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.