeli sovereignty. We’ve been seeing this really being expedited in full force.

And now for the far-right government, this massacre, as atrocious as it is, is for them a historic opportunity. It is, for them, reinforcing this idea that the only solution to what they regard as “the Gaza problem” is either the complete mass destruction of the Strip or to try to eliminate, rather than merely contain, Hamas’s political and military apparatus, and, if possible — and this is really one of the most horrific potentials — is the potential that this moment could be used to try to expel masses of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip. The far-right ministers are very explicit about this ambition, and they really are trying to mobilize Israeli institutions in order to implement that process. And while we’re still in the throes of the storm, we’re already seeing that first demand on their wish list being implemented in a way that our Palestinian colleagues from Gaza were just describing.

And there’s a massive mutual interest, not just on the part of the far-right politicians, but also the Israeli military, which has been really humiliated by this massive breach of the Gaza fences by Hamas, completely subverting its intelligence or its appearance of being able to know at all times what Hamas is doing. Because of this shattering, the Israeli military also, arguably, is in line with the political establishment over what to do with this.

And time will tell where this leads, but we’re already seeing this indulgence of revenge, not just from the Israeli institutions themselves, but also the international community, including the United States, which is basically telling Israel to go ahead, and to actually justify that revenge and removing the political context, without necessarily having to excuse the massacres — which they should not — but to nonetheless realize that there is no military solution to this issue, and the real problem in the end is this wider apartheid regime that is activating even when you don’t have a war around Gaza, that is activating even on your, quote-unquote, “calm.” And this is the bigger issue that needs to be addressed.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Amjad, we just have a minute, but if you could say — you know, everybody says, as you said, this was unprecedented that Hamas broke through this barrier. People say, you know, they’ve been planning this attack for a long time. What statement have they made since this military assault on Gaza began? And what do you know of what they’re doing with the hostages and whether they’re willing to release them in exchange for Gaza getting some basic resources?

AMJAD IRAQI: It’s quite hard to say what the endgame is entirely. In many ways, the assault also probably surprised them as much as it did the Israelis. And right now I think they’re trying to — it seems like they’re trying to figure out what kind of bargaining chips they have in order to gain certain new kinds of agreements with the Israeli authorities, with the aid potentially of Arab states to try to mediate some kind of ceasefire, that helps to meet certain Hamas demands.

And they’ve been quite explicit about some of the things that they’re seeking, which are long-standing issues that have existed even before this far-right government, including the issue of release of Palestinian prisoners, including provocations and aggressions around Jerusalem, especially around the holy sites, and also, of course, what’s been happening in the West Bank under the Israeli occupation and settler violence. So, these are kind of the big structural demands that are still at play, and it seems that Hamas is now trying to use tactically, basically, what they have right now to kind of turn the tables. But because we’re still —

AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.

AMJAD IRAQI: — in the eye of the storm, because we’re still seeing the mists of this, it’s very hard to know where this is leading.

AMY GOODMAN: Palestinian journalist Amjad Iraqi, we thank you so much for being with us. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

[admin]

A Second Nakba? Israel Orders 1.1 Million Palestinians to Evacuate Northern Gaza Amid Bombing & Siege
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
OCTOBER 13, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/13 ... evacuation

Transcript

Israel’s military on Friday ordered 1.1 million civilians in the northern Gaza Strip to evacuate “southwards” in just 24 hours, a demand that aid groups say will cause untold human suffering. The ultimatum comes ahead of an expected ground invasion of the besieged coastal enclave, where authorities say 1,537 people have been killed since Israel began devastating airstrikes in retaliation for a Hamas attack in which militants killed 1,300 people and took some 150 hostages. Hamas says the intense Israeli bombardment that has pulverized much of Gaza also killed 13 hostages. Meanwhile, Israel continues to maintain a total blockade of the territory, blocking food, water, fuel and medicine from reaching those trapped inside. For more on the crisis and mounting human toll, we speak with Gaza writer Muhammad Shehada, who condemns the international community and mainstream media for its complicity in Israel’s destruction of Gaza. “These things are unimaginable horrors that are inflicted on Gaza right now with no one intervening to stop it,” he says. “This is pure madness.”

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Gaza, where Israel last night ordered the evacuation within 24 hours of all Palestinians living in the northern Gaza Strip — some 1.1 million people within 24 hours. The United Nations has condemned the order, saying it’s, quote, “impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” unquote.

Much of Gaza is already in the dark, as Israel has cut off energy, food and water supplies. The seven-day Israeli bombardment has killed at least 1,500 Palestinians. Israel declared war after Saturday’s surprise brutal attack by Hamas militants on Israel, where the death toll has reached 1,300. Israel is now amassing tanks on the border of Gaza ahead of what appears to be an imminent ground invasion.

Some 400,000 Palestinians had already been displaced prior to Israel’s evacuation order last night. Some groups have announced plans to defy Israel’s order. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said, quote, “Despite the occupation’s threats to shell; the decision has been made. We did and will not leave. Our medics will carry on their humanitarian duties. We won’t leave people face death alone,” unquote.

Many in Gaza fear Israel’s evacuation order is the start of a second Nakba. Seventy-five years ago, in 1948, some 700,000 Palestinians fled from or were violently expelled from their homes upon Israel’s founding in 1948. Much of Gaza’s population are refugees from families displaced 75 year ago.

We begin today’s show with Muhammad Shehada, a writer and analyst from Gaza, chief of communications at Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, columnist at The Forward newspaper, a Jewish weekly in New York. He’s joining us from Copenhagen.

Muhammad, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you describe what’s happening on the ground? And first respond to this order from the Israeli government that half the population of Gaza, 1.1 million people, must leave the north and head south, and they gave them 24 hours last night to do it.

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Yes. Thanks, Amy.

I’ve been through at least six Israeli military operations, or even more. This is like nothing I’ve ever seen in my entire life and nothing like Gaza has ever seen, in terms of magnitude, scale, level of destruction and death. Entire neighborhoods are totally unrecognizable.

With the evacuation orders, it’s basically plain and very obvious forcible transfers. And its most important thing about it is that it’s unimplementable. If you know Gaza geographically and physically and the devastation of infrastructure there, you would know that most roads are broken. There is vast electricity, internet outages. People are not getting any news. At the same time, the area that Israel wants people to go out of is the most densely populated part of Gaza and the area with the most safe shelters, these U.N. schools — although not very safe, because Israel bombed a lot of them over the last six days, but it’s the area with the most U.N. schools. It’s the area with the most hospitals. And right now you have over 7,000 Palestinians wounded in al-Shifa Hospital and other hospitals around Gaza, around the area that Israel wants them to evacuate from. So, by the mere act of evacuation, many people are going to lose their lives.

The other issue is that there are not enough houses, not enough spaces or shelter in the south of Gaza that Israel wants to push people towards to be in. The only realistic outcome of this is that we’re going have people just literally baking in the sun in 30 degrees Celsius temperature, about 85 degrees Fahrenheit, daily, in the sun, in the street, without any access to hospitals, any access to food or water, let alone the sheer terror of Palestinians experiencing a second Nakba. Many people there are saying, “We’re not leaving our homes.” The Palestinian Red Crescent said, “We refuse to evacuate, because we’re not going to let our people face death alone.”

At the same time, I’m aware that there is some pressure from European officials on the Israeli government discreetly to sort of backtrack this decision, but they are telling me, quite obviously, that it’s unlikely they would have much influence on Israel without the U.S. coming on board. And until now, the Biden administration hasn’t made its mind up about an event that’s way, way more horrendous than the Palestinian Nakba. We’re talking almost about double the amount of Palestinians that were displaced in 1948 just gone in 24 hours.

AMY GOODMAN: We’ve been trying to reach guests in Gaza and were not able to make any connection at this point. Muhammad Shehada, if you could explain more the conditions on the ground? And the significance, as I listened last night to the general director of the Palestine Red Crescent Society say, “How do we move people out of hospitals with this short amount of time, not to mention more than a million people?”

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Yes. So, before the evacuation orders, almost everyone I know in Gaza, they say, “Our knees cannot lift us up.” They haven’t had any sleep for more than two to three hours a night, punctuated by constant military airstrikes, because Israel dropped, up until yesterday, about 6,000 bombs on Gaza in six days. That’s about a bomb every one-and-a-half minutes. Every single neighborhood in Gaza was damaged, every single street, area. All the famous sites are completely gone, pulverized.

At the same time, I talked — the last time I talked to people was this morning. I talked to at least two to three people, and I lost them as I was talking with him on the line, because of airstrikes or running out of electricity and internet. Israel bombed Gaza’s main telecommunication company on the third or fourth day of this escalation, bombed it completely, leading to outages in vast areas of Gaza. And the last time I talked to someone, the last one I spoke to is a Gazan Irish citizen. He holds Irish citizenship, European. And he was telling me basically this: “I only have few liters of water in my home, for a family of six. I don’t know where am I going to go. I have a few batteries, and they’re running out of power.” And he doesn’t know if he’s going to stay alive.

Most people I know in Gaza are uploading — literally, uploading their wills and last words to their social media accounts and begging for forgiveness from anyone that they’ve ever wronged or done anything to, and saying, “Please forgive us, and we forgive you, as well.” This is what it has come down to.

AMY GOODMAN: Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett exploded at a Sky News anchor, Kamali Melbourne, during an interview Thursday, after Melbourne pressed Bennett on Israel’s attacks on Palestinian civilians. Here’s a portion of the exchange.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: What about those Palestinians in hospital who are on life support and babies in incubators, whose life support and incubator will have to be turned off because the Israelis have cut the power to Gaza?

NAFTALI BENNETT: Are you seriously keep on asking me about Palestinian civilians? What’s — what’s wrong with you? Have you not seen what happened? We’re fighting Nazis. We don’t target them. Now, the world can come and bring them anything they want, if you want to bring them electricity. I’m not going to feed electricity or water to my enemies. If anyone else wants, that’s fine. We’re not responsible for them.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: But this is the point —

NAFTALI BENNETT: But you keep on —

KAMALI MELBOURNE: This is the point —

NAFTALI BENNETT: You — I want to tell you —

KAMALI MELBOURNE: No, no, Mr. Bennett, this is the point.

NAFTALI BENNETT: No. No, listen.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: Listen.

NAFTALI BENNETT: You listen to me right now.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: No, you’re raising your voice. And we’re trying —

NAFTALI BENNETT: I’ve heard you enough.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: No, no, I understand. We’re trying to have a conversation here.

NAFTALI BENNETT: I’ve heard a lot of you.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: Listen, this is my program.

NAFTALI BENNETT: No, you’re not having a —

KAMALI MELBOURNE: This is my show.

NAFTALI BENNETT: And that’s exactly —

KAMALI MELBOURNE: And I am asking the questions. You’re raising your voice.

NAFTALI BENNETT: But it’s my country.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: And I’ve asked you. And we’ve already —

NAFTALI BENNETT: And when people — when people —

KAMALI MELBOURNE: We’ve already — stop, please.

NAFTALI BENNETT: When people —

KAMALI MELBOURNE: And let me finish. We’ve already distinguished —

NAFTALI BENNETT: Shame on you, Mister.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: — between Hamas —

NAFTALI BENNETT: I want to tell you, you — shame on you.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: You’re trying to speak over me.

NAFTALI BENNETT: Because we are not —

KAMALI MELBOURNE: No, no.

NAFTALI BENNETT: Shame on you.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: It’s nothing about shame.

NAFTALI BENNETT: I am the — I was the prime minister.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: We’re trying to have a conversation —

NAFTALI BENNETT: There is absolutely shame.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: — about a very serious situation here.

NAFTALI BENNETT: Because when you just jump —

KAMALI MELBOURNE: And you are refusing to address it.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Sky News anchor Melbourne challenging the former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who said to him, “You’re daring to ask me about Palestinian civilians?” Muhammad Shehada, your response?

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Well, I’m afraid that this is now becoming a mainstream sentiment in Israel — and not just in Israel, amongst official European and American leaders, and in the media, as well. If you’ve been looking at what Israeli politicians are saying, about two days ago, an Israeli lawmaker, senior one in the ruling coalition, Limor Son Har-Melech, she wrote on Twitter, saying, quote, “There are no innocents in Gaza. Flatten Gaza,” quite literally, very openly. Now we have the architect, the godfather of the Israeli judicial coup, or judicial overhaul, Simcha Rothman, he is now saying that the main goal of this operation is that a Jewish kid can walk freely in Gaza alone, if there would be a Gaza at all. So this sentiment is shared widely.

But what I find most striking are two things. Number one, European diplomats in the Occupied Territories are telling me that their leaders, their bosses, their foreign ministries, for the last at least five to six days, were not bringing Gaza up to their Israeli counterparts at all. That’s the same with the U.S. government. They’re not bringing what’s Israel’s conduct in Gaza at all, aside from the issue of the humanitarian corridor. This might change now with the forcible transfer of 1.1 million people. But at the same time, this level of complicitness, I’ve never seen before.

And it’s the same with mainstream media. I’ve seen circulation of allegations, that were completely debunked, of extreme, horrendous atrocities, like mass rapes and decapitation of babies, being taken at face value by virtually all the mainstream media, circulating immediately and without the slightest work of journalistic integrity or investigation, although it was later debunked. And at the same time, when we have Human Rights Watch coming out yesterday and saying, “We have solid evidence of Israel using phosphorus munition on Gaza’s civilian populations” — that’s a chemical incendiary weapon that burns on immediate and ignites on immediate impact with oxygen, and it burns flesh and bone, and it cannot be turned off, and the toxic fumes of it can be lethal and can cause respiratory — permanent respiratory damage. Human Rights Watch says Israel is using it. This is a war crime. And virtually not a single mainstream media is picking up and reporting on this.

So, it’s unimaginable, the level of complicitness that I see in this round of escalation. Nobody is calling for deescalation or ceasefire, not even a humanitarian ceasefire, although they did that in the last major war on Gaza, 2014. That was the United Nations and the U.S. We had a humanitarian ceasefire for 72 hours. But this time there is not even any talk about it, not even a thought for it. And that, I find most frightening.

I get a lot of questions from my colleagues, family and people I love in Gaza, asking, “Are we going to stay alive?” One of my friends, she says, “I just gave birth about a month ago. My baby is clinging to me. I’m afraid if he’s going to die from a heart attack from the airstrikes and fear and terror,” at the same time that she’s afraid that her husband might get killed or taken away from her if there’s a ground invasion, at the same time that she’s afraid that she’s going to end up permanently a refugee in the Sinai desert. These things are unimaginable horrors that are inflicted on Gaza right now with no one intervening to stop it. This is pure madness.

AMY GOODMAN: On CNN last night, a former military Israeli analyst said, “Our goal isn’t turning Gaza City into a parking lot. Our goal is to turn Gaza into a Hamas-less region.” Muhammad Shehada, if you can respond, in this last answer?

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Yeah, exactly. As I said, Israeli leaders, politicians and members of the ruling coalition are openly admitting that the goal is flattening Gaza. Simcha Rothman, as I said, he is the architect, the chief architect, of the Israeli judicial overhaul. He is one of the top lawmakers in the Israeli ruling coalition. And he is saying openly the goal is that a Jewish Israeli kid can walk in and out freely, if there would be a Gaza at all. He is admitting it very openly.

And I’ve seen the sentiment not just from Israeli politicians, but from Israeli media, as well, from Israeli pundits, analysts and commentators. Voices of reason in Israel are now becoming a shunned minority. Many of them are afraid to speak up, because now the atmosphere is so hostile, so polarized and toxic and dehumanizing for people in Gaza that whenever Gaza is brought up, the only thing that’s brought up with it is Nazis. Can you imagine if any person in Gaza would refer to Israel as such, how many condemnations would be poured on their heads immediately?

AMY GOODMAN: Muhammad Shehada, I want to thank you so much for being with us, usually based in Palestine, in Gaza, a writer and analyst, chief of communications at Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, columnist for The Forward newspaper, a Jewish weekly here in New York.

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

Former EU Envoy: Israel’s Forced Transfer of Palestinians in Gaza Would Be a War Crime
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
OCTOBER 13, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/13 ... aza_israel

Transcript

Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, recently retired European Union ambassador to Palestine, says Israeli pain and anger cannot justify war crimes in Gaza, where Israeli bombardment has already killed over 1,500 people. Now with Israel demanding the relocation of 1.1 million people ahead of an expected ground invasion, von Burgsdorff says Israel must adhere to international law and protect civilians. “No matter what Hamas did, it does not justify the incredible use of lethal force without distinction and without proportionality as far as the Palestinian population is concerned in Gaza,” he says.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn right now to Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, a former EU, European Union, ambassador to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, served in that post up until July.

Your response to this order by the Israeli military that half the population of Gaza must move within a 24-hour period, starting last night, from the north to the south, Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff?

SVEN KÜHN VON BURGSDORFF: Yeah. Thank you, Ms. Goodman. And, of course, I can fully second what Muhammad Shehada has so well described as the absolute catastrophe which 2 million Gazans are facing.

Let me start by saying I’m fully aware of this deep hate and frustration and despair which befell the Israeli society. And when they speak of their 9/11, of what happened last Saturday, I understand, of course, that view and that emotional tension they are under right now, and that makes it so difficult to have a rational discussion, not only in Israel, but also in Europe and in the U.S.

But we have to be aware that we still are governed by international law. We have left the medieval times. We have rules of conduct for war. We have rules of conduct of how apply humanitarian principles. And no matter what Hamas did, it does not justify the incredible use of lethal force without distinction and without proportionality as far as the Palestinian population is concerned in Gaza. Distinction, proportionality and precaution are sacrosanct principles for the code of conduct of armed hostilities. And Israel, as a democracy, cannot escape that and has to be held accountable. It cannot be that Israel has a carte blanche because terrible acts, brutal, gruesome acts happened to 1,000 or even 1,200 Israelis. That is not the excuse you can use to flatten Gaza.

And let me come back to the point of what you exactly asked. The announcement of the IDF to basically forcibly evict more than 1 million Gazans from their homes in the northern part of the Strip is likely to be criticized by international legal experts as a war crime, if there is no provision made for ensuring humanitarian access and exit and the necessary facilities to accommodate the basic human rights to water, energy, food and physical safety, let alone health. And this is also clearly signed in all international conventions Israel has ratified and is accountable to. So it is unexcusable if the international community does not use its pressure point to hold Israel to account for what they have pledged before the international community to respect.

I understand the emotions, they run very high right now in Israel. I am in retirement right now in France, so I am not now on the post. But I can understand that. But as I said, we all have to uphold international law, international humanitarian law and international human rights law. That is the yardstick. That is the most important measure of conduct for all of us.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, who arrived in Israel today, and play for you a comment she made last year about Russia targeting civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.

URSULA VON DER LEYEN: War crimes. Targeted attacks on civilian infrastructure, with a clear aim to cut off men, women, children of water, electricity and heating, with the winter coming, these are acts of pure terror. And we have to call it as such.

AMY GOODMAN: So, she’s talking about what Russia is doing in Ukraine. Would this also apply to Israel and Palestine?

SVEN KÜHN VON BURGSDORFF: International law applies everywhere. Human rights are universal, indivisible and inalienable. This is the EU position across the world.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about a statement by Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council. He’s got dozens of workers in Palestine. We just spoke to Yousef yesterday from the Jabaliya refugee camp, is where he lives. He came in, talked about the difficulty of even moving to be able to talk to us, to find a space that had electricity. Today we can’t reach people in Gaza. But Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, commented on the Israeli relocation ultimatum of Gaza civilians, saying, “The Israeli military demand that 1.2 million civilians in northern Gaza relocate to its south within 24 hours, absent of any guarantees of safety or return, would amount to the war crime of forcible transfer. It must be reversed,” he said. Your response, Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff?

SVEN KÜHN VON BURGSDORFF: I fully subscribe to the statement of Jan Egeland. As an international legal expert, as a political scientist, as a former diplomat and as a human being, there is no doubt that this has to be respected.

And by the way, let me just underline this: If Israel decides to close its crossings in Kerem Shalom and in Erez, Egypt is bound by international law to open its border crossing in Rafah. And it cannot be that Israel threatens to bomb corridors and transports carrying humanitarian facilities and equipment. It cannot be. This is another war crime if that would take place. Egypt also has to ensure that its obligations towards refugees under international law are fully respected. So, it’s not just ensuring that in the space of the south, if one were actually to displace people, all the facilities are there, fully knowing that this amounts already, this forced eviction, to a war crime, but also the ability for people to be able to exit for humanitarian reasons this highly dense populated strip in Gaza in the south would also need for Egypt to open its borders. And, of course, it has community of providing the necessary provisions to facilitate that people can live there.

Again, this can only be a temporary solution. It cannot be that, as Muhammad Shehada said, we are basically witnessing a second Nakba, whereby the entire Gazan population is forcibly evicted from their homeland, which is Gaza, from their homes. And that is also something I think we have clearly to underline when talking to Israel and when engaging with them on finding a solution.

Let me just say an important thing right now: The key political measure right now is to deescalate and stop any further war crime and try to ensure that the people of Gaza are fully safe and protected. And, of course, I understand that there’s the important issue of freeing the hostages. I don’t know whether it’s 150 or whatever the number is. But it’s very important that this process be done as soon as possible and through negotiations. This is also a very important element which we have to be aware of. So, humanitarian access and exit and freeing the hostages and deescalating are the three key, I think, objectives one has to engage on now.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you for being with us, Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, former EU ambassador to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, served in that post up until July, speaking to us from France.

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Noura Erakat: Western Leaders & Media Are Justifying Israel’s “Genocidal Campaign” Against Palestinians
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
OCTOBER 13, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/13 ... aza_israel

The unfolding crisis in Gaza, where relentless Israeli bombardment has killed more than 1,500 people since Saturday, is “a humanitarian catastrophe,” says Palestinian American human rights attorney Noura Erakat. She says Western leaders and the mainstream media have relied on racist, Islamophobic tropes to build a false consensus “that war is inevitable and that whatever consequences come out is the fault of Hamas, thereby further blaming the victims for their own killing and massacres.” Erakat also decries the Israeli order that 1.1 million residents in Gaza relocate under threat of a ground invasion. “What we are seeing is a genocidal campaign. You cannot forcibly transfer 1.1 million Palestinians in a 225-square-mile enclosed area. There is nowhere for them to go,” says Erakat, an associate professor at Rutgers University and author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine.

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

Last night, the Israeli army ordered half the population of Gaza, 1.1 million residents, to evacuate their homes within 24 hours from northern Gaza to the south, in what many Palestinians fear is the start of a second Nakba. The U.N. said the mass transfer of half of Gaza’s population would have devastating humanitarian consequences. This comes as Israel has bombed Gaza for seven straight days, killing at least 1,500 people.

Joining us now, Noura Erakat, Palestinian human rights attorney, associate professor at Rutgers University, author of Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine. She’s speaking to us from Philadelphia.

Noura, if you can respond to this order and what’s happening in Gaza?

NOURA ERAKAT: Good morning, Amy, and thank you.

Your reporting has been an oasis in a sea of warmongering across mainstream media, for which I have deep contempt at this moment. They have mobilized almost every racial trope of savagery, barbarian. They have built on Islamophobia and the infrastructure of the “war on terror” to create a commonsense, logical conclusion that war is inevitable, and whatever consequences come out is the fault of Hamas, thereby further blaming the victims for their own killing and massacres.

At this point, we have to understand that there is no military solution. There has never been a military solution to this. Hamas cannot be eradicated. As we’ve seen, right now Palestinians are being killed, pulled from out of the rubble. We have not given them hope. I saw a young girl staring in trauma at the screen, her entire family decimated. What will happen to this young girl in 20 years? What will we tell her? That Israel had no choice? That this was your fault, and now your future is to continue to be stuck in an open-air prison?

There must be hope. And that hope lies in a political solution and in the responsibility of the international community to dismantle an apartheid system, to dismantle prolonged military occupation, the longest in the world, to lift a debilitating siege that has condemned Palestinians to slow death. This is a human-made disaster, a catastrophe, according to the World Health Organization. This is not a crisis; it is a humanitarian catastrophe. If we are to create a future, it has to begin and end with a political and diplomatic solution.

AMY GOODMAN: We have this update: Palestine’s Ministry of Health said seven Palestinians have been shot dead by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank today. Five hundred Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza, and at least Hamas is saying that 13 of the hostages have died in the Israeli airstrikes. These are hostages that Hamas took from the Gaza border. Your response to all?

NOURA ERAKAT: It’s devastating, Amy. All of us are watching this. But one of the things that we’ve been emphasizing is that although what we’re seeing is devastating, we’ve also been laying a pathway out of it. While international human rights organizations and Israeli human rights organizations came to near consensus in 2020 that Israel oversees an apartheid system, a crime against humanity, what is the greatest crime, that is sustaining this ongoing structure of violence, there should have been mobilization to impose weapons sanctions on Israel, to impose a diplomatic solution, to force Israel in order to dismantle this racist, colonial structure that has basically condemned Palestinians to permanent subjugation. It is the failure of the international community to mobilize that has now produced this outcome. It is all of our responsibility. There is blood on all of our hands.

And now the way out is not a military solution. We have to deescalate. There must be a ceasefire. There must be a recognition that Hamas, unlike these awful comparisons to ISIS and al-Qaeda, is actually a nascent sovereign of the Palestinian people, who has only targeted Israel. That gives them the right to use armed force, though that right is not qualified — that right is not — excuse me — unqualified. They cannot use it however which way, based on ongoing trauma and violence. But it must be recognized that as a nascent sovereign, they are representing a Palestinians’ people struggle for freedom.

And as we’ve seen from the broad Palestinian public institutions, civil society organizations, other political parties, they have all insisted that responsibility for this lies at the feet of Israel. The Haaretz editorial team has also said this lies at the responsibility of Israel.

This is not about finger-pointing, nor is it about bean counting the dead. There is tragedy on all sides. But if we are interested, if we are interested in not only ending this particular crisis, but of also achieving a durable, truthful, long-lasting solution, we have to go beyond this moment to dismantle the structures of violence that are sustaining it and creating these tragedies that are hurting everybody and will spill, beyond Israelis and Palestinians, throughout the region and throughout the world.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about the White House just saying that Gaza City’s evacuation is a “tall order.” The Israeli army’s call for more than a million people to evacuate North Gaza, a “tall order,” the White House has said, adding the U.S. understands Israel is trying to give civilians “fair warning.” Your response, Noura Erakat?

NOURA ERAKAT: That is so cynical. That is so cynical and can only be corroborated by an irresponsible media that has failed to show decimation of Palestinian communities, the attack on shelters, the attack on refugee camps. What warnings? To what end? Palestinians have been under siege for 16 years. There are no humanitarian corridors. The one corridor with Egypt was bombed by Israel. The minister of Israeli defense literally said that there will be no — there will be no exit, that there will be a siege, that electricity will be cut off, that water will be cut off, that Palestinians are “human animals.”

There has been a priming that all of these mass atrocities will be accepted by a population who will watch it with lament but think to themselves, “But what else was Israel supposed to do?” We are all being primed to accept mass atrocities. This historically is the playbook of how genocides happen. What we are seeing is a genocidal campaign.

You cannot forcibly transfer 1.1 million Palestinians in a 225-square-mile enclosed area. There is nowhere for them to go. The largest hospital, Palestinian hospital, that is literally on life support — no pun intended — to stay functioning, is in the north. Where will these Palestinians be treated?

What we are seeing is an ongoing shrinking of Palestinian land, is an ongoing campaign to take that land without the people. They want to shrink and concentrate the Palestinians now below Wadi Gaza in what is an untenable situation. As much as we think that this is about war and conflict and perpetual animosities, this is about land and water.

And there is only one viable future. We either all live together, or we all die together. And despite all of our appeals for us to survive and live together, the international community, mainly the Western governments, led by the United States — the European capitals, who have already cut off aid to Israel, France, which has banned Palestinian protests, Germany, which has banned Palestinian protests — are intent on a military option where there is no outcome. Military solution will not produce an outcome of a viable future for anybody.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, I already played this, but I’m going to play a much shorter clip of the former Israeli prime minister, because of how significant he is, Naftali Bennett, who’s now serving in the army in Gaza, exploding at the Sky News anchor Kamali Melbourne when asked about what’s happening with Palestinian civilians.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: What about those Palestinians in hospital who are on life support and babies in incubators, whose life support and incubator will have to be turned off because the Israelis have cut the power to Gaza?

NAFTALI BENNETT: Are you seriously keep on asking me about Palestinian civilians? What’s — what’s wrong with you?

AMY GOODMAN: “Are you seriously asking me about what’s happening to Palestinian civilians?” the former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said. You’re a human rights attorney, Noura Erakat. Your response?

NOURA ERAKAT: My response is, doesn’t have to be based on any expertise in human rights. This is about morality. This is about decency. The fact that Naftali Bennett can get upset about Palestinian civilians and the death of babies in incubators should be indicative to us that Palestinians do not have the same right to survive, that we are not exacting an equality and a respect and a decency for all civilian life.

We have set up this situation, Amy. We have set up this situation where Palestinians are expected to die. And what we are seeing in this moment is now an expectation that they can die in mass numbers, that they can die being in hospitals where they are cut off by electricity by the Middle East’s only nuclear power, the 11th most powerful military in the world. It’s the 12th largest military exporter, and the United States and the European community is sending them arms. They do not need arms. This is not a security situation. This is not a failure of security. This is a crisis of political will.

AMY GOODMAN: Noura —

NOURA ERAKAT: This is a — rather than normalize apartheid by inviting Israeli President Isaac Herzog to the Congress, Congress should have mobilized for an immediate imposition of sanctions in order to create a future where all people live, where all of us live, not just some of us.

AMY GOODMAN: Noura Erakat, we want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian human rights attorney, associate professor at Rutgers University. You just talked about hospitals.

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Gaza’s Health System at a “Breaking Point” Amid Israeli Siege & Bombing
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
OCTOBER 13, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/13 ... cal_system

Transcript

The World Health Organization warns Gaza’s healthcare system is at a “breaking point” under Israel’s unabated bombing of civilians, and its blockade of resources and medical supplies. The WHO also reports dozens of attacks on hospitals and ambulances. We speak with Dr. Zaher Sahloul, a physician specializing in disaster relief with the international medical nonprofit MedGlobal, which is supporting doctors in Gaza. He calls the situation there “beyond catastrophic” as the number of critically injured patients far outstrips available hospital beds. Sahloul says the U.S. must tell Israel to stop the “hell that is raining on Gaza.”

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org.

On Thursday, the World Health Organization warned the health system in Gaza is at a breaking point. The WHO said, quote, “Without the immediate entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza — especially health services, medical supplies, food, clean water, fuel, and non-food items — humanitarian and health partners will be unable to respond to urgent needs of people who desperately need it. Each lost hour puts more lives at risk,” they said.

We’re joined now by Dr. Zaher Sahloul, president and CEO of MedGlobal, an international medical nonprofit that provides healthcare in disaster regions. He’s joining us from Chicago.

Dr. Sahloul, we only have three minutes. Can you talk about the situation on the ground, what’s possible, what is happening right now to the people of Gaza, especially with this demand that half of the population move from north to south? This is including the populations of the hospitals.

DR. ZAHER SAHLOUL: The situation is beyond catastrophic. I mean, I don’t have words to describe what’s happening right now. I’ve been in Ukraine, actually. I just came from Ukraine two weeks ago and visited some of the areas that were hit by the Russians. I’ve been in Syria. I’ve been in Lebanon, other places. I’ve been to Gaza four times. But this is the worst I have seen, in Gaza.

Children are dying unnecessarily because of this bombing. What happened in Israel a week ago should not justify what’s happening to the Palestinian children and the women and the elderly right now, and what will happen, the futures.

Hospitals are overwhelmed. We have only 2,500 beds in Gaza, and right now we have 7,000 critically ill, injured patients in Gaza. I’ve seen videos yesterday that was promoted by Dr. Hassam, who works in one of the hospitals in Gaza, where patients are on the floor of the emergency room because there’s not enough beds. Every exam bed has three children crying, and many of them are not crying because they are in shock. Doctors and nurses are in shock, not because of the overwhelming patients that are coming to the hospital, but because also they are not sure whether their families are safe or not or whether they will live for one more day or not. There is 75 attacks, according to the World Health Organization, in the last six days on hospitals, on ambulances, that led to 15 medics who were killed and 30-plus who were injured.

The situation going to get worse. That means more innocent people will die unnecessarily. Our hearts and prayers are with the people of Gaza, with the Palestinian people of Gaza, who are not responsible for what happened in Israel. Every loss of life should be treated the same way. And I don’t think — as a physician, I’ve been in crisis areas and disasters for the past 12 years. This is the worst I have seen. And I’m really fearful for the Palestinian people and the children, that have no connection to what happened in Israel. They’re not responsible for what happened in Israel.

The situation is beyond catastrophe. And I urge our government, because they are the only party that is able to stop this hell that is raining on Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: President Zaher Sahloul, I want to thank you for being with us, president and CEO of MedGlobal, speaking to us from Chicago.

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“Gaza Is Running Out of Life”: Human Rights Watch Sounds Alarm on Israel’s Collective Punishment
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 16, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/16 ... transcript

The death toll from Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has topped 2,700, including more than 1,000 Palestinian children. As the humanitarian crisis worsens, we get an update from Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, who says conditions in Gaza are dire, as Israel has cut off access to electricity and safe water, and many disabled and ill residents are physically unable to obey the evacuation order. This comes as Israeli President Isaac Herzog said his government holds the entire population of Gaza, including civilians and children, responsible for Hamas’s attack. Shakir also discusses Israel’s use of white phosphorus, an illegal weapon of war. “People in Gaza are saying their goodbyes to the world,” says Shakir.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Gaza, where the death from Israel’s 10-day bombardment has topped 2,750. The dead include over a thousand Palestinian children. Over 50 Palestinians have also been killed in the occupied West Bank. Over 1 million residents of Gaza have been displaced, including many who fled their homes after Israel ordered the entire northern Gaza Strip to be vacated. More than a thousand people are believed to be trapped under rubble following Israeli airstrikes.

And the humanitarian catastrophe is growing as hospitals are running out of electricity and water due to the Israeli siege. Water has already run out at U.N. shelters across the Gaza Strip. This is Dr. Mohammed Abu Mughaiseeb, deputy medical coordinator in Gaza for Doctors Without Borders.

DR. MOHAMMED ABU MUGHAISEEB: The situation is very difficult. I mean, today we were for two hours searching for drinkable water. Even drinkable water is not available anymore. It’s very difficult. Food, still there is food. No electricity, no pumping of normal water, as well. The hospitals are barely working. I mean, there’s a lot of medical staff who left the hospital with their families because you cannot — I mean, they are not safe, so they need to stay with their families to evacuate, as well. Medication is really decreasing in the private pharmacies, as well. So, I mean, it’s very dangerous. I mean, they are bombing all the day, so, I mean, there is no humanitarian corridor. Today I am in contact with some hospitals, mainly Shifa. Burn unit, there is only one surgeon, one anesthesiologist, no nurses at all in the hospital, in this burn unit especially. They have a lot of shortage or — I mean, we don’t know what will be tomorrow and where we are going.

AMY GOODMAN: Oxfam’s Omar Ghrieb recorded this audio message from Gaza after fleeing the northern Gaza Strip after Israel ordered the area fully evacuated. He described the mass exodus as “Nakba 2.0.”

OMAR GHRIEB: Perhaps yesterday was one of the worst days of my life. We spent years hearing from our grandparents about Nakba and what that was and how they felt. And I think yesterday we had the chance to actually see it with our own eyes when we were all pushed into mass expulsion, to go from north and center Gaza into southern Gaza. And it was really horrible. People spent over 14 hours in an influx of a sea made of people, just walking with their belongings, holding children, holding sick people, holding people with disability, just walking and walking and walking under the sun, begging any passing car to take them, but most cars were full to the brim. It was Nakba 2.0 happening right in front of our eyes, and we are actually a part of it.

I don’t know how and when we reached the south, but people kept coming. The streets were frantically busy. And I saw so many people just taking the streets, like putting their children and their belongings in the street and just sitting there, because most really left aimlessly with nowhere to go and no one to seek refuge to. And on top of that, they talked about a safe humanitarian route, and then they bombed two trucks filled with people. Tens were dead. I saw the bombing place. I don’t know what’s going to happen next.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Oxfam’s Omar Ghrieb speaking from Gaza. Many Palestinians say there’s no place for them to go. This is Um Muhammad Al-Laham, a grandmother, speaking from a hospital in Khan Younis next to her 4-year-old granddaughter, who was the only member of her family to survive after Israel bombed their home.

UM MUHAMMAD AL-LAHAM: [translated] They were sitting inside the house. My sons and his sons and one of their mothers-in-law were at his house. Suddenly, without warning, they bombed the house. Fourteen people were killed. Only this girl, my granddaughter Fulla, survived. I hope she’ll get better and stay safe and heal. May their souls rest in peace. God is the one who gives patience to people. … May God keep me alive to take care of her, and she will be a good person. She is the only person alive from her father’s family, who is martyred, also her brother, sister, mother, grandmother from her mother’s side, her uncles — all of them, 14 people all at once.

AMY GOODMAN: In Israel, family members who have loved ones kidnapped by Hamas held protests over the weekend demanding their safe return. Israel now believes Hamas is holding 199 hostages, a figure that’s higher than previous estimates. This is Avichai Brodetz, a farmer from kibbutz Kfar Aza. His wife and three children were taken captive in Gaza — to Gaza.

AVICHAI BRODETZ: And my kids are over there, along with my wife, I hope in good health. And I want them to come back home in good health. And I came here. This is where decisions are being made in Israel. If I could go to the center of Gaza and do the same thing, I would. And I wish I could go there some day. … We have to stop. I think we got this right now as a sign from God just to stop the bloodshed. And I ask Hamas, which is holding my family — I hope, again, in good health — please stop, and the Israeli government to please stop and just bring the women and children back.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. He’s joining us from Chicago.

Omar, tell us the latest — it’s so difficult to make contact with people in Gaza right now — what you understand is happening, Israel demanding that the entire population of northern Gaza, which is the main population center, including Gaza City, must move south of Khan Younis, then, though, that we heard that they were bombing Khan Younis. Talk about the situation now.

OMAR SHAKIR: We’re witnessing a situation that’s simply not fathomable for any of us on the outside. We’re talking about a population that has now for days been without electricity, that has been without water, that has been without — for large parts of it, without internet, that’s been without food, that’s been without aid. Hundreds of thousands have left northern Gaza. You know, if they’re lucky, they’ve been able to get to relatives and family homes south of Wadi Gaza, as many do not have that privilege and, you know, are making temporary accommodations. They’re under constant bombardment. We’ve seen some of the more intense bombing of Gaza take place over the last 24 to 48 hours. There have been reports of people killed as they were taking a safe route out of Gaza. The hospitals are operating on generators, which are running out of fuel. People are now resorting to water that’s unfit for human consumption. There are people that have not been able to leave northern Gaza, because you have there Gaza’s main hospital. You have people with disabilities. You have older people. And they’re terrified of what might come ahead. You have Israeli officials who are signaling their intent to commit large-scale atrocities.

So we really have a terrifying situation where people in Gaza are saying their goodbyes to the world. They’re not sure, you know, whether or not they’ll make it to the evening, to tomorrow morning. The humanitarian situation, despite reports, people are not being allowed — have not been allowed to leave via Rafah as of the time we’re speaking. Aid is still not getting in. Electricity is still not getting in. There’s no confirmed reports of even water having come back in. So it’s a really desperate situation.

AMY GOODMAN: Heard that the Secretary of State Antony Blinken had pushed them to turn the water back on, but because the electricity isn’t on, it couldn’t be pumped.

OMAR SHAKIR: Exactly. I mean, in order for water to be provided, you obviously need the electricity to allow the water to be pumped. You also need — you know, the ability for the desalinizational plant to operate, you need electricity. Water infrastructure has been damaged in the airstrikes. And again, the water was only being provided to a certain part of southern Gaza, which is clearly part of the Israeli government’s strategy of trying to empty northern Gaza of its population. There are obviously many other areas in Gaza. So, right now people have no choice but to turn to water which is unfit for human consumption and which carries the risk, for those who drink it, of waterborne illnesses. So, amid everything else, not having water — as the U.N. has said, water is life. And Gaza is running out of life.

AMY GOODMAN: Omar Shakir, in a long Twitter thread you posted on Saturday, you warned Israeli authorities are signaling their intent to commit mass atrocities. You cite a number of Israeli officials making statements suggesting precisely that. Can you document what you’re saying and what they’ve been saying?

OMAR SHAKIR: Absolutely. I mean, we have seen rhetoric from the Israeli government that signals that they hold the entire 2.2 million people of Gaza responsible for the heinous attacks that took place on October 7th. You have the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, who has said very clearly that the entire nation of Gaza is responsible. He notes that the people there could have risen up to topple the Hamas government. You have statements from Israel’s energy minister, who was responsible for cutting the water, the fuel, the electricity, who has similarly talked about, you know, cutting off the last drop of water and the last battery until they’re defeated. Again, he’s referring — it’s a statement that refers both to Hamas authorities but also to evacuating the entire population. You have statements, of course, from Israel’s defense minister, that’s gotten much attention, about fighting “human animals,” declaring an entire siege on Gaza. You have Israel’s U.N. ambassador that was on CNN a couple of days ago and spoke about how, you know, “Let’s remember that Hamas — you know, that the population of Gaza elected Hamas.” Of course, he neglects to mention that nearly half of Gaza’s population are children who weren’t even alive to vote at the last time there were elections.

All these statements should worry the international community, because they’re not happening in a vacuum. They’re happening as the Israeli government reduces entire neighborhoods and blocks to rubble, as hundreds of children and civilians have been killed in relentless bombardments, 6,000 bombs dropped in a 25-by-7-mile area, I mean, an open-air prison. So these statements aren’t happening in a vacuum. They’re happening amid the most intense bombardment of Gaza we’ve maybe ever seen, in a situation where more than a million people, according to reports, have been displaced from their homes. So, the international community must act to stop this. There is a moment that we can try and stop this, and we must do so before it’s too late.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to play for our audience Israeli President Isaac Herzog claiming no one is innocent in the Gaza Strip, including civilians.

PRESIDENT ISAAC HERZOG: We are working, operating militarily, according to rules of international law, period, unequivocally. It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians were not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’état. But we are at war. We are at war. We are at war with the other. We are defending our homes. We are protecting our homes. That’s the truth. And then, when a nation protects its home, it fights. And we will fight until we break their backbone.

AMY GOODMAN: “We will fight until we break their backbone.” I want to turn to your post on Saturday, where you wrote, “History teaches us that, when there are clear calls to commit large-scale atrocities by a party capable of doing so & actions taken consistent with those words, they need to be taken seriously & stopped. That’s where we are today in Israel & Palestine. A descent into darkness.” Omar Shakir, if you can take it from there?

OMAR SHAKIR: Yeah, I mean, Present Herzog talked about breaking their back. They have broken the back of the people of Gaza in a way that’s simply unprecedented. The statement that the Israeli government is complying with international law is pure fiction. I mean, we know they’ve cut vital necessities, as we’ve discussed, to the entire civilian population. They have sealed the crossings. We know that they have bombed in a way that, again, has reduced — as has been proudly boasted by the Israeli Air Force on Twitter, of reducing entire neighborhoods and blocks to rubble.

You know, we really need to take note of these statements, because the Israeli government — and again, what’s striking here is that it’s not meeting the sort of pushback that one would expect in a situation like this. I mean, it took days for Europe and the United States even to reiterate basic platitudes about the need to comply with international humanitarian law. You’re not seeing sufficient effort taken to warn of the risks to Gaza’s population. It is a situation that, as we speak, is deteriorating, and not enough is being done to stop it.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about white phosphorus. You tweeted — Human Rights Watch tweeted October 12th, “Israel has used white phosphorus in military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, putting civilians at risk of serious and long-term injuries. White phosphorus causes excruciating burns and can set homes afire. Its use in populated areas is unlawful.” Israel has denied this. What proof do you have of this, Omar Shakir?

OMAR SHAKIR: I mean, Israel also denied it in 2009, when Human Rights Watch documented it, and that turned out to be false, as was disproven by numerous other voices. Human Rights Watch verified this evidence. It’s confirmed. We were able to take video footage that took place both in Lebanon and Gaza, verified that it was recorded when it was taken. We ran these by weapons and munitions experts, who confirmed that it was — you know, that what was shown was white phosphorus. And then we interviewed people who live in the communities where the white phosphorus was dropped in Gaza, near the port area, and their description of what it looked like and smelled like was consistent with the use of white phosphorus.

Amnesty International followed up with their own reporting, where they were able to verify additional areas in which white phosphorus was used. They were able to look at footage that was provided by the Israeli government of some of the weapon systems being used in Gaza, again being able to source that it was white phosphorus that was being carried by those planes.

And, of course, we’re talking about a weapon that is, when dropped in civilian areas, unlawful, because it can burn homes and other structures. It can cause lifelong suffering for the communities that live there. The fact that the Israeli government is using it — and let’s note that they have — even when not used as a weapon, even when white phosphorus is used for signaling or obscuring the army, it can cause harm to civilians. And the Israel army has readily available alternatives that have much of the same effect in terms of signaling or obscuring, without the harm it causes to civilian populations. Its use is [inaudible] —

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Omar Shakir, I want to thank you very much for being with us, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, also authored the landmark 2021 Human Rights Watch report titled “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.”

Coming up, Israeli historian, Holocaust scholar Raz Segal. He says Israel’s assault on Gaza is “a textbook case of genocide.” Back in 30 seconds.

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“A Textbook Case of Genocide”: Israeli Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal Decries Israel’s Assault on Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
OCTOBER 16, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/16 ... transcript

Raz Segal, an Israeli expert in modern genocide, calls Israel’s assault on Gaza a textbook case of “intent to commit genocide” and its rationalization of its violence a “shameful use” of the lessons of the Holocaust. Israeli state exceptionalism and comparisons of its Palestinians victims to “Nazis” are used to “justify, rationalize, deny, distort, disavow mass violence against Palestinians,” says Segal.

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.

“A Textbook Case of Genocide: Israel has been explicit about what it’s carrying out in Gaza. Why isn’t the world listening?” That’s the headline of a new piece in Jewish Currents by our next guest, Raz Segal. He’s an Israeli historian, associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University, where he’s also an endowed professor in the study of modern genocide. Raz Segal joins us now from Philadelphia.

Professor Segal, welcome to Democracy Now! Lay out your case.

RAZ SEGAL: Thank you for having me.

I think that, indeed, what we’re seeing now in Gaza is a case of genocide. We have to understand that the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide from 1948 requires that we see special intent for genocide to happen. And to quote the convention, intent to destroy a group is defined as racial, ethnic, religious or national as such that is collectively, not just individuals. And this intent, as we just heard, is on full display by Israeli politicians and army officers since 7th of October. We heard Israel’s president. It’s well-known what the Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on 9th of October declaring a complete siege on Gaza, cutting off water, food, fuel, stating that “We’re fighting human animals,” and we will react “accordingly.” He also said that “We will eliminate everything.” We know that Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari, for example, acknowledged wanton destruction and said explicitly, “The emphasis on damage and not on accuracy.” So we’re seeing the special intent on full display. And really, I have to say, if this is not special intent to commit genocide, I really don’t know what is.

So, when we look at the actions taken, the dropping of thousands and thousands of bombs in a couple of days, including phosphorus bombs, as we heard, on one of the most densely populated areas around the world, together with these proclamations of intent, this indeed constitutes genocidal killing, which is the first act, according to the convention, of genocide. And Israel, I must say, is also perpetrating act number two and three — that is, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and creating condition designed to bring about the destruction of the group by cutting off water, food, supply of energy, bombing hospitals, ordering the fast evictions of hospitals, which the World Health Organization has declared to be, quote, “a death sentence.” So, we’re seeing the combination of genocidal acts with special intent. This is indeed a textbook case of genocide.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the displacement? Israel is saying that the entire northern Gaza — now hundreds of thousands of people have complied — must move south. The northern part of Gaza is the most populated, with Gaza City.

RAZ SEGAL: Yeah, definitely. I mean, as is well known, this is an impossible order. It’s impossible for specific groups of people — people in hospitals, people defined as disabled, elderly people — many Palestinians who refuse to leave their homes because of their histories and their memories of the Nakba. This is an impossible order. It’s yet another indication of the intent to destroy, the intent to commit genocide.

It’s also worthwhile to emphasize Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, a new term that he coined, “complete siege.” It seems like a completely new term that really takes what was already a 17-year siege on Gaza, the longest in modern history, which was already a clear violation of international humanitarian law — it takes this siege and now turns it into a complete siege, which really signals the turn to this kind of genocidal destruction that we’re seeing, including with this eviction order.

It’s also worthwhile to try to explain, I think, why Israel is so explicit in its declaration. We’ve heard Israel’s president talk about evil. We’ve also heard about Biden’s use of the word “evil.” EU leaders describe the Hamas attack as “evil.” And it has to be said, the Hamas attack were clear war crimes, the mass murder of more than 1,000 Israeli civilians, a horrendous war crime that rightfully shocked many Israelis and many, many people around the world. But “evil” is not a term to describe them. “Evil” is a term to decontextualize. “Evil” is a term to demonize and to really enhance the widespread fantasies of Israelis today that they’re fighting Nazis. Actually, former Prime Minister Bennett, Naftali Bennett, said that directly in an interview yesterday: “We are fighting Nazis.” We see this and many, many other indications in Israeli society and politics today. And if we’re fighting Nazis, then everything is permissible.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Segal —

RAZ SEGAL: No law —

AMY GOODMAN: I actually wanted to go to the former prime minister, Naftali Bennett, who’s currently in the Israeli army. This is from a few days ago, where he exploded at the Sky News anchor Kamali Melbourne during an interview Thursday, when Melbourne pressed him on Israel’s attacks on Palestinian civilians. This is a part of what he said.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: What about those Palestinians in hospital who are on life support and babies in incubators, whose life support and incubator will have to be turned off because the Israelis have cut the power to Gaza?

NAFTALI BENNETT: Are you seriously keep on asking me about Palestinian civilians? What’s — what’s wrong with you? Have you not seen what happened? We’re fighting Nazis. We don’t target them. Now, the world can come and bring them anything they want, if you want to bring them electricity. I’m not going to feed electricity or water to my enemies. If anyone else wants, that’s fine. We’re not responsible for them.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: But this is the point —

NAFTALI BENNETT: But you keep on —

KAMALI MELBOURNE: This is the point —

NAFTALI BENNETT: You — I want to tell you —

KAMALI MELBOURNE: No, no, Mr. Bennett, this is the point.

NAFTALI BENNETT: No. No, listen.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: Listen.

NAFTALI BENNETT: You listen to me right now.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: No, you’re raising your voice. And we’re trying —

NAFTALI BENNETT: I’ve heard you enough.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: No, no, I understand. We’re trying to have a conversation here.

NAFTALI BENNETT: I’ve heard a lot of you.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: Listen, this is my program.

NAFTALI BENNETT: No, you’re not having a —

KAMALI MELBOURNE: This is my show.

NAFTALI BENNETT: And that’s exactly —

KAMALI MELBOURNE: And I am asking the questions. You’re raising your voice.

NAFTALI BENNETT: But it’s my country.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: And I’ve asked you. And we’ve already —

NAFTALI BENNETT: And when people — when people —

KAMALI MELBOURNE: We’ve already — stop, please.

NAFTALI BENNETT: When people —

KAMALI MELBOURNE: And let me finish. We’ve already distinguished —

NAFTALI BENNETT: Shame on you, Mister.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: — between Hamas —

NAFTALI BENNETT: I want to tell you, you — shame on you.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: You’re trying to speak over me.

NAFTALI BENNETT: Because we are not —

KAMALI MELBOURNE: No, no.

NAFTALI BENNETT: Shame on you.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: It’s nothing about shame.

NAFTALI BENNETT: I am the — I was the prime minister.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: We’re trying to have a conversation —

NAFTALI BENNETT: There is absolutely shame.

KAMALI MELBOURNE: — about a very serious situation here.

NAFTALI BENNETT: Because when you just jump —

KAMALI MELBOURNE: And you are refusing to address it.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that is the former Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, exploding at the Sky News anchor Kamali Melbourne. Professor Segal, you’re an Israeli historian. This is what you’re talking about, when he uses the Nazi analogy and also when he says, “Are you seriously talking about Palestinian civilians?” Your response?

RAZ SEGAL: That’s exactly what we’re — it’s very important to understand this context, the idea of fighting Nazis, the idea of using Holocaust memory in this way. There is a broad context, a long history, of course, of this shameful use of Holocaust memory, which Israeli politicians have used to justify, rationalize, deny, distort, disavow mass violence against Palestinians. And it has allowed also a view to develop that sees Israel as somehow exceptional, providing it impunity. The truth, however, is that all perpetrators of genocide actually see their victims as dangerous, as vicious, as inhuman, right? That’s how the Nazis saw the Jews. And that’s how today Israelis see Palestinians.

And that’s why the lessons of the Holocaust, actually, which were never meant to provide cover and rationalize state violence and genocide, but, rather, protect groups, especially stateless and defenseless groups, groups under military occupation and siege, from violent states — the lessons of the Holocaust are now very, very urgent. We need to center the voices of those facing state violence and genocide, and we need to move to prevention as fast as possible. In order to do that, we need to recognize what’s going on around us, what’s unfolding in front of our eyes, which is really a textbook case of genocide, with the rhetoric, with the actions, with everything involved.

AMY GOODMAN: Raz Segal is associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University and the endowed professor in the study of modern genocide. He is an Israeli historian. His new article for Jewish Currents, we’ll link to, “A Textbook Case of Genocide.” The subtitle, “Israel has been explicit about what it’s carrying out in Gaza. Why isn’t the world listening?” Back in 30 seconds.

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Remembering Issam Abdallah, Reuters Journalist Killed Covering Israeli Missile Strikes in Lebanon
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
OCTOBER 16, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/16 ... df_lebanon

On Friday, an Israeli shell reportedly landed among a group of international journalists covering clashes on Lebanon’s border with Israel, killing Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and injuring six others. We speak to Abdallah’s close friend Lama Al-Arian, an international producer for Vice News in Beirut, who says colleagues believe that Abdallah’s death was the result of a “targeted attack.” Abdallah, whose hometown of Khiam had been occupied by Israel during the 15-year occupation of southern Lebanon, became a journalist “to tell stories from this region that he cared about so much, that he thinks is very misunderstood by Western media.” Remembers Al-Arian, “He always wanted to show the humanity of people suffering.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

On Friday, an Israeli artillery strike reportedly landed among a group of international journalists covering clashes near Lebanon’s border with Israel, killing 37-year-old Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah, who was part of a Reuters crew providing a live video signal. Six others were injured in the strike, including reporters for AFP — that’s Agence France-Presse — and Al Jazeera.

The Lebanese army said in a statement Israeli troops fired the shell that struck the journalists. Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry has requested a complaint be filed by Beirut’s mission to the United Nations over what it called a, quote, “flagrant violation and a crime against freedom of opinion and press,” unquote. The Israel Defense Forces say the incident is being looked into. Reuters says it’s, quote, “urgently seeking more information, working with authorities in the region, and supporting Issam’s family and colleagues.”

Just before the show, just before yet another funeral for Issam, I spoke with one of his closest friends, Lama Al-Arian. She’s an international producer for Vice News based in Beirut, Lebanon. I asked her to describe what happened.

LAMA AL-ARIAN: Well, Amy, since the bombing of Gaza began, there’s been a lot of tensions and flare-ups in the south of Lebanon between Israel and different groups there, and he was one of the many journalists who traveled there to cover what was happening.

He was in a group, in a press scrum, in a group of journalists, who were standing right in front of the Israeli border, clearly marked as press, you know, wearing their jackets, wearing their helmets and doing just live positions. They weren’t embedded with any sort of group. They were just there, you know, to tell the story of what was happening in the south. He even posted a selfie a few — maybe like 30 minutes before the events took place, you know, just showing what was happening. He was wearing his jacket and his helmet.

And then, you know, speaking to journalists who were there and also watching the Reuters live feed, which caught the moment they were hit, two Israeli strikes — we’re not sure what kind of artillery yet — hit them. And one of them, unfortunately, killed our friend and beloved journalist Issam and injured six other journalists, including Christina Assi, who’s still undergoing surgery at the moment.

AMY GOODMAN: And who did they all work for?

LAMA AL-ARIAN: There were journalists from the AFP. There were journalists from Reuters. There were journalists from Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera had been there for many days doing lives from this very position. Nobody thought that they were unsafe there. Issam was somebody who used to call me reckless and say that “I’m worried about you,” because he was somebody who really valued safety. And he’s been to many conflict zones. And he just always put safety of colleagues and himself, you know, even before the story. And so, that’s why many of his colleagues and his friends think they were targeted, because there were no, like, Hezbollah members or any members of armed groups in that area. It was just a group of journalists who were hit.

AMY GOODMAN: And where did the airstrike come from? And where exactly did it hit?

LAMA AL-ARIAN: It came definitely from the direction of Israel, because they were standing right in front of the border. Of course, there’s going to be investigations into this, but this is from eyewitnesses who were there, including his colleagues who survived the attack. The Lebanese army has also made a statement saying that it came from the direction of Israel and it was an Israeli strike. The Lebanese prime minister said the same thing, the acting prime minister, Najib Mikati.

And when the Israeli officials were asked about this, they, of course, haven’t taken any responsibility yet. The Israeli ambassador to the United Nations even was a little bit callous. He says, “We’re sorry. We’ll look into it. But we’re in a time of war, and things happen.”

So, it came — you know, as his colleagues, eyewitnesses and friends say, and many, many official reports, it came from Israel, but it’s very unlikely that there will be any accountability.

AMY GOODMAN: Did Issam die immediately?

LAMA AL-ARIAN: It seems from the videos that were published online, the very grim videos, that he did die immediately. You can hear other colleagues screaming in the background, saying, “My legs! My legs! I can’t feel my legs!” You have Dylan from the Associated Press — or, sorry, you have Dylan from AFP, who immediately ran to help his colleague. He put a tourniquet over her leg. When the second strike came — he was saying yesterday he wasn’t sure if it was the first strike or the second strike that killed Issam. But, unfortunately, I’ve been looking for his voice in any of the videos that have been published, especially immediately after the attack, when I was trying to figure out if my friend was safe or not, and I couldn’t hear his voice. So I think it was an immediate death.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you learn?

LAMA AL-ARIAN: I read on Twitter that a journalist had been injured, and I immediately started to call his friends. And they were all, you know, trying to also find out more information. And I kept calling his phone. And usually during any big incidents that happen in the country, like the Beirut explosion, he just declines my phone call. But this is the first time that I didn’t get like a declined phone call or him picking up, saying, “I’m busy. I’m working, but I’m OK.” And so, I just — unfortunately, I — I just felt that it was him who had passed away. We knew that he was with the other journalists that day. And it was a Reuters live feed that had caught the moment of impact, which, you know, he was running with two of his other colleagues who traveled here from Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: When was the last time you saw him?

LAMA AL-ARIAN: I was actually just with Issam and a group of his friends two days before he passed away and a day before he traveled to the south. He was telling me that he was going to cover these events, but he was also mentioning, you know, how broken up he was about the images coming out of the Gaza Strip and also how upset he was by the coverage of many Western media outlets regarding this war. He had also told a friend earlier that this — he had also told a friend earlier last week that, you know, he was worried about safety concerns along the border. And what he feared most was that if he was to pass away or to die, nobody would name his killer.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us about the funeral?

LAMA AL-ARIAN: The funeral was, of course, extremely sad. It took place in south Lebanon, you know, amongst the olive and pomegranate trees, which he loved so much. We’ve taken trips there in the past, where we drank coffee in the homes of his aunts, who all live there. And I know that he loved Lebanon very much. He loved the south very much. It took place, again, in his hometown, Khiam, which is a place that saw a lot of war and destruction previously. It was under, I think, 22 years of Israeli occupation before it was liberated May 25th, 2000. So, of course, there’s a lot of symbolism there. And it was attended by a lot of officials from many different political parties and, of course, many, many journalist friends of his. He was buried along with his press jacket, and on top of his grave, they lined his grave with his cameras.

AMY GOODMAN: Why did he become a journalist?

LAMA AL-ARIAN: I think the reason why Issam really became a journalist is to tell stories from this region that he cared about so much and that he thinks is very misunderstood by Western media. And he worked for Reuters for a very long time covering many different stories. He covered the Egyptian revolution in 2011, which I know he was very proud of. He covered stories from Lebanon. After the explosion, he was one of the first journalists to go straight to the port, and he interviewed injured people. He always took risks to make sure that people’s voices got out there. He covered the war in Ukraine. He was interviewing grieving mothers. He was in Turkey after the earthquake for weeks interviewing people living in the rubble. He was there when they were pulling people out from under the rubble. He was there, you know, covering funerals. And he just always wanted to show the humanity of people suffering.

AMY GOODMAN: And why had he gone to the border that day with the other journalists?

LAMA AL-ARIAN: He went to the border that day because there was, you know, back-and-forth fire between Israel and different armed groups in Lebanon. Because of what was happening in Gaza, you know, tensions and flare-ups started to happen at the border. And that was his job. His job was to go and tell people what was happening.

AMY GOODMAN: Lama, I’m talking to you today right before you’re going to another funeral for Issam?

LAMA AL-ARIAN: Yes. He was somebody who was extremely loved within the community. And, you know, it’s very common in Muslim and Arab culture to go and spend the first week with the family. So that’s what we’re going to be doing to try to give them as much support as possible, to the family members, to the journalists, who’ve also had to mourn their colleague but also keep working, reporting on what’s been happening in Gaza, reporting on what’s been happening inside Lebanon, and also the very real — also preparing for the very real possibility that there could be, you know, another war here.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Lama, your sister Laila wrote a piece about your family and about your grandfather buying land in Gaza, investing his life savings, and about what’s happened to your own family in this last week in Gaza. Could you tell us about that?

LAMA AL-ARIAN: Of course. I mean, this is what I’ve been telling friend, like, who’ve been sending condolences. This is the second time this week, you know, friends from around the world have had to send me condolences. Earlier this week, my mother lost 11 of her extended family members in a single airstrike on her family home inside Gaza. And that was already very difficult on my mother and, of course, on our family. I didn’t know these family members very well, but it was still extremely heartbreaking to see videos of people who share our last name on the internet pulling out dead children from the rubble and injured people. And, you know, amongst the people that were killed was a 6-month-old baby named Zeineddine [phon.].

AMY GOODMAN: That was Lama Al-Airan, an international producer for Vice News, speaking to us from Beirut, Lebanon, about her dear friend Issam Abdallah, the Reuters videographer killed last week reportedly in an Israeli airstrike while reporting on the Israel-Lebanon border. The strike injured six other journalists, as well.

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Twelve Journalists, Mostly Palestinians in Gaza, Killed in “Deadliest Time for Journalists”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
OCTOBER 16, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/16 ... m_abdallah

At least 12 journalists, mostly Palestinians, have been killed over the past 10 days of conflict in and around the Gaza Strip. Sherif Mansour of the Committee to Protect Journalists says it is one of the highest death tolls for journalists covering the conflict since 1992 and calls today it the “deadliest time for journalists in Gaza.” He joins Democracy Now! to discuss the role of journalism in combating misinformation during times of violence and the threat of widespread censorship by Israel and other state actors.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: In the first week of fighting in Gaza, the Committee to Protect Journalists reports at least 12 journalists have been killed. More are missing and injured.

We’re joined now by CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, Sherif Mansour.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Sherif. In these last few minutes we have — we’ve heard the story of Issam — tell us what you understand about what’s happened to journalists. He was on the Israel-Lebanon border. Israel says they’re looking into it. What’s happening in Gaza?

SHERIF MANSOUR: Well, this is the deadliest time for journalists in Gaza. That is, according to our count, one of the highest tolls for journalists covering the conflict since 1992. Since 2001, we’ve recently published stories of 20 Palestinian journalists who have been killed over the years covering IDF operations. Many of them, 13, were in Gaza before the start of this war. But right now we’re looking at at least 10 Palestinian journalists, mostly freelance photojournalists, for taking outsized challenge and risk in order to tell the story of what’s happening. But there are, in addition to Issam, from Lebanon, at least one or two journalists from Israel who have been killed and went missing since the beginning of the raid on October 7. We are also still investigating a lot of damages to media facilities in Gaza that were bombed over the course of the week, reportedly at least 48 or so. Many were injured. Many lost their homes. And many cannot access the outside world because of lack of internet.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let me ask you: What are the international laws and conventions in place to safeguard journalists and hold those responsible for their killings?

SHERIF MANSOUR: Well, we call on Israel to immediately investigate what happened to Issam and his six colleagues who were injured. We support the Lebanon complaint in the U.N. to make an investigation. And we also call on Brazil, who is presiding right now, on this week, on the U.N. Security Council, to make sure that journalists’ safety is included in any talks that’s happening diplomatically.

AMY GOODMAN: And let me ask you — last week, BBC Arabic journalists Muhannad Tutunji and Haitham Abudiab were reportedly stopped, assaulted and held at gunpoint by Israeli police in Tel Aviv. What do you know about this situation?

SHERIF MANSOUR: Unfortunately, censorship is widespread, not just on covering Gaza in Israel, and we’ve seen and reported a lot of journalists being threatened live, including from Al Araby TV just couple of days ago. And journalists have told us they have received threats, in addition to all the misinformation that has been spread to justify those attacks against those journalists. And we saw the Israeli government right now making decrees to censor and close Palestinian media outlets and inciting against even Israeli journalists who, quote-unquote, “harm national morale” during the war.

AMY GOODMAN: And I wanted to ask — on Friday, the U.S. news organization Semafor reported, quote, ”MSNBC has quietly taken three of its Muslim broadcasters out of the anchor’s chair since Hamas’s attack on Israel last Saturday amid America’s wave of sympathy for Israeli terror victims.” The article detailed how Mehdi Hasan, Ayman Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi have all seen their roles reduced over the past week, even though the three have some of the deepest knowledge of the region at the network, Semafor reported. Your final comments on this?

SHERIF MANSOUR: Well, journalists must provide accurate and independent account of what’s happening, including in time of crisis. We rely on them so that the misinformation that we see does not fuel the conflict. We rely on them so that we know the motivation and the implication of all the warring parties. And we rely on them to expose the potential of human rights violation or war crimes. So, we call for the absolute resilience of journalists and the support of their editors so that they can do their job fairly, without censorship.

AMY GOODMAN: Sherif Mansour, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Middle East and North Africa program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

That does it for our show. A happy birthday to Juan González and Miguel Nogueira! I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.

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“We Will Never Leave”: Human Rights Lawyer Raji Sourani in Gaza City Refuses to Be “Good Victim”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
OCTOBER 17, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/17 ... urani_gaza

We go to Gaza City to speak with Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, who is refusing to move south after Israel’s evacuation order. “Why should we be good victims for criminals who do war crimes [in] the daylight in front of the whole world, and the world is watching?” asks Sourani, who says there are no safe havens in Gaza, but social solidarity is high among survivors. “They can bomb us. They can kill us. But they cannot take the love and the justice from our hearts and minds.” Since October 7, Israel’s attacks on Gaza have killed 2,800 people — over a third of them children — a figure that does not include an estimated 1,000 additional Palestinians trapped under rubble of homes and businesses. Civil groups are sounding the alarm as civilians in Gaza are being forced to use contaminated water, a majority of hospitals remain partially operational, and critical supplies are running low under Israel’s complete siege of the territory.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: The death toll from Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has topped 2,800 after Israeli airstrikes killed at least 71 people in the southern Gaza Strip. The attacks came just days after Israel ordered residents of the northern Gaza Strip to head south. Gaza’s civil defense force estimates at least 1,000 Palestinians remain trapped under rubble from recent Israeli strikes.

ABID SAQIR: [translated] The number of martyrs who are under rubble is 1,000, according to the figures of the Ministry of Interior. Work is underway to extract them, though we don’t have heavy machinery to do so. We are exerting individual efforts by civil defense personnel with some excavators. From Gaza Valley until the governate of Rafah, there are only two excavators working. And in each operation an excavator gets damaged, we postpone taking out martyrs until we fix it.

AMY GOODMAN: Earlier today, the Gaza Ministry of Health announced Gaza’s only oncology hospital, the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, will be forced to close within 48 hours due to a lack of fuel. On Monday, UNRWA, the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency, warned that Israel’s siege is having a devastating impact on civilians.

JULIETTE TOUMA: No supplies have come into Gaza since the 7th of October. Nothing. No fuel, no food, no water, no other types of assistance. No supplies have gotten into Gaza since the 7th of October. That, I can confirm. Not for UNRWA and not for other U.N. agencies. … There continues to be no water for the vast majority of the population in Gaza. We’re talking about 2 million people in the Gaza Strip who do not have water. And water is running out. And water is life. And life is running out of Gaza.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken announced President Biden will visit Israel Wednesday to show support for Israel following last week’s surprise attack by Hamas that killed over 1,400 people in Israel. During the attacks, Hamas and other militant groups seized as many as 250 hostages, most of whom are civilians. On Monday, Blinken said a deal is being developed to resume the delivery of some aid to Gaza.

SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN: To that end, today, and at our request, the United States and Israel have agreed to develop a plan that will enable humanitarian aid from donor nations and multilateral organizations to reach civilians in Gaza — and them alone — including the possibility of creating areas to help keep civilians out of harm’s way. It is critical that aid begin flowing into Gaza as soon as possible.

AMY GOODMAN: President Biden is also expected to travel to Amman to meet with Jordan’s King Abdullah, the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Biden has so far refused to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. And on Monday, the U.S. voted against a ceasefire resolution proposed by Russia at the U.N. Security Council. On Monday, more than 50 protesters were arrested at the White House in demonstrations calling for a ceasefire. The protest was organized by Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow.

The head of U.S. Central Command, Army General Michael Kurilla, flew into Israel today as the United States continues to rush ammunition, air defenses and other weaponry to Israel ahead of a possible Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.

We go now to Gaza City, where we’re joined by Raji Sourani. He’s the award-winning human rights lawyer and director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza. He’s also the 2013 Right Livelihood Award laureate. He’s on the executive board of the International Federation for Human Rights. He received the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in 1991, also twice named an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience. And years ago, when he was denied entry into the United States, it was former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, among others, who advocated on his behalf to secure a visa.

On Monday, he shared this message with his friends, quote:

“Good morning from Gaza
The most wonderful city l loved and wish to end my life on its soil
Terrible and unbelievable the criminality
We did not sleep from the bombing
Freedom and dignity so costly and we are ready to pay our lives for it
No right to give up
I am so proud of my people, unbelievable courage and strength
Keep the strategic optimism
Love and hugs to you all my friends.”

Raji Sourani, you’re in Gaza City. We spoke to you a week ago. You have remained in Gaza City, which is in the north of Gaza. You have not moved south. Can you talk about what’s happening in your city and why you’ve chosen to remain there?

RAJI SOURANI: Hi, Amy.

You know, I mean, Gaza, 85% of its population are refugees, and they suffered the Nakba in 1948. And there is the cultures and subcultures of Palestinians having always the Nakba in their minds and hearts. And what Prime Minister Netanyahu asked people of Gaza, day one, he asked Gazans to leave. His minister of defense, he said, “No electricity, no water, no fuel and no food.” And from the first minute for their reaction, they began to bomb everywhere and made sure no safe haven in Gaza. Much more than that, they were targeting civilians and civilian targets.

And later on, they asked people in the north of Gaza to move to the south, as if the south is the safe haven. But when people even, hundreds of thousands of them, moved to the south, the Israelis bombarded them. More than 170 were killed en route to the south. In the last two days, the south has had the hell of bombing and the concentration of bombing of the Israeli F-35, and the smart bombs of GBU-31/32/37, the most smart American bombs, are targeting everywhere. So, they left nothing. Nothing.

Why should we be good victims for criminals who do war crimes at the daylight in front of the whole world, and the world is watching? I cannot be, you know, good victim for the Israeli criminal occupation in this sixth war, launched against us after a blockade of 16 years and after occupation of 55 years. After 75 years, we have no right as the Palestinians to do another Nakba. We will resist that, because we knew the disaster which came to the Palestinian people 75 years ago. Israeli criminals, their criminality, it’s not a secret. It’s there in the real time, and the whole world is watching. And those who are backing it, politically, militarily, are complicit and part of the crime committed against Palestinian people.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Raji Sourani, how are the people, you and others, surviving without water, without electricity, without fuel?

RAJI SOURANI: I’m proud of my people, because with all the might of Israel, the strongest army in the Middle East, towards Gaza, the 365 square kilometers, and after a blockade of 16 years in the most dense populated area on Earth, which is lack of everything, they are still strong, still surviving. They didn’t give up. They have no right to give up. And they are managing. We have death everywhere, in the streets and the sky — and the deaths coming from the sky, from the sea, from the artillery. Everywhere, I mean, there is death and destruction. With that, I mean, people having super fantastic social solidarity. And they are trying to resist this aggression once and again. We have no right to give up. I’m very proud that I’m Gazan. I’m very proud I’m Palestinian. I’m very proud that we are not good victims for the criminals.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And when you hear the report now that President Biden, in the midst of this colossal war crime that is being committed, is going to travel to Israel?

RAJI SOURANI: I don’t know why he and Mr. Blinken insisting on bringing humanitarian aid, as if we are animal farm and all what people need, food. I’m telling you 1,200 children have been killed in Gaza. Nine hundred fifty women have been killed in Gaza. More than that, we have 7,000 injured people, who are, hundreds of them, in very critical conditions. We are having 1,200 under the rubble. People cannot uncover them because we have no means to uncover them in Gaza. And the civil defense was bombarded, and seven of them have been killed. More, I mean, even hospitals were asked to evacuate. To evacuate to where? Like, you are imposing death penalty, imposing death penalty on injured people who are treated in the hospitals, and trying to — Gaza, I mean, doctors, nurses have the courage to say, “No, we are not going to evacuate. Bomb us. Bomb us.”

And they are, you know, doing all these horrendous acts. Is this the most moral army on Earth who bombs schools of UNRWA youth shelters with thousands of people? Is this the most moral army who cuts water, electricity, food supplies on civilians? Is this the mighty Israel?

International law, international humanitarian law and the human rights, it’s there to protect civilians at the time of war. That’s why Geneva Conventions are there. That’s why Rome Statute are there. That’s why ICC is there. I mean, civilians need protection. They need to have a safe haven, but not only food. We have a prolonged occupation. Nobody is talking about occupation. We have crimes on our skins, on our ideas. The deaths of people in obscenity way, I mean, Israel dealing with it.

And then, I mean, this is Blinken and Biden bringing some food and medicine to the animal farm? We want dignity. We want freedom. We want the end of the occupation. That’s what we want. They have to stop these atrocities. And that is there is something called a free world, civilized world should call for. Why U.S. supported Ukraine? Because Russia invaded and occupied Ukraine. They give them political support. They give them financial support. They give them military support. And they ask Americans, and with them Europeans, to go and try for the freedom of Ukraine, to end the occupation of Russia. We are occupied 55 years, the Nakba since 75 years. We want to have an end for this occupation. We are not the criminals. No just or fair occupation on Earth. All international human rights organizations — name it — Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, EuroMed Human Rights Network, FIDH, even Israeli leading human rights organization B’Tselem and others — they said we have to hold Israel accountable for the crimes they are committing and doing, even before this war. With this war, I believe Mr. Biden, what he should say is, “Stop this aggression promptly, immediately. Stop attacking civilians. End the occupation. Give the Palestinians dignity, freedom and their independence.” That’s what we want from the free world. We don’t want one more bag of flour. No, we want end of the occupation. We want dignity, and we want freedom.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re sticking with you, Raji. It’s a little hard to understand as you speak on the phone, but rarely do media organizations have people on the phone from Gaza. It becomes increasingly difficult to hear what is happening on the ground there. So we appreciate and will — at democracynow.org, the transcript of this conversation will be available. I wanted to ask you about the State Department memo that was revealed, warning diplomats not to use the word “de-escalate,” and an Israeli military strategist saying, “Our goal isn’t turning Gaza City into a parking lot. Our goal is to turn Gaza into a Hamas-less region.” Can you respond to that, Raji?

RAJI SOURANI: Hamas, Fatah, PFLP, Jihad Islamic combatants, they are part of a resistance. Israel has a problem with them. We have no problem. There is rules of engagement between militaries. We have no problem with that. The real, real serious problem, it’s not that Israel is engaging with these. They are revenging from the civilians in Gaza. What hospitals, the schools, houses, towers had to do with Israel, with the attack which had happened? What 1,100 children have been killed has to do with the attack? The women have been killed, those who under rubbles and under destruction and unable to be recovered. Why patients cannot — I mean, receive all this? Why our fate and destiny to stay under occupation?

Everybody should think about the root causes of this. There is an occupation by Israel. This occupation committed many, many crimes. It’s the most well-documented conflict in history. And there is an open investigation at the ICC. And the prosecutor, Mr. K.K., Karim Khan, didn’t move one millimeter, while with Putin, in one year, he gave warrant to be arrested, and lies of sanctions — layers of sanctions have been imposed on Russia in unprecedented way. Now with Israel, everything is OK? Our blood is obscene?

They have the right to kill and destroy us, not to destroy what’s happening, even destroy our tomorrow. It’s shame on the West to support such criminal country who do these war crimes. We cannot be like old Rome. In old Rome, there was rule of law for masters, not for slaves. Palestinians are not the slaves of the 21st century. We will not accept that. We will die with dignity and with pride, but we are not going to be killed according to the Israeli army orders and instructions.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Raji, we have heard now for a week that the Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza will be opened, but it continues to be closed. What are you hearing about why it has taken so long to allow at least the most injured and those who are most vulnerable to leave Gaza?

RAJI SOURANI: Egypt knew the real intentions of Netanyahu. They knew that the real ultimate goal of this, to push all Gazans, the 2.4 million people, toward Sinai and Egypt. And they cannot be complicit, part of this crime. And they closed the border from their side, because they don’t want Gazans to live there. The Israeli-orchestrated bombing, the level of bombing, the architect of bombing, pushing people toward the south, toward Egypt. And that’s why Egypt, I mean, closed that. Israel wants the border to be open to make Gazans leave. Most of the Gazans won’t leave. And Egypt understood this is the Israeli plan. That’s why they blocked it. And they said, “If you want to open the crossing, I will only do that if you allow the humanitarian aid coming to Gaza.”

AMY GOODMAN: Raji —

RAJI SOURANI: Israel doesn’t want the humanitarian aid to come to Gaza. And they bombed and — Rafah crossing twice. Sorry, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, it was just bombed again, the area leading to Rafah, today. We just have 30 seconds, but just to understand: Are you going to leave Gaza? Are you going to leave your home? The last time we talked to you, your house was shaking. They had bombed the Islamic University nearby. What are your plans now?

RAJI SOURANI: On my body, I have no plan. I am here like an olive tree. We will never leave our homeland. I’m eight generations — I’m eight centuries, my family, I mean, living in this part of the world. I’m not going to reward Netanyahu by leaving because he threatened of that. They can bomb us. They can kill us. But they cannot take the love and the justice from our hearts and minds. We are defending just, fair, right cause. We know dignity and the freedom so costly. We will fight for that.

AMY GOODMAN: Raji Sourani, I want to thank you for being with us, award-winning human rights lawyer, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, recipient of the Right Livelihood Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, speaking to us from his home in Gaza City. Please be safe, Raji.

Next up, we go to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank to speak with Sari Bashi of Human Rights Watch. Back in 30 seconds.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “We Are Palestinians” by the Palestinian singer Dalal Abu Amneh, who has been arrested by Israeli forces in the West Bank after she shared a social media post in support of charities working in Gaza.

[admin]

HRW Condemns Israel’s Collective Punishment on Gaza, Urges Biden to Help Restore Humanitarian Aid
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
OCTOBER 17, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/17 ... _west_bank

Israeli soldiers and settlers have cracked down on the occupied West Bank since Hamas’s shocking attack on Israel on October 7, killing at least 55 and arresting over 700 Palestinians, including several prominent lawmakers. “People are worried. All of this is unprecedented,” says Sari Bashi, program director at Human Rights Watch in Ramallah. Bashi is co-founder of Israeli human rights group Gisha, which works against apartheid policies that affect Palestinians, and urges U.S. lawmakers to address the human rights violations that led to this conflict. “No U.S. policy toward Israel-Palestine will be successful if it doesn’t address the abuses on the ground.”

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.

We head now to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 55 Palestinians in the West Bank since Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel October 7th. Israeli authorities have also arrested over 700 Palestinians, several prominent lawmakers, including Aziz Dweik, the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

To talk about the situation in the West Bank and the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, we’re joined by Sari Bashi, program director at Human Rights Watch, co-founder of Gisha, the leading Israeli human rights group promoting the right to freedom of movement for Palestinians in Gaza.

Sari, if you can talk about the entire situation, the imminent invasion of Gaza? You just heard Raji Sourani. And also talk about what’s happening in the West Bank. In the last year, approximately — it’s a bit more, but a Palestinian a day has been killed since the beginning of the year.

SARI BASHI: Yes. Thank you.

And I’m sorry to say that since October 7th in Gaza, Israeli airstrikes have killed, on average, 100 children a day. And that’s the statistic that stays with me.

So, this latest escalation began on October 7th, when Hamas-led fighters entered Israel and committed unspeakable war crimes against Israeli civilians. They massacred partygoers at an outdoor dance party. They entered homes, in some cases burning the homes, in other cases shooting families. And they took hostage men, women, older people, children, people with disabilities. Appropriately, the U.S. government and people in the United States condemned those acts, because they were unspeakable crimes against civilians that have no justification.

So the answer cannot be for the Israeli government, with the backing of the American government, to then target and harm civilians in Gaza. I am particularly concerned about the collective punishment of civilians in Gaza. The Israeli military cut food, electricity, water and fuel supplies on October 7th, which is contributing to the humanitarian catastrophe. And the Israeli military is engaging in — is dropping explosive weapons in densely populated areas with wide area effects. So, when you do that, when you drop bombs on crowded urban centers, it is predictable that you will kill civilians. It is predictable that you will kill children. And that’s what’s happening. Gaza is the size — about the size of the U.S. city of Philadelphia. It’s 2.2 million people. Nearly half of those people are children.

And that’s something that we need to see more of the United States government addressing. We’ve heard thus far general comments about the need to respect international humanitarian law. We need very specific directives for the Israeli government to immediately restore food, fuel, electricity and water supplies and to stop dropping weapons in densely populated civilian areas.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sari Bashi, I wanted to ask you — the prime minister, Netanyahu, has urged the Palestinians in Gaza to flee to Egypt if they want to avoid the horrors of the bombing and the invasion. Isn’t this itself a form of ethnic cleansing? After all, Israel is not telling the Palestinians, “Hey, if you want to escape the bombing and the invasion, move into Israel or be transported to the West Bank.” After all, even Putin, in his invasion of Ukraine, ended up admitting 1.2 million Ukrainians into Russia to avoid the worst impact on them of the war itself.

SARI BASHI: So, the first thing to say is that the countries that are neighboring Gaza — Israel and Egypt — have an obligation to open their borders and let people who are fleeing for their lives enter. Not to do that risks violating the principle of non-refoulement. When you have mothers with children who are trying to save their children’s lives, Israel and Egypt need to open their borders and let that happen. But the Israeli evacuation order risks forcible transfer. The Israeli military has called on half the population in Gaza in the north to go to the south, and Israeli military officials have also called on people in Gaza to flee to Egypt.

Now, for people in Gaza, Gaza is — 70% of the people living in Gaza are refugees from what is now Israel. Some of the older people who fled Friday, Saturday from northern Gaza to southern Gaza, they remember fleeing the Israeli army 75 years ago. They remember the homes they left behind in what is now Israel. And they remember that they were never allowed to come back, although international law defends the right of return for all refugees, whether they’re Ukrainians trying to resume — to return to areas that have been liberated from Russian occupation or under Russian occupation, or people from Gaza coming back after the army has left.

My concern is that while it’s acceptable, and in some cases advisable, for warring parties to issue warnings, those warnings are only effective if there are safe ways for civilians to avoid harm. So, when you tell a million people to evacuate but there’s no safe place to go to and no safe way to get there, that’s not an effective warning. And another thing that the United States government should do very clearly is to call on the Israeli government to cancel the evacuation order and to take all measures to protect civilians who remain in the north. There are many people — men, women, children, older people, people with disabilities, hospital patients — who either cannot or will not leave the northern Gaza, and they retain their protections under international law.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you talk to us about how Palestinians in the West Bank are being impacted as a result of the continuing conflict in Gaza?

SARI BASHI: So, here, people are mostly worried. There have been road closures. Workers have not been allowed to enter Israel for their jobs. There have been increased military activity in the West Bank, including incursions and arrests. You mentioned arrests of people who expressed support for the attacks on October 7th. Businesses who engaged in that have been closed at night, with the Israeli army coming in. For the most part, people are worried.

All of this is unprecedented. The attacks that Hamas-led fighters committed against Israeli civilians on October 7th are unprecedented. It was the worst massacre of civilians in Israeli history. And the level of harm, targeted harm, that the Israeli military is inflicting on civilians in Gaza is also unprecedented.

At Human Rights Watch, we’re trying to hold open a narrow space for universal basic principles of humanity. It is never OK to commit unspeakable war crimes against civilians, as was done in southern Israel on October 7th. And that in no way justifies committing war crimes against civilians in Gaza.

And for Americans who are confused by all of what’s going on, I would suggest you just remember that very basic principle that civilians need to be protected, and then encourage your elected representatives to remind the U.S. government of that principle, because the United States government is providing $3.8 billion in annual military aid to Israel, and it’s rushing even more weapons here right now. It has a responsibility to rein in the attacks on civilians, to call on Israel to cancel the evacuation order and protect civilians in Gaza and to immediately restore humanitarian supplies to civilians.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the difference between your experience on the West Bank, as an Israeli Jewish lawyer, and your husband’s experience, as a Palestinian professor, a resident of Ramallah, for people to understand? And also this issue — you know, Jake Sullivan recently said, just a few weeks ago, Biden’s national security adviser, that it’s been quieter in the Middle East than any time in 20 years. This is the time that at least a Palestinian a day was being killed. And talk about settlers and the army.

SARI BASHI: Yeah. I think part of the concern — and I know Raji was addressing that when he talked about root causes — is that some of the root causes of the violence, including what Human Rights Watch and many other groups have called apartheid, are invisible to U.S. policymakers. We have a situation where U.S. policymakers are very busy brokering normalization deals between the most right-wing Israeli government in history and dictatorial Arab governments, and it’s not paying attention to what’s happening on the ground.

For decades, the Israeli authorities have engaged in systemic repression of Palestinians, including not allowing people in Gaza, refugees in Gaza, to return to their homes in what is now Israel, and including a punishing closure for the last 16 years that has not allowed appropriate supplies to enter and leave Gaza and has not allowed people to travel. And that’s part of the reason why people in Gaza were so vulnerable even before this violence began.

In addition, the Israeli government is privileging Israeli Jews over Palestinians. And that’s the essence of the crime against humanity of apartheid, when you commit inhumane acts and engage in systemic repression in order to privilege one group over another. So, I’m Israeli Jewish, American, as well. My partner is Palestinian. And I can do things that he can’t do. I can travel quite freely. And even though his mother is a refugee from what is now Israel, he can’t pass areas that are off limits to Palestinians. I have excellent rights. I have health. There are cities in Israel being built for Jews only, and also in the West Bank, settlements being built for Israeli Jews only, while Palestinians are hemmed in, unable to build cities, and their homes are being demolished for lack of permits that are almost impossible to get. The Israeli authorities are engaging in forcible transfer, where they remove Palestinian communities in the West Bank to make room for settlements. All of these are part of the root causes of the violence.

And the only thing I can hope is that U.S. policymakers will realize that it’s not quiet here. There’s terrible abuses going on. You just have to listen to what people on the ground are telling you, and adjust accordingly. No U.S. policy toward Israel-Palestine will be successful if it doesn’t address the abuses on the ground, first, second and third.

AMY GOODMAN: Sari Bashi, we want to thank you for being with us, program director at Human Rights Watch, co-founder of Gisha, the leading Israeli human rights group promoting the right to freedom of movement for Palestinians in Gaza.

Next up, we go to a former Israeli peace negotiator. His recent interview on BBC went viral. Back in 20 seconds.