U.S. & Israel vs. Axis of Resistance: Biden Strikes New Targets in Middle East as Gaza War Continuesby Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
February 05, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/2/5/n ... transcriptAs the Pentagon launched airstrikes in Syria and Iraq against Iran-backed militants and carried out new attacks on Houthi forces in Yemen over the weekend, we speak with Narges Bajoghli, professor of Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University. She is an expert on the Axis of Resistance, the informal coalition loosely led by Iran that consists of the Iranian and Syrian governments, the Houthi movement in Yemen, militant groups in Iraq, Hezbollah, Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza and the West Bank. She lays out how, despite their different ideologies, the groups are united in their goal of opposing Western influence and control in the region and moving understanding of the Palestinian liberation struggle “out of the narrative terrain of the 'global war on terror'” and “into a language of hegemony and colonialism.”
TranscriptThis is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: The United States bombed 85 targets in Syria and Iraq on Friday in retaliation for a recent drone strike by Iranian-backed militants on a base in Jordan that killed three U.S. troops. The Pentagon said it used long-range bombers flown directly from the U.S. in its largest action against Iran-backed groups since the Iraq War.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Sunday on Fox News that the strikes were just the, quote, “first round” and vowed more would follow.
JOHN KIRBY: I’m certainly not going to talk about potential future military operations. What I would say — and this is a really important point — is what you saw on Friday night was just the first round. There will be additional response actions taken by the administration against the IRGC and these groups that they’re backing.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Meanwhile, on Saturday, Iran’s interior minister denounced the U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.
AHMAD VAHIDI: [translated] We naturally condemn any move against the resistance front, and we reject and condemn these attacks that will naturally lead to the flames of the resistance. And they must act wisely, which is very unlikely, and we do not see it in the Americans. If they act wisely, they should stop supporting the Zionist regime.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: This comes as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports six fighters from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces were killed in an overnight attack Sunday on a U.S. base in eastern Syria. Today, Iran’s security chief, Ali Ahmadian, has arrived in Baghdad for talks to address the escalation in fighting.
Meanwhile, the U.S. bombed Yemen again on Saturday and Sunday, targeting sites controlled by Houthi forces who have vowed to keep targeting ships linked to Israel and the United States until Israel halts its assault on Gaza.
For more, we’re joined by Narges Bajoghli, professor of Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University. She co-authored the new book titled How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare and is also the author of Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic. Her recent co-authored piece in Foreign Affairs is headlined “How the War in Gaza Revived the Axis of Resistance.”
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Narges. If you could begin by responding to the latest news over the weekend, the U.S. launching airstrikes in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and the Biden administration vowing more attacks are to come, and, in particular, on Friday, the U.S. striking dozens of targets, for the first time hitting facilities linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Narges?
NARGES BAJOGHLI: Sure. So, with the killing of the three U.S. servicemen in Jordan in Tower 22, that is one of the U.S.'s stated red lines in the region. And that's been something that throughout the past three-and-a-half months, as well as the longer sort of shadow war between Iran, Hezbollah, the U.S. and Israel in the region, that’s been a red line that has been observed quite firmly by the forces that are fighting against the United States and Israel.
Now, with the three servicemen who were killed, it was obvious that the U.S. had to respond. The fact that they responded in the ways that they did, but that Iran very quickly announced that no Iranians had been killed, signals — they are signaling back to the U.S. that they understood that the retaliation had to happen, but that they are not escalating at this moment because their own fighters had not been killed.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Narges, could you explain what were the locations? The U.S. hit 85 targets at seven facilities in Iraq and Syria. What were the locations that were hit? As you said, Iran has said there were no Iranian casualties, but, of course, there were Iraqis and Syrians who died. Talk about the significance of the fact that in the Iranian media it was made clear that there were no Iranian casualties, and also explain the targets that were hit by the U.S.
NARGES BAJOGHLI: Sure. So, the targets that were hit were logistical centers, command centers, spaces that weaponry are stored. And these are sites that are linked to militias that are a part of what is called the Axis of Resistance from — on behalf of Iran and its allied forces in the region. So these are spaces that the U.S. identified and at least stated that they, these locations, are backed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and they are belonging to militias that are fighting against the U.S. and Israel in the region.
And the significance of the fact that Iranian media claimed very quickly that no Iranians had been killed in the attacks is because Iran had said that their red lines — they have two major red lines in the region for escalating this into a broader war. One is any kind of strike on Iran’s territorial — within Iran’s territory or on its bases, and the second is the killing of Iranian personnel and fighters. And so, this was a — very quickly after the attacks, they announced within Iranian media that people had been killed, especially Iraqis and Syrians that were tied to these various militias and groups, but that no Iranians had been killed. So that was a very clear signal to say, “We understand your response, but we will not escalate at this moment.”
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, I mean, to talk more about that phrase “the Axis of Resistance,” you have said that Iran-backed groups or Iran proxies has been in the headlines — those phrases have been in the headlines for decades. Is that, in your view, an accurate rendering, especially in light of the fact that you’ve made the argument that in this case, following Israel’s assault and ongoing assault on Gaza, it’s Hezbollah that has really taken the lead, because it recognizes that the core issue now is Palestine?
NARGES BAJOGHLI: So, the Axis — or, what’s called the Axis of Resistance, sort of the seeds of it began after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. And the reason for that was that the U.S. at the time, under the George 2 administration, was very clear and very loud that the next country after Iraq would be Iran. So, what Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Quds Forces, which are their extraterritorial forces, which at time were under the command of Qassem Soleimani, their strategy became to create militias within Iraq that would, in essence, bog down the U.S. in Iraq and not allow it to turn its focus then on the Iranians.
Eventually, throughout the 20-odd years of the “global war on terror” in the region, as the battlegrounds spread throughout the region, Iran also began to form and give training to and funding to and weaponry to different militias throughout the region, at first mostly sort of Shia militias, but that began to expand into nonsectarian forces. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Lebanese Hezbollah have been very instrumental in creating what is now — what they now term the Axis of Resistance, which includes not only Iran and Hezbollah, Syria itself and militias across Iraq, as well as the Houthis in Yemen, and then, of course, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and civilian resistance groups within the West Bank. These are all sort of under the umbrella of what is called the Axis of Resistance.
Now, I think what’s really important to note is that these are not proxy groups of Iran. From the get-go, the Revolutionary Guard has set up these groups to be decentralized. And then, after the assassination or the killing of Qassem Soleimani by the Americans under the Trump administration in 2020, his successor has decentralized these forces even more. So what that means is that all of these forces are aligned with Iran and Hezbollah’s mission to drive the United States out of the Middle East and to fight against what they deem to be Israeli colonialism, not only just over historic Palestine, but more broadly across the region. So that is first and foremost. But all of these groups are also involved in this axis for their own local interests, because they see the United States and Israel involved within their borders and within the fights that they are involved in locally. So, the axis, in essence, yes, it follows upon Iran’s strategic interest in the region, but it is a decentralized axis. They make their own decisions. They coordinate at the top. But it’s not as easy as Iran says do this, and then the members of the Axis of Resistance follow.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Narges, could you talk about the extent to which you’ve pointed out that neither Iran nor the U.S., as officials from both countries have said, are not interested in escalating, much less in coming into direct conflict — that is, the U.S. and Iran? But many have been concerned that, you know, at this point one false move could set the entire region alight, and especially so given that, as many have said, yourself included, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is actually creating the conditions for the U.S. and Iran to have a direct confrontation. If you could talk a little bit about that and what you think the impact of this might be?
NARGES BAJOGHLI: Yeah. So, at least from the perspective of whether it’s within Iran or Hezbollah, the reading from their perspective of what is going on in the region is that as the Israelis have had a difficult time getting to their strategic objectives within Gaza, there is a desire on the behalf of Bibi Netanyahu to expand this war into one that would drive and drag the United States more fully into it, especially in direct confrontation with Iran, because from the point of view of Israel and Israeli leaders sort of, and this is what Netanyahu has stated, is that Iran is the head of what they call the octopus. Right? And so, their desire is to say that in order to deal with what is going on in the region and this multipronged attack that is happening on Israel from across various borders, Iran needs to be dealt with directly.
Now, the United States does not want to get involved in a direct confrontation with Iran, because it’s not just a direct confrontation with Iran, as the Axis of Resistance kind of makes clear. What Iran’s strategy has been since the start of the “global war on terror” by the United States in the region has been to create a network of spaces in which, if the West were to get involved, it would be not just a war with Iran, it would be a war across the region. That is what makes this moment extremely dangerous, is because, as you said, there could be miscalculation on either end, and it could actually develop into something much larger. So, although the United States is saying that they don’t want to get involved in another large Middle East war, and they instead want to focus on China and sort of on a different part of the world, Iran has also made the same claim, that it does not seek to get into a larger war.
Now, what’s important here is to note that both Iran and Hezbollah, although they are striking back against Israel and different kinds of U.S. forces or sort of bases across the region, what they are trying to do is to put enough pressure on the U.S. and to create enough global sort of outrage about what is going on in Gaza in order to put public pressure on the United States to retreat from the region, because it knows that — you know, Iran and Hezbollah and the other forces know that it will be extremely difficult and they cannot take on the U.S. militarily. But what they are hoping to do is to create enough public pressure, because of what is happening in Gaza, to force the U.S. to reconsider its strategies over these past few decades in the Middle East.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And finally, Narges, you talked about this, the increasing support for this Axis of Resistance in the region. If you could speak, as you did in your Foreign Affairs piece, of the role of the war in another domain, that is to say, in media, and, in particular, social media, that is ongoing now, that is kind of changing the nature of the conversation in the Middle East about this war?
NARGES BAJOGHLI: Right. So, both Nasrallah, who is the commander of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Khamenei, who’s the supreme leader of Iran, have been very clear in saying that their main objective — that they will not get into this larger sort of, what they call, trap that Netanyahu is laying for them to engage more directly with the United States, and instead they want to keep Palestine at the forefront. Now, why are they saying that? Not only because of what is happening in Gaza and their sort of allyship with the Palestinians, but more than that also is the fact that Palestine, as an issue, has become a global issue for the first time in many decades, and because of social media, it has broken through much of the narrative of how conflict in the Middle East more broadly, but especially Israel-Palestine, has been sort of talked about and understood on a global stage. It’s now no longer about fighting Islamic terrorism, but there’s a more global understanding that this is an issue that is related to occupation, apartheid and settler colonialism.
For why is this important for the Axis of Resistance, it’s because, for decades, they have been involved in fighting the United States and Israel in the region, but, narratively, they have just been sort of deemed as terrorists or bad actors or maligned actors that are fighting against the United States. For the first time pretty much in their existence over the past four decades, for the first time the causes by which at least they claim to be fighting for, which is driving the United States out of the region and finishing off Israeli colonialism, for the first time that is being understood globally not in the language of Shi’ism or sort of religious and Islamic ideology, but in the language of human rights and in the language of genocide and international law. So, for these reasons, this has been a really important war for this axis. But also, secondly, Hamas itself has been quite adept at utilizing media very, very effectively in communicating what it is both facing and what it is up against in the region, as well as, obviously, the many Palestinian journalists and influencers within the Gaza Strip and across the region who are tapping into a global sort of moment of deeper and deeper understanding of the kinds of geopolitical forces that are at play both in the Middle East and beyond.
So there’s a confluence of things that are going on, but that confluence in this moment has been to the benefit of the Axis of Resistance. And this is something that they’ve been working on for a very long time to be able to develop multilingual media that essentially is able to utilize social media as a strength to communicate broader ideologies about what is going on in the Middle East and move it out of the narrative terrain of the “global war on terror,” which is the U.S. and Israel fighting Islamic terrorism, and it’s been able to reframe all of that into a language of hegemony and colonialism, and settler colonialism specifically, and apartheid.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Thank you so much, Narges Bajoghli, professor of Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University and co-author of the new book How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare. She’s also the author of Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic. Her recent co-authored piece in Foreign Affairs is headlined “How the War in Gaza Revived the Axis of Resistance.”
When we come back, we speak with Senator Bernie Sanders’ former foreign policy adviser, Matt Duss, and speak with a Palestinian American doctor who just declined to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
[break]
NERMEEN SHAIKH: “The American Ruse” by MC5. The group’s founding member and guitarist Wayne Kramer passed away Friday at the age of 75.
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“Incandescent” with Rage: Matt Duss on Voter Anger over Biden Support for Netanyahu & Gaza Assaultby Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
February 05, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/2/5/m ... transcriptAs the White House steps up its shelling of targets in the Middle East amid regional unrest over Israel’s monthslong assault on Gaza, we discuss the possibility of wider war with Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, now with the Center for International Policy. “The Biden administration’s strategy here is failing,” says Duss. Voter outrage over its unwavering pro-Israel stance is “incandescent” and on track to harm the president’s reelection campaign as Democratic Party members pull back on get-out-the-vote efforts, while some may refuse to vote at all. “The issue of Israel-Palestine is not just a foreign policy issue. It is an issue of social and racial justice,” explains Duss. “This is going to be fixed, if it can be fixed at all, by changing policy and ending support for this massacre.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Nermeen Shaikh.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is back in the Middle East as Hamas is set to respond to a ceasefire proposal to pause fighting and release more hostages. This comes after the U.S. launched airstrikes in Syria, Iraq and Yemen Friday in retaliation for the killing of three U.S. soldiers by Iran-backed militants who attacked a base in Jordan.
Meanwhile, President Biden is facing more pressure over his support for Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Independent Senator Bernie Sanders has announced plans to introduce an amendment to remove $10.1 billion in military aid for Israel. In a statement, Sanders denounced what he called, quote, “Netanyahu’s illegal, immoral war against the Palestinian people.”
Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warner and Brian Schatz have sent a letter to Secretary of State Blinken to pressure the Biden administration to push back against Netanyahu’s rejection of a two-state solution. The lawmakers wrote, quote, “Prime Minister Netanyahu’s explicit departure from that position, both in his statements and in government policies aimed at undermining this internationally agreed upon pathway, is dangerous to both U.S. and Israeli national security.”
For more, we’re joined in Washington, D.C., by Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy. He’s the former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders.
Matt, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you could begin —
MATT DUSS: Thank you.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: — by giving your response to these recent round of U.S. strikes in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, and what you think may come of this?
MATT DUSS: Well, I think it shows clearly that the Biden administration’s strategy here is failing. Their approach since October 7 in the region has been twofold. One is to, essentially, back Israel’s assault on Gaza unconditionally, and the second was to try and contain the conflict to Gaza. And that second part has clearly, steadily, been failing over the past several weeks and months, but especially now in the wake of the attack in Jordan, you know, with these attacks in Syria, in Iraq and, of course, continuing in Yemen. So, this conflict has steadily been spreading, as anyone should have expected it to, because this kind of violence simply cannot be controlled.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And if you could say, Matt — many have suggested, yourself included, that there are people in D.C., in the D.C. establishment, who have been advocating for a war with Iran for decades. I mean, what are your concerns about where they stand now and how much their voices may be amplified? And how many of —
MATT DUSS: Right.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: — those are Democrats?
MATT DUSS: Right. As I’ve said, I mean, there are people in Washington, in the United States, in U.S. politics, for whom Iran has always been a target. And when we saw this immediately after the War in Iraq, as your previous guest said, there were people who were making clear that their goal was to move on to Iran next. So, any time there is any kind of attack or crisis in which Iran is involved, you see these voices trying to exploit the situation to once again drive the U.S. into an open conflict with Iran, which I think many understand would be an absolute catastrophe. If people thought the Iraq War was bad, they can — you know, we can only imagine what a war with Iran would look like. This is not just me talking; these are military experts in the United States who have repeatedly warned that an open conflict between the United States and Iran would be absolutely disastrous.
But I think there’s a political component here. You always have to take that into account. And unfortunately, you do see voices in Washington who always see a political advantage in bashing the president and kind of promoting this kind of hawkish approach to foreign policy that, I have to say, has failed repeatedly, and yet they continue to make these calls for more war, more escalation, with zero accountability.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And if you could respond, Matt, to this Bernie Sanders announcing plans to introduce an amendment to remove over $10 billion in funding, in military aid to Israel?
MATT DUSS: I support it wholeheartedly. I think, as is so often the case, Senator Sanders is speaking for many Americans and, frankly, I think, a majority of Democratic voters, if you look at the polls of Democratic voters’ opinions of the U.S. approach to the war. This is now an over four-month conflict. This is, I think, clearly a massacre, with close to 30,000 people killed, huge parts of Gaza just obliterated. We’ve seen in the past weeks acknowledgments from Israeli officials that they understand they are not going to achieve the goal of eradicating Hamas. And frankly, no one ever really thought that they seriously could do that. So, the idea that the United States is simply going to continue supporting this conflict with zero conditions as we have been, I think, is absolutely the wrong approach, and I think Senator Sanders’ proposal here is the right one.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And if you could speak, Matt, about the role of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, something you’ve spoken about recently, as well? A poll found in January that only 15% of Israelis want Netanyahu to remain in power after the war in Gaza ends, though many support his strategy of —
MATT DUSS: Yeah, yeah.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: — his Gaza strategy of, effectively, crushing Hamas and —
MATT DUSS: Yeah.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: — also much of the Palestinian population there. So, in a sense — I mean, Netanyahu is only likely to remain in power so long as this war continues. If you could talk about the impact of that?
MATT DUSS: That’s right. Yeah, that’s right. And I think that is what is particularly dangerous here and gets to the particularly pernicious role of Netanyahu himself. Let’s remember, before October 7th, he was facing multiple corruption indictments. He was facing mass protests, that had been going on for months, against his government’s attempt to undermine Israel’s judiciary. And then, on top of that, now you have a belief by a vast majority of Israeli citizens that he personally failed to protect Israelis, that it was — the atrocities that we all saw on October 7 were the result of his failures. So he knows that as soon as this war stops, so does his political career. And the only hope he has of continuing to stay in power is to prolong and escalate this war as long as possible. And that’s extremely dangerous.
And frankly, I think it’s been a very bad decision by President Biden to tie himself so closely to Netanyahu and to this strategy. And I think we need to detach from them and show much, much more distance from what Israel is doing.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, indeed, Biden’s reelection bid seems also to be in question, given his Gaza policy. And you’ve said that his administration does not seem to understand the depth of the problem arising from his Gaza policy.
MATT DUSS: Yeah.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And I’ll just read a bit from this Politico article by Jonathan Martin, where he says, quote, “that a hot war in Gaza this fall may mean 30,000 fewer votes apiece in Madison, Dearborn and Ann Arbor and therefore the presidency.” Biden especially came under criticism last month when he spoke a hundred days since the October 7th attack and failed to mention at all what’s happened in Gaza, the devastation in Gaza —
MATT DUSS: Yeah.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: — with tens of thousands killed, displaced — and displaced. And all this as a recent YouGov poll found 50% of self-described Biden voters say what’s happened in Gaza, Israel’s attacks on Gaza, constitute a genocide. So, could you explain what you think the possible implications of this are in November? And also, given the Democratic — young Democratic base, why isn’t someone even like Bernie Sanders calling for ceasefire?
MATT DUSS: Well, I think I’m hesitant to ever overestimate the impact that foreign policy will have on a presidential election. But I do think we are seeing that for many Democratic voters, for many progressives, particularly young progressives, the issue of Israel-Palestine is not just a foreign policy issue. It is an issue of social and racial justice. And I think this is something the Biden team simply does not understand or only now starting to really understand.
Again, this is going to be a very close election. If it’s going to come down to possibly a few hundred thousand votes in a few key states, and if a lot of these voters who you were just referencing — I doubt they will vote for Trump; they may simply choose not to vote. But they will almost certainly not work to get out the vote. They will not do the volunteering. They will not do the phone banking. They will not do the knocking on doors that’s going to be necessary to maximize vote turnout for President Biden’s reelection. And that should very much concern them.
And I think what’s going on here, it’s not simply a matter of a difference in policy. I think everyone understands the stakes, what a Trump election or a Trump reelection would mean for this country. But the anger at Biden’s support for this assault on Gaza is really just incandescent. It is a matter of principle for many Democrats, not just Arab and Palestinian Americans, but more broadly, some groups of Democratic voters who simply cannot bring themselves to pull the lever or check the box for a president who is supporting this. And this is not going to be fixed by dispatching a few administration officials to certain neighborhoods in Michigan or elsewhere. This is going to be fixed, if it can be fixed at all, by changing policy and ending support for this massacre.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Matt Duss, thank you so much for joining us, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders.
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After Losing Nearly 100 Relatives in Gaza, Palestinian American Doctor Refuses to Meet with Blinkenby Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
February 05, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/2/5/t ... transcriptWe speak with Dr. Tariq Haddad, a Palestinian American leader who refused to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week in protest of the Biden administration’s ongoing support of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Instead, the doctor wrote a 12-page letter to Blinken admonishing the latter for his role in the deaths of nearly 100 of his family members. “I wanted him to see me and see Palestinians as human beings, not as some part of a political game,” says Haddad. He shares stories of some of his lost loved ones and condemns U.S. political and military partnership with Israel. “I just kept looking for evidence that our government actually cares about the lives of my family, and I saw none.”
TranscriptThis is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Nermeen Shaikh.
Before U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken left for his fifth Middle East trip since October 7th, he held a roundtable meeting Thursday to discuss the situation in Gaza with a number of Palestinian Americans. But some of them refused to attend, in protest against the Biden administration’s ongoing support for Israel’s assault on Gaza.
We’re joined now by one of those who refused. Dr. Tariq Haddad is a cardiologist and member of the Virginia Coalition for Human Rights, who grew up in Gaza. He laid out his reasoning in a 12-page letter to Blinken. Included in Dr. Haddad’s letter were pictures of his family members. One of Blinken’s staff reportedly made sure to print the letter in color. Dr. Tariq Haddad joins us now from Falls Church, Virginia.
Dr. Tariq Haddad, welcome to Democracy Now! Our condolences to you for the many family members of yours who have been killed in Gaza. If you could begin by talking about what you know of what happened in Gaza to your family members, and then explain this invitation that you received for a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and why you declined to attend?
DR. TARIQ HADDAD: Thank you. Thank you for having me. And I appreciate the condolences.
Yeah, I think some context is necessary here to understand why I turned this invitation down. So, I have hundreds of family members in Gaza, both sides of my family, both in the town of Khan Younis and the Gaza City. I’ve had about a hundred family members at this point who have been killed, including physicians, pharmacists, lawyers, engineers, dozens and dozens of children, multiple small babies. I can’t tell all their stories, but I just want to tell a few just for the audience.
October 25th, 10 members of my family, all three generations of one side of my family, were all killed. My cousin Jamal El-Farra, his son, who is a physician, Dr. Tawfiq El-Farra, his wife who was pregnant, two of their beautiful daughters, Reem and Hala, Jamal’s brother Esam, wife Semad, and their daughters, Rusul, Tuqa and Nadian, all, multiple generations all killed in one Israeli missile strike. Tuqa, one of the younger women in the family, her wedding date was the day she was killed. They were all from modest means. They actually built — the three brothers built their home themselves, ironically, the same home that the Israeli strikes destroyed.
Another day, a couple days later, my cousins Hatem and Aziz El-Farra from Khan Younis, who lived literally 20 yards from where I grew up, were killed along with 14 other members of their family, seven of their children. Aziz was actually a pharmacist, and Hatem was just an incredible community figure who always had a smile on his face, always was available to help anybody who needed it. The day before he was killed, Hatem had just gone up to my uncle and asked if he could house five families who were made homeless by the Israeli missile strikes, in our grandparents’ house.
One child, one child out of that whole three generations, survived, Hamza. He had an amputation, was in the hospital. He woke up to find out his siblings, his parents, his uncles and his aunts, his grandparents all had died. Excuse me. And then he died himself in the next day from the trauma injuries from the Israeli attacks, because there wasn’t adequate medical care to keep him alive.
A couple of days after that, November 2nd, my cousins Hani, Huda and Wafaa El-Haddad, all siblings, were killed in Gaza City along with my cousin Hani’s Croatian wife and my aunt. Huda and Wafaa were teachers. Hani was an interior decorator. My cousin Hani initially survived with — as a physician, I can tell you it was a fairly minor leg injury, but then he bled to death the next day, because he had no access to any functional medical facility, since they had all been bombed and destroyed by the Israeli attacks. Hani’s brother Wael survived and then had to witness the horror of seeing his mother buried from the waist up in the rubble, dead. And he saw his sister Wafa shredded into pieces. And this, you know, they’re messaging me and telling me.
My other cousin, Nael, who I grew up with and played with as a kid, literally had to bury all his family members in a makeshift grave, because he couldn’t even access a cemetery. And he’s been going 24 hours at a time with no food or water.
Even those in my family who actually fled what was thought to be dangerous areas to safe areas have been targeted. One of my cousins, Samar El-Farra, died in a refugee camp in Rafah around the time she had completed her doctorate for her Ph.D. And we were about to congratulate her on that doctorate when she was killed.
There are family members who have died from a lack of medical care, an inability to access medical care. One of my cousins, Abdulrahman El-Farra, died because he was unable to reach a functional hospital after he was injured. Four of my family members got killed in an Israeli bombing of their car while they were, ironically, trying to go to the Gaza European Hospital for shelter. And then, a few weeks ago, Sabri El-Farra, one of my cousins, died with seven of his sons. And then, most recently, just a few days ago, a baby in our family, Saber El-Farra, who was 20 days old, froze to death, died from hypothermia in the refugee camp that his family was in. And this is after — this 20-[day]-old just froze to death after nine of his siblings and his father were murdered by the Israeli military strikes a few weeks before.
The ones — the people in my family who have not been killed, arguably, are suffering a fate worse than death. Hundreds of my family are displaced. Not a single one of them is able to stay in their home. All their homes are either damaged or destroyed. One of my family members had to give birth on the rubble of her home that was destroyed, and did not even have clothes to put on her baby. Famine is common. Every one of my family members has mentioned it. They have no access to clean water. They’ve had to recycle water because there’s no access to clean water. And they’ve had dysentery and gastrointestinal illnesses. Famine. One of my cousins messages me all the time saying he’s gone 24 hours without food.
So, to answer your question, knowing all this and knowing what I’ve gone through week after week, month after month, checking every morning to see who’s alive, who’s dead, who’s suffered, who can we help, and as the dead rose to a hundred in my family to 15,000 children all across Gaza, to 30,000 civilians, as I saw the famine happen, I just kept looking for evidence that our government actually cares about the lives of my family. And I saw none. I kept waiting for a ceasefire, that Secretary Blinken had access, has the ability to do, and he refused to do it. I kept waiting for a United Nations resolution to call for a ceasefire, which the United States continued to veto. I kept waiting for something, and all I saw was the opposite. I saw our U.S. strategic Middle Eastern military reserve being used to replenish the Israeli ammunitions for this genocide. I saw, cruelly, just a few days ago, the withdrawal of funding for the United Nations, that was supplying military [sic] assistance to these over 2 million people that are going through famine.
So, getting back to your original question, I sort of — I wrote this letter to Secretary Blinken because I wanted him to see me and see Palestinians as human beings, not as some part of a political game or some sort of, you know, blame game. I wanted him to see us for who we were as human beings. And I wanted him to put himself in my shoes and ask himself, if he saw his family getting killed day after day, month after month, as a direct result of the government’s policies, and he knew that somebody in that government could have done something to prevent those 100 people from dying, the suffering of the remaining hundreds of people, how could you sit in a room, given three minutes to face that person, and face them, knowing that that person has been directly responsible for the death of your family and all the suffering that your family has seen, and do so simply as part of a political grandstanding? And that’s why I just ethically could not be there, because actions speak louder than words. And I just wanted him to see us as human beings, to empathize, and not play politics and not play games.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Tariq Haddad, thank you so much for joining us. And again, our condolences for the horrific — the horrors that your family has lived through in Gaza. Dr. Tariq Haddad, cardiologist and member of the Virginia Coalition for Human Rights who refused to attend a meeting in D.C. with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
When we come back, we talk about starvation in Gaza with Alex de Waal. Back in a minute.
[break]
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Annie Lennox performing Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child.” On Sunday night, Annie Lennox called for a ceasefire at the end of her performance at the Grammys.
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Israel’s Use of Starvation as a Weapon of War Brings Gaza to the Brink of Famineby Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
February 05, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/2/5/a ... transcriptIsrael is accused of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, as Israeli forces continue to severely restrict the delivery of humanitarian aid, food and medical supplies to millions inside the besieged territory. “It is not possible to create a famine by accident,” says Alex de Waal, an expert on the subject who serves as the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University. Despite months of international warnings calling on Israel to open up aid channels, de Waal says famine in Gaza is “inevitable” as those warnings have been ignored and Israel’s war on Gaza is poised to continue.
TranscriptThis is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Nermeen Shaikh.
Israel is being accused of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, as Israeli forces continue to severely restrict the delivery of humanitarian aid, food and medical supplies to millions inside the besieged territory after four months of indiscriminate bombardment and mass displacement. U.N. human rights experts warn Gaza’s 2.3 million population is facing severe levels of hunger, with the risk of famine increasing daily.
For more, we’re joined by Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University and author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine. His piece for The Guardian is headlined “Unless Israel changes course, it could be legally culpable for mass starvation.”
Alex de Waal, welcome to Democracy Now! Lay out the argument you have in your Guardian piece.
ALEX DE WAAL: So, my argument is essentially that while it may be possible to bomb a hospital by accident, it is not possible to create a famine by accident, and that for some months now, and particularly in mid-December, when the famine review committee, which is sort of the highest level of humanitarian assessment in the world, an independent, impartial, professional and extremely discrete body of experts, said that Gaza is heading towards famine, it is already in catastrophe — and these are very technical terms. And unless there is an end to active hostilities by the Israeli authorities and army and a full spectrum of relief operations, it is inevitable that sometime in the coming months — and they said beginning likely in early February — under the technical definitions, Gaza would be in famine.
So that is fair warning. And the actions undertaken by the government of Israel — and the war crime of starvation is defined thus: “using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supplies.” So the main element of the crime is destroying food, foodstuffs, hospitals, medical care, sanitation, shelter, etc. Unless that is all stopped, Gaza will be in famine.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Alex, if you could clarify? We just have a minute. You say that Palestinian children in Gaza will die in the thousands, even if the barriers to aid are lifted today. Explain.
ALEX DE WAAL: So, a humanitarian crisis is like a speeding freight train. Even if the driver puts on the brakes as hard as he possibly can, it will take many miles for that train to come to a stop. So, the levels of malnutrition that we are now seeing, the exposure to infectious disease through polluted water, through overcrowding and through lack of shelter, will mean that this humanitarian crisis continues. So, this is not something that can be stopped overnight.
And the fact that even after these warnings were issued, even after the International Court of Justice issued its provisional measures instructing Israel that it had to undertake these key actions, that this has continued, and the United States has not stopped it, makes them culpable for the crimes of starvation.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Alex de Waal, if you could speak — you’ve worked, obviously, on the question of famine and of mass starvation in many other contexts. If you could put what’s happening in Gaza in the broader context of what you’ve witnessed, from Sudan to Ethiopia, Afghanistan and Yemen?
ALEX DE WAAL: I think that the key element, key fact about what is happening in Gaza, has been happening for the last few months, is an exceptionally accelerated and concentrated and clearly deliberate, intentional reduction of a population to a state of outright starvation, of a nature that we have not seen in modern times. There is no parallel to this since World War II.
So, if we compare what is happening in Gaza to the other great famines in recent times, in Somalia, in Ethiopia, in Yemen, in the Nigerian Civil War in the 1960s, in China in the late 1950s, many of those were much bigger in terms of the numbers of people who died, because they impacted much larger populations. They were also much slower. They took many, many months or several years, usually, to unfold. They all have in common the fact that it is political or military decision that not only sets in motion starvation, but allows it to proceed without being halted. But this is an extraordinarily ruthless and concentrated example, as I said, without real parallel since World War II.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And could you explain why its intention doesn’t really come into this, why it doesn’t matter whether Israel is deliberately using starvation as a weapon of war, or if it’s a byproduct of its assault on Gaza? Why is that not relevant?
ALEX DE WAAL: So, let’s look at the case that was presented to the International Court of Justice by South Africa recently. And that used the Genocide Convention. And the key provision in the Genocide Convention is Article II (c), which is deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part. Now, the court is going to take a long time to rule as to whether this is genocide or not, because the key element that it has to determine is genocidal intent. Now, there are a lot of senior government ministers in Israel who have made blatantly genocidal statements, but that does not, in itself, prove that there is genocidal intent in the way that the Israeli Defense Forces are conducting their operations.
But the actual facts on the ground are that conditions of life that will bring about the physical destruction of a significant part of the population of Gaza, those are there. Those are actually existing, regardless of what is the intention. And there are different types of intention. So, the war crime of starvation, which is — the focus is on depriving civilians of objects indispensable to survival, which isn’t just food. It’s anything that is indispensable to survival. That can be deliberately intended, in the sense that the criminal, the perpetrator, wants to starve, or obliquely intended, in that the perpetrator is conducting the actions for another reason, like crushing a military adversary, but it has that outcome.
Now, the key thing about starvation is that it doesn’t stop just because you stop doing your action. And it continues, when you are being — and if you continue doing it even though you were warned of the outcome, you are also responsible. And that is the key here. The key is that Israel is knowingly creating these conditions, because it has been warned, and warned repeatedly, and yet it has continued. And so that makes it culpable. And regardless of the intent, the crime is being committed. And those who are arming Israel, supporting Israel and undermining the relief capacity, which is particularly the UNRWA, are complicit in this.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, another point that you make in your Guardian piece — I’ll just read a short sentence. You write, “Never before Gaza have today’s humanitarian professionals seen such a high proportion of the population descend so rapidly towards catastrophe,” you say. And this as residents in the north, northern Gaza, are reportedly eating grass and drinking polluted water. UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, said today a food convoy expected to move into northern Gaza was targeted by Israeli forces. So, Alex, if you could talk about that, and, of course, this coming as there are — you’re warning of famine, these are the conditions on the ground, and donor countries are considering defunding UNRWA?
ALEX DE WAAL: So, if we go back to what the Famine Relief Committee came up with back in December — and this was based on the data that they gathered primarily during the humanitarian truce at the end of November. They have a five-point scale of food stress, going from phase one, which is normal; phase two, which is stressed; phase three, crisis; phase four, emergency — and in emergency, this is when children start to die in significant numbers; and phase five, which is catastrophe or famine, depending on exactly how the different metrics and indicators work out. And the current, as of early December, was 17% in catastrophe, phase five, 42% in emergency, phase four. The projected, which was for this week, early February, was 26% in catastrophe or famine, and 53% in emergency, so three-quarters of the population in emergency or catastrophe or famine. And that is quite extraordinary, given that right at the beginning of the crisis, the population was under stress, but then the rates of severe acute malnutrition were actually pretty low. The number of children who suffered from wasting because of deprivation of food was about 1% or thereabouts. So, just to reiterate, this train of catastrophe is moving extremely fast.
Now, there is a principle that was adopted by international humanitarians and by the United States government some 12, 13 years ago in Somalia, which is broadly called “no regrets” programming, which is that if you see a catastrophe unfolding, you must set aside the strict criteria in two regards. First of all, how closely and clearly do you actually know how bad it is? You should operate on a worst-case assumption. It’s better to waste some — quote, “waste” some resources by feeding people who may not actually be starving to death. And secondly, you also need to work with authorities, or you have to have a humanitarian carveout that means you can work alongside or with authorities that you don’t fully trust, knowing that some of your aid may be diverted. In the case of Somalia in 2011, it was the terrorist group al-Shabab, because unless you worked with them, there was going to be a famine in the areas they controlled. And so, it was agreed we will have a humanitarian carveout.
Now, this “no regrets” principle is being inverted today in Gaza, in that the slightest suspicion that some members of UNRWA, which is the only capable relief organization able to deliver assistance at scale, the slightest suspicion that some of them, small number, are associated with Hamas and its actions, is leading to a potential major cutoff in funding. And that makes international donors doubly complicit in what is going on.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: You also wrote in your piece — just to put what’s happening in a comparative frame, you wrote, quote, “Many wars are starvation crime scenes. In Sudan and South Sudan, it’s widespread looting by marauding militia. In Ethiopia’s Tigray [region], farms, factories, schools and hospitals were vandalized and burned, far in excess of any military logic. In Yemen, most of the country was put under starvation blockade. In Syria, the regime besieged cities, demanding they 'surrender or starve.' The level of destruction of hospitals, water systems and housing in Gaza, as well as restrictions [of] trade, employment and aid, surpasses any of these cases,” you write in your Guardian piece. So, if you could elaborate on that?
ALEX DE WAAL: So, what the Israeli Defense Forces are doing is not the full range of starvation crimes. For example, we don’t see them pillaging. We don’t see them stealing en masse. But what we do see is this relentless destruction of essential infrastructure. And this goes far beyond any proportionality. The laws of war are very clear, that if you are conducting a war in an area that is inhabited by civilians, that you have to have the — the damage to civilians, the deaths of civilians must be proportionate to your military objectives. And even the Israeli former Chief Justice Aharon Barak actually has said in a judgment, actually relating in this case to torture, that a law-abiding state or a democracy must — and I quote — “must sometimes fight with one hand tied behind its back,” because the fact that there are combatants embedded within a civilian population does not mean that that civilian population loses its civilian character, its protected character, according to the war. And what we are seeing in the case of Gaza is that the Israelis are essentially treating the entire population as a combatant population. That is de facto what we are seeing. And we did not see that with this intensity in any of these other cases.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Alex, if you could put this all in the context of ongoing U.S. support for Israel, and also U.K. support, but principally U.S. support? To the extent that Israel is guilty of creating the conditions for famine and already inducing mass starvation in Gaza, is the U.S. also complicit?
ALEX DE WAAL: I think morally, clearly, it’s complicit. And it could be legally liable in two ways. One, first of all, would be if the International Court of Justice does indeed find that Israel was — is responsible for genocide. And then the United States could be complicit in that crime in, certainly, the element of inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction. But even if the ICJ doesn’t find that, or it takes a long time to find that, the International Criminal Court prosecutor is also looking into war crimes and crimes against humanity, which have essentially the same provision, without the genocidal intent. And I think this would not be difficult to prove, that the same outcome is being — is occurring with just the intent to destroy these things, without the direct intent to cause starvation or to cause genocide, so starvation being the predictable outcome.
Now, if the prosecutor of the ICC were to begin to issue arrest warrants for Israeli officers or commanders or politicians, then the U.S. might find itself, by implication, complicit on those grounds, too. So the U.S. lawyers need to be very, very attentive to that as they give the administration its advice on whether it should continue in its current policy, which, as your correspondents have been saying, appears to be unconditional support for Israel.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We reported in our headlines that Belgium summoned the Israeli ambassador after Israel bombed Belgium’s development agency in northern Gaza. The bombing reportedly occurred on Wednesday after Belgium announced it would not pause funding for UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. So, Alex de Waal, could you respond to this? And if a direct link is established, though I’m not sure how that would be, what does it mean that Israel is carrying out this kind of retaliation against a humanitarian agency?
ALEX DE WAAL: That would be just an extraordinary violation, not only of international humanitarian law, but of international criminal law. And if it could be proven, it would mean that those responsible could and should end up in court on trial for those crimes.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Alex de Waal, now we want to turn to — you know, you’ve done a lot of work in Sudan. So, if you could talk about — you recently wrote a piece for Chatham House on the situation now in Sudan. If you could elaborate on that?
ALEX DE WAAL: Well, let me actually take a little step back, because what we’re seeing in the Horn of Africa and in Yemen is something that we have not — in my almost 40-year career of studying food crises in these countries, we have not seen before, which is four major simultaneous food emergencies unfolding at the same time. So we have — in Sudan, we have about half the population. It’s a country of about 45 million people, and about half the population is in need of emergency assistance because of the war. In Ethiopia, we are seeing, in the northern part of the country, a rapid descent into famine conditions — are not yet there, but they are heading there — due to a combination of the effects of the war in northern Ethiopia, which unfolded over two years, came to an end a year ago, combined with drought. In Somalia, the continuing insecurity and conflict combined with severe drought, and now, in recent months, severe floods related to climate change. And in Yemen, the impact of the protracted war and siege, which just came to an end last year, which is now being exacerbated by the hostilities between the U.S. and the Houthis, and the designation of the Houthis as a terrorist organization.
So we’re seeing four massive food crises unfolding in parallel, at a time when two other things are happening. One is that the price of of food aid has shot up because of the Black Sea crisis and also the Red Sea crisis. It’s just the cost of shipping, the cost of insurance, getting food to these countries has gone up. And also, the budget of the major agencies, such as the World Food Programme, has been massively squeezed. And that’s primarily because there is a standard allocation from the U.S., the major donor, but then what we — what the World Food Programme and what USAID need is a supplemental allocation, and the supplementary budget is held up in Congress.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Thank you so much, Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University and the author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine. His new piece for The Guardian is titled “Unless Israel changes course, it could be legally culpable for mass starvation.” To see Part 1 of our conversation with Alex de Waal, go to democracynow.org. This is Democracy Now! I’m Nermeen Shaikh. Thanks so much for joining us.