Capitol Police Violently Break Up Jewish-Organized DNC Protest Calling for Gaza Ceasefire
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 17, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/17 ... transcript
Transcript
As protests for a ceasefire in Gaza continue around the United States, the Jewish-led peace organization IfNotNow helped organize Wednesday’s protest at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. The protesters held hands to block the entrance to the building and were met with pepper spray and police use of force. “Let’s be clear that police escalated the protest,” says Eva Borgwardt, national spokesperson for IfNotNow. “Our Jewish values and our safety as Jews is extremely, extremely contingent on calling for a ceasefire now,” Borgwardt, who is Jewish, continues. She also comments on Democratic Party leaders’ resistance to and suppression of public calls to rein in Israel’s lethal assault on Gaza, as well as the role of the powerful lobbying group AIPAC in policing public dissent.
AMY GOODMAN: President Biden is facing increasing pressure to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. But instead, the White House is rushing more arms to Israel. Bloomberg is reporting the U.S. has quietly sent Israel more laser-guided missiles for Apache gunships, as well as new army vehicles, bunker-buster munitions and more ammunition. On Wednesday, the United States abstained from a United Nations Security Council vote in support of extended humanitarian pauses in Gaza.
Meanwhile, protests are continuing across the United States calling for a ceasefire. In California, police arrested at least 81 protesters after they blocked traffic on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge for several hours. In Boston, protesters shut down the Boston University Bridge.
Many of the protests calling for a ceasefire have been organized in part by two Jewish organizations: IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace. On Wednesday, the groups helped organize a protest at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., where House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and other lawmakers were gathered. U.S. Capitol police violently moved in on the protesters as they held hands to block the entrance to the DNC. Police described the protest as, quote, “not peaceful” and claimed that protesters pepper-sprayed officers. But images from the protest shows it was officers who deployed pepper spray and that officers used force to remove the demonstrators. This is Eva Borgwardt, national spokesperson for IfNotNow, speaking during the police action.
EVA BORGWARDT: We’re outside the Democratic Party headquarters because this party claims to be on the side of life and peace and equality, and we’re saying that we want them to live up to their values and oppose this horrific war and call for a ceasefire now. And we’re being responded to by the police shoving antiwar activists down the stairs, shoving peaceful protesters back with their bikes. And because our party, our party that 80% of us want a ceasefire, would rather beat up protesters than —
CHUCK MODI: Hold on. To be continued. One second. One second. One second.
AMY GOODMAN: Protest organizers say 90 people were injured outside the DNC. Capitol police say six of their officers sustained injuries. One person was arrested.
One lawmaker who was inside the DNC, California Congressmember Brad Sherman, took to social media to describe the demonstrators as, quote, “pro-terrorist, anti-Israel protestors.” On Thursday, President Biden called into a DNC meeting to express his appreciation for how law enforcement handled the protest.
We’re joined right now by that person you just heard, Eva Borgwardt, national spokesperson for IfNotNow.
Thanks so much for joining us from D.C., Eva. If you can start off by calling — by explaining why you focused on the DNC? And then describe what happened and respond to Congressmember Sherman saying you are pro-terrorist.
EVA BORGWARDT: Well, Amy, thank you so much for having me.
And, yes, the focus on the DNC was because, as we know, the majority of Americans, and certainly the majority of Democrats, want a ceasefire. And our lawmakers are not listening to the thousands of calls and constituent meetings that we’ve been trying — ways that we’ve been trying to reach them over the past month. And so, this was, like many protests across the country, an act of nonviolent civil disobedience. The goal was to assemble peacefully, call attention to the urgent situation in Gaza and ask for Democratic leadership to act and call for a ceasefire now, a release of the hostages, a hostage exchange and a deescalation and to address the root causes of this violence — decades of occupation, apartheid and siege.
And unfortunately, police chose to escalate. And with no verbal warnings or communication with police liaisons who were trying to speak with them, they started shoving protesters down the stairs and shoving protesters back with their bicycles and trampling on the 11,000 tea lights that protesters had brought to represent the Palestinians who have already been killed in Gaza.
And as you mentioned, Democratic lawmakers, including Congressman Brad Sherman, have said that these protesters are pro-Hamas. Speaker Mike Johnson said that this was an antisemitic protest, which is, frankly, absurd, because — for many reasons, but primarily so many of the protesters are not only Jews, but who have loved ones who were either murdered by Hamas on October 7th or Jews and Palestinians who have loved ones either in Gaza or who know people in Gaza who have lost dozens of members of their families over the past month. And so, to say that these, again, many of them personally grieving protesters are pro-terrorist is absurd. And let’s be clear that police escalated this protest.
AMY GOODMAN: Rather than characterize what Congressmember Brad Sherman said, as I did at the beginning, let’s hear what he said on CNN Wednesday night.
REP. BRAD SHERMAN: There were over 200,000 pro-Israel demonstrators, with a permit, entirely peaceful. And here you have a demonstration less than one-thousandth as large that’s also getting publicity. And it’s getting publicity because of their willingness to attack police, as they did with pepper spray, is a force multiplier.
AMY GOODMAN: So, he’s contrasting the protest you had in front of the DNC with the pro-Israel march that took place a few days ago. Your response to what he’s saying? Also, I know a number of reporters outside were scratching their heads when he talked about pro-terrorist protesters.
EVA BORGWARDT: Yes. Thanks, Amy. And, yes, his words do speak for themselves. I mean, first of all, let’s also be clear that there have been hundreds of thousands of nonviolent — hundreds of thousands of peace activists — Palestinian, Jewish, multiracial, multifaith — rising up across the U.S., and millions around the world. And so, to contrast Wednesday night’s demonstration only with the Tuesday demonstration, the pro-Israel march at the Capitol, is telling, because it’s impossible for politicians like Brad Sherman, who are refusing to call for a ceasefire, to acknowledge the massive peaceful uprising that is happening around the world in support of the people of Gaza because the public, the international community, sees Palestinian lives and Israeli lives as equal.
AMY GOODMAN: Eva, on Thursday, yesterday, Vermont’s sole Congressmember Becca Balint became the first Jewish congressmember to call for a ceasefire. That’s very interesting because one of the senators of Vermont, Bernie Sanders, has not called for a ceasefire. In fact, IfNotNow protesters have been arrested in his office requesting that he call for a ceasefire. Your response to both Balint and Sanders?
EVA BORGWARDT: Yes, well, and I was also at that protest at Senator Sanders’ office earlier this month. And I think, in particular, for Jewish lawmakers, as a Jewish movement, as the Jewish movements that have been protesting for ceasefire, we are doing this for safety and freedom for Palestinians who are under siege, and also because we are terrified for our loved ones in Israel and in the entire region if this escalates into a broader regional war. And our disappointment in Senator Sanders so far refraining from calling for a ceasefire is that he has made his legacy as an antiwar champion. And so, we are extremely grateful to Congresswoman Balint for speaking out from a Jewish perspective for ceasefire, because we feel that our Jewish values and our safety as Jews is extremely, extremely contingent on ending this horrific violence and calling for a ceasefire now.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Eva, you were an organizer for President Biden during his 2020 campaign. If you can talk about your response to his position now, and what this means, and what you feel Biden supporters then are feeling today?
EVA BORGWARDT: Yes. So, like you mentioned, I worked for President Biden in Arizona in the 2020 election. Let’s be clear: I am terrified of Donald Trump and the white supremacist, antisemitic movement that’s behind him. And I feel immense stake in the Democratic Party winning in November 2024. And frankly, again, I am deeply terrified and angry at Democratic leadership for ignoring the calls from the majority of their base for a ceasefire, a hostage exchange and a deescalation, and creating a lack of faith in the Democratic Party that I am very concerned will hurt Democrats’ chances in November.
And I encourage them, with the fullest, fullest emphasis possible, to reverse course now. We have seen so far that for some Democrats, 1,400 Israeli deaths and over 4,000 Palestinian deaths were enough. Now, for other Democrats, 11,000 Palestinians in Gaza killed are not enough for them to call for ceasefire, which is how we know this horrific violence will end and move toward a political solution in the region. And so, we are waiting to see how many Palestinian lives our Democratic politicians need in order to call for ceasefire. And every day, every hour that they wait has, I fear, implications for what will happen in November.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, I wanted to ask about the powerful lobby group AIPAC — that’s the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — stepping up its support for primary challengers to lawmakers who voice support for a ceasefire. Slate magazine reports AIPAC is expected to spend somewhere around $100 million in Democratic primaries backing opponents of House progressives, like the Squad. Your response?
EVA BORGWARDT: Yes. So, IfNotNow is currently — prior to October 7th, IfNotNow’s main focus was around the campaign around AIPAC and making sure that the Jewish public, in particular, and the American public understand that these days AIPAC is — those $100 million and the money that AIPAC is spending in these elections is primarily from far-right billionaires and that AIPAC is functioning essentially as a way for these Republican billionaires to interfere in Democratic primaries.
And in particular around escalating their spending or threats of spending against those calling for ceasefire, AIPAC has always been determined to prevent any kind of conditionality on U.S. support for Israel, any human rights conditions consistent with U.S. law and any daylight between the U.S. and Israel. And now in attempting to punish any of the lawmakers who are taking a moral and pragmatic stand in calling for ceasefire, they are demonstrating that even the genocidal — and let’s call it genocidal, because it is — rhetoric from — as you have on this show many times, rhetoric from the Israeli leaders in the government right now is not enough to warrant conditionality in U.S. support. And frankly, I am also extremely terrified about the implications of punishing politicians for not supporting, again, this assault on — this massacre in Gaza, because if we say — if AIPAC is determined to tell the American public that supporting an unfolding genocide — that speaking out to oppose an unfolding genocide is beyond the pale in the realm of political acceptability, what is going to become of us, and what is going to happen to this world?
AMY GOODMAN: Eva Borgwardt, I want to thank you so much for being with us, national spokesperson for IfNotNow, one of the organizers of Wednesday’s protest at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C.
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Sharif Abdel Kouddous on the Targeting of Journalists & Israel’s “Colonial Fantasy” to Depopulate Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 17, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/17 ... transcript
Transcript
As the United Nations calls again for a ceasefire in Gaza, Palestinian health officials are warning thousands of women, children and sick people could soon die as Israel continues its bombardment of Gaza. Gaza is also facing a second day of a communications blackout. “Gaza City itself is a hollow shell” where “the streets have been turned into graveyards” and “the smell of death is everywhere,” says independent journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous. “It increasingly seems that Israel is trying to push Palestinians into Egypt, which is a long-standing colonial fantasy,” he says of Israel’s campaign of Palestinian displacement in Gaza. Kouddous also calls out the journalism community’s silence in the face of what is the deadliest conflict for journalists in decades, noting the “bias being laid bare.”
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
As we continue to look at Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, I want to turn to the words of the British Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah describing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. He had been working in the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, which was one of the last functioning hospitals in the Gaza Strip.
DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: Day before yesterday, there was a major airstrike, over 50 killed, on a mosque. And Al-Ahli was completely inundated with the wounded, and we were operating all through the night. And by the early hours of yesterday morning, we had realized that we have basically run out of medication for the anesthetic machines, and we had to stop the operating room. We had finished early, and that is when we made the decision.
At the same time, in the early hours of the morning, there was heavy bombing all around the hospital. I mean, we — close to the hospital, you could feel the building being shook. And we were being — and it sounded like tank fire. It didn’t sound like air raids. And so we made the decision that it was time for at least the operating room staff, since we were being — not going to be able to provide a service, to evacuate. And so, yesterday morning we left. And we could — you could hear the sounds of the tanks around the hospital when we walked out. And we literally walked all the way to Nuseirat camp in the central zone.
When we left, there were over 500 wounded needing the urgent medical care, needing surgical intervention, that we cannot provide because we had run out of medication. We had run out. The operating room could no longer function. And at the best, there were two operating rooms in Al-Ahli. We were always overwhelmed with the number of wounded, compared with what we were able to provide.
AMY GOODMAN: The British Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah, speaking through his surgical mask in Gaza. We’ve been trying to reach people there, but it’s the second straight day of a telecommunications blackout. This is only the latest one.
To talk more about Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, we’re joined now by independent journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous, produced the award-winning documentary The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh for Al Jazeera’s documentary series Fault Lines and has reported from Gaza for Democracy Now! and other outlets.
Sharif, it’s so important to talk about what’s happening there even as this telecommunications blackout is happening. Also, the leaflets that are being dropped on Khan Younis, which is where so many thousands of Palestinians have been instructed to go, to head south, from northern Gaza south — now leaflets are being dropped there, saying they must move further south. Can you respond to this overall situation?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, I mean, you have a situation where the northern part of Gaza, north of Wadi Gaza, and Gaza City itself, which was home to nearly 1 million people, is now a hollow shell. Most neighborhoods in Gaza City and in northern Gaza, in general, have been very badly damaged or destroyed. You have these armored columns of Israeli forces going in and tearing up the roads. Electricity, water, sewage infrastructure basically no longer exist.
And, you know, there are reports that the smell of death is everywhere, as an untold number of bodies are lying under the rubble. The U.N. estimates that about 2,700 people, including 1,500 children, are missing and believed to be buried under the ruins. And there’s reports of the people that have remained in the north digging with their bare hands, trying to find their family members. And the streets have been turned into graveyards.
So, only a fraction of the people who lived in northern Gaza remain there, and most have been forcibly displaced to the south in scenes that are reminiscent of the Nakba. One-point-five million people have been displaced in Gaza. That’s nearly double the number that were ethnically cleansed in 1948 and were never allowed to return to their homes. And many of these people are people who were displaced, or their descendants, from 1948. We have to remember that 80% of Palestinians in Gaza are not from Gaza. They’re refugees. So, most of the Palestinians in northern Gaza are now packed into the south. There’s no indication if or ever they’ll be able to return to the north. The Israeli military effectively controls most of the northern area. And northern Gaza is basically uninhabitable now. You know, it’s been destroyed.
And there’s hardly any aid coming in. You know, Gaza is now receiving only about 10% of its needed food supplies. Dehydration, malnutrition are growing. Nearly all of the people in Gaza, the 2.3 million people, are in need of food, according to the U.N. And as you mentioned, the communications systems are down now for second day. And this is a more serious telecommunications blackout, because it’s the result of no fuel to power the internet and phone networks, so it may be a more permanent communications blackout. And this communications blackout is actually causing disruptions to the little amount of cross-border aid deliveries that were coming in.
And as you mentioned, the Israeli forces now have dropped these leaflets just the other day telling Palestinians in areas east of Khan Younis, which is, you know, a bigger city in the south of Gaza, to evacuate. Where are these people supposed to go? It increasingly seems that, you know, Israel is trying to push Palestinians into Egypt, which is a long-standing colonial fantasy. And, you know, there are plans that have been documented for this. There was a document leaked last month from Israel’s intelligence minister that detailed a durable postwar situation solution for Gaza, which includes the long-term transfer, forcible transfer, of Palestinians to northern Sinai. There’s something called the Eiland plan, which is named after a retired major general, who outlines a proposal to forcibly transfer Palestinians to Sinai.
But right now, yeah, we don’t know what the situation is. Egypt has staunchly refused this kind of mass displacement of Palestinians into its territory, and it has tried to negotiate aid to come in. But there’s increasing pressure right now on Egypt, because at the end of the day, this is an Egyptian border, the Rafah border crossing. It’s the only border crossing into Gaza that is not controlled by Israel. Egypt right now is letting in maybe 50, maybe 80, maybe a hundred trucks a day, just a fraction of the amount of aid that used to come into Gaza even before October 7th. And the reason it’s only letting in a fraction is that it’s allowing Israel to dictate the terms. So it gets approval from Israel of how many trucks can enter the Rafah border crossing. Those trucks then enter. They go up to an Israeli border crossing, where they’re checked. They come back down and then enter into Gaza.
And there’s increasing pressure on Egypt from civil society in Egypt, from people around the world, for Egypt to just open the border and let the aid in. If Israel wants to bomb U.N. aid trucks, then, you know, that’s something else. But right now Egypt is coordinating with Israel on how much aid gets in, and people are beginning to starve, and infectious disease is spreading because of no water, and it’s an incredible crisis.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, the number of journalists who have been killed, I think Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 42 journalists and media workers have been killed since October 7th. It’s the deadliest month for journalists since the group began collecting information in 1992. If you can talk about the global response, the global journalist response? And then we’ll talk a bit about the latest on Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed not in Gaza by the Israeli forces, but was killed last year outside the Jenin refugee camp.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Yeah. I mean, what can you say? I don’t know what the number is even now. You know, it’s at least 35. Maybe 40 Palestinian journalists have been killed in just over a month, by far the highest number of journalists killed in such a short amount of time. And, you know, foreign journalists can’t get into Gaza. Israel is not letting them in, and nor is Egypt. So you have a situation where you’re killing most of the journalists, the registered journalists in Gaza. You’re not letting other journalists in. And then we’ve seen very problematic coverage from newsrooms, Western newsrooms, of what’s happening on the ground, problematic language, and people have been protesting this. And we just saw — you know, people have been resigning from The New York Times. The poetry editor of The New York Times just resigned from there, you know, because of the language used by The New York Times in this coverage.
But also, you know, you haven’t seen the type of outcry that one would imagine from the journalistic community for their colleagues who are being killed in Gaza. And the ones that aren’t killed in Gaza have lost so much. They’ve lost their families. They’ve lost their homes. When Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered by the Saudi government, there was massive condemnation from Western news outlets for the murder, and rightly so. When Evan Gershkovich, The Wall Street Journal reporter, who remains in prison in Russia, was arrested, there has been and still remains a massive outcry over his arrest. But we haven’t seen the same kind of outcry over this record number of journalists, Palestinian journalists, that have been killed in Gaza. I think it’s deeply, deeply problematic and reveals a bias that is being laid bare in many ways.
And as you mentioned Shireen Abu Akleh, you know, when this all kind of — the assault on Gaza began on October 7th, we saw people post on Twitter, on social media kind of photos of Shireen and just saying that — kind of wishing that she was around, that she was alive to report, because she was such an incredible journalist and so needed in a time like this. You know, even the Lebanese journalist who was killed in shelling in southern Lebanon by Israel —
AMY GOODMAN: Issam Abdallah.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: — one of his last tweets — Issam Abdallah, yeah, Issam Abdallah — one of his last tweets was a photo of Shireen. And he just wrote, “Shireen,” with a heart. And then, after he was killed, someone put up his photo and said “Issam,” with a heart.
AMY GOODMAN: And the latest news —
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: So, yeah, Shireen — go ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: — about the Israeli army bulldozing the memorial for her where she was killed?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Right. I mean, as we heard in headlines, you know, Israel has repeatedly conducted very brutal raids on Jenin, on the Jenin refugee camp, which is the heart of militant Palestinian resistance in the West Bank. We’ve seen drone strikes on Jenin. Just a few days ago, a drone strike killed about 14 Palestinians in Jenin, one of the deadliest days in the West Bank since 2005. And we saw drone strikes just the other day, as well, and raids on the hospital.
And during one of these raids, they came in — the site where Shireen was shot by an Israeli sniper has become a memorial area. When I went there last year to report on her killing, there’s photos of her everywhere. There’s flowers. There’s written pieces of tribute that are all hung up. The tree where she was killed under, you can still see the bullet holes. And it’s a place where family and friends have sought some solace by visiting this area and remembering Shireen. And an Israeli bulldozer came in during one of these raids and completely destroyed this road and this area where this memorial was. And it doesn’t seem — it seems to just be some kind of vindictive act, because there was no reason to destroy this road that leads to the entrance of the Jenin refugee camp.
They’ve also — you know, in an earlier raid, they destroyed this memorial which was in the shape of a horse, which was kind of well known in Jenin, in a main roundabout, and was built from the pieces of an ambulance that was blown up in an airstrike by Israel in 2002. And it was — they used the parts of the destroyed ambulance to kind of create this horse monument, which was a testament to Jenin’s spirit of resistance. They also came in and kind of removed that. So there seems to be also an attack on symbols of resistance to Israel, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Sharif, we’re going to ask you to stay with us. We’re going to switch gears. Sharif Abdel Kouddous is a journalist who won a George Polk Award for documentary The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh for Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines series. After the break, Sharif will stay with us, and we’ll be joined by another guest to talk about his new documentary and all the latest developments around Cop City in Atlanta. Back in 20 seconds.