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

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“Like Lying in a Coffin”: UNICEF Spokesperson Warns of Devastating Toll on Gaza’s Children
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
MARCH 29, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/29/ ... transcript

As the death toll in Gaza tops 32,600, we speak with UNICEF spokesperson James Elder in Rafah near the Egyptian border, now home to some 1.5 million Palestinians seeking shelter from the fighting. He says Israel’s continued obstruction of aid into the territory is a “man-made and preventable” crisis of hunger and acute malnutrition that could be ended if Israel just opened access to more aid trucks, especially in northern Gaza, where desperate people could be reached in as little as 10 minutes. “When I’m on the street, every person, the first thing they want to tell me, in English or Arabic, is 'We need food, we need food,'” Elder tells Democracy Now! “They are saying that because their assumption is the world doesn’t know, because how would this be allowed to happen if the world knew?” He also reiterates UNICEF’s call for a full ceasefire and warns against Israel’s planned ground invasion of Rafah, which he describes as “a city of children.”

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.

In Gaza, the death toll has now topped 32,600, including 14,000 children, with over 75,000 people wounded. At least 31 people, including 27 children, have already died of malnutrition and dehydration.

For more, we go to Rafah in Gaza, where we’re joined by James Elder, spokesperson for UNICEF, which stands for the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, James Elder. Thank you so much for joining us as you stand outside a hospital in Rafah. Talk about where you’ve been in Gaza and what’ve you found.

JAMES ELDER: Amy, hi there.

Look, I’ve been south to north, north to south. If we start here in the south, in Rafah, this is a city that’s normally 300,000 people, and it’s now about 1.5 million, so you can imagine the congestion. I’m looking now at a field hospital. The number of times, Amy, well, I’ll walk around and just think this place feels like a war zone. Now, of course, it is a war zone. So, if I’m in a hospital, you’re talking about being in a hospital, and it is absolutely heaving with people. So, the corridors are now no longer corridors. They are tented up, people using blankets, whatever they can, thousands and thousands of people trying to take refuge in hospitals, and, of course, thousands and thousands of people with the wounds of war in hospitals. So, here, Rafah, this is a city of children, Amy. This is where most people from Gaza have now fled, with a very real fear of an offensive here.

When you go further north, to the very north, as I’ve been to Jabaliya and Gaza City, well, first you see the devastation. I’m seeing, Amy, entire cities turned to rubble, more or less, things I’ve never seen before, every street. When I go with people from that city, drivers who — drivers who grew up in that city, and who simply don’t know how to get around anymore, Amy, because they’ve lost those landmarks to direct them. And then you see the nutritional status, those children you spoke about. More children died overnight in the last couple of days, dehydration, malnutrition. I see those families, Amy. I see mothers in tears, crouched over cots with children and babies who are paper thin, thousands of people on the street doing that universal sign: food now.

That’s some sense, north to south. Whatever it is, it’s desperation, and it’s exhaustion. People have done everything. They break their last piece of bread to share if they have four or five families stay with them. But I’ve sat with families this morning that I can speak to. They’re exhausted. And yeah, they’re confused as to why they don’t have the world’s attention.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get your response to the latest news, James Elder.

JAMES ELDER: I’ve got no hearing, guys.

AMY GOODMAN: The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to ensure unhindered aid could get into Gaza. The legally binding order was issued after a request by South Africa, which brought the genocide case to Israel in January. The court noted in its latest order, “Palestinians in Gaza are no longer facing only a risk of famine, but … famine is setting in.” The judges also cited U.N. data which finds at least 31 people, including 27 children, having already died of malnutrition and dehydration. The court is ordering Israel to submit a report within a month showing how it’s implemented the order. The significance of this, as the U.N. warns famine is imminent in northern Gaza? And the number of children who have been affected, James?

JAMES ELDER: Yes. I mean, we saw a report, Amy, almost two weeks ago by the most respected nutrition body in terms of crises on the planet, and it is talking about more people now being in that, what we call catastrophic food insecurity than in their 20 years of reporting. If we look at the north of Gaza, where before this war, less than 1% of children under the age of 5, less than 1%, suffered acute malnutrition. Now if we look at those north, to 2-year-olds, the most vulnerable, Amy, it’s one in three. One in three. This is the speed at which we’ve seen this catastrophic decline.

So, yes, at the United Nations, from my own executive director to the secretary-general, have been calling for months and months for unhindered, safe — sort of very difficult place to work — safe access for aid. Now, that’s road access. The most efficient and effective way to get supplies, lifesaving supplies, food — food, water, medicines, to people is on the road network, not just from the south, because that can be difficult. It’s 30 or 40 — 30 miles, doesn’t sound like a long way. It is a long way when you’ve got tens of thousands of people on the street. Amy, there are crossings that are 10 minutes away from those people who are hand to mouth, from those mothers who are cradling children who are severely malnourished. Ten minutes away.

So, in the same way that this crisis, this nutritional crisis affecting children and civilians in Gaza, is man-made and preventable, it can be turned around. Now, if you want to be a glass half-full, that’s good news. This can be reversed. But we do need those decisions to be made. We need all hindrances gone, all obstructions gone. We need safety. You know, we know that more my United Nations colleagues have been killed in this war than in any war since the creation of the United Nations. We’ve seen those horrendous videos of desperate people, desperate because they see a truck of food once a week — there is no consistency — desperate people being killed accessing food. There are crossings in the north. If those are opened, we can flood the Gaza Strip with aid, and this is solved within a matter of weeks, magic pace that UNICEF has, changes their lives dramatically.

But we’re not seeing that. Instead, UNRWA, the biggest U.N. agency here, the backbone of humanitarian aid on the Gaza Strip, that was sending 50% — Amy, 50% of the food to the north, they’ve been blocked. So we have to be very clear and very, very honest in terms of what the restrictions are. The restrictions currently are why we are seeing this level of malnutrition, particularly among children.

AMY GOODMAN: So, why — what is Israel saying to you, to the international body, the United Nations, to you particularly at UNICEF, why they’re not letting this aid go, and particularly saying they will not work with UNRWA at all in northern Gaza?

JAMES ELDER: Yes. Look, obviously, you know, we function here based on our impartiality, and we talk to anyone. So you’re right to ask. I’m not privy to the exact conversations. Like anyone else, you hear the statements made that there is, you know, limitless access here. The reality on the ground says differently. In the first three weeks of March, one-quarter of aid convoys were denied. As I say, the restrictions on UNRWA are immense.

I can speak to my own experience of the complexities of even getting that food aid to the north, which is why if you come in from the north in those crossings, that’s a game changer. In the same way that the world has focused a little bit on airdrops and ships, obviously, right now the desperation is so great that those people who have been forcibly put into this position will take food aid wherever it comes from. It shouldn’t be the case, when, I mean, in the north, you’re talking about an area that was famed for strawberries — not for malnutrition, for strawberries. But we have to be clear that when a ship comes in, it has the equivalent tonnage of around 12 trucks. There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of trucks, you know, five miles from where I am now. You could get hundreds and hundreds of trucks within 10 minutes, if that border crossing was open in the north, to those people who are cut off. That’s an important thing to remember.

When I was in the north, Amy, those people are cut off. You’re past the last checkpoint when we access those people. When I’m on the street, every person, the first thing they want to tell me, in English or Arabic, is “We need food. We need food.” Now, I know this, of course. This is my work. But of course I listen to them. What was revealing is why they’re saying that. They are saying that because their assumption is the world doesn’t know, because how would this be allowed to happen if the world knew?

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the effects on children of malnutrition? If they don’t die of hunger, the effects of the dehydration and malnutrition that they’re experiencing now?

JAMES ELDER: Yeah, look, in one sense, it’s one of the saddest things you’ll see, because a malnourished child, literally, their body starts to feed on itself in its last desperate acts. As my executive director said when she was — she’s been in malnutrition centers around the world. Remember, in UNICEF, we are serving children around the world, and critical, critical scenarios for children particularly on nutrition, from places from Sudan to Ethiopia. And she spoke of just the silence in a malnutrition ward, because babies do not have the energy to cry.

But what usually kills children with this most severe form of malnutrition is a disease, a simple thing, pneumonia, a simple childhood disease. Children with severe acute malnutrition are 10 times more likely to be killed by that. And that is something that UNICEF has been warning about here for months. Because now Rafah has become a city of children, because the water system and the sanitation system have been devastated, it’s impossible to have the services here that children need. I mean healthcare. Never before in Gaza have so many children needed healthcare. Only one-third, one in three, hospitals are partially functioning. Toilets — toilets, both in terms of dignity but in terms of sanitation, Amy — the global standard in an emergency is one toilet for 20 people. Here we’re looking at about one toilet for 800. For a shower, multiply that by four, one shower for three-and-a-half thousand people. Imagine for a teenage girl, much less, yes, a pregnant woman or a child. So, our great fear, which we are starting to see, is when you have severe malnutrition and you add in disease, this is the perfect storm. This is when this horror show for children becomes just as lethal on the ground as it currently is from the skies.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, of course, this is aside from the — I think the number has topped 14,000 of children who have died, uncounted number of them still in the rubble. If you can talk about this death toll, and also compare Gaza to other conflict zones you’ve been in, James Elder? You’ve been all over the world, to say the least.

JAMES ELDER: Yeah, look, for me, Amy, in a way, I’m loath to make the comparison, simply because, for UNICEF and myself, of course, a child is a child wherever they are. And when you see what’s happened to children, you know, from Ukraine to Afghanistan, it’s horrendous, and that’s why my colleagues are frontline workers in all of these places.

Yes, though, there is something particular here, the intensity of devastation. Obviously, it’s such a big child population in a compact space with, let’s be clear, indiscriminate attacks. The numbers you’re sharing there, it’s unprecedented. And when you see in a hospital those wounds of war to children, Amy, remembering that when there is a missile or a bomb on a family home, it’s not just one injury to a child. It’s the broken bones. It’s the burns. It’s very hard to look, but we must keep looking, the burns on a child. And it’s the shrapnel. These are the images that I turn, every time I turn around in a hospital, and I don’t think I’ve seen that, that consistency.

You have these rare moments, Amy, of clutching onto some hope. And once was a moment in a hospital, a little boy Mohamed, now, he had bad burns, but as I walked in to Mohamed, he made this little effort — it hurt him — to put a little thumbs-up, an unsolicited movement. And I just thought, “Wow! What a character!” And then the adult with him explained that Mohamed was also the best student in his school, showed me photographs of this beautiful little boy receiving awards. And I thought, “This little guy’s going to be OK.” And you hold onto these moments. Then that adult explained to me that when the missile hit Mohamed’s home, it killed everyone. And because families are hunkering down, I mean everyone — mother, father, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. Mohamed didn’t know this yet, but Mohamed is now the last surviving member of his entire family.

These horror stories, Amy, are being normalized here. I didn’t think I’d ever hear such a thing in Gaza, but I’m hearing it time and again, time and again. So, yes, and these wounds of war, I should add, you know, in the last two days, I made a point to go to hospitals since the ceasefire decision, which was a cause of great hope here. Great hope. Well, that hope has been well and truly drowned out right now by bombs. And I saw many children who doctors did not think would still be alive today based on the bombings that have occurred since Monday’s decision.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re standing, James Elder, in Rafah. If you can talk about what’s happening right now in Rafah? You have Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying, absolutely, an invasion, ground invasion, will happen. It’s not a matter of “if,” it’s a matter of “when.” You have talked about a possible ground invasion in Rafah. What would this mean?

JAMES ELDER: The horrors in Gaza do start to outstrip our ability to describe them. And it would be a catastrophe. But, of course, that word has been rightly used many times. But this is a city of children, as I say. This city, Rafah, now has twice the population density of New York City, but — I don’t know what you can see, OK, but that’s as tall as they get. This is ground level. And most people — most people are in tents. They’re in street corners. They’re on beaches. They’re in what was agriculture, what was agriculture. They’re ground level, 600,000 children here.

And what they’ve endured, I mean, we’re in uncharted territory when it comes to the mental health of these children. Amy. Night after night, even for me — and I get to leave this place — for me, I lie in bed, and you hear the bombardments that wake you, and your building shakes, and you lie there feeling like lying in a coffin. Like, what are the chances of waking tomorrow morning? Children here go through that with their families every night. Every night with a mother and child, there’s no lullaby you sing to a child to drown that out.

And so, for those people here, not only are they just holding on, their coping mechanisms at a wit’s end, they have nowhere to go. We have to understand that. It’s not — the social services are devastated. Khan Younis, the city next door, as I say, I’ve never seen that level of annihilation. Gaza City, further north, the same. There’s talk of an area near here, al-Mawasi. It’s a beach. You know, literally, you’d be doubling the population density again. So, it’s a terrifying thought, Amy. I didn’t imagine it would come to this, but, yes, as you rightly say, the conversation is very commonplace now. I just wish people could see the density of people here, could see the exhaustion, could listen to a doctor as I speak to him in a hospital as he’s treating a child with massive head wounds, and the doctor’s in tears, saying, “What did this child do?” Well, we will see that on a scale I don’t think any of us, certainly not me, can imagine.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, what would an immediate ceasefire mean for the children of Gaza, for the whole population there?

JAMES ELDER: You know, I’m glad you end like that, because that gives me a chill. Everyone asks still: Do we have hope? Is there hope? And most people hold on to this idea, Amy, of like, as a mother said, “I’ve lost my — I’ve lost two children. I’ve lost my home. I’ve lost my ability to earn income. I’ve lost my ability to feed my remaining child. All I have is hope.”

Now, a ceasefire is a game changer. Ceasefire. Firstly, let’s get the hostages home. There are children somewhere, after five-and-a-half months. End the torment. End the torment for they and their families. A ceasefire enables us finally to flood the Gaza Strip with aid and bring this nutritional crisis, imminent famine — make no doubt about it, imminent famine. And a ceasefire, Amy, means that those families that I spoke of, who tonight again will endure what I mentioned there, they will go to bed, if there’s a ceasefire, a mother and her child, and they will know, for the first time in months, that they will wake up tomorrow.

AMY GOODMAN: James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson — UNICEF stands for the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund — joining us today from Rafah in the Gaza Strip. Thank you so much, and be safe.

When we come back, we speak with the head of a corporate activist group who was just subpoenaed before Jim Jordan’s House panel. We’ll talk about shareholder and corporate responsibility. Stay with us.

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IDF Drone Bombed World Central Kitchen Aid Convoy Three Times, Targeting Armed Hamas Member Who Wasn't There: The strike on the aid convoy, which travelled along a route approved by the Israeli army, killed seven workers of the World Central Kitchen – but the target, an armed man thought to be a terrorist, never left the warehouse with the cars
by Yaniv Kubovich
Haaretz
Apr 2, 2024 3:03 pm IDT
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/202 ... ff29360000

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One of the vehicles hit in the airstrike near Deir al-Balah, on Tuesday.Credit: Ahmed Zakot/ Reuters

The Israeli strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in the Gaza Strip on Monday night was launched because of suspicion that a terrorist was travelling with the convoy.

An Israeli drone fired three missiles one after the other at a World Central Kitchen aid convoy, that left Monday night to escort an aid truck to a food warehouse in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, according to defense sources familiar with the details.

According to the defense sources, the cars were clearly marked on the roof and sides as belonging to the organization, but the war room of the unit responsible for security of the route that the convoy travelled identified an armed man on the truck and suspected that he was a terrorist.

[x]
John Hudson @John_Hudson
Munition dropped right through the World Central Kitchen logo

4:01 AM · Apr 2, 2024

Until the actions that preceded the strike, carried out by a Hermes 450 drone, were completed, the truck reached the warehouse with the World Central Kitchen's three cars, with seven volunteers in them – two dual-national Palestinians (U.S. and Canada) and five citizens of Australia, the UK, and Poland.

A few minutes later, the three cars left the warehouse without the truck, on which the ostensibly armed man was located. According to the defense sources, that armed man did not leave the warehouse. The cars travelled along a route preapproved and coordinated with the IDF.

At some point, when the convoy was driving along the approved route, the war room of the unit responsible for security of the route ordered the drone operators to attack one of the cars with a missile.

Some of the passengers were seen leaving the car after it was hit and switching to one of the other two cars. They continued to drive and even notified the people responsible that they were attacked, but, seconds later, another missile hit their car.

The third car in the convoy approached, and the passengers began to transfer to it the wounded who had survived the second strike – in order to get them out of danger. But then a third missile struck them. All seven World Central Kitchen volunteers were killed in the strike.

On Tuesday morning, World Central Kitchen executives announced a temporary halt to its operations in Gaza, and that the ship that had departed to Gaza with aid shipments would return to Cyprus.

"It's frustrating," one of the defense sources told Haaretz. "We're trying our hardest to accurately hit terrorists, and utilizing every thread of intelligence, and in the end the units in the field decide to launch attacks without any preparation, in cases that have nothing to do with protecting our forces."

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One of the cars in the convoy that was targeted, with a World Central Kitchen label on its windshield and roof.Credit: Ahmed Zakot/ Reuters

The IDF understands that this is a serious incident that is liable to have far-reaching effects on the continued combat in Gaza, because of deteriorating international legitimacy in recent weeks. The defense establishment is preparing to send representatives to the dead volunteers' countries, to personally present to senior government officials the findings of the investigation that the army announced on Monday night.

The strike is not the first incident in which World Central Kitchen staff were wounded in Gaza. On Saturday, an IDF sniper fired at a car headed to a food warehouse in the Khan Yunis area. He hit the car's windshield, but the volunteer inside was unharmed.

The World Central Kitchen immediately filed a complaint with the IDF after the incident, and demanded the army stop the fire toward its staff, and guarantee their safety when distributing food in the Gaza Strip, which is carried out with full coordination. The IDF did not comment on the organization's inquiry about that incident.

IDF Spokesman rear adm. Daniel Hagari has spoken of the incident on Tuesday, expressing his "sincere sorrow," saying that "as a professional military committed to international law", The IDF is committed to examining its operations "thoroughly and transparently," he said, speaking to foreign press.

Hagari further said he has spoken to WCK founder, Chef Jose Andres, and expressed the IDF's "deepest condolences."

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צבא ההגנה לישראל
@idfonline
מצורף תרגום:
הלילה התרחש אירוע בעזה שהוביל למותם הטראגי של עובדי המטבח העולמי המרכזי, בעת שהם מילאו את שליחותם החיונית – להביא מזון לזקוקים לכך.
כצבא מקצועי המחויב לחוק הבינלאומי, אנחנו מחוייבים לבחון את פעולותינו באופן מעמיק ושקוף>>

3:22 AM · Apr 2, 2024

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented on the event and said that the incident was a "tragic case of our forces unintentionally hitting innocent people in the Gaza Strip. This happens in war, and we will investigate it to the end. We are in contact with the governments involved, and we will do everything to insure that this does not happen again."

According to Deir al-Balah residents, who were in the area when the convoy was hit, the attack happened near the temporary pier set up to unload goods that reach Gaza by sea, like the shipments organized by WCK from Cyprus.

Some of the residents were skeptical about the army's stance that the event was a mistake and would be investigated, as the cars in the convoy were clearly identified as belonging to the humanitarian organization.

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“The Zone of Interest”: Oscar-Nominated Film Producer on the Holocaust, Gaza & “Walls That Separate Us”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 5, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/5/t ... transcript

Update: During the Oscars ceremony, filmmaker Jonathan Glazer condemned the Israeli occupation after his Holocaust film “The Zone of Interest” won an Oscar for best international film.

Ahead of the 96th Academy Awards, we’re joined by James Wilson, producer of the Oscar-nominated film The Zone of Interest, who raised Israel’s assault on Gaza in his BAFTA Award acceptance speech last month. The film follows the fictionalized family of real-life Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss as they live idyllically next to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Wilson says the film serves as a metaphor for the occlusion of “systemic violence, injustice, oppression, from our lives,” and challenges audiences’ complicity by asking them to identify with Höss and his wife Hedwig. “The idea of this film was to look for the similarities, rather than the differences, between us and the perpetrator,” says Wilson.

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.

We end today’s show with the producer of the Oscar-nominated Holocaust film, Zone of Interest, about the family of Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss living a tranquil life on the opposite side of the wall of the Auschwitz concentration camp. First, this is the film’s trailer.

LINNA HENSEL: [played by Imogen Kogge] [translated] These flowers are so beautiful.

HEDWIG HÖSS: [played by Sandra Hüller] [translated] The azaleas there. There are also vegetables. A few herbs. Rosemary. Beetroot. This is fennel. Sunflowers. And here is kohlrabi. The children love to eat it.

UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: [translated] The heartfelt time we spent in the Höss house will always be among our most beautiful holiday memories. In the east lies our tomorrow. Thanks for you National Socialist hospitality.

AMY GOODMAN: The Zone of Interest just won three BAFTA Awards last month for best sound, best British film and best film not in the English language. During his acceptance speech, producer James Wilson raised Israel’s assault on Gaza.

JAMES WILSON: A friend — a friend wrote me after seeing the film the other day that he couldn’t stop thinking about the walls we construct in our lives, which we choose not to look behind. Those walls aren’t new from before or during or since the Holocaust. And it seems stark right now that we should care about innocent people being killed in Gaza or Yemen in the same way we think about innocent people being killed in Mariupol or in Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by James Wilson, producer of the Oscar-nominated film The Zone of Interest, nominated for best picture, among others. The Oscar ceremony is Sunday — best international picture.

Congratulations, James Wilson, on all the nominations and what you won at the BAFTAs. Talk about that experience and why you related what’s happening now with Israel’s assault on Gaza to this Holocaust film, and talk specifically about that wall that separated the commandant’s home from the Auschwitz concentration camp.

JAMES WILSON: Well, thank you, Amy. Good morning. Thank you for inviting me on the show.

Well, I mean, why I said that? I mean, as you heard in the clip, I mean, I related the film both to the — in the present moment of the Israeli assault on Gaza, but also the innocent victims in Israel on October the 7th. And I mentioned Yemen, and I mentioned Ukraine, too, Mariupol, too. So, the context of that, which felt — it felt organic to the idea of the film, the questions of the film. You know, I know politics in film award speeches can grate sometimes, but this — as I said, this felt very pertinent to what the film is about, which is that — yeah, as you say, the walls that separate us from things that we choose not to look at, just as the friend who had messaged me about the film saying he couldn’t stop thinking about that in his own daily life. And all of that just came together. I was obviously thinking about it beforehand. You know, I felt — you know, it was a nervous moment just to speak in front of a lot of people. I’ve never won an award for a film I’ve worked on. But it felt organic to the idea of the film.

And you mentioned the wall in the film. And, of course, the film stages an absolutely real situation, which is the Höss — the family of, you know, the commandant of Auschwitz and his wife and the family, and the life they led in a nice house and garden that exactly abutted Auschwitz in full operation in the early 1940s. And that wall, which is in the film and in that situation, was absolutely real. It’s of course also a metaphor for, as my friend’s message said, the way we can sort of occlude and tune out systematic violence, injustice, oppression, all sorts of things, from our lives in order that we go on with them. And I suppose the film asks that question: What are the walls in our lives? Do we have walls like that in our life? Are there groups of people whom we care about more than others, as groups of people socially, not as friends and family? And it seems quite clear that that is the case.

And I suppose the other thing about the film is we always wanted it to be — feel modern and feel about the present. Everything about how we made it, how Jon Glaze, the writer/director of the film, wanted to make it, was to make it feel like it was happening in the present and it reflected the present. And that was, you know, through the tools of filmmaking — cinematography, acting, music, sound design — to create this immersive feeling of present tenseness, which was a means to an hopeful end, which was to reflect us in the present.

And Jon has also spoken about how it’s a political film. And one of the things that’s happening in the present is this extraordinary, staggering loss of innocent life and killing of innocent people in Gaza in the Occupied Territories, that is a response to the heinous mass killing of October the 7th. But it just seems very stark in the world that we have, politically, our governments at least, have a different level of care and attitude to those innocent people being killed in Gaza and in Yemen and, of course, in other — you know, this selective empathy, I think, marks hundreds of years of human history — and I mentioned that in the — I spoke to that in the brief speech I was able to make — and isn’t just something that was happening, you know, from 1940 to ’45 in Germany. So, all of those things sort of came together in that moment in that speech.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, James Wilson, you mentioned the commandant of Auschwitz and his family. What was the challenge in getting the audience to identify with these main characters, with this idyllic family, up against this incomprehensible terror and destruction that was happening right — or, that was occurring and he was presiding over?

JAMES WILSON: Well, I mean, in a way, you’ve — I mean, the challenge — the challenge that you identify sort of is the core of the film, I think, the questions of the film. It’s not a polemical film. There’s not like a message where we’re trying to pin it, you know, tie it up with a neat bow. But I think the whole — I think the whole question of the film and the idea, the thinking space of the film, it’s a film, I think, that asks you to — tries to make a space in which you can think, was to lean into some kind of identification with those people, as you say, the commandant of Auschwitz and his partner, his wife, to look for the similarities, not the differences. The typical way the Holocaust is narrated is of a sort of — you know, sort of is of something — it’s the discourse of what’s called Holocaust exceptionalism, right? That the Holocaust stands apart from history, outside of history, as this sort of mythic, almost evil, mystical event. And there’s something apolitical and ahistorical in that idea. So the idea of this film was to look for the similarities, rather than the differences, between us and the perpetrator, which is not —

AMY GOODMAN: And I wanted to go to a clip from your film, when Nazi commandant —

JAMES WILSON: Sure.

AMY GOODMAN: — Rudolf Höss’s wife Hedwig Hensel speaks to her mother.

LINNA HENSEL: [played by Imogen Kogge] [translated] Is that tahe camp wall?

HEDWIG HÖSS: [played by Sandra Hüller] [translated] Yes, that’s the camp wall. We planted more vines at the back to grow and cover it.

LINNA HENSEL: [translated] Maybe Esther Silberman is over there.

HEDWIG HÖSS: [translated] Which one was she?

LINNA HENSEL: [translated] The one I used to clean for.

AMY GOODMAN: James Wilson, 10 seconds to wrap.

JAMES WILSON: Well, I mean, just to pick up that last point, it was to look for all those details and aspects of our lives in terms of our aspirations, our desire for household comfort, the things that motivated and drove them that reflect in different ways our life.

AMY GOODMAN: James Wilson, we’re going to leave it there. Congratulations on your Oscar nominations for international film at the Oscars, The Zone of Interest. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

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What I Witnessed in Gaza Is a Holocaust: Palestinian Writer Susan Abulhawa
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 6, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/6/g ... transcript

We speak with Palestinian novelist, poet and activist Susan Abulhawa, who is in Cairo and just returned from two weeks in Gaza. “What’s happening to people isn’t just this death and dismemberment and hunger. It is a total denigration of their personhood, of their whole society,” says Abulhawa. “What I witnessed personally in Rafah and some of the middle areas is incomprehensible, and I will call it a holocaust — and I don’t use that word lightly. But it is absolutely that.”

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.

A U.N. convoy of food trucks trying to bring 200 tons of food into northern Gaza was turned back by the Israeli military today. A convoy of 14 trucks waited for three hours at the Wadi Gaza checkpoint in central Gaza before it was turned away by the Israeli military and later stopped by a large crowd of desperate people who, quote, “looted the food,” according to the World Food Programme. This comes as Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on Palestinians seeking to get aid in northern Gaza, killing at least 119 people in the most deadly attack February 29th.

Hunger has reached catastrophic levels in Gaza. The Palestinian Health Ministry said today the death toll from malnutrition and dehydration has risen to 18, adding, quote, “The famine is deepening and will claim thousands of lives if the aggression is not halted and humanitarian and medical aid is not immediately brought in,” unquote. Children, pregnant women, those with chronic illnesses are most vulnerable.

Meanwhile, the Israeli bombardment continues, with shelling and airstrikes today in cities across the Gaza Strip, including in Rafah, Khan Younis, Deir al-Balah and elsewhere. At least 30,700 Palestinians have been killed, over 72,000 wounded in Gaza over the past five months. Nearly the entire population has been displaced from their homes.

For more, we go to Cairo, Egypt, where we’re joined by Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian novelist, poet and activist, author of several books, best known for her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, an international best-seller translated into 32 languages, considered a classic in Palestinian literature. She’s the founder and co-director of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children’s organization, and the executive director of Palestine Writes Literature Festival. She just returned from Gaza after spending two weeks there, is now in Cairo.

Susan, welcome to Democracy Now! If you can talk about what you saw? You have written, “Some are eating stray cats and dogs, which are themselves starving and sometimes feeding on human remains that litter streets where Israeli snipers picked off people who dared to venture within the sight of their scopes. The old and weak have already died of hunger and thirst.” Describe your trip.

SUSAN ABULHAWA: So, that part of the essay is in the northern region, where nobody really is allowed to go. Trying to venture into the north is a suicide mission. There are tanks and snipers positioned, and anyone trying to get there is basically killed. As you just mentioned, aid trucks are not getting in, either. They are intentionally stopped. And it’s an intentional starvation, basically. I was primarily in the south, in Rafah. I was able to go to Khan Younis and to Nuseirat and a few other places in the middle region, but that became increasingly more dangerous.

I want to say that the reality on the ground is infinitely worse than the worst videos and photos that we’re seeing in the West. There is a — you know, beyond people being buried alive en masse in their homes, their bodies being shredded to pieces, these kinds of videos and images that people are seeing — beyond that, there is this daily massive degradation of life. It is a total denigration of a whole society, that was once high-functioning and proud and has basically been reduced to the most primal of ambitions, you know, being able to get enough water for the day or flour to bake bread. And this is even in Rafah.

And the people in Rafah will tell you that they feel privileged because they’re not starving to death, while their families in the north, the ones that they can reach, because Israel has basically cut off 99% of communication — what remains are basically communications by people who have, you know, set up some ingenious ways to keep internet in the north. But most people in the north have no idea what’s happening. As a matter of fact, at one point — I’m sure you all know Bisan Owda, who is on Facebook. She explained to me she often goes up to the border between Khan Younis and the middle area in the north where you can’t go beyond, and she explained to me that an aid truck, that sort of pushed its way through but was eventually fired on, had — people came up and ran up, thinking that the war was over and people were returning to the north. So, most people in the north are in total darkness and hunger and really have no way of communicating, no way of figuring out where to get food.

And, you know, what we’re hearing on the ground is surreal. It’s dystopic. What I witnessed personally in Rafah and in some of the middle areas is incomprehensible. And I will call it a holocaust — and I don’t use that word lightly. But it is absolutely that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Susan Abulhawa, I want —

SUSAN ABULHAWA: The stories I heard from people are — sorry, go ahead.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, no, Susan, I wanted to ask you — you write in your article, “At some point, the indignity of filth is inescapable. At some point, you just wait for death, even as you also wait for a ceasefire. But people don’t know what they will do after a ceasefire.” Could you talk about that, even if there is a ceasefire —

SUSAN ABULHAWA: Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — the level of destruction that the people face now in terms of being able to rebuild their country?

SUSAN ABULHAWA: I mean, that’s how much people have been reduced. I mean, the ceiling of their hope at this point is for the bombs to stop. And, you know, everybody wants to go back. They talk about pitching a tent on their homes and figuring things out. But a lot of people are trying to leave. There is a brain drain, basically. Those who can afford it, those who can raise the money, those who are able to get jobs elsewhere, who have professional skills, are trying to leave. They have children. All the schools have been destroyed. College students have nowhere to go.

You know, what’s happening to people isn’t just this death and dismemberment and hunger. It’s a total denigration of their personhood, of their whole society. There are no universities left. Israel intentionally bombed schools and blew them up, presumably to ensure that rebuilding could not take place, that reestablishing a society cannot take place without the infrastructure of education, of healthcare, and, basically, foundational structures for buildings.

AMY GOODMAN: Susan, I wanted to follow up on what you said about a holocaust. And you also used the term “genocide.” And you say, “Genocide isn’t just mass murder. It is intentional erasure.” Can you take that from there?

SUSAN ABULHAWA: Exactly. I mean, one of the — like I said, one of the things that Israel has been keen to do in Gaza is to erase remnants of people’s lives. So you have, on an individual level, homes, complete with memories and photos and all the things of living. And I’m sure you know Palestinians typically live in multigenerational homes. We’re not a mobile society. And so, these homes have several generations of the same family completely wiped out. On a societal level, you have — Israel has targeted places of worship — mosques, ancient churches, ancient mosques. They have targeted the museums, cultural centers, any place that — libraries. Any place that has records of people’s lives, has remnants and traces of their roots in the land, have been intentionally wiped away.

You know, it’s really frustrating for us to read Western media talk about, you know, Israel is targeting Hamas and whatnot. They’re not. This has always — and when you’re on the ground, you understand this has always been about displacing Palestinians, taking their place and wiping them off the map. That has been Israel’s stated goal, I mean, even in this instance and before, in 1948. It has always been their aim, to destroy us, remove us, kill us and take our place. And that’s what’s happening now in Gaza. It’s what happened in 1948, in 1967. And every new Nakba, every new escalation, is greater than the one before. And here we now arrive at a moment of genocide and holocaust, because the world has allowed Israel to act with such barbarity with impunity.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I wanted to ask you also — you mentioned the world reaction. More people have died in Gaza in less than five months than have — civilians — than have died in Ukraine in over two years, in the war in Ukraine, and Ukraine has 40 times the population of Gaza. I’m wondering your sense of the failure of the — especially of the Western nations, of Europe and the United States, to act?

SUSAN ABULHAWA: The Western world has lost any semblance of moral authority, if they ever had any. Or, you know, I think that maybe there was an illusion of moral authority previously, but I think — you know, what we have always known is that we are dealing with genocidal colonizers. But I think that is more apparent to the rest of the world at this hour. And I think what’s also happening is that Americans are coming to understand, increasingly, though not nearly enough, that they’re being lied to.

AMY GOODMAN: And we’re going to take up that issue in Part 2 of our discussion, which we’ll post at democracynow.org. Susan Abulhawa, Palestinian novelist, thanks so much.

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Israel’s “Killing Machine”: How U.S. Military Support Is Undercutting Ceasefire Talks, Prolonging War
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 7, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/7/i ... transcript

As Israel continues its relentless bombardment and siege of Gaza, where hunger and dehydration have reached deadly levels, Hamas has accused Israel of “thwarting” efforts to reach a ceasefire deal. A Hamas delegation in Cairo said that Israel has insisted on rejecting elements of a deal for a phased process that would culminate in an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza, as well as ensuring the entry of aid and facilitating the return of displaced Palestinians back to their homes in Gaza. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is pushing Hamas to accept the terms on the table, claiming that a “rational” offer had been made for a six-week truce in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages. The White House statements seem to be “a very politically calculated move so that they can essentially point the blame at Hamas if this fails,” says Tahani Mustafa, senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group. Mustafa also provides updates on UNRWA’s collapsing operations, repression in the West Bank and the utility of international law for Palestine today.

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: A Hamas delegation that was in Cairo for ceasefire talks has left Egypt, accusing Israel of, quote, “thwarting” efforts to reach a deal. Talks are expected to resume next week. Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters that Israel is insisting on rejecting elements of a deal for a phased process that would culminate in an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza, as well as ensuring the entry of aid and facilitating the return of displaced Palestinians back to their homes in Gaza.

Negotiators from Hamas, Qatar and Egypt — but not Israel — were in Cairo trying to secure a 40-day ceasefire in time for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins early next week. With the talks at an impasse and only set to resume next week, that unofficial deadline for a deal appears highly unlikely.

AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, President Biden urged Hamas to accept the terms on the table and claimed that a rational offer had been made for a ceasefire in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages. Biden told reporters, “It’s in the hands of Hamas right now. If we get to the circumstance that it continues to Ramadan, it’s going be very dangerous,” Biden said.

As the talks have been underway, Israel has continued its relentless bombardment of Gaza, killing over 80 people in the last 24 hours. The death toll after nearly five months of the assault is at at least 30,800 killed and nearly 73,000 wounded. Meanwhile, hunger has reached catastrophic levels as a result of Israel’s siege. At least 20 Palestinians have died from malnutrition and dehydration, according to the Health Ministry.

For more, we’re joined by Tahani Mustafa, senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group. She’s normally based in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank but is joining us today from Doha, Qatar, where she’s attending a symposium on Palestine organized by Georgetown University.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Tahani. Can you start off by talking about the situation on the ground and these ceasefire talks? Hamas is saying that Israel sabotaged the talks, and Hamas has left Cairo. And then we’re getting word that, actually, some negotiations are still underway.

TAHANI MUSTAFA: So, I think negotiations at the moment are very precarious. We’ve seen that the ceasefire deal, or at least what is being offered by Israel and the U.S., who, by the way, have unilaterally come up with some of these conditions rather than actually effectively engaged with Hamas — it appears to be a very politically calculated move so that they can essentially point the blame at Hamas if this fails. But what we’ve seen in these proposals that have been offered is that they offer very little to both Hamas and Gaza. There is no guarantee in terms of aid, how much aid will be let in. Already Israel is claiming that they are allowing sufficient amounts of aid, contrary to what even human rights organizations are saying, so that we’ve already seen that they are tampering with reality there.

And there’s also the concern, and rightly so, that this will simply — I mean, in terms of what has been offered, is a six-week pause, is what Israel and the U.S. is offering. And so, for Hamas and for Gazans, they basically see that as a pause in the killing machine, essentially, where Hamas hands over those hostages, surrenders all the cards at its disposal, and then the killing machine just resumes.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Tahani, could you explain why — what’s remarkable about the talks, one of the things, is that Israel has, in fact, refused to participate in the talks that were held in Cairo, saying that Hamas must present a list of 40 elderly, sick and female hostages who would be the first to be released as part of a truce. So, could you explain what the obstacles are to revealing such a list and why Hamas is hesitant to do so?

TAHANI MUSTAFA: It’s not necessarily hesitancy. It’s the difficulty in terms of trying to gauge how many hostages are actually alive, especially given that Hamas is not holding all of those hostages. So, you know, there could be — there could very well be hostages being held captive by other groups. Now, given, obviously, the difficulty in terms of movement due to the Israeli onslaught, it’s made it very difficult to gather any concrete numbers, especially in terms of how many of those are actually alive. So, it’s more the logistics of being able to actually provide a proper confirmed list that’s holding Hamas back.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Tahani, what are the risks of an agreement not being reached next week? Because, initially, there were concerns that Israel would then go ahead with its Rafah invasion.

TAHANI MUSTAFA: Next week marks the beginning of Ramadan. You know, for the last couple of years now, we’ve seen that Ramadan has been an incredibly provocative time. May 2021 marked the previous cross-border conflict between Israel and Hamas, and that had nothing to do with events in Gaza and everything to do with provocations we saw in places like East Jerusalem.

If we don’t see — which we’re not, most likely, going to end up seeing — a ceasefire or some kind of pause before Ramadan, given the escalation of violence, given temperatures on the ground, you know, this could be catastrophic, not just for Gaza in terms of what this also then means about a looming invasion of Rafah, which Israeli analysts are warning is not a matter of “if” but “when,” but also in places like the West Bank and even East Jerusalem, where Israel has so far claimed that it’s not going to limit access to places like the Al-Aqsa compound, but we have seen in the past that it has actually done that, and often this has been very arbitrary in terms of the times and conditions that they’ve put in terms of limitations on access, but, more importantly, how that has led, especially in the last two years, to severe escalations of violence.

AMY GOODMAN: In the next segment, we’re going to talk more extensively about this Washington Post exposé that says that the U.S. has flooded Israel quietly with about a hundred weapons transfers, that have not been, most of them, approved by Congress, overwhelmingly. Can you talk about the significance of President Biden saying, “We must get more aid into Gaza. There are no excuses. None,” yet at the same time the thing that’s stopping this, the Israeli bombardment, the stopping of the aid groups, the U.S. has supported when it comes to Gaza, backed up by bombs, missiles and ammunition?

TAHANI MUSTAFA: Well, precisely. I mean, that very much nails it on the head, is that the U.S. has done very little in terms of putting any pressure on Israel to limit some of the violence on the ground, limit the intensity of its military campaign. And at the same time, it’s now complaining that there aren’t any sufficient aid routes.

The U.S. has the leverage to ensure that there are sufficient aid routes. The U.S. has the leverage to ensure that Israel abides by the provisional measures set out by the ICJ when it has claimed that Israel has a case to answer for when it comes to genocide. But it simply hasn’t done that. There is absolutely no red lines, no pressure being put on Israel. And worse yet, we’re seeing things like these sorts of aid drops where even in terms of nutritional value and sufficiency, I mean, they don’t even come close to meeting the needs of most Gazans in the north. I mean, it’s honestly — I mean, it’s more of a kind of posturing of U.S. ineffectual diplomacy more than anything.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Tahani, you’re normally based — apart from what’s going on in Gaza, if you could talk about what the situation in the occupied West Bank has been since October 7th?

TAHANI MUSTAFA: I mean, the situation has been incredibly dire. And, unfortunately, given all the media attention on Gaza, there hasn’t really been much focus in terms of a lot of the violations that have been happening in the West Bank, where we have — in the first month alone, we saw an uptick in Israeli settler violence, where we saw something like 15 Palestinian communities displaced, where we saw the West Bank being put under an economic siege, which has lasted until today, by the way. There have been restrictions on movement, where you’ve had the PA’s administrative capital cut off from the northern part of the West Bank due to the erection of makeshift checkpoints and road closures and roadblocks.

Worse yet, you’ve seen, prior to the 7th of October, I mean, most of the flashpoints in the West Bank were primarily in the north, in places like Jenin and Nablus. Now that has pretty much spread across the board. You’re seeing places where militancy was not an issue prior to the 7th of October pop up, in places like Tubas, in places like Hebron. Worse yet, you are seeing similar images to where you’ve seen the destruction of localities in Gaza, where you’re now seeing those exact same images, but on a smaller scale, in places like Jenin refugee camp, in places like Tulkarm refugee camp, where Israeli soldiers have gone in and razed these localities, these neighborhoods, to the ground, where they have destroyed electricity lines, sanitation, water, cultural centers, which used serve as a form of civic expression and mechanisms for younger Palestinians to vent their frustrations in more peaceful forms, right? But you’ve seen younger generations now being swayed more towards, out of necessity, militancy and armed resistance, and where these neighborhoods have practically become uninhabitable.

So, you know, you’ve seen a significant uptick in terms of the violence, not just from settlers, but Israeli soldiers. From the 7th of October until now, until today, in the West Bank alone, we’ve seen something like 420 Palestinians killed, and the majority of those have been through search-and-arrest operations and targeted assassinations.

AMY GOODMAN: One of the reported parts of the ceasefire are hostages released, as well as Palestinian prisoners. Talk about the number of Palestinians who have been arrested just since October 7th — for example, in the occupied West Bank. Is it something like, well, over 7,000? How many of them are children? How many of them are under 18? And what have they been charged with?

TAHANI MUSTAFA: Well, the majority of those that have been arrested are — something like 7,000 — a significant proportion of those are children, you know, people under the age of 18. And in terms of charge, I mean, that’s the point. They haven’t been charged with anything. This is administrative detention, where they can be held indefinitely without charge or trial. And that can range from any kind of activity, whether it’s liking a Facebook post or simply expressing any kind of solidarity with Gaza. The Israelis don’t really need any legitimate excuse or reasoning to arrest people in the West Bank. These have been very arbitrary arrests. And, I mean, these arrests can range between 50 to 100 a day, are some of the figures we’ve seen, since the start of the 7th of October.

And I think it’s worth reminding your viewers that this is on a population that had nothing to do with the events of the 7th of October. The PA President Mahmoud Abbas came out immediately after the attacks of the 7th of October and condemned both Hamas and armed resistance, claiming that armed resistance was not a means toward self-determination. And yet we have seen the collective punishment upon reaped a population that, as I said, had nothing to do with the events of the 7th of October.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Tahani, could you explain? I mean, there have been a number of Gaza detainees, 27, who have died in custody. If you could explain, you know, how many you know of and who these people are?

TAHANI MUSTAFA: Again, these arrests are incredibly arbitrary. You know, they have been, effectively, arresting men, women, children. We’ve seen Israeli soldiers, quite literally, posting the images and videos of themselves torturing and arresting and withholding, again, young men, women, children on social media accounts like Telegram, TikTok, you know, posting a lot of these, what amount to, effectively, war crimes on social media, which really goes to show the level of impunity that Israel knows that it can get away with.

And as I said, these arrests have been very arbitrary. These people often are not affiliated to Hamas. In fact, if anything, I think a couple of months ago we saw — and this was actually something surprisingly called out by Western media — the way that Israel tried to doctor those images to show that they were militants, when in fact they weren’t. So, many of those that have been arrested are regular Gazan civilians that have absolutely no affiliation to any particular political faction.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about South Africa once again going to the International Court of Justice, taking additional — asking it to take additional emergency measures in Gaza, including ordering a ceasefire. Of course, South Africa brought the genocide case against Israel before the court, but said, “The threat of all-out famine has now materialized. The court needs to act now to stop the imminent tragedy.” Tahani?

TAHANI MUSTAFA: I mean, look, I think, in practice, you know, international law is useless. It’s only as useful as the powerful allow it to be. And, you know, in many ways, the ICJ hearings have been empowering, in the sense that this is the first time where Israel has been held to account in the decadeslong luxury of impunity that it has been able to get away with. But at the same time, we have seen that since the ICJ ordered Israel to take provisional measures, it has failed to do so. And worse yet, there has been absolutely no pressure to ensure that Israel do so. We saw the defunding of organizations like UNRWA, which have been the primary source of things like aid and assistance to those on the ground. We have seen, you know, I think something like over 15,000, if not 20,000, Palestinians killed since the ICJ issuing of provisional measures. And we’ve seen absolutely no pressure on Israel to try and settle for a ceasefire or any kind of pause.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: I want to ask about UNRWA. Canada says it will resume funding to the agency, after it halted support in January following Israeli claims that 12 staff were involved in the October 7th attack. Could you talk about what’s happening with funding for the agency and what the impact has been of so many countries pulling out, including the U.S., which is the largest funder, or was?

TAHANI MUSTAFA: Well, right now UNRWA is holding on by a thread. We have seen some resumption of funding and some extra funding coming in from various other sources, but UNRWA is really holding onto a thread. And the worst part about this is that there is absolutely no organization that is capable of filling that void. You know, there have been attempts to try and get organizations like the World Food Programme, but they simply don’t have the capacity to do what UNRWA does. You know, no organization is as embedded into the civic infrastructure of Gaza the way that UNRWA is. And more importantly, it cannot — it cannot substitute for most of the services that UNRWA provides, something by the WFP’s own admission. So, right now, you know, UNRWA is really holding on by a thread and the consequences of any kind of potential drying up of funds, which hopefully it won’t come to that, but if it does, it will be incredibly catastrophic.

AMY GOODMAN: Tahani, we just have a minute, but we wanted to ask you about Benny Gantz, part of the Israel war cabinet, going — unauthorized, apparently, by Netanyahu — to Washington, meeting with Blinken, meeting with Vice President Harris, Netanyahu telling the Israeli Embassy apparently not to cooperate with this, what he called, unauthorized trip. Are you seeing a split that could take down Netanyahu?

TAHANI MUSTAFA: There certainly has been a split within the Israeli administration. And that has been something that is starting to surface over the last couple of months between the political and military establishment, but even internally within the political establishment. Obviously, the welcoming of Gantz is substantial for Israeli politics. Again, you know, it is a sign of U.S. ineffectual diplomacy, whereby to reiterate their discontent with Netanyahu’s policies, they’re now welcoming and engaging with an opposition politician.

But again, that does nothing to really change the reality on the ground for Palestinians. Nothing came out of that meeting, where Israel was — you know, there were no red lines laid in terms of what Israel can and can’t do in Gaza. There as again no pressure being put on Israel. Simply, you know, reaffirming your discontent with Netanyahu’s strategy at the moment by engaging with an opposition politician isn’t enough to actually change the reality on the ground for Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: Tahani Mustafa, we want to thank you for being with us, senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group. She’s normally based in the occupied West Bank in Ramallah but is joining us today from Doha at a symposium that she’s attending on Palestine, organized by Georgetown Qatar.

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Biden Admin Quietly Approves 100+ Arms Sales to Israel While Claiming Concern for Civilians in Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 7, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/7/j ... transcript

While the Biden administration has been publicly voicing reservations over the mounting death toll in Gaza, a Washington Post investigation revealed the administration has quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate weapons sales to Israel over the last five months, amounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters and other lethal aid. Only two approved foreign military sales to Israel have been made public since the launch of Israel’s assault on October 7, which the Biden administration approved using emergency authority to bypass Congress. “It is actually illegal to provide military assistance to a country that is restricting U.S.-funded humanitarian assistance, and we know that this is the case with Israel,” says Josh Paul, a veteran State Department official who worked on arms deals and resigned in protest of a push to increase arms sales to Israel amid its assault on Gaza. Paul describes the “production line”-style sale of weapons to Israel and says increasing internal dissent is putting pressure on Biden to change his “dead-end” policy of unconditional support for Israel. “We have a president and a set of policies … that remain set on this course regardless of the harm it is doing to Israeli security, to American global interests and, of course, to so many Palestinians.”

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: Over the past few weeks, the Biden administration has been publicly voicing reservations over the mounting death toll in Gaza, calling on Israel to protect civilians and allow in humanitarian aid. But behind the scenes, the Biden administration has quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate weapons sales to Israel over the last five months, amounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters and other lethal aid, this according to a new investigation by The Washington Post.

AMY GOODMAN: Only two approved foreign military sales to Israel have been made public since the launch of Israel’s assault on October 7th, amounting to over $250 million worth of tank shells and ammunition, which the administration authorized using emergency authority to bypass Congress. But in the case of the hundred other weapons sales, known as Foreign Military Sales, the arms transfers were made without any public debate, because each fell under a specific dollar amount that requires the executive branch to individually notify Congress.

For more, we’re joined by Josh Paul, a veteran State Department official who worked on arms deals and resigned in protest of a push to increase arms sales to Israel amidst its assault on Gaza. Josh Paul is the former director of congressional and public affairs for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in the State Department, where he worked for 11 years. He’s now a nonresident at DAWN — that’s Democracy for the Arab World Now. He’s joining us from New Haven, Connecticut.

Josh, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you talk about the significance of this Washington Post exposé, what we’ve learned about the U.S. flooding Israel with weapons as President Biden talks about saying he’s putting pressure on Israel to let food aid in?

JOSH PAUL: Thank you, and thank you for having me.

I think what we’ve learned from this story shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. It is that the president continues to facilitate the flow of arms to Israel despite a change in tone. You know, we have certainly heard the administration call for more humanitarian assistance, for, you know, at least a temporary ceasefire. But at the same time, it continues to provide the arms that enable Israel to continue its operations. So, I think that’s pretty consistent, frankly, with what the White House has said, including John Kirby from the podium this week, that this remains U.S. policy.

I think many of your viewers may be shocked to hear that there have been a hundred sales in the last few months since October 7th. But here, I don’t think anyone in the State Department will be particularly moved by this story. Much of the process does, unfortunately, move like a production line when it comes to cases that do not require, under law, congressional notification. So what we really have here is both a policy problem but also a lack of transparency that is built into the system, and which can only be remedied by a change in law.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go to what national security communications adviser John Kirby said. He was questioned at the White House by the journalist Andrew Feinberg, a correspondent for The Independent in Britain.

ANDREW FEINBERG: What is preventing the president from communicating to the Israeli government that if they don’t allow aid, we will not continue supplying weapons? Why is that not a fair trade: no aid, no bombs?

JOHN KIRBY: Because the president still believes that it’s important for Israel to have what it needs to defend itself against a still viable Hamas threat. Maybe some people have forgotten what happened on the 7th of October, but President Biden has not.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Josh Paul, your response, both to the question and to Kirby’s response?

JOSH PAUL: I mean, there you have it. And I think the question could also have noted that under U.S. law, under Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act, it is actually illegal to provide military assistance to a country that is restricting U.S.-funded humanitarian assistance. And we know that this is the case with Israel, because Jake Sullivan himself, the national security adviser, has said that this is a problem, and, of course, we would not be airdropping aid into Gaza, were we leaning on Israel to open the humanitarian aid routes. So, you know, I think there is a clear case to be made here that we are not in accordance with U.S. law, certainly out of step, I think, with international law. And at the same time, the Biden administration position remains: We will continue to provide arms to Israel, whatever it requests and requires.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, if you could explain, Josh: How much does this differ from the procedure that’s been in place regarding U.S. arms transfers to Ukraine? I mean, in this case, as we’ve said, only two approved foreign military sales to Israel have been made public. What about to Ukraine?

JOSH PAUL: Yeah. So, for the most part, the procedures and processes through which we provide arms to Israel versus Ukraine are different. Ukraine requires an authorization under presidential drawdown authority, as well as new and novel funding to, for example, Department of Defense’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. Those have expired. We are out of, essentially, both of those. And so, without additional funding, we will not be able to provide arms to Ukraine.

Israel, on the other hand, is perfectly capable of using its own money to procure weapons through the Foreign Military Sales system, through the direct promotional sales system, which, by the way, The Washington Post didn’t touch on. And it’s quite possible that there’s a hundred more sales through that other channel to Israel that we don’t know about. And, of course, you know, we are providing Israel with military ground assistance, which it can also tap into and knows that it will be able to tap into, because it has a 10-year commitment from us to continue providing billions of dollars a year, unlike Ukraine. So it’s a slightly different situation and much easier, I think, for Israel to continue to receive weapons even in the absence of a supplemental, unlike Ukraine.

AMY GOODMAN: Democratic Colorado Congressmember Jason Crow told The Washington Post the Biden administration should apply, quote, “existing standards” stipulating that the United States, quote, “shouldn’t transfer arms or equipment to places where it’s reasonably likely that those will be used to inflict civilian casualties, or to harm civilian infrastructure.” Crow, a former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, told the Post, “I am concerned that the widespread use of artillery and air power in Gaza — and the resulting level of civilian casualties — is both a strategic and moral error.” Now, Crow is not usually a dove on all of these issues, but it’s very interesting to see him talk about his response, his critical response to the U.S. when it comes to Israel.

And this is particularly interesting on the day of President Biden’s State of the Union address tonight. We don’t know exactly what he’s going to say. We know there are a number of Americans who have family members who are being held hostage in Gaza. We don’t know if the Biden family or the administration will be inviting any Palestinians, and that Biden wanted to be able to announce a ceasefire tonight, which is clear, it looks like, will not be happening. But your response to all of this and how these weapons sales, do you feel, perpetuate the war?

JOSH PAUL: Yeah, I mean, I think that people who have served in the military or worked in the Middle East, people like Representative Crow, also, frankly, like Secretary of Defense Austin, understand that what Israel is doing is not going to lead to success on Israel’s own terms, as Secretary of Defense Austin has said. It will lead to strategic failure. And that is why I think the same is true on the Israeli side, where you have former heads of Mossad, for example, saying that this is a dead-end road, that what they are doing is damaging to their own interests.

But I think that is separate from the political question here. And the political question is one in which we have a president and, you know, a set of policies and, frankly, a Congress, as well, for the most part, that remains set on this course, regardless of the harm it is doing to Israeli security and to American global interests and, of course, to so many Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: Josh Paul, you were in the State Department for 11 years, and you were involved with these kind of arms deals. You resigned in protest of a push to increase arms to Israel. But I wanted to ask you: How much does protest on the ground affect what’s going on in the State Department, in the White House? How much do you hear it? I mean, there is a massive amount of protest in the United States. And no matter who wants to insulate Biden from it, almost everywhere he goes he is hearing the chants of “ceasefire.” I mean, tonight, one of his guests will be the UAW President Shawn Fain. The UAW was one of the early unions to call for a ceasefire. How much does it matter?

JOSH PAUL: I think protest is very important, I think particularly protest when it manifests at the ballot box, in terms of, for example, the “uncommitted” vote or the “other” vote that we have seen in states and will continue, I hope, to see in the coming days, because that signals to the Biden administration that they really have a political problem here. And that is really one of the only means we have of getting this administration to change course in the time that it has left. So I think that is very important. I think it’s most important when it manifests directly in the political process, and when it comes with organization. I think there is a momentum around this issue now, and we have to maintain that momentum for the, frankly, months and years ahead, because this is not going to be a long-term pole to shift where American policy is and has been for many years.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, you were inside for years the State Department. Now that you’ve resigned — and we sort of ask you this every time since then — how many people inside the administration have reached out to you? Do you feel that that’s increasing? And how many times do they tell you that they’ve been discussing this with Biden or the inner circle of Biden, and what their views on this are? I mean, Biden was no fan of Netanyahu from the beginning. And so, yet he is embracing him now. What they are saying?

JOSH PAUL: Yeah, I mean, I’m still hearing from people I had not heard from previously, to be clear, who are saying that, you know, “This is not working. I feel sick to my stomach of being involved in this. And, you know, I’m trying to make changes, and it’s just not working.” I had several of those conversations just in the last week with people I’ve not spoken to before on this issue. So I think the internal pressure, the internal disgust, frankly, is still there.

But I think, you know, the White House and the president have surrounded the president with, you know, a council of advisers who are, for the most part, like-minded with him. And I don’t know how much of that dissent is actually breaking through, and, even if it did, how much it would change the president’s decision-making. I think he is where he is. And, you know, absent significant political pressure, that is not going to change, unfortunately.

AMY GOODMAN: Josh Paul, we want to thank you for being with us, veteran State Department official, worked on arms deals, resigned in protest of a push to increase arms sales to Israel and its siege on Gaza. He’s the former director of congressional and public affairs for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in the State Department, where he worked for 11 years, now a nonresident fellow with DAWN — that’s Democracy for the Arab World Now.

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Biden’s SOTU on Gaza: Israeli Daughter of Freed Hostage & Palestinian American Professor Respond
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 7, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/8/b ... transcript

In his State of the Union address, President Biden addressed Israel’s assault on Gaza, where the humanitarian crisis continues to worsen amid a relentless bombing campaign and siege. We’re joined by two guests: Eman Abdelhadi, a Chicago-based Palestinian Egyptian American professor, artist and activist, who on Thursday delivered an alternate State of the Union address called “The State of Genocide,” and Neta Heiman Mina, a member of the Israeli chapter of Women Wage Peace, whose 84-year-old mother, Ditza Heiman, was one of the hostages released during the temporary ceasefire and hostage exchange between Israel and Hamas in November. Abdelhadi says that by arming Israel while offering limited aid to the starving population of Gaza, the Biden administration is “effectively holding a gun to Palestinians’ heads, shooting at them with one hand and throwing crumbs at them with the other.” Meanwhile, Mina calls on the Israeli government “to do everything we can” to return the remaining hostages, including an immediate ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners. “This genocide has been going on for 152 days, and it is 100% an American project,” Abdelhadi says, adding that campaigners plan to hold Biden electorally accountable for his continued support for Israel. “We are going to make sure that the DNC knows where we stand on this issue.”

Transcript

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

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

In his address, President Biden talked about Gaza, which has become a key election issue. As they watched, progressive lawmakers Cori Bush, Summer Lee, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib — the only Palestinian American in Congress — held up signs reading “Lasting Ceasefire Now” and “Stop Sending Bombs.” Tlaib, Summer and Bush also donned Palestinian keffiyehs. Separately, many Democratic women wore white in honor of the suffragettes. Today is International Women’s Day. This is President Biden.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Israel has a right to go after Hamas. Hamas ended this conflict by releasing hostages, laying down arms — could end it by releasing the hostages, laying down arms and surrendering those responsible for October 7.

But Israel has a — excuse me. Israel has an added burden, because Hamas hides and operates among the civilian population like cowards, under hospitals, day care centers and all the like. Israel also has a fundamental responsibility, though, to protect innocent civilians in Gaza.

This war has taken a greater toll on innocent civilians than all previous wars in Gaza combined. More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of whom are not Hamas — thousands and thousands of innocents, women and children; girls and boys also orphaned; nearly 2 million more Palestinians under bombardment or displacement; homes destroyed, neighborhoods in rubble, cities in ruin; families without food, water, medicine. It’s heartbreaking.

I’ve been working nonstop to establish an immediate ceasefire that would last for six weeks to get all the prisoners released — all the hostages released and to get the hostages home and ease the intolerable humanitarian crisis and build toward an enduring, a more — something more enduring.

The United States has been leading international efforts to get more humanitarian assistance into Gaza. Tonight I’m directing the U.S. military to lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the coast of Gaza that can receive large shipments carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelters. No U.S. boots will be on the ground. A temporary pier will enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.

AMY GOODMAN: Ahead of Biden’s State of the Union address, hundreds of protesters blockaded roads outside the White House, near the Capitol, delaying Biden’s speech as they demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Other protests took place nationwide. More are expected this weekend in Chicago, where the Democratic National Convention will take place this summer. An antiwar coalition held a 24-hour vigil in the city’s Federal Plaza reading as many names as possible of the more than 30,000 Palestinians killed by Israel’s bombing of Gaza. They also hosted an alternate State of the Union address by our next guest.

EMAN ABDELHADI: Tonight’s State of the Union is the state of the genocide, because our leaders have followed a familiar playbook: investing in power, money and blood at the expense of humanity.

AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Chicago, where we’re joined by Eman Abdelhadi, a Palestinian Egyptian American activist and assistant professor at the University of Chicago, where her work includes studying the politics of Muslim Americans. She supported President Biden in the 2020 presidential election and even drove some of her friends to the polls.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Professor Abdelhadi. Your message last night?

EMAN ABDELHADI: Thank you, Amy, for having me.

I want to point out that I co-wrote and co-gave the speech with Ari Bloomekatz, who is the editor of In These Times magazine. And our message was that business cannot go on as usual, and we are not going away. This genocide has been going on for 152 days, and it is 100% an American project. It would not be where it is today if the U.S. did not send weapons to Israel, did not lend unconditional support. And so, it is disingenuous to put it at the end of the speech as though it were a faraway foreign policy issue and not a core issue that is on Americans’ minds.

AMY GOODMAN: And your response to this idea of setting up a port? First it was airdropping food. But it’s as if it’s a natural catastrophe, like an earthquake or a tornado or a hurricane, where you have to ensure that somehow people get food. But it is a U.S. ally who the U.S. is arming: Israel.

EMAN ABDELHADI: Yeah. President Biden is effectively holding a gun to Palestinians’ heads and shooting at them with one hand and throwing crumbs at them with the other hand. And he wants us, as American people, to focus only on the crumbs that he’s throwing. Meanwhile, we are saying, and have been saying, “President Biden, drop the gun.” It is absurd to frame these deaths as though they are just collateral damage and not an intentional strategy of ethnic cleansing by the Israeli state.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring in Neta Heiman Mina, who is a member of the Israeli chapter of Women Wage Peace. Her 84-year-old mother, Ditza Heiman, was taken hostage by Hamas from her home on the Kibbutz Nir Oz near the border with Gaza but was released on November 28th. She’s joining us from Israel.

Neta, thanks so much for being with us, coming back on Democracy Now! There were a number of hostage families represented last night who were guests of congressmembers, of the Bidens, of the Israeli American or American hostages in Gaza. First of all, how is your mother? And can you talk about what you want to see happen now?

NETA HEIMAN MINA: Hi. Thank you for having me.

My mother is OK. She is starting to live her new life. She can’t go back to her home in the kibbutz, because the kibbutz is wounded by the Hamas. But she’s still waiting for her neighbors and friends from the kibbutz, that there are still 37 live hostages from Kibbutz Nir Oz still in Gaza.

I think we need to do everything we can to bring them back, even if it’s said a ceasefire, even if it’s said a release the Palestinian prisoners. We must do it as soon as possible, because they don’t have time. They can’t stay there. I was in some event today, and this is the number of days they are there. And there are old people and children and women that we hear what they are going through. Those people doesn’t get their medications. It needs to be as soon as possible.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about the movement that has been formed by the hostage families? I don’t think their message comes through as clearly in the United States. We have interviewed a number of people, of those Israelis who were killed on October 7th, like Hayim [Katzman], who was a student at University of Washington — we talked to his sibling, Noy [Katzman], in Brussels, who said, “My brother would not want this killing to continue in Gaza.” If you can talk about what hostages’ families are saying right now and how a number of them, well, like you — you’re the daughter, you’re with Women Wage Peace — a number of those even taken or who died were peace activists?

NETA HEIMAN MINA: I don’t want to talk in the name of all the families, the hostages’ families, because we have different thoughts about the situation. But I think the majority want to do everything to bring them back, and they don’t care if we need to stop the war now or release the Palestinian hostages — the Palestinian prisoners, sorry. I think the majority want to do everything to bring them back. We talked two weeks ago with people from the — there was people that they understand, and they told us that Israel can manage with stop the war now and can manage with the release of the prisoners, and there is no problem to do it.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me bring back professor Eman Abdelhadi. Can you talk about what Netanyahu is threatening, the land invasion of Rafah, what that would mean?

EMAN ABDELHADI: It would mean the complete ethnic cleansing of the rest of the Gaza Strip. We’ve seen 1.5 million people squeezed into this tiny piece of land. And now that last refuge, that last piece of land that was supposed to be safe, would be under attack. Palestinians literally have nowhere left to go.

Ultimately, this is a continuation of the policy that Netanyahu has been following since October, right? And since before October, in fact. He and other officials from his administration have been very open in declaring their intent to clear Gaza, to basically empty it of its inhabitants and ready it for settlement. And yet they have faced no consequences from the Biden administration. Your guest before said that we need a transformative foreign policy, and yet what we’re seeing is that the American ruling class is unwilling to transform the relationship of unconditional support to Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Eman, what are the plans for the Democratic convention in Chicago, where you are?

EMAN ABDELHADI: Well, you know, we are very unhappy with this administration. I think the “uncommitted” campaign shows this. Chicago has the largest Palestinian community in the country. It’s, in fact, one of the largest Palestinian diasporic communities in the world. And we are not going away. We are still going to be in the streets. And we are going to make sure that the DNC knows where we stand on this issue.

AMY GOODMAN: And let me ask Neta Heiman Mina: I’m wondering if you can talk about what’s happening with the government right now, how — that Netanyahu, to say the least, has a conflict of interest. If he is forced out of government, he could end up in prison. You now have Benny Gantz meeting with Vice President Harris and Tony Blinken in Washington, D.C., part of the war cabinet, former defense minister. Do you see the government falling apart?

NETA HEIMAN MINA: I don’t know if the government will fall apart. But I want to first say, before I answer your question, that we need to remember that Hamas started this attack. The 7th of October, Hamas attacked Israel, killed 1,400 people, take 254 hostages from their beds with their pajamas. We need to remember this. And the situation in Gaza now, it’s as well as the — it’s the Hamas — Hamas make it. Hamas doesn’t care the Israeli people, and it doesn’t care the Gaza people. I think they care the Gaza people less than the Israeli care, and for sure less the American care.

I don’t know if the government will fall apart. There is a problem. Our prime minister, bringing back the hostages is not in his first priority. His first priority is to stay prime minister and that the government won’t fall apart. And he has a very difficult situation with Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, that if it will be a deal that they said that they will need to stop the war and to release the Palestinian prisoners, he will have a problem with his government.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me go to Eman Abdelhadi. If you can respond to what Neta has said? And also, we just got this news: According to CBS News, five people were killed Friday by an airdrop package when at least one parachute failed to properly deploy and the parcel fell on them. The video is circulating now. We have just 30 seconds.

EMAN ABDELHADI: Hamas was reacting to a 16-year siege. I’m not promoting what they did on October 7th. But to say that this whole issue started on October 7th is to ignore the fact that a Palestinian was killed every single day in 2023, leading up to October 7th. So, without addressing the root causes of October 7th, without addressing the violence of keeping 2 million people under siege for 17 years without freedom of movement —

AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds.

EMAN ABDELHADI: — then we’re not going to get anywhere.

AMY GOODMAN: Eman Abdelhadi, I want to thank you for being with us, assistant professor at the University of Chicago, Palestinian Egyptian American, and Israeli Neta Heiman Mina, member of the Israeli chapter of Women Wage Peace. Her mother was just freed from Gaza in November.

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“The Trauma Is Immeasurable”: Palestinian Writer Susan Abulhawa on Israeli Violence in Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 7, 2024

Palestinian novelist, poet and activist Susan Abulhawa recently returned from two weeks in the Gaza Strip, where she witnessed firsthand the destruction and misery wrought upon the territory and its people by Israel’s relentless assault. Abulhawa spoke with Democracy Now! last Wednesday from Cairo and said “the trauma is immeasurable” for the Palestinians in Gaza. Abulhawa describes hearing stories of abuse, humiliation and torture at the hands of Israeli soldiers as people struggle to find basic necessities to survive. “The degradation is total,” says Abulhawa. “And on top of that, they’re bombed, day in and out.”

Transcript

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

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

Israel is continuing its attacks on Gaza as Palestinians mark the first day of Ramadan. The death toll from Israel’s five-month assault has topped 31,000.

For more the situation on the ground in Gaza, we turn to Part 2 of our conversation with the Palestinian novelist, poet and activist Susan Abulhawa. She is the author of a number of books, including her debut novel Mornings in Jenin. She’s founder and co-director of Playgrounds for Palestine, a children’s group, and the executive director of Palestine Writes Literature Festival. She joined us last week from Cairo, Egypt, one day after she returned from a two-week trip to Gaza. I asked her about the level of trauma that the children in Gaza are experiencing.

SUSAN ABULHAWA: The trauma is immeasurable, frankly, not just for children, but for everybody. I spoke with a lot of women, in particular, who were recovering in a hospital or were there — or, you know, being with their children who were recovering. The stories they told me are just — are out of like a Hollywood horror film. I mean, there are — I have photos of the backs of men where Israeli soldiers carved pictures, smiley faces, Stars of David, etc., in their skin. These women narrated stories to me of, you know, Israeli soldiers laying them — laying hundreds of women on the ground and then taking their guns with the laser and laughing, and then wherever the laser landed, they shoot.

I spoke with a woman whose 3-year-old daughter had both of her legs shattered, and she was in the hospital recovering. It was an intentional — she was intentionally shot by a soldier. And this happened to her daughter after they killed her son, shot him through the head, in what she described as tank fire toying with them for about 30 minutes before they finally delivered the final blow that took her son.

People being forced to walk from hospitals, severe injuries, people being forced to walk for hours to get to safety. Children and people, you know, who were fleeing their homes, trying to get to the south, having to walk with their hands up, with their IDs, and if anybody dares to look down or pick anything up, they’re picked off. They’re literally shot by snipers.

The scenes that they narrated to me — I spoke with a little girl who was about 8 years old, whose face was badly burned, but her injuries were the least in the whole family. The entire family had third-degree burns all over their bodies. And what she explained to me, again, you know, I don’t know how a child survives that.

I spent time in a hospital, in a maternity ward, where there were newborns who had either — who were unknown or who were known but whose family was just absent and no longer there, or nobody knows what happened to them. These newborns are spending 24/7, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in incubators without any human touch, really, except when they come to feed them, because the nurses and the doctors are so exhausted and so overworked. People are being discharged from hospitals with wounds and going into tents where they don’t have running water and proper hygiene, and they’re getting horrible infections and dying from sepsis.

You know, life on the beach, you know, the beach is where Palestinians used to go for fun, to love, to be with family. And it’s torture now, because a lot of tents are pitched in the sand, and the sand is in everything. People’s skin is scorched. I mean, children walk around with cracked cheeks from the sun and sand. The sand gets in every bite of food.

The food that does come in, into Rafah, is primarily canned food. And most of it — and I think you hinted at this earlier, and I’ve seen it and tasted it myself — it is stuff that has clearly been sitting on shelves for decades. And all you can taste, really, is the rancidity, metallic taste of the can.

You know, this is — people schedule their days, they plan their days around trying to get to a single shared bathroom that’s shared by hundreds of other families. They try to do their best with hygiene, but it’s impossible. And when you have — when people succumb to living in filth, people — you know, I think maybe people in the West sort of have this impulse thought that most Black and Brown people sort of live like this. So it’s a little humiliating to have to explain that we don’t actually live in filth. And it’s degrading, beyond anything you can imagine, to be forced to live like this months on end, to have no way to protect your children, no way to give them hope, no way to calm their fears.

You know, there’s no privacy in the tents, because, you know, there’s not enough tents for families. So families are actually separated, with, you know, dozens of women in one tent and dozens in another. So spouses cannot even hold each other at night when they need that care the most. It’s these details that are traumatizing en masse for children, for parents, for elderly.

People don’t have medicines. People are dying from lack of insulin, which, by the way, Israel has banned from coming into Gaza. And they’re dying from diarrhea, because they’re drinking polluted water, and Israel has also banned water treatment, water filtration systems, even handheld ones, simple personal water filtration systems that, you know, Americans use when they go camping.

The degradation is total, Amy. And on top of that, they’re bombed, day in and out, even in Rafah. When I was there, there was not a single night that we didn’t hear bombs, and at least once was close enough that the building I was in shook, and we thought our building had actually been hit. But it was the one — it was one over from where I was. And there was another moment, too, when a tent by a hospital, where we had just been, was bombed. They bombed a tent. And it actually happened to be the tent that is adjacent to the tent that Bisan Owda was in. And they were sitting, eating. They were sitting on the ground eating, and shrapnel just came above their heads.

AMY GOODMAN: Palestinian novelist, poet, and activist Susan Abulhawa. Her debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, was translated into 32 languages. She joined us last week from Cairo, Egypt, one day after she returned from Gaza. To see Parts 1 and 2 of our interview with her, go to democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.

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Aid Worker in Gaza: The Only Barrier to Delivering Supplies Is Israel. The U.S. Must Pressure Its Ally
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 12, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/12/ ... transcript

Palestinians in Gaza marked the first day of Ramadan on Monday amid rising hunger and desperation, with Israel continuing to restrict aid shipments into the besieged territory. United Nations officials have complained that even basic items like medical scissors have resulted in trucks being stopped by Israeli forces at the border. This comes as countries such as the United States conduct dangerous airdrops of essential supplies and have announced plans to build a pier off the coast of Gaza to deliver aid. “It’s going to be more simple, more realistic and more efficient if the United States has pushed the Israelis to allow the aid truck to go into the north of Gaza and Gaza City,” says Yousef Hammash, advocacy officer with the Norwegian Refugee Council, speaking to us from Rafah. “The only issue that we are facing on delivering the aid on the ground is the restrictions the Israelis put on it.” Hammash also describes “living day by day” amid “madness, violence [and] bombardment.”

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.

We turn now to Gaza, where Al Jazeera is reporting Israeli forces have killed at least nine people who were waiting for aid in Gaza City. Twenty injured people were taken to Al-Shifa Hospital.

This comes as Israel continues to restrict aid coming into Gaza, which is on the brink of famine. The U.N. is reporting one truck was recently denied access to Gaza because it contained scissors inside medical kits. UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini criticized the decision, saying, quote, “Medical scissors are now added to a long list of banned items the Israeli Authorities classify as 'for dual use.'” He went on to say, “The list includes basic and lifesaving items: from anesthetics, solar lights, oxygen cylinders and ventilators, water cleaning tablets, cancer medicines and maternity kits,” unquote.

Meanwhile, an aid ship bound for Gaza has set sail from Cyprus with 200 tons of food supplies. The UAE-funded mission was organized by two aid groups, World Central Kitchen and Open Arms.

Inside Gaza, Palestinians marked the first day of Ramadan Monday.

For more, we go directly to Rafah to Yousef Hammash. He is advocacy officer in Gaza for the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Welcome back to Democracy Now! Thank you so much for joining us, Yousef. Can you explain what’s happening on the ground right now? Talk about the issue of famine and hunger, and what you think needs to happen.

YOUSEF HAMMASH: First of all, thanks for hosting me again and giving me the chance.

And, unfortunately, since we last spoke until now, nothing have changed, only except for the worse. More families have been displaced by the ongoing bombardment all across Gaza. Situation in Rafah has deteriorated day by day. We are not able to fulfill the basic needs for families here. People are scattered in the streets everywhere. So, it’s an unimaginable situation for displaced families in Rafah. And we have a different situation for the middle area and the northern part of Gaza, which, unfortunately, even from media, is kind abandoned, while families and children are on the verge of a famine, and over 25 people were killed from hunger.

The situation in Gaza is going into unclear vision in the horizon. We don’t understand what’s coming next. All what we are having is a daily basis of madness, violence, bombardment and a death toll that’s increasing on a daily basis. And unfortunately, so far we are not seeing any real intervention from outside so at least we could have a glimmer of hope that this will end soon.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Yousef Hammash, how do you respond to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s claim denying that there’s starvation and alleging that it is groups under Hamas in Gaza that are preventing the delivery of aid?

YOUSEF HAMMASH: I work for the Norwegian Refugee Council, and we operate on the ground, mainly in Rafah currently, because we don’t have any access for the northern part of Gaza. And we didn’t see any evidence related to this allegation. All what we are looking for is open the checkpoints, the Israel restrictions that have been put to split Gaza into three pieces now. And we don’t have access to Khan Younis now, and there is no access to Gaza City and the northern part of Gaza. And we are talking about over half a million who are trapped there, dying to fulfill their children’s basic needs.

People have — we had the first day of Ramadan yesterday. And I was reaching out for friends and colleagues in the northern part of Gaza, and I was trying to understand exactly what they could find to have iftar, merely a piece of bread with tea. The situation in the south is also chaos and chaotic and getting worse every day. But in the northern part of Gaza, people are literally on the verge of famine. People are dying to find a piece of bread there.

And it’s unacceptable that we could — we start to put these allegations here and there. There is a need on the ground that’s very clear. If we go to social media, media outlets, wherever you go, you could see exactly what’s going on there. So, it’s unrealistic, and it’s unacceptable, actually, just to ignore and deny that there is a famine in the north.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to Khalil Abou Ziyada, a Palestinian currently in the Al-Shati Camp in Gaza.

KHALIL ABOU ZIYADA: [translated] My feeling is that of a person who was displaced from his house. I’m 71 years old, and I have never experienced Ramadan with this feeling. It’s an awful feeling. At times like this during Ramadan, I used to prepare the dining table to eat at sunset. But today there’s no food, and I don’t have money to get food for iftar at sunset.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Yousef Hammash, the United States, President Biden, has been authorizing the dropping of food, airdropping it — five people were killed, crushed to death by a malfunctioning parachute that was carrying one of the food drops — and now has proposed this pier, where they say they’ll get food in, unclear how, considering what Israel has been doing. All of their ports of entry or all of their crossings are closed and not allowing food to come in from Rafah. Why would the pier be any different, especially given that the U.S. continues to provide the bombs and the ammunition that is dropped on the Palestinians?

YOUSEF HAMMASH: That’s what make it you don’t understand exactly what’s going on. First of all, any help to feed even one single family or one single child in the northern part of Gaza or Gaza or in the south is very welcome and much appreciated. But let’s go be realistic. Spending all of these efforts building the port or airdropping, which is not efficient, unfortunately — and you have mentioned exactly what happened in that incident killing five people. And imagining that all of media show all of that, what we saw related to the airdropping, was less than two aid trucks.

Why the United States didn’t use its influence to its closest ally, while it’s weaponizing them, and using that influence in a proper way to force them, to impose on them to remove restriction on aid? And it’s going to be more simple, more realistic and more efficient if the United States have pushed the Israelis to allow aid trucks to go in to people in need in the northern part of Gaza and Gaza City. And imagine the distance between Rafah crossing and the northern part of Gaza is half an hour by drive. So, why we need to spend all that amount of effort building a seaport or airdropping, while we have a realistic option that’s put in front of us, but there is just some restriction by the Israelis? And so, that’s what makes it unimaginable, why we are going to that option, while already we have different options on the ground, and it’s still in place, running and functioning in place since almost the beginning of this chaos. The only issue that we are facing in delivering the aid on the ground is the restriction that the Israelis put on it for Gaza City and the northern part of Gaza.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Yousef Hammash, how are you faring, your family and your own children, under these conditions? What kind of aid do you have access to?

YOUSEF HAMMASH: In Rafah, there is kind of affordability. But, unfortunately, the prices also are not affordable somehow. There is some people who could get some of the food items, especially into Rafah. Again, there is kind of availability, but, unfortunately, the inflation of prices make it unaffordable for the majority of the families here.

We are living day by day here. Our cycle of life is one day. We fulfill our basic needs as responsibles toward our children and extended families, and then we will look for the next day. As an example, yesterday, I had to search, after my working hours, up to the iftar timing, just to look for some vegetables, and I couldn’t find it. Maybe I was late, because there is one million and a half are in Rafah, this 55 square kilometers, and we are competing to find food for our families.

AMY GOODMAN: Yousef Hammash, we thank you so much for being with us, advocacy officer in Gaza for the Norwegian Refugee Council, joining us from Rafah.

***

U.N. Rapporteur Francesca Albanese Urges Arms Embargo & Sanctions on Israel over War Crimes in Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 12, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/12/ ... transcript

We speak with Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, who says the “monstrosity” of Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza, including attacks on civilians and restrictions on aid, shows that the International Court of Justice’s provisional orders to protect civilians are being ignored. “What should be done is an arms embargo right now and sanctions, because Israel is not in compliance with the critical measures ordered by the ICJ,” says Albanese.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

As we continue to report on Gaza, we’re joined by Francesca Albanese, United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, joining us from Tunis today. As you listen to the report on the ground in Rafah and you hear also, in addition to international groups, a dozen Israeli human rights organizations are demanding of the ICJ, the International Court of Justice, that Israel abide by its demand, request — you can explain whether it’s legally binding — to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, and Netanyahu’s denial that there is a famine problem.

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Hi, Amy and Juan. And thank you for having me back.

First of all, it’s very painful to listen to the testimonies from Gaza, because as someone who has seen this tragedy unfolding, this catastrophe unfolding, from the very beginning, and knowing that the situation in Gaza was already desperate for many before the 7th of October, again, I hear them in pain, especially at a time that is holy like the Ramadan.

I’m glad Israeli organizations are forcefully asking for compliance with international law, because this is what has been violated through and through. International law sets clear obligation on warring parties to deliver aid and allow in and facilitate the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief to the civilians in need in a situation of armed conflict.

And this is all the more serious in Gaza, given that on the 26th of January, the International Court of Justice issued an order that requested Israel to take immediate and effective measures to enable the permission of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life facing the Palestinians in Gaza. This has not happened. On the contrary, after the 26th of January, we have seen, on the one hand, increasing fighting, increasing shelling and killing of civilians desperately gathering for aid, the bombing of convoys and airdropped food, although the airdropped food, in any case, is dangerous, as we have seen. It has killed people in Gaza. And it’s a false factor. It cannot deliver the aid to everyone in need. On the other hand, we have seen also the deliberate targeting of UNRWA, which is the only organization who can orderly deliver humanitarian aid and food, on top of the increasing restrictions on the aid that can come in.

In the face of all this, Amy, I certainly welcome the opening of a humanitarian corridor, of a maritime corridor between Cyprus and the Gaza Strip. At the same time, this risks to be a drop in the ocean, as if, it was said before, the crossings between Israel and Gaza are not open, and if the humanitarian access is not fully guaranteed, within the scope of a ceasefire, because, ultimately, the only way to save lives is to stop bombing the Gaza Strip.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Francesca Albanese, we’ve been hearing now for weeks that negotiations were proceeding. Any day there would be a ceasefire. Any day. But the days keep passing, and the war continues. Do you feel that the United States and the Western powers are doing enough to pressure Israel on the issue of ceasefire?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: I see the United States and most Western powers doing enough to continue this situation, this monstrosity, because there is no other way to qualify this. And certainly not enough is being done to prevent it, because the only thing at this point — and again, I want to stress once again, there is an order of the ICJ which imposes obligations not just on Israel, but also on third states, and these obligations are being violated. They send back to the — I mean, they refer back to the Genocide Convention. So it’s very critical, what they are doing and not doing. And this entails — this might entail responsibilities for these states, as well. But what should be done is an arms embargo right now and sanctions, because Israel is not in compliance with critical measures ordered by the ICJ, and this is not something that should be treated with negligence.

AMY GOODMAN: Francesca Albanese, do you know why Karim Khan of the International Criminal Court, the other court, outside of the International Court of Justice, has not brought Netanyahu up on charges? He immediately did after Putin invaded Ukraine. I think something like 10,000 Ukrainians, with a far larger population, have died, and that, in itself, is horrific, but we’re talking about 30,000 — more than 30,000 Palestinians, all agree, overwhelmingly civilian. And yet the International Criminal Court has not bring charges.

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: I cannot say with certainty, because I don’t know what his motives are. I want to imagine that his team is diligently preparing arrest warrants for anyone who needs to receive an arrest warrant. The fact that it has not happened yet is shocking. But to be honest, for me, it’s shocking that there had been no effective move by the ICC even before the 7th of October, because the continuous building of settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza — sorry, and East Jerusalem, the taking of land, the advancing of the annexation plans, these were already war crimes falling squarely in the jurisdiction of the ICC. So, there has been a delay in the situation of Palestine that might also be understandable as representing the political pressure that is on anyone operating at the international level. So, I don’t want to put the burden only on the ICC prosecutor.

There is a clear double standard when it comes to Palestine, also possibly resented across other parts of the Global South. But, clearly, Amy, the fact that in Ukraine we have had 0.2% of the population killed, and in Gaza, 1.3% of the population killed, and 4.5% of the population either killed, reported missing or injured, and no arrest warrant, in the face of genocidal incitement and clear orders given that have targeted the entire population as a whole as responsible for what happened, the tragic events of the 7th of October, this is disappointing, to say the least.

AMY GOODMAN: We have less than a minute. UNRWA, you talked about, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, although more than a dozen countries, 16, 17 countries, stopped funding, Canada and Sweden have resumed, Israel not presenting evidence that they said Hamas was — UNRWA was involved with Hamas. Yet the United States, by far the largest funder of UNRWA, has not. What is the effect of this, in 30 seconds?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: The effect is that it undermines the operations of UNRWA across the region, not only in Gaza, but the entire Near East, in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. And there is no legal basis to do so. So this only aggravates the responsibility of the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Francesca Albanese, we want to thank you for being with us, United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, today speaking to us from Tunis, Tunisia.

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Rami Khouri: U.S. Airdrops & Floating Pier Plan Are “Not Serious Responses” to Gaza Suffering
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 13, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/13/ ... transcript

The European Union’s foreign policy chief has accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war by blocking aid from entering Gaza. The World Food Programme managed to deliver aid to Gaza City for the first time Tuesday in three weeks, but the agency said famine is imminent in northern Gaza unless aid deliveries increase exponentially. Meanwhile, as the United States proposes building a seaport off Gaza and airdrops for food aid, Palestinian American journalist Rami Khouri calls the proposals “sheer entertainment” that is “designed primarily to make Americans feel better about themselves.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: So, Rami, let’s talk about Gaza. The European Union’s foreign policy chief has accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war by blocking aid from entering Gaza. The World Food Programme managed to deliver aid to Gaza City for the first time Tuesday in three weeks, but the agency said famine is imminent in northern Gaza unless aid deliveries increase exponentially. Meanwhile, the U.S. says it’s begun shipping parts to build a temporary port off the coast of Gaza to increase aid, while still shipping bombs to Israel to attack Gaza. Rami Khouri, if you can comment on this and now Morocco saying it’s worked out a deal with Israel? It’s going to fly something like 40 tons of aid into Tel Aviv and then has secured a way to transport that aid over land, through an Israeli crossing, into Gaza.

RAMI KHOURI: You know, there’s all kinds of ideas being discussed about how do you reduce the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza because of the Israeli genocidal attack, which is directly supported and armed and funded by the United States. One of these ideas is to bring aid into Israel and ship it overland. Another one is to come up from Egypt through the Sinai. A third one is to have direct flights or ships coming into Gaza. But all of these are patchwork Band-Aids that don’t really solve anything in the long run, because all you need is one attack by any group — and, you know, the Israelis or Hamas or some freelance thugs, anybody, could fire a rocket at one of these aid shipments, and the whole thing would come to a halt. So, these are not serious responses.

You know, the Americans came up with the airdrop idea, and then they came up with the floating pontoon dock, about the same time as the Oscars took place in Hollywood. This is entertainment. This is not serious diplomacy or strategic stabilization of the Middle East. This is sheer entertainment designed primarily to make Americans feel better about themselves because they’re aware that they are involved deeply in the genocidal assault by Israel on Gaza. And they are aimed primarily to help the Democratic Party in the next presidential elections coming up in November, because the Democrats are facing serious pushback from a big coalition of Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, Black Americans, Hispanics, progressive Jews, labor unions, all kinds of people who form the core heart of the Democratic Party traditionally, and they’re basically now thumbing their noses at Biden and saying, “Look, we don’t play this game anymore where you just make promises and then continue your genocidal policies.”

And the significance of this is it’s not just Arab Americans. And the media, as typically happens, with a few exceptions, like you and a few others — that media in the U.S. and most of Europe, and England, in particular, they just talk about, “Oh, the Arab Americans are complaining, or Muslims Americans.” It’s much wider than that. Americans are fundamentally decent people. They don’t like to see their money and their guns and their government supporting what has now been called a plausible genocide by the highest court of the world. And this is serious stuff. And the American citizens don’t feel comfortable being associated with this kind of criminality. But for the government to respond with theatrics and cartoonlike efforts to show how effective their technology is and what amazing things we can do, this is not serious. The Americans really haven’t really thought out all the implications of this shipping by air or by pontoon bridges or boats or whatever, the distribution of the food.

UNRWA is the most efficient food distributor in Gaza, and the United States is trying to destroy UNRWA because Israel asked it to. And Israel asks the United States, pushes the red button, when it needs American criminal assistance, and the Americans tend to respond, most of the time. And the Americans defunding UNRWA is a criminal activity, because it has massive implications for the well-being and even survival of Palestinians in Gaza and many other refugee camps around the region.

So, if the U.S. is serious about helping reduce civilian suffering in Gaza, it has very, very simple, quick ways to do it, which is to lay down the law with the Israelis and say, “Look, you’re not going to get — we’re not going to remain complicit in this genocide of yours. You have to stop obstructing the delivery of food and medicine and other things into Gaza, or else we’re going to stop the delivery of arms and funds and diplomatic protection at the U.N.” This is a tough position for the U.S. to take. It has taken similar positions a few times in the past. But you have to have resolve, you have to have serious analysis in the White House, and you have to have a wellspring of decency and ethical behavior — all three of which are now missing from the White House policy on foreign policy in the Middle East.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, Rami Khouri, this bizarre plan for a temporary pier, given the fact that it would take as much as two months to prepare, isn’t that effectively the United States recognizing that this war, this genocidal war, is going to go on much longer than most, I guess, of the American public expected?

RAMI KHOURI: Absolutely. This is exactly the point I’m trying to make, that the United States and Great Britain, most of all, among the Western countries, are explicitly, openly, even enthusiastically supporting the plausible genocide that Israel is carrying out. And this is one of the great mysteries of modern times. Why would two countries like the U.S. and the U.K., which boast about their commitment to democracy and human rights and equality and all of these good things — why would they be so emphatic and so consistent in supporting this? They don’t have a problem with 30,000 Palestinians killed and hundreds of thousands injured or displaced. They clearly don’t have a problem with it. Their words mean nothing. Their actions speak volumes about what they truly feel in their hearts. This is the government. The people of these countries are much better than that.

But the U.S. and U.K. and a few other countries are all-out supporting Israel in doing this, and they have been since 1917, when England issued the Balfour Declaration. That’s why we say you’ve got to look at the historical context. In 1917, the United Kingdom issued the Balfour Declaration to the small, young Zionist movement in Europe, saying, “We support the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.” And Palestine was 95% Arab. There was a small Jewish community that had always existed there, and should always exist there, but it was 95% Arab. It’s like me saying there should be a Palestinian homeland in the center of Manhattan. It just is not — it’s not right. It’s not possible. You can’t take somebody else’s land and create your own country.

And since 1917, the Zionist movement and the state of Israel, supported by the U.S. and U.K. and others, has enthusiastically pursued the plan to diminish the number of Palestinians living in Palestine so you can have an exclusively Jewish state, which is the government policy now of this government in Israel. But it has failed. It has failed because the number of Palestinians between the historic Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, which includes Israel and some of the Occupied Territories, there are more Palestinians now than Israelis, more Christian and Muslim Palestinians than Jewish Israelis. So, not only is the Israeli plan vicious and cruel and criminal, it’s also ineffective.

And the United States is pursuing its amateurish, comic, entertainment-based, cartoonlike foreign policy to support this, knowing that it’s going to fail. And, you know, the airdrops were the best example of this, those five poor kids who were killed by these food packets that fell on them and killed them. This is unbelievable that the United States would carry out these kinds of policies. The pontoon bridge is another one.

There are so many ramifications of that also that haven’t been discussed or explored, in terms of what’s it going to mean in terms of recreating Israeli direct security control mechanisms in Gaza to protect the food and allow it to be distributed. Who’s going to distribute it? Is this going to create new mechanisms, which already are starting to take shape now, of lawless, ganglike behavior among starving, desperate Palestinians? And this is human nature. Anybody who’s starving and desperate is going to create gangs and to go get the food and distribute it. And this is exactly what’s happening. This is exactly what the Israelis want. They want the Palestinians to act in this manner, and therefore, the Israelis can show the world, “Look at these — these are animals, these Palestinians.” And they want to drive them out. And there’s another fear also that if UNRWA is not allowed to continue its activities, the distribution process will end up being either politicized or criminalized. And this is with the direct involvement of the Israelis and the Americans and some Arab countries. And this is also not a very good idea.

AMY GOODMAN: Rami Khouri —

RAMI KHOURI: So, there’s many —

AMY GOODMAN: — we want to thank you so much for being with us, Palestinian American journalist, senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut, joining us today from New York.

When we come back, we speak with civil rights advocate and author Michelle Alexander, who says, “Only Revolutionary Love Can Save Us Now.” Back in 20 seconds.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “Everything Must Change,” sung by Nina Simone. The song includes the words “The young becomes old / And mysteries do unfold / For that’s the way of time / No one and nothing stays unchanged.” These are words quoted by our next guest.

***

“Revolutionary Love”: Michelle Alexander on Gaza, Solidarity, MLK & What Gives Her Hope
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 13, 2024

Author and civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander’s new piece in The Nation reflects on Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s April 4, 1967, speech in New York opposing the war in Vietnam and its lasting lessons for American society today. She describes “revolutionary love” as the transnational “connections between liberation struggles” around the world, and calls for anti-oppression movements in the U.S. to continue working to “end the occupation of Palestine and commit to the thriving of all of the people who have been subjected to endless war and occupation.” Revolutionary love, argues Alexander, “is the only thing that can save us now.”

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.

Civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander has a new piece in The Nation. It’s headlined “Only Revolutionary Love Can Save Us Now.” Michelle Alexander begins, “This moment feels different. Something new is in the air. Of course, everything is always changing. Impermanence is the way of life. Philosophers, theologians, and poets have reminded us for centuries that the only constant is change.”

Michelle Alexander joins us now for more, the best-selling author of the book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

It’s great to have you back with us, Michelle. If you can —

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Thank you. Thanks for having me. I’m always happy to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to see you. If you can talk about what gives you hope right now, even as you write about what’s happening in Gaza, as you talk about what’s happening with issues of police brutality and mass incarceration through the United States? Talk about movements and your references to Dr. King.

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Well, what gives me hope right now is that, despite everything, revolutionary love is bursting and blossoming in all kinds of places and spaces. Years of relentless and patient organizing and deep learning about each other’s histories and struggles have led to a moment when Black activists are showing up at protests organized by Jewish students who are raising their voices in solidarity with Palestinians who are suffering occupation and annihilation in Gaza. And, you know, this is due to connections that have been made over the course of years between liberation struggles on the streets of Ferguson and those occurring in Palestine. And these small acts of revolutionary love are leading to movements, are building movements that just might help us change everything.

And, you know, we see this in communities everywhere, where people are connecting dots between climate change and racial and gender injustice. We see it in the movement to stop Cop City in Atlanta. We see it in movements for clean water and food. And we see that people are making connections between liberation struggles here at home and those occurring around the world, as well as connections between the violence of policing and incarceration and the violence of militarism and the relentless assault on Gaza.

So, you know, people are turning towards really promising forms of movement building, incredible acts of courage in this moment, speaking unpopular truths. And that gives me hope, even in a time when there is so much reason for fear and anxiety, that can be paralyzing.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Michelle, but you also raised in your article that all of this is happening right now in the midst of a presidential election here in the United States. And what do you see as the impact of the policy of the Biden administration in terms of — especially in terms of Gaza and the genocide there, and what the impact may be on the result of our election?

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Well, you know, tens of thousands of people have been killed in Gaza in just a few months with our bombs — you know, mass murder funded by our government, aided and abetted by our military, paid for, in large part, by our tax dollars. And while we have been told by our government that we are not witnessing genocide, you know, I and millions of people around the world have watched. You know, as videos have traveled around the globe, we’ve watched, you know, as mothers have pulled body parts of their dead children out of rubble, as people have had their limbs amputated, sawed off, without anesthesia because the hospitals have been destroyed and there’s no medicine, including pain medication, to be found. We’ve watched as people facing starvation have been shot at by Israeli soldiers as they approach vehicles carrying aid.

And so, you know, the Biden administration seems to be surprised that people who are not Palestinian care as deeply as we do. And I think if the Democratic Party and the Biden administration is serious about winning this next election, they must not only insist upon a ceasefire, but end the aid for the military support and the bombs, and must invest and ensure that the people who are starving and who are suffering there get the aid that they need to survive. We must end the occupation of Palestine and commit to the thriving of all of the people who have been subjected to relentless war and occupation for decades now. And so, yeah, I do think it’s an important issue in this election year.

And, you know, as I point out in the piece, that there are many, many things that are weighing on the minds and the hearts of the American people right now. It is the mass killing in Gaza, you know, more than 10,000 children, and the destruction of hospitals, schools, churches, mosques, universities, museums and nearly all the basic infrastructure. It is the memories of the killings that occurred on October 7th, memories that many continue to carry along with deep grief and fear. But there’s also, you know, fears of the threats to our democracy, to the very ideas of diversity and inclusion. And there’s the threat of climate change. You know, 2023 was the hottest year on record, and it seems we may have already passed a critical tipping point, and yet the five biggest oil companies last year raked in record profits, nearly $200 billion in profits, more than the economic output of most countries. And, you know, if all that wasn’t enough, we keep learning more and more that AI just might destroy humanity.

And, you know, I find that people often ask me, as I speak about issues related to climate change and the war in Gaza and the threats related to the rise in technology: What does any of this have to do with mass incarceration or police violence, the issues and causes that have been most pressing and most important to me for much of my life? And what I always say is that these issues have everything to do with mass incarceration. These are existential crises that we face because we have persisted in treating people and all of creation as exploitable and disposable, unworthy of our care and concern. We are lost in the delusion that we can solve problems or do justice or achieve peace and security simply by locking people up, throwing away the key, destroying their lives and families, getting rid of them, declaring wars on them, wars on drugs, wars on crime, wars on Gaza. And that’s why I keep returning again and again to the speech that Martin Luther King gave near the end of his life, the speech where he condemned the Vietnam War and was immediately canceled. That’s what my piece in The Nation is ultimately about.

AMY GOODMAN: Michelle, we want to end with and get your final comment on Dr. King’s speech that he gave at New York’s Riverside Church opposing the War in Vietnam a year to the day before he was assassinated. This is Dr. King speaking about why he opposed the War in Vietnam.

REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask, and rightly so, “What about Vietnam?” And they ask if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home. And I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. King, after which, you point out in the piece, Michelle, that he was canceled, from the major papers, The New York Times to The Washington Post, attacked for his opposition to war.

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Yes, that’s absolutely right. I mean, it’s difficult to overstate the political risk that he was taking in that moment. Our nation had been at war with Vietnam for two years. Ten thousand American troops had already been killed. And the war had enthusiastic bipartisan support within the political establishment. Anyone who dared to criticize the war were often labeled communist and subjected to vicious forms of retaliation and backlash. Many of his friends and his allies told him not to speak out against the war, saying he’d jeopardize the very fragile and brand-new gains of the civil rights movement.

And he said, you know, those people, those voices didn’t understand the depth of his moral commitment, but they also had no real understanding of the nature of the world in which they lived. And he said basic morality demands that we speak for the weak, the voiceless, the victims of our own nation, especially the children, including those our nation calls enemy, for they are no less our brothers and sisters. He condemned the moral bankruptcy of a nation that doesn’t hesitate to invest in bombs and warfare around the world but can’t ever seem to find the dollars to eradicate poverty at home.

But, for me, you know, what makes King’s speech essential in this moment is that he was arguing in that speech that if we, as a nation, do not awaken from our collective delusions, we are doomed. You know, he said we must rapidly shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. You know, he said when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, you know, the giant triplet of racism, extreme materialism and militarism will never be conquered. You know, if we fail to make this turn, if we fail to awaken, we are doomed. And he was right. Whether we’re talking about climate change, AI, mass deportation, mass incarceration, the wars in Gaza or the wars on drugs, he’s right, that if we don’t turn away from the corrupting forces of capitalism, militarism and racism, and embrace a truly revolutionary love for all people and all creation, we are doomed. Towards the end of that speech at Riverside, he said there is such a thing as being too late. You know, he said over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words “too late.”

And yet his message wasn’t a hopeless one. He was calling us to embrace a revolutionary movement, one that was grounded in an ethic of love. Just as bell hooks once said, you know, as long as we refuse to embrace love in our struggles for liberation, we will not be able to create a culture of conversion where there’s a mass turning away from an ethic of domination. And that, ultimately, is what revolutionary love is all about and why I believe it is the only thing that can save us now.

AMY GOODMAN: Michelle Alexander, thank you so much for joining us, civil rights advocate —

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: — author of the best-selling book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. We’ll link to your piece in The Nation, headlined “Only Revolutionary Love Can Save Us Now.”

When we come back, Donald Trump meets with Hungary’s authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at Mar-a-Lago last weekend. Stay with us.

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Mehdi Hasan on Genocide in Gaza, the Silencing of Palestinian Voices in U.S. Media & Why He Left MSNBC
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 14, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/14/ ... transcript

Acclaimed journalist Mehdi Hasan joins us to discuss U.S. media coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza and how the war is a genocide being abetted by the United States. Hasan says U.S. media is overwhelmingly pro-Israel and fails to convey the truth to audiences. “Palestinian voices not being on American television or in American print is one of the biggest problems when it comes to our coverage of this conflict,” he says. Hasan has just launched a new media company, Zeteo, which he started after the end of his weekly news program on MSNBC and Peacock earlier this year. Hasan’s interviews routinely led to viral segments, including his tough questioning of Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev, but the cable network announced it was canceling his show in November. The move drew considerable outrage, with critics slamming MSNBC for effectively silencing one of the most prominent Muslim voices in U.S. media. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to threaten a ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, which human rights groups warn would be a massacre. President Biden has said such an escalation is a “red line” for him, but Netanyahu has vowed to push ahead anyway. “Where is the outcry here in the West?” asks Hasan of reports of Israeli war crimes, including the killing of over 100 journalists in the past five months in Gaza and the blockade of aid from the region. “It’s a stain on [Biden’s] record, on America’s conscience.”

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: The death toll in Gaza has topped 31,300. At least five people were killed on Wednesday when Israel bombed an UNRWA aid distribution center in Rafah — one of the U.N. agency’s last remaining aid sites in Gaza. The head of UNRWA called the attack a, quote, “blatant disregard to international humanitarian law.”

This comes as much of Gaza is on the brink of famine as Israel continues to limit the amount of aid allowed into the besieged territory. At least 27 Palestinians have died of starvation, including 23 children.

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera is reporting six Palestinians were killed in Gaza City when Israeli forces opened fire again on crowds waiting for food aid. Over 80 people were injured.

In other news from Gaza, Politico reports the Biden administration has privately told Israel that the U.S. would support Israel attacking Rafah as long as it did not carry out a large-scale invasion.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we begin today’s show looking at how the U.S. media is covering Israel’s assault on Gaza with the acclaimed TV broadcaster Mehdi Hasan. In January, he announced he was leaving MSNBC after his shows were canceled. Mehdi was one of the most prominent Muslim voices on American television. In October, the news outlet Semafor reported MSNBC had reduced the roles of Hasan and two other Muslim broadcasters on the network, Ayman Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi, following the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel. Then, in November, MSNBC announced it was canceling Hasan’s show shortly after he conducted this interview with Mark Regev, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is an excerpt.

MEHDI HASAN: You say Hamas’s numbers — I should point out, just pull up on the screen, in the last two major Gaza conflicts, 2009 and 2014, the Israeli military’s death tolls matched Hamas’s Health Ministry death tolls, so — and the U.N., human rights groups all agree that those numbers are credible. But look, your wider point is true.

MARK REGEV: Can I challenge that?

MEHDI HASAN: We shouldn’t —

MARK REGEV: Will you allow me —

MEHDI HASAN: We shouldn’t —

MARK REGEV: — to challenge that, please? Can I just challenge that?

MEHDI HASAN: Briefly, if you can.

MARK REGEV: I’d like to challenge that.

MEHDI HASAN: Briefly.

MARK REGEV: I’ll try to be as brief as you are, sir. Those numbers are provided by Hamas. There’s no independent verification. And secondly, more importantly, you have no idea how many of them are Hamas terrorists, combatants, and how many are civilians. Hamas would have you believe that they’re all civilians, that they’re all children.

And here we have to say something that isn’t said enough. Hamas, until now, we’re destroying their military machine, and with that, we’re eroding their control. But up until now, they’ve been in control of the Gaza Strip. And as a result, they control all the images coming out of Gaza. Have you seen one picture of a single dead Hamas terrorist in the fighting in Gaza? Not one.

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah, but I have —

MARK REGEV: Is that by accident, or is that —

MEHDI HASAN: But I have, Mark —

MARK REGEV: — because Hamas can control — Hamas can control the information coming out of Gaza?

MEHDI HASAN: Mark, but you asked me a question, and you said you would be brief. I haven’t. You’re right. But 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.

AMY GOODMAN: “Oh wow,” Mehdi Hasan responded, interviewing Netanyahu adviser Mark Regev on MSNBC. Soon after, MSNBC announced that he was losing his shows. Since leaving the network, Mehdi Hasan has launched a new digital media company named Zeteo.

Mehdi, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. I want to start with that interview you did with Regev. After, you lost your two shows, soon after. Do you think that’s the reason those shows were canceled? Interviews like that?

MEHDI HASAN: You would have to ask MSNBC, Amy. And, Amy and Nermeen, thank you for having me on. It’s great to be back here after a few years away. Look, the advantage of not being at MSNBC anymore is I get to come on shows like this and talk to you all. You should get someone from MSNBC on and ask them why they canceled the shows, because I can’t answer that question. I wish I knew. But there we go.

The shows were canceled at the end of November. I quit at the beginning of January, because I wanted to have a platform of my own. I couldn’t really spend 2024, one of the most important news years of our lives — genocide in Gaza, fascism at the door here in America with elections — couldn’t really spend that being a guest anchor and a political analyst, which is what I was offered at MSNBC while I was staying there. I wanted to leave. I wanted to get my voice back. And that’s why I launched my own media company, as you mentioned, called Zeteo, which we’ve done a soft launch on and we’re going to launch properly next month. But I’m excited about all the opportunities ahead, the opportunity to do more interviews like the one I did with Mark Regev.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Mehdi, could you explain Zeteo? First of all, what does it mean? And what is the gap in the U.S. media landscape that you hope to fill? You’ve been extremely critical of the U.S. media’s coverage of Gaza, saying, quite correctly, that the coverage has not been as consistent or clear as the last time we saw an invasion of this kind, though far less brutal, which was the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah, it’s a great question. So, on Zeteo, it’s an ancient Greek word, going back to Socrates and Plato, which means to seek out, to search, to inquire for the truth. And at a time when we live in a, some would say, post-truth society — or people on the right are attempting to turn it into a post-truth society — I thought that was an important endeavor to embark upon as a journalist, to go back to our roots.

In terms of why I launch it and the media space, look, there is a gap in the market, first of all, on the left for a company like this one. Not many progressives have pulled off a for-profit, subscription-based business, media business. We’ve seen it on the right, Nermeen, with, you know, Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire and Bari Weiss’s The Free Press, and even Tucker Carlson has launched his own subscription-based platform since leaving Fox. And on the progressive space, we haven’t really done it. Now, of course, there are wonderful shows like Democracy Now! which are doing important, invaluable journalism on subjects like Gaza, on subjects like the climate. But across the media industry as a whole, sadly, in the U.S., the massive gap is there are not enough — I don’t know how to put it — bluntly, truth tellers, people who are willing to say — and when I say “truth tellers,” I don’t just mean, you know, truth in a conventional sense of saying what is true and what is false; I’m saying the language in which we talk about what is happening in the world today.

Too many of my colleagues in the media, unfortunately, hide behind lazy euphemisms, a both-sides journalism, the idea that you can’t say Donald Trump is racist because you don’t know what’s in his heart; you can’t say the Republican Party is going full fascist, even as they proclaim that they don’t believe in democracy as we conventionally understand it; we can’t say there’s a genocide in Gaza, even though the International Court of Justice says such a thing is plausible. You know, we run away from very blunt terms which help us understand world. And I want to treat American consumers of news, global consumers of news — it’s a global news organization which I’m founding — with some respect. Stop patronizing them. Tell them what is happening in the world, in a blunt way.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Mehdi, talk about this. I mean, in your criticism of the U.S. media’s coverage, in particular, of Israel’s assault on Gaza — I mean, of course, you have condemned what happened, the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7th. You’ve also situated the attack in a broader historical frame, and you’ve received criticism for doing that. And in response, you’ve said, “Context is not causation,” and “Context is not justification.” So, could you explain why you think context, history, is so important, and the way in which this question is kind of elided in U.S. media coverage, not just of the Gaza crisis, but especially so now?

MEHDI HASAN: So, I did an interview with Piers Morgan this week. And if you watch Piers Morgan’s shows, he always asks his pro-Palestinian guests or anyone criticizing Israel, you know, “Condemn what happened on October 7th.” It’s all about October the 7th. And what happened on October 7th was barbarism. It was a tragedy. It was a terror attack. Civilians were killed. War crimes were carried out. Hostages were taken. And we should condemn it. Of course we should, as human beings, if nothing else.

But the world did not begin on October the 7th. The idea that the entire Middle East conflict, Israel-Palestine, the occupation, apartheid, can be reduced to October 7th is madness. And it’s not just me saying that. You talk to, you know, leading Israeli peace campaigners, even some leading Israeli generals, people like Shlomo Brom, who talk about having to understand the root causes of a people under occupation fighting for freedom. And it’s absurd to me that in our media industry people should try and run away from context. My former colleagues Ali Velshi and Ayman Mohyeldin, who Amy mentioned in the introduction, they were on air on October the 7th as news was coming in of the attacks, and they provided context, because they’re two anchors who really understand that part of the world. Ayman Mohyeldin is perhaps the only U.S. anchor who’s ever lived in Gaza. And they came under attack online from certain pro-Israel people for providing context. This idea that we should be embarrassed or ashamed or apologetic as journalists for providing context on one of the biggest stories in the world is madness. You cannot understand what is happening in the world unless we, unless you and I, unless journalists, broadcasters, are explaining to our viewers and our listeners and our readers why things are happening, where forces are coming from, why people are behaving the way they do. And I know America is a country of amnesiacs, but we cannot keep acting as if the world just began yesterday.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about a piece in The Intercept — you also used to report for The Intercept — the headline, “In Internal Meeting, Christiane Amanpour Confronts CNN Brass About 'Double Standards' on Israel Coverage.” It’s a really interesting piece. They were confronting the executives, and “One issue that came up,” says The Intercept, “repeatedly is CNN’s longtime process for routing almost all coverage relating to Israel and Palestine through the network’s Jerusalem bureau. As The Intercept reported in January, the protocol — which has existed for years but was expanded and rebranded as SecondEyes last summer — slows down reporting on Gaza and filters news about the war through journalists in Jerusalem who operate under the shadow of Israel’s military censor.” And then it quotes Christiane Amanpour, identified in a recording of that meeting. She said, “You’ve heard from me, you’ve heard my, you know, real distress with SecondEyes — changing copy, double standards, and all the rest,” Amanpour said. The significance of this and what we see, Mehdi? You know, I’m not talking Fox right now. On MSNBC —

MEHDI HASAN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — and on CNN, you rarely see Palestinians interviewed in extended discussions.

MEHDI HASAN: So, I think there’s a few issues there, Amy. Number one, first of all, we should recognize that Christiane Amanpour has done some very excellent coverage of Gaza for CNN in this conflict. She’s had some very powerful interviews and very important guests on. So, credit to Christiane during this conflict. Number two —

AMY GOODMAN: International —

MEHDI HASAN: — I think U.S. media organizations —

AMY GOODMAN: — I just wanted to say, particularly on CNN International, which is often not seen —

MEHDI HASAN: Very good point.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — on CNN domestic.

MEHDI HASAN: Very good — very good point, Amy. Touché.

The second point, I would say, is U.S. media organizations, as a whole, are engaging in journalistic malpractice by not informing viewers, listeners, readers that a lot of their coverage out of Israel and the Occupied Territories is coming under the shadow of an Israeli military censor. How many Americans understand or even know about the Israeli military censor, about how much information is controlled? We barely understand that Western journalists are kept out of Gaza, or if when they go in, they’re embedded with Israeli military forces and limited to what they can say and do. So I think we should talk about that in a country which kind of prides itself on the First Amendment and free speech and a free press. We should understand the way in which information comes out of the Occupied Territories, in particular from Gaza.

And the third point, I would say, is, yeah, Palestinian voices not being on American television or in American print is one of the biggest problems when it comes to our coverage of this conflict. When we talk about why the media is structurally biased towards one party in this conflict, the more powerful party, the occupier, we have to remember that this is one of the reasons. Why are Palestinians dehumanized in our media? This is one of the reasons. We don’t let people speak. That’s what leads to dehumanization. That’s what leads to bias.

We understand it at home when it comes to, for example, Black voices. In recent years, media organizations have tried to take steps to improve diversity on air, when it comes to on-air talent, when it comes to on-air guests, when it comes to balancing panels. We get that we need underrepresented communities to be able to speak. But when it comes to foreign conflicts, we still don’t seem to have made that calculation.

There was a study done a few years ago of op-eds in The New York Times and The Washington Post on the subject of Israel-Palestine from 1970 to, I think it was, 2000-and-something, and it was like 2% of all op-eds in the Times and 1% in the Post were written by Palestinians, which is a shocking statistic. We deny these people a voice, and then we wonder why people don’t sympathize with their plight or don’t — aren’t, you know, marching in the street — well, they are marching in the streets — but in bigger numbers. Why America is OK and kind of, you know, blind to the fact that we are complicit in a genocide of these people? Because we don’t hear from these people.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Mehdi, I mean, explain why that’s especially relevant in this instance, because journalists have not been permitted access to Gaza, so there is no reporting going on on the ground that’s being shown here. I mean, dozens and dozens of journalists have signed a letter asking Israel and Egypt to allow journalists access into Gaza. So, if you could talk about that, why it’s especially important to hear from Palestinian voices here?

MEHDI HASAN: Well, for a start, Nermeen, much of the imagery we see on our screens here or in our newspapers are sanitized images. We don’t see the full level of the destruction. And when we try and understand, well, why are young people — why is there such a generational gap when it comes to the polling on Gaza, on ceasefire, why are young people so much more antiwar than their elder peers, part of the reason is that young people are on TikTok or Instagram and seeing a much less sanitized version of this war, of Israel’s bombardment. They are seeing babies being pulled from the rubble, limbs missing. They are seeing hospitals being — you know, hospitals carrying out procedures without anesthetic. They are seeing just absolute brutality, the kind of stuff that U.N. humanitarian chiefs are saying we haven’t seen in this world for 50 years.

And that’s the problem, right? If we’re sanitizing the coverage, Americans aren’t being told, really, aren’t being informed, are, again, missing context on what is happening on the ground. And, of course, Israel, by keeping Western journalists out, makes it even easier for those images to be blocked, and therefore you have Palestinian — brave Palestinian journalists on the ground trying to film, trying to document their own genocide, streaming it to our phones. And we’ve seen over a hundred of them killed over the last five months. That is not an accident. That is not a coincidence. Israel wants to stamp out independent voices, stamp out any kind of coverage of its own genocidal behavior.

And therefore, again, you’re able to have a debate in this country where the political debate is completely disconnected to the public debate, and the public debate is completely misinformed. I’m amazed, Nermeen, when you look at the polling, that there’s a majority in favor of a ceasefire, that half of all Democrats say this is a genocide. Americans are saying that to pollsters despite not even getting the full picture. Can you imagine what those numbers would look like if they actually saw what was happening on the ground?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I want to go to what is unfolding right now in Gaza. You said in a recent interview that in the past Israel was, quote, “mowing the lawn,” but now the Netanyahu government’s intention is to erase the population of Gaza. So let’s go to what Prime Minister Netanyahu said about the invasion of Rafah, saying it would go ahead and would last weeks, not months. He was speaking to Politico on Sunday.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: We’re not going to leave them. You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is? That October 7th doesn’t happen again, never happens again. And to do that, we have to complete the destruction of the Hamas terrorist army. … We’re very close to victory. It’s close at hand. We’ve destroyed three-quarters of Hamas fighting terrorist battalions, and we’re close to finishing the last part in Rafah, and we’re not going to give it up. … Once we begin the intense action of eradicating the Hamas terrorist battalions in Rafah, it’s a matter of weeks and not months.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Mehdi, your response to what Netanyahu said and what the Israelis have proposed as a safe place for Gazans to go — namely, humanitarian islands?

MEHDI HASAN: So, number one, when you hear Netanyahu speak, Nermeen, doesn’t it remind you of George Bush in kind of 2002, 2003? It’s very — you know, invoking 9/11 to justify every atrocity, claiming that you’re trying to protect the country, when you, yourself, your idiocy and your incompetency, is what led to the attacks. You know, George Bush was unable to prevent 9/11, and then used 9/11 to justify every atrocity, even though his incompetence helped allow 9/11 to happen. And I feel the same way: Netanyahu allowed the worst terror attack, the worst massacre in Israel to happen on his watch. Many of his own, you know, generals, many of his own people blame him for this. And so, it’s rich to hear him saying, “My aim is to stop this from happening again.” Well, you couldn’t stop it from happening the first time, and now you’re killing innocent Palestinians under the pretense that this is national security.

Number two, again George Bush-like, claiming that the war is nearly done, mission is nearly accomplished, that’s nonsense. No serious observer believes that Hamas is finished or that Israel has won some total victory. A member of Netanyahu’s own war cabinet said recently, “Anyone who says you can absolutely defeat Hamas is telling tall tales, is lying.” That was a colleague of Netanyahu’s, in government, who said that.

And number three, the red line on Rafah that Biden suppposedly set down and that Netanyahu is now mocking, saying, “My own red line is to do the opposite,” what on Earth is Joe Biden doing in allowing Benjamin Netanyahu to humiliate him in this way with this invasion of Rafah, even after he said he opposes it? I mean, it’s one thing to leak stuff —

AMY GOODMAN: Mehdi —

MEHDI HASAN: — over a few months —

AMY GOODMAN: — let’s go to Biden speaking on MSNBC. He’s being interviewed by your former colleague Jonathan Capehart, as he was being questioned about Benjamin Netanyahu and saying he’s hurting Israel more than helping Israel.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: He has a right to defend Israel, a right to continue to pursue Hamas. But he must, he must, he must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken. He’s hurting — in my view, he’s hurting Israel more than helping Israel by making the rest of the world — it’s contrary to what Israel stands for. And I think it’s a big mistake. So I want to see a ceasefire.

AMY GOODMAN: And he talked about a, well, kind of a red line. If you can address what Biden is saying and what he proposed in the State of the Union, this pier, to get more aid in, and also the dropping — the airdropping of food, which recently killed five Palestinians because it crushed them to death, and the humanitarian groups, United Nations saying these airdrops, the pier come nowhere near being able to provide the aid that’s needed, at the same time, and the reason they’re doing all of this, is because Israel is using U.S. bombs and artillery to attack the Palestinians and these aid trucks?

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah, it’s just so bizarre, the idea that you could drop bombs, on the one hand, and then drop aid, on the other, and you’re paying for both, and then your aid ends up killing people, too. It’s like some kind of dark Onion headline. It’s just beyond parody. It’s beyond belief.

And as for the pier, as you say, it does not come anywhere near to adequately addressing the needs of the Palestinian people, in terms of the sheer scale of the suffering, half a million people on the brink of famine, over a million people displaced. Four out of five of the hungriest people in the world, according to the World Food Programme, are in Gaza right now. The idea that this pier would, A, address the scale of the suffering, and, B, in time — I mean, it’s going to take time to do this. What happens to the Palestinians who literally starve to death, including children, while this pier is being built? Finally, I would say, there’s reporting in the Israeli press, Amy, that I’ve seen that suggests that the pier idea comes from Netanyahu, that the Israeli government are totally fine with this pier, because it allows them still to control land and air access into Gaza, which is what they’ve always controlled and which in this war they’ve monopolized.

The idea that the United States of America, the world’s only superpower, cannot tell its ally, “You know what? We’re going to put aid into Gaza because we want to, and you’re not going to stop us, especially since we’re the ones arming you,” is bizarre. It’s something I think Biden will never be able to get past or live down. It’s a stain on his record, on America’s conscience. The idea that we’re arming a country that’s engaged in a “plausible genocide,” to quote the ICJ, is bad enough. That we can’t even get our own aid in, while they’re bombing with our bombs, is just madness. And by the way, it’s also illegal. Under U.S. law, you cannot provide weaponry to a country which is blocking U.S. aid. And by the way, it’s not me saying they’re blocking U.S. aid. U.S. government officials have said, “Yes, the Israeli government blocked us from sending flour in,” for example.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Mehdi, let’s go to the regional response to this assault on Gaza that’s been unfolding with the kind of violence and tens of thousands of deaths of Palestinians, as we’ve reported. Now, what has — how has the Arab and Muslim world responded to what’s going on? Egypt, of course, has repeatedly said that it does not want displaced Palestinians crossing its border. The most powerful Muslim countries, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Emirates, if you can talk about how they’ve responded? And then the Axis — the so-called Axis of Resistance — Houthis, Hezbollah, etc. — how they have been trying to disrupt this war, or at least make the backers of Israel pay a price for it?

MEHDI HASAN: So, I hear people saying, “Oh, we’re disappointed in the response from the Arab countries.” The problem with the word “disappointment” is it implies you had any expectations to begin with. I certainly didn’t. Arab countries have never had the Palestinians’ backs. The Arab — quote-unquote, “Arab street” has always been very pro-Palestinian. But the autocratic, the despotic, the dictatorial rulers of much of the Arab world have never really had the interests of the Palestinian people at their heart, going back right to 1948, when, you know, Arab countries attacked Israel to push it into the sea, but, actually, as we know from historians like Avi Shlaim, were not doing that at all, and that some of them, like Jordan, had done deals with Israel behind the scenes. So, look, Arab countries have never really prioritized the Palestinian people or their needs or their freedom. And so, when you see some of these statements that come out of the Arab world at times like this, you know, you have to take them with a shovel of salt, not just a grain.

Also, I would point out the hypocrisy here on all sides in the region. You have countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which were involved in a brutal assault on Yemen for many years, carried out very similar acts to Israel in Gaza in terms of blockades, starvation, malnourishment of the Yemeni children, in terms of bombing of refugee camps and hospitals and kids and school buses. That all happened in Yemen. Arab countries did that, let’s just be clear about that, things that they criticize Israel for doing now. And, of course, Iran, which sets itself up as a champion of the Palestinan people, when Bashar al-Assad was killing many of his own people, including Palestinian refugees, in places like the al-Yarmouk refugee camp, Iran and Russia, by the way, were both perfectly happy to help arm and support Assad as he did that. So, you know, spare me some of the grandiose statements from Middle East countries, from Arab nations to Iran, on all of it. There’s a lot of hypocrisy to go around.

Very few countries in the world, especially in that region, actually have Palestinian interests at heart. If they did, we would have a very different geopolitical scene. There is reporting, Nermeen, that a lot of these governments, like Saudi Arabia, privately are telling Israel, “Finish the job. Get rid of them. We don’t like Hamas, either. Get rid of them,” and that Saudis actually want to do a deal with Israel once this war is over, just as they were on course to do, apparently, according to the Biden administration. We know that other Arab countries already signed the, quote-unquote, “Abraham Accords” with Israel on Trump’s watch.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about the number of dead Palestinian journalists and also the new U.N. investigation that just accused Israel of breaking international law over the killing of the Reuters video journalist Issam Abdallah in southern Lebanon. On October 13th, an Israeli tank opened fire on him and a group of other journalists. He had just set up a live stream on the border in southern Lebanon, so that all his colleagues at Reuters and others saw him blown up. The report stating, quote, “The firing at civilians, in this instance clearly identifiable journalists, constitutes a violation of … international law.” And it’s not just Issam in southern Lebanon. Well over a hundred Palestinian journalists in Gaza have died. We’ve never seen anything like the concentration of numbers of journalists killed in any other conflict or conflicts combined recently. Can you talk about the lack of outrage of other major news organizations and what Israel is doing here? Do you think they’re being directly targeted, one after another, wearing those well-known “press” flak jackets? It looks like we just lost audio to Mehdi Hasan.

MEHDI HASAN: Amy, I can — I can hear you, Amy, very faintly.

AMY GOODMAN: Oh, OK. So —

MEHDI HASAN: I’m going to answer your question, if you can still hear me.

AMY GOODMAN: Great. We can hear you perfectly.

MEHDI HASAN: So, you’re very faint to me. So, while I speak, if someone want to fix the volume in my ear. Let me answer your question about journalists.

It is an absolute tragedy and a scandal, what has happened to journalists in Gaza, that we have seen so many deaths in Gaza. And the real scandal, Amy, is that Western media, a lot of my colleagues here in the U.S. media, have not sounded the alarm, have not called out Israel for what it’s done. It’s outrageous that so many of our fellow colleagues can be killed in Gaza while reporting, while at home, losing family members, and yet there’s not a huge global outcry. When Wael al-Dahdouh, who we just saw on the screen, from Al Jazeera, loses his immediate family members and carries on reporting for Al Jazeera Arabic, why is he not on every front page in the world? Why is he not a hero? Why is he not sitting down with Oprah Winfrey? I feel like, you know, when Evan Gershkovich from The Wall Street Journal is wrongly imprisoned in Russia, we all campaign for Evan to be released. When Ukrainian journalists are killed, we all speak out and are angry about it. But when Palestinian journalists are killed on a level we’ve never seen before, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, where is the outcry here in the West over the killing of them? We claim to care about a free press. We claim to oppose countries that crack down on a free press, on journalism. We say journalism is not a crime. But then I don’t hear the outrage from my colleagues here at this barbarism in Gaza, where journalists are being killed in record numbers.

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Mehdi Hasan on the Risk of the Media Normalizing Trump’s Fascism & Dangers of TikTok Ban
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
March 14, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/14/ ... transcript

Journalist Mehdi Hasan warns U.S. media coverage of the 2024 election is largely unable to capture the threat to democracy posed by Donald Trump and the modern Republican Party. “We need to speak very clearly about what that fascist threat is,” says Hasan, who warns media outlets cannot “normalize his extremism and racism and bigotry,” because the right to free press itself could be under threat if he regains power. “One of our two major parties has been fully radicalized and is now in bed with white supremacists. … Let’s be plain about that.”

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Mehdi, let’s go to another issue that is, of course, a pressing one this year — namely, the U.S. elections. You’ve said that the problem with the media here is that it’s singularly unable to cover Trump properly — Trump, of course, who is now the nominee. If you could explain what you mean by that, and what the effects of that are going to be this year?

MEHDI HASAN: Phew, yeah, good question, Nermeen. Well, I would say three quick things. Number one, as I mentioned at the start, one of the reasons I set up Zeteo is because I believe there is a fascist threat to the United States from the modern Republican Party, and including its standard-bearer, its now official candidate, Donald J. Trump, and we need to speak very clearly about what that fascist threat is. We need to be able to say the F-word, not dance around it, not pretend Donald Trump is a normal candidate, not normalize his extremism and racism and bigotry and authoritarianism. And what we’re seeing right now, Nermeen, after 2020, when we saw some improvement in our coverage of Trump, I feel like we’ve regressed back to 2016 in many ways, in treating Trump as a spectacle, in benefiting from whatever ratings he gives media organizations, in asking him softball questions. He recently did an interview on CNBC. It was embarrassing to watch. That is a huge problem. So that’s number one.

Number two, you know, there is this issue right now, for example, where, look, we have this issue of access journalism, where a lot of journalists still need to be able to get guests on air from both parties, and there is this both-sidesism, which is very frustrating. And the media needs to really think long and hard about how we do journalism. The old conventions, the old norms cannot apply. There are not two sides to every story. There are not two sides to Holocaust denial or climate change or elections. You know, there’s not two sides to whether Joe Biden won the last election or not. We need to be clear-eyed about what’s in front of us, and, again, have some respect for our viewers and our readers and tell them what is going on, that one of our two major parties has been fully radicalized and is now in bed with white supremacists and is spreading some of the worst QAnon conspiracy theories out there. Let’s be plain about that.

And number three, in terms of the dangers, I mean, we have skin in the game. This idea that the media should be impartial, no, we should have a bias towards truth. We should have a bias towards free press, because the media’s survival is at stake here. If Donald Trump wins the election, what do you think is going to happen to our free press? He’s not hiding it. He has talked openly about wanting to come after NBC and MSNBC for treason. His allies, like Kash Patel, have talked about going after the media criminally and civilly. One of his allies, Mike Davis, says if Trump makes him AG, he’s going to put me in Guantánamo Bay. This is the kind of open authoritarian rhetoric that we’re hearing from the Republican side. And the media cannot pretend that this is normal or not a threat to our very freedoms.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to finally ask you about what we’re taking up in our next segment, the bill to ban TikTok. The measure is going to now be taken up by the Senate. But I wanted to ask you about a particular aspect of it. Palestinian rights activists say Israel’s war on Gaza has galvanized anti-TikTok sentiment in conservative and centrist lawmakers. In a leaked post-October 7th audio recording, Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, can be heard saying, quote, “We have a TikTok problem,” referencing declining public support for Israel among younger people. The progressive group RootsAction also noted that AIPAC is the top donor to Congressmember Mike Gallagher, who authored the TikTok ban bill. And this is coming as Donald Trump flip-flopped. He flipped his position on the bill within the last week, now opposing the ban, after recently meeting with Republican megadonor billionaire Jeff Yass, whose company holds a 15% stake in ByteDance, interestingly, a major donor to right-wing Israeli think tanks. Mehdi, just your take on that aspect of this?

MEHDI HASAN: Well, first off, Donald Trump doesn’t believe in anything other than himself, so he should really be supporting this bill. It aligns with his anti-China positions. But he’s not, because he might be making money out of not supporting this bill. So that’s just a reminder that Donald Trump believes in nothing but himself.

In terms of the TikTok problem, clearly it’s a problem. We discussed earlier, if you have a sanitized war on mainstream media, but you have TikTok showing younger Americans exactly what’s going on, in terms of the barbarism, the brutality, the mass killing, the starvation, the war crimes, then, of course, that’s a problem for the Israeli PR machine, clearly, and for the pro-Israel factions in the United States.

And it’s ironic when we say, “Oh, well, it’s actually not to do with Israel. It’s to do with China. It’s to do with not knowing what’s going on inside of this company.” Come on. Look, I have an issue with Chinese ownership of TikTok. Of course I do, like anyone else. I’m no fan of China. But the idea that other social media companies are somehow transparent or doing a better job on moderation, come on. I mean, look at Elon Musk, just this week, canceled Don Lemon’s new show on his platform, on Twitter, on X, because he was asked some moderately tough questions by Don Lemon. This is the kind of — you know, this is the power of Big Tech in America and billionaires who are controlling our public squares. The idea that dealing with TikTok will help us challenge misinformation or extremism online is just a complete lie.

AMY GOODMAN: Mehdi Hasan, we want to thank you so much for being with us, and we’re going to continue this discussion about TikTok in our next segment. Mehdi Hasan, journalist, author, editor-in-chief, now CEO of the new media company Zeteo, until January was a host on MSNBC and Peacock. All the best to you, Mehdi.

MEHDI HASAN: Thank you, Amy.