We Are Not Numbers: Palestinian Journalist Ahmed Alnaouq Mourns 21 Family Members Killed by Israel
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 14, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/14 ... transcript
Transcript
One-and-a-half million residents of Gaza have been displaced by Israeli bombing and siege since October 7 in what many Palestinians are calling a second Nakba, or catastrophe, referencing the 1948 expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians to create the state of Israel. “It’s what has been going on for the past 75 years,” says Palestinian journalist Ahmed Alnaouq, who describes how 21 members of his family were killed in Gaza, including his father and several siblings. Alnaouq had not been able to visit his family for four years prior to their deaths, due to restrictions upon entry into Gaza. He joins us from London, where historic protests calling for a ceasefire were deemed “hate marches” by Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who was fired shortly thereafter. Alnaouq speaks about global support for Palestinians and responds to U.S. President Joe Biden’s latest comments on Israel’s targeting of hospitals in Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: The United Nations says more than 200,000 Palestinians living in the northern Gaza Strip have fled their homes over the past 10 days after being forcibly displaced by Israel’s massive bombardment. Since October 7th, more than 1.5 million Palestinians have been displaced. That’s more than three-quarters of Gaza’s population. Many fear they’ll never be allowed to return home.
Over 1,500 displaced Palestinians remain at Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza, which has run out of fuel and has stopped functioning as a hospital. The World Health Organization has warned Al-Shifa has become, quote, “nearly a cemetery” as dead bodies pile up outside the hospital. Heavy fighting has been reported just outside the hospital doors. Israel claims Hamas has a command center below the hospital, but the claim has been denied by hospital officials.
Many Palestinians in Gaza are comparing the recent events to the 1948 Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” when 700,000 Palestinians were pushed out of their homes and turned into refugees during the creation of the state of Israel. This is 80-year-old Abla Awad. She grew up in a refugee camp in Gaza, had been forced from her home as a 5-year-old in 1948. Now she’s become a refugee again.
ABLA AWAD: [translated] We came here. We fled from Jabaliya camp and came here to escape the bombing. And now we’re here. Ants are everywhere. Flies are everywhere. There’s no food. It’s been a while since I had any bread. I’m hungry and want to eat. They’re kneading the dough now. …
It’s the same thing happening again. We were displaced from our home cities, and we ended up in Gaza. We used to live in Bureij refugee camp. And now it’s a second Nakba. What did we do to them? Every few years they bring a new Nakba onto us. … I was 5 years old, and I remember being displaced. Our families carried us along with their bags, and they took us to Gaza. I swear it’s the same as what’s happening today. Just like they displaced us the first time, they’re doing so another time. The two situations are alike. I have never seen a war like this. People are being displaced.
AMY GOODMAN: The words of Abla Awad, an 80-year-old Palestinian woman in Gaza.
We go now to London, where we’re joined by Ahmed Alnaouq. He is a Palestinian journalist from Gaza who lives now in London, co-founder of We Are Not Numbers. At least 20 members of his family have been killed in Gaza since October 7th, including his father and several siblings. His recent piece for The Nation is headlined “Palestinians Just Want to Be Treated Like Human Beings.”
Welcome to Democracy Now! We are so sorry for your loss, Ahmed. If you can talk about what happened to your family?
AHMED ALNAOUQ: Thank you very much, first, for having me.
What happened to my family is what’s happened to another thousand Palestinian families — in fact, 1,200 other Palestinian families. And it’s what has been going on for the past 75 years. My family was living in their home. There was my father, my three sisters, two brothers, my cousin and 14 nieces and nephews. They were sleeping in my home on the 22nd of October when Israel bombed my home and killed all of my family members except for two — actually, except for three. One of them was a kid whose name is Malak, 10 years old. She was severely burned, and then she spent a few days at the hospital, and then she succumbed to her wound. The rest is my nephew, 3 years old, and my sister-in-law. She survived. But 21 family members were killed. And this is what’s happening in Gaza. This is what has been going on for the past 75 years. And only since the 7th of October, more than 1,200 other families suffered the same loss I have suffered right now.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ahmed, you left Gaza in 2019. Have you been able to return since? And when was the last time you saw any of your family members?
AHMED ALNAOUQ: Well, unfortunately, I left Gaza in 2019 but haven’t been able to meet any of my family members ever since. And I was — for the past four years, I have been trying my best to meet with my father, to see my father. He was an old man. He was 75 years old, but he looked older than he is. He was very sick. And for the past four years I have been dying every day a hundred times because I miss my father, and I couldn’t meet with him because of the borders and the blockade. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen him ever since I left Gaza. And I never met with any of my siblings, who I lost, ever since I left Gaza.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Your reaction to the enormous protests around the world? There was a huge one in London this Saturday. What do you hope might come from these mobilizations?
AHMED ALNAOUQ: Well, actually, London has been protesting for the past four weeks, every Saturday, London, in protests — not only London, but also in Edinburgh and in capitals all over the world. People are protesting in thousands and in hundreds of thousands. The Saturday that we have seen on — the protest that we have seen on Saturday in London, people estimate the number between 800,000 to a million people. It’s one of the biggest protests in the history of Britain, after the protest in the War in Iraq in 2003. And these hundreds of thousands of people who protested, every one of them called for one single thing: a ceasefire, and ceasefire now.
It gives me a heartwarming feeling that Palestine, that my family, that the children in Gaza are not forgotten, that people follow the news, that people care about the Palestinians in Gaza, and people — and, most importantly, that people in the West no longer buy the mainstream media narrative that seeks to dehumanize and demonize the Palestinian people and to provide a cover for Israelis to commit massacres against the Palestinian people. So it gives me a heartwarming feeling that we are not forgotten, and people care about us, and people will keep protesting against the Israeli occupation, people will keep protesting against this aggression, this onslaught on the Palestinians in Gaza, until there is a ceasefire.
And I think these protests are doing a great job. We have seen that the governments, many of the politicians have changed their tone when it comes to Gaza. We have seen the comments from President Macron, which is very good, and I think it’s a step in the right direction. I think this country is a democracy, and I think people, when they protest, I think, eventually, their government will have to listen to them and to pressure Israel stop its onslaught on Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the politics of what’s happening in London now? I mean, this massive protest, one of the largest Britain has seen, in London this weekend, and then the ousting of the foreign secretary, Braverman, saying that pro-Palestinian marches are “hate marches,” so she was thrown out, and David Cameron, the former prime minister, was made the foreign secretary, and then the discussion of Tony Blair being brought back, as well. Your response, Ahmed?
AHMED ALNAOUQ: Well, I think the message that the protesters in London and all over the U.K. gave to the government is that we do not accept to be slammed. We do not accept to be called hate marches. We do not accept the false allegation that people who protest for Palestine are antisemitic. And unfortunately, unfortunately, we have seen some comments from politicians, from the former home secretary, describing these marches as “hate marches.” Unfortunately, we, the Palestinians and pro-Palestinians and people from all over the U.K. — now we are talking about the majority of the people who live in the U.K. are now pro-Palestinian, are pro-ceasefire. You could rarely find someone who wants Israel to continue their massacres against the Palestinian people. Unfortunately, the government is not living up to its responsibility as a democracy. They’re not living up to the demands and aspiration of the British people.
And I think the British people were very generous, very kind. They were very pro-justice. And they came from all across the U.K. on Saturday. People came from all across the U.K. They traveled for hours in order to participate in this protest. And their message was that they do not accept these allegations. They do not accept that this protest is a hate march. They come — Jewish, Muslims, Christians, atheists, people of LGBTQ, people from all colors, from all faiths came to the U.K., came to London on Saturday, and they protested, calling for a ceasefire. This is actually a love march. And people who came here, they came out of love, out of humanity. And they came here to say that enough is enough. And these people do not accept that their home secretary says that they are hate marchers.
And I believe that the power of people is very, very — people are very powerful, and their calls are very powerful. And I think, eventually, the government will have to listen to them. I think this is a right step, a step in the right direction from the British government to ousting this — Suella. And I really hope that the next home secretary — I really have hope that they will do a better job than the previous one.
AMY GOODMAN: We were just showing video of this massive march. And among the signs, there was a large group of Jews who were marching, saying “Jews against apartheid,” the Jewish star with “Not in our name.” But I wanted to come to the United States and get your response, Ahmed, to what’s happening here, President Biden speaking Monday, saying Al-Shifa Hospital must be protected.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: You know I have not been reluctant in expressing my concern to what’s going on. And it is my hope and expectation that there will be less intrusive action relative to the hospital. We’re in contact, and we’re — with the Israelis. Also, there is an effort to take this pause to deal with the release of prisoners. And that’s being negotiated, as well, with the Qataris engaged. And so I remain somewhat hopeful. But the hospital must be protected.
AMY GOODMAN: “The hospital must be protected,” President Biden said. Your response, and also, previously, to the large Jewish population who’s speaking out against what Israel is doing in Gaza, and separating their condemnation of antisemitism from condemnation of the Israeli state?
AHMED ALNAOUQ: The Jewish people in this country and in America, actually, has been playing a pivotal role in this struggle against the occupation, in this struggle against the apartheid and occupation of Palestine. We in London, we have, for example, in this protest, more than a thousand people, Jewish people, came in the protest, in the Jewish bloc, and they protested. And their calls were the same calls as everyone in the protest is calling for. The Jewish people are part of the struggle of the Palestinian liberation movement, and they have been doing a great job. And actually, I believe that one of the most vocal voices for Palestine are of Jewish voices. We have seen many organizations in the U.S. and in the U.K. with Jewish people, Jewish Voice for Peace and Na’amod and many other organizations here and there, who are calling, who are fighting day and night for the liberation of the Palestinian people, who are fighting against the occupation peacefully and justly. They are not antisemitic. They can’t be antisemitic while they are Jews.
And unfortunately, the smear campaigns that the Israeli lobby is doing here is fierce, and they do not distinguish between the Jewish people or the Christians or the Muslims. As long as we are pro-Palestine, as long as we are against occupation, then we are antisemitic. That’s really absurd. But I am very, very, very proud, and all of us are very, very, very proud of the Jewish community, of the Jewish community in the U.S. and in the U.K. who challenge the stereotypes, who challenge the Western media, and who challenge the disinformation and misinformation about what’s going on in Palestine and Israel. And they came out and said in one word that they are pro-justice, pro-peace, and they are with ceasefire now.
As for Biden, he said that Al-Shifa Hospital should be protected. I really want to believe him, but I don’t think that he’s genuine in his calls, because he is supporting Israel. He has been aiding Israel with the money, with diplomacy, with weaponry. He has doubled the money that he gives to Israel to bomb us. For example, my family was bombed by an F-16, an American-made airplane. So, Biden provides Israel with whatever it needs, with the weapon, with whatever it needs, and then they say that Al-Shifa Hospital should be protected. Unfortunately, Al-Shifa Hospital is not protected. Now most of the refugees who came to Al-Shifa Hospital, they already left. We have seen videos of piles of bodies in Al-Shifa Hospital, and eyewitnesses say that the stray dogs go and eat from the bodies of the Palestinian people, because they cannot go and bury these bodies of the dead people in the Gaza Strip. Unfortunately, I think these comments from Biden should be — I will only believe these comments if he does something, if he does an action. But right now I do not trust his words. I do not trust his calls. And I believe he is complicit in the war crimes that Israel is committing against the Palestinian people, including the targeting of the hospitals, Al-Shifa Hospital and other hospitals. They have been targeted, these hospitals, because Israel had the cover and the atmosphere from the U.S. government, from the U.S. military, from the U.S. media, mainstream media, to do what they are doing right now.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, Ahmed, I wanted to ask you — you were mentioning Al-Shifa Hospital and the United States being complicit. The terrible, absolutely terrible images we’ve seen in the past two days of the premature infants cut off from their incubators and just all together in a big group surrounded by aluminum foil to protect them — I can’t understand why even in the United States still or even in the West there are still people who don’t recognize the enormous war crimes that are being committed here. Your sense of what it will take to stop this, to allow at least a ceasefire in Gaza right now?
AHMED ALNAOUQ: Well, I don’t know what it takes to force a ceasefire, after everything that we have seen, after the targeting of civilians, the targeting of hospitals, targeting of schools, targeting of refugees as they are going south, more than 15,000 people now already killed, including the 2,000 or 3,000 people under the rubble. Entire areas have been wiped out. Neighborhoods have been destroyed. And people are starving. People are literally starving in Gaza. They don’t have food. They dont’ have water. They don’t have medical supplies. They don’t have electricity. They don’t have internet connection. All of this, a genocide, is taking place in Gaza, and we’re still seeing some politicians and some governments who refuse to push Israel for a ceasefire. I don’t know what does it take to stop all of that.
And we have seen what’s going on in the hospital, in Shifa Hospital, is a crime. It’s a crime against humanity. I don’t think — I don’t know how these people are humans, how they feel for their brothers and sisters, who allow these massacres to happen in Al-Shifa Hospital. And allow me to say this: The Israelis are targeting Al-Shifa Hospital and other hospitals not because there is a Hamas base in it. Of course they know that there is no Hamas there. These are public areas, and everyone, like, they are taped and filmed all the time. There is no Hamas inside Al-Shifa Hospital, but Israel wants to destroy Al-Shifa Hospital in order to force everyone who live north of the valley to go south, because people are taking refuge in these hospitals, so Israel are bombing these hospitals so that they end all the shelters for the refugees, and that’s when they will be forced to move south. So, all these allegations that Hamas members or military base is in Al-Shifa Hospital, other hospital, is absurd.
Now, a country or an army that is willing and capable of killing 5,000 Palestinian kids while they were sleeping in their homes, including 14 of my nieces and nephews, is capable of lying and saying that there is Hamas in the hospital. This is a lie, and the world should know. The world should know better. Now we have social media. We see the truth as it is. And I do not give any excuse for anyone who believes or buys the Israeli narrative about what’s going on in this conflict, because this army is a killer, is a murderer, and they are, of course, capable of lying, as they have lied for many, many, many years before.
AMY GOODMAN: Ahmed Alnaouq, I want to thank you for being with us, co-founder of We Are Not Numbers. At least 20 members of his family have been killed in Gaza since the October 7th Hamas attack, including his father and several siblings. His recent piece for The Nation is headlined “Palestinians Just Want to Be Treated Like Human Beings.” We’ll link to it at democracynow.org.
Next up, we speak with two journalists, the award-winning Jazmine Hughes, forced to resign from The New York Times Magazine after signing an open letter criticizing Israel. We also speak to the writer Jamie Lauren Keiles, who is leaving The New York Times, as well. Back in 30 seconds.
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AMY GOODMAN: “Wednesday Morning” by Macklemore, who addressed the pro-ceasefire rally in Washington, D.C., last week.
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NY Times Writers Jazmine Hughes & Jamie Keiles Resign After Signing Letter Against Israeli War on Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 14, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/14 ... transcript
Transcript
Democracy Now! speaks to award-winning writers Jazmine Hughes and Jamie Lauren Keiles in their first broadcast interview since being forced out of The New York Times Magazine for signing an open letter condemning Israel’s siege on Gaza. The magazine’s editor Jake Silverstein said the letter violated the outlet’s policy on public protest, but Keiles says there are no clear guidelines, especially for contributing writers. He explains he signed on to the letter due to his disappointment in the journalistic standards missing from mainstream coverage of the war in Gaza, saying “this is an industrywide question.” Both writers say their former institution’s scrutiny of pro-Palestinian activism is a double standard that indicates tacit support for Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We turn now to look at how Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is creating turmoil in newsrooms. The New York Times Magazine's award-winning writer Jazmine Hughes was recently forced to resign after signing an open letter condemning Israel's siege on Gaza. In an email to the staff, the magazine editor, Jake Silverstein, wrote, “While I respect that she has strong convictions, this was a clear violation of The Times’s policy on public protest. This policy, which I fully support, is an important part of our commitment to independence,” he said.
Jazmine Hughes is an acclaimed journalist who won a National Magazine Award earlier this year for her profiles of Viola Davis and Whoopi Goldberg in The New York Times. She also worked on the _Times_’ prize-winning 1619 Project about the role of slavery in the United States. Her last piece was about Danny DeVito and his daughter Lucy starring in a Broadway play.
Meanwhile, a contributor at The New York Times Magazine who signed the same letter criticizing Israel, Jamie Lauren Keiles, has announced he’ll no longer write for the publication. He’s a transgender journalist who describes himself as a, quote, “religiously observant Jew.” In a message on social media, he said it was a, quote, “personal decision about what kind of work I want to be able to do.”
The letter they both signed read in part, quote, “We stand in opposition to the silencing of dissent and to racist and revisionist media cycles, further perpetuated by Israel’s attempts to bar reporting in Gaza, where journalists have been both denied entry and targeted by Israeli forces. … We condemn those in our industries who continue to enable apartheid and genocide. We cannot write a free Palestine into existence, but together we must do all we possibly can to reject narratives that soothe Western complicity in ethnic cleansing,” they wrote.
Jazmine Hughes and Jamie Lauren Keiles join us together in their first broadcast interview. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Jazmine, let’s begin with you. Talk about your decision, that led to your forced resignation from The New York Times, to sign the letter. Why did you choose to sign on?
JAZMINE HUGHES: I signed on to the letter as mostly a conscientious person. I felt so overwhelmed by the media that I was seeing, the reports that I was hearing. And I don’t purport to be an expert on the situation, by any means. Admittedly, I’m pretty belated to the entire approach. And I wanted to personally hold myself accountable.
But what really stuck out to me about the letter is that we were — the letter was addressed in part to other news organizations, other journalists, that spoke about workplace violations, harassment that people were facing, that spoke about the ways in which the conflict is being covered. And I considered it a conversation within the industry that I wanted to be a part of.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you talk a little about what your concerns were about how it was being covered by the Times?
JAZMINE HUGHES: Well, I don’t want to speak about particular ways that it was covered by The New York Times, but just in general, I felt as if I wanted to be part of this conversation that really held the industry itself to a particular standard. And also I felt personally implicated as a taxpaying American, and I wanted to hold myself accountable for these sorts of things. With regard to the _Times_’s coverage, I — actually, no, I didn’t have anything particular about the _Times_’s coverage. I just wanted to speak to the matter at large.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this whole issue, obviously, of objectivity within mainstream or commercial journalism, your sense of how it has been applied over the years?
JAZMINE HUGHES: I think that objectivity is a wonderful, beautiful project for a world that does not exist. Right? And I think that, I guess, specifically within the Times, but in mainstream media writ large, that the recent, like, diversification of newsrooms has been a great boon, I think, to both coverage and to people’s, like, egos. But what happens when we suddenly have like an influx of people with different identities, different experiences and different wants in a newsroom? I signed the — I signed the letter, rather, as an employee of The New York Times, but as a Black person, as a queer person, as a woman. And, you know, all these identities have — all of those identities, or all of the communities thereof, have been awarded their rights by agitation, right? By protest. And I, as a person at the core of all these identities, wanted to amplify that effort. And I think that — sorry, that’s it.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Jazmine, you’ve talked about the awards you’ve won for your writing, like the National Magazine Award, being from a very subjective point of view, and that that’s your power, that’s what you win the awards for. Can you amplify on that?
JAZMINE HUGHES: Sure. I have won — I had won three awards during my tenure as a writer for The New York Times Sunday Magazine: one for being under 30, which I am no longer; one for writing a story about coming out as a lesbian; and one for writing these stories on — like stated, on Viola Davis and Whoopi Goldberg. And all of these stories were predicated, in some part, on my identity.
I think the biggest difference, or, I guess, the biggest note that I want to make, that I signed that letter as a magazine journalist, right? I wasn’t working in the newsroom. I wasn’t doing the sort of stories where you take the sort of like distant, authoritative stance where you are presenting unbiased and unfiltered facts. Every story that I’ve written for The New York Times has been, like, through my very real identity and experiences. The fact that I’ve written so many stories with the word “we” — right? — that can refer to any group of people, any sort of community that I’m a part of, already puts me in a situation where I didn’t purport to try to write or continue the sort of — the standards of the newsroom, of the actual New York Times. I think that I was writing — or, all the stories I wrote had a particular voice, and I think that voice translated onto the letter because it’s me, and that’s what makes sense.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s bring Jamie Lauren Keiles into this conversation. You also resigned from The New York Times Magazine. You’re a transgender Jewish writer, a self-described “observant Jew.” You were a New York Times Magazine contributor. Talk about your decision.
JAMIE LAUREN KEILES: Yeah. So, first and foremost, I signed the letter as a person. I feel like growing up as a Jew in America, you’re asked all the time, “What would people do if there was another Holocaust?” And for me, it was just really important to say this is the time when you’re supposed to speak up. Like, this is the moment that you’ve been hypothetically asked about your entire life. So, journalism aside, I signed it as a person, and I think it’s the right thing to do. And I wouldn’t support an ethnostate anywhere else in the world for any other group, and I don’t support it for my own people. So, that was, first and foremost, why I signed the letter.
The secondary question of sort of why did I sign it as a journalist has to do a little bit about with questions about sort of what do we expect of contingent labor. Jazmine is a staffer, but I’m a contributing writer for the magazine, which means I don’t have benefits. I don’t have any kind of protections. So, that’s how most of the journalism in our industry is currently being produced in this moment, by contingent laborers. And I think there’s this bigger question of, like: If an institution is not willing to give you a job, then what do you owe them? Right? And I think, like, I’m not — as someone that doesn’t have job security and isn’t protected and doesn’t have access to the labor rights that a union grants, I think it’s like incumbent upon me to be owning my own platform as much as possible, right? I owe nothing to the institution of the Times, if the Times gives nothing to me. And I think that, to me, the commitment to signing the letter, beyond the fact that I just think it’s the correct statement to make, it’s a little bit of a protest of this idea that just because you’re a person who produces news — and like Jazmine, like, I cover celebrities. You know, this is not my main topic. But it’s the idea that the magazine or the Times as a whole would have some hold on my speech just seemed ludicrous to me. So, in some way, it was a small amount of protest over the labor conditions in the industry at large.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, in other words, what you’re saying is the Times holds you to the code of conduct of an employee but then does not provide you the benefits or the protections of an employee. What did the editors say to you once the letter had come out?
JAMIE LAUREN KEILES: I mean, it’s a little less clear than that — right? — because, like, there’s not formal statements saying what contributors and what 1099 workers can or cannot say, right? When you go say, “Hey, where’s the line? Like, what is political speech, and what is a statement of fact?” like, it’s very hard to get a clear answer on that.
So, I signed the letter. This was the second letter I signed. I signed an earlier letter regarding the paper’s coverage of trans issues, and I was reprimanded for that. And they said, “Well, you know, you can’t sign this letter because it singled out the work of other writers specifically within the institution.” And I said to that, “Well, I don’t work here, so I don’t know what you’re talking to me about.” And basically, I signed this letter and resigned shortly after, because I felt a reprimand was coming, which Jazmine’s situation, on some level, seems to have borne out.
But the biggest frustration, I think, from the labor perspective is that when you asked, “What are the guidelines? Where are the hard boundaries of what kind of speech is acceptable for a Times contributor or not?” there’s no written guidelines. People will tell you vague things on the phone, like my editor did, such as, like, “Well, you can attend street protests and post on social media, but don’t make a big thing about it,” right? So, like, to me, it’s a little bit of a question of, like: Are there clear rules about this? What types of objectivity are we maintaining to be, like, the requirement for doing this job? And then it’s incumbent upon me to accept or reject those things or not. But as long as it’s this vague triangulation about, like, “Well, you know, there’s kind of just a vibe about what types of speech are OK,” like, I just, as someone that’s, like, trying to do intellectually honest work and be in pursuit of truth in some sense, whether or not a totally objective position is possible, I think it’s really important, especially as the industry becomes more and more centered on people who do this kind of 1099 contingent work, to have clear guidelines for what is expected of journalists who are doing this work.
AMY GOODMAN: Jamie, I was wondering your response, and if you were a part of the protest last week — it was just after Jazmine had resigned — the large group of media workers who led a march to The New York Times and later occupied the paper’s building entrance for over an hour, denouncing what demonstrators called biased reporting toward Israel. Protesters read the names at the time of at least 36 journalists — it’s now over 40 journalists — killed by Israeli fire in Gaza — it’s 40 altogether, also involving Lebanon — and distributed mock newspapers with the words “The New York Crimes,” accusing the Times with complicity in laundering genocide. Also, people like Nan Rubin [sic] announced that — rather, Nan Goldin announced that she would end her project, her collaboration with The New York Times, the well-known artist. Jamie, your thoughts?
JAMIE LAUREN KEILES: Yeah. So, I did attend the outside march in support of the action that was led by Writers Against the War on Gaza, which is the group that produced the letter that Jazmine and I both signed.
I don’t necessarily think my anger is focused specifically on The New York Times, because, like, while they are indicative of a broader problem with the industry, I think this is like an industrywide question, right? So, like, the Times, as like one of the — the, quote-unquote, “paper of record,” becomes the center of this conversation, but, like, it’s by no means exclusive to the Times. And, like, my particular employment situation there really is like not that critical when we think about the broader issue, right?
To me, the media questions around it — right? — it’s like critical thinking skills that journalists would be expected to apply to any other situation — right? — and stuff like providing historical context or thinking about, like, the semantics of power within certain language that’s chosen, even things like the Times naming their vertical the “Israel-Hamas war” versus perhaps like the “Israel-Palestine war” or the “Israel-Gaza war,” right? There are all these choices that are being made, things like — I was really, really disheartened to see the CNN embed with the IDF, right? Like, there are all these ideas about, like, journalistic objectivity, but then, when it actually comes down to the level of like news being produced, things we would expect of news coverage on any other topic are totally being forgotten here. And I just think, like, any attempts to silence journalist pushback to this seems to me to be like, in some way, an endorsement of Israel’s actions, right? So, like, all I think that — but beyond a ceasefire, which is my personal demand, as far as an industry demand, all I’m asking for is fair, fair, reasonable coverage that you would expect of any other topic.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us in this first broadcast interview you’ve done. Jamie Lauren Keiles resigned from The New York Times Magazine, as did Jazmine Hughes. Jamie Lauren Keiles is a contributor, and Jazmine is — was a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine.
Next up, we look at how the United States and other nations are helping to arm Israel in its assault on Gaza. We’ll speak with Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory. Stay with us.
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Antony Loewenstein: Israel Is Testing New Weapons on Gaza as Arms Dealers Profit from Gaza War
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 14, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/14 ... transcript
Transcript
Worldwide protests calling for a ceasefire are drawing attention to the role of weapons manufacturers and distributors supplying machinery to Israel’s assault on Gaza, with demonstrators blocking shipping tankers and entrances to weapons factories, and unionized workers refusing to handle military materiel over the war in Gaza. There is “a growing public awareness and anger” about the global connection between Western powers and the Israeli military industry, says Antony Loewenstein, who has investigated how Israeli weaponry and surveillance technology are used on Palestinians and exported around the world. “Israel is already, as we speak … live-testing new weapons in Gaza,” says Loewenstein. He also discusses what he characterizes as the “intelligence” and “political” failures of the October 7 Hamas incursion.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
The weapons Israel is using in its assault on Gaza have become a major focus of protests calling for a ceasefire. In the United Kingdom Friday, hundreds of demonstrators blockaded the country’s biggest weapons manufacturer, BAE Systems, to call for the end of weapons sales to Israel.
PROTESTERS: BAE, what do you say? How many kids have you killed today? BAE, what do you say? How many kids have you killed today?
AMY GOODMAN: This comes as union members in Belgium and Spain have refused to handle shipments of military materiel over the war in Gaza. Here in the U.S., nine peace activists were arrested Monday for blockading entrances to the engineering complex of General Dynamics in Connecticut, where nuclear submarines are designed, and said, quote, “We are seeking to make connections between General Dynamics’ preparation for nuclear war here in New London and Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza,” they said.
Meanwhile, in Australia, hundreds of pro-Palestine protesters blocked the Israeli ZIM shipping line from docking at Sydney’s Port Botany, saying it is a major shipper of arms to Israeli forces currently waging war on Gaza. Over the weekend, hundreds of thousands of pro-Palestine protesters took to the streets of Sydney, of Melbourne, of Brisbane to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Australia has reportedly approved over 50 military export permits to Israel this year alone, and three Palestinian human rights organizations in Australia and the U.K. have filed legal challenges to suspend them.
For more, we’re joined in Sydney, Australia, by Antony Loewenstein, an independent journalist who’s investigated how Israeli weaponry and surveillance technology is used on Palestinians and exported around the world. His most recent book, published in May, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World. He was based in East Jerusalem between 2016 and 2020.
We welcome you back to Democracy Now!, Antony Loewenstein. If you can start off by talking about this issue of weapons, and also speak from your background as a Jewish reporter?
ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: Thanks so much for having me, Amy and Juan.
Look, what’s been happening since October 7 with the arms to Israel, really, in some ways, fits into a long pattern. You’ve had, since that day, the U.S., U.K., Germany, Australia, Netherlands, many other countries rush ship huge amounts of weapons to Israel, including, I might add, F-35, which is a fighter jet that Israel has been using. And there’s a global supply chain, and many countries, including Australia, the U.S. and Netherlands, are sending parts to Israel, which almost certainly are being used over Gaza as we speak. In fact, the German arms exports to Israel have expanded 10 times in the last month since 2022, a massive increase.
And I think what you see, really, is a growing global awareness of the connection between Israeli militarism and the arms industry. That might be obvious to many on the left. That’s been the case for many, many years, long before October 7. But I think you see, in some ways, a growing public awareness and anger. The longer this conflict is going on, the death toll is so staggering. The amount of civilians being killed is so overwhelming, the footage that we’re all seeing. And understanding the connection between how that’s happening and who’s actually funding and supporting that — yes, obviously, Israel is the one that’s actually doing the killing in Gaza, but there’s a deep global connection to many Western partners that are funding, backing and arming it.
And I think, ultimately, finally, I’d say that there is a growing Jewish awareness of this. Now, obviously, I speak as someone who’s Jewish. I am Australian, but also a German citizen. And I think it’s clear that for a long time there’s been Jewish criticism of Israel, that’s for sure. But in the last years, particularly since the Gaza war in 2014, and especially this year, the devastation we’ve seen since the horrific Hamas attack on October 7, growing Jewish voices, not just in relation to protesting Israeli actions, but the arms that many Western countries are sending to Israel to fight its brutal war.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Antony, could you talk about how Israel and especially Gaza have become a laboratory for surveillance states? You write, for instance, that the system is most extreme in the city of Hebron, where facial recognition and numerous cameras are used to monitor Palestinians, including at times in their homes, instead of the extreme Jewish settlers who are routinely attacking them. Could you talk about that? And also, what’s happening in — what’s been happening in Gaza even before the war?
ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: One of the things I talk about a lot in my book, Juan, in The Palestine Laboratory, is how in the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem, for years, Israel regularly tests and trials new weapons. That could be drones, spyware, as you say, facial recognition technology. And Gaza, for years, was framed as the ultimate laboratory. There were 2.3 million Palestinians. There was a fence that essentially was constructed around the entire perimeter. It was almost impossible to break out. Of course, we saw that didn’t — not a reality on October 7, which I’ll get to in a minute. But, ultimately, there were huge amounts of technologies.
But one I think you find after October 7 — and I heard this both from sources that I’ve been speaking to, but also some decent reporting in the last month — is this, in some ways, was a tech lack of imagination, a tech failure, a tech lack of imagination, a tech arrogance. And what I mean by that is that Israel had believed, arrogantly, for years that it was possible to cage 2.3 million people indefinitely, and they would never break out and resist that, and even to the point where in the year before the attack, I’ve been hearing reports that Israel and the NSA, the U.S.'s key spy agency, stopped listening in to Hamas walkie-talkies, for example, just didn't listen to it, in the belief they didn’t need to. But certain Jewish communities near the Gaza border were giving information they were hearing back to Israeli military intelligence, which the government ignored. Now, on the one hand, it was an intelligence catastrophe, not unlike 9/11 in the U.S. But it was more than that. It was a political failure, Netanyahu, being the prime minister, the obvious one.
And I think what it shows is, as I talk about in the book extensively, that you can have all the repressive technology you want in the world — you can repress people, surveil them, monitor their homes, document them in any way possible — and Israel is, tragically, a global leader in this, which they then export to huge amounts of nations around the world — but, ultimately, it won’t work. It can “work,” in inverted commas, for a certain amount of time, and you can convince other countries that it does work. But when something like October 7 happens, we see the complete failure.
Having said that — and this is the important caveat to this — you know, ultimately, I think this will have no impact on Israel’s arms industry. In fact, I think it’s actually going to help. And let me briefly explain what I mean by that. The failure on October 7 was clear, but I think many countries will want to support Israel now moving forward. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Israeli arms sales have soared, massively soared. And I think what you’ll find is that like after 9/11, the U.S. defense industry massively benefited from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel is already, as we speak, as I’ve been documenting in the last month, live-testing new weapons in Gaza, showing it on social media, how they’re working. That’s not just for a domestic and international public, but also other countries that might want to buy those weapons in months and years ahead.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I wanted to ask you — in terms of countries selling weapons to Israel, talk about the difficulty in Australia in even finding out what the government is doing in terms of its exporting of arms to Israel.
ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: You know, the American arms industry is hardly one you would call moral, but at least at times there’s a degree of transparency. Although I do note that after the Biden administration has sent huge amounts of weapons to Ukraine, there was a degree of listing what weapons were being sold, whereas with Israel in the last month, there’s been barely any acknowledgment on what America actually is selling to Israel, although we have certain suspicions.
Australia is an interesting case. Australia is a middle power. We are very, very madly pro-Israel, sadly, as a government. And for years and years, the Australian arms industry has been boosted by both sides of politics in my country. They’ve wanted to make it one of the top 10 or 20 arms exporters in the world, which it now is. It sold weapons to Saudi Arabia, that they used in their genocidal war against Yemen. And in the last years, a number of activists, lawyers and journalists, including me, have tried to find out some details about what exactly is going on with the Australian arms industry to Israel.
And I should say that I’m one of the co-founders of Declassified Australia, a news organization. And recently we published this amazing report which detailed how Pine Gap, which is a key U.S. intelligence asset in the center of Australia, is being used by the Americans to provide real-time intelligence to the Israelis in their war against Gaza. Now, Pine Gap has been used for decades in U.S. war making in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the idea that you have a key American intelligence asset in the center of Australia giving information to Israel, which directly implicates Australian officials and government in what Israel is doing in Gaza. And this report went viral a few weeks ago, which I think explains how there’s so much concern that the U.S.’s presence in Australia, and, therefore, assisting Israel in its war against Gaza from Australian shores, should something that concern all of us deeply.
AMY GOODMAN: Antony Loewenstein, we want to thank you so much for being with us. Antony Loewenstein is —
ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: — an independent journalist who’s investigated how Israeli weaponry and surveillance technology is used on Palestinians and exported around the world, also a filmmaker and the author of many books, including his most recent, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World. He was based in East Jerusalem between 2016 and 2020. We’ll also link to your latest piece in the New Internationalist headlined “How Palestine Became Israel’s Spyware Test-Bed.”
That does it for our show. Belated happy birthday to Ishmael Daro! Democracy Now! produced with Renée Feltz, Mike Burke, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Thanks for joining us.