DemocracyNow! Headlines
November 22, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/shows/2023/11/22
Israel Continues Deadly Attacks as 4-Day Truce Announced, Gaza Death Toll Tops 14,100
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 22, 2023
Israel and Hamas have agreed to a four-day pause in fighting and to exchange 50 hostages held in Gaza for 150 Palestinian women and children in Israeli prisons. The short-term truce will also allow for the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza. The deal was mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the U.S. The temporary truce will start Thursday at 10 a.m. local time. The death toll in Gaza has topped 14,100 people after nearly seven weeks of nonstop Israeli attacks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it does not mean Israel will end its war on Gaza, as it continued its deadly attacks on the besieged territory, including in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. This man lost 15 members of his family, including children, in an Israeli airstrike earlier today in a residential area of Khan Younis.
Kamal Kalouseh: “This ceasefire deal won’t bring safety from Israelis. They may betray it. They may not continue with it. If there is no real ceasefire deal that ends this, it is not worthy.”
Reporter: “Aren’t you optimistic?”
Kamal Kalouseh: “No, no, I am not optimistic, but I am apprehensive that the attacks will be fiercer than before the ceasefire.”
We’ll have more on the truce deal after headlines. Separately, an Israeli drone strike killed at least five Palestinians in the Tulkarm camp in the occupied West Bank. Palestinian officials say Israeli forces also raided the emergency department of the Thabet Thabet Hospital in Tulkarm.
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Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital Under Siege; WHO Mourns Employee Killed with Family in Israeli Strike
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 22, 2023
Israel’s assault on Gaza’s health system continues. At least 100 Palestinians were killed overnight and this morning in attacks around hospitals and refugee camps. Israeli forces have encircled the Indonesian Hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip and have ordered staff to evacuate. There are still hundreds of patients inside, including 50 in critical condition. The head of the Indonesian Hospital, Sarbini Abdul Murad, wrote an open letter to President Biden urging him to listen to his conscience and respect international norms. Murad writes, “You have destroyed the international rules of the game, insulted the authority of the UN, torn apart the sense of justice, and hurt human values, and tarnished the face of human civilization.” Israeli shelling has killed at least 12 people in the Indonesian Hospital.
The World Health Organization says it is struggling to evacuate hospitals in the north.
Christian Lindmeier: “Over 30% of the deaths and injuries are in the south of Gaza, in the so-called safe area. Over 30% of the deaths are in the south of Gaza. Then came the bombing and the attacks of the hospitals, and now no more hospital is functioning in the north. Colleagues from MSF have been reporting that they were attacked, too, one of the last resorts there. So, taking away healthcare of people is taking away the last resort, is taking away the last piece of humanity. And that’s what’s happening right now.”
The WHO announced one of the agency’s staff members was killed when Israel bombed her parents’ house in southern Gaza. Dima Alhaj was among more than 50 people killed in the strike, including her 6-month-old baby, her husband and two brothers.
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Three Doctors, Including Members of MSF, Killed in Strike on Al-Awda Hospital
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 22, 2023
Doctors Without Borders said two of its doctors were killed in an Israeli strike on the Al-Awda Hospital. Doctors Mahmoud Abu Nujaila and Ahmad Al Sahar were killed alongside their colleague Dr. Ziad Al-Tatari. Doctors Without Borders said it has repeatedly told Israel it is a functioning hospital, and shared its GPS coordinates with Israeli authorities one day before the deadly attack. There are still some 200 patients at Al-Awda.
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Palestinian Poet Mosab Abu Toha and Family Released After Abduction by IDF
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 22, 2023
The Palestinian poet and author Mosab Abu Toha has been released, following his abduction by Israeli soldiers while trying to leave the Gaza Strip with his family. Abu Toha had been heading to the southern Rafah border crossing when he was seized by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint. He is said to be receiving medical treatment after being beaten by Israeli soldiers.
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BRICS Leaders Call for “Durable Truce”; South African Lawmakers Vote to Suspend Ties with Israel
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 22, 2023
Leaders at a virtual summit of BRICS nations called Tuesday for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce” in Gaza and the release of all captive civilians. The original BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — were joined by the coalition’s newest members — Egypt, Ethiopia, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran — at Tuesday’s high-level meeting. In contrast to the U.S. and many European nations, the majority of BRICS countries, including China and Russia, have called for a ceasefire. The summit’s host, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, forcefully condemned Israel’s assault on Gaza.
President Cyril Ramaphosa: “The collective punishment of Palestinian civilians through the unlawful use of force by Israel is a war crime. The deliberate denial of medicine, fuel, food and water to the residents of Gaza is tantamount to genocide.”
South Africa’s Parliament voted on Tuesday to suspend diplomatic ties with Israel and close its embassy in Pretoria until a ceasefire is reached. Such actions, however, will ultimately be up to President Ramaphosa.
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Ro Khanna Joins Congressional Call for Gaza Ceasefire
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 22, 2023
California Congressmember Ro Khanna has become the 43rd Democratic lawmaker to call for a ceasefire. Activists and Khanna’s constituents have been pressuring the powerful lawmaker to sign onto a House ceasefire resolution, including occupying his office last month.
In related news, the Detroit City Council on Tuesday became the largest U.S. city to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire. Polls show some two-thirds of Americans support a ceasefire.
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Activists Protest at Missouri Boeing Plant; UTA Drops Susan Sarandon for Calling for Ceasefire
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 22, 2023
In Missouri, protesters rallied at the gates of a Boeing manufacturing plant near St. Louis Tuesday, demanding an end to the use of U.S.-made weapons in the killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Protesters say the factory produces Joint Direct Attack Munitions and GBU-39 small-diameter bombs supplied to Israel’s Air Force.
In Hollywood, the United Talent Agency has stopped representing Oscar winner Susan Sarandon after she spoke at a rally in New York City last week, where she called for a ceasefire in Gaza. Sarandon has been active at antiwar protests to demand the protection of Palestinian lives.
Susan Sarandon: “You don’t have to be Palestinian to stand with the Palestinian people. You do not have to be Palestinian to understand that the slaughter of almost 5,000 children is unacceptable and a war crime.”
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Israel & Hamas Agree to 4-Day Truce & Hostage Release as Netanyahu Threatens War on Gaza Will Go On
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 22, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/22/hostages
Transcript
Under the terms of a new hostage deal, Hamas will release 50 hostages who were captured in its October 7 attack in exchange for Israel releasing 150 Palestinian women and teenagers held in Israeli prison and agreeing to a four-day pause in fighting to exchange captives and bring urgently needed humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. The four-day pause could be extended if Hamas continues to release hostages, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Israel would continue its 47-day bombardment of Gaza that has killed 14,000 Palestinians. “This is a rare glimmer of hope,” says former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy, who explains how this deal will shape Israeli politics and Netanyahu’s prospects moving forward. “The morning after this, he faces the music.”
AMY GOODMAN: Israel is continuing to attack Gaza ahead of the start of a four-day pause in fighting. Al Jazeera reports at least a hundred Palestinians were killed overnight in Gaza. The death toll from Israel’s 47-day bombardment has now topped 14,000.
As part of the truce deal, Hamas has agreed to initially release 50 hostages in exchange for the release of 150 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons. The four-day pause could be extended if Hamas agrees to keep releasing 10 hostages a day. Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza are believed to be holding about 240 hostages seized during Hamas’s October 7th attack on Israel.
According to the Palestinian group Addameer, Israel is now holding about 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners. That’s up from 5,000 before October 7th. More than 2,000 of the jailed Palestinians are being held indefinitely without charge. Palestinian news outlets have reported six Palestinians who were being detained without charge have died in recent weeks.
In Gaza, some residents welcomed the news of the four-day pause to the Israeli bombing.
ABU JIHAD ABU SHAMIEH: [translated] We hope this ceasefire will be good. We have been waiting for this ceasefire. We have been hoping for it. We pray for peace for all people so we can be done with all these challenges we are facing. We have been fleeing from one place to another. We hope the ceasefire will be good and that we will see positive solutions from this. We pray for ceasefire. We pray for people to live in peace so they can go back to their jobs and houses to have stability.
AMY GOODMAN: In Israel, families of the hostages called on the Israeli government to secure the release of everyone seized on October 7th. This is Nir Shani, whose 16-year-old son Amit is being held hostage in Gaza.
NIR SHANI: Any person will be released is good, is important. Eventually, we need them all. But if it had to be slice by slice, so be it. … We need to establish this release. The best thing is that everybody will be released at the same time, but, as I said, some can stay in that situation for a bit longer, and some will not be able to hold on, so we have to start doing the deals and get them back to us.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by Daniel Levy, the president of the U.S./Middle East Project. He served as an Israeli peace negotiator under Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin. His piece for The New York Times earlier this month was headlined “The Road Back from Hell.”
We’re going to get to that in a moment, Daniel. Thanks so much for joining us again. But we want to start off with this deal that has been reached. We know a good deal about the horrific story of the hostages who are being held, that Hamas is holding or other groups in Gaza, about 240 of them. We know less about the Palestinian prisoners, the women and children. It’s going to be three to one. They will release 150 Palestinian prisoners for 50 hostage. Can you tell us about these people who are in prison? We don’t know specifically, though the Israeli government is releasing their names. But who is held in Palestinian jails? Who are these women and children?
DANIEL LEVY: Well, I think, Amy, that, first of all, let’s acknowledge this is a rare glimmer of hope. It will be very good to see those Israelis who will be coming home. It will be so important to have those four or five days without bombardment, without civilian losses in Gaza. It would be horrendous if we then return to where we have been in these past 40-plus terrible days. And [inaudible] to see those women and children coming out. I can’t speak to the names. We don’t know the names.
You mentioned the Palestinian organization Addameer. I suggest people look up that organization, which advocates on behalf of Palestinian prisoners. By the way, last government in Israel, the government of Bennett, Lapid, Gantz, super-extremists, as we’ve come to know the Netanyahu government, that organization was one of six Palestinian NGOs that was deemed criminal, terrorist by the Israeli [inaudible].
Israel has different ways of trying and convicting, or not convicting, Palestinians that it then holds in its prisons. The issue of child detention is something that Defense of the Child International has particularly drawn attention to, the number of children who end up in Israeli prisons, who go through military trials. Israel uses military courts. Women are part of the resistance, part of the struggle. Some Palestinians who [inaudible] are part of that struggle. Others are there on spurious accusations. And then Israel has a system of administrative detention, where it will hold people without trial. It will say — the security establishment will say to the courts, “This is too sensitive,” about [inaudible] information. And people can be held indefinitely under administrative detention. So, that’s the ways in which they are held.
As we’ve heard, more than 2,000 have been arrested — I think maybe two-and-a-half thousand — in the West Bank since the start, since October 7. So, we’re going to get some of those out now, the women and children. And I imagine if there are going to be further prisoner releases — if there are going to be further releases from Gaza, you will have exchanges of prisoners, of those Palestinians being held in [inaudible].
AMY GOODMAN: Daniel, we’re going to break and come back to you. We’re going to try to call you on the phone to get a better sound from your system. Daniel Levy is the president of the U.S./Middle East Project, former Israeli peace negotiator with the Palestinians at Taba under Prime Minister Ehud Barak and at Oslo B under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. We’ll be linking with him in a moment.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “We Rise” by Batya Levine, sung at many of the Jewish resistance protests calling for a ceasefire now. This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Our guest is Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project, former Israeli peace negotiator with the Palestinians. Juan?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yes. Daniel, I wanted to ask you about the — just announced in the last few hours, this temporary — this truce. In an interview with The Guardian recently, you said, quote, “My sense is that the Israelis are always trying to get another day, and another day, and another day of operations before agreeing to a deal.” Because we’ve heard now of this potential truce now for two weeks, and each day we kept hearing that it was imminent, that it was imminent. But what has Israel been able to do during that time, while it finally reached and officially declared?
DANIEL LEVY: Well, Juan, unfortunately, the answer to that question is an awful lot of additional damage, civilian loss, children being killed. We’ve seen the devastation in hospitals in Gaza.
Now, I think the Israeli government was probably each day hoping it would buy the lottery ticket and capture one of the Hamas leaders, kill one of the Hamas leaders. The names Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif are the ones that spring to mind.
And — and I think this is crucial — why have they held out so long? I think that Prime Minister Netanyahu and the leadership understood that once you go into this new phase, where you’ve agreed an initial prisoner release, a few things happen. Some new dynamics come into play. On the Israeli side, internally, in the public debate inside Israel, people see that you can get people out through a negotiated deal. And I think Netanyahu is worried that that will increase the pressure on him to do further deals, to make these arrangements whereby you end the military assault. And he hasn’t wanted that because they haven’t achieved their military objectives, which are unachievable, by the way, and because he knows that the morning after this, he faces the music, and he is likely to be toast politically.
But, you know, other things will happen as a consequence of this. For instance, we may see more Western media using this lull to show us more of the devastation inside Gaza. In fact, there’s a report in Politico which says some in the administration are worried what these images may do to public opinion even more. So there’s real concern, I think, on the Israeli side that this sets in motion a dynamic which could end a war which they want to continue.
And I would say that the families have done so much of the heavy lifting inside Israel in changing the public debate and getting us to this point. I don’t think so much should be placed on their shoulders.
I think now — belatedly, because it should have happened long ago — is the time for the U.S. administration and others to step up and to desist from their opposition to a ceasefire, because it would be so cruel if after this we see a return of the kinds of assaults and bombings and losses on the Palestinian side in Gaza. And, unfortunately, in their statements that they put out recognizing this initial deal, neither President Biden nor Secretary Blinken did that, and they still actually fail to talk about Palestinian lives with empathy and to accord those lives humanity and dignity, which is such a sad thing.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you just said that you thought that the goals of Netanyahu are unachievable. Why is that?
DANIEL LEVY: Well, he has talked and talked about the elimination of Hamas. That is not a militarily achievable objective, in my mind. Hamas is a movement that has withstood this pressure, so I think there will still be — it may be somewhat residual, but a Hamas fighting capacity. But Hamas is a political movement. Hamas is an idea. I don’t want to lionize that, but I think we have to recognize that when people are met with a system of structural violence, they resist. That resistance may be in the form of Hamas. That resistance may be in the form of other armed groups. By the way, that resistance may be in the form of calling for boycotts, divestments and sanctions against Israel. That resistance may be in the form of pursuing legal claims in international courts and elsewhere. If you close all of those avenues, then you’re much more likely to get the kind of outburst of violence and even the scenes which were horrific on October 7th. But Hamas will still be there the morning after. And groups like Hamas will still be there as long as the occupation and the system of denial of Palestinian rights is in place. There’s no military solution.
AMY GOODMAN: Daniel Levy, we reported yesterday on Mosab Abu Toha, well-known writer and poet — right? — who was taken for four days. Apparently, he was taken with about 200 people. Now, there was such an outcry in the United States, The New Yorker magazine, The Atlantic demanding his release. No one knew what had happened to him, the U.S. — sorry, the Israeli forces taking him at a checkpoint, that he was released. But when you have examples like that, I mean, the other 199, or however many were taken, did they then become part of the Palestinian political prisoners who then Israel can use to release in exchange for Hamas prisoners, not to mention how many hundreds of Palestinians have been arrested on the West Bank in the last few weeks? They haven’t been tried, have they?
DANIEL LEVY: Some have, and some haven’t, Amy. You’ve got some being held under what’s called administrative detention, which is basically detention without trial. I mean, my takeaway from that, amongst other things, Amy, is — let’s whisper it — pressure works. OK? So, if pressure can be built to get one person out, can it be built to get more out? Can it be built to end what’s going on in Gaza?
Now, you asked about the future prisoner releases. And that is why I think we need to understand that the overwhelming likelihood, as terrible as this is, is that at the end of this round of the agreement reached, Netanyahu has committed himself to resuming the military assault. By the way, in the statement he released, the first thing he talked about was not we’re getting our people home, it was his commitment: “I am going to continue this war.” That’s the first sentence. That’s the intention. And that’s why there needs to be maximum pressure exerted to build on this, because also let’s just think about the dynamics and the geography in play here. The Palestinian population has been displaced from the north of Gaza to the south. Israel now says that it intends to move from north to south. You have more people in a smaller area. Can anyone in good conscience make the claim that, going forward, there will be a reduction in Palestinian civilian casualties, in dead children? So, if the administration continues to refuse to call for a ceasefire, it is complicit.
Now, those future agreements, which I think are still the offramp to getting a ceasefire, will involve further prisoner releases. And so, the answer to your question, Amy, is that just as we have seen women and children being released now, hopefully in the coming days, from being held in Israel and being released from Israeli prisons, in the future there will be further deals, and Hamas is not going to drive a soft bargain. Hamas has this leverage by holding these Israelis. It intends to use that leverage. When it comes to the soldiers it is holding, I imagine the release that they demand from Israeli prisons will be very significant indeed.
And there’s a proper debate inside Israel. And thankfully, you have courageous families who are getting up in the parliament, shouting at the right-wing ministers, standing outside the Ministry of Defense, standing outside the Prime Minister’s Office, meeting with the leaders, saying, “Save lives. Don’t end more lives. Prioritize” — and this is going to be the debate, whether they prioritize the release of the Israelis, and therefore, that means we’re going to a ceasefire, and we’re going to see Palestinians released, or they prioritize prosecuting their war.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Daniel, I wanted to ask you, in terms of the Netanyahu government and — the public opinion polls are showing that Netanyahu’s popularity is at an all-time low even in the midst of this war, far, far less, for instance, to the popularity of President Biden here in the United States. Is it your sense that regardless of what happens, that Netanyahu’s — with this war, that Netanyahu’s political career is coming to an end?
DANIEL LEVY: From your lips, Juan. It’s a risky thing to speculate on, because he’s such a political survivor. But I do think, this time around, the path to staying on in power for Netanyahu is almost, almost unimaginable. He is so unpopular. I think even some of the reservists who are fighting in Gaza are chomping at the bit to finish, so that they can demonstrate outside his office to get him out.
And here is the question that will follow in the coming days: Does even this pause begin to reignite politics inside Israel? Do we have to wait ’til the end of the war in order for Netanyahu to be replaced? There are open splits now, increasingly visible, inside the government. One of the most hard-right, openly racist and worst factions voted against the deal. Another intended to vote against the deal but pulled back at the last minute. We are likely to see some of the next five days, a lot of it will be filled with life-affirming images inside the Israeli media of Israelis coming home, but some of it will be now talk of what next. The opposition leader has called for Netanyahu to be replaced.
So I think we’re in a zone where that begins to come into view. But, to be honest, the most important thing is to get the ceasefire, and the politics can come when it comes. If we need to get rid of Netanyahu to get the ceasefire, then, of course, that order switches.
AMY GOODMAN: Daniel Levy, we thank you for being with us, president of the U.S./Middle East Project, former Israeli peace negotiator with Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin. We’ll link to your recent New York Times op-ed, “The Road Back from Hell.”
Coming up, we speak with an Israeli history teacher who was jailed for four days and held in solitary confinement after criticizing the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians. Back in 20 seconds.
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Meet the Israeli History Teacher Arrested & Jailed for Facebook Posts Opposing Killing of Palestinians
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 22, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/22/meir_baruchin
Transcript
On November 9, Israeli police arrested Jerusalem history and civics teacher Meir Baruchin after he posted a message on Facebook about his opposition to the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians. Police seized his phone and two laptops before interrogating him on suspicion of committing an act of treason and intending to disrupt public order. After being in jail for four days, Baruchin was freed but lost his job as a teacher and is still facing charges. “These days Israeli citizens who are showing the slightest sentiment for the people of Gaza, opposing killing of innocent civilians, they are being politically persecuted, they go through public shaming, they lose their jobs, they are being put in jail,” says Baruchin, who says if he had been Palestinian, he would have faced more violence.
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 the Israeli government is cracking down on Israeli citizens who criticize their government’s bombardment of Gaza. We’re joined now by Meir Baruchin, a history and civics teacher from Jerusalem who was recently jailed for four days in solitary confinement after he posted a message on Facebook about his opposition to the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians, especially women and children.
On November 9th, Israeli police ransacked his house and arrested him. They also seized his phone and two laptops. Police interrogated him on suspicion of committing an act of treason and intending to disrupt public order. He was then jailed for four days and labeled a high-risk detainee. Baruchin has since been freed, but he has lost his job as a teacher and is still facing charges. Despite this, Meir Baruchin has refused to stay silent and is joining us now from Jerusalem.
Meir, welcome to Democracy Now! It was hard for us to get in touch with you over the last few days because your electronic devices, like your phone, were taken. Can you talk about exactly what happened to you? What did you post? And then, how did the Israeli police come to ransack your house?
MEIR BARUCHIN: First of all, thanks for having me.
When I got to the first interrogation, the interrogators presented 14 posts, most of them before October 7th. There were posts from four years ago, from two years ago. Only one or two posts were after October 7th.
What I’m trying to do in my Facebook posts is this. For most Israelis, Palestinians are really vague images. They have no names, no faces, no family, no hope, no plans. And I’m trying to give them names and faces, introduce them to Israelis, so more Israelis would be able to see Palestinians as human beings. So, that’s what I do in my Facebook. The police didn’t like it, so they arrested me.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And when you were arrested, what was the substance of the interrogation against you during that time? And how were you treated?
MEIR BARUCHIN: On November 9th, I got a call from the police to come over for interrogation on sedition. I called my lawyer, and he said that in order to interrogate an Israeli citizen for sedition, they need an approval from the general attorney. The police did ask for approval but was rejected, so they decided to interrogate me for intention to commit an act of treason and disrupt public order.
The minute I walked into the police station, they shackled my hands and legs, and they showed me a warrant to search my house. Five detectives took me to my house and ransacked the place. Then I was taken back to the police station for the first interrogation, that lasted four hours. After that, I was taken to the jailhouse. Like you said, I was categorized high-risk detainee, separated from everyone. I wasn’t allowed to bring anything with me, a book or something. I spent there four days. In order not to go crazy, I exercised every hour and a half, two hours.
On Sunday evening, November 12th, they took me for a second interrogation. And their technique was — it wasn’t really asking questions. It was more of a rhetoric. When you install the answer inside the question, you don’t really let the other person choose his own answer. For example, they said something like, “As someone who justifies and legitimizes the rapes by Hamas people on October 7th, don’t you think that…” — you know, that was their technique. Also in my second interrogation, at a certain moment they said that my Facebook posts are just like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Now, I’m history teacher, so I asked them, “Did you ever read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?” There was no comment.
I was taken back to the jailhouse. And on November 13th, I was released by the judge, and still they kept me in the jailhouse for another three-and-a-half hours.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what has been the response of fellow teachers in Israel and of the press to your arrest and detention?
MEIR BARUCHIN: Most of mainstream media embrace the statement of the police spokesman who accused me as justifying and legitimizing the rapes committed by Hamas people on October 7th.
As for my colleague teachers, hundreds of them are telling me, “Meir, I am fully behind you, but I have children to support,” “Meir, I’m with you, but I’m paying a mortgage,” “Meir, I’m with you, but my daughter is getting married,” “Meir, I’m with you, but we just started to redecorate the house.” They are afraid to speak up. They are afraid to lose their jobs. They see very clearly that these days Israeli citizens who are showing some — the slightest sentiment for the people of Gaza, opposing killing of innocent civilians, they are being politically persecuted, they go through public shaming, they lose their jobs, they are being put in jail. So they are afraid.
AMY GOODMAN: Last week, Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, published an editorial headlined “Arresting Arabs and Left-wingers: How Israel Intends to Crack Down on Domestic Dissent Over Gaza War.” In it, Haaretz wrote about your case, saying, quote, “Make no mistake: Baruchin was used as a political tool to send a political message. The motive for his arrest was deterrence — silencing any criticism or any hint of protest against Israeli policy. Baruchin paid a personal price.” So, Meir, if you can talk about the fact that you were fired from your job? You have four children, right? And also, how unusual is your arrest and being put in solitary confinement, both for Israeli Jews and for Palestinians?
MEIR BARUCHIN: Well, first, I must admit that the fact that I’m Jewish played a key role in my arrest. Had I been Palestinian, it was completely different. There would have been much more violence from the police officers and also in the jailhouse by the wardens.
I think it’s a clear message for not only to the teachers, but to all Israeli citizens. One of the newspaper men from Yedioth Ahronoth, Ben-Dror Yemini, he called me a “soldier in the service of terrorist propaganda,” in those specific words. Other newspaper — other journalists also embraced the police statement without getting my response or without even trying to challenge the police statement.
AMY GOODMAN: They took your phone and also your computer?
MEIR BARUCHIN: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Have you gotten it back?
MEIR BARUCHIN: They took my phone. They took two laptops. No, no, not yet. My lawyer is working on it. But the case is still not closed. I’m still facing charges. Also, the Ministry of Education suspended my license, so I cannot go back and teach anywhere in the country.
AMY GOODMAN: And what do you tell your kids? We just have 30 seconds, Meir.
MEIR BARUCHIN: My kids are proud of me, and that’s the most important thing.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you so much for being with us. Meir Baruchin is an Israeli history and civics high school teacher who was jailed for four days, held in solitary confinement, after criticizing the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians. His case is still open. He could still go to trial. He’s speaking to us from Jerusalem.
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Gaza in Ruins: Satellite Imagery Researchers Say Israel has Destroyed or Damaged 56,000 Buildings
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 22, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/22/radar
Transcript
Democracy Now! speaks with two researchers who lead the Decentralized Damage Mapping Group, a network of scientists using remote sensing to analyze and map the damage and destruction in the Gaza Strip since Israel’s attacks began on October 7. Radar technology shows that Israel’s bombing campaign has left about half of all buildings in northern Gaza damaged or destroyed since October 7, with at least 56,000 buildings in Gaza damaged overall. Doctoral researcher Corey Scher explains how researchers use open data to bring consistent, transparent assessments of the rapidly expanding damage in Gaza. “We’ve all been surprised at the speed of this,” says Jamon Van Den Hoek, lead of the Conflict Ecology lab.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We end today’s show looking at how Israel’s 47-day bombardment has left Gaza in ruins. Satellite images show the Israeli attacks have left about half of all buildings in northern Gaza damaged or destroyed since October 7th. Overall, researchers say at least 56,000 buildings in Gaza have been damaged.
We’re joined now by two researchers who lead the Decentralized Damage Mapping Group, a network of satellite image scientists using remote sensing to analyze and map the damage and destruction in the Gaza Strip. Corey Scher is a doctoral researcher at CUNY, the CUNY Graduate Center here in New York, and Jamon Van Den Hoek is an associate professor of geography at Oregon State University, the lead of the Conflict Ecology group.
Jamon, let’s begin with you. Explain what you found in these charts, these images that you have of Gaza, where it stands today, where it stood a month ago.
JAMON VAN DEN HOEK: Yeah. Thank you, Amy, for the invitation to speak with you today.
We’ve been charting damage using satellite radar technology since the start of the war across the entire Gaza Strip every five to six days. So we update our damage maps, we share them with journalists and humanitarian actors every five or six days, and we track what we identify as likely damage across the Gaza Strip.
What we’ve seen is a really steady and fast expansion of damage across especially northern Gaza. As you mentioned, North Gaza governorate and Gaza governorate, just last week, leading up to Saturday, we’re approaching 50% of buildings seeing likely damage. Now, there’s still much less damage in southern Gaza. Rafah, for example, is maybe somewhere between 5 and 8%. But as your earlier guests were saying, we’re expecting that to increase as the war continues.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And have you ever seen this scale of damage and destruction at such a rapid pace in any conflict in other parts of the world?
JAMON VAN DEN HOEK: It’s difficult to say. We haven’t yet used the same approach to measure, say, the rate of damage across Ukrainian cities or Syrian cities or Yemeni cities. But I think we’ve all been surprised at the speed of this. And part of that is just how compact Gaza is. If you look at the rate of progress of damage on our maps, it’s just filling up the map of Gaza, especially in the north. And that’s been consistently surprising to us.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to bring Corey Scher into the conversation. Corey, how does open access to these satellite images help understand and compare the impact of conflicts?
COREY SCHER: Thanks, Juan, for the question.
Open data helps us to maintain a consistent delivery of damage assessments. Whereas it’s been a big issue for journalists and humanitarian organizations acquiring very high-resolution satellite data from private companies, we don’t face those issues, because our work focuses on leveraging science and open data to make sure that we can provide a consistency and quality of this type of assessment across the duration of, for example, what’s going on in Gaza. Open data is a cornerstone of the work that we do, because it helps us bring transparency to this in a way that can’t be interrupted.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about how rare your work is, which may surprise some people, not reliant on commercial imagery. Semafor recently reported earlier this month that key providers of satellite photographs to news organizations and other researchers had begun to restrict imagery of Gaza after a New York Times report on Israeli tank positions based on the images. Can you talk about this? In the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, commercial satellite companies provided some of the most compelling images and insights into how the conflict was developing on the ground. And, of course, this has changed after Israel’s attacks and invasion of Gaza, Corey.
COREY SCHER: Thanks, Amy. Well, I can’t really comment on the politics or the policy of a specific company. All I can say is that leveraging open data, that we use, can guarantee that regardless of what’s happening in the private sector, open Earth Observation has the potential to at least give some type of insight into the impacts of conflict happening on the ground. So, I think that’s all we can really say.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you talk a little bit more about what the difference is between commercial images and the ones that you use?
COREY SCHER: Yeah. Thanks, Juan. So, what we’re doing is a scientific analysis of satellite radar data. So, I want you to imagine a camera flash, that you’re one of the — take a picture of something at nighttime. The camera flash leaves the camera, goes through space, bounces off the surfaces. Say you want to take a photo of me. So, the camera flash goes off my face and then illuminates my face, goes back to the sensor, and then you have recorded an image.
So, now we’re going 700 kilometers in altitude. There’s satellite radar. Similar to a camera flash, a burst of microwaves, radar waves, go down to the Earth. They illuminate a region, and then the echoes of these waves scatter back to the sensor, and we can make an image — the sensors make an image, regardless of day or night or cloud cover conditions. So this adds to the level of consistency where we can image a region. Every revisit of the satellite overpass, usually we have a good acquisition.
AMY GOODMAN: Ja—
COREY SCHER: Um —
AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead.
COREY SCHER: Yeah, thank you. Well, what we’re doing is listening for very small changes in these echoes. So, if you imagine walking into a room where there’s no furniture, you listen to the sound of your voice echoing throughout the room, remember that echo, go back later after installing a carpet or a bookshelf, and you can hear a slight change. Scientifically, our algorithms are looking for very small variations in the radar echoes that bounce off the Earth’s surface and go back to the satellite to map indicators of damage. So this is very much different than a picture, right? We’re not looking at pictures. We’re running satellite radar data through scientific algorithms we’ve spent years developing, ultimately to resolve these signals of damage.
AMY GOODMAN: Jamon Van Den Hoek, if you can explain how open access to these satellite images helps you understand and compare conflicts, like what you see in Gaza? And how are your images different from commercial imagery, and how you get it, and comparing Gaza, for example, to Mariupol in Ukraine?
JAMON VAN DEN HOEK: Sure. As Corey was saying, we’re sensitive to different kinds of things than one could see if you looked at basically a bird’s-eye view of Gaza. We are sensitive to lateral damage, so damage to the walls, to the sides of buildings, structures, that you can’t see if you just look top down. That’s a key difference just between optical overhead imagery and side-looking radar imagery. That’s a bit technical, but that’s an important difference when we have ground invasion. Not everything is aerial bombardment. Not everything has a roof being destroyed.
The other aspect that Corey was touching on, as well, is — and you mentioned with the Semafor article — are those restrictions, where commercial providers, over many years of developing relationships with humanitarian actors — there’s become a dependency on using commercial imagery in the humanitarian space, as well as in journalism, to monitor conflict effects on communities, landscapes, farms, forests. That’s developed a kind of relationship with these commercial providers such that that’s basically the literacy, is using those kind of very high-resolution images, the kind you might see at, say, a Google-based map or an Apple-based map in Apple Maps, very clear, high detail. You can make out features. However, those images are usually very small-scale. They’re narrow strips of land. They’re acquired in a sort of ad hoc and sometimes inconsistent manner. If there’s cloud cover, you can’t see through the clouds. Working over a country as large as Ukraine, for example, it’s incredibly difficult to get, wall to wall, the entirety of Ukraine covered with commercial imagery in that way, not just because of the size of Ukraine, but because of all the atmospheric and weather effects that happen that obscure your view.
Radar doesn’t have those kind of limitations. And working with civilian spacecrafts — we’re working with the European space agency Copernicus Programme’s Sentinel-1 satellite, which is an amazing satellite that’s been in operations for about eight years now — we don’t have those restrictions. So, we can, in a sense, just as easily detect conditions, damage, whether it’s cloudy, whether it’s day or night. It doesn’t matter to us. We don’t need visible light do this.
And we can also, because we have open access to it, and everyone does — you and Juan can go right now to Sentinel help and download your own satellite images and do this. Anyone has access to this. So there’s a tremendous opportunity for democratization and transparency of the methods. We aren’t hiding behind any sort of commercial barrier or some bespoke algorithm where the inner workings are unclear. We’re trying to be incredibly transparent and be very direct with the limitations of what this approach offers, and sharing this with actors, journalists, humanitarian organizations, who can do other things with it than we can. We can map likely damage. We can make estimates of damaged structures. We cannot do all these other amazing things that so many people are working on on the ground, as well as through sort of remote journalism practices. So, it’s become a really much — very much a team effort, where, yes, we’re doing this analysis in an open way, but then what we generate, we share, and then it goes — it’s gone off, and people have made amazing products that have really told a kind of a narrative that we’ve never been able to imagine, really.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Van Den Hoek, have you been warned about what you’re doing? Have you been warned? I don’t hear you. Sorry. Go ahead.
JAMON VAN DEN HOEK: There’s nothing — no, we have not been warned. There’s nothing illegal about what we’re doing. We’re accessing open imagery. There’s no — we have not been communicated with anybody about anything of this nature.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jamon, I’d like to ask you — you worked on a report with Amnesty International looking at the 2014 Israeli attacks on Gaza, and you also analyzed satellite imagery back then. How has the science evolved over the years?
JAMON VAN DEN HOEK: It’s like night and day. Back then, we were working with also open data, but a combination of commercial imagery. This system that we’re working with now didn’t exist at that time, this radar technology that we’re using today.
Working with Amnesty International — it was also led by Forensic Architecture — we were able to combine different kinds of satellite images to monitor very specific features. So, we were able to see, say, individual trees destroyed by tanks or trucks in Rafah. But it was very localized, and it was also — Protective Edge was such a short conflict, really, very, very brief. And so, there, we just looked at kind of before and after.
That kind of before-after approach doesn’t work with a conflict that’s now — a war that’s now gone on 47 days. We’re not interested in the after. We want to know the process. We want to know the pattern of change as it’s manifest on the ground. Those concerns weren’t really there for such a short conflict, but we also didn’t really have the means to do it. And now —
AMY GOODMAN: We just have 10 seconds.
JAMON VAN DEN HOEK: Thank you. Every five days, we can update this, and we just have a much better sense of grasping the dynamics of this war than, really, any other conflict that we’ve looked at.
AMY GOODMAN: Jamon Van Den Hoek, we want to thank you so much for being with us, and Corey Scher, part of the Decentralized Damage Mapping Group, a network of satellite image scientists using remote sensing to analyze and map the damage and destruction in the Gaza Strip.