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

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Israel-Hamas Hostage Deal Highlights Plight of Palestinian Prisoners, Many of Them Children
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 27, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/27 ... transcript

Transcript

With a four-day truce between Israel and Hamas set to expire after Monday, we look at who has been released and the growing pressure to extend the pause in fighting that has given Gaza residents small respite from Israel’s relentless bombardment and allowed humanitarian aid to reach people inside the territory. The pause began Friday to allow for the release of Israelis and foreign nationals kept hostage by militants in Gaza in exchange for the freedom of some of the thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails, many of whom are minors and women. “We are talking about over 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners inside Israeli prisons right now. More than 2,500 are being held under administrative detention … without a charge and without a trial,” says Tala Nasir, a lawyer with Addameer, a group that advocates for Palestinian prisoners. We also speak with Israeli journalist Orly Noy, who says the sheer number of Palestinian prisoners shows “how central the tool of incarceration is in the Israeli project” of occupying and oppressing Palestinians. “The same system that allows every Jewish settler, citizen or soldier or policeman to walk away after killing Palestinians under the most outrageous circumstances is the same system that treats a 12-year-old who threw stones as a dangerous terrorist,” says Noy.

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

The four-day truce in Gaza has entered its final day, but negotiations are underway to extend it. So far, Hamas has released a total of 58 hostages who had been held captive for the seven weeks. Thirty-nine of the freed hostages have been Israeli citizens. Hamas also released 17 Thai workers, a Filipino worker and an Israeli Russian. Since the truce began, Israel has released 117 Palestinian prisoners, mostly women and children, including many who had been held without charge.

One of the first hostages released was the 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Yaffa Adar. She was captured from her home in the kibbutz Nir Oz. Her granddaughter, Adva Adar, spoke Sunday.

ADVA ADAR: I can say that she’s deaf, and I can say that she said that she was thinking about the family a lot and that it helped her survive that she could hear the voices of the great-grandchildren calling her and that it gives her a lot of power, and that she’s now trying to realize what’s happening here and about a lot of friends and neighbors that are either dead or kidnapped from the kibbutz and about Tamir, her oldest grandson, that is also a hostage, and that she has no house to return.

AMY GOODMAN: In the occupied West Bank, crowds gathered to celebrate the release of Palestinians held in prison. This is Nasrallah Alawar, one of the Palestinian teenagers released.

NASRALLAH ALAWAR: [translated] Prison guards made us starve. They used to bring us two patches of bread for each cell, which is not enough. There were also children, 11 and 12 years old, with us, and there wasn’t enough food for them. God only knows how bad the situation was.

AMY GOODMAN: Health officials in Gaza now say the death toll from Israel’s bombardment has reached nearly 15,000. The New York Times is reporting the rate of civilians killed in Gaza by Israel has been far higher than in recent wars in Ukraine, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. The New York Times reports more than twice as many women and children have already been reported killed in Gaza in the last seven weeks than have been confirmed killed in Ukraine since Russia launched its attack nearly two years, though the exact death tolls in both conflicts are unknown.

Earlier today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Israeli troops in Gaza and told them, “Israel will continue until the end. Nothing will stop us.”

We’re joined now by two guests. We go to Jerusalem, where we’re joined by Orly Noy, Israeli political activist and editor of the Hebrew-language news site Local Call. She’s also the chair of B’Tselem’s executive board. Her new piece for +972 Magazine is “What Israelis won’t be asking about the Palestinians released for hostages.” Tala Nasir is also with us, a lawyer with the Palestinian prisoner and human rights organization Addameer.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with Orly Noy. If you can talk about this temporary truce, that could end today or possibly will continue, Israel says, for each day that Hamas releases at least 10 hostages, what this four-day respite has meant, who has been released, Orly?

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

As soon as the exchange of prisoners deal was agreed upon, Israel came up with a list of 300 Palestinian prisoners, almost all of them minors, with a few women included, that would be the pool to be released throughout the ceasefire. When you look thoroughly at the names and the charges, as you said, first off, many of them were never charged with anything. I mean, the numbers are incredible. The latest data from the beginning of November talk about more than 6,800 Palestinians, political prisoners, what Israel refers to as “security” prisoners, more than 2,000 of them through administrative detention. It means that not only they have never been convicted with anything, they’ve never been charged with anything, so never had the opportunity to defend themselves.

You look at minor Palestinian teenagers who have been arrested for throwing stones at police jeeps or army jeeps. One of the names in that list is in prison just simply for calling, with a group of his friends, “Allahu Akbar” — yes, “God is great.” Another Palestinian woman has been sitting in jail for allegedly intending to carry out an attack, not even doing anything in practice. Others have been charged with attempts to carry out stabbing attacks, or did — even did so, but mildly injured policemen and women. So you see that the charges are incredibly minor, but what this list really gives, allows is the sense of how central the tool of incarceration is in the Israeli project of the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about the Israeli hostages, and others. Thai, a Filipino hostage, a Russian Israeli hostage was released.

ORLY NOY: So, of course, I mean, these past three days with the release of the hostages have been really a sort of national celebration, after — in what are maybe the darkest days that Israelis can remember. I mean, there was a very anxious anticipation for their return, especially the children, whom the Israeli entire society became to know by name each of the children that have been held as hostages. So there’s been a lot of anxiety in anticipation for their return.

They’ve been greeted with a national embrace. And they, of course, went immediately to receive medical treatment, those who needed, but a medical checkup for all of them. And they have — I mean, but this is just the beginning of their journey back to life, because many of them don’t know what happened since they went to captivity. Many of them lost immediate family members, and they are just now learning about it. So it’s a very bittersweet moment for them and for the Israeli society as a whole.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, from the beginning, it was said that Americans or Israeli Americans would be released. It was only yesterday that the little 4-year-old, Abigail Edan, was released. Both her parents were murdered. She ran, as a 3-year-old — it’s astounding; she turned 4 in captivity — to her neighbor’s house, and there Abigail was captured along with the mom and her three kids — I think her oldest daughter and the husband were murdered — and then they were all taken into captivity. She is the first American to be released, and some are speculating that Hamas is holding off on Americans so that Biden will put pressure on Netanyahu to continue the ceasefire.

ORLY NOY: Yeah, we are being told so. And it actually makes some sense, because, I mean, it is almost ironic that while Israel is incarcerating Palestinian children for throwing stones, at the same time, the only lesson that it teaches the Palestinians is that the only way to actually release Palestinian prisoners is through such heinous crimes, such as the one that Hamas carried out on October 7th. I mean, really, the amount of Palestinian children, women, minors and others in the prisons, without any due process, without the ability to really honestly protect themselves from, is such that right now it seems that their only hope is through such actions — again, horrible, violent, heinous actions taken by the Hamas — but Israel just doesn’t show any other way for Palestinians to be able to resist the occupation, which they have the right to, without spending the rest of their lives in the Israeli prisons.

AMY GOODMAN: Tala Nasir, I want to ask you about what’s happening on the streets right now. I want to go back to what Ben-Gvir, the far-right Cabinet minister, said. On Thursday, the Israeli minister of national security, Ben-Gvir, instructed police to use an iron fist against attempts to celebrate prisoner releases, and said, quote, “My instructions are clear: There are to be no expressions of joy. Expressions of joy are equivalent to backing terrorism; victory celebrations give backing to those human scum, for those Nazis.” So, if you can talk about what this means? In the West Bank, we’ve seen thousand people coming out to celebrate the young men now, boys when they were arrested — some have come of age while they were in prison. But in East Jerusalem, we are not seeing that. Is it because people are terrified of being arrested for terrorism? I mean, this from Ben-Gvir, a man who himself was convicted in Israeli court 15 years ago of aiding terrorism and inciting hatred of Palestinians?

TALA NASIR: Yes. First of all, good morning. Thank you for having me.

I’m going to talk about several violations after, or in the past three days, within this exchange deal, starting with the West Bank. So, the Israeli forces deliberately assaulted the released prisoners and their families during the prisoner release operations. They first delayed the release of prisoners until late at night. They released the child prisoners wearing clothes that are too big for their size, and some of them were barefoot. Additionally, the clothes did not provide adequate protection from the cold weather at these days. Forces also used gas bombs, the rubber bullets, live ammunition in front of Ofer Prison, where families were gathered to meet with their children and loved ones.

On the other hand and concerning the released prisoners from Jerusalem, the Israeli forces raided the homes of the prisoners before their release in the occupied Jerusalem. They prevented them from any signs of celebration upon, of course, reuniting with their loved ones, sons and daughters. The families of the released prisoners were summoned to Al-Moscobiyeh center, where they were subjected to harsh and arbitrary conditions that prohibited them from gatherings, banned them from marches and fireworks, prevented them from chanting slogans, in addition to confiscating the sweets that were inside the houses.

Also, there were assaults on journalists who were present at the homes of the released prisoners, and that was by physically assaulting them and expelling them out of the houses, prohibiting them from media coverage. That’s what happened, or these are the main violations happened in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem in the past three days of the prisoner exchange.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about particular cases of young people who are imprisoned, Tala Nasir? You’re speaking to us from Ramallah. If you can talk to us, for example, about the case of — let’s see — of the young man who was — Ahmad Manasra. Tell us when he was arrested. What happened to him when he was 13 years old?

TALA NASIR: Yes, OK. So, regarding Ahmad Manasra, so he was arrested when he was 12 years old, and he was — on attempt of stabbing an Israeli settler. He was interrogated in a very hard conditions inside Israeli prison. He went under torture and ill treatment. He is now facing psychological illness and issues. Of course, he’s not on the list of the prisoners supposed to be released within this exchange deal, because he is over 18, while he was under 18, he was 12 years old, when he was arrested. We hopefully think his name will be on the next list of the supposed to be released from Israeli prisons, but until now nothing is accurate about the many prisoners.

Talking about the prisoners who were released or the names who were on the list, one of them serves the highest sentence of all child prisoners. His name is Mohammed Abu Qtaish. He is serving a 15-year sentence, which is the highest sentence among all the children. We’re talking about a woman prisoner who was released before two days. Her name is Shorouq Dwayyat. She is sentenced to 16 years old, and it’s the highest sentence among the women prisoners. We’re talking about injured and ill female prisoners who were released. One of them is Israa Jaabis, who suffers severe burns all over her body. We’re talking about Fatima Shaheen. She is a woman prisoner who was released. She lost the ability to walk. She is paralyzed for being shot by the occupation forces. We are also talking about releasing four administrative detainees from women prisoners, in addition to nine child administrative detainees. These are being held under administrative detention without a charge, without a trial and indefinitely.

AMY GOODMAN: And let’s talk about how many Palestinians are imprisoned right now. What? Over 7,000, 2,000 of them from the West Bank since October 7th?

TALA NASIR: Not exactly. We are talking about over 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners inside Israeli prisons right now. More than 2,500 of them are being held under administrative detention. And talking about after the 7th of October, the number of 80% of the Palestinians detained after the 7th of October are being now held under administrative detention without a charge, without a trial. And after the 7th of October until this day, we’re talking about 3,260 Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons until this day. So, in less than two months, it’s more than 3,000 Palestinians, including 120 female prisoners, including 41 journalists.

And let me shed light on something. From Friday until this day, we are talking about more than 112 Palestinians that were detained in the past three days only, from the beginning of the truce. So it’s actually equal to the number of released prisoners within the exchange deal. So these mass arrest campaigns are still taking place in all the cities, villages, refugee camps in the Palestinian territories. And most of them are being held under administrative detention.

Something important to note also: Six Palestinian prisoners died or were killed inside Israeli prisons in less than a month. These six, four of them were arrested after the 7th of October, and two of them were arrested before. Until now, we don’t know the circumstances of their death, because we still don’t have the accurate information, but the testimonies of prisoners and released prisoners affirm that they were brutally beaten inside the prisons. So, several violations have been taking place inside Israeli prisons after the 7th of October, and that’s what we have documented throughout these two months.

AMY GOODMAN: Near Ofer prison in the West Bank, Hanan Al-Barghouti spoke after she was part of the first group of 39 Palestinian detainees to be released. She said, since October 7th, her family was not allowed to contact her, after Israeli prison authorities launched a brutal crackdown on Palestinian prisoners. She says she was in September and placed in jail without charge or trial for an additional period of four months, subject to indefinite extensions under Israel’s administrative detention policy. Four of her sons are also under arrest.

TALA NASIR: Yes, true.

AMY GOODMAN: This is her.

HANAN AL-BARGHOUTI: [translated] The female prisoners await relief. The female prisoners are in agony. The female prisoners are very upset. They impose on us many humiliating things and all the things that hurt us. But we remain with our heads held high and steadfast and tolerant despite their sadism. God willing, we will free all the female prisoners and empty the jails.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Hanan Al-Barghouti, who was arrested in September and just released as part of the prisoner exchange. I actually want to put this question to Orly Noy. How are Palestinian prisoners perceived? I mean, the way you describe them — we talk about the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on October 7th. You describe them as hostages of the Israeli state, with so many of them not even charged.

ORLY NOY: Yeah. I mean, here, I should mention a word about the collaboration of the Israeli media with the general state attempt to portray each and every Palestinian behind bars as a terrorist. I mean, this is the one and only term that the Israeli media is referring by to the Palestinian prisoners, and it doesn’t matter what they did. And if it’s a 12-year-old child who threw stones or a grown-up man who did something more severe, they are all seen as terrorists. And the double standard, particularly in that area, is really mind-blowing, because the same system that allows every Jewish settler, citizen or soldier or policeman to walk away after killing Palestinians under the most outrageous circumstances is the same system that treats a 12-year-old who threw stones as a dangerous terrorist, and all of a sudden, you know, stones can kill and whatnot, so they are all seen as terrorists.

And one of the most difficult tasks for a human rights organization is actually to advocate for the conditions of the Palestinian prisoners, who — as was mentioned before, which were harshened dramatically since October 7th. And we’ve been talking to some people, and we’ve been hearing heartbreaking, shaking testimonies about the conditions of Palestinian prisoners in the prisons these days, and far away from the public eye and further — even further away from public interest.

AMY GOODMAN: So, where do you see this going, Orly Noy? Do you see Israel — Hamas has already agreed to this — extending this truce for every day that they release 10 hostages? And what about the pressure on Netanyahu, where you had thousands of Israelis marching to his offices, demanding hostages be number one over a military strike on Gaza?

ORLY NOY: I think that the question would become crucial after the release of all the civilians, because we should keep in mind that Hamas is also holding in captivity Israeli soldiers. And without a doubt, the price that they will demand for their release is going to be much, much higher than what we’ve seen so far.

At the same time, and again going back to the role of the Israeli media, the media is pushing very hard to renew the war after those exchanges. And Netanyahu actually has a very big incentive to carry on the war, because of those demands that you mentioned, because he knows that the day after the war, the Israeli public is going to hold him accountable for that catastrophe.

At the same time, nobody knows what Israel’s endgame is and what is Israel’s plan for the day after the war regarding Gaza. So, all of that, with the given situation in Gaza, where — when people, the residents of the already most densely populated place on Earth, are now squeezed in a smaller area, facing hunger, without clear water to drink, without proper medications, what will be the nature of the next phase of war, should there be one? Under those circumstances, I really do not dare to even imagine that scenario.

AMY GOODMAN: Just have 30 seconds left, but I want to ask Tala about your knowledge of the number of arrests of people, of Palestinians in Gaza. In recent days, Israel arrested the Awni Khattab, the head of Khan Younis Medical Center, and Muhammad Abu Salmiya, the head of the Al-Shifa Hospital. We also, of course, know about Mosab Abu Toha, who is known around the world, the Palestinian poet and writer. He was taken with about 200 others in prison, but because of tremendous pressure and outcry, especially from the United States news organizations, he was released, but the others weren’t.

TALA NASIR: Yes. So, unfortunately, we have no information about Palestinians who have been imprisoned from Gaza, to this day. We tried to contact, of course, the Israeli Prison Service. All the Israeli human rights organizations are trying also to find out the whereabouts and the situation of Palestinians detained from Gaza. But until now, we don’t even know the numbers of these Palestinians, and, of course, we do not know the circumstances of their arrests.

We are also talking about, until this day, there are approximately 700 missing Palestinians, who are likely detained in the occupation prisons, but we don’t know the accurate information about their conditions. These are from the workers who have been working inside Israel before the 7th of October. Some of them were released at the Karm Abu Salem crossing. But there are approximately 700 that are now still missing, and we don’t have any information about them. So we are trying and working to know the conditions they are being detained and what are their condition and what are they going through right now.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Tala Nasir, I want to thank you so much for being with us, lawyer with the Palestinian prisoner and human rights organization Addameer, speaking to us from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, and Orly Noy, Israeli political activist, editor of the Hebrew-language news site Local Call and chair of B’Tselem’s executive board. We’ll link to your new piece for +972 Magazine, “What Israelis won’t be asking about the Palestinians released for hostages.”

Coming up, we speak to a former Palestinian prisoner and a former Israeli military commando, who together helped found Combatants for Peace. Back in 20 seconds.

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“There Is an Alternative”: Meet the Israeli & Palestinian “Combatants for Peace” Urging Nonviolence
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 27, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/27 ... transcript

Transcript

With Israel and Palestine experiencing the worst violence in decades, we speak with two co-founders of Combatants for Peace, a group composed of people from both sides of the conflict who have committed to nonviolence and peaceful coexistence. Avner Wishnitzer is a former member of Sayeret Matkal, one of the Israel Defense Forces’ elite commando units, and Sulaiman Khatib spent more than 10 years in prison after being arrested as a teenager for an attack on Israeli soldiers. The two recently co-authored a piece for The New York Review of Books on modeling a nonviolent path toward peace. “We are offering a different direction that’s based on partnership and common interest and common values,” says Khatib. Wishnitzer adds that only a political solution can bring lasting peace. “When people are fed with the idea that there is no choice but violence, they respond with violence to each other,” he says.

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

As we continue to cover the truce in Gaza and prisoner-hostage releases, we’re joined by two of the founders of the group Combatants for Peace. Avner Wishnitzer is a member of one of the Israeli military’s elite commando units. He’s joining us from Jerusalem. And in Ramallah, we’re joined by Sulaiman Khatib, who spent more than 10 years in prison after an altercation with two Israeli soldiers. They recently co-wrote an article for The New York Review of Books headlined “Combatants for Peace.”

Sulaiman, let’s begin with you. As you see Palestinians released from prison in exchange for the Israeli hostages and those of other nationalities who have been released, can you talk about your thoughts as a former man imprisoned yourself?

SULAIMAN KHATIB: Firstly, thank you, Amy, for having us, myself and my partner and brother, Avner in Jerusalem.

And as I heard your interview with the colleagues, speakers before us, that explain in details about the prisoners and the hostages exchange, as ex-prisoner, I definitely feel a lot of empathy to the prisoners, especially when talking about kids, actually, women and kids. That makes me feel optimistic. And that shows also, unfortunately, where the dehumanization and the multi standards — double standards that exist in this place.

And definitely as an ex-prisoner personally and Combatants for Peace, in our organization, that includes Palestinians and Israelis, that we live with a more multiple, complex narrative, we would like, really, both the Israeli government and the Hamas in Gaza to release the prisoners, the civilians that were taken hostages in Gaza and the Palestinian prisoners that we are talking about thousands of them, and some of them without charge even, in jail. All these prisoners and hostages have families, have rights. And as we see, unfortunately, their rights by international law were not granted, as myself experienced that. I’ve been in jail when I was actually 14, under a military court. So I know the meaning of separating from your family and being without rights, basically. I know the meaning of that.

AMY GOODMAN: And what inspired you now to commit your life to peace as a co-founder of Combatants for Peace?

SULAIMAN KHATIB: So, as a ex-political prisoner, and I participated — I am a very active person since my childhood, very committed to the liberation and freedom of our people. I participated in different hunger strikes, food hunger strikes in jail, and that was my first introduction and transformation to nonviolence and the power of nonviolence.

Through my experience and learning about the history of the conflict and learning — I also know Hebrew very well, and I’m coming from an Indigenous Palestinian family that has been living around here, outside of Jerusalem, almost more than 500 years. I have been opening my heart and my soul and my mind to find partners on the Israeli side that reach the same conclusion, which is basically as simple as no military solution for this conflict.

And it’s beyond that, because, for us, nonviolence is ideology. We advocate for nonviolence. And we advocate for liberation that’s collectively connected, both Palestinians — despite, of course, the power dynamic and the occupation, which we challenge, and we talk about it clearly. I believe that, as I said, our freedom and our needs for freedom and for dignity and for human rights, both Palestinians and Israeli, is legitimate.

The strategies that has been taking place not just lately, since October 7, but, of course, like over decades of occupation and apartheid system and the violence and the ideology of violence, whether it’s coming from settler violence or it’s coming from religious violence from Hamas side, we are opposing this clearly and publicly. We are offering a different direction that’s based on partnership and common interests and common values, based actually on an old story that we, Jewish and Palestinian Arab, we could live in coexistence next to each other, and our identities can really be safe and practiced in the land where we belong. And it doesn’t have to be either/or. We’ve been — myself, Avner and other friends — we’ve been in the place where is it about us or them, eliminate them, and the army force options. We don’t believe in this anymore.

And definitely, after I was released from jail, I committed my life to bridge the gap among our people with other activists. And the road is long. I know this is a long journey. It’s not necessarily even for our generation.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me bring Avner Wishnitzer into the conversation. You are a former member of one of the IDF’s elite commando units. What inspired you to help found Combatants for Peace?

AVNER WISHNITZER: Hi, and thanks for having us.

For me, it was the gap between the way I was raised to believe that Israel is a safe haven for the Jews and that it’s essentially liberal democracy, and the reality of the occupation, which I learned to really know up close only after my service. I was at that time in my early twenties and still a reserve soldier in that same unit. And what I saw in the early 2000s around the South Hebron Hills and around Nablus and different places around the West Bank really brought me face to face with the systematic oppression, of which I was only vaguely aware. And it exposed, it created a dissonance: the declared values of Israel as a democracy and its backyard, in which none of these values are valid. And I felt that I can no longer talk the talk and act as if this backyard did not exist. And I refused to serve in the Occupied Territories in late 2004. And then, thinking that it’s not enough to just refuse and absolve yourself from this systematic violence, it is crucial also to struggle against it actively, because you can only refuse once.

And at that point, it was early 2005. We were approached by a group of Palestinians who were curious about this refusenik phenomenon, and then we started meeting. And these meetings later led to the formation of Combatants for Peace. And we have been saying for almost two decades what we are still saying now, and we insist even more, as Sulai said, there is no military solution. It’s a fantasy, but a very dangerous fantasy.

And we see now the horror and the fear and the hatred in Israel, in the West Bank, in Gaza. What happened on the 7th of October, the atrocities are unprecedented, and then Israeli attack on Gaza and settler violence in the West Bank, again, unprecedented. The levels of violence keep rising, and the circle of violence just goes on, because we are unable to undo the driving forces of this conflict — first and foremost, the occupation. It’s not the only reason, but we believe it’s the most important reason for perpetuating this conflict. And this is why we’ve been struggling against it for so long. We believe there is —

AMY GOODMAN: And what do you think —

AVNER WISHNITZER: There is an alternative, and this is what we are trying to push forward.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s what I want to ask you about: What is the alternative at this point? You have this truce that could end today, unless Hamas releases 10 prisoners a day, but Israel has said only up to 10 days and that they are going to wipe out Hamas in Gaza. What is the alternative, Avner?

AVNER WISHNITZER: So, the alternative is not in this microtactic level. I mean, sure, we are for the release of all hostages. We are for the release of prisoners. You talked about the prisoners a lot during this program. We are talking about something far more fundamental, a sea change, which means the renewal of talks that would lead to a political — a just political solution, that is agreed on both sides and not imposed unilaterally, and to support that political process, that is so crucial, because right now there is no alternative. It’s just brute force. And when people are fed with the idea —

AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds left, but then we’re going to continue the conversation.

AVNER WISHNITZER: OK, just one point. When people are fed with the idea that there is no choice but violence, there is only violence, to each other. We need to open an alternative, a political process to end the violence.

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“Atmosphere of Hate”: AFSC Leader & Palestinian Vermonter on Shooting of 3 College Students
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 28, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/28 ... transcript

We get an update on the three university students of Palestinian descent who were shot Saturday in Burlington, Vermont. Two were wearing keffiyehs and speaking Arabic at the time of the attack. Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ahmad are now recovering, though Hisham Awartani, who was shot in the spine, has reportedly lost feeling in the lower part of his body. The FBI is reportedly investigating whether the shooting was a hate crime. “This atmosphere of hate” starts “from the federal level,” declares Wafic Faour of the organization Vermonters for Justice in Palestine, who joins us to discuss the recent history of Vermont’s suppression of pro-Palestinian sentiment. “If you talk about Palestinian rights, you’re going to be called 'terrorist,'” says Faour, yet although “the attacker is a white supremacist, … we don’t call it as is.” We also speak to Joyce Ajlouny, former director of the Ramallah Friends School in the occupied West Bank, where the three victims were students together. She reads poems they wrote in sixth grade and notes that over the course of the decadeslong occupation, “Palestinians of all faiths … have not been offered the humanity and dignity that they deserve.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Burlington, Vermont, where three Palestinian college students were shot on Saturday as they were walking to dinner at the home of one of the students’ grandmothers, who lives near the University of Vermont. Two of the men were wearing keffiyehs, and they were speaking Arabic at the time of the attack. The young men have been identified as Hisham Awartani, a Brown University student; Kinnan Abdalhamid, of Haverford College; and Tahseen Ahmad, a student at Trinity College. They were all 20 years old — they’re all 20 years old and graduates of the Ramallah Friends School in the occupied West Bank. Two of the students remain hospitalized. Hisham Awartani, who was shot in the spine, has reportedly lost feeling in the lower part of his body and may never walk again.

Authorities have charged a 48-year-old white man named Jason Eaton with three counts of second-degree attempted murder. He’s being held without bail. He pleaded not guilty on Monday. He reportedly shot the students from his porch as they walked by. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the FBI is investigating whether the shooting is a hate crime.

The shooting comes just weeks after a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy was stabbed to death near Chicago by his landlord.

Tamara Tamimi, the mother of one of the students, Kinnan Abdalhamid, told ABC News, quote, “To us, it’s decades of dehumanizing policy and rhetoric from U.S. leaders towards Palestinians and Arabs, including from the Biden administration, which has caused our children to be in the situation that they’re in,” unquote.

On Monday, relatives of the men shot in Vermont joined local authorities at a news conference at Burlington City Hall. This is Rich Price, the uncle of the Brown student, Hisham Awartani.

RICH PRICE: We speak only on behalf of the family because the family can’t be here. I want to say that these three young men are incredible. And that’s not just a proud uncle speaking, but it’s true. They are — they have their lives in front of them. …

I moved here 15 years ago, and I never imagined that this sort of thing could happen. And my sister lives in the occupied West Bank, and people often ask me, “Aren’t you worried about your sister? Aren’t you worried about your nephews and your niece?” And the reality is, as difficult as their life is, they are surrounded by incredible sense of community. And “tragic irony” is not even the right phrase, but to have them come stay with me for Thanksgiving and have something like this happen speaks to the level of civic vitriol, speaks to the level of hatred that exists in some corners of this country. It speaks to a sickness of gun violence that exists in this country.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Rich Price, the uncle of Hisham Awartani, one of the three college students of Palestinian descent who were shot Saturday in Burlington, Vermont. And this is Kinnan Abdalhamid’s uncle, Radi Tamimi.

RADI TAMIMI: Kinnan grew up in the West Bank, and we always thought that that could be more of a risk in terms of his safety, and sending him here would be, you know, the right decision. And we feel somehow betrayed in that decision here. And, you know, we’re just trying to come to terms with everything.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined by two guests. In Burlington, Vermont, Wafic Faour is with us. He’s a Palestinian refugee from Lebanon, has lived in Vermont for years. He’s a member of Vermonters for Justice in Palestine. And in Bethesda, Maryland, Joyce Ajlouny is the former director of the Ramallah Friends School, the school where all three of the students shot in Vermont graduated from. She’s now the general secretary of the international Quaker social justice organization American Friends Service Committee. She herself is Palestinian American.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Wafic, you’re in Burlington. Let’s begin with you. Where were you on Saturday when you got the news that three young Palestinian students, all 20 years old, best friends, visiting one of their grandmothers for Thanksgiving, were shot?

WAFIC FAOUR: I was at my house in Richmond. Thank you, Amy, for inviting us. I was at my house. We were organizing many activities and rallies because of what is happening on Palestine and this genocide war against our people over there. Definitely, I was shocked. And our community here are terrified and angry.

But, Amy, we should talk about what brought this atmosphere of hate. And this is a hate crime, and we should call it as is. From the federal level, the actions of Biden administration’s and Secretary of State Blinken and the defense secretary, they’re supporting Israel unconditionally and talking about the Palestinian victims and questioning the numbers of the Palestinian Health Ministry. This is on the federal level. And here in Vermont, for the past two years we have living under siege, too, from attacks from institutions here. When we brought resolution to talk about Palestinian rights, human rights and the protection of the Palestinian people, we found attacks from administrations in UVM, University of Vermont in Middlebury, and, unfortunately, from many faith-based institutions. And they called us antisemitic. And this atmosphere will bring to the American public that if you talk about Palestinian rights, you’re going to be called “terrorist.” If you wear a keffiyeh like this, you’re going to be called “terrorist.” And this is what brought this crime. And it is hate crime. Unfortunately, our leaders here in Vermont didn’t call it as is. And we should call it as is and use the right words.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Wafic, specifically at the press conference that was held on Monday by law enforcement, what do you believe should have been said but was not?

WAFIC FAOUR: Well, I mean, when state attorney Sarah George mentioned it’s a hateful event, but it is not hate crime. I mean, if it happened to another community, it would have been called hate crime immediately. And now they are questioning of the mental capacity of the attacker, when it is — believe me, we feel here if the name of the attacker is an Arab name or a Muslim name, he will be called “terrorist” immediately by the media, and the media will have a field of describing that person. Now the attacker is a white supremacist, and because of the atmosphere and racism against the Muslims, the Arabs and the Palestinians here, in this state and all across United States, we don’t call it as is.

At the same time, the mayor of Burlington, who opposed and he promised to reject and to veto any resolution in our progressive city that calls for Palestinian human rights and our rights as a Palestinian American citizen and our solidarity groups to call — to use our First Amendment and to call for the right of BDS, Boycott, Divestment and Sanction. And that happened a year and a half ago. You cannot have a double standard that attack us because we are activists for the rights of the Palestinians, at the same time when something like this, you just bring sorrow and mourning and defend yourself and where you stand. You have to stand with people justice regardless, and you have to be the mayor of all the citizens.

And I call for the Burlington councilmembers to bring a stronger resolution, and mainly for ceasefire now. You know, the Palestinians are dying. And we are working to stop this genocide over there. And we have — our local leaders, they have responsibility to support our solidarity group and the people in Vermont and Burlington.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you — the mother of one of the injured young men, Hisham Awartani, his mother, Elizabeth Price, has been trying to leave Ramallah and travel to the U.S. to see her son. Is there any news about whether she’ll be able to come?

WAFIC FAOUR: I don’t know. I heard that she’s coming. I saw a statement about that. I don’t know if she’s on her way already. I know a sister, and her husband, of another victim is here. I am in contact with the stepfather of another victim, and he told me his health is improving now.

But we have to take this crime as example of what we feel and what we are experiencing here. We stand by those victims. But at the same time, I have to talk to you about the fear and the anger of our community here in Vermont, the Palestinian and the Arab Muslim community in particular, and our solidarity groups and young students who getting attacked by UVM administrations and a year and a half ago from Middlebury administration, too.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to get to that, but I want to bring in Joyce Ajlouny into the conversation, former director of the Ramallah Friends School, the school where all three boys went to school in Ramallah. She’s now the general secretary of American Friends Service Committee, joining us from Virginia [sic]. Can you talk about where they went to school? These were three best friends, now 20 years old. I think you’re muted.

JOYCE AJLOUNY: Terribly sorry.

AMY GOODMAN: Perfect.

JOYCE AJLOUNY: Yes, Amy. Thank you for having me.

As you were speaking to Wafic, I received a message from Ali Awartani and Elizabeth Price. They’re saying they’re on their way to America — just to answer your question about if they are planning to come. They are en route, traveling to be with Hisham.

AMY GOODMAN: And I should correct that you’re in Bethesda, Maryland. Sorry, I said Virginia.

JOYCE AJLOUNY: I am.

AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead.

JOYCE AJLOUNY: No worries. That’s close enough.

Yes, the Ramallah Friends School was established in 1869 by Quaker missionaries. It’s a phenomenal place. I’m a graduate of the school myself. My grandmother, who was a Palestinian Quaker, graduated from there in the 1920s. So, this is a proud place for many of us. And not that it’s educationally and academically superior than IP education, kindergarten through 12th grade, but it’s also the Quaker values and the foundations of peace and nonviolence and teaching tolerance and service and integrity, conflict resolution, emphasizing dialogue and inquiry. That is what the school is about. And the track record is phenomenal when we look at our graduates and what they are up to. I think graduates say that they are who they are because of the Ramallah Friends School. So it is a phenomenal place that has transformed the lives of many throughout generations. So I know that Hisham, Kinnan and Tahseen are proud alums.

And, you know, I think that they’re getting together as most of us are, Palestinian Americans here. I also want to share that three of them are Palestinian Americans. And so, sometimes that’s dropped from the news, that two of them are actually American citizens. And so, they are gathered. They gather together to provide solace for each other and just vent sometimes, and it’s therapy to come together. And unfortunately, they have witnessed this horrific, horrific crime in the midst of them coming together to comfort each other. And I think that is what has happened, unfortunately, this time.

AMY GOODMAN: You posted on Facebook their poems, Tahseen’s poem, as well as Hisham. I’m wondering if you could read them for us? How old were they? Like in sixth grade?

JOYCE AJLOUNY: They were in sixth grade. I had the privilege of being the head of school when they were in middle school. And so, the librarian, actually, dug those up. And I will read Hisham’s poem, sixth grade Hisham, who now goes to Brown — by the way, brilliant students, all of them, accomplished, top-notch, value-driven.

I wanted to say, maybe, Amy, before I read his poem, that’s how selfless our students are. You know, Hisham wrote to his professor at Brown — and I want to quote him — he said, “It’s important to recognize that this is part of the larger story. The serious crime did not happen in a vacuum. As much as I appreciate and love every single one of you here today, I am but one casualty in a much wider conflict.” And then Hisham goes on to say to his professor that “This is why, when you say your wishes and light your candles today, you should mind — your mind should not just be focused on me as an individual, but rather a proud member of a people being oppressed.” And so, these are his words since the shooting.

When he was in sixth grade in 2015, he wrote — that’s Hisham Awartani:

“Hope dwells in my heart
It shines like a light in darkness
[This] light cannot be smothered
It cannot be drowned out by tears and the screams of the wounded
It only grows in strength
This light can outshine hate
This light can outshine injustice
It outshines segregation and apartheid
As of Greek legend, Pandora opened a box
And when she did that, all the evil escaped
But luckily, Pandora closed the jar before hope could escape
And as long as hope stayed in that jar
Hope would never escape
So I ask you one thing, learn from that story
Learn to never give up hope
Learn to let hope give power
In the darkest of times
And let the light shine.”

AMY GOODMAN: Wow! Hisham in sixth grade.

JOYCE AJLOUNY: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And how about Tahseen?

JOYCE AJLOUNY: Tahseen, there are two poems. I want to read one, which depicts where our students are coming from, that they are coming from living under a brutal occupation apartheid system that agonizes them, that traumatizes them day in and day out, children, sixth-graders. So, Tahseen writes:

“My ears are pounding
Children dying
Mothers crying
Authorities lying
My ears are pounding
My ears are pounding
Missiles destroying
Bombs exploding
Bullets killing
My ears are pounding
Press careless
Dreams traceless
Lands ownerless
My ears are pounding
Kids without mothers
Beds without covers
Palestine without others
My ears are pounding
My ears are pounding
There is one sound I heard
Not from a breeze or a bird
The sound of darkness
My ears are pounding
My ears are pounding
I’d rather be deaf.”

So, that says a lot. That says a lot about where we are at today in the story of the Palestinian struggle, which is often depicted as that this all started on October 7th. And so, this is 2015. And they are — when you read this poem, you feel like you’re reading it about today, about our people in Gaza and what they are going through, and yet this was eight years ago. So, the struggle continues.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And —

JOYCE AJLOUNY: Yeah. Go ahead.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Joyce, I wanted to ask you if you could comment on the tragic irony that the families of the victims have said in various interviews that they thought that the U.S. would be a safer place for their children than the West Bank, and then to have this terrible tragedy occur here.

JOYCE AJLOUNY: Yes, of course. I mean, I think that is the absolute truth. You know, I know that a large number of Palestinian students from the Ramallah Friends School attend U.S. colleges. And they’re actually very sought after. And when they come here, the parents know that they are keeping them away from being subjected to violence from not just the Israeli military but the Israeli settlers. I have a 31-year-old son there now, and I worry about his safety. The settlers have been emboldened, and there’s violence there every day. And you wonder. You know, you send them here, and then they — this keffiyeh has now become a symbol, instead of our struggle, instead of a symbol of our tradition, our traditional dress and our struggle, this is now being painted and tainted as a symbol of violence. And so, I have another son in Washington, D.C. He doesn’t leave home without his keffiyeh. I worry about him, too. So, that is where we’re at right now.

And I can’t but agree with Wafic about the dehumanization that has been taking place. And this is not new. You know, Palestinians are — you know, even in our grief, we are depicted as Palestinians “dying” — right? — while Israelis are being “killed” and “massacred.” So language really matters. And I think that is what we have seen time and time again. You know, 47 children died on the West Bank between January and August of this year, way before this war started. And I wonder, like, who cried for them. Who mourned them? Where was the U.S. mainstream media talking about them? And so, it’s not just the language. It’s also the framing — right? — that this is the worst attack since the Holocaust, painting Palestinians as Jew haters, as that this is a religious struggle rather than a people seeking freedom, seeking liberation from a settler colonial system, and remembering, you know, that Palestinians of all faiths are in the same struggle, as well, and they have not been offered the humanity and the dignity that they deserve. And so, I think this is all — this is manifest due to the continued dehumanization, not only by the media but by our government, you know, as Wafic said, that they continue to turn a blind eye. They’re not calling for a ceasefire. They continue to embolden the Israeli atrocities by sending more aid, doubling their aid, and supporting the genocide of our people. And so, that is truly the reason why this is happening.

I just wanted to also take the opportunity, you know, we’re doing the — there’s this exchange of hostages. And when they talk about that, they talk about Israelis released the children — the Israelis released are “children,” while the Palestinians who are released are “teenagers,” so children versus teenagers. You know, in my book, they’re all hostages. The fact that the media is not talking about the 3,000 Palestinians who have been kidnapped, basically, since October 10th and put in Israeli jails, and they’re calling them — they’re not prisoners. To them, they are bargaining chips — right? — that they will use in exchange. But, to us, they are hostages, just like the hostages that are held in Gaza. And so, that is the narrative that is being talked about day in and day out. And people who have sentiments that are anti-Arab, anti-Muslim are emboldened by all of that and take action, like Jason Eaton, who felt emboldened because no is portraying Palestinians as human beings that deserve the dignity and the respect that everyone else should be — that everyone else is granted.

AMY GOODMAN: Jason Eaton, of course, is the alleged shooter —

JOYCE AJLOUNY: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — of the three Palestinian young men. I want to thank you, Joyce Ajlouny, the former director of the Ramallah Friends School, where they all went to school in the occupied West Bank, all three students shot in Burlington, Vermont, on Friday. Joyce is also now the general secretary of the American Friends Service Committee. And I want to thank Wafic Faour, a Palestinian refugee from Lebanon, member of Vermonters for Justice in Palestine, speaking to us from Burlington.

And this final note: Speaking about the Vermont representatives, you have Becca Balint, who is the first Jewish congressmember to call for a ceasefire. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has not called for a ceasefire but has called for conditions on U.S. aid to Israel. He said, quote, “While Israel has the right to go after Hamas, Netanyahu’s right-wing extremist government does not have the right to wage almost total warfare against the Palestinian people.”

Coming up, we speak to prize-winning investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill about Israel’s propaganda war over Al-Shifa Hospital and what’s underneath it. Who built what’s under Shifa Hospital? Back in 20 seconds.

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Jeremy Scahill: Israel’s “Lethal Lie” About Al-Shifa Hospital as Hamas Base Was Co-Signed by Biden
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 28, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/28 ... transcript

The Intercept's Jeremy Scahill deconstructs Israel's narrative around Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, including unsubstantiated allegations Hamas uses tunnels under the hospital as its command center — tunnels that Israel itself built. “We were told that this was like a Hamas Pentagon,” says Scahill, who describes how the Israeli military’s own evidence disproves its allegations that the hospital was dangerous enough to justify its siege and bombardment. The World Health Organization says Al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, “is no longer functioning.” The Israeli disinformation campaign against it was a “lethal lie,” says Scahill. We also discuss the status of Palestinian prisoners who are now candidates for release in Israel and Hamas’s ongoing hostage exchange.

Transcript

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

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

Israel is continuing to detain the head of Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital in Gaza. Last week, the Israeli military detained Muhammad Abu Salmiya as he was evacuating patients south from Gaza City.

Israel raided Al-Shifa, claiming Hamas ran a command and control center under the hospital, but Israel has yet to provide any hard evidence to back that up. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak recently spoke with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. He admitted Israel built the bunkers decades ago underneath Al-Shifa.

EHUD BARAK: It’s already known for many years that they have in the bunkers, that originally was built by Israeli constructors underneath Shifa, were used as a command post of the Hamas in a kind of a junction of several — several tunnels, part of this system. I don’t know to say to what extent it is a major. It’s probably not the only kind of command post. Several others are under other hospitals or in other sensitive places. But it’s for sure had been used by Hamas even during this conflict.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Well, when you say it was built by Israeli engineers, did you misspeak?

EHUD BARAK: No, no. Someday, you know, decades ago, we were wanting the place, so we held them. It was decades, many decades, ago, probably five, four decades ago, that we helped them to build these bunkers in order to enable more — more space for the operation of the hospital within the very limited size of this compound.

AMY GOODMAN: Again, that was the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

We’re joined now by Jeremy Scahill, senior reporter and correspondent at The Intercept, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army and Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield. One of his most recent pieces for The Intercept is headlined “Al-Shifa Hospital, Hamas’s Tunnels, and Israeli Propaganda.” Jeremy is joining us from Germany.

Jeremy, can you talk about what he just said?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah. Well, first of all, Amy, the Al-Shifa Hospital, originally, going back to the years of the British Mandate in the 1940s, it was a British military barracks, and then it was converted into a hospital, under both the Israeli and the Egyptian occupations of that area. And then, in the 1980s, the Israelis began to do extensive construction on it. In fact, I was looking at the Israeli Architecture Archives that were set up, and you can go back and look at [inaudible] from that era, and two Tel Aviv architects oversaw the expansion of the Al-Shifa Hospital. And by 1983, they had finished the construction of underground facilities at the hospital.

Now, we should also say, it’s not uncommon for hospitals the world over to have underground facilities for a variety of reasons. But when you’re in an active war zone, it’s very common. In fact, Israel has many underground facilities at its hospitals throughout Israel and has been using them since October 7th, certainly. They’re considered more secure places to hold vulnerable patients.

And so, what we know about Israel’s construction is that they at least built an underground operating room. They built a network of tunnels. And, in fact, during some of the construction, the son of one of the Israeli architects who designed the underground facility said that when Israel was building these in the 1980s, they hired people from Hamas as security to guard the construction project to ensure that it wouldn’t get attacked.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jeremy, could you talk also about the thousands of prisoners that Israel has been holding, many of them without any trial for extended years, and yet the Netanyahu government refers to all of them as “terrorists”?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah. I mean, Juan, I went through — and this connects also to the narrative around Al-Shifa. But just to directly answer your question, Israel released a list of 300 names that it said were fair game for a hostage-prisoner handover because of the truce with Hamas. And I went through all 15 pages of those names. I read each of the individual dates of birth, the dates of arrest, what the nature of the charges were — if there were any charges. Some of them don’t even list any actual charges against them. And what I discovered is that of the 300 names, 233 of these prisoners — most of them are teenage boys, some are — there’s a teenage girl who’s 15 years old — the 233 of 300 have not been convicted of anything. They haven’t been sentenced for anything. And Israel is the only country in the so-called developed world that tries children in military courts.

And so, you know, the Israeli narrative is that these are all hardened terrorists, because Palestinians are not allowed to have any context. Palestinians are not treated as full human beings. So, when a child — maybe his brother was killed by the Israeli forces, maybe his mother was killed by the Israeli forces — throws a rock at a soldier, their houses are often then raided at night. They’re snatched. They’re taken to interrogation without the presence of a parent or a lawyer. And then they’re pressured into pleading guilty under threat of spending years in a military judicial process.

Now, I say this relates to Al-Shifa because the colonial narrative always — and you can look at the British with the IRA, you can look at the position against Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress — is that those who are victims of the occupation have no rights to legitimate struggle. And so, the prisoners that Israel are holding, overwhelmingly, are people that are accused of committing political acts of violence. And that context also bleeds into Israel’s narrative about Al-Shifa: Al-Shifa is not really a hospital.

Al-Shifa — look, I don’t know if you guys have the video, but if you do, you should play it. Israel puts out a video to justify the siege of Al-Shifa Hospital, the most important hospital in Gaza, where you had dozens of children that needed incubators. Israel had knocked out the power supply. You had the most vulnerable patients there. They put out a video, the Israeli Defense Forces, that is this high-tech three-dimensional rendering, they said, of an underground, what I just call a Hamas Pentagon, and they imply that this is where — this is the central facility where Hamas is planning its terror operations.

When Israel finally then lays full siege to it, with the backing of the Biden administration and Biden himself — they co-signed all of that. They said that hostages had been held under the hospital. They said that it was used as a command and control center. When Israel finally starts to access the hospital, they take embedded journalists on these propaganda tours. And what they found was essentially nothing of any major significance. They go in, and they say, “Oh, look, we found these rifles behind an MRI machine,” which is ridiculous for anyone who knows the technology of an MRI machine and the magnetism of it. They’re all conveniently placed, neatly arranged. There’s one Hamas vest with a Hamas logo on it. So that gets ridiculed, and skepticism is expressed even by corporate media outlets that historically print Israel’s propaganda as just established fact.

So, then they finally gain access to a tunnel in the area. They go down there, and they say, “Oh, this tunnel is X number of meters long, and there’s a blast-proof door that has a hole so that the Hamas terrorists can fire at us. So we need to take some time before we blow it open. And then on the other side is going to be this command and control center.” So, finally, then, last week, they blow the thing open. They go in there. And what do they find? They find three rooms, basically. One looks like a kind of very old-school, 1980s-style exam room from a hospital. There’s a sink somewhere in there. There’s two toilets. And then you have this utter clown from the IDF who has been made a fool of himself by doing these tours. It’s like Geraldo Rivera looking for Al Capone’s vault. He’s running around, saying, “Aha! There’s electricity in here. This is a Hamas command center. Aha! They had an air conditioner in here.” You know, the pipes are rusty. Many of the electrical wires aren’t even connected.

Now, I don’t know for a fact that Hamas guys weren’t under there. It wouldn’t shock me if at some point Hamas did have people under there. But we were told this was like a Hamas Pentagon and that it was so dangerous that it justified laying siege to a hospital filled with the most vulnerable people. This is akin to sort of the George H.W. Bush administration lies about the Iraqis pulling babies from incubators. It’s an utter lie that was co-signed and promoted by President Joe Biden and his administration, and they should be made to answer for this, because it wasn’t just Al-Shifa. They did it at the Indonesia Hospital. They did it at other hospitals. Of course Hamas has networks of tunnels underneath Gaza, 150 to 300 kilometers, by some estimates. Israel is waging a targeted assassination campaign against them, and they live in a confined area waging a guerrilla war. That’s not news. But Israel tried to rebrand something that anyone who’s followed this already knows, and tried to make it seem like it’s a smoking gun. And, in fact, it was a lethal lie.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, we want to thank you for being with us, senior reporter, correspondent at The Intercept. We’ll link to your pieces on Al-Shifa and Palestinian prisoners at democracynow.org.

[admin]

“Horror Show”: Doctors Without Borders Demands Permanent Ceasefire in Gaza, Medical Aid for Wounded
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 30, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/30 ... transcript

We get an update from Avril Benoît, executive director of Doctors Without Borders, on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and violence hospitals are facing in the occupied West Bank. Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinian children Wednesday during a raid on the Jenin refugee camp, and medical workers say they were blocked from reaching the camp to treat the wounded. “Under humanitarian law, anyone should be able to reach a hospital,” says Benoît, who is demanding a “proper ceasefire” in the region to allow medical aid to reach people devastated by Israel’s war. She says the prospect of Israel resuming its bombardment of Gaza, including in the south where people were ordered to move, would be “a horror show.”

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Israel has agreed to extend its truce with Hamas for a seventh day to facilitate the exchange of captives. The extension was announced just minutes before it was set to expire on Thursday morning, prolonging a reprieve for Gaza’s 2.3 million residents after 47 days of relentless attacks by Israel spawned a massive humanitarian crisis. On Wednesday, Hamas released 16 hostages. In exchange, Israel released another 30 Palestinian women and child prisoners.

Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, two Palestinian children were shot dead by Israeli forces during a raid on the Jenin refugee camp on Wednesday. Fifteen-year-old Basil Suleiman Abu al-Wafa died in a hospital after he was shot in the chest. And 8-year-old Adam al-Ghoul was shot in the head as he ran from Israeli forces, in a killing captured on video. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said Israeli soldiers blocked medics from reaching the camp to treat the wounded.

In Khan Younis, in the south of Gaza, Doctors Without Borders surgeon Dr. Hafez Abukhussa described how his hospital is overwhelmed.

DR. HAFEZ ABUKHUSSA: The patients that we see, the majority of patients, they are female and children. But what hurts me a lot, when I see a child, an innocent child, injured, and he need a major surgery. He lost his limb. And he’s the last child. He’s the only remnant of his family. And when he woke up from anesthesia, he asked to see his family. So, this is really a heartbreaking situation.

The difficulties that we face here is the lack of supplies, the lack of instruments. In the hospital on normal days here, there’s 300 patients. Now it’s more than 1,000 patients. The patients, they are homeless, because many of them are refugees within Gaza, and the other people, they have — their houses were destroyed. They don’t have the access to potable water, or there’s a lack of food, a lack of [electricity]. And some of them just get out from their houses with the clothes that they are wearing. We know that we are in danger, in danger anytime, but we will keep doing the same.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Avril Benoît, executive director of Doctors Without Borders.

Welcome back to Democracy Now! If you can talk about what is happening right now in Gaza? I mean, as we are broadcasting, U.S. Secretary of State Blinken is meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, and he just met with Netanyahu. There is a ceasefire, not clear it was going to be extended even one more day. Minutes before the end of that ceasefire, it was announced it would continue. What have you learned about the devastation?

AVRIL BENOÎT: Well, thanks for having me.

From the medical humanitarian perspective of what we have seen from the beginning, after the appalling attack on October 7th, has been a collective punishment of the people in Gaza. And that’s why you’ve seen such a disproportionate number of civilians killed. The devastation on the hospitals is near complete. There are a few hospitals in the north that are really not much more than shelters right now, with still medical personnel trying to stay with patients, but they have no more equipment, they have no electricity, they have no water. They’re holed up.

And it’s a very high-risk evacuation route. We know from our own experience of our team that was stuck there with their families, after having made the decision for the medical doctors to stay with some of the patients in the hospitals, that they came — they were subjected to crossfire. A couple of the members of the evacuation group, the family members were killed in that. Our vehicles were destroyed, the ones that we were intending to use to be able to evacuate these staff and families after they retreated from what seemed to be imminent risk of death, that proved to be fatal in the end.

And so, what we’re seeing is this surge of patients in the south. As you just heard, hospitals, from the beginning, have been completely overwhelmed, but now they’ve got patients who really require much more complex medical care. They require, really, referral — ideally, medical evacuation in a safe way to a third country, for example, where they can receive the level of care that will save their lives and prevent further damage.

Just to mention another thing, because of the lack of antibiotics, medicine, wound dressing equipment, we have a very high risk of high numbers of people dying of infections. And that is something that should never happen under international humanitarian law, the norms of war. People should have access to medical care in a conflict like this. And that is just not being guaranteed in terms of the way this war is being conducted.

AMY GOODMAN: Can I ask you if you’ve heard about this report of al-Nasr pediatric hospital in northern Gaza and the premature babies, five of them, discovered, the remains of the babies? The reports were that they were left to die after Israeli forces blocked access to the intensive care unit.

AVRIL BENOÎT: I don’t have the details on that, I’m sorry. What we do know is that it was a harrowing decision for the medical staff when ordered to evacuate, knowing that sometimes you’re only given a couple of hours, which is completely unacceptable. Even in the context of this pause, this truce — which we certainly hope will continue and become an actual ceasefire — it’s very complicated to transfer a patient that is in a vulnerable state, in a machine that no longer has any electricity — as you probably know, the lack of fuel has meant it’s near impossible to run ambulances — and because of the violence, all these checkpoints, where it seems that people are waiting for hours and hours. You can imagine you’ve got people who are transferred from an intensive care unit stuffed into an ambulance because it’s one of the only ones running, and then at the checkpoint they’re stopped for up to seven hours. And then there’s violence, and they feel they have to retreat. It’s a very harrowing, high-risk kind of thing to organize.

And that’s one of the reasons that we’re calling for this killing to stop, for there to be a proper ceasefire, and, furthermore, for there to be medical evacuations, so that people can receive the care they need in a safe way, with, of course, the right to return if they so wish, and then also for there to be unconditional humanitarian aid that is allowed to enter, because we know people are in places where the aid cannot reach, and they cannot reach the hospitals. They don’t feel it’s safe. And so they are at risk of dying and suffering lifelong consequences if they don’t receive the medical care right away.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Avril, could you speak about the — during this pause, how much medical equipment, supplies, medicine, as you were speaking about earlier, the acute shortage, which many people have mentioned — how much medication is coming in, medication and equipment is coming in, during this pause, into Gaza?

AVRIL BENOÎT: The specifics are unclear, to be perfectly honest. We see that every day there are a certain number of trucks. They move at a snail’s pace. What we would really like to see, of course, is for that to be faster and of greater volume. Before this conflict, before October 7th, there were 500 trucks that would cross daily into Gaza, and that was during a blockade, so not enough. The hospitals were already at a deficit of the equipment that they needed, of the replenishing supplies. All the stocks were always threadbare. And so, then compounded with the fact that we have an estimated 30,000 to 35,000 wounded people, not to mention those that are now coming in with fevers, gastrointestinal situations, acute watery diarrhea — maybe it’s cholera; we don’t know, because we don’t have the testing facilities and labs available to check — what we’re seeing with this truce is that there is no way to be able to support the hospitals that continue to stand. Of course, many of them have been damaged in the fighting. They have been attacked systematically. The World Health Organization has been tracking this.

And for us, this is such an obvious violation of international humanitarian law, to attack hospitals, to attack medical staff, to kill them while they’re at the bedside of patients — and our own colleagues have been killed — and to just go after these facilities as if there’s some excuse that is legitimate, when it’s not, and there’s no evidence that’s been offered to really prove that they should be targets, really nothing — nothing — to substantiate that at all. They are protected spaces.

And so, the truce has allowed perhaps some stocks to go in for us to facilitate to do some movements, to check on some hospitals and clinics to see what their stocks are like. But what you really needed was to pre-position everything, to have it already in place at the starting blocks, in a warehouse, ready to be distributed to the places that need it most, that still have medical staff. And that wasn’t done because of the total siege over the last many weeks.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Avril, I’m not sure — I’m sure you’ve heard that the World Health Organization earlier this week warned that more people in Gaza could die from disease than have already died from the bombing. If you could talk a little bit about that?

AVRIL BENOÎT: Yes. Well, certainly, I mentioned infections earlier. When you have children coming in who have more than 50% of their bodies burned from explosions, they are, in the best-case scenario, in the fully equipped hospital with all the means to control the infection, really it’s a life-or-death situation. So, now we have so many of these children that we cannot treat properly. We don’t even have the proper gauze in the stocks to be able to do it.

The other thing that the World Health Organization was pointing out, which is entirely plausible, is this whole question of dehydration. So, young children, infants are coming in severely dehydrated. And where is the water? Since the siege began, this is one of the things that this collective punishment has honed in on to say, “We’re not going to give you access to water or food or medicines” — all the things that are needed just to stay alive. So, that’s a huge problem right now.

Then you just think of the people with chronic illnesses. And this is always a concern for us. Somebody who’s on heart medication, or they have diabetes, they have any number of chronic illnesses — think of all the cancer patients — where are they supposed to go to replenish? The hospital system that is barely functioning at all in the south, for example, their focus is on the severely wounded that are coming in, trying to keep people alive, patch them up, do the amputations really quickly, not in the proper way even to allow for prosthetic devices after. They’re just trying to do the most triage very urgently. And the ones who need safe place to give birth, the ones who need their heart medication, the children who are severely dehydrated, and there’s nowhere really to look after them in a hospital like that, these are the ones that are likely to be the other casualties of this war, not only the ones who are killed by the direct violence that is seemingly affecting civilians so much more than anyone else.

AMY GOODMAN: Avril Benoît, if you can talk about Netanyahu’s threat to — in resuming the bombardment? You’ve got Blinken, who reportedly is urging more surgical strikes. But they’re talking about bombarding the south. This is where they forced — what is it? — a million Gazans, Palestinians, to go from the north. So, talk about what this would mean if this temporary ceasefire ends.

AVRIL BENOÎT: It’s a horror show for us. Just think about it. A third of the injured people already were injured in the south, which was the place that everyone was told to go. That was the place. You were supposed to leave the north, go to the south. And then they got killed there.

So, for us, this is the worst, because what we have is, on the one side, the talk of “We would like humanitarian law to be respected. We would like civilians to be considered. Limit the collateral damage of civilians,” and yet, what we have seen time and again is there are no consequences evident for not doing that. And so, we have, with the looming end of this truce — and, it seems, not enough political will to really have a ceasefire — what we would regard as a kind of talking one thing but no consequences. So we can tell the Israeli forces, the Netanyahu government, “Please try to limit the killing of civilians, start doing that,” but we’re not really seeing any consequences if they don’t.

And we do know that the United States is providing billions in aid, its military aid. And so, you know, it seems that that aid could well be used, with no consequences, to violate international norms, the Geneva Conventions, international humanitarian law. And for us, that’s just unacceptable.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And finally, Avril Benoît, MSF International President Christos Christou posted this update on Tuesday, that while he was visiting the MSF team at the Khalil Suleiman Hospital in Jenin, the Israeli army conducted an incursion on the refugee camp.

AVRIL BENOÎT: Yes. And one of the most difficult things about that is that —

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to play a clip. We’re going to play a clip —

AVRIL BENOÎT: OK.

AMY GOODMAN: — of Christou right now.

AVRIL BENOÎT: Sounds good.

CHRISTOS CHRISTOU: It’s been already two-and-a-half hours that we are trapped in our hospital here in Jenin, while the Israeli forces are operating in another incursion in Jenin camp. There is no way for any of the injured patients to reach the hospital, and there’s no way for us to reach these people. There’s nothing worse for a doctor to know that there are people there needing our care, and they cannot get it.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Avril Benoît, if you could comment on that and also the fact that two children were killed in Jenin just today?

AVRIL BENOÎT: Yes. Well, as Dr. Christou, our international president, said, if people cannot access a facility in the West Bank, already you can see the grave concern that we have. Under humanitarian law, anyone should be able to reach a hospital. And to have a hospital surrounded, blocked, so that no one can actually bring their injured children, bring their wounded to that hospital, for us, is a complete outrage. It’s been happening systematically in Gaza. And for us to now see it elsewhere is something that we, as the international community, should never accept.

And that is one of the reasons that we are speaking so loudly and in a united voice with the humanitarian aid agencies for a ceasefire, a proper ceasefire, to stop the killing, stop the siege, and allow aid to come in unconditionally and for the people to be helped, saved, and to be able to resume their lives in some shape or form.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you, Avril Benoît, for joining us. This ceasefire, we will see, goes day by day, those children in Jenin killed yesterday. Avril Benoît is executive director of Doctors Without Borders.

Coming up, we’ll be speaking with the acclaimed Gazan human rights attorney Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. He’s going to be joining us from Cairo, after his house was bombed in northern Gaza. We will find out about his journey south. Then we’ll speak with the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Greg Grandin about the death of Henry Kissinger. Stay with us.

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“This Is Genocide”: Attorney Raji Sourani on Israeli War Crimes & Fleeing Gaza After Home Was Bombed
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November30, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/30 ... transcript

After his home in Gaza was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in October, Palestinian human rights lawyer Raji Sourani joins us from Cairo. He says Israel is enacting a “new Nakba” in its war on Gaza, and the expulsion of all Palestinians from their homeland is the clear end goal of the Israeli state. “They want us out, out of Palestine, out of Gaza, out of the West Bank,” says Sourani. “This is genocide, this is ethnic cleansing, and these are first-class war crimes.”

Transcript

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

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: As we continue our coverage of Gaza, we’re joined by Raji Sourani, the award-winning human rights lawyer and director of the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights. He’s a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. We last spoke with Raji Sourani after Israel bombed his home in Gaza City. He joins us today from Cairo, Egypt.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Raji Sourani. If you could begin by talking about how you managed to leave Gaza and how you got to Cairo?

RAJI SOURANI: Well, it was very hard and very heartbreaking for me, I mean, to leave Gaza, I mean, the place I lived all my life, one-way ticket in it. And that was very hard and very tough. But really, I mean, after I was targeted for the second time, after we talked, I was advised very strongly, I mean, not to be at that place and to leave the northern of Gaza. And I left with my family, who didn’t want to leave me alone. I mean, so we left together to the south for a few days, and thanks for the help of great friends, I mean, who managed to get me there, because in two previous attempts it was mission impossible, when tens of people died either on the beach road or at Salah al-Din Street in front of our eyes, when the Israelis shot and bombed, I mean, people who were advised to leave to the safe haven in the south. But that wasn’t, I mean, the case. So I managed to leave to the south, finally, on my third attempt. And from there, I managed to move to Egypt.

There was, I mean, quite a lot of friends who wanted, in a way, the voice, I mean, of Gaza, the voice of the voiceless, about the horrendous genocide taking place at [inaudible] to be reported to the outside world. And there is quite a lot of things to do with the ICC, which greatly disappointing us, and there’s quite a lot of work to do with the ICJ. And there is quite a lot of work to talk, speak to power in European countries about this new Nakba, which is in process, and Israel creating it, and to stop their complicity, their absolute political, legal, military support for belligerent criminal occupation, who’s doing suicide — genocide at the daylight, who’s doing ethnic cleansing, war crimes, broadcasted there live at the real time. But it seems deep in their mind and hearts, the colonial, racist Western governments don’t want to see, don’t want to know, and they are insisting, I mean, in supporting blindly the Israeli belligerent occupation in the crimes they are doing in Gaza and the Occupied Territories at large.

AMY GOODMAN: Raji, if you could look straight into the camera lens as we speak to you now in Cairo? Thank God you’re OK. When we were speaking to you the day after your house was bombed, you described your son moving you and your beloved wife from one room, saying, “Let’s going into the hallway,” and then the place was destroyed. If you could say in more detail what it was like to make your way north to south, what you saw along the way? We also had reports that those who wanted to return to their homes north — so much of the bombing, it may surprise people, is happening actually in the south, where people are directed to go, before this ceasefire. Is it true that people were shot trying to go home in the north? The Israeli military had said, “Don’t do this.”

RAJI SOURANI: Well, we have to understand the context, the context of what the Israelis really want. In simple words, Prime Minister Netanyahu, the criminal Netanyahu, said in simple words, “Gazans should leave Gaza.” He said, “Gaza should be deserted.” And the Minister of Defense Gallant, in a clear, simple way, he said, “For Gazans, there will be no food, no electricity, no fuel.”

And so, what does that mean? I mean, if you say Gazans should leave Gaza, to go where to? It’s obvious and clear. If you are starving and cutting electricity, food, medicine, you are bombing shelters, hospitals, ambulances, if you are killing hundreds of entire families, I mean, being erased, if you are bombing bakeries, if you are bombing water infrastructure and desalination plants, if you are, you know, bluffing, I mean, the entire streets in the Gaza, if you are not allowing people even to reach hospital, if you bomb the civil defense system and the people who are working on it, what do you want from that? If you make no safe haven in entire Gaza, what’s the purpose of that?

They want to push the north to the south. This is the first stage. And they pushed many as a million people, I mean, to the south — Gaza already one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. And they push them while Gaza suffers 17 years of blockade, suffocated the life socioeconomically, passed through five wars against them, and in the eye of the storm the civilian and civilian targets. And now you are doing all that. You are killing almost 30,000 people, because many, many, Amy, still, I mean, under the rubbles, many still under their destroyed houses, and civil defense unable to recover. You are talking about thousands of people. You are talking about thousands of people in the streets in some areas nobody can get to.

The rationale, the behavior of the Israeli guidelines, the outcome of this pushing people to the south, and then from the south toward Sinai, that’s a new Nakba. As simple as that. They want us out, out of Palestine, out of Gaza, out of the West Bank. This is, I mean, the ultimate goal, Amy, for the Israeli government. And this coalition of Netanyahu and the right wing, the basis of their governmental agreement, the coalition agreement to do that, this was said at day one of this war, of this genocide war. And I think yet the Israelis so determined, so willing, and they want to do that. They want to do that.

They finished, I mean, the first stage, and now they want to go to the second stage. And after they finish up with Gaza, it won’t be a new brand of apartheid in East Jerusalem and West Bank. They will do the same, I mean, there. So, what was lack of their plan in 1948 in the Nakba, they want to implement it completely now, so Eretz Yisrael would be clean, and they will have the purity of the Jewish state. And by that, they will accomplish, I mean, their mission. This is simple, clear for any who want to see beyond the details. This is really what Israel want to do.

And that’s why we call it, from the second day, this is genocide, this is ethnic cleansing, and these are first-class war crimes. It’s against A, B, C of international law, international humanitarian law. And it’s against Geneva Convention. It’s against Rome Statute. And we see, from the wall to wall, support by many European countries, doing that willingly and giving full legal, political and military support for the state of Israel, plus U.S.

AMY GOODMAN: Raji, as you talk about international law, can you make that comparison between what happened in Ukraine, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, immediately the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court opening an investigation, especially against children — I think there were something — against what happened to the children. Five hundred children have died in Ukraine over almost two years, up to a thousand dead or maimed. And you compare it to the few weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, 5,000 to 6000 children alone dead, over 15,000 people dead. What do you want Karim Khan to do? And finally — and we just have a few minutes — right now Blinken just met with Mahmoud Abbas. He just met with Herzog on his, like, fourth trip to the Middle East, the U.S. pushing hard to give more weapons aid to Israel. Your response to that? What do you want Biden to say to Netanyahu? And how much power does he have?

RAJI SOURANI: I don’t think yet there is decision by U.S. to stop what is going on. They can simply stop all these crimes. We are bombed with F-35, F-16s, the American tanks, the American artillery, the American ammunition. We are killed with that, with some small amount of European arms. Now, if U.S. want to stop that, they can do that. And they can do that simply. But they are supporting, Amy, really, what Israel is doing. And if we are talking about the next stage that — attends. Hello?

AMY GOODMAN: We can hear you fine. Just if you can just look up into the camera. We see you. Ah, we may have just lost Raji Sourani. Raji Sourani is the world-renowned, award-winning human rights attorney, won the RFK, Robert F. Kennedy Award, won the Right Livelihood Award, has lived in Gaza for decades, speaking to us from Cairo, Egypt. He just got out of Gaza. His home was bombed, with this wife and his son and him it.

[admin]

Headlines for DemocracyNow!
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now!
December 01, 2023

Dozens of Palestinians Killed in Renewed Israeli Attacks as Weeklong Gaza Truce Expires
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now!
December 01, 2023

Dozens of Palestinians have been killed after Israel resumed its bombardment of the Gaza Strip, ending a weeklong pause to facilitate the exchange of captives. Hamas responded by firing a salvo of rockets toward southern Israel. The U.N. says the resumption of violence puts thousands of innocent lives at risk. Since October 7, the Israeli bombardment has killed over 15,000 Palestinians, including 6,100 children. Israel has expanded its military campaign to target southern areas of Gaza, where Israeli planes have been dropping leaflets warning people to evacuate areas around Khan Younis, warning the city was now a “dangerous battle zone.” Israel previously expelled hundreds of thousands of people from the northern Gaza Strip to the south. Just hours before the truce was set to expire, residents of Khan Younis searched through the rubble of their former homes for any personal items they could salvage.

Dalal Masoud: “The end of the calm today feels like our execution. They are telling us that today is the last day of the ceasefire, and we have 24 hours before we return to a life of sheltering in schools in squalor, with the hardship of life without water, electricity or proper shelter. We want a complete truce, not being told every day there is a truce, only to have it breached.”

Freed Palestinian Prisoners Say They Faced Torture and Rape in Israeli Jails
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now!
December 01, 2023

Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza came after Israel and Hamas completed a seventh exchange of captives. On Thursday, eight Israelis held by Hamas were released, while 30 Palestinians were freed from Israeli jails. Israel’s government says it believes Hamas still holds 137 hostages kidnapped during the October 7 attacks. Newly freed Palestinians report suffering torture and sexual assault. This is Baraah Abo Ramouz, a Palestinian journalist who spoke after his release from an Israeli jail Thursday.

Baraah Abo Ramouz: “The situation in the prisons is devastating. The prisoners are abused. They are being constantly beaten. They’re being sexually assaulted. They are being raped. I’m not exaggerating. The prisoners are being raped.”

Earlier this week, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for an investigation into reports of sexual violence committed by Hamas on October 7.

NYT: Israel Had Hamas Battle Plan More Than a Year Ago But Failed to Prevent Oct. 7 Attacks
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now!
December 01, 2023

Israeli government officials knew Hamas was planning a large-scale attack on Israel more than a year ago, but failed to respond to specific warnings about the plot after dismissing it as “aspirational.” That’s according to an explosive report in The New York Times, which says Israeli officials intercepted a 40-page battle plan by Hamas detailing how its attack would play out — a blueprint Hamas closely followed on October 7.

Meanwhile, another explosive new report by +972 Magazine details how Israel is using artificial intelligence to draw up targets in Gaza, and how Israel has loosened its constraints on attacks likely to kill civilians. One former intelligence officer described the plan as a “mass assassination factory.” After headlines, we’ll go to Jerusalem to speak with Israeli investigative reporter Yuval Abraham, who broke the story.

Arizona Police Arrest Protesters and Journalist Covering Blockade of Raytheon Building
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now!
December 01, 2023

In Arizona, 26 people were arrested Thursday as protesters peacefully blockaded a Raytheon manufacturing hub in Tucson, demanding an end to U.S. arms transfers to Israel. One protester said, “We are outraged that more than 15,000 Palestinians have been killed, while companies like Raytheon continue to fill their coffers with blood money.” Among those arrested was journalist Alisa Reznick of public radio station KJZZ. She was arrested by Pima County Sheriff’s deputies even as she carried recording equipment and repeatedly identified herself as press.

MSNBC Cancels “The Mehdi Hasan Show,” Sparking Uproar
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now!
December 01, 2023

MSNBC is facing a torrent of backlash after announcing it’s canceling “The Mehdi Hasan Show.” The British-born journalist is known for holding powerful figures to account and is one of the most powerful Muslim voices on American television.

Following the news, Congressmember Ilhan Omar said, “It is deeply troubling that MSNBC is cancelling his show amid a rampant rise of anti-Muslim bigotry and suppression of Muslim voices.” Journalist Ryan Grim said, “Mehdi’s style of confrontational interviews, in which he doesn’t let public figures get away with lies or half true talking points, turned him into a celebrated journalist in the UK. His show’s cancellation is such a pathetic indictment of the U.S. media.”

Mehdi Hasan’s show has been welcomed as one of the few on a mainstream network to question Israel’s narrative over its attacks on Gaza. Last month, Hasan interviewed Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Mehdi Hasan: “I have seen lots of children with my own lying eyes being pulled from the rubble. So” —

Mark Regev: “Now, because they’re the pictures Hamas wants you to see. Exactly my point, Mehdi.”

Mehdi Hasan: “And also because they’re dead, Mark. Also” —

Mark Regev: “They’re the pictures Hamas wants — no.”

Mehdi Hasan: “But they’re also people your government has killed. You accept that, right? You’ve killed children? Or do you deny that?”

Mark Regev: “No, I do not. I do not. I do not. First of all, you don’t know how those people died, those children.”

Mehdi Hasan: “Oh wow.”

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“Mass Assassination Factory”: Israel Using AI to Generate Targets in Gaza, Increasing Civilian Toll
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 01, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/1/ ... transcript

We look at a new report that reveals how Israel is using artificial intelligence to draw up targets in its military assault of Gaza. The report’s author, journalist Yuval Abraham, has found that the IDF’s increasing use of AI is partly a response to previous operations in Gaza when Israel quickly ran out of military targets, causing it to loosen its constraints on attacks that could kill civilians. In other words, the “civilian devastation that is happening right now in Gaza” is the result of a “war policy that has a very loose interpretation of what a military target is.” This targeting of private homes and residences to kill alleged combatants means that “when a child is killed in Gaza, it’s because somebody made a decision it was worth it.” It has turned the Israeli military into a “mass assassination factory,” with a “total disregard for Palestinian civil life,” continues Abraham, who also notes that, as an Israeli journalist, his reporting is still subject to military censors. We also discuss another recent report revealing that Israel may have received intelligence about Hamas’s planned attack more than a year in advance of October 7, but ignored it.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: [size=15\20]Israel has resumed airstrikes on Gaza after a weeklong truce ended. The strikes have reportedly killed at least 70 Palestinians. Israel is dropping leaflets ordering Palestinians in Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza, to head further south toward Rafah.[/size] Since the October 7th Hamas attack, the Israeli bombardment has killed over 15,000 Palestinians, including 6,100 children. The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has described the resumption of attacks as “very troubling.”

RAVINA SHAMDASANI: The resumption of hostilities in Gaza is catastrophic. We urge all parties and states with influence over them to redouble efforts immediately to ensure a ceasefire on humanitarian and human rights grounds. Recent comments by Israeli political and military leaders indicating that they are planning to expand and intensify the military offensive are very troubling.

AMY GOODMAN: Talks are reportedly continuing for a new truce and the release of more captives. Israel says it believes Hamas still holds 137 hostages kidnapped during the October 7th attacks.

We turn now to look at a stunning new exposé on how Israel is using artificial intelligence to draw up targets and how Israel has loosened its constraints on attacks that could kill civilians. One former intelligence officer says Israel has developed a, quote, “mass assassination factory.”

In one case, sources said the Israeli military approved an assassination strike on a single Hamas commander despite knowing the strike could kill hundreds of Palestinian civilians. Another source told +972 Magazine, quote, “Nothing happens by accident. When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. … Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every [home],” unquote.

+972 also reports the Israeli military knowingly attacked civilian targets, including apartment complexes, universities and banks, in an effort to exert, quote, “civil pressure” on Hamas.

We’re joined in Jerusalem by the Israeli investigative reporter Yuval Abraham. His latest report for +972 Magazine and Local Call is headlined “'A mass assassination factory': Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza.”

Yuval, thanks for joining us again from Jerusalem. If you can talk about who your sources are and what exactly they’re using — the Israeli military is using AI for? Explain this idea of a “mass assassination factory.”

YUVAL ABRAHAM: Sure, yeah. So, I’ll start by saying, Amy, that, you know, there are some things that I can say and other things that I cannot say. You know, we, as Israeli journalists, are subjected to the military censors, so everything that I have published had to be vetted by the military. And also my knowledge is partial.

So, I’ve spoken to seven Israeli intelligence officers, some of them current, some of them former intelligence officers. All of them took part in wars against Gaza, in bombing campaigns, whether right now or in 2021, 2022 and 2014. And the use of artificial intelligence is an increasing trend that the army is adopting to mark targets in Gaza.

And I think a good year to look at to understand its beginning with relation to Gaza is 2019, when the Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi introduced this new division in the military called the Targets Division. And its idea was to bring together hundreds of soldiers and basically start to develop these AI algorithms and automated software to accelerate the target creation for strikes with life-and-death consequences in Gaza. And, you know, a source that actually took part in this division center said that they were being judged not by the quality of the targets that they were producing, but by the quantity, that the idea here was that if you want to create a certain shock effect, if you are fighting against a guerrilla group, like Hezbollah in Lebanon and/or Hamas in Gaza — this is the source saying — then — so, the source said that this shock effect is the way Israel views its war tactic against these organizations, and [size=1w0]part of that is trying to accelerate the creation of targets.[/size]

Now, in 2014, which was the previous biggest Israeli assault on Gaza, according to sources that I’ve spoken with, the Israeli military ran out of targets after roughly three weeks. And that operation lasted for 50 days. And sources have described a sense that in previous operations, that the military just runs out of targets to bomb, and alongside that there is some political pressure or some need to continue the war, to create a victory image for the Israeli public, to work, you know, to apply more pressure. And I think this increasing use of artificial intelligence, this acceleration of target creation, in part, is a response to that problem, to running out of targets.

And what we know now from sources is that target production using these programs — one of them is called “The Gospel,” and according to sources, it does facilitate this mass assassination factory that I can get into in a moment. But the rate of creating the targets is now faster than the rate that Israel is able to bomb the targets. And in this Targets Division, according to the army’s sources, already 12,000 targets were created during this war in this Targets Division, using these artificial intelligence tools, which is too much — two times as many targets as were bombed in the entirety of the 2014 war, which lasted for 51 days.

AMY GOODMAN: Yuval Abraham is a journalist based in Jerusalem who writes for +972 Magazine and Local Call. He’s just written a piece called “'A mass assassination factory': Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza.” We’ll be back in 30 seconds.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Students at the Ramallah Friends School in the occupied West Bank singing a solidarity song for the children of Gaza with their teachers Safia Awad and Issa Jildeh. In just a moment, we’ll be speaking with Elizabeth Price, the mother of one of the three Palestinian college students in the United States who was shot in Burlington, Vermont, Saturday night. But right now we’re continuing with Yuval Abraham, journalist based in Jerusalem, who writes for +972 Magazine. His most recent piece”:https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/, “'A mass assassination factory.'” Yuval, explain what a power target is.

YUVAL ABRAHAM: Sure, yes. So, power targets is a concept that was developed, according to intelligence sources in the military, first in 2014. And the military defines power targets as residential high-rise buildings. So they have eight floors, 12 floors, 14 floors. And the official military’s claim is that in each of these buildings there is military target that merits, that legitimizes bombing down the entire building. However, according to three sources in Israeli intelligence that I’ve spoken with who have deep knowledge of this tactic, who have been involved with bombing power targets, they say that the idea of power targets is to purposely attack buildings that have all of these civilian apartments in them in order to put pressure on Palestinian civilian society in Gaza, which is then translated to pressure on Hamas, civilian pressure on Hamas. I’ve heard this term several times in my conversations with intelligence sources.

Now, in 2021, Amy, the Israeli military bombed the Al-Jalaa building in Gaza, which — you know, it caused an international uproar because this was a building that hosted the AP, AFP and Al Jazeera media outlets. It was one out of nine high-rises that were bombed in 2021. I have managed to confirm from sources within Israeli intelligence that this was, in fact, a power target. One source said that there was this idea that if we bomb the high-rises, it causes the civilians to feel like Hamas is not sovereign, like they have lost control. One source said that he felt this was a form of a terror tactic.

Now, very importantly, the sources that I’ve spoken with have dealt with these power targets before 2023, before the current Israeli assault in Gaza. So I know less about the specifics of power targets that are currently bombed; however, we do know from official army statements that Israel, during the first five days, so up until October 11th and October 12th, has bombed 1,329 power targets. The military says that half of the targets that were bombed were identified as power targets in the military.

Now, during these five days, we know, of course, that hundreds of children have been killed. We have managed to find indications of these buildings that were bombed without an evacuation protocol. And this is a very important point, because, according to sources that I’ve spoken with, in the past the internal protocol in the military was that you can only bomb power targets, which are high-rise buildings or governmental buildings inside neighborhoods, after you’ve evacuated all the families from the building. This was a principle that was in place in 2021, where they bombed nine high-rises, nine power targets. And no civilian Palestinians were killed, because they did put in place an evacuation protocol. They call, you know, the guard in the building. It’s quite horrific. You know, there is little missiles. But at the end of the day, the goal was to put pressure on civilians by destroying their apartments, from what I’ve heard from sources, and not by killing them.

Now, I don’t know — again, I haven’t spoken to sources that have bombed power targets in this operation, but there are clear indications that I am finding in Gaza — for example, the Al-Mohandessin Tower, which was bombed, on top of all the families inside of it, or Babel Tower or Al-Taj Tower — that they were bombed while the families were inside. And I think — I am assuming, since these are high-rises, and since the military has said that it bombed over a thousand power targets, that these were power targets. So this is a shift. I mean, the evidence suggests there is a shift here of not only striking targets that are primarily intended to cause civilian shock or to put civilian pressure on Hamas — again, according to intelligence sources — but, apparently, in some of the cases, the evidence suggests that such targets have also led to the killing of families.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaking Thursday at a news conference in Tel Aviv.

SECRETARY OF STATE ANTONY BLINKEN: Israel has the most sophisticated — one of the most sophisticated militaries in the world. It is capable of neutralizing the threat posed by Hamas while minimizing harm to innocent men, women and children. And it has an obligation to do so. … The way Israel defends itself matters. It’s imperative that Israel act in accordance with international humanitarian law and the laws of war.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Yuval Abraham, if you can respond to what Blinken is saying? You know, at the beginning, after the October 7th attack, President Biden said that the support for Israel was unconditional, they could do anything they wanted. Now, clearly, with massive pushback in the United States with protests of people all over the country and around the world, you have both Biden and Blinken stepping back and saying you have to protect civilians. One of your sources suggested that the scale of this attack, with an unprecedented number of civilian casualties in Gaza, has to do in part with the Israeli military’s wish to redeem itself after the catastrophic failures of October 7th. And now you have this big New York Times exposé that Israel clearly knew a year ago the blueprint for this attack. And there are other reports, in Haaretz and other places, that say — I think they were called — the women surveillance soldiers along the Gaza border, I think they’re called spotters, were repeatedly telling their supervisors in the last weeks, in the last months, “We see this escalation here. It looks like Hamas is about to attack.” And they would be told they’d be brought up on insubordination charges if they kept pushing this issue. Yuval?

YUVAL ABRAHAM: Yes, Amy. It’s very important for me to respond to Blinken’s statements. And I have three things that I really want to say, and I really want people to listen to them.

The first is that the very real war crimes that Hamas has committed, you know, killing people — some of them I knew — massacring people, do not justify Israeli war crimes in Gaza that are being committed. That’s number one.

Number two, this idea that the military is doing whatever it can to keep civilians in Gaza safe or that it is using its technology to not harm civilians in Gaza is false. It’s not true. And I know this not only from looking at the catastrophic killing of so many civilians in Gaza, but also by speaking to intelligence sources who have told me that now all of the previous restrictions, that were already permissive, into harming civilians have been dramatically loosened. For example, one source spoke about how you get sort of this approximation of where a target is, and it’s not pinpointed. And yet soldiers will still strike it, knowingly killing families and civilians, to save time, to save time in getting a more accurate pinpointing of the target. It’s very important that people understand that — and this according to five sources that I’ve spoken with in Israeli intelligence — in all of the target files that Israel is bombing right now, the amount of civilians that are likely to be killed is written down. So, again, it’s not a mistake. As you’ve quoted in the beginning of the piece, in the beginning of the narration, Amy, when a child is killed in Gaza, it’s because somebody made a decision that this killing was worth it to hit another target. And there are internal regulations that the army has created that regulate this. And so it’s very clear to me that after October 7th there is a total disregard for Palestinian civilian life, even when hitting targets that are either not distinctly military in nature.

The third and final thing — and this goes back to the idea of a mass assassination factory — is that there is a systematic policy, according to sources, of targeting private residential homes of Hamas or jihadi operatives when they are in these private homes, when they are in these buildings or private residences. And just so you understand, I mean, what this means is that the military is knowingly dropping a bomb, that weighs a ton, or often more, on a residential building in order to assassinate one person, knowingly killing that person’s family and neighbors in the process, when, according to sources, in the vast majority of cases, these buildings are not places where there is military activity that is being conducted. It is an assassination against somebody who is in Hamas or Jihad’s military brigades, but they are not in a military place. One source who was particularly critical of this policy said that he thought it was like if Israel would bomb — sorry, if a Palestinian militant group would bomb the homes of Israelis, not when they are wearing their army uniform, but when they are going back home in the weekend, and essentially assassinating them through the bodies of their families or their neighbors, and then saying that they use those families as human shields.

Now, I think that we’ve talked about these power targets, and we’ve talked about these assassination targets, and, of course, there are many different types of targets that could be considered, under international law, more legitimate — for example, militant cells, for example, ammo warehouses, for example, you know, rocket launcher pits. And I think that to look at the civilian devastation that is happening right now in Gaza, you have to understand that it’s a consequence of a particular Israeli war policy. It is a war policy that has a very loose interpretation of what a military target is, also attacking people in civilian spaces. It is a war policy that centers on deterrents and hitting these power targets that are intended to place civilian pressure on Hamas. And it is a war policy that is increasingly being helped by the use of big data, automation software and AI. And again, I don’t know everything; I’ve only spoken to several sources. But my evidence suggests that many, many of the civilians who are being killed in Gaza are being killed as a result of these policies, that I do not think are justifiable policies. International law experts would call them war crimes. And that’s why I don’t think that what Blinken is saying is true, honestly.

AMY GOODMAN: And we’re going to talk more about war crimes later in the program. Yuval Abraham, I want to thank you for being with us, Israeli Jewish journalist based in Jerusalem, who writes for +972 Magazine and Local Call. We’ll link to your new piece, “'A mass assassination factory': Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza.”

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Resumed Bombing of Gaza Will Be Crushing to Palestinian Students Shot in Vermont, Says Victim’s Mother
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 01, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/1/ ... transcript

We speak with the mother of Hisham Awartani, one of the three 20-year-old Palestinian college students who were shot last weekend in Burlington, Vermont, in a suspected hate crime. Elizabeth Price traveled from her home in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank to see her son, who is still hospitalized in Burlington. He was shot in the spine and, while in stable condition, now faces an immediate loss of mobility. Price shares how her son’s “resilience” and “brotherhood” with his childhood best friends who are the other survivors of the shooting, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmad, have been an integral part of his recovery. She also emphasizes that had Awartani been shot in Palestine, “he would have been dead in prison or thrown somewhere in a medical facility without the support to recover from this.” We also discuss life under occupation in the West Bank, U.S. displays of solidarity with Palestinians, and the media narrative surrounding the shooter’s motives. Of the three young men’s commitment to highlighting the larger picture of Israeli oppression of Palestine, Price says that “the fact that the Israelis have started bombarding again in the Gaza Strip is something that will crush them more than their injuries.”

Transcript

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

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

We turn now to Vermont, where family members of three Palestinian college students shot in Burlington Saturday night are arriving to care for their sons, who they say were targeted simply for being Palestinian. In a minute, we’ll speak with the mother of Hisham Awartani. He was shot in the spine when he took a walk with his friends Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmad after they visited relatives while staying in Hisham’s grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving break. All three have been friends since the first grade at the Ramallah Friends School in the West Bank. Two of them were wearing keffiyehs, the symbol of Palestinian pride, when they were shot. Their alleged attacker, Jason Eaton, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempted murder. Authorities have not yet added a hate crime enhancement to his charges.

The Associated Press reports Eaton had a history of domestic disputes that led police to confiscate his shotgun a decade ago. NBC News reported Tuesday that another ex-girlfriend told police in 2019 Eaton had continued calling and texting her and driving by her house after she had made it clear she didn’t want to communicate with him, and she had considered filing a restraining order. So often mass shooters have abused women in their past.

At a vigil Monday on the campus of Brown University, where Hisham Awartani is a student, professor Beshara Doumani, the Mahmoud Darwish professor of Palestinian studies, read a statement from Hisham.

BESHARA DOUMANI: “I would like to start out by saying that I greatly appreciate all the love and prayers being sent my way. Who knew that all I had to do to become famous was to get shot? … And as much as I appreciate the love [from] every single one of you here today, I am but one casualty in this much wider conflict. Had I been shot in the West Bank where I grew up, the medical services which saved my life here would likely have been withheld by the Israeli Army.”

VIGILERS: Shame!

BESHARA DOUMANI: “The soldier who would’ve shot me would go home and never be convicted.”

VIGILERS: Shame!

BESHARA DOUMANI: “I understand that the pain is so much more real and immediate because many of you know me, but any attack like this is horrific, be it here or in Palestine. This is why when you send your wishes and light your candles for me today, your mind should not just be focused on me as an individual but rather as a proud member of a people being oppressed.”

AMY GOODMAN: That statement from Hisham Awartani was read at a vigil Monday night at Brown University’s campus, where he’s a student.

Hisham’s mother, Elizabeth Price, joins us now from Burlington after traveling from her home in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank to be with her son in the hospital.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Elizabeth. I’m so sorry you’re here under these circumstances. Can you talk about how Hisham is doing and his friends, the two other Palestinian students shot on Saturday night?

ELIZABETH PRICE: Hisham makes me so proud. I mean, he was lying in his bed, paralyzed from the chest down, in great pain from broken bones, and in shock and traumatized, and he typed out that statement to be read out to a vigil. And I was so impressed with his ability to focus on others during that, in this time of his life being devastated.

He is in stable condition. He is going to be transferred to a rehabilitation center so that he can live to learn — learn to live with his injuries, and then also, hopefully and definitely, return on a path towards full mobility, we hope. His other friends are also stable. One has been discharged from the hospital but is severely traumatized. You know, he spent 45 minutes thinking that his friends had been shot dead. And then, a third, the third child, or the third young man — because they are children to me since they grew up in my house — is stable and working towards discharge.

But they are all traumatized, and they are all feeling grateful to be alive and feeling the bitterness of the fact that they are receiving such attention and such support and such incredible medical services from the Burlington community in the Burlington medical facility while at the same time people are dying under the bombs of the Israeli bombardment. I mean, the fact that the Israelis have started bombarding again the Gaza Strip is something that will crush them more than their injuries have crushed them.

My son said that when he went through the list of those who had died under the Israeli bombardment a few weeks ago, he found that there were 30 that had his name, Hisham. And he has said in another statement to a Brown newspaper — he says to remember, like he said in the vigil, “I am the Hisham you know.” And I think that he just really wants people to be thinking about the Palestinians who are dying by the tens of thousands right now, and not to be focusing on him. And I think this is something that he and his — this is a sentiment that is shared by his friends, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m wondering if you can tell us — although he wants to talk about himself as, as he said, a member of an oppressed community; think of all of the people who don’t get help when they’re shot right now in Gaza and the West Bank. But if you could tell us about Hisham? He’s Palestinian, Irish American? Is that right?

ELIZABETH PRICE: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Twenty years old, a junior at Brown?

ELIZABETH PRICE: Yes, yes. So, Hisham was born in America and is a devoted Giants fan. He grew up in Palestine. He’s an Irish citizen because I was born in Ireland, and he’s Palestinian because his father is Palestinian. And he’s a — you know, grew up in Palestine. He is a born mathematician. He has mathematics in his family. He once said to me that just numbers make him happy. And he is the type of person who — he’s a polymath. He’s a polyglot. You know, he speaks Arabic and English —

AMY GOODMAN: What languages does he speak?

ELIZABETH PRICE: Arabic and English fluently. He’s studying — he’s very good at Persian right now, because he’s been taking Persian. He took cuneiform in college, so he, you know, can write in an extinct language. He has studied Hebrew and German and French in high school, and he is currently studying Spanish and Italian at Brown.

And he is doing a BSc in pure mathematics at college. He went in as a math student. And then, when he took a course in archaeology, he was just hit by a bug for archaeology — bitten by the bug of archaeology. Now he’s doing a BSc in math and a BA in archaeology. Not really quite sure how those two things go together, but Hisham has the ability to just suck in information, create this incredible database of knowledge that he can make, quite rapidly, connections with, and then come out with a conclusion that he shares with people. I mean, he’s a computer, in his brain. And yet, at the same time, he’s very soulful and very philosophical.

And I think in the last few days — I mean, this hasn’t even been a week since this happened to him. In the last few days, I have really understood how Hisham has the ability to have his soul and his heart encompass his people and for him to be able to contextualize the suffering that he’s had within what is something that he sees as a valid and — the dignity of his people. So, I think that is giving him great comfort. There is an Arabic word, sumud, which means resilience. It’s about the concept of existence being resistance, staying on your land no matter what. And Hisham, for me, signifies and symbolizes that concept. He is like an olive tree, that he can get cut down, but he will regrow. And that is where he gets the strength to be thinking about other people and about his people even while he lies in a bed unable to move.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I think we can also see where he gets his spirit: from you, Elizabeth. And his —

ELIZABETH PRICE: I’m lucky to be his mother. I am blessed to be his mother. I am so privileged to have gotten to know him in my life.

AMY GOODMAN: So, can you talk about them growing up in the Ramallah Friends School? We spoke with the head of the school, who’s now head of the whole American Friends Service Committee in the United States, Joyce Ajlouny. Talk about his experience growing up in Ramallah, where you live, and going to this Quaker school.

ELIZABETH PRICE: Well, I mean, life in Ramallah and life in Palestine is a beautiful thing. Obviously, we live under military occupation, and so, you know, people are killed every day, and often they are children. And children are arrested, and people are arrested. And often the school goes on strike because — in solidarity with the news of someone being killed by the Israeli army. So, it’s a life where you know when the school goes on strike, that someone has lost their life. And the walls of the streets around the school are filled with pictures of people who have been killed, in memory of them.

But Ramallah, and Palestine, is a place of family and community. It’s a place where everyone knows each other, and we feel safe. My daughter, who is 17, can walk home late at night in safety, because everyone respects the other and sees the other as a member of a larger society or community or family. And so you’re never alone, and you’re always — everyone acts to take care of each other.

So, these boys grew up together. They did Model United Nations. They talked, and they did math club, and they did chess club. And they would come to my house on a Saturday afternoon, like giraffes, you know, as they grew up over the years, and they would duck under my threshold and sprawl over on my couches, and I would make them food. And then they would cram themselves into Hisham’s tiny room, and they would just talk about philosophy and politics and language and then just talk about — you know, just joke with each other.

And then, when they were receiving their college results for those who had applied to American colleges, you get the results at like 3:00 in the morning in Palestine, so they would stay up together, and they would be on the phone to each other, and they would be there for each other. So, as the one person up opened their email, and if it was good news, they would celebrate; it was bad news, they would commiserate. And so, that helped them survive so much. And the three boys who you mentioned, Hisham and his two friends, are like brothers. And I think that that has been so important for them.

After they were shot, they were kept in the same ICU room for a number of days by the hospital, because the hospital recognized that the proximity meant that they could be with each other and give each other strength. Kinnan, who has been released, was the least hurt, but was deeply, deeply traumatized by the experience that he went through when he thought that his friends had been killed. And so, by keeping him, even though he could be released, with the boys, the hospital was able to give them that comfort of being with each other and having that camaraderie and that brotherhood sustain them in the time where they were just trying to come to grips with the hatred that had been shown to them, the devastation of their lives and the crippling of my son.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m looking at a report from NBC. At one event at Brown, 20 students were arrested by university police and charged with trespassing after they refused to leave a sit-in outside Brown President Christina Paxson’s office. A friend of Hisham’s, Daniel Newgarden, said that Hisham had attended a Shabbat dinner with some of the Jewish students who had been arrested during the sit-in, and that they got together each Friday afterward. And they talked about the alliance between Jews and Palestinians, who they saw increasingly anxious after October 7th, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH PRICE: Yes. Hisham did notify Brown that he felt unsafe on campus. I hadn’t realized that. Hisham often wouldn’t tell me things. He was so busy with his life, doing five course and 20 hours of work. But he did feel anxious. He was active.

And I have to tell you that when we heard about that sit-in by the Jewish students, we were moved. There has been such an incredible outpouring of support by Jewish activists in America. The concept of the Grand Central Station sit-in was something that reverberated around Palestine and really lifted our hearts. And then, when Hisham sent me a picture of him at Shabbat dinner with these young people, I just felt like he was in the right community.

I mean, when this type of thing happens, when Palestinians are so traumatized and so abused by the international community and the ignoring of their rights, my children learned over this last seven weeks what it is to be on the wrong side of justice. And I think for definitely my daughter and definitely Hisham, it opened their eyes up to what it is to be a part of an oppressed community, and the opportunity for solidarity across that.

Jewish people have been targeted for centuries by antisemitism. The other minorities in America, the Native Americans have been in solidarity with the Palestinians. Black Americans, so many different minorities have reached out and been in — stood in solidarity with the Palestinians. And I think that that’s the life that I want my children to experience, to live in a community where they know and fight for the — against the injustice that others suffer, and that they know that the others are standing with them in the injustice — against the injustice that the Palestinians suffer. So, that Shabbat dinner gave me great joy when I heard about it.

AMY GOODMAN: People can go to Democracy Now! and see — we were there at the Grand Central protest, hundreds of Jews arrested as they shut down Grand Central Station on a Sabbath night, on a Friday night. If you can say what the doctors are saying right now, Elizabeth? Hisham has a bullet lodged in his spine. He also — his thumb — what else is —

ELIZABETH PRICE: So, Hisham, from what I understand, he must have had his hand up when he was shot, and so the bullet went through his thumb into his clavicle. And then I think it may have ricocheted against his scapula. It broke a — I think it touched a rib, and then it went into the T2 of his spine. So, from what I understand, that trajectory and that passage meant that the bones slowed down the bullet, which is very lucky, because I think the bullet would have severed his spine. So, currently the bullet has lodged there, and there’s concussive impact, which has meant that Hisham has lost the sensation of pain and temperature, but he can feel pressure from his mid-torso downward. So Hisham has to go through a long process of physical therapy to be able to regain the control of his muscles down there.

In the short term, I believe that he will be able to learn how to live with that. He’ll be given the — he’ll be taught how to live with his disability. And our long-term plan is to support him to be able to regain motion, functional motion in all of his body. But my son has an incredible mind and an incredible soul. And he is already — the doctors say that it’s hard sometimes to get people to engage with their new situation, and Hisham has been asking questions and inquiring and just taking control of it all with his curiosity and taking information so he can process it. So, he’s tired, and it’s a long — the next step is — the next phase is going to be a very long process, but he’s very determined, and he’s brilliant and curious. And I think — I know that he’ll be a success in no matter what he does.

AMY GOODMAN: He was shot in Vermont. There’s a three-member Vermont congressional delegation. You’ve got Becca Balint, the first Jewish American congressmember to call for a ceasefire. Peter Welch just joined her, the Vermont senator. And Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders,, while he has not called for a ceasefire, he has called for aid to Israel to be conditioned on what’s happening in the West Bank and what’s happening in Gaza. Your final thoughts on what you’re calling for now, Elizabeth, as your son lies in the ICU?

ELIZABETH PRICE: Thank you. I think one of the things that I really want to emphasize is that there should be — it would be irresponsible for there to be any discussion of the mental health status of the perpetrator. There are millions of people suffering with mental health issues, and it is disrespectful to them to imply that mental health is something that leads to gun violence. There are millions of people in America with mental health who do not pick up a gun and shoot. And it is irresponsible to victimize the shooter in this case. So, any discussion of what his mental state was or his emotional state was is irresponsible. It’s also a double standard. It is often applied to white perpetrators of shooting crimes, but not to those who are nonwhite or of different backgrounds, and particularly of minority backgrounds. And so I consider that to be unacceptable. And recent statements by the media that have highlighted that have — they broke me last night. And I find that incredibly offensive, that people would victimize the shooter.

I would also say that it is time to call for ceasefire. The fact that the bombs started falling on Gaza again today crushed me. I celebrated Becca Balint’s stance, and I applaud and I’m so grateful for Peter Welch’s statement of an unconditional ceasefire. The Palestinian people in Gaza have been brutalized by not just the bombardment, by the fact that they haven’t had — they didn’t have food, water or fuel for weeks. They just sat there and died. And I just — I was in deep depression and mourning for seven weeks, even before this happened to my son.

And my son would be, I think, redeemed in his suffering if he knew that, in any way, in any small way, attention brought to the Palestinian people through his plight helped to make the decision makers in the American government recognize that Palestinians are humans and Palestinians deserve to live, and if one more Palestinian child dies or is injured in the way that my son was injured, it is a travesty that this world should not have to live with. My son is receiving attention and the best medical care in America. If he was in Gaza or if he was in the West Bank, he would have been dead in prison or just thrown somewhere in a medical facility without the support he would need to be able to recover from this. So I am incredibly privileged, and as is my son, that he has been hurt here amongst this community who have supported us and provided us with the medical care, where he is seen as a valid human being. And I think, in my son’s name, I call for all the decision makers and policymakers in the American government to recognize the Palestinian children in Gaza and the West Bank and in Jerusalem are also human and deserve the dignity and the support that my son is being provided with. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Elizabeth Price, we thank you so much for being with us, mother of Hisham.

ELIZABETH PRICE: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Please give him all of our regards, one of the three Palestinian students shot by a white man while visiting their family in Burlington, Vermont, this past weekend, Elizabeth Price joining us from Burlington after traveling from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank — so did his father — to be at Hisham’s side.

[admin]

Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year Ago: A blueprint reviewed by The Times laid out the attack in detail. Israeli officials dismissed it as aspirational and ignored specific warnings.
by Ronen Bergman and Adam Goldman
Reporting from Tel Aviv
Published Nov. 30, 2023
Updated Dec. 2, 2023

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Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.

The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named “Jericho Wall,” outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people.

The translated document, which was reviewed by The New York Times, did not set a date for the attack, but described a methodical assault designed to overwhelm the fortifications around the Gaza Strip, take over Israeli cities and storm key military bases, including a division headquarters.

Hamas followed the blueprint with shocking precision. The document called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles and on foot — all of which happened on Oct. 7.

The plan also included details about the location and size of Israeli military forces, communication hubs and other sensitive information, raising questions about how Hamas gathered its intelligence and whether there were leaks inside the Israeli security establishment.

THE MOSSAD'S FALSE FLAG AL QAEDA CELL

Rashid Abu Shbak, the head of Palestinian Preventive Security in the Gaza Strip said on Friday, December 6, 2002 that his forces had identified a number of Palestinian collaborators who had been ordered by Israeli security agencies to "work in the Gaza Strip under the name of Al-Qaeda." Al-Jazeera TV reported that the Palestinian authorities had arrested a group of Palestinian "collaborators with Israeli occupation" in Gaza, who were trying to set up an operation there in the name of bin Laden's Al-Qaeda. The Palestinian Authority spokesman said the members of the group had confessed that they were recruited and organized by the Israeli intelligence, Mossad. Sharon had personally claimed on December 4, 2002 that he had proof of Al-Qaeda operations in Gaza, and used the allegations to justify brutal Israeli Defense Forces attacks in the Gaza Strip the next day -- which was the start of the Islamic holiday, Eid, celebrating the end of Ramadan. Ten civilians were killed in the IDF assaults. Reuters published an extensive featured story on the affair by Diala Saadeh on December 7, 2002, under the headline "Palestinians: Israel Faked Gaza Al Qaeda Presence." The article quoted President Arafat, who told reporters at his West Bank Ramallah headquarters, "It is a big, big, big lie to cover [Sharon's] attacks and his crimes against our people everywhere." Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo explained: "There are certain elements who were instructed by the Mossad to form a cell under the name of Al Qaeda in the Gaza Strip in order to justify the assault and the military campaigns of the Israeli occupation army against Gaza." (Haaretz, Reuters and Al Jazeera, December 7, 2002) Sharon is of course a past master of false-flag tactics like these, having been implicated in the direction of the Abu Nidal organization and also in the setting up of Hamas.

On Sunday, December 8, 2002, Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian Authority Planning and International Cooperation Minister, held a press conference with Col. Rashid Abu Shbak, head of the PA 's Preventive Security Apparatus in the Gaza Strip, to release documents and provide further information about the Israeli intelligence creation of a self-styled Al Qaeda cell. Shaath called on the diplomats to "convey to their countries that they assume the responsibility of exerting pressure on the Israeli government to stop the Israeli aggression," and announced that the PA had handed ambassadors and consuls of the Arab and foreign countries documents revealing the involvement of the Israeli Intelligence in recruiting citizens from Gaza Strip in a fake organization carrying the name of Qaeda. The goal of the operation was to create a new pretext for aggression against the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. Shbak said that the PA had found eight cases of fake Al Qaeda recruiting over the previous nine months. Three Palestinians were arrested, while another 11 Palestinians were released, "because they came and informed us of this Israeli plot." The PA Security Service had traced mobile phone calls and e-mails, purportedly from Germany and Lebanon, back to Israel; these were messages asking Palestinians to join Al Qaeda. One e-mail even bore the forged signature of Osama bin Laden. "We investigated the origin of those calls, which used roaming, and messages, and found out they all came from Israel," Shbak said. The recruits were paired with collaborators in Gaza, and received money and weapons, "although most of these weapons did not work." The money was provided by collaborators, or transferred from bank accounts in Israel and Jerusalem. (Palestine Ministry of Public Information, Islam Online, December 9, 2002)...

Palestine -- After Israeli had occupied the west bank of the Jordan River, the Gaza strip and the Sinai peninsula in June, 1967, the Israelis found themselves ruling over some two million Palestinians. Under the United Nations system it is illegal to annex territory acquired through armed conflict without the approval of the United Nations Security Council, which in this case was not forthcoming. Rather, the UNSC passed resolution 242, calling on Israel to withdraw to the internationally recognized borders as they had been before June 1967. (In the run-up to the Iraq war, Bush spokesmen accused Iraq of having violated some 17 United Nations Security Council resolutions; they conveniently forgot that Israel was the all-time champion in that department, since Israel is currently in violation of some 30 UNSC resolutions regarded the territories it has occupied since 1967. But the US never proposed war to enforce compliance with those resolutions.) The Israeli occupation of conquered Palestine was oppressive and humiliating, and a national resistance soon emerged in the form of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Its leader was Yassir Arafat, a secular nationalist more or less in the Nasser mold. Since the PLO had few weapons, and since the Israeli army was a dominant presence, the PLO began doing what the Jews had done between 1945 and 1948 against the British occupation of the same territory: they launched guerilla warfare, which the occupiers quickly labeled terrorism. The official Israeli line was that there was no Palestinian people, but this was soon disproved. From the beginning, the Israeli Mossad was active in conducting provocations which it sought to attribute to the PLO and its peripheries: attacks on airliners and on the 1972 Olympic games in Munich are therefore of uncertain paternity. The more horrendous the atrocity, the greater the backlash of world public opinion against the PLO. There is no doubt that the Mossad controlled a part of the central committee of the organization known as Abu Nidal, after the nom de guerre of its leader, Sabri al Banna. In 1987-88, just as the first Palestinian intifada uprising was getting under way, there emerged in the occupied territories the organization known as Hamas. Hamas combined a strong commitment to neighborhood social services with the rejection of negotiations with Israel and the demand for a military solution which was sure to be labeled terrorism. Interestingly enough, one of the leading sponsors of Hamas was Ariel Sharon, a former general who was then a cabinet minister. These facts are widely recognized; US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurzer, an observant Jew, stated late in 2001 that Hamas had emerged "with the tacit support of Israel" because in the late 1980s "Israel perceived it would be better to have people turning toward religion, rather than toward a nationalistic cause." (Ha'aretz, Dec. 21, 2001) In an acrimonious Israeli cabinet debate around the same time, Israeli extremist Knesset member Silva Shalom stated:

"between Hamas and Arafat, I prefer Hamas ... Arafat is a terrorist in a diplomat's suit, while the Hamas can be hit unmercifully." (Ha'aretz, Dec. 4, 2001)

This tirade provoked a walkout by Shimon Peres and the other Labor Party ministers. Arafat added his own view, which was that

"Hamas is a creature of Israel which, at the time of Prime Minister Shamir, gave them money and more than 700 institutions, among them schools, universities, and mosques. Even [Israeli Prime Minister] Rabin ended up admitting it, when I charged him with it, in the presence of Mubarak." (Corriere della Sera, Dec. 11, 2001)

With incredible arrogance, the Bush administration has pronounced Arafat as unfit to be a negotiating partner. In effect, they are choosing Hamas -- or worse, an act of incalculable folly for Israel and for the United States as well.

-- 9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA, by Webster Griffin Tarpley

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you if you could talk about Israel’s involvement in Hamas gaining power. In 2009, Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for over 20 years, told The Wall Street Journal, quote, “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.” Another former Israeli official, Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, said he was given a budget to help finance Islamist movements in Gaza to counter Yasser Arafat and his Fatah movement. Another former Israeli military official, David Hacham, said, quote, “When I look back at the chain of events, I think we made a mistake. But at the time, nobody thought about the possible results.” Your response, Tareq Baconi?

-- A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West, by Ian Johnson

TAREQ BACONI: Well, the origins of that is really Hamas emerged as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood chapter in the Gaza Strip. And the Muslim Brotherhood chapter was not a political party. It was a social party. And its operations in the Gaza Strip and throughout the Palestinian territories were actually granted licenses by Israeli occupying forces at the time, so there was a license for the Muslim Brotherhood chapter to operate openly in the Gaza Strip. When Hamas was established in 1987 and became a political party and a military party that was engaged in active resistance against Israel’s occupation, the policies within the Israeli government shifted, and obviously it became less open to allowing Hamas to function. However, that did not deter Israeli authorities from encouraging and promoting divide-and-rule tactics between the Islamist national movement, so Hamas, and secular nationalism around Fatah. And this has always been a tactic that the colonial forces have used globally, and obviously Israeli colonialism is no different. So it has directly and implicitly attempted divide-and-rule policies.

This really turned and came to a head in 2007, when Hamas, after winning democratic elections in 2006, rose to power, and the Israeli authorities, along with the U.S., attempted to initiate a regime change operation, which facilitated a civil war between Hamas and Fatah and allowed Hamas to take over the Gaza Strip. Since then, Israeli authorities have actively embraced the idea that Hamas would be accepted as a governing authority in the Gaza Strip. Now, part of the calculus in that is because of Gaza’s 2 million Palestinians. This is a demographic issue. Israel wanted to sever the Gaza Strip from the rest of historic Palestine in order to reinforce its claim that it’s a Jewish-majority state. By getting rid of 2 million Palestinians, two-thirds of whom are refugees demanding return, Israel can claim to be both a Jewish state and a democracy and restructure what is its apartheid regime. Now, in order to do that, it acquiesced to maintaining Hamas in governance, and it claimed that it placed a blockade around the Gaza Strip because Hamas was in power. And obviously this was bought in the international community, using what we were just talking about, the idea that Hamas is a terrorist organization, axis of evil, and, therefore, that this blockade makes sense.

What policymakers don’t understand is that Israel has engaged in blockades around the Gaza Strip and attempted to get rid of the population in the Gaza Strip long before Hamas was even established as a party. But with Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip, this created a perfect fig leaf for Israel to maintain the Gaza Strip as a separate strip of land. And to do that, it had to acquiesce and, in some ways, even enable Hamas to maintain its position as a governing authority there. And this also further reinforced its efforts to try to maintain division among the Palestinian leadership and play divide-and-rule policies between the PA and Hamas.

-- “Divide and Rule”: How Israel Helped Start Hamas to Weaken Palestinian Hopes for Statehood, by Amy Goodman

The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.

Last year, shortly after the document was obtained, officials in the Israeli military’s Gaza division, which is responsible for defending the border with Gaza, said that Hamas’s intentions were unclear.

“It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested,” read a military assessment reviewed by The Times.

Then, in July, just three months before the attacks, a veteran analyst with Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency, warned that Hamas had conducted an intense, daylong training exercise that appeared similar to what was outlined in the blueprint.

But a colonel in the Gaza division brushed off her concerns, according to encrypted emails viewed by The Times.

“I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary,” the analyst wrote in the email exchanges. The Hamas training exercise, she said, fully matched “the content of Jericho Wall.”

“It is a plan designed to start a war,” she added. “It’s not just a raid on a village.”

Officials privately concede that, had the military taken these warnings seriously and redirected significant reinforcements to the south, where Hamas attacked, Israel could have blunted the attacks or possibly even prevented them.

Instead, the Israeli military was unprepared as terrorists streamed out of the Gaza Strip. It was the deadliest day in Israel’s history.

Librarian's Comment: As reportage emerges revealing that Netanyahu's right wing cabal had developed a long-friendly financially supportive and militarily tolerant relationship with the Hamas forces that committed the massacre of Israelis, it's worth taking a look at who the primary victims were. I think it's a safe bet that the young people attending Supernova were not voting for Netanyahu, and clearly were not right-wing orthodox Jews with restricted diets and of course, a ban on secular dancing. This was probably the largest group of young, pro-peace Israelis that you could find in the entire country on that day. So, just assuming for the sake of engaging in reasonable speculation that Netanyahu wanted to give Hamas an opportunity to kill a large number of Israelis who he did not like anyway, the massacre of these youthful ravers may also be laid at his door. Clearly he deployed forces to protect the New York transplants known as "settlers" to allow them to continue their killing of Palestinian people, and their destructive revels in Palestinian border towns, while backed by IDF soldiers who made sure that Palestinians could not protect their property or themselves from these rampaging bands of renegade New Yorkers. That also meant that the soldiers were not there to guard against the incursion that made it so easy to roll in and kill hundreds of ravers, and made sure that military forces were deployed so far away that they couldn't prevent the catastrophe from unfolding in its full lurid horror. Finally, we now know that Netanyahu's cabal happily canoodling with Hamas in what it believed was a partnership to undermine the PLO, turned a blind eye to Hamas's military buildup and organization, allowing the well-planned, and apparently well-informed assault to take place.

LARA FRIEDMAN: Yeah. I mean, look, the taking of hostages, the taking of civilian hostages by Hamas — I mean, the October 7th attack was heinous in every aspect. The aspect of taking the hostages brought this home to Israelis in a way that is just — I don’t think anyone who has not spent time in a small country where everyone is — you know, there’s one degree of separation. This is incredibly real and incredibly personal for everyone in Israel.

What is notable is, in past experiences where there have been hostages taken, Israel has sort of turned over every rock possible, done everything possible to get them back. You have negotiations. You have contacts. You have — think of Gilad Shalit. I mean, the entire country mobilizes to get the hostage back — “hostage,” singular, “hostages,” plural. In this context, after October 7th, the issue of hostages is raised constantly by the Israeli government as a reason for why it has to do what it’s doing in Gaza, notwithstanding the fact that carpet bombing Gaza, using deep, deep penetrating bombs that are trying to get at the tunnels, seems like a very likely way to kill your own hostages. There has been a clear signal given — and if you listen to the — if you look at the Israeli media, the contacts that the families of hostages have had with the Netanyahu government, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that there isn’t actually a lot of desire on the part of the Israeli government to get the hostages back.

There have been numerous — and it’s been public — from other governments, from negotiators, there have been numerous offers by Hamas to exchange hostages, to release hostages in certain circumstances. There was, you know, a 24 — for a brief ceasefire. And so far, the argument seems to be, from the Israeli side, “We won’t do that, because anything we do would be a victory for Hamas. And that is — that we can’t let that happen, so releasing the hostages is simply not a priority.”

But talking about the hostages and accusing anyone who talks about ceasefire as not caring about the hostages is a wonderful tactic. All of us who are speaking out on this in social media, on media like this, are accused constantly of, “Well, you don’t care about the hostages.” The answer is, no, I care very much about the hostages. I don’t understand why the Israeli government doesn’t care more about the hostages. I would suggest that the Israeli government’s approach to the hostages makes clear that their objectives in this war are not about freeing the hostages. And that, I think, requires further thought.

-- Middle East Expert Lara Friedman: If Netanyahu Cared About Hostages, Why Did He Launch Ground Invasion?, by Amy Goodman

Israeli security officials have already acknowledged that they failed to protect the country, and the government is expected to assemble a commission to study the events leading up to the attacks. The Jericho Wall document lays bare a years-long cascade of missteps that culminated in what officials now regard as the worst Israeli intelligence failure since the surprise attack that led to the Arab-Israeli war of 1973.

[Michael Moore] As Bush sat in that Florida classroom, was he wondering if maybe he should have shown up to work more often? Should he have held at least one meeting since taking office to discuss the threat of terrorism with his head of counterterrorism? Or maybe Mr. Bush wondered why he had cut terrorism funding from the FBI. Or perhaps he just should have read the security briefing that was given to him on August 6th, 2001, which said that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack America by hijacking airplanes. But maybe he wasn't worried about the terrorist threat, because the title of the report was too vague.

[Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor] I believe the title was, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

-- Fahrenheit 9/11, written, directed and produced by Michael Moore

Underpinning all these failures was a single, fatally inaccurate belief that Hamas lacked the capability to attack and would not dare to do so. That belief was so ingrained in the Israeli government, officials said, that they disregarded growing evidence to the contrary.

The Israeli military and the Israeli Security Agency, which is in charge of counterterrorism in Gaza, declined to comment.

Officials would not say how they obtained the Jericho Wall document, but it was among several versions of attack plans collected over the years. A 2016 Defense Ministry memorandum viewed by The Times, for example, says, “Hamas intends to move the next confrontation into Israeli territory.”

Such an attack would most likely involve hostage-taking and “occupying an Israeli community (and perhaps even a number of communities),” the memo reads.


Vehicles caught fire in Ashkelon, Israel, as rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7.Credit...Ilan Rosenberg/Reuters

The Jericho Wall document, named for the ancient fortifications in the modern-day West Bank, was even more explicit. It detailed rocket attacks to distract Israeli soldiers and send them hurrying into bunkers, and drones to disable the elaborate security measures along the border fence separating Israel and Gaza.

Hamas fighters would then break through 60 points in the wall, storming across the border into Israel. The document begins with a quote from the Quran: “Surprise them through the gate. If you do, you will certainly prevail.”

The same phrase has been widely used by Hamas in its videos and statements since Oct. 7.

One of the most important objectives outlined in the document was to overrun the Israeli military base in Re’im, which is home to the Gaza division responsible for protecting the region. Other bases that fell under the division’s command were also listed.

Hamas carried out that objective on Oct. 7, rampaging through Re’im and overrunning parts of the base.

The audacity of the blueprint, officials said, made it easy to underestimate. All militaries write plans that they never use, and Israeli officials assessed that, even if Hamas invaded, it might muster a force of a few dozen, not the hundreds who ultimately attacked.

Israel had also misread Hamas’s actions. The group had negotiated for permits to allow Palestinians to work in Israel, which Israeli officials took as a sign that Hamas was not looking for a war.

For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.

The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.

Hamas was also included in discussions about increasing the number of work permits Israel granted to Gazan laborers, which kept money flowing into Gaza, meaning food for families and the ability to purchase basic products.

Israeli officials said these permits, which allow Gazan laborers to earn higher salaries than they would in the enclave, were a powerful tool to help preserve calm.

Toward the end of Netanyahu’s fifth government in 2021, approximately 2,000-3,000 work permits were issued to Gazans. This number climbed to 5,000 and, during the Bennett-Lapid government, rose sharply to 10,000.

Since Netanyahu returned to power in January 2023, the number of work permits has soared to nearly 20,000.

-- For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces. The premier’s policy of treating the terror group as a partner, at the expense of Abbas and Palestinian statehood, has resulted in wounds that will take Israel years to heal from, by Tal Schneider, Times of Israel, 8 October 2023

But Hamas had been drafting attack plans for many years, and Israeli officials had gotten hold of previous iterations of them. What could have been an intelligence coup turned into one of the worst miscalculations in Israel’s 75-year history.

In September 2016, the defense minister’s office compiled a top-secret memorandum based on a much earlier iteration of a Hamas attack plan. The memorandum, which was signed by the defense minister at the time, Avigdor Lieberman, said that an invasion and hostage-taking would “lead to severe damage to the consciousness and morale of the citizens of Israel.”

The memo, which was viewed by The Times, said that Hamas had purchased sophisticated weapons, GPS jammers and drones. It also said that Hamas had increased its fighting force to 27,000 people — having added 6,000 to its ranks in a two-year period. Hamas had hoped to reach 40,000 by 2020, the memo determined.

Last year, after Israel obtained the Jericho Wall document, the military’s Gaza division drafted its own intelligence assessment of this latest invasion plan.

Hamas had “decided to plan a new raid, unprecedented in its scope,” analysts wrote in the assessment reviewed by The Times. It said that Hamas intended to carry out a deception operation followed by a “large-scale maneuver” with the aim of overwhelming the division.

But the Gaza division referred to the plan as a “compass.” In other words, the division determined that Hamas knew where it wanted to go but had not arrived there yet.

On July 6, 2023, the veteran Unit 8200 analyst wrote to a group of other intelligence experts that dozens of Hamas commandos had recently conducted training exercises, with senior Hamas commanders observing.

The training included a dry run of shooting down Israeli aircraft and taking over a kibbutz and a military training base, killing all the cadets. During the exercise, Hamas fighters used the same phrase from the Quran that appeared at the top of the Jericho Wall attack plan, she wrote in the email exchanges viewed by The Times.

The analyst warned that the drill closely followed the Jericho Wall plan, and that Hamas was building the capacity to carry it out.

The colonel in the Gaza division applauded the analysis but said the exercise was part of a “totally imaginative” scenario, not an indication of Hamas’s ability to pull it off.

“In short, let’s wait patiently,” the colonel wrote.

The back-and-forth continued, with some colleagues supporting the analyst’s original conclusion. Soon, she invoked the lessons of the 1973 war, in which Syrian and Egyptian armies overran Israeli defenses. Israeli forces regrouped and repelled the invasion, but the intelligence failure has long served as a lesson for Israeli security officials.

“We already underwent a similar experience 50 years ago on the southern front in connection with a scenario that seemed imaginary, and history may repeat itself if we are not careful,” the analyst wrote to her colleagues.

While ominous, none of the emails predicted that war was imminent.

"We did not have…threat information that was in any way specific enough to suggest something was coming in the United States." -- Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor [responding to Gorelick]

"Nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government, could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale." -- George Bush, Jr.

-- The 9/11 Commission Report, by The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

"This is our 9/11.” -- Michael Herzog, Israeli ambassador to the United States

"In a way, this is our 9/11" -- IDF International Spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, 10/8/23

Nor did the analyst challenge the conventional wisdom among Israeli intelligence officials that Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, was not interested in war with Israel. But she correctly assessed that Hamas’s capabilities had drastically improved. The gap between the possible and the aspirational had narrowed significantly.

The failures to connect the dots echoed another analytical failure more than two decades ago, when the American authorities also had multiple indications that the terrorist group Al Qaeda was preparing an assault. The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were largely a failure of analysis and imagination, a government commission concluded.

But on that September day we were unprepared. We did not grasp the magnitude of a threat that had been gathering over time. As we detail in our report, this was a failure of policy, management, capability, and -- above all -- a failure of imagination.

-- The 9/11 Commission Report, by The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

The analyst warned that the drill closely followed the Jericho Wall plan, and that Hamas was building the capacity to carry it out.

The colonel in the Gaza division applauded the analysis but said the exercise was part of a “totally imaginative” scenario, not an indication of Hamas’s ability to pull it off.

“The Israeli intelligence failure on Oct. 7 is sounding more and more like our 9/11,” said Ted Singer, a recently retired senior C.I.A. official who worked extensively in the Middle East. “The failure will be a gap in analysis to paint a convincing picture to military and political leadership that Hamas had the intention to launch the attack when it did.”


The breached security fence in the village of Kfar Azza, Israel, three days after it was attacked by Hamas.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

Ronen Bergman is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, based in Tel Aviv. His latest book is “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations,” published by Random House. More about Ronen Bergman

Adam Goldman writes about the F.B.I. and national security. He has been a journalist for more than two decades. More about Adam Goldman

[admin]

The Women Soldiers Who Warned of a Pending Hamas Attack – and Were Ignored: Over the past year, the Israel Defense Forces’ spotters situated on the Gaza border, all women, warned that something unusual was happening. Those who survived the October 7 massacre are convinced that if it had been men sounding the alarm, things would look different today
by Yaniv Kubovich
Haaretz
Nov 20, 2023
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/202 ... 1581146536

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Three days after the October 7 massacre in southern Israel, Mai – a spotter who serves in the Israel Defense Forces’ Gaza Division and survived the murderous Hamas assault on her army base near the border – received a phone call at home.

On the line was someone from the army’s human resources division. “If you don’t return to your post,” she was cautioned, “that’s absenteeism during wartime and would mean up to 10 years in prison.” Identical messages were also delivered to colleagues from the army base who, like her on Black Saturday, had been locked in an operations room “armed” only with their cellphones as Hamas terrorists ran amok.

“We tried to explain that we can’t go back,” Mai recounts. “We lost our comrades. We spent hours hiding, among dead bodies, in that operations room.”



According to Mai (a pseudonym, like the names of everyone interviewed for this story), some of the young women who survived the attack are currently being treated in mental health institutions, while others are still too afraid to seek treatment.

“Up till now, the commanders haven’t visited us; nobody from the army has come to speak with us and ask how we’re feeling. They’re simply ignoring our existence.” Perhaps a clarification should be added to that last statement: They are seemingly ignoring their existence as human beings, not as part of the military.

(The spotters’ job, known as “tatzpitanit” in Hebrew, involves staring at a screen for hours on end, studying surveillance cameras for untoward activities. Nowadays, only women soldiers perform the task.)


IDF spotters working at the IDF base in Nahal Oz.Credit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit

The spotters decided to stay home and nothing else happened until last week – when they all received identical letters informing them that if they failed to return to their posts by this Wednesday, there would be severe repercussions.

“They told me: ‘You need to come back, your position is ready,’” says another spotter, Shir. “Nobody cares how I am or if I’m fit to do this – the main thing [for them] is for me to return to my nine-hour shift watching screens all day.”

Shir has decided that she will report back to the base – but not because of the threats and intimidation.

“It’s important to make clear that we’re returning only for the sake of our friends who were murdered or kidnapped,” she says, “and not for everyone who abandoned us there.”

Somehow, Shir and her colleagues are not surprised by the attitude they have encountered; just perhaps a little unnerved by its intensity. During their years of military service, they say they’ve grown accustomed to the fact that they “don’t count.” Nor was any notice given to the repeated warnings they raised before Hamas’ infiltration on Black Saturday. Warnings that, it seems to them, were going in one IDF earpiece and out the other.

These included reports about Hamas’ preparations near the border fence, its drone activity in recent months, its efforts to knock out cameras, the extensive use of vans and motorcycles, and even rehearsals for the shelling of tanks.


An IDF spotter working at the Nahal Oz military base, near the Gaza border, earlier this month.Credit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit

The spotters believe Hamas was actually being rather negligent: it didn’t try to hide anything and its actions were out in the open. But throughout this period, they say senior officers in the IDF’s Gaza Division and Southern Command refused to listen to their warnings. They believe this stemmed partly from arrogance but also from male chauvinism.

The spotters are exclusively “young women and young women commanders,” explains one of them. “There’s no doubt that if men had been sitting at those screens, things would look different.”

‘Tell everyone we love them’

In some ways, the hours leading up to the morning of October 7 were quite ordinary. Noga, a spotter stationed at the IDF’s intelligence unit at Kissufim, close to the Gaza border, spotted an unfamiliar, suspicious-looking man standing in front of one of the barrier gates erected along the Gaza Strip border.

Her report reached Lt. Col. Meir Ohayon, commander of the 51st Battalion in the Golani Brigade, who at 3 A.M. made his way to the location and, after sighting the man, fired tear gas at him. The suspect turned back and went to a Hamas observation post about 300 meters (nearly 1,000 feet) from the fence, which is the distance at which Palestinians are allowed to stay. The spotter observed several other people at the same position, and it seemed to her that a briefing was being held there.


An armed Israeli observation post hit by Hamas on the morning of October 7.Credit: Hatem Ali/AP

All of the above seemed unusual and disturbing to her, so she shared her feelings with the other spotters as well as the on-duty commander. However, at the end of a discussion that lasted about a minute in the operations room and in consultation with the division, it was decided to return to normal.

“I’m sorry I had to wake you at this hour,” the spotter apologized to Ohayon, “but I still think there’s something strange here.”

Ohayon was unperturbed and replied that it’s always best to be vigilant in order to avoid surprises. A few hours later, it became clear that this “vigilance” did not prevent the surprise.

This was merely the final piece in the puzzle, though. In retrospect, after she fully understood the scope of the disaster, and after she had lost dozens of friends who were either killed or kidnapped by Hamas, the sheer scale of the disconnect became clear to the spotter.

While she had been trying to understand who the suspicious figure was and what he was up to, the IDF and Shin Bet security service had already held discussions following a warning about a terrorist infiltration. It was serious enough for the senior officials to decide (on the Friday evening) to increase the presence of special forces in the south, sending a specialist team trained to deal with terror squads.

Another team from the Shin Bet operational unit and a force from the commando unit were also placed on alert. An elite IDF team from Sayeret Matkal was also dispatched to the area. However, no one in the Southern Command or its Gaza Division bothered to inform the dozens of young women serving as spotters at the Kissufim and Nahal Oz army bases of that. This did not even change at 4 A.M., when it was decided to put the Gaza border communities themselves on alert for fear of possible infiltration.


Ori Megidish (center) with family after she was found by IDF ground troops in Gaza. Megidish, an army spotter, was taken hostage on Oct 7.Credit: Shin Bet Spokesperson's Office

“If we had known about this warning, this whole disaster would have looked different,” Yaara tells Haaretz. “Nobody told us there was such a high level of alert.”

According to Yaara, three hours, or even two hours, would have given the young spotters time to prepare. “But nobody thought to tell us. The IDF left us like sitting ducks on a range. The fighters at least had weapons and died as heroes. The spotters who had been abandoned by the army were simply slaughtered, without any opportunity to defend themselves.”

At around 6:30 A.M., Noga still found time to report about the “infiltration” protocol for communities and military bases, all while hearing the gunfire and shouting of the terrorists outside the command center where she was stationed.

In the spotters’ WhatsApp group, friends from Nahal Oz were already reporting that terrorists were everywhere, that people had been killed and kidnapped, and that there was nowhere to run. At 7:17 A.M., the last message was received in the group, signed by spotters from Nahal Oz: “Tell everyone that we love them and thanks for everything.”

Disdainful attitude

The spotters’ harsh words for their superiors is not a new development. In fact, Haaretz published an investigative report last year focusing on the disdainful attitude toward them from their commanders. At the time, your correspondent spoke with spotters from bases across Israel, including those in the Gaza Division.

One of the issues they raised was that their voice was simply not being heard and that their professional opinion was not being given due weight. It seems that any commission of inquiry studying the events of October 7 will have to start with the testimonies of those surviving spotters.



They can pinpoint seemingly pivotal incidents going back months. For instance, Talia, who has served as a spotter in the Gaza Division for about 18 months and is therefore considered something of a veteran, recounts: “A month before the war, I was sitting in the command center in Kissufim and at around 7 A.M. dozens of cars and vans arrived in the area I’m responsible for, near one of Hamas’ observation towers. After a few minutes, a luxury car stopped next to them – the type of car very few people in Gaza have, so definitely Hamas.”

“I didn’t recognize all of them, but it was clear to me that these men were from Nukhba [Hamas’ special forces], because some of them had ski masks over their faces so as not to be identified. They left there for a briefing that lasted a long time, 30 to 40 minutes, with binoculars, pointing to the Israeli side.”

Talia says she wanted to try to identify the men and see what was in their vehicles – so she pointed the cameras to one of the senior people there and zoomed in.

“He gestured to me, wagging his finger – ‘nu, nu, nu,’” she recounts, admitting her shock because the camera was located on a high pole at a great distance from where the group was standing, but he knew exactly where it was.

At that stage, she called in her commander. I told her they can see me, that he’s talking to me through the camera,” she recalls. “She also saw this and didn’t know how to react to it.”

After the Gazans left, Talia says she received a report from a more northerly lookout post that the same group had returned and was stopping in different spots along the length of the Gaza Strip.

For Talia and the other spotters on duty that day, this looked like a briefing prior to an operation against Israel – and they acted accordingly.


The entrance to Kibbutz Nahal Oz.Credit: Eliyahu Hershkovitz

“We flagged the event, we reported that it was unusual and that they could see us,” she recalls. “We reported that it was a briefing by senior [Hamas] officials who we could not recognize. But until today, it’s not clear what [the IDF] did with that information.”

She says her commanders also tried to pass this information up the chain of command. However, as relatively low-ranking officers, these women “are just as helpless as we are before the senior commanders – and certainly before the division and regional command,” Talia says. “Nobody really pays any attention to us. As far as they’re concerned, it’s ‘sit at your screens’ and that’s it. They’d say: ‘You’re our eyes, not the head that needs to make decisions about the information.”

When the Hamas attack began on October 7, and after messages had come in from the Nahal Oz base, Talia sent a message to that same commander, asking if she remembered the earlier event. “She replied that she had no doubt it was the briefing for the attack,” she relates. “At the same time, we’re seeing videos of our friends being taken off to Gaza, helpless.”

Every stone, every vehicle

Two to three months. That’s how long it takes for a new spotter to know her sector “better than anyone else in the IDF,” Talia says. “In my sector, I know every stone, every vehicle, shepherd, Hamas training camp, laborers, birdwatchers, trails and outposts.” In her words, a veteran spotter does not need “8200 in order to tell immediately whether her sector is operating unusually,” a reference to the fabled intelligence unit.

It is hard work, often Sisyphean. A spotter’s shift lasts for nine hours, during which she sits in front of a screen attempting to monitor anything that seems at all unusual, even a slight deviation from the norm. Any such event must immediately be logged in an operational report, which is sent to the base commanders, and from there to the intelligence desks of the relevant divisions and command centers.



What happens in practice with the information they have just relayed? The spotters are finding it hard to answer that question.

This was also the case when Hamas drones started flying regularly in their sector.

“In the past couple of months, they began to put up drones every day, sometimes twice a day, that came really close to the border,” says another spotter, Ilana. “Up to 300 meters from the fence – sometimes less than that. A month and a half before the war, we saw that in one of Hamas’ training camps, they had built an exact replica of an armed observation post, just like the ones we have. They started to train there with drones, to hit the observation post.”

Ilana recounts how they passed this information on according to protocol, but even went beyond that: “We yelled at our commanders that they have to take us more seriously, that something bad is happening here. We understood that the behavior in the field was very strange, that they were basically training for an attack against us. Until now, nobody has come and told us what was done with this information.”

And then on Black Saturday, when they saw the drones blowing up their observation posts one after the other, the spotters knew where this was headed. “We knew from the moment the attack began: this was exactly what was happening in the last month and a half of their training,” Ilana says.

There were other preliminary signs too, spotters says. More reports that they wrote, and sent, but whose whereabouts are unknown.

“They never told me what happened with the information we were passing on,” says another spotter, Adi. “We were constantly being told that there might be a terrorist infiltration, that it could happen.” Of course, the IDF needs to be prepared for such an incident, but apparently there was no concrete threat – no matter how many concrete events the spotters reported.

“In the last year, they started to remove pieces of iron from the fence,” says Adi, citing an example of what was written in another report that might be buried in some drawer somewhere. And there’s more.

“In my sector, they built a precise model of a Merkava IV tank and trained on it all the time,” says another spotter from the Gaza Division. “They trained on how to hit a tank with an RPG, where exactly to hit it and then, in front of our eyes, they trained on how to capture the tank crew.”

She says the spotters tried warning that these training exercises were actually increasing in intensity, “that there were more people taking part, and that they were being done with additional Hamas units coming in from other areas.”

They also noticed that vans and motorcycles were frequently being used in the training. And when protests started taking place by the border [in the months prior to the attack], they observed that “there are Hamas operatives who are constantly examining the places where we are less effective with the cameras. They really planned everything down to the smallest detail. Anyone who says today that it was unavoidable or that it was impossible to know – that’s a lie.”

In her words, ”They abandoned our friends to die because nobody wanted to listen to us. It’s beneath their dignity to listen to a sergeant – who for two years has been staring at the same screen and knows every stone, every grain of sand – tell them something contrary to what the senior intelligence officers are telling them. Who am I, some little woman, before a man with the rank of major or lieutenant colonel, for whom everybody stands at attention when he enters the room?”

A few minutes after 1WTC was hit the following message came over the public address system in 2WTC. I was in the 44th floor sky lobby of 2WTC at the time. “A plane had just crashed into 1WTC but the integrity of 2WTC was OK.” Notice how you are not instructed to leave and not instructed to stay. The message was repeated again. Seconds after the message was repeated flight 175 crashed into 2WTC.... I would like to make it clear here on what exactly came over the public address system at 9:02 AM. I made a conscious effort to memorize it. “A plane had just crashed into 1WTC and that the integrity of 2WTC was OK.” This message was repeated once more. Seconds after the second announcement flight 175 crashed into 2WTC. -- Jim Kazalis, 9/11 survivor and volunteer guide in NYC

Obviously, people started leaving WTC1 after the first strike at 8:46. People also began leaving WTC2. As I recall from reading about it, Building Security through the public address system advised those in WTC2 who were evacuating to return to their desks. -- Brian Good

I was in the second tower that got hit. When you refer to “they” you have to clarify who that is. When the first building was hit, the Morgan Stanley security went screaming through the floor telling everyone to evacuate. When I was in the stairwell, the announcements said that the building was safe -- stay where you are go back. -- Ken Robulak, Former Financial Advisor at Morgan Stanley (company) (2001–2004)

I was in Manhattan that day. On my walk home to Brooklyn I met a man who was on the 20th floor of the south tower when the plane struck. He said the firefighters were telling everyone to stay put and not to leave the building. He chose to ignore them and lived as a result. -- Greg Murphy, Studied Bachelor of Arts Degrees in Art and Art History (Graduated 2017)

-- Why didn't they evacuate the World Trade Center in September 11 after the first crash?, by quora.com

‘They studied us in depth’

Forty fighters from the Golani Brigade’s 13th Battalion, some Bedouin trackers and three women combat soldiers from the artillery corps who were on standby: this was the entire force at Nahal Oz on the morning of Saturday October 7 facing hundreds of terrorists – a significant proportion of the 3,000 or so who infiltrated with vans, cars and motorcycles from the sea, land and air. The soldiers had no chance.

“They knew much more about us than we thought,” says another spotter, Liat. “Today I know, and my friends are also sure of it, that they studied us in depth. Not just where we were sitting and observing from. They did an insane job.”


Palestinians from the Gaza Strip entering Kibbutz Kfar Azza on October 7.Credit: Hassan Eslaiah/AP

A spotter who was on duty at one of the lookout posts that day says: “There were so many warning signals along the way. Hamas didn’t do this under the radar. It’s just that nobody thought to accept the opinion of some spotters when intelligence personnel were thinking completely differently.”

In April, Smadar sat at the lookout post in Kissufim and noticed something new at one of Hamas’ training camps. “They had built a precise model of the border area,“ she says. “They trained there on how to break through the fence. Contrary to what the IDF thought, their training was for infiltration on the ground, not from tunnels. As time passed, their training became more intensive.”

About a month and a half before the attack, that training apparently shifted up a gear.

“We started to see them getting 300 meters from the fence, and their trainers stood with stopwatches and measured how much time it took them to run to the fence, to reach it, and to return to their positions. We knew there was something [happening],” says Liat. According to her, even though disturbances were also taking place near the fence, “the forces we sent did practically nothing – even the warning shots stopped. Combat soldiers would arrive, fire tear gas and leave.”

Those reports, it seems, piled up in the rubbish heap of the tragedy.

A month before the war, there was an apparent change of approach among some spotters: A senior officer from the Gaza Division came to the operations room on one of the bases along the Gaza border in order to talk about the sector, so one of the spotters decided to tell him exactly what was on her mind.

“I told him there was going to be a war and we’re simply not ready,” she says, recalling the conversation. “That what’s happening with Hamas along the border fence is not normal. That they’re mocking the IDF, that our hands are tied and we’re not even [firing] warning shots.”

The response of the senior officer was to ask for her name, to regard her with admonishing eyes and to “put her in her place” for having the temerity to address him directly rather than going through the proper channels.

“He said to me, ‘I’ve been in the sector since 2010. I was a commander here, an intelligence officer, I know Gaza inside-out, and I’m telling you that everything’s fine. You’re here only six months and I’ve been here 12 years. I know the sector like the back of my hand.”

Someone who has known the sector for less time – but still in depth – is Einat, a spotter from Nahal Oz. That Saturday, she was at home (“in the safe room with the family”), but recognized immediately what was about to happen.

“As soon as I understood that there was such a large infiltration, I told [my family]: ‘There’s a Hamas raid, they’ll kidnap soldiers and charge into the residential communities.’ I even told them there was no way they weren’t coming with paragliders. They looked at me like I was crazy. I started shouting that we knew there would be something and no one would listen to us.”

Then the messages from friends at the base began to arrive, plus the photos and videos from Palestinians on Telegram. “We were seeing how they were murdering our friends and how they were being taken to Gaza,” she recalls. “I cannot describe the frustration, the sense of abandonment by the senior commanders. We issued warnings, we told our commanders, but we’re considered the bottom of the division’s food chain.”

In response to this article, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit stated: “The IDF and its commanders are following all the male and female soldiers who were present during the events of October 7 closely. The male and female soldiers are accompanied by medical professionals from the mental health system. This is in addition to the continuous contact with their commanders, who are a support system and attentive ear. The return to their posts will be gradual and sensitive, supervised and according to the condition of each person. There is no intention of disciplinary measures against anyone. If there were any conversations that might suggest otherwise, they are contrary to the guidelines and will be dealt with accordingly.”

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 04, 2023

Israel Kills 800 Palestinians as Truce Ends; Hospitals Under Attack as Gazans Have Nowhere to Turn
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 04, 2023

Gaza’s Health Ministry says Israeli strikes have killed more than 800 people since Saturday, after Israel targeted the besieged Palestinian territory with some of its most violent assaults yet — including parts of southern Gaza previously designated by Israel’s military as “safe” zones. Dozens were killed as Israel flattened homes in the Jabaliya refugee camp where displaced families were sheltering, while in Gaza City’s Shuja’iyya neighborhood Israeli strikes destroyed 50 residential buildings and homes, killing more than 300 people.

Ambulance drivers have been targeted by Israeli snipers, including a medic who was shot transporting an injured person toward al-Awda Hospital. UNICEF spokesperson James Elder delivered this message from inside Gaza’s Nasser Hospital.

James Elder: “We cannot see more children with the wounds of war, with the burns, with the shrapnel littering their body, with the broken bones. Inaction by those with influence is allowing the killing of children. This is a war on children. … Clearly, words, clearly, pleas from the world do not make a difference on those who have the power to stop the killing, the maiming of children.”

Following the collapse of the temporary truce Friday, Israel continues to restrict the number of aid trucks permitted into the besieged enclave as Gazans continue to plead for food, water and a permanent end to the attacks.

Watan al-Masri: “The days of the truce, God protect us, we slept. We rested. There were no drones, and we were living well. But with what happened today, we’ve been living in fear and anxiety. Really, fear has returned. The sadness has returned. With every explosion, we spring up. Is it in front of us? Is it behind us? We are living in terror. If anyone has any way to help us, we are dying of starvation.”

Over the weekend, Hamas said it would not release any more Israeli hostages until a ceasefire comes into effect and Israel releases all Palestinian prisoners.

Meanwhile, top U.S. officials have publicly warned Israel’s military about the thousands of Palestinian civilians it has killed and injured. This is Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin: “You see, in this kind of a fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.”

Austin’s warning came as The Wall Street Journal reported the U.S. has supplied Israel with 15,000 bombs, including 2,000-pound bunker busters, and 57,000 artillery shells since October 7.

UAW Becomes Largest U.S.-Based Union to Call for Gaza Ceasefire
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 04, 2023

Here in the U.S., a protester is in critical condition after setting themself on fire Friday outside the Israeli Consulate in Atlanta, Georgia. Authorities said the protester never posed a threat to consular staff, and the self-immolation was believed to be “an act of extreme political protest.”

In Denver, Colorado, hundreds of Jewish activists and their allies blocked traffic on the busy Speer Boulevard Sunday following a week of protests outside the Colorado Convention Center, where the Jewish National Fund was holding its Global Conference for Israel. Fifteen members of Jewish Voice for Peace were arrested after chaining themselves together on the road and halting traffic for over an hour.

The United Auto Workers became the latest, and largest, union to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. The UAW joins the American Postal Workers Union, the California Nurses Association, the Chicago Teachers Union and others in calling for a ceasefire. The UAW is also creating a “divestment and just transition working group” and taking a closer look at the union’s “economic ties to the conflict.”

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“No One Is Safe in Gaza”: Journalist Akram al-Satarri Reports from Khan Younis Amid Israeli Assault
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 04, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/4/ ... transcript

We speak with Palestinian journalist Akram al-Satarri in Khan Younis, the southern Gaza city that is now the focus of Israel’s assault. Israel has ordered many Palestinians to leave their homes and head further south toward Rafah near the Egyptian border, which Israel also attacked over the weekend. “They are being bombarded while they are trying to move,” says al-Satarri. “The safety is in the very south of Rafah, and when they reach the promised safety, they end up being bombarded.” Gaza’s Health Ministry says Israel’s air and ground assault has killed more than 800 people since Saturday, and Israel has killed over 15,500 Palestinians and displaced more 1.7 million from their homes since October 7, when it began its war on the besieged territory in response to a deadly attack by Hamas militants on surrounding Israeli communities.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show looking at Gaza as Israel expands its air and ground assault on the besieged territory days after a truce between Israel and Hamas ended. Palestinian health officials say Israel has killed at least 800 people since Saturday. The Gaza Health Ministry official says hospitals are being, quote, “flooded with an influx of dead bodies.” In Gaza City, a massive Israeli attack leveled about 50 buildings in the neighborhood of Shuja’iyya, reportedly killing more than 300 people.

We’re going to turn right now just outside the hospital in Khan Younis called the Nasser Hospital. There, Gazan journalist Akram al-Satarri is standing. He’s going to talk to us about the situation in the south of Gaza, in Khan Younis, and also talk about his own situation and where his family is living, as well. This is Akram.

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: … sixty-five square kilometers, becoming the largest battlefield on Earth. Gaza, 1.8 million people asked to move and leave their homes in the very north in the Gaza Strip, in Gaza City and Gaza central area, towards the very south of Gaza, to Rafah area. They are being bombarded while they’re trying to move. Houses are being destroyed. In last 24 hours, more than 1,760 people were killed. In the last 12 hours, more than 316 people were killed.

The massive movement of the people can be seen for everyone who’s moving throughout the different streets of the Gaza Strip, people who are grabbing anything they can take, people who moved from the north to the central Gaza and to the Khan Younis area. They are grabbing almost everything, because they came almost with nothing from the north. And now they’re being asked to move to the south because the bombardment is going heavier. And in the south, when they are settling there, the bombardment is resumed, and people are killed. In the last three or four hours, several incidents and several explosions were reported in different areas of the Gaza Strip, inclusive Khan Younis area, Rafah area, to the very south of the Gaza Strip, and Gaza central area and Gaza City and the north, as well.

Palestinians, who were left with almost nothing — no transportation, no fuel, no energy, no supplies whatsoever. Even the water now is becoming a very scarce commodity in the Gaza Strip. People with all of that facing — all of that they are facing are being asked to move. Some of them are walking on foot for such a very long time for the sake of just fleeing to safety. The safety is in very south of Rafah. And when they reach the promised safety, they end up being bombarded. When they reached the promised safety, they lost their dears. They lost the shelter that they are trying to build. I was on my way to Rafah and then back to Khan Younis area. I was seeing the people who were trying to erect the tents on the two sides of the road, people who were just taking any kind of wood and branches of the trees that they can find, any kind of plastic sheets, any kind of wood, to start and do something that can serve them as a shelter.

I am already an IDP now, internally displaced person, because my whole area was asked to leave, and I had to leave my home, my apartment, one apartment that I spent a whole time trying to build for me and for my family. And when we were about to leave, we were wondering what we can we take and what can we leave, because our capacity to take things is very limited. We started prioritizing: medication, number one. Medications, number one, because they are life-saving. And then blankets, sheets, mattresses, whatever we can get, even the water we were carrying with us because of the fact that I told you: Water is a scarce commodity in the Gaza Strip.

People who are now in Rafah are facing a very dramatic situation. They don’t have supplies. They don’t have food. They don’t have water. And they are still struggling for the sake of securing any type of living or life in that area. They have been losing their children, their mothers, their spouses, for the sake of just getting anything that can help them to start fire and to warm some water and to cook something. One-point-eight millions in Gaza now officially IDPs, internally displaced people. And those 1.8 million people are trying to find somewhere place that they can hide, but the heavy bombardment in the last few days and the heavy bombardment throughout the whole conflict left no one safe in Gaza, left no one is safe in Gaza because of the —

AMY GOODMAN: It sounds like we have lost Akram —

AKRAM AL-SATARRI: — large-scale killing resulting from that bombardment, large-scale devastation resulting from that bombardment, and large-scale insecurity resulting from that, as people of Gaza are facing a profound access and security crisis. They have not been able to access anything. And their personal security have been jeopardized by the ongoing devastation and escalation.

AMY GOODMAN: Akram al-Satarri, reporting to us from Gaza. He’s in southern Gaza. He’s standing just outside the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, where he has also, in addition to reporting there, moved his family south. Khan Younis is a place where the Israeli military originally told people in northern Gaza to move to, and now they are bombing Khan Younis, where so many hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have moved, to Khan Younis and further south to Rafah. It’s extremely difficult to make these conditions — to make these connections, and we thank all of those who have helped us. We’re going to turn now to a break. This break are Gazan journalists, Palestinian journalists who have survived the assault so far, though many have lost family members, singing together.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “We Will Stay Here Until the Pain Goes Away.” Journalists in Gaza seen sitting together in their press-identified clothing in a viral video singing “We Will Stay Here Until the Pain Goes Away.” More than 60 journalists and media workers have been killed since October 7th, 54 of them Palestinian journalists in Gaza.

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“We Are All Palestinians”: COP28 Activists Demand Ceasefire in Gaza, Defying Protest Restrictions
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 04, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/4/ ... transcript

Despite strict limits on protest in the United Arab Emirates, as well as United Nations rules at the climate conference known as COP28 now underway in Dubai, over 100 people demonstrated on the sidelines of the summit Sunday in solidarity with Palestine to demand a ceasefire in Gaza. Some held banners with watermelons painted on them, a known symbol of the Palestinian movement, to circumvent a ban on Palestinian flags. Protesters were barred from chanting phrases like “from the river to the sea” and “Free Palestine” and were not permitted to say “Gaza,” “Palestine” and “Israel” or name any other nation. Several still did so in defiance. Democracy Now! is broadcasting from COP28 this week, and we feature voices from the protest.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: These are voices of a protest Sunday when over a hundred people gathered on the sidelines of the U.N. climate summit for a peaceful action in solidarity with the Palestinian people demanding a ceasefire in Gaza.

PROTESTER 1: When human rights are under attack, what do we do?

PROTESTERS: Stand up, fight back!

PROTESTER 2: We’ll be reading for you today from the Gaza Ministry of Health list of names of all those who have been killed since October 7th.

PROTESTER 3: Moaz Etemad Youssef Dalloul, female [sic] — male, 6 years old. Tala Amjad Alyan Abu Ayada, 5 years old. Elaine Amjad Alyan Abu Ayada, 3 years old. Hamza Muhammad Nahed Al-Fasih, 3 years old.

PROTESTER 1: The names are still being written.

TARIQ LUTHUN: My name is Tariq Luthun. I am a Gazawi born in Detroit. This violence is not happening just in my hometown of Gaza. It’s happening everywhere. Being in Detroit, there are so many situations in which water has been cut off. Being just down the street from Flint, Michigan, we see water be poisoned and polluted for the people and the residents of Flint. And precedents like that, where people are expendable, is only possible because of the violence we see inflicted upon people back in my homeland. And because of that, we are taking a stand here today not just as Palestinian people, myself, but people who are allied with justice for all people across the world, because that is what is necessary to have true climate justice. What good is finding a world that is green if the roots are soaked in blood? What good is a world that is green if there’s nobody left to live in it? The precedent set on people’s lives and the calculations we make as to who is expendable, that is the precedent we set for who’s expendable anywhere.

PROTESTER 1: Hey ho! Take me by the hand! Strong in solidarity we stand! Human rights and justice! Human rights and justice! Hey ho! End the apartheid!

SHIRINE JURDI: Just because now we have social media, we were able to see some of the facts. Have you seen this TikTok that went viral? We know TikToks that goes viral about food. Did you see this TikTok about how you remove white phosphorus from your body? Because white phosphorus weapons are being shelled on people, shelled on civilians, shelled on women and children. And this is where most of the casualties are. Lots of women were — we have almost 50,000 women pregnant, trying to deliver at this time of the period, and these women, lots of them, lost their lives, and, if you have seen, also these newborn babies. Have you seen them? Have you seen them struggling for air to breathe? But, unfortunately, electricity was cut off. They had no food, no water, no sanitation. They had nothing to breathe on. They had nothing to survive on. And lots of these newborn children were killed. And let’s be their voices.

CHEBON KERNELL: [speaking in Muscogee] I come here from the continent of North America representing our Indigenous peoples of our Muscogee communities who for many years now we have lived in an occupied state. We were dispossessed of our lands. We were forced upon reservations, where we were confined to one area. The water and the resources that we had known for thousands upon thousands of years were taken from us and commodified and exploited and stolen from our peoples. Today we come here, and I stand here and have been asked to say these words, because I stand in solidarity with each one of my relatives here and everything that you’re going through, my relatives on these lists here. I’m never going to forget those names that are being said. And one day I will greet them when I join them in the spirit world. But today I want to say something before more violence is incurred, that this has to stop now.

ANCEL LANGWA: I stand here as a member of Africans Rising, which is a Pan-African movement of Africans working for unity, justice, peace and dignity. Just like Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral institutions of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” So we are here because we have decided that we shall not be neutral.

ASAD REHMAN: Sisters, brothers, solidarity, greetings from the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice.

Today we stand in a space bearing the words “the United Nations,” in a process we are deeply committed to as the eyes, ears and voices of our people fighting for justice, the body that was created after the horrors of the Second World War with a promise of “never again,” a promise that made it illegal to target civilians, a promise that made it illegal to use food, water, medicine as a weapon of war, a promise of human rights, a promise that all people would be able to live with dignity, free from occupation and oppression.

And for these last two months we have witnessed not just the Palestinian people starved, trapped, cut off from the world, bombed and killed, their screams echoing throughout the night with no hope of rescue, as every morning we wait desperately for that message that our friends and our colleagues are still alive, but whilst watching the international community stand in silence — and again, not just for these last two months, but for 15 years of an illegal blockade, for 50 years of an occupation and apartheid, and a hundred years of ethnic cleansing and settler colonialism. We watched an international community that has been actively complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity, where the genocidal intent isn’t even bothered to be hidden anymore. And still, of course, that’s not enough. We’ve seen hospitals, schools bombed. We’ve seen medics, journalists and even U.N. staff killed, 18,000 people. Human rights and humanitarian law is lying in shreds.

And some ask — some ask us: Why do we care about the Palestinians? Why do climate justice groups mobilize in their millions, from Pakistan to the Philippines, from Belgium to Brazil, from South Africa to Sweden? Why is it our people from all around the world — Black, white, Brown, Jew, Muslim, Christian — are taking to the streets? It’s because we have seen the masks that have slipped. We have seen how the Palestinians are not even viewed as human beings. And in the faces of the Palestinians, for Black, Brown and Indigenous people, we see our past, our present and our future, of lives deemed less valuable than others, of an arc of 500 years of colonialism and racialized capitalism, of sacrificed people and of sacrificed land, of the powerful profiting from oppression, but then saying they don’t have any money for climate finance, but billions for bombs and bullets against the people.

And we say — and we say to those powerful countries, who put words of human rights into texts over there, that no amount of empty words will ever erase your complicity. You not only wrote the blank check, you enabled this. You own this. You own this as much as those who are dropping the bombs on the terrified people of Palestine. So, here today, we, the peoples of the world, say to the Palestinian people, the international community over there may have forgotten you, but you are not alone. You will never be alone, because we are all Palestinians! Ceasefire now! End settler colonialism! End apartheid! End the occupation! Free Palestine!

PROTESTER 1: We’re going to close this moment by respecting the names, the identities, the children, the women, the mothers, the fathers, the journalists have been murdered. We are going to read some of those names.

PROTESTER 4: Issa Ahmed Issa Al-Nashar, 8 years old. Zaid Sabry Musleh Radi, 8 years old. Fayez Shadi Fayez Al-Dakka, 8 years old.

TARIQ LUTHUN: Menna Essam Mahmoud Abu Eyada, 14 years old. Mahmoud Muhammad Fathi Al-Shaer, 14 years old.

PROTESTER 5: Amjad Khaled Kamal Rashwan, 3 years old. Salma Muhammad Khalil Abu Al-Ala, 2 years old.

AMY GOODMAN: Voices from a protest Sunday inside the U.N. climate summit here in Dubai, showing solidarity with the Palestinian people, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The first voice in this last segment was Chebon Kernell of the Muscogee Nation here in the United States, and the last speech you heard was our guest right now, Asad Rehman.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 05, 2023

Gaza Death Toll Approaches 16,000 as Israel Intensifies Attacks and Lays Siege to Hospitals
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 05, 2023

The World Health Organization says the situation in Gaza is “worsening by the hour,” as Israel’s military lays siege to hospitals and intensifies its assault on areas it previously ordered civilians to flee to. The death toll from the Israeli bombardment is approaching 16,000 — with thousands more believed to be trapped under the rubble.

Twenty-six of Gaza’s 35 hospitals are now out of service. In the north, Israeli tanks encircled Kamal Adwan Hospital and began shelling the medical complex. Doctors there say Israeli snipers are firing on anyone attempting to leave. Images from the hospital’s courtyard show bodies swaddled in white sheets lined up in rows, after medical staff were unable to bury the dead.

In southern Gaza, an intense Israeli assault on the city of Khan Younis has left hospitals overrun. This is Ibrahim Esbeitan, whose 2-month-old son was injured in an Israeli airstrike Monday.

Ibrahim Esbeitan: “They told us to leave Gaza City. There’s a war in Gaza. So we left the north and came here to the south, just like they asked. But this is what we found in the south. What can we do? This is my son. He was born on the second day of the war, and we haven’t been able to register his birth yet.”

As he spoke, Ibrihim Esbeitan gestured to his infant son, who lay motionless while medical workers connected him to an oxygen supply. The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, has called Gaza the “most dangerous place in the world to be a child.”

Israeli Strikes Kill World-Renowned Researcher Sofyan Taya, Journalist Montaser Al-Sawaf
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 05, 2023

More than three-quarters of Gaza’s population is displaced, with some 2 million people forced into a 90-square-mile area in the south which Israel is actively bombing.

Among the dead is Sofyan Taya, president of the Islamic University of Gaza and a renowned researcher in physics and applied mathematics. Taya was killed along with his family in an Israeli airstrike Saturday in Jabaliya, just north of Gaza City.

On Monday, Israel cut phone and internet access across Gaza for the fourth time, plunging most of Gaza’s residents into another total communications blackout. This comes as Israeli attacks continue to kill journalists at an unprecedented pace. On Friday, Montaser Al-Sawaf, a freelance journalist working for the Turkish Anadolu Agency, was killed along with his brother and other relatives in an Israeli airstrike on his home. Al-Sawaf reportedly bled to death after no ambulances were available to save him. The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 56 Palestinian media workers have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7.

U.S. State Department Says It’s “Too Soon” to Judge Whether Israel Is Protecting Civilians
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 05, 2023

In Washington, D.C., State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Monday it was “too soon” to judge whether Israel has been doing enough to protect civilians in Gaza. Miller was challenged by veteran Palestinian journalist Said Arikat.

Said Arikat: “And you don’t think that Israel intentionally kills civilians?”

Matthew Miller: “We think far too many people” —

Said Arikat: “When you bomb — when you bomb neighborhoods” —

Matthew Miller: “I have not seen evidence that they are intentionally killing civilians.

We believe that far too many civilians have been killed. But again, this goes back to the underlying problem of this entire situation, which is that Hamas has embedded itself inside civilians” —

Said Arikat: “Come on.”

Matthew Miller: — “inside civilian homes, inside mosques, in schools, in churches. It is Hamas that is putting these civilians in harm’s way.”

Lawsuit Accuses Netherlands’ Government of Complicity in Israeli War Crimes
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 05, 2023

A court in the Netherlands has heard a lawsuit brought by human rights groups challenging the government’s export of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel. Oxfam and Amnesty International argue the arms transfer violates the Netherlands’ obligations under international law to prevent war crimes, citing Israel’s wide-scale and serious violations of humanitarian law in Gaza. Dutch human rights lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld argued the case.

Liesbeth Zegveld: “The state must immediately stop its deliveries of F-35 parts to Israel. That is its obligation under Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions, it is its obligation under the Genocide Treaty to prevent genocide, and it is its obligation under export law. The position of the state that we can’t confidently establish whether violations are taking place is a charade.”

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“There Simply Is No Safe Place in Gaza”: Aid Groups Demand Ceasefire as Israel Intensifies Its War
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 05, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/5/ ... transcript

The World Health Organization is warning the crisis in Gaza is getting worse by the hour as Israel intensifies its ground and air assault across all parts of the Gaza Strip, including surrounding the Jabaliya refugee camp and bombing Khan Younis, where many had fled to from the north. With Israel’s attack killing close to 16,000 Palestinians, Shaina Low from the Norwegian Refugee Council describes the “hectic, chaotic, desperate” conditions on the ground and says she can barely get in touch with her colleagues in Gaza, let alone coordinate a humanitarian response to the destruction. “If they can’t get in touch with each other, our operations come to a standstill,” says Low. “We desperately need a ceasefire in order to be able to finally address these dire needs.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates at the U.N. climate summit.

The World Health Organization is warning the crisis in Gaza is getting worse by the hour as Israel intensifies its ground and air assault across all parts of the Gaza Strip. UNICEF says there’s, quote, “no safe zones” remaining in any part of Gaza, where the death toll from the Israeli bombardment is approaching 16,000. Israeli troops have reportedly encircled Jabaliya, the largest refugee camp in Gaza. A spokesperson for the Gaza Health Ministry said hospitals are struggling to cope with the surge of patients.

ASHRAF AL-QUDRA: [translated] The wounded and patients are on the floor. There is no life-saving health service in the hospitals of southern Gaza Strip, hence hospitals in southern Gaza have totally collapsed. They cannot deal with the quantity and quality of injuries that arrive at the hospitals. It is difficult for the ambulances to reach the injured in the targeted areas. The Israeli occupation targets ambulances that move in the southern areas of the Gaza Strip. It prevents them from reaching the targeted places.

AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric, traveled to Gaza.

MIRJANA SPOLJARIC: I have just visited the European Gaza Hospital. And the things I saw there, it’s beyond anything that anyone should be in a position to describe. What shocked me the most were the children with atrocious injuries and at the same time having lost their parents, with no one looking after them. We are facing a situation here that will not be healed by sending in more trucks. We need to provide protection to the civilians in Gaza, to the women and children, to the elderly people that I saw today that have nowhere to go. The majority of people I met today have been displaced several times. I met people who have lost limbs because they needed to evacuate between treatments, and they lost a hand or a foot because they couldn’t be treated in the hospital where they arrived first. I was told today that the north has lost its entire surgical capacity.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric.

We begin today’s show in Jerusalem, where we’re joined by Shaina Low. She’s a communications adviser in Palestine for the Norwegian Refugee Council, has spent much of the last 15 years working in Palestine.

Shaina, thanks so much for joining us in this very desperate time in Gaza. Can you describe the overall situation to us?

SHAINA LOW: What we’re hearing from our staff on the ground in Gaza is just that day after day things are getting more and more hectic, chaotic, desperate. We’re hearing about massive influxes of people fleeing Khan Younis, fleeing south and west to barren areas of land where there’s no facilities able to accommodate them. We’re hearing about shelters that are overwhelmed and bursting at the seams and cannot house any additional people. We’re hearing about people being so desperate that they are sleeping on the streets, trying to salvage whatever materials they can find in order to build a makeshift shelter. Yesterday our office lost internet connection because people had actually cut the internet cable in order to use that to help make a shelter. This is the level of desperation that we’re getting at.

Stores have shut down because there’s no food available or no stocks available to be sold. Yesterday our staff survived on eating crackers, because there was nothing else available. Day after day, the situation is getting more and more desperate. About 1.9 million people out of 2.3 million, over 80% of Gaza’s population, is internally displaced with nowhere to go. We desperately need a ceasefire in order to be able to finally address these dire needs, because we cannot address them while there are ongoing hostilities. It is simply impossible.

AMY GOODMAN: So much of the population has moved from the north to the south, Khan Younis and even more south. These are places that they went to because the Israeli military said they would be safe. Now they’re saying in order to destroy Hamas, they must bomb those places, as well. Where are they telling them to go, Shaina?

SHAINA LOW: You know, they’re telling people to go not to safe places, but to so-called safer places. But what we’ve been seeing for the last eight weeks in Gaza is that there simply is no safe place in Gaza. There’s no place that’s safe from bombardment, from land, air and sea. We’re seeing that there’s no safe place for people to seek shelter, not only because of the ongoing bombardments, but simply because there aren’t facilities able to accommodate so many people. People are being exposed to the elements. They’re in overcrowded shelters where there’s diseases spreading. We’re already hearing about hepatitis A being detected inside some of the U.N. shelters. There really is no safe place.

We have been calling on Israel to stop these directives calling on people to flee. These directives are violations of international humanitarian law, because Israel is neither guaranteeing the safe passage of people to reach areas of safety, they aren’t guaranteeing safety in those areas, and they aren’t guaranteeing people the right to return home once hostilities have ended.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what is happening in the hospitals? And also, how many staff do you have in the Norwegian Refugee Council in Gaza? And what has happened to their families?

SHAINA LOW: Well, what we’re hearing about the situation in hospitals is that there is a desperate need for additional beds. There are about 1,500 beds, I heard from the World Health Organization yesterday during a briefing. There’s an estimated need of around 5,000 beds. There used to be 3,500 beds in Gaza, so we’re seeing — as needs increase, we’re seeing the number of beds decrease. Of course, there’s a shortage of — chronic shortage of medical supplies, medicines, clean water just to make sure that places are sterile and that patients can be treated safely. We’ve been hearing for weeks reports of maggots coming out of people’s wounds because they cannot be properly cared for and treated.

We have a staff of 54 currently inside of Gaza. And thankfully, all of our staff has stayed alive. But I cannot say that they are safe or unharmed. Multiple members of our staff have lost family members. We had one staff member, Amal, who had followed Israel’s directives to flee from the north, as she fled her home in northern Gaza and ended up in Rafah, where the home she was seeking shelter in was bombed, killing her only child, her 7-year-old son Khaled, and killing 10 other members of her family. Just this week, we had another colleague who was injured in an airstrike on Rafah, allegedly one of those safer places, and two of her family members were killed. We have staff who are sleeping on the streets because they have no place to go, including one staff member who has a 2-month-old baby. They are unable to find shelter. People are desperate. We are doing the best that we can not just to support people, ordinary people, in Gaza, but to support our staff. But we are increasingly finding our hands tied and are unable to do things because it’s not safe for us to operate. We cannot reach the aid that we have stored in warehouses in Gaza, either because the roads are cut off or because it simply isn’t safe for us to access them.

AMY GOODMAN: Have you been able to reach people in Gaza? We’ve been trying all morning. People we have been able to reach in the past, we cannot reach today.

SHAINA LOW: I was able to be in touch with my colleague Yousef this morning. He told me that he was on his way to go and check on the rest of his family, who are staying in Khan Younis. Unfortunately, because connectivity is very difficult, I hadn’t been able to get in touch with him since the early morning. I reached out to one of our security managers, because I was concerned that I hadn’t heard from him. And thankfully, about 10 minutes before I came on the air, I got notice that, yes, Yousef was safe and had reached our office, returned to our office.

But this is the difficulties and challenges that we’re living with, where we’re wondering not just if our staff is OK, but wondering if we’ll be able to connect with them. It’s not just worrying on a personal level, because these aren’t just our colleagues. These are our friends. These are the people that we work with day after day. But also it’s impossible for us to have any type of humanitarian response without being able to coordinate that, neither coordinate between our office in Jerusalem and our office in Gaza, but also with our staff in Gaza who are trying to manage this response. If they can’t get in touch with each other, our operations come to a standstill.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about a comment of State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, who said it’s too soon to judge whether Israel has been doing enough to protect civilians in Gaza. He was challenged by a veteran Palestinian journalist, Said Arikat. This is a clip.

SAID ARIKAT: And you don’t think that Israel intentionally kills civilians?

MATTHEW MILLER: We think far too many people —

SAID ARIKAT: When you bomb — when you bomb neighborhoods —

MATTHEW MILLER: I have not seen evidence that they are intentionally killing civilians. We believe that far too many civilians have been killed. But again, this goes back to the underlying problem of this entire situation, which is that Hamas has embedded itself inside civilians —

SAID ARIKAT: Come on.

MATTHEW MILLER: — inside civilian homes, inside mosques, in schools, in churches. It is Hamas that is putting these civilians in harm’s way.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you respond to what State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said?

SHAINA LOW: From what we’ve been seeing and hearing, it seems that Israel is not proportionate in its response, is not adhering to international humanitarian law. While there may be legitimate military targets, the principles of humanitarian law of distinction, proportionality and precaution still apply. When 70% of those who are killed are women and children, it seems that proportionality is not being taken into consideration.

Just yesterday, it was reported that Israeli military officials said that they would start employing technology to try and lower the number of civilian deaths. The fact that they’re realizing that they need to lower, and have the ability to lower, the number of civilian deaths would indicate that prior to that, that they were not taking those appropriate precautions. They were not making sure that their attacks were proportionate according to international humanitarian law. And it seems that with the indiscriminate bombardments that are happening, it’s impossible to distinguish between civilian and military objectives.

AMY GOODMAN: Shaina Low, we want to thank you for being with us, communications adviser in Palestine for the Norwegian Refugee Council, has been an daily touch with her colleagues in Gaza, usually several times a day when connectivity allows, has spent much of the last 15 years in Palestine.

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Climate Crossfire: From Gaza to Ukraine, How War & Military Spending Accelerate Climate Chaos
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 05, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/5/ ... transcript

Broadcasting from COP28 in Dubai as Israel continues its bombardment of Gaza, Democracy Now! investigates how militarism and war fuel the climate crisis. “The jets, the tanks, the bombs, the missiles, all of these things that we are seeing raining down on people, they’re all fossil fuel-dependent,” says Deborah Burton, co-author of a new report that shows increased spending by NATO nations will divert millions of dollars from climate finance while increasing greenhouse gas emissions. “We are absolutely going in the wrong direction.” Shirine Jurdi, a women, peace and security expert with close colleagues in Gaza, lays out how women are disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis and the global war machine. “If we want to talk about real impacts and outputs out of this COP, we really need to look at militarization.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re broadcasting from COP28, the U.N. climate summit in Dubai.

As Israel continues its bombardment of Gaza, we turn now to look at how militarism and war fuels the climate crisis. A new report warns that increased spending by NATO nations will divert millions of dollars from climate finance while increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

We’re joined now by two guests. Shirine al-Jurdi is a women, peace and security expert from Lebanon, member of the MENA — Middle East North Africa — task force with the Women and Gender Constituency at COP28. She’s also a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in Lebanon and the MENA and regional liaison officer at the Middle East and North Africa Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict. And Deborah Burton is here. She’s co-founder of Tipping Point North South. She leads their Transform Defense project, focused on military emissions and spending, climate change and climate finance, co-author of the report, “Climate Crossfire: How NATO’s 2% military spending targets contribute to climate breakdown,” published with the Transnational Institute.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Deborah [Burton], let’s begin with you.

DEBORAH BURTON: OK.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what you have found in this report. We’re going to go specifically to the conflict just hours from us right now, in Gaza, and what that means. But broadly, talk about the link between NATO, war and climate change.

DEBORAH BURTON: I mean, I think the first thing I want to say, sitting here alongside Shirine, is, I don’t think we can be seeing a more extreme example of a war machine in operation than what it is we’re seeing and hearing from Gaza. I just want to say that Israel is the 15th-largest military spender in the world, and it’s spending $24 billion a year on its military. And you’re seeing this let rip on a population that really cannot defend themselves.

So, what we’ve been working on with Transnational Institute and Stop Wapenhandel in the Netherlands is this report, “Climate Crossfire.” “Climate Crossfire” is actually a companion piece to a report we wrote last year before COP, and that was looking generally at how military spending accelerates climate breakdown. So that was the general picture. This year we’re looking — we’re focusing on NATO.

NATO is a 31-member-strong military alliance. And just to give people a kind of general little bit of context to help orientate themselves, global military spending now is $2.2 trillion per annum. It’s rising. It’s risen something like 20% in the past 10 years. NATO accounts for half of that, so $1.1 trillion per annum accrues to NATO. And this is all before Ukraine and Gaza, so this is all going to start taking a sharp incline up.

Generally, in terms of emissions, the global military are estimated on patchy data, because they don’t fully report, but something in the order of 5.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. And again, to put that in context, that is more than the 52 countries of the African continent, that come in at — that’s somewhere in the order of 3.5 to 4%. That’s the total greenhouse gas emission burden — it’s hardly a burden — for 52 countries. The global military come in at 5.5%.

So, to look to NATO, to come to NATO, which, as I said, is a 31-member military alliance, accounts for half of military spending, in terms of emissions, it currently would rank — if it were a country, NATO would come in at 40, the equivalent of the Netherlands, for example. And with its 2% of GDP request, what NATO are asking their 31 members to do is to increase on what they’re spending now and get their military spending, annual military spending, up to 2% or more of GDP. OK?

So, what we worked on, we asked the question: Well, what would that mean for greenhouse gas emissions? And what would it mean for military spending? And we worked over this eight-year period of 2021 to 2028. And in the case of military spending, it would be, over that eight-year period, accruing another $2.57 trillion over that eight-year period. And that $2.57 trillion would get you, as an example, 118 years — 118 years — of that paltry $100 billion climate finance figure that was agreed at in the Paris meeting in 2015.

AMY GOODMAN: And what do you mean by “climate finance”?

DEBORAH BURTON: So, this is the $100 billion that was agreed in 2015 at Paris —

AMY GOODMAN: That Hillary Clinton announced in Paris.

DEBORAH BURTON: — as support, climate support, climate finance support, for the world’s most vulnerable countries. And we, the rich countries, are legally bound to deliver that. So what we’re trying to do with the scale of military spending, which is in the trillions — it’s in the trillions — is to put that alongside these, on the one hand, pledges and, on the other hand, gaps. There are so many climate finance gaps.

The 2% GDP target for NATO members in terms of emissions — so there is an emissions burden to this — currently NATO is sitting — again, you know, it’s something in the order of the Netherlands’ emissions, in terms of emissions. That 2% increase over that eight-year period, again, we calculate, would bring it closer to Russia, Russia’s emissions burden. Russia is a major, you know, oil-producing country. It’s something like 2 billion tons of CO2 equivalent.

AMY GOODMAN: In fact, actually, President Putin is expected to be here in Dubai tomorrow.

DEBORAH BURTON: What can we say? I mean, you know, it’s clear here at COP, and certainly in terms of this issue that we’re working on here, the military emissions story. And it’s primarily because of Ukraine, and now with Gaza. Suddenly, we are able to get some oxygen of publicity — you know, we’re here now talking about this — because of this collision between conflict, wars, conflict-related emissions — which, I should say, is not in that 5.5% estimate. This estimate of 5.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions accruing to the military does not include conflict, doesn’t include conflict.

So, with Ukraine and now Gaza, we are able to illustrate, to show, to, as I say, bring oxygen and publicity to the fact that there is an absolute correlation between military spending — so, the more you spend on your big-ticket, gas-guzzling, fossil fuel — totally fossil fuel-reliant hardware — the jets, the tanks, the bombs, the missiles — all of these things that we are seeing raining down on people, they are all fossil fuel dependent. There is an absolute correlation between military spending and the emissions that come from that hardware. And we are going in the wrong direction. We are absolutely going in the wrong direction. And the NATO 2% target, for example, is completely counter to all climate targets.

AMY GOODMAN: Say what you mean by 2% target.

DEBORAH BURTON: Of GDP. So, NATO will say —

AMY GOODMAN: You must spend on the military.

DEBORAH BURTON: They are asking their 31 members to spend 2% —

AMY GOODMAN: I remember Trump, President Trump, kept saying —

DEBORAH BURTON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — “You are not paying your fair share.”

DEBORAH BURTON: In fact, and more, we need you to spend. We need you to spend more. And it doesn’t really stop at NATO. NATO have allies in other parts of the world who are looking at 2% or more. So, this 2% of GDP, it’s important — it doesn’t sound like very much, but it’s very significant, because you’re talking about orders of billions over a period of time.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Shirine al-Jurdi. We just came in on Saturday night. Sunday there was a major protest against what’s happening in Gaza, calling for a ceasefire. There were at least a hundred people protesting, holding a sign that said “ceasefire.” You were one of the people there. The names of the dead were being intoned throughout the protest. You just heard our last segment talking about what’s happening in Gaza. You’re with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Can you talk about the connection between war, weapons and militarism, directly what’s happening in Gaza?

SHIRINE JURDI: Yeah. We can see, like, the gloomy picture just, like, by what we saw now and by Deborah, the numbers that she gave. This is a gloomy picture that we have. And definitely what we see and what we know is that women are disproportionately impacted by conflict. So, what about if you have lack of infrastructures, especially when we talk about conflict? It means we are talking about lack of infrastructures, lack of infrastructures of peace, of institutions, and also lack of the rule of law. And unfortunately, this is all unfolding in Gaza, in the Middle East at large, in other conflict areas, as well, but maybe now we are talking about a Palestine per se and what’s happening in Gaza.

What’s happening is tremendous. I mean, I could not even believe that we are living this at this moment in our history. This is too hard even to believe that we are witnessing that. We are witnessing that within our own eyes. And I think it’s just obvious, like the impact of militarization on women. And we’ve seen it in different spaces. We’ve seen it, like as now was mentioned, like, in hospitals. We’ve seen it with mothers. We’ve seen it, like, at the grassroots. And —

AMY GOODMAN: How many women were pregnant in Gaza?

SHIRINE JURDI: Almost 50,000 women were pregnant at that time. And if we have seen, with the lack of electricity, when electricity was put down, we saw even these infants struggling, struggling to breathe, to continue living. And unfortunately, lots of these newly born kids were also killed. And this is not only a genocide. I mean, this goes beyond humanity.

So, the nexus between climate, militarization, gender is highly now needed, especially now that we are in the COP, and especially that the issue of militarization is not put on the agenda. And at times, like, we see that the circle — if we really want to talk about emissions, if we really want to talk about fossil fuel phaseout, if we really want to talk about GST, if we really want to talk about real impacts and outputs out of this COP, we really need to look at militarization. We need to look at it from first the resources, the production, the export, the import, and how it is being used, like now in Gaza and also in Lebanon the white phosphorus bombs. I don’t know if you noticed or if you saw in TikTok, it went viral how they’re telling people how to remove the white phosphorus bombs. We are used to —

AMY GOODMAN: You mean the white phosphorus from their skin.

SHIRINE JURDI: Yeah, from their skin, because it will keep on going into your skin. And what about the implications that it has on the soil? What about the implications that it has on the water, on the earth, that we are having and breathing, as well?

AMY GOODMAN: I want to read you something from Al Jazeera: “From polluted water supplies to toxic smoke-filled air from burning buildings and bodies, every aspect of life in Gaza is now filled with some form of pollution.” There’s evidence of Israel using white phosphorus weapons both in Gaza and South Lebanon. This has disastrous effects on both the environment and people’s health. You’re focusing on Palestine. You yourself are from Lebanon.

SHIRINE JURDI: Yeah, Amy. In Palestine, we saw it with our own eyes. And we saw because of the many journalists, that they’re risking their lives, and many who lost their lives, as well, risking to take photos and to document the atrocities that are being done. In Lebanon, as well, we have seen also how phosphorus weapons were used. And we saw also how this huge area, green areas of olive trees were burned and put down, whether in Gaza or in Lebanon. I mean, it’s a huge catastrophe, whether at the forest level, whether at the human level. And it’s going beyond, beyond issues of actual present and direct impact, to the trauma, the trauma that everyone is living.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is from Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor: “Due to technological developments affecting the potency of bombs, the explosives dropped on Gaza may be twice as powerful as a nuclear bomb.”

SHIRINE JURDI: Exactly. That was even like two weeks ago, before the ceasefire. So, I could see — like, now I was even scared to see, because, I mean, it’s too — you cannot even watch these bombs that are being — yesterday I was watching — I follow several journalists, and I was watching her, and she was saying, “Now this is a massacre. If these, like now, bombs are being used while we are told to go to the south to a safe space, but there’s no safe space, so this is meant to terminate us.”

AMY GOODMAN: Deborah?

DEBORAH BURTON: You absolutely can’t talk about this without the arms industry.

SHIRINE JURDI: Yeah.

DEBORAH BURTON: Because, I mean, they’re all — when we talk about even emissions, the arms industry — the supply chain for militaries are more polluting than the militaries themselves. It may come as a bit of a surprise that they are like this. The arms industry, just in the way that you can track oil through — the military’s use of oil through war. Of course, when they’re, you know, at war, oil usage goes up. So, you can track profits, war profits to the arms industry. There is no story without fully addressing the culpability of the arms trade.

And, you know, I brought something I want to read, because it will apply to Gaza. It absolutely will apply to Gaza. Their stock shares, their shares are going up, as soon as any conflicts hit. They’re making profits as it is. It’s a very nice life, thank you very much, as it is. When conflict kicks in, it’s off the scale. So, this is the CEO of Raytheon, OK? And I want to read this.

SHIRINE JURDI: Yeah.

DEBORAH BURTON: “Everything that’s being shipped into Ukraine today, of course, is coming out of stockpiles, either at the DOD” — the Department of Defense — “or from our NATO allies, and that’s all great news. Eventually we’ll have to replenish it and we will see a benefit to the business over the coming years.” That’s a guy called Greg Hayes, CEO of Raytheon.

Israel, Israel’s suppliers, everybody that’s involved in the food chain, the kind of war machine food chain that is enabling Israel to do what it is doing on Gaza, will be making money. They will be going home very happy with their bottom lines and their profits in their back pockets.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us. And we will link to your report. Deborah Burton is the co-founder of Tipping Point North South. She leads their Transform Defense project, focused on military emissions and spending, making the link between climate change and militarism. And Shirine al-Jurdi, women, peace and security expert from Lebanon. Thanks so much, both, for being with us.

SHIRINE JURDI: Thank you, Amy, for having us.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 07, 2023

Israeli Forces Intensify Assault on Khan Younis as U.N. Official Decries “Apocalyptic” Situation
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 07, 2023

In Gaza, Israeli tanks are pushing further into the southern city of Khan Younis as its deadly ground assault continues and Palestinian casualties rise. The few functioning hospitals remain completely swamped with an influx of injured people, many of them children. The WHO called the assault on Gaza “humanity’s darkest hour.” At least 16,200 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed since October 7. The U.N.'s top humanitarian relief coordinator said Israel's attack in southern Gaza has been as devastating as in the north, with the “apocalyptic” conditions preventing the delivery of aid. Some 85% of the population has now been displaced.

Ibrahim Mahram: “We suffered from the war of cannons and escaped it to arrive at the war of starvation. Now we cannot find food. We make the food by ourselves. We divide one tomato between all of us. … There is no safe place. They finish off one place at a time, and only God knows where we will end up. Are we going to be alive? Are we going to be martyrs? We do not know what our destiny is. Today I eat, but I do not know if I’m going to eat tomorrow.”

IDF Spokesperson Lauds Reported Ratio of 2 Civilians Killed for Death of Every Hamas Fighter
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 07, 2023

An Israeli military spokesperson appeared on CNN Tuesday and touted a report released this week which said the IDF killed some 5,000 Hamas fighters, which would equal roughly two civilians killed for every Hamas member.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus: “You will find that that ratio is tremendous, tremendously positive, and perhaps unique in the world.”

The comments were swiftly condemned, and the accuracy of the figures have apparently not been verified outside of the Israeli military.

U.S. Bans Visas for Settlers Involved in Violence; Divided Senate Votes on Israeli, Ukraine Funding
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 07, 2023

The Biden administration announced Tuesday it would ban visas for Israeli settlers involved in surging West Bank violence. Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 260 Palestinians and wounded over 3,000 in the occupied West Bank since October 7.

The U.S. government’s rare rebuke of Israel comes as the Senate is voting today on a $106 billion spending package which would send more military funding to Ukraine and Israel. Senate Republicans vowed to block the package over its lack of funding for so-called border security. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders spoke out against the bill on the Senate floor Monday.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: “I do not believe we should be appropriating over $10 billion for the right-wing extremist Netanyahu government to continue its current military approach. What the Netanyahu government is doing is immoral. It is in violation of international law. And the United States should not be complicit.”

Despite his condemnation of Israeli violence, Sanders has refused to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

14 Congressmembers Vote Against House Resolution Conflating Anti-Zionism with Antisemitism
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 07, 2023

Thirteen House Democrats and one Republican, Congressmember Thomas Massie, voted against a new resolution explicitly equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism Tuesday. Ninety-two Democrats voted “present.” The resolution also states the phrase “from the river to the sea” — a popular slogan at protests for Palestinian rights — is a call for the “eradication of the State of Israel and the Jewish people.” Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American congressmember, wrote, “Opposing the policies of the government of Israel and Netanyahu’s extremism is not antisemitic. Speaking up for human rights and a ceasefire to save lives should never be condemned.”

AIPAC Throws Millions at Possible Insurgent Campaigns to Unseat Progressive Democrats
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 07, 2023

In a mounting offensive by AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to unseat progressives who speak up for Palestinian rights, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, who has been courted by AIPAC, announced earlier today he is launching a primary challenge against New York Congressmember Jamaal Bowman.

Last month, two Michigan Democrats running for the U.S. Senate revealed AIPAC offered them $20 million to instead primary Congressmember Rashida Tlaib for her House seat. Nasser Beydoun, a Lebanese American businessman, and Hill Harper, a Hollywood actor-turned-politician, both turned AIPAC down.

Meanwhile, a new book by journalist Ryan Grim reports an AIPAC representative approached Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with an offer to raise $100,000 after her stunning 2018 win. The fundraising was presented as an opening salvo to “start the conversation” about AOC’s position on Israel.

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“Catastrophic”: Gaza Aid Worker on “Horror” of Forced Relocations Amid Israel’s War on Southern Strip
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 06, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/6/ ... transcript

We go to Gaza for an update on Israel’s attack, which is now being described as one of the worst assaults on any civilian population in recent times. As Israeli tanks enter Khan Younis and the Palestinian death toll tops 16,000, we speak with Yousef Hammash. The advocacy officer for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Gaza describes how he and his family are facing internal displacement for the third time during the assault, this time from Khan Younis, where they had fled after Israeli warnings to head to the south of the Gaza Strip. Now in Rafah by the Egyptian border, they are struggling to find shelter and, like thousands of other now-homeless Palestinians, have resorted to living in a makeshift tent. “I left everything behind,” Hammash says about leaving his home in Gaza City, now destroyed. “I didn’t care what I was going to lose. I was looking for the safety of my family.” Hammash says a paltry amount of humanitarian aid is being allowed into Gaza even as refugees of the war face starvation, dehydration and infection. “The amount of aid that’s coming to Gaza is literally not tangible,” he says.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from the U.N. climate summit in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.

We begin today’s show in Gaza, as Israeli tanks are moving into the center of Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city, after days of intense shelling and airstrikes. Palestinian health officials say the death toll in Gaza has topped 16,200, including over 6,600 children. This is a resident of Khan Younis speaking after Israel bombed his home.

HAMDI TANIRA: [translated] There were 30 people inside the house. Twenty of them were children, children aged 15 days, 1 year, 3 years, 4 years. We set up a place for them to sleep throughout the bombardment. We put them to sleep. We went to sleep. All of a sudden, what happened to us, we don’t know. The fire hit us. And like you see, all of it collapsed on top of us. None of us made it out completely OK. Everybody is hurt. How and why, we don’t even understand what happened ourselves. We rushed to the hospitals to check on the children and came back this morning to check the house. Look at this. I swear, we don’t even know how we made it out alive.

AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, released a statement, saying, quote, “The pulverising of Gaza now ranks amongst the worst assaults on any civilian population in our time and age. Each day we see more dead children and new depths of suffering for the innocent people enduring this hell,” he said.

We’re joined now by Yousef Hammash, advocacy officer in Gaza for the Norwegian Refugee Council. He’s joining us today from Rafah.

Yousef, thanks so much for being with us. If you can start off by talking about what’s happening right now, from Khan Younis, where you were, to Rafah, where you have fled now?

YOUSEF HAMMASH: Thanks for hosting me, Amy.

Unfortunately, after seven days of the humanitarian pause, we weren’t expecting that we will see this madness getting increased. The madness is getting bigger and bigger. And directly after the humanitarian pause, the bombing started mainly in the south, and the Israeli land operation started taking place in Khan Younis, and they turned Gaza into three pieces. While it used to be cut into two parts, now it’s three parts. So we have Gaza City and the middle area and Khan Younis and Rafah.

And as the ground operation started the eastern part of Khan Younis, and they asked the residents to flee to Rafah, that’s what forced us to flee for the third time now to Rafah. And hundred thousands of people had to do this, to take this choice to flee into Rafah and to build these small tents made by wooden sticks and plastic under this harsh weather. And it became really crazy situation suddenly. And we had to witness the same as we witnessed in the northern part of Gaza when the military operation — even the war started on 12th — after the war started on 12th of October, when they asked us to flee to the south. And we didn’t have other option, and we fled to the south to Khan Younis, and now we found ourselves doing it again. Hopefully, it’s going to be the last time.

Unfortunately, the humanitarian situation is catastrophic here. People are using anyplace as a shelter. People are living on sidewalks and streets and any empty area they found. They put anything to cover their heads, and they consider it as a shelter, without any means of protection. And it’s a horrible situation that I don’t think I have the ability to describe it. If you see it by your own eyes, you will be shocked. We never witnessed such horror. And you can see it in people’s face. They are in a miserable situation that doesn’t have any option to do. All what they do is looking for their safety, fleeing from a place to another place.

AMY GOODMAN: Yousef, it’s not usual in most situations where the journalists themselves are trying to save their own families and their own lives as you report on the entire situation. If you can track your own journey with your family? I think some 60 journalists, Gazan and Palestinian journalists, about that number, have been killed in these last weeks, including the head of the Gaza journalists’ association, so many cameramen and reporters. But if you can start with your journey where you left, first north, and then going home to Jabaliya, and go from there, and why in each situation the terror and the destruction that you left behind?

YOUSEF HAMMASH: So, at the beginning of the — on 7th October, I had to flee my house, because I lived in Beit Lahia, which is more near to the border, and usually, as in our previous experience from wars and escalation, it’s the first areas to be targeted. And I thought it’s better for me to take my children and my extended family to Jabaliya camp, which is the center of the north, and convincing myself that it’s going to be a bit more safe. And since the moment that I did this decision, I left everything behind. I didn’t care what I’m going to lose. I just was — I was looking for the safety of my family. The two, three days after the war, my house was targeted, and my parents’ house was targeted, and the other house with my brother was targeted.

And on the 12th of — we had to stay in my grandparents’ house in Jabaliya. On the 12th of October, we started to receive these phone calls from Israelis and settlers just threatening us and warning us about what’s coming. And then I had to decide to flee again from Jabaliya to the south, based on what they asked us. And again, our responsibility towards our children and our extended families forced us to take these options. We fled to Khan Younis without anything, literally. We had to start our new life. And I was lucky because I have some relatives there, so I had to — I managed to find a roof to cover my head.

And I wasn’t expecting that we will live this horror again, and we had to take this option again for the third time to go to Rafah. But, unfortunately, in Rafah we don’t have that option to have a roof to cover our heads. And since two days, I’m trying, surfing around Rafah, looking for anyplace to shelter my family. And unfortunately, until now, I didn’t succeed to find a place. Today I had to go to build a tent for my family, finding a safe place, as they call it, in al-Mawasi area, that’s going to be much safer there. And we follow what’s the instruction that — what we receive. And I had to do the same as the other hundred thousands of other people in Gaza who had to take that option also. So, I had to build a tent. I don’t know how we will manage to fit in it, but this is the option that we have.

But especially the two days when the military operation started in Khan Younis, the horror that we saw from the bombardment, the nonstopping bombardment — I was calculating for the timing between each missile was eight seconds, imagining we were living in an earthquake, Amy. And that’s what’s, again, always putting us in a situation in front of our children that we are useless to protect them. We cannot even provide protection for our children and our — my sisters, for example. I felt very useless in front of them because I cannot do anything for them. So we had to take that option, convincing ourselves again that we will be safe. I am pretty sure there is no place safe in Gaza. But we’ll do as much as — I will take whatever it takes. I will do it to protect my family.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, you’re not a journalist. You’re an aid worker. You are an advocacy officer in Gaza for the Norwegian Refugee Council. But your descriptions of what is happening there are so critical. How do you do your work and the other 50 or so Norwegian Refugee Council workers do their work in Gaza as they’re being forced to flee? And are you trying to get now over the border from Rafah into Egypt?

YOUSEF HAMMASH: Yeah, Amy, we are trying to do our best, because this is our role, and this is why we are here. But, unfortunately, we are in the same situation like everyone is here. During the humanitarian pause, we were assessing the situation, trying to do distribution plan, because we are trying to help as much as we can people in need. The majority of — the entire population in Gaza are in need. So, you have to understand the situation in general. Half of the population before 7th October was relying on humanitarian aid. Imagine adding this catastrophic situation to the need of people. The entire population in Gaza is in need. And if you combine us all as humanitarian actors, we cannot cover the need that we are having here.

We used these seven days to manage to have our trucks entered through Rafah and to do our distribution plan and trying to assist as much as we can. But then we found ourselves in the circle of violence again. And unfortunately, even in front of the situation now, we are useless. We cannot protect ourselves even as humanitarian workers. There is no protection for any of us. We are all in Gaza under the same circumstances. We are trying, but the situation is preventing us. And trust me, many of my colleagues are — had to sleep in the streets —

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what —

YOUSEF HAMMASH: Sorry. Go ahead, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what kind of aid is getting through and isn’t getting through, and what it means when you have something like 1.8 million, 1.9 million Palestinians, out of — what? — 2.3 million, who are on the run, who are internally displaced?

YOUSEF HAMMASH: Honestly, Amy, what all of us as humanitarian actors can do is like a drop in the ocean of needs here. And we keep asking for allowing more and more trucks of aid to enter, but it’s too political, and everyone understands the situation now. They allow only — there is not even an accurate number for how many trucks per day we can get through Rafah. It’s too political situation, what’s bringing us to understand it. Trust me, in the past few days, we were chasing our trucks. We were trying to find solution how to get it through Rafah, manage — store it in some place, then trying to distribute it as fast as we can, because we understand it’s nothing comparing to the need. So we are trying to do our best. Even if it was few people that we can assist and help, it is something. But even to reach that small something is not easy. It’s almost impossible because of the situation that we are living in. The amount of aid that’s coming to Gaza is literally —

AMY GOODMAN: Yousef Hammash —

YOUSEF HAMMASH: — not tangible and is not affecting the need. It’s not really affecting the amount of need that we are having in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you so much for being with us, Yousef Hammash, advocacy officer in Gaza for the Norwegian Refugee Council. He fled Khan Younis earlier this week, joining us now from Rafah. He was in Beit Lahia originally, fled to the Jabaliya refugee camp, then to Khan Younis, then to Rafah near the border crossing with Egypt.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 07, 2023

More Palestinian Civilians Killed as Israel’s Assault on Gaza Enters Third Month
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 07, 2023

Israeli tanks have advanced into the center of the city of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip as Israel’s assault on the besieged Palestinian territory enters its third month. On Wednesday, an Israeli strike on the Jabaliya refugee camp killed 22 family members of Moamen Al-Sharafi, a correspondent for Al Jazeera Arabic, including his parents and siblings. Palestinians in parts of southern Gaza that Israel has claimed are safe continue to come under fire. This is Amir Magnam, a 5-year-old boy injured Wednesday when an Israeli strike hit a school in eastern Khan Younis where his family was sheltering.

Amir Magnam: “I went into the classroom and went to play with my friend. Then suddenly I heard a sound going boom, and we ran. A rock fell on me, on my legs, and then I ran away.”

Reporter: “Who got injured?”

Amir Magnam: “Father. A big rock fell on father, hit him here on the leg. A big rock fell on me here on my leg.”

As Israeli Siege Continues, U.N. Warns 97% of Gazans Have “Inadequate” Food Supplies
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 07, 2023

Gaza’s Health Ministry says Israeli attacks have killed more than 16,200 people — more than 7,100 of them children. In a new report, the World Food Programme finds at least 97% of households in northern Gaza have “inadequate” supplies of food to meet their needs. A third of residents of southern Gaza reported high levels of “severe” or “very severe” hunger.

Reuters Investigation Reveals Israeli Tank Killed Journalist Issam Abdallah and Injured 6 Others
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 07, 2023

In Lebanon, a Reuters investigation has revealed an Israeli tank crew killed one of its journalists and wounded six other reporters on October 13 by firing two shells in quick succession from Israel while the journalists were live-streaming cross-border shelling. The attack killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and injured six others, including Agence France-Presse reporter Christina Assi. Reuters has condemned the killing and is demanding that Israel explain its actions.

U.N. Chief António Guterres Invokes Article 99 in Rare Move to Force Debate on Gaza Ceasefire
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 07, 2023

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has invoked Article 99 of the U.N. Charter in a bid to force a debate at the Security Council on a resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. Guterres’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric announced the move on Wednesday.

Stéphane Dujarric: “The secretary-general urges the members of the Security Council to press to avert a humanitarian catastrophe, and he appeals for a humanitarian ceasefire to be declared.”

It’s the first time Guterres has invoked Article 99 since he became U.N. secretary-general seven years ago — and just the fourth time in U.N. history.

Doctors Without Borders Holds Vigil for Medical Workers Killed in Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 07, 2023

In New York City, medical workers with the French charity Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, held a candlelight vigil outside the United Nations headquarters Wednesday calling for a ceasefire in Gaza as they honored colleagues who’ve been killed by Israel’s assault on hospitals and clinics. Four MSF staff members are among the hundreds of medical workers who have been killed in Israel’s attacks since October. This is Dr. Africa Stewart, an obstetrician and chair of MSF’s board of directors.

Dr. Africa Stewart: “We speak out now because you cannot deliver humanitarian aid while you fear for your own life. I’m here for the mommies. I’m here to remind us how hard it is to run full speed when you’re pregnant, how debilitating it is to decide if you’re going to hold your toddler’s hand or a parent’s hand as you flee. Our colleagues are being killed at the bedside of our patients. This must stop. We need basic perinatal care, which includes water and food and electricity.”

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“Terrorized”: Gaza Poet Mosab Abu Toha on Being Stripped, Jailed & Beaten by Israeli Forces
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
December 07, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/7/ ... transcript

We speak with celebrated Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha for his first interview after he was jailed and beaten by Israeli forces, when he was detained at a checkpoint in Gaza while heading to Rafah with his family. He was rounded up with scores of other Palestinians. “I felt humiliated. I felt terrified and terrorized by this army because they were ordering us to do everything at gunpoint,” says Toha, now in Cairo. He calls on Western leaders to stop supporting the violence against Palestinians. “If you can’t stop the war, if you can’t stop the carnage, the genocide, just stop financing it.”

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has invoked Article 99 of the U.N. Charter for the first time in decades to press the Security Council to support a ceasefire in Gaza as Israel intensifies its assault, which began two months ago today, on October 7th, after Hamas attacked Israel.

In a letter, Guterres wrote, quote, “Amid constant bombardment by the Israel Defense Forces, and without shelter or the essentials to survive, I expect public order to completely break down soon due to the desperate conditions,” he wrote.

He went on to write, quote, “We are facing a severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system. The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region. Such an outcome must be avoided at all cost.”

We begin today’s show with the celebrated Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, who was recently jailed and beaten by Israeli forces. He was detained at a checkpoint in Gaza as he was headed toward Rafah with his family. He was rounded up with scores of other Palestinians. After he was released from an Israeli jail two days later, Abu Toha posted a message on social media, writing, quote, “I’m safe but still have pain in nose and teeth after being beaten by Israeli army. I gave them all my family’s passports, including my American son’s but they didn’t return anything. Also my clothes & my children’s were taken and not returned to me. No wallet, money, credit cards,” he wrote.

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab Abu Toha’s detention sparked global outcry from the literary community and beyond. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Progressive and other publications. He founded the Edward Said Library in Gaza. His first book of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear, won the American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The poetry collection was published by City Lights Books.

On Sunday, Mosab Abu Toha managed to leave Gaza with his wife and three children through the Rafah border. He joins us now from Cairo, Egypt, for his first interview since he was jailed.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Mosab. Thank you so much for being with us. I’m sorry for all you have gone through. Can you describe what happened, where you were detained, where you were jailed, what happened to you when you were in Israeli prison?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Thank you so much for having me.

I made it from the north of Gaza to the south of Gaza, but I was jailed by the Israeli army. I was trying to cross and reach the Rafah border crossing. Our names were listed by the American — by the Department of State, because my youngest son, 3 years and a half, was born in America. He’s an American citizen. So I was trying to cross from the north of Gaza, where I spent the past two months, I would say, to the south of Gaza, where Rafah is, and where we were advised to go. But at the checkpoint, I was picked by the Israeli army, along with about 200 other people. I was picked by the Israeli soldier. He called me by describing me. He said, “The man with the black backpack and the red-haired boy, put the boy down and let him go, and come to me.” So, I mean, I took our passports, my son’s and also my wife’s and two other children, thinking that I would show the passports and also my American son to them, so that they would just let us go. But I was surprised, because he ordered me, very aggressively, to put the son down and come to join the queue of other people who were kidnapped with me.

I mean, there was a young — a younger man. He was so scared, and he said, “I wanted my mother. I want to be with my mom. Oh, my mom, come help me,” etc. I tried to calm him down, telling him, “Oh, don’t worry. Maybe they are going to ask us some question, and then we would go.” But that was not the case.

I was then summoned by another Israeli soldier who was sitting next to another soldier who was pointing his gun at us. They asked us to recite our names and our ID numbers, and then I was led to another Israeli Jeep, in front of whom — I mean, there were three Israelis soldiers — I was forced to take off all my clothes. I just took off my pants and my shirt, etc., and I kept my boxer shorts on. But I was surprised when they asked me to just also take off my boxer shorts. So I was naked. And I felt humiliated. I felt terrified and terrorized by this army, because they were ordering us to do everything at gunpoint. And then I was beaten in my face. I was beaten in my stomach. And I still have pain in my face.

And later, I realized they were taking us to Bir As-Saba, or Be’er Sheva, about two hours away from Gaza, without knowing what they were going to do to us. I had little clothes to warm my body during the cold weather. And so, I mean, they took me for interrogation, and I did tell them all my story. And I wasn’t aware that the whole world, especially in America, were just writing about me and asking for my release. I think this was one reason — I mean, I didn’t do anything in my life; I didn’t harm any person, although I lived under occupation all my life. And I was wounded when I was 16. I got a piece of shrapnel just a few centimeters away from my windpipe, so I was harmed. My house was bombed. But I myself didn’t harm anyone. But I was harmed again. And I am still harmed by the fact that my family and my neighbors are still in Gaza. And the last time I was in touch with my mother and my sisters and also my brothers and their children was five days ago, the same day I left Gaza. So I have no single piece of news whether they are alive or dead.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Mosab, I’d like to ask you — I mean, of course, you mentioned very soon after you arrived in Egypt that you remain very, very concerned because your parents and your siblings are in Gaza. You have not been able to reach them for five days. Are you able to reach others in Gaza? I’d just like to read very briefly what a leading military analyst from the U.S. has said, drawing an analogy between the Second World War’s bombardment of German cities like Dresden and Cologne and the contemporary present bombardment of Gaza by Israel. This is Robert Pape, writing, “Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne — some of the world’s heaviest-ever bombings are remembered by their place names. Gaza will also go down as a place name denoting one of history’s heaviest conventional bombing campaigns.” So, Mosab, if you could talk about that and what you know now about what’s going on in Gaza since you left?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Well, I mean, the situation, I think, is different than the other place names that you mentioned. For your information and your respected audience, I still have friends whose houses were bombed a few weeks ago and whose bodies are still not retrieved. And I wrote in one of my posts that not only are Gazans, are we and Gazans concerned about being killed under the rubble of our house, but also of being — maybe of being alive under the rubble and no one coming to rescue us. So, there are no fire trucks. There are no civil defense staff. There is no fuel. There are no equipment — there is no equipment to retrieve the bodies of those who might be still alive under the bombing of their house — after the bombing of their houses. So I don’t think Gaza could be compared to any other place on Earth.

And now with social media and all the world watching us, I mean, it’s different from maybe Second World War. I mean, people would hear the news of the bombing of a house or something maybe later. But people are just watching us live, and no one can step in to stop their carnage, the genocide that is committed against my family, my neighbors, my friends, my students, my fellow writers and artists.

So, during the truce a few weeks ago — I think two weeks ago there was the truce. I was in Deir al-Balah in the second — in the other half of the Gaza Strip, while my brother Hamza, who is a father of three children and whose wife is pregnant and is about to give birth — so, that’s another issue that no one talks about, I mean, the reality and the circumstances with which women in Gaza are living. I mean, they are talking about sexual violence against Israeli women, but no one talks about the violence against our lives. No one talks about pregnant women. No one talks about women themselves buried under the rubble with their families. So, this is not called violence? So, you just care about sexual violence? That’s all you care about? [inaudible] how this world is really thinking.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Mosab, so, could you talk about that? Could you say —

MOSAB ABU TOHA: And this needs to stop. And you need to —

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Mosab, I was saying —

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yes.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: — if you could elaborate on that?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Hello?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: What the situation of Palestinian women, in particular, as you pointed out, Palestinian women who are pregnant, given what the situation in hospitals is? You’ve said a little bit about this in the past. If you could elaborate?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Well, I mean, you know, women, just like other women in the world — I mean, women in Gaza have their own needs. I men, there are no clean bathrooms. There are no clean toilets. And they need their own things. You know, when a woman gets the period, I mean, there are no — you know, there are no stuff for them to take care of their bodies. And there are also the other pregnant women. So, many hospitals in Gaza are out of service right now, not only for the wounded but also for pregnant women. No one talks about this. You need to talk about this. Where can my sister-in-law, my brother’s wife, where can she give birth? And is there enough clothes for the newborn baby? So, you don’t care about this violence committed against parents? How they are going to manage their lives? No one talks about this.

This is violence in itself, not only killing us, but about — so it’s also about the lack of water, the lack of food. You know, so, before the start of this carnage, we used to buy 25 kilo of wheat flour for 40 shekels, which is about $12. Yesterday, my wife’s uncle messaged me, and he said, “I paid 500 shekels,” which is about $130. So he paid $130 to get 25 kilograms of flour wheat — wheat flour — and if you could find it, of course, because there is lack in respect to wheat flour and other basic things. But so, if he had the money to buy it, there are other people who have not been able to get any money because they are jobless. Most people in Gaza depend on daily jobs — farmers, sellers, etc. So, there are — the majority of people in Gaza don’t have money, so they are sometimes begging other people to give them money. So, no one talks about this. They are just talking about sexual violence, about October 7th. But this has been going on, even before October 7th, by the way.

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab Abu Toha, we are reporting on everything, the horrific stories we’re hearing from October 7th, but also what happened before October 7th to Palestinians and after. And I wanted to get your response to the World Health Organization calling the assault on Gaza humanity’s “darkest hour.” The U.N.'s top humanitarian relief coordinator said Israel's attack on southern Gaza has been as devastating as in the north, with the apocalyptic conditions preventing the delivery of aid, some 85% of the population now displaced. And particularly, if you could talk about your conversations with doctors and nurses in Gaza? You tweeted, “Just imagine yourself as a father watching your child not only having his/her leg amputated, but also dying of pain. Do you still feel you are a father? That there are still humans in the world?” Talk about the hospitals.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Mm-hmm. So, the first hospital I was able to enter was Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital, which is in Deir al-Balah. And I went there — I mean, I don’t like to go to hospitals, because, first of all, there is no space for me to enter. I mean, beds are full of patients and wounded people. And at the same time, the corridors, the inner hallways are just full of people lying there. I mean, wounded people are getting treated, getting surgeries while on the floor. So, but I had to go to the Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah to get some treatment for my face and my bleeding nose. So, there are not enough doctors to treat the patients and the wounded people. And there are just bodies everywhere. People even — I mean, they would just go and bury people without their relatives around, because their relatives have died with them, which is really, really heartbreaking. And people are turned into numbers and names. They would just put a body in a piece of cloth and just write their names, and that’s it. They would just take them to the cemetery.

So I was able to talk to some doctors and nurses at the hospital. And I was shocked. I mean, I knew that there were not enough medications, but I was told by one nurse about the case of a child who had her leg amputated. And because there was no anesthesia, no painkillers, the child died while she was having her leg amputated. And I’m wondering, I mean: How would I feel as a father if my child had to have her leg or arm amputated, while she is watching her arm or leg amputated, and then she would continue to bleed, and then she would die because of the pain? And I’m asking all the people in the world just to put themselves in my place as a father. And I’m asking them: Are you really ready in the future when a Gazan child meets you maybe in the street or when you come visit Gaza or visit the cemeteries in Gaza? What would you say to this child? What have you done to protect his family? So, you are living in the Western world —

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Mosab, finally —

MOSAB ABU TOHA: — and you are, in some way or another, supporting Israel — yes.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: No, please go ahead. Finish.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: I mean, you are — in some way or another, you are supporting Israel, not — I mean, you know, you are paying taxes, which is going to — I mean, most of the taxes are going to Israel. And I’m really shocked by the American administration, and I hope that my voice would reach the American administration people. So, when October 7th happened, you went to Israel. You showed your support. You offered weapons, and you offered money. So you were able to do everything. But now you are asking Israel to protect — to minimize the casualties among the civilians. Can you do anything to protect the civilians? So, you are calling Israel to minimize the casualties, OK? So, what can you do as an American administration to force Israel to abide by the world law? Is it really hard for you to stop the carnage, to protect the civilian people, to protect hospitals, to protect shelters, UNRWA schools?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, finally, Mosab, what is your message to the U.S., to President Biden, and to European leaders?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Well, I think if you can’t stop the war, if you can’t stop the carnage, the genocide, just stop financing it. Stop providing more weapons to Israel. Because these weapons are just killing children who are just like your other children. I mean, your children and you, as an American or a European parent, you could be born here in my place in Gaza. Your child could be living in an UNRWA school, in a shelter. They could be bombed in a classroom. Instead of studying and, you know, continuing education, your child could be just sheltering in a classroom with no teacher, with no books. They are just being educated how to survive, if they could.

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab, we just have 30 seconds, but were you ever told why you were jailed? You were jailed — I think that day about 200 Palestinians in Gaza were jailed. There was a great outcry for you. Do you know if the others were released?

MOSAB ABU TOHA: No. I mean, there are a few other people I knew by name because they are from the same town as me, from Beit Lahia. And now it’s — so, I was kidnapped on November 19th, and now today it’s December 7th. Until now, there are other people who are still detained by the Israeli army, and their families are just contacting me: “Did you — do you know anything about our…” I told them, “I just left. I was just released. I don’t have any news about your family.” So they are still kidnapped.

And the Israelis, by the way, accused me of being a Hamas member. You know, I mean, what a ridiculous accusation. I have been living in America for the past four years. And I’ve been hurt, you know, without — I asked them. I asked the Israeli captain if they have any photograph, if they have any satellite photo of me holding a weapon or being in any place that could cause any harm to you. And he slapped me in the face. He said, “You give me the proof!”

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab Abu Toha, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Palestinian poet and author, jailed by Israeli authorities as he and his family fled Gaza. His son is an American citizen. He is a columnist, a teacher, and founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza, also author of the American Book Award-winning book of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza.