Israel’s War on Journalists: More Reporters Killed in Gaza in 3 Months Than Any Country Over Entire Year
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
January 17, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/1/17/ ... transcript
Gaza is now the deadliest place on Earth for media workers. By some estimates, over 110 journalists have been killed there since Israel began its assault on the territory following the October 7 Hamas attack, and the Committee to Protect Journalists says more journalists were killed in the first 10 weeks of the war than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year. We speak with CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa coordinator Sherif Mansour, who says journalists in Gaza are showing great courage amid horrific working conditions. “They really are rewriting what it means to be a journalist today with immense, brave and never-seen-before sacrifices,” Mansour says.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Israel’s bombardment of Gaza from the land, air and sea continued today, much of it in the southern part of the territory in the cities of Khan Younis and Rafah. At least 163 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in the last 24 hours, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Some of the worst shelling hit the western side of Khan Younis, which was designated in the early stages of Israel’s assault on Gaza as a so-called safe zone by Israel. There’s also been intense Israeli bombardment in the vicinity of Nasser Hospital, the main hospital in the city, and tanks and armored vehicles are on the main road leading to the area. Among the places hit in Khan Younis was a school sheltering displaced Palestinians. An eyewitness described the attack.
EYEWITNESS: We saw death with all colors. The tanks entered. We saw everything vividly. It was horrible — random shelling, random fire, random killing. They are coming just to kill and go back home. This is a Nakba. They are just coming to kill children, women, elderly, in the bathroom, in the school, in the hospital, in the street, anywhere. They killed us. They are just coming to kill only. Just that. Just killing.
AMY GOODMAN: The interruption of communications and internet services in Gaza, for days, has continued for the fifth consecutive day, the longest telecommunications blackout of the war so far. This has caused delays for emergency workers to respond to airstrikes and has hampered media coverage from Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera’s bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh left Gaza on Tuesday, crossing into Egypt, then flying to Qatar to receive medical treatment. Dahdouh has come to symbolize both the suffering and resilience of Palestinian journalists in Gaza. In October, four members of his family were killed, including his wife, his 15-year-old son, his 7-year-old daughter and his grandson, in an Israeli strike on a refugee camp where they were seeking shelter after their home was bombed. Last week, his eldest son, 27-year-old-Hamza, also a journalist, was killed along with another journalist in an Israeli airstrike on their car in Khan Younis. Dahdouh will receive medical treatment in Doha for a wound he received when Israel bombed the area he was in that ended up killing his cameraperson Samer Abudaqa.
By some counts, over 110 journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 7th. The Committee to Protect Journalists has found more journalists have been killed in the first 10 weeks of Israel’s war on Gaza than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year.
For more, we’re joined by two guests. Sharif Abdel Kouddous is an independent journalist and a Democracy Now! correspondent. His latest piece for The Intercept investigates the killing of Abudaqa. It’s headlined “Israel Bombed an Al Jazeera Cameraman — and Blocked Evacuation Efforts as He Bled to Death.” He’s joining us from here in New York. In Washington, D.C., we’re joined by Sherif Mansour, the Middle East and North Africa program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Before we talk to Sharif about the cameraman, the Al Jazeera cameraman who bled to death over five hours, can we put this in a broader context, Sherif Mansour? Talk about the astounding number, the horrific number, of journalists who have died in Gaza.
SHERIF MANSOUR: Well, thank you for having me again, Amy. I’ve already talked to you about this at least twice, and the number only goes higher. The deadly pattern we discussed become more deadly. And we have since talked, talked about the apparent pattern of targeting against journalists, their families. And specifically when we discuss Al Jazeera and al-Dahdouh’s family, they really are rewriting what it means to be a journalist today, with immense, brave and never-seen-before sacrifices. The Palestinian journalists, local journalists — so far, 76 out of 83 we’ve counted since the start of the war are Palestinians. The overwhelming majority are killed by the Israeli army. The Israeli army has killed more journalists in the span of those three months than any other entity or army have done over a course of one year since 1992. This is the most dangerous and the most — we’ve never seen any assignment like this before.
Of course, what we called on is independent and transparent and thorough investigation. We want to see the case of al-Dahdouh, his son, Al Jazeera and others that show a culpability of the Israeli army to be put to public scrutiny by allowing immediate entry to international media and international investigators into Gaza without censorship by the Israeli army. The killing must stop. And for that to happen, the record must be made public, and U.S., European and other allies of Israel need to call Israel on that record and ensure those investigations are made immediately public.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sherif Mansour, what has been the response of the Israeli government and the Israeli Defense Forces, given the enormous number of journalists killed? Have they accepted any culpability at all for any of these killings?
SHERIF MANSOUR: The cases of precise attacks by drones against Al Jazeera, which happened at least twice in the last four weeks, included for the first time the Israeli army taking responsibility of doing those attacks, but also doing as they’ve done in the past, when they are held responsible because the case of a journalist is someone who was behind an international news organization. They said they will investigate, but they also push false narratives, claims that they are terrorists or that they were part of an ongoing crossfire, and, as we’ve seen in past incidents before this war, this time around three narratives pushed by the Israeli army, correcting and changing and providing nothing more than a questionable document, with English for the first time, coming from what they said was a terrorist group, but providing no other evidence that support their claim, and have — so far, the outlets, eyewitnesses, and the families of the journalists have denied the Israeli army narratives and showed to the contrary that, for example, Hamza, an Al Jazeera journalist, was approved to travel — before his father, Wael Dahdouh, did yesterday — after Israel vetted him. And if he was wanted by any chance, he wouldn’t have had this approval before he was killed. And other testimony and accounts that we and others are showing the contradicting nature of these narratives, this is also the same narrative we said happened before this war started, in our “Deadly Pattern” report. And it is a pattern of responses designed to evade responsibilities by throwing the word “terrorists,” by also pushing out those narratives until the world look away.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, and Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are both calling for Israel to be officially investigated for war crimes and its targeting of journalists, not only in Gaza, but outside of Gaza, because an internal Reuters investigation found that one of its journalists, Issam Abdallah, was killed by an Israeli tank shell fired on him and a group of six other journalists in southern Lebanon on October 13th. Could you talk about these attacks outside of Gaza?
SHERIF MANSOUR: So, we saw the same pattern of disregard for press insignia that we reported before this war, 13 out of 20 journalists killed by IDF fire over 21 years who wore press signs and press insignia showing that they are media personnel. And like those cases, the case of Issam Abdallah show, with independent investigation, physical proof, forensic proof from the scene, in addition to mapping, audio and visual analysis by international human rights groups and international media organizations, that show that those journalists did not pose any threat to Israeli government positions, that they have been seen by an Israeli drone at least an hour, that they were visibly expressing or showing press signs and only their cameras, and the position that they have taken was a high-vantage hill that did not obscure their location with being close to any camera or house that justified that they would have any threat. And all of this and other evidence have shown that what we show in the past, in the cases of at least three journalists that we categorized as murdered before this course, including Shireen Abu Akleh and Yaser Murtaja and Ahmed Abu Hassin, who were killed in Gaza, that there was no justification for the use of lethal force by the Israeli army. And those and other cases [inaudible] that we call for independent investigation as war crimes, because the Israeli army did not live up to their commitments and obligation under international law.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, Shireen Abu Akleh was killed May 11, 2022, outside the Jenin refugee camp. Sharif Abdel Kouddous did a George Polk Award-winning documentary on the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh. He’s joining us, as well.
***
How Israel Bombed Al Jazeera Journalists & Blocked Rescue of Cameraman Samer Abudaqa Until He Died
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
January 17, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/1/17/ ... transcript
We hear from Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, whose recent article for The Intercept documents how Israel bombed two Al Jazeera journalists in mid-December while they were accompanying rescue workers, seriously injuring both. But while the network’s Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh managed to get to an ambulance nearby, his cameraman Samer Abudaqa bled to death from his wounds as Israeli forces prevented medical workers from reaching him for about five hours, despite the desperate entreaties of many foreign journalists to save the life of their colleague. “The world should be outraged about this killing, about all the killings that are happening to Palestinian journalists in Gaza,” says Abdel Kouddous.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, I wanted to ask you about this latest piece you did for The Intercept that’s headlined “Israel Bombed an Al Jazeera Cameraman — and Blocked Evacuation Efforts as He Bled to Death.” Give us the tick-tock, the chronology on what happened on that horrific day, when he and Wael al-Dahdouh, who is the Gaza bureau chief for Al Jazeera, went to the school that was bombed. Tell us exactly what happened.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Right, Amy. And when we talk about the killing of Palestinian journalists in Gaza, this was an incident on December 15th where much of the world watched as hours ticked by as Samer Abudaqa was wounded and prevented from getting medical care by Israel and eventually died. And so, that timeline of what happened, I think, is extremely important.
But, basically, Wael al-Dahdouh, who is Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza, went with Samer Abudaqa, who’s a 20-year veteran journalist, a cameraman — they went to this school in Khan Younis which had been bombed earlier in the day, and they were accompanied by a team of Civil Defense workers. That team had received — had requested and received approval by the Israeli military through the Red Cross to be in the area. They got there around noon. They spent about two-and-a-half hours in the area. This is according to Wael al-Dahdouh. And as they were wrapping up their coverage, there were these — he said there were hardly anyone in the area. There were drones buzzing overhead. They were just about to leave and go back to the ambulance that had brought them there, when a strike hit them, at about 2:30 p.m.
Wael al-Dahdouh was thrown to the ground. He said when he got up and kind of regained awareness, he realized he was bleeding quite profusely from his arm and that he would bleed to death if he didn’t get medical attention. He looked over and saw the three Civil Defense workers who were accompanying them had been killed instantly. And then, at a small distance away, he saw his colleague, Samer Abudaqa, on the ground. He had been wounded in the lower part of his body. Wael said that he seemed like he was screaming — Wael at that point had lost much of his hearing from the blast — and that Samer couldn’t get up. Wael realized the only chance that both of them had was for him to get to medical attention and get help to bring Samer out, because he couldn’t get up. So Wael somehow stumbled across about 800 meters to the ambulance that was waiting. He begged them to go in and get Samer, but they insisted on evacuating him first to a hospital in Khan Younis and that another ambulance would go retrieve him. There are videos of Wael al-Dahdouh receiving treatment, wincing in pain, calling on people to go get Samer, telling them to coordinate with the Red Cross.
What we understand from Wael and others is that an ambulance did go immediately to try and retrieve Samer from the area, but that they were fired on, or in their area, in their proximity, by Israeli forces. At the same time, Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Ramallah, Walid al-Omari, was making calls to the Red Cross — this is around 3:00, 3:30 p.m. — and asking the Red Cross to liaise with the Israeli military to allow for emergency crews to reach Samer Abudaqa in Khan Younis. So the Israeli military knew, at least by 3:00 or 3:30, that there was a wounded journalist who lay helpless that needed evacuation.
And at the same time, news was spreading of Samer Abudaqa’s plight, and there’s a group called the Foreign Press Association, which is a Jerusalem-based nonprofit representing reporters, mostly foreign reporters from over 30 countries, and there’s a WhatsApp group, which has about 140 of these journalists on it. One of the journalists, a freelance reporter and producer based in Jerusalem named Orly Halpern, posted just after 3 p.m. about the Samer’s plight and told the journalists, or called on them, to call Israeli military spokespeople and to demand that Samer be evacuated. And so, the FPA was getting involved. Senior members of the FPA, the Foreign Press Association, were getting involved, calling Israeli military officials, Israeli military spokespeople, senior ones, repeatedly asking for passage for Samer.
And from what we understand, at The Intercept we obtained screenshots of this WhatsApp group from multiple journalists in the group, and also from speaking with people involved in these efforts, that for hours Israel did not give approval to these ambulances. Finally, after about five hours after Samer was initially wounded, a bulldozer was finally approved to go through to reach Samer. But by then, he had already died. He had bled out. He was found with — he had seemed to have removed his flak jacket and had tried to crawl and had died. And it was incredibly tragic. He had lain there. Al Jazeera had posted a live counter of the hours and minutes since he was wounded on its broadcast, and people were just watching. And he eventually died.
And the next day, Al Jazeera announced it was preparing a legal file to submit to the International Criminal Court over what it called the assassination of Samer Abudaqa. And so did Reporters Without Borders, also included his killing in a filing with the ICC, war crimes against journalists killed in Gaza. So, you know, the world should be outraged about this killing, about all the killings that are happening to Palestinians, Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, Sharif, in this particular case, there is no doubt that the highest echelons of the Israeli Defense Forces were aware that this journalist was wounded and in need of medical attention.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Yes, we have multiple journalists who told — we have screenshots of a WhatsApp group where they’re discussing having spoken to Israeli military spokespeople in those hours and saying, “No approval yet. Ambulances not cleared. Bulldozers not cleared yet.” So, this took hours. And, you know, the Israeli military must have known very early on what the situation is. They’re the ones who had repeatedly bombed the area. They knew there was rubble in the streets. There’s constant — near-constant drone surveillance of Gaza. The Red Cross, we know, was liaising with the Israeli military to try and get approval. And yet they left, or they just didn’t allow — by some accounts, firstly, ambulances were fired on that tried to reach Samer Abudaqa. They returned back — this is the Palestinian Red Crescent and Civil Defense — and they were waiting then for approval. They also asked for Red Cross teams to accompany them to the area as a form of protection. And all of this is happening while Samer Abudaqa is lying helpless. The Israeli military is not giving permission. And he eventually died.
AMY GOODMAN: And then, again, that was Wael al-Dahdouh’s cameraperson and dear colleague, who bleeds to death over five hours. And then, in the last weeks, his son, Hamza al-Dahdouh, also an Al Jazeera journalist, is killed in this Israeli airstrike, along with the AFP stringer Mustafa Thuraya, in an airstrike, a drone strike on a car. Sharif, final comments?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Yeah, I think, look, in this country, the journalistic community should be outraged, should be vocal in their outrage, at Israel’s killing of their colleagues in Gaza. And we haven’t seen that.
And let me just end by saying, you know, in 2022, the Pulitzer Board awarded a special citation to journalists of Ukraine for their coverage of the Russian invasion and of the war. And the citation reads, quote, “Despite bombardment, abductions, occupation, and even deaths in their ranks, they have persisted in their effort to provide an accurate picture of a terrible reality,” end-quote. This is the case many times over for the journalists of Gaza, for the Palestinian journalists of Gaza. I doubt they will be receiving any such accolades. And that’s where the problem lies.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif Abdel Kouddous, independent journalist, wrote this piece for The Intercept, “Israel Bombed an Al Jazeera Cameraman — and Blocked Evacuation Efforts as He Bled to Death.” We’ll link to it at The Intercept at democracynow.org. And Sherif Mansour, Committee to Protect Journalists’ Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, speaking to us from D.C.
***
“They Don’t Show Gaza”: Gideon Levy on How Israel’s Press Is Failing to Cover the War’s True Toll
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
January 17, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/1/17/ ... transcript
We speak with acclaimed Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, columnist for Haaretz and a member of its editorial board, about how the Israeli media has covered the war on Gaza, the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice and more. Levy says the domestic Israeli media all but ignores the Palestinians being killed, focusing mostly on its own soldiers and the families of hostages. “The Israeli average viewer doesn’t see Gaza at all,” he says. “They are betraying our first mission: to tell the full story.”
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.
From coverage of the war by Palestinian journalists on the ground, we turn to coverage by the Israeli media. What do most Israelis see on TV? How has the Israeli media’s coverage shaped opinions of war? This is a clip from i24NEWS of Israeli military commander Lieutenant Colonel Dotan talking about an alleged Hamas tunnel in an exclusive video shown by the network last week.
BENITA LEVIN: Now the IDF has found tunnels and weapons inside a child’s room inside the Gaza Strip. These visuals were obtained from the IDF, and i24NEWS is now going to be allowed to play that. Let’s take a look.
LT. COL. DOTAN: [translated] During our patrols in the area, we uncovered the entrance to a tunnel under this children’s bedroom, actually under this desk, exactly where the children were supposed to study. We can see very clearly the tunnel, which goes towards the tunnel gallery. We can also see here these RPG missiles, these munitions grouped in the same sector, including military tactical vests and grenades ready for use.
AMY GOODMAN: That was a clip from Israeli media outlet i24NEWS.
For more on Israeli media’s coverage of the war, we go to Tel Aviv, where we’re joined by Gideon Levy, an award-winning Israeli journalist and author, columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, a member of its editorial board, his most recent piece headlined “If It Isn’t a Genocide in Gaza, Then What Is It?”
Gideon, welcome back to Democracy Now!
GIDEON LEVY: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what Israelis see on television, where most get their news. We just did this whole piece on the killing of Gazan journalists, Palestinian journalists. We’ve never seen anything like this anywhere in modern history, where you have between 80 and over a hundred Palestinian journalists killed in just a matter of weeks. What do Israelis understand is happening?
GIDEON LEVY: The main question, Amy, is what they don’t see or what they are not being shown, because, as you know, and as your viewers definitely know, Israeli media is quite a free media, commercial-owned, quite liberal, no pressure from the government or secret services or army or things like this. Anything it does, it does voluntarily. And the Israeli media decided, almost wall to wall, maybe except of my newspaper, Haaretz, all the rest — it’s also the TV, also newspapers— they decided that they are part of the Israeli propaganda machinery. They stopped being journalists.
And this, they’re doing two ways. The first one is the most serious one. They don’t show Gaza. The Israeli average viewer doesn’t see Gaza at all. He sees the soldiers. He sees the families of the hostages. He is being told day and night about the Israeli sacrifice. He’s being told day and night how brave are the soldiers. You see it seven days a week, 24 hours a day, and only one thing you don’t see: the suffer of Gaza. And the media decided not to show it, not because anyone pushed the media not to do it. They do it because they know very clear that this is what their viewers don’t want to see, and they want to please them. And by this, they are betraying our first mission: to tell the full story. You know, there are Israelis who wouldn’t care less to see all those terrible images and say, “Hamas is to be blamed. The Arabs are to be blamed. They deserve it. They are barbarian. Everything is fine.” But they have to see what is being done on our behalf. So, that’s the first level.
The second level, which is less important but still must be mentioned, is that Israeli media speaks now only in one voice. There is no room for any critic about the war. There is no room for any question marks. I don’t remember a war in which after so many stages, still the entire media is just a pale echo of the propaganda machinery of the army.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Gideon, your newspaper, Haaretz, is somewhat different from the rest of the press. But how widely read is it within Israel, and who reads Haaretz?
GIDEON LEVY: Haaretz is not a big newspaper in terms of quantity, but it is still quite an influential newspaper, both abroad, as you know, because it’s being published both in English and in Hebrew, and also in Israel still parts of the elite are reading it. I don’t want to say that every Israeli reads Haaretz, but every Israeli knows about Haaretz. And through the social media, it has some kind of influence, but it is obviously very limited.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the levels in Gaza we’re hearing about of starvation, that every Palestinian is hungry right now? The babies being pulled from the rubble — I mean, we’re thousands of miles away from you. Tel Aviv is very close to Gaza. What do they see when it comes to casualties?
GIDEON LEVY: Nothing. They hear the figures, but figures are only figures. It’s only statistics. It doesn’t make you feel. It doesn’t make you understand the scale of the tragedy, the scale of the crimes, I must say. You know, you watch all the international networks, and you see Gaza. You see the children dying on the dirty floors of the hospitals, bleeding to death. You see the uprooted people. You see the destruction. You see the suffer of hundreds of thousands of people, and obviously the starvation. And in Israel, you see only the soldiers, only the families of the hostages, only the scenes where you don’t see Palestinians at all. It seems as if they don’t exist.
Now, Amy, that’s not new, because the Israeli media betrayed the coverage of — betrayed its mission by covering in the same way the occupation throughout so many years. It was always dehumanizing the Palestinians as much as possible. But this time we reach a level that I don’t remember such a level, because you can really watch for hours Israeli TV and have no clue what’s going on in Shifa Hospital or in other hospitals or in uprooted neighborhoods, and where are the people, how do they make their living, do they get some food — nothing of this, nothing which might remind us that the Palestinians are human beings. This is almost a taboo: Don’t mention them as human beings.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Gideon, Prime Minister Netanyahu keeps assuring the international community that Israel does not intend to permanently occupy Gaza. But what is he saying domestically to the Israeli people? He even has two Twitter handles, one that’s an official one and then another that is more geared toward sending out incendiary messages to the population?
GIDEON LEVY: Just this morning he was quoted in a private talk, I think, that the war will continue at least until 2025. And nobody sees the end. Nobody knows the end. There is no endgame. There is no plan what to do the day after. And the Israelis start to believe now that this might last for many years, at least the occupation of Gaza — obviously, without intention. Almost everything that Israel did in the last decades was without intention, but it always came out. It never intended to go for wars and always finds itself in war. It never intended to create an occupation of over 50 years, and it came out like this. No, no, the intention is one thing, and the results are another thing. Israel has no plan to leave Gaza in the coming months or years, which doesn’t mean that Israel will stay there, but I don’t see any alternative right now. What will they do?
***
What Happened on October 7? Gideon Levy on Haaretz’s Call to Investigate Kibbutz Killings & More
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
January 17, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/1/17/ ... transcript
We continue our conversation with the renowned Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who says there are growing questions about the IDF’s response to the October 7 Hamas attack that cannot wait until the end of fighting in Gaza. That includes intelligence failures in the lead-up to the attack, as well as reports of troops killing Israeli civilians when they opened fire on homes taken over by Hamas militants. “The fact is that those people were killed and might have been rescued. It must be investigated,” says Levy.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about your paper, Haaretz, reporting that a group of family members of Israelis who were killed in Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7th in the Hamas attack on Israel are demanding a probe into how their relatives died. An Israeli brigadier general recently admitted he ordered an Israeli tank commander to fire on a home where Hamas fighters were holding 15 Israeli hostages. Brigadier General Barak Hiram told The New York Times he had ordered the tank commander to, quote, “break in, even at the cost of civilian casualties.” Thirteen of the Israeli hostages died; only two survived. Gideon, you’re a member of the Haaretz editorial board, which recently ran a piece headlined “The IDF Must Investigate the Kibbutz Be’eri Tank Fire Incident — Right Now.” Elaborate on what happened and the investigation your editorial board is calling for now.
GIDEON LEVY: Look, everyone is postponing all the investigation to the day after, and the day after seems to get farer and farer. And we are very concerned that it will never be investigated. But here we have a very concrete case. And families, rightly so, want to know who is responsible for the killing of their beloved ones and how did it happen.
The brigadier general that you just mentioned happened to be a settler. I don’t want to say that it says a lot, but let’s remember that many of our high-rank generals, or more and more of them, are settlers. And settlers have their own ideology. Even when they serve in the army, they have their motivation, which is not always a very secular motivation. It’s not always the motivation of the others.
But in any case, the fact is that those people were killed and might have been rescued. It must be investigated. It’s not very complicated to investigate it. It’s a very concrete and focused event. And we were calling the army to do so. I don’t know. Until now, we didn’t hear from the army. I hope they will do it, because this can have also a lot of consequences in the coming days or weeks or months in Gaza, because this situation might repeat itself. When we will face a house where there are hostages and commanders of Hamas, do we shoot them all dead? I really wonder.
AMY GOODMAN: And you also had a piece on how sexism ultimately killed what are known as the spotters. The Israeli military, the women, who were on the border, who were seeing Hamas gear up, were telling their supervisors it looks like there’s about to be an imminent attack. And some were even told if they’d raise this again, they would be brought up on charges of insubordination. Is that right, Gideon?
GIDEON LEVY: Yeah, we had a big story on this. But, you know, the small stories might overwhelm or overshadow the big story, because the big story, finally, there are two huge question marks. A, what happened on the 7th, and how did it happen? Because all those stories get to one conclusion: that there was no army on this day. There was not — the most sophisticated intelligence in the world, with all the most sophisticated devices, who knows the color of the underwears of each Palestinian, all of a sudden didn’t know anything, after all the money in which was invested there and all the reputation they have. And then came the second question: Where was the army after the attack started? No army whatsoever.
And above all, the question which bothers me more than anything else, and that’s namely, having said what happened on the 7th, as barbaric as it was, whatever it was, there are question marks about certain events on the 7th, but it’s very clear that there was an attack, a very aggressive attack: Does this give us Israelis the right to do anything we want after the 7th forever, without any limits, no legal limits, no moral limits? We can just go and kill and destroy and destruct as much as we wish? That’s the main question right now. The event that you mentioned with those soldiers girls just show how unprepared and unprofessional was the intelligence in the army.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, most of those young women died. Last question, your biggest piece, “If It Isn’t a Genocide in Gaza” —
GIDEON LEVY: Only two survived. Only two survived, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Only two. “If It Isn’t a Genocide in Gaza” —
GIDEON LEVY: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: — “Then What Is It?” We just have 30 seconds, Gideon.
GIDEON LEVY: Listen, the Israelis don’t seem to care that so many innocent Palestinians were killed. They just care how to label it, if it’s genocide or not. And I say it doesn’t matter what is the legal definition. Twenty-four thousand people, most of them innocent people, 60, 70% of them women and children, 10,000 children among them, this is enough of a fact that nobody can deny, by the way, to ask ourselves: Do we really have the right to do it? What does it tell about us, about our moral standards? And, above all, how long will we go on, and where are we aiming to? Another 25,000 killed people in Gaza will guarantee more security to Israel? And even if yes, do we have the right to do so?
AMY GOODMAN: Gideon Levy, Israeli journalist, author, columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, also a member of the Haaretz editorial board. We’ll link to your piece, “If It Isn’t a Genocide in Gaza, Then What Is It?”
***
“The Logic of Escalation”: From Red Sea to Iran & Beyond, Will Israel’s Gaza Assault Spark Wider War?
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
January 17, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/1/17/ ... transcript
Military actions by various actors across the Middle East are compounding fears that Israel’s assault on Gaza is escalating into a full-blown regional war. In recent days, the United States has carried out strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen who have resumed their attacks on container ships in the Red Sea; Iran has struck targets in northern Iraq, Syria and Pakistan; while Hezbollah and Israel have escalated the intensity of fighting across their border. For a look at where all this is headed, we speak with journalist Spencer Ackerman, who says it’s “the most dangerous moment for the Middle East” he has witnessed in over 20 years of covering war and security. “This is now a conflict with battlefronts ranging across the region,” he says. “We shouldn’t think that absent an active act of deescalation that this won’t continue spiraling outward throughout 2024.” Ackerman writes the Forever Wars newsletter and is the foreign policy columnist for The Nation.
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.
From northern Iraq to Lebanon to Pakistan to the Red Sea, an array of strikes and counterstrikes over the last several days are compounding fears that Israel’s assault on Gaza could escalate into a full-blown regional war. In just the past few days, the U.S. has carried out strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen, who have resumed their attacks on container ships in the Red Sea. Iran has struck what it said was as an Israeli spy headquarters in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, as well as targeting anti-Iran militants in Pakistan and Syria. Meanwhile, in Lebanon, Hezbollah and Israel have escalated the intensity of fighting across the border.
For more, we’re joined by award-winning journalist Spencer Ackerman, foreign policy columnist for The Nation magazine. His latest piece, “Israel Is Not Promising to 'Scale Back' Its War.” He also publishes the Forever Wars newsletter on Ghost, where his new piece is headlined “Iran’s Opening Shots and the Logic of Escalation.”
Welcome back, Spencer, to Democracy Now! Talk about this possibility of a widening war, and what you’re most concerned about.
SPENCER ACKERMAN: Amy, thank you for having me.
I think that in my 20-plus years of covering the “war on terror,” this is the most dangerous moment in — for the Middle East that I’ve seen professionally. You talk about there being the possibility of a full-blown regional conflict. We’re at least at half-blown now. Consider what the battlefields are and have been in this conflict: Gaza, obviously the most important one, the most devastating to humanity, where the Palestinians are experiencing what could and probably should be understood as a genocide, but also southern Israel, northern Israel, southern Lebanon, northwestern Syria, Beirut, northeastern Syria, Erbil, Baghdad, southwestern Yemen, the Red Sea, Pakistan, as well. This is now a conflict with battlefronts ranging across the region, each of which facing pressure to escalate as their various combatants’ objectives are not fully achieved. We shouldn’t think that absent an active act of deescalation, that this won’t continue spiraling outward throughout 2024.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Spencer, this whole idea that we hear almost every day some member of the Biden administration say that they’re trying to prevent an escalation of the conflict in the region, when in fact their actions are quite the opposite?
SPENCER ACKERMAN: That’s right, Juan. We heard the Biden administration say most recently that it was deeply concerned about escalation in Lebanon. Well, just in the last 24 hours, the Israeli Air Force has been bombing southern Lebanon, bombing what it says are Hezbollah positions there, but also the United States has taken direct action, not just in the Red Sea, but also on Yemeni soil itself multiple times, three times at least, including most recently yesterday. And, as well, recently it carried out its first drone strike in Baghdad since 2020, which has now strained U.S.-Iraqi relations. So, the United States, while it might say that it’s seeking to contain the conflict, is caught up in the logic of escalation.
And that means we shouldn’t give the Biden administration a pass on this. These aren’t, you know, automatic gravitational forces. These are the accumulations of choices that Biden and his team are making to involve the U.S. more deeply in this spiraling conflict, all of which could be stopped if the United States used its immense influence over Israel to restrain it or stop it from carrying out its collective punishment of Gaza.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We often hear, as well, about the Axis of Resistance, supposedly controlled or financed by Iran, but very little about the Axis of Empire, of the U.K., the United States and Israel in the region. To what degree does this axis have more right to control the affairs of the region than those who are actually from countries there?
SPENCER ACKERMAN: Quite well said, Juan. Without ceding any of Iran’s claims to regional hegemony, the United States and its allies act as if they are the representatives of the natural and just order of the Middle East, and not, in fact, Western impositions upon the aspirations of the citizenry, the people of these countries, to determine their own affairs.
And we are seeing that quite starkly most recently in Yemen, where one of the most war-devastated countries in the Middle East, as a result of not only U.S. strikes against al-Qaeda targets, what the United States says is al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, stemming from something like over the past 15 years, but also a U.S.-backed Saudi and Emirati campaign that lasted seven years before a ceasefire took hold in 2022, that brought not only famine but cholera to this country, that has been engulfed in a foreign-backed, foreign-sponsored and foreign-accelerated civil war, nevertheless, even among people who don’t accept the Houthi movement as the legitimate rulers of Yemen, saw massive demonstrations after the United States and its Western allies started bombing Yemen in retaliation for the Houthi attempt to relieve the siege of Gaza. So you really have the — we really have on full exposure the rejection of U.S. claims to, you know, standing for peace and stability in the region.
AMY GOODMAN: Spencer, your piece last week for The Nation is headlined “Israel Is Not Promising to 'Scale Back' Its War,” which you wrote partly as a corrective to a New York Times article that claimed that’s what Israel is planning. If you could explain this and what it means for — I mean, we just heard Gideon Levy, the Israeli Jewish journalist at Haaretz, talking about this war going on for a year or more.
SPENCER ACKERMAN: That’s right. Amy, when you listen to what the Israeli government says to its own people, like Gideon mentioned, it talks about a war that will — and this is what Benjamin Netanyahu said over the weekend — “will last until victory, and no one, not even The Hague, will stop us,” which is an incredibly and ominous thing to say, and probably ought to be tacked on to South Africa’s genocide lawsuit.
What it says to the Americans, as the Americans are feeling the pressure from its Arab allies in the region, and indeed from President Biden’s own supporters in the United States who want to see this war stopped, is that, in fact, it’s scaling down to lower-intensity operations, or more often it doesn’t say that quite outright. It says it will move away from high-intensity operations into what it says is a so-called phase three of its operations in Gaza.
So, what is phase three? Phase three focuses on southern Gaza. Every day we are getting reports of casualties from Gaza, civilian casualties in the triple digits. Israel already made something like 1.7, 1.8 million people —
AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds.
SPENCER ACKERMAN: — relocate to southern Gaza. So this war is not, in fact, scaling down. It’s moving toward a sustainable path of civilian devastation.
AMY GOODMAN: Spencer Ackerman, foreign policy columnist for The Nation magazine, also publishes the Forever Wars newsletter on Ghost. We’ll link to your pieces at democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, for another edition of Democracy Now!