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

[admin]

Amid Gaza Ceasefire, Israel Arrests Hundreds & Continues “Colonial Violence” in Occupied Palestine
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
MAY 24, 2021
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/5/24/ ... re_tension

GUESTS
Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestinian writer and poet who is organizing to save his family’s home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem.
LINKS
Mohammed El-Kurd on Twitter
"Rifqa," by Mohammed El-Kurd

The United Nations is appealing to the world to address the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza following the 11-day Israeli assault that killed 248 Palestinians, including 66 children, and injured more than 1,700 people. The U.N. is estimating that at least 6,000 residents of Gaza were left homeless after their homes were bombed by Israel, which has maintained a blockade on Gaza for the past 14 years. Tensions also remain high in Jerusalem, where dozens of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli security forces stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound Friday and Israeli authorities are continuing the campaign to forcibly evict Palestinians from their homes so Jewish settlers can move in. Mohammed El-Kurd, a Palestinian writer and poet who is organizing to save his family’s home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, says Israeli aggression against Palestinians has continued despite the ceasefire. “Colonial violence is still business as usual in occupied Palestine at large,” El-Kurd says.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: The United Nations is appealing to the world to address the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza as the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is holding for a fourth day. The 11-day Israeli assault on Gaza killed 248 Palestinians, including 66 children, there. More than 1,700 people were injured. The U.N. is estimating at least 6,000 residents of Gaza were left homeless after their homes were bombed by Israel, which has maintained a blockade on Gaza for the past 14 years.

Meanwhile, tension remains high across the region. On Sunday, dozens of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli security forces stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the third-holiest site in Islam. On Friday, Israeli security forces fired stun guns and rubber bullets at Palestinians outside the mosque.

Israeli prosecutors have also filed terrorism charges against three Jewish men who pulled a Palestinian man out of his car in the city of Bat Yam two weeks ago and viciously beat him. A police official said, quote, “The three defendants engaged in inciting the mob before the victim arrived. They stole, looted from and destroyed stores owned by Arabs. When they saw an Arab, they carried out an extremely merciless beating,” unquote. Some initial press reports had mistakenly said the victim was Jewish.

Meanwhile, in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, Israeli authorities are continuing their campaign to forcibly evict Palestinians from their homes so Jewish settlers can move in.

We go now to Sheikh Jarrah, where we’re joined by Mohammed El-Kurd. He’s a Palestinian activist and poet who’s organizing to save his family’s home. His debut book, Rifqa, will be released by Haymarket Books later this year.

Mohammed, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you talk about the ceasefire, now in its fourth day, what it means and the wreckage in its wake? And then we’ll talk about what’s happening to you, your family and the other residents of Sheikh Jarrah.

MOHAMMED EL-KURD: Thank you. Thank you, Amy. It’s good to be back.

I think the ceasefire means a lot of things. First, it means that the resistance, the Palestinian resistance, be it grassroots or otherwise, has been able to accomplish its own conditions, has been able to withstand a brutal nuclear superpower that is senselessly carpet-bombing a strip where people, 2 million people, are besieged. But in its fourth day, we are seeing that the Israeli authorities did not respect the ceasefire conditions. Al-Aqsa Mosque has been invaded more than once. There has been a mass arrest campaign, and Sheikh Jarrah is still under an illegal blockade. And colonial violence is still business as usual in occupied Palestine at large.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain in more detail what happened at the Al-Aqsa Mosque starting on Friday, and explain the significance of this mosque in Islam.

MOHAMMED EL-KURD: Well, Al-Aqsa Mosque, for Palestinians who are Muslim, it’s the holiest site in Palestine, and it’s the third-holiest site in Islam. And it is continuously raided and stormed by the Israeli police and army, the occupation forces working with Israeli settlers that are usually armed. And what happens is that oftentimes worshipers are met with brute force inside the mosque. This is stun grenades, rubber-coated bullets, sometimes live ammunition. People are detained, harassed, hit, brutalized.

And the images we have been seeing of this violence are not unique. What’s been unique is that finally Palestinians are making noise about what’s happening. We’re finally recording, and the world is finally listening. Yesterday, over, I believe, a hundred-and-something Israeli settlers stormed the mosque to incite violence, to provoke Palestinians. And, of course, the occupation authorities ransacked the mosque, ransacked the worshipers and wounded many.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain Sheikh Jarrah — it seems now the world has heard about your neighborhood in East Jerusalem — your own situation, you and your twin sister Muna. I wanted to play that clip, that went viral, for people to understand what’s taking place. But first, if you can put it into context? How is it possible that a Jewish settler has been living in your house for years? Go back in time.

MOHAMMED EL-KURD: Of course. I mean, I think there’s two things to be said about Sheikh Jarrah: the then and the now. The then is that it is a microcosm of the Israeli reality, the Israeli settler colonialism in Palestine at large. It is absurd to people to hear that there’s a settler from Long Island that’s squatting in my house, but he wouldn’t be able to do that without being emboldened by the Israeli occupation forces, by an Israeli judicial system that is inherently colonial and supremacist, and by American tax dollars. The person in my house has been there, much like many Israelis have inhabited homes that belong to Palestinians that were thrown out of them, that were massacred, that were forced to flee. And this is the situation in the entire neighborhood. You have settler organizations, that are registered in the United States, that are working and collaborating with the Israeli authorities to fabricate documents to throw out Palestinians. I think it’s important to put in context that we are a community of refugees that is facing a billionaire-backed settler organization that is working in different countries.

And what’s happening in Sheikh Jarrah is not just in Sheikh Jarrah. It’s happening in Silwan, where more than 800 Palestinians are about to be made homeless and a hundred homes will be destroyed, demolished. It’s happening in the South Hebron Hills. It’s happening in Issawiya, where the Israeli authorities are building, quote-unquote, “national parks” to behave as colonial borders, to prevent natural community growth in Palestinian communities. There’s many and a million ways in which Palestinians in Jerusalem are dispossessed. And sometimes it’s a judicial system, sometimes it’s artillery and weapons, and sometimes it’s national parks. But it all behaves in the same way.

I also want to just make a quick note that Sheikh Jarrah has been under an illegal blockade for the past three weeks. No Palestinians — no Palestinians, not even medics, not even journalists —are allowed into the neighborhood, except the people that live there. And even those of us who live there are still harassed and questioned and shoved around. I’ve been shoved around more times than I can count. And that’s been the same reality for other people. This is all happening. The neighborhood is blockaded, barricaded with cement barriers. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers can just walk in, no questions asked. And oftentimes, if not most of the time, they are armed with their rifles or pistols.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to go to that viral video showing your twin sister Muna confronting the Israeli settler who’s been living in part of your home for 12 years.

MUNA EL-KURD: Jacob, you know this is not your house.

JACOB FAUCI: Yes, but if I go, you don’t go back. So what’s the problem? Why are you yelling at me? I didn’t do this. I didn’t do this.

MUNA EL-KURD: But you —

JACOB FAUCI: It’s easy to yell at me, but I didn’t do this.

MUNA EL-KURD: You are stealing my house.

JACOB FAUCI: And if I don’t steal it, someone else is going to steal it.

MUNA EL-KURD: No, no one is allowed to steal it.

AMY GOODMAN: So, this Jacob says, “If I don’t steal it, someone else will.” Where does he live in your house?

MOHAMMED EL-KURD: So, he lives — so, the houses, the 28 houses of the Sheikh Jarrah housing project, were built in 1956. And we have built an extension to our house in the year 2000. The extension, of course, was closed immediately upon building, because 94% of building permits presented by Palestinians in Jerusalem get rejected. Actually, the councilman who rejects and accepts these permits is the same person that went viral for another video, saying that their goal is to make East Jerusalem like West Jerusalem, and if it happens at the expense of the Palestinians, it’s no big deal. So, Jacob, from Long Island, Jacob Fauci, lives in that extension of my house and has lived there for, I think, a decade now.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s go to what happened in Gaza, the Hamas-Israel ceasefire. You’ve got over 200 Palestinians killed, over 240 Palestinians killed. About a quarter of them are children. More than 60 of those dead in Gaza are children, as a result of the Israeli bombardment. Now President Biden says that the U.S. will contribute to rebuilding Gaza. I want to play that clip for you. President Biden saying that they will contribute money, and, of course, the United Nations is also calling for a Gaza rebuilding fund. Your response?

MOHAMMED EL-KURD: I think — you know, I believe there was a condition that the resistance must be disarmed. And I just think it’s ridiculous that the United States, of all countries, would talk about disarming what they call terrorism, when they have unleashed more terror onto the world than any other nation.

And I think if we’re going to talk about disarming terrorism, I think Israel is a great place to start. The world seeing Gaza get carpet-bombed was a great presentation — of course, a heart-wrenching and terrible presentation, but nonetheless a good presentation — that the Israeli myth of self-defense is more and more penetrable, that they’re not really defending against anything. And those manipulations of language, those red herrings they throw in the way of Palestinian advocacy, are not strong enough to contrast the images of them targeting densely populated civilian areas, are not strong enough to contrast the intent — the confessions made by Israeli officials about, you know, flattening the Strip or venting out their frustrations by leveling residential towers.

So, I think Israel is losing the battle in the public eye. And I hope no more Palestinians have to be killed before the world takes action against Israelis and against the Israeli authorities, the occupation authorities, who have been getting away with impunity for decades.

AMY GOODMAN: Is there an Israeli peace movement that is expressing solidarity with the Palestinians?

MOHAMMED EL-KURD: I don’t think there’s an Israeli peace movement that directly addresses the Israeli occupation authorities as a form of colonial violence. And I think that’s where the issues stem. I think any Israeli peace movement’s intentions are welcome, but they must reflect the wishes and the self-determination and the self-articulation of the Palestinian street, the voices of the Palestinian youth. And I don’t think — I don’t believe that’s present nowadays.

AMY GOODMAN: The significance of the overall solidarity around the world, what that has meant for you? I mean, we just played a clip of someone in London. Something like 180,000 people protested. That was, rather — yes, that was in Paris.

MOHAMMED EL-KURD: Yes, Amy, that was — the videos in London and Paris, all over the world, have been heartwarming to me as a Palestinian and to many, many, many Palestinians, to see this huge, unprecedented shift in public opinion. And we know that it will have reverberations and accumulations in the coming future. We know that these protests are going to continue and be developed into actions and sanctions and boycotts and initiatives and letters. And I ask the people who are protesting to continue doing so, because we must the stubborn in the face of Israeli colonialism.

We’re also already seeing punishment for these advocacy campaigns, for these protests. Fourteen hundred Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenships have already been arrested in the past two weeks. Yesterday, the Israeli authorities announced a campaign of what they called “law and order,” where they will be arresting 500 more Palestinians to — and I quote — “even the score.” Of course, no Israelis that took part in the lynch mobs were arrested or will be arrested in that campaign. To look at this mathematically, if you’re arresting 500 Palestinians, that means you’re terrorizing 500 families, 500 streets, where you’ll be ransacking, raiding people’s homes, terrorizing them.

This sends a clear message to us Palestinians who have been feeling a sense of national unity across historical Palestine: If you protest colonial violence, you’ll be met with more colonial violence. But it is also — this campaign of, quote-unquote, “law and order” is also an indication that the Israeli occupation authorities are losing control.

AMY GOODMAN: Mohammed El-Kurd, I want to thank you for being with us, writer and poet from Jerusalem. He’s organizing to save his family’s home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem.

[admin]

Joe Biden’s Hit and Run on the Palestinian People
by Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan
MAY 20, 2021

U.S. taxpayers who want to see their tax dollars at work should look no further than the Gaza Strip, the besieged enclave where 2 million Palestinians live in what former Conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron described as “an open-air prison.” Israel has launched another of its horrific, periodic bombing campaigns against the embattled Gazans —- slaughters that Israeli commentators have long called “mowing the grass” -— leaving hundreds dead, including scores of children. At least 17 hospitals and clinics have been damaged, including Gaza’s only COVID-19 testing facility, clean water has been cut to hundreds of thousands, schools have been destroyed, and a major high rise building hosting media organizations including Al Jazeera and the Associated Press was leveled. The United States enables all this by providing Israel with billions of dollars in aid annually and unparalleled access to sophisticated weaponry.

Jewish Voice for Peace, a grassroots human rights group, asked of American Jews in a recent press release, “Do we accede to a future rooted in denial and continue to allow apartheid, ethnic cleansing and massacre in our names? Or do we engage with hard truths and bring our whole selves to the struggle of teshuva, of repair for these harms?” Israel has long enjoyed vigorous, bipartisan support in the U.S. Now, with a new, more diverse generation of elected representatives, popular resistance to Israel’s occupation of Palestine is finding a voice in Washington.

“I am the only Palestinian American member of Congress now, and my mere existence has disrupted the status quo,” Congressmember Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Detroit, said during an emotional address on the floor of the House of Representatives. “I am a reminder to colleagues that Palestinians do indeed exist, that we are human, that we are allowed to dream. We are mothers, daughters, granddaughters. We are justice seekers and are unapologetically about our fight against oppressions of all forms.”

Tlaib was speaking on Eid al-Fitr, the celebration that follows the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and just two days before the Palestinian commemoration of Nakba Day. The Nakba, or, in English, the Catastrophe, was the violent expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that accelerated following the May 15th, 1948 founding of Israel.

Since then, Israel has systematically expanded its illegal military occupation of Palestinian land, killed thousands of innocent Palestinians, and imprisoned tens of thousands more without charge. None of this could have been accomplished without the robust support and approval of the United States.

In the past, Rashida Tlaib might have been a lone voice. Now, she has a groundswell of support. Democratic Congressmembers Alexandria Ocasio-Cortéz of New York and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin joined Tlaib in offering a joint resolution to Congress, opposing the pending $735 million sale to Israel of so-called “smart” bombs, the Joint Direct Attack Munitions, or JDAMS, manufactured by Boeing. Sen. Bernie Sanders is introducing a similar resolution in the Senate.

John Ossoff, the first Jewish Senator elected from Georgia, led 28 Democratic Senators in calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, from both Israel and Hamas, whose missiles have killed 12 people inside Israel. Thousands of people have been rallying across the United States, demanding a cease fire.

On Tuesday, Biden made a trip to Detroit, Rashida Tlaib’s home district, to visit the plant where Ford’s all-electric vehicles will be manufactured. Tlaib met him on the airport tarmac. NPR reported that an aide to Tlaib summarized Tlaib’s comments to Biden as, “Palestinian human rights are not a bargaining chip and must be protected, not negotiated…The U.S. cannot continue to give the right-wing Netanyahu government billions each year to commit crimes against Palestinians. Atrocities like bombing schools cannot be tolerated, much less conducted with U.S.-supplied weapons.” Biden praised Tlaib in his speech at the Ford plant, adding, “I pray that your grandma and family are well.”

Palestinian grandmothers living under Israeli occupation don’t need Biden’s prayers; they need his intervention.

As Biden was about to test drive an electric truck, he had this exchange with a reporter:

“Mr. President, can I ask you a quick question on Israel before you drive away, since it’s so important?”

“No, you can’t–not unless you get in front of the car as I step on it. I’m only teasing,” Biden replied. He then tore off, reportedly hitting 80 mph. For the millions of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, it is as if they are hit daily by a truck driven by the American government.

Israel’s latest deadly assault has driven more people around the world into active solidarity with the Palestinian people in their resistance, rejecting what the late, great Palestinian scholar and activist Edward Said described as the “gregarious tolerance for the way things are.”

[admin]

Sheikh Jarrah Residents Face Legal Defeat; Israel Arrests Thousands of Palestinians to Quell Dissent
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
JUNE 07, 2021
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/7/i ... ss_freedom

GUESTS
Mariam Barghouti: Palestinian writer and researcher.
LINKS
Mariam Barghouti on Twitter

Israel is cracking down on Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank, occupied East Jerusalem and inside Israel amid the ongoing ceasefire between Israel and Gaza. Israeli police have arrested nearly 2,000 Palestinians over the past month in an attempt to quell protests and uprisings against the occupation, according to the newspaper Haaretz. “Israel is criminalizing our right to say we’re Palestinian, our right to say we want to live in our homes in dignity, our right to be free,” says Mariam Barghouti, a Palestinian writer and researcher.

Transcript

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

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

While the ceasefire continues to hold between Israel and Gaza, Israel is cracking down on Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank, occupied East Jerusalem and inside Israel. The newspaper Haaretz reports Israeli police have arrested nearly 2,000 Palestinians over the past month in an attempt to quell protests and uprisings against the occupation.

On Saturday, Israeli police arrested Al Jazeera reporter Givara Budeiri as she covered a protest in Sheikh Jarrah. During the arrest, officers broke her hand and destroyed the equipment of her camera operator. She was also reportedly beaten while being taken to an Israeli police interrogation center.

On Sunday, police in East Jerusalem detained both Muna and Mohammed El-Kurd. The 23-year-old twins have been helping to lead efforts to fight the eviction of Palestinians living in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem where their families live. Jewish settlers already live in part of their home. Mohammed spoke out after he and his sister were released Sunday night.

MOHAMMED EL-KURD: What happened today was a clear tactic of intimidation. The Israeli occupation clearly doesn’t want anybody to be speaking about the abuses it’s doing against the Palestinian residents in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan. But we are not afraid. We are unintimidated. We are going to continue to speak out against all of these injustices. And we’re going to continue to protect our homes.

AMY GOODMAN: Just as we went to air on Democracy Now!, residents of Sheikh Jarrah were dealt a legal setback, making it more likely the Palestinians will be evicted.

We go now to the West Bank city of Ramallah, where we’re joined by Mariam Barghouti, Palestinian writer and researcher.

Mariam, welcome back to Democracy Now! Explain what the Israeli attorney general just ruled.

MARIAM BARGHOUTI: Hi. Thank you for having me again, Amy.

So, right now the attorney general of Israel basically said that they will not be involved with the case of Sheikh Jarrah and the decision is left to the Israeli Supreme Court. The excuse is that the case of the families is “too weak” to actually solicit successful resolution for the families, the Palestinian families of Sheikh Jarrah. But at the same time, this is an entire legal system that is built on ensuring the erasure of Palestinians, so of course the case is going to be too weak. And I think it would have been false to also assume that the attorney general of Israel would help in bringing out any other result for Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: So, right now what does this mean for people like, well, the Palestinian twins, Muna and Mohammed? They were arrested yesterday, first Muna, and then Mohammed turned himself in. What were they interrogated about? They have been released since.

MARIAM BARGHOUTI: They have been released since then. And in terms of the interrogation, well, the charges that they are — that are being put in front for the twins, who are 23 years old, is participating in activities which impact the security of the state of Israel and in participating in riot acts with a nationalistic motive. And let’s emphasize on this, this nationalistic motive is basically any Palestinian saying, “We’re Palestinian,” especially for those who hold Israeli citizenship or a Jerusalem ID.

Israel’s interrogation tactics are for intimidation. They are for coercion. And often they have Palestinians sign false confessions in Hebrew, knowing very well that the person in front of them, the Palestinian, doesn’t speak Hebrew. So, it’s not just Mohammed and Muna El-Kurd. This is the same tactic that’s being used against all Palestinians. Two others were also arrested with them, Iyad Abu Sneineh and Zuhair Rajaby, who are from Silwan. And it shows you how Israel is targeting all Palestinian neighborhoods that are confronting their forced expulsion.

AMY GOODMAN: Some people might be very surprised to hear all of this. They might be saying, “Wait a second. I thought there was a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza, that the violence is over.” That’s how it’s described in the mainstream media. So, if you can describe what continues to happen since? You have Mohammed reporting on Saturday that Jewish settlers were throwing stones at his house, that the Israeli police were standing by. If you can talk about the settler-police relationship and also what happened to the Al Jazeera reporter?

MARIAM BARGHOUTI: Right. So, in terms of Givara Budeiri, she was violently attacked by Israeli police in Jerusalem as she was trying to cover the developments happening in Sheikh Jarrah, knowing very well that Israel is trying to give a blackout on Palestinians.

And in terms of the ceasefire, this is a ceasefire where Israel agrees not to bomb Gaza, but the besiegement of Gaza continues. The healing and rebuilding and recovery process is inapplicable right now, until the siege is lifted and removed.

In terms of attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, in Jerusalem, in other Palestinian cities, such as Haifa and Safad and Akka, it continues. And the Israeli police basically provides protection for settlers but also joins them in the violence. Three weeks ago, you had Israeli police dressed in civilian clothing so they can join the settler mobs chasing Palestinians, screaming “Death to Arabs!” So, it’s continued.

And Givara Budeiri, the Al Jazeera correspondent, who was violently attacked and taken into interrogation despite being press — let’s remember Israel bombed Al Jazeera offices, Associated Press offices in Gaza on live television. And just yesterday, they threw a stun grenade on another correspondent with Al Jazeera, Najwan Samri, which injured her in the leg.

And these violations are just systemic. And we often assume that just because you’re in the police, just because you’re an Israeli lawyer, you’re not participating in the ethnic cleansing. But they are colluding together.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to Givara herself, the Al Jazeera journalist Givara Budeiri, describing her arrest and the breaking of her hand on Al Jazeera.

GIVARA BUDEIRI: They broke my hand. I spent all the night in the hospital. My back hurt me a lot. And here, my hand, from the cuffs, also they hurt so much, because the soldiers in the car were tightening it all the time. I have a headache. And my leg — I can’t walk very well.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can also talk about, overall, the cracking down on Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank, in occupied East Jerusalem, inside Israel, thousands of arrests in the last month?

MARIAM BARGHOUTI: That’s true, there have been thousands of arrests. Just this morning, 17 Palestinians were taken into arrest overnight in raids on their homes, where families were beaten, children were terrorized. I know a couple of incidents with friends who are speaking how their children are just completely horrified of the violence of Israeli forces.

And this is all coming as part of Israel trying to “settle the score,” as the police said, for everyone that spoke up against their ethnic cleansing. Israel is criminalizing our right to say we’re Palestinian, our right to say we want to live in our homes in dignity, our right to be free. And it is doing it by using legal violence. It is doing it by using economic violence. A lot of the detainment of Palestinians is also so they can fine them or let them pay bail. So, they’re trying to sustain these horrifying measures by letting Palestinians or forcing Palestinians to kind of cover the expenses of it.

AMY GOODMAN: So, as we speak — and we just have a minute and a half to go — I wanted to ask you about the forming of this new government, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claiming, without evidence, sounding exactly like Trump, that the election was rigged, Trump saying it right about the same time in his first speech that he gave in North Carolina. Netanyahu was saying that the election was marred by the biggest election fraud in the history of any democracy, his remarks drawing comparisons, of course, to Trump. But I wanted to ask you about the new government, the deal that would see far-right politician Naftali Bennett serve as prime minister for two years, followed by the opposition leader Yair Lapid for two years after that. Bennett previously led the Israeli settler movement in the occupied West Bank, calling for annexation of Palestinian lands, opposes a Palestinian state, has compared Palestinian citizens of Israel to a fifth column.

MARIAM BARGHOUTI: Right. Well, I think the new — quote-unquote, “new” government isn’t really new. It is just a lot more blunt in its racist measures. It’s a lot more blunt in its colonial measures. Let’s not forget that Netanyahu used to constantly say that they are the ones that dictate the rules, and Palestinians will remain Palestinian subjects.

I think we will see a lot more violence right now. It will be in the form of detainment, mass detainment. It will be in the form of criminalizing the Palestinian voices. It will be in the form of the continued impunity of settlers and police that shoot down Palestinians and aren’t held accountable.

And also, in terms of the settler movement, let’s not forget that many of these settler organizations — and they are terrorist organizations — are based out of the U.S. So we need to also look at the role of that in terms of continuing the cycle of violence we’re experiencing here.

AMY GOODMAN: And also, if you could talk about, for the first time, the United Arab List joining this coalition that would rule?

MARIAM BARGHOUTI: Right. So, at this point, what we need to look at is the demands of Palestinians for justice and freedom. Anyone that doesn’t represent that, we need to look at as aiding and abetting Israeli apartheid and persecution of Palestinians. So, sometimes we might get misguided in the labels, but, in the end, let’s look at the reality on the ground, on the actions on the ground, and holding accountability for Palestinians against the criminals that are perpetuating this.

AMY GOODMAN: Mariam Barghouti, I want to thank you so much for joining us from Ramallah, Palestinian writer and researcher. I’m Amy Goodman. Stay safe.

[admin]

Israeli Bombs Killed 66 Kids in Gaza Including 12 Who Were Getting Help for Trauma from Past Attacks
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
MAY 28, 2021
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/5/28/jan_egeland_gaza

GUESTS
Jan Egeland: secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council.
LINKS
Jan Egeland on Twitter

As the United Nations human rights chief warns Israel may have committed war crimes in Gaza, we look at how Israel killed 12 Palestinian children being treated for trauma from past Israeli bombings. Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, says Gaza has become “the home of hopelessness,” particularly for young people in the besieged territory. “We humanitarian workers are sick and tired of building and rebuilding and see it all torn down again,” Egeland says of Israel’s repeated attacks on Gaza. “We are accumulating rubble, we’re accumulating dead children, and we’re accumulating hopelessness, if it continues like this.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: The United Nations human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, the former president of Chile, says Israel may have committed war crimes during its 11-day bombardment of Gaza, which killed at least 253 Palestinians, including 66 children. Bachelet spoke before the United Nations Human Rights Council.

MICHELLE BACHELET: Such strikes raise serious concerns of Israel’s compliance with the principles of distinction and proportionality under international humanitarian law. If found to be indiscriminate and disproportionate in their impact on civilians and civilian objects, such attacks may constitute war crimes.

AMY GOODMAN: The U.N. Human Rights Council approved a resolution Thursday to launch a sweeping international investigation into war crimes committed in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The resolution was drafted by the Organization of Islamic States.

KHALIL HASHMI: Regrettably, the self-professed global champions of human rights continue to shield the occupier from global accountability and literally provide arms and ammunition for its widely reported war crimes and crimes of apartheid against the Palestinian people. Let us be clear: There is no legal and moral equivalence between the occupier and the occupied.

AMY GOODMAN: The Biden administration has vowed to help rebuild Gaza, but at the same time it’s moving ahead with a plan to sell $735 million worth of bombs to Israel despite congressional opposition.

Earlier this week, I spoke to Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which works in Gaza. Last week, the council revealed 11 of the children killed in the Israeli bombing of Gaza were taking part in a program to help them deal with trauma from previous Israeli attacks. Egeland is the former humanitarian relief coordinator at the United Nations. He spoke to us from Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where tens of thousands have evacuated fearing another volcano eruption. We also talked about the crisis in the DRC, but I began by asking him to talk about the situation in Gaza.

JAN EGELAND: Well, Gaza has become the home of hopelessness, where people are crammed together, 2 million people, in a tiny place. It’s smaller than the municipality of Oslo, where I normally live. There is no way people can leave the place. Israel and Egypt control the borders, and they don’t let anybody out, really. They let only a bit of humanitarian aid in.

During this onslaught, we didn’t only have the 11 ones you talked about, Amy. There was a 12th little girl killed. All of those, we were trying to treat for trauma from the previous conflicts. There’s been five wars since 2006. So, a child would have grown up with nothing but violence, nothing but hopelessness. That’s why we need Blinken and Biden and the leadership of the U.S. now to lead to a solution to this senseless repeat of conflicts where Palestinian children die.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you have the United States providing the weapons for Israel to bomb Gaza and now committing to the rebuilding of Gaza. Can you talk about the problem with this?

JAN EGELAND: Well, it seems futile, really. There seems to be a logical third path — namely, for the U.S. to lead the international community — the U.S., Europe and the Arab countries — to have some kind of an arbitration, when you have an Israeli leadership and Palestinian leaderships incapable of solving the underlying conflicts that lead to repeat violence and insecurity for both peoples. So, could the U.S. lead us, please, in reaching, you know, political solutions, an end to the occupation and so on? We just had an earthquake here in Goma. That’s why it’s shaking.

We need in Gaza to have an end to this serving hopelessness to children, who will grow up with more and more bitterness and chaos. And I’m telling you, we humanitarian workers are sick and tired of building and rebuilding and see it all torn down again.

AMY GOODMAN: You co-signed a letter with 11 other heads of international humanitarian organizations to Secretary of State Blinken about the situation in Gaza. Talk about the issues you’ve raised. I mean, you had this constant bombardment, where the president of the United States, President Biden, would not demand of Netanyahu a ceasefire, said he might like one, he would urge one, but not make that diplomatic demand, particularly important since Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world.

JAN EGELAND: Yeah, we, the 12 nongovernmental organizations serving Palestinians on the ground, the civilian population, especially children, women and the most vulnerable — we urged, in our letter, the United States to take the lead in ending the occupation, getting humanitarian access to all consistently, to all in need, ending the underlying injustice that means that we have this confrontation. But we’re also trying to tell that we need help to be able to be active for all Palestinians, irrespective of where they are in Gaza. Too often the borders close in our face, and we cannot then even help the people in need.

AMY GOODMAN: Secretary General, last week, you tweeted, quote, “We are devastated to learn that 11 of the children we help in #Gaza with trauma from previous violence are now killed by Israeli missiles. Israel must stop this madness: children must be protected. Their homes and schools must not be targets.” We also spoke with the head of UNRWA, the U.N. agency in Gaza, about the devastation and the number of schools and hospitals that were attacked. Tell us more about these children and what it means that you’re funding trauma help for them.

JAN EGELAND: Well, we’ve been to Gaza for a very long time. I personally also visited it regularly over the last 30 years. So, during all of my visits to Gaza, where we have 50 humanitarian workers now working around the clock, as they have been for a very long time, the strongest impression is this hopelessness, this bitterness, this sense that the youth do not believe it will become better, it will become worse. So, it’s bitterness. They’re giving up.

We also then saw that too many children were having learning problems in school. I mean, they are having so much nightmares at night that they cannot really follow education. So we started a Better Learning Program, as we call it, which is an excellent psychosocial program, and these children then started to learn better. They were making progress in school. And the Palestinians are like their neighbors, the Israelis — very diligent, very talented, very organized.

So, we were a bit optimistic before this last repeat violence. And through these 11 days of madness, we got news every single day, nearly, of new children killed, 12 now in total, who were in our, you know, psychosocial program. They were then killed with their families, with their dreams, and their nightmares, that we were treating them for.

I think that’s a very strong symbol also of it cannot continue like this. The United States has to get the parties out of this repeat cycle of violence. Would we want to come back every three, four, five years, for eternity, with more bombing of urban areas? We’ve seen that — our estimate is that 13,500 homes have been either damaged or even destroyed. We are accumulating rubble, we’re accumulating dead children, and we’re accumulating hopelessness, if it continues like this.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what Israel, in a lot of the mainstream media, at least in the United States — you’re based in Norway — the equivalency of the Hamas missiles and the Israeli bombardment that killed over 250 Palestinians, a quarter of them — it’s what? Something like 66 children dead?

JAN EGELAND: Well, this is disproportionate warfare. There is one occupier, and that is strong. And there are people then having also now extremist organizations among themselves, trying to inflict as much damage on the other side as they can. But, of course, there were more than five times the number of dead Palestinian children as total fatalities, military and civilian, of all ages, on the Israeli side.

So, again, the U.S. military might that is given to Israel makes it be so much stronger than the other, and therefore we feel they should now reach out and try to make peace with their neighbors. It’s not going to be easy, because there’s a lot of extremism now. And there will be more extremism, because there is more bitterness and more hatred each time you have these kind of military campaigns.

AMY GOODMAN: Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, speaking to us about Gaza earlier this week from Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where tens of thousands have fled their homes fearing another volcanic eruption. We also talk about the crisis in Yemen and vaccine apartheid, when we come back with him.

[admin]

Undercover Israeli Forces Kill Three Palestinians in West Bank Raid
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
JUN 11, 2021
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/11/ ... _bank_raid

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces killed three Palestinians during a predawn undercover raid on Wednesday. The Israelis were dressed to look like Palestinians. The dead included two military intelligence officers with the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned what he called a “dangerous Israeli escalation.” Israeli forces also raided the headquarters of the Palestinian Union of Health Workers Committee on Wednesday and ordered the group’s Ramallah office to remain closed for six months. Amnesty International warned Israel’s action could have “catastrophic consequences” for Palestinians needing healthcare.

********************

Shocking Video Shows Israeli Guards Brutally Assaulting Palestinian Prisoners
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
JUN 11, 2021
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/11/ ... _prisoners

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has published shocking video of Israeli prison guards brutally kicking, punching and beating shackled Palestinians inside a prison in the Negev Desert in 2019. The video shows guards throwing dozens of men into a large pile on a concrete floor; 15 were later hospitalized. The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said today, “The case proves, yet again, that Palestinian victims of violence by Israeli security forces cannot achieve justice via Israeli systems and can hope to do so only in an international court.” No Israeli guards faced charges over the assault. The warden on duty was later promoted.

[admin]

Israeli Soldiers Shoot and Kill Palestinian Woman After Overnight Air Raids on Gaza
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
JUN 16, 2021
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/16/ ... ds_on_gaza

Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian woman in a town northeast of Jerusalem earlier today. She was identified as 29-year-old Mai Afanah, a doctoral student. The Israeli military claimed she attempted to ram her car into a group of soldiers. Local media report no ambulance was sent to care for her after she was shot.

The killing came the day after Israel launched overnight air raids on Gaza for the first time since a ceasefire with Hamas was declared in May following a brutal 11-day bombardment of the Gaza Strip. No casualties have been reported. The Israeli military said its air raid came in response to “fire balloons” launched from the besieged Gaza Strip.

**********************

Palestinians Protest Ultranationalist Israeli “March of the Flags” in Occupied East Jerusalem
by Amy Goodman
Democracy Now
JUN 16, 2021
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/6/16/ ... _jerusalem

Earlier in the day, at least 17 Palestinians were arrested as they protested the ultranationalist Israeli “March of the Flags” taking place in occupied East Jerusalem. Some participants chanted “Death to Arabs” and “May your village burn down.” This is Palestinian legal activist and protester Farid al-Atrash.

Farid al-Atrash: “They should stop all the acts by the Israeli occupation and the settlers by entering Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the capital of the Palestinian state. We’re telling Jerusalem and the Jerusalem residents that you are not alone, and there should be an end to all this aggression by the Israeli occupation in front of the whole world.”

[admin]

“Police State Without the State”: Palestinian Authority Faces Protests over Critic’s Death in Custody
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
JULY 08, 2021
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/7/8/m ... _authority

GUESTS
Mariam Barghouti: Palestinian writer and researcher based in Ramallah.
LINKS
Mariam Barghouti on Twitter
"Who is the Palestinian Authority protecting? Not us."
We look at growing opposition to the Palestinian Authority after the killing of a prominent activist, Nizar Banat, a vocal critic of the ruling body who died in PA custody after security forces violently arrested him at his home. Banat’s killing has sparked protests calling for President Mahmoud Abbas to step down. “The Palestinian Authority now is acting like a police state without the state,” says Palestinian writer Mariam Barghouti. “The Palestinian Authority has often collaborated with Israel at the expense of Palestinians.”

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

We turn now to the occupied West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority is facing intense criticism for violently cracking down on Palestinian protesters in recent weeks, following the death of the human rights activist Nizar Banat in Palestinian Authority custody. Banat was a vocal critic of the PA. He was arrested June 24th by PA forces, who broke into a relative’s house where he was staying in the town of Dura. Relatives who witnessed the attack say Banat was beaten before his arrest. Hours after his detention, he was declared dead. This is Nizar Banat’s wife, Jihan Banat, and relative, Hussein Banat.

JIHAN BANAT: [translated] Two months ago, there was a shooting toward us from unknown people. They wanted to kill Nizar, because they targeted our bedroom. For two months, he has been away from home. We didn’t see him. We heard at 3 a.m. that he was arrested. They took all his belongings and laptop. Two hours later, he was announced dead.

HUSSEIN BANAT: [translated] We were at home at 3:30 a.m. Suddenly, we heard noise of breakthrough. They broke the windows and opened the door of the room where we were sleeping. And they were from the preventative forces. When they broke in, we were sleeping, and Nizar, too. We woke up while they were beating Nizar with their metal sticks on his head.

AMY GOODMAN: Nizar Banat had run on behalf of an opposition party in the parliamentary elections that President Mahmoud Abbas would eventually call off. On Saturday, hundreds of Palestinians protested in Ramallah, calling for Abbas to step down. This comes as the Israeli newspaper Ynet reported last week the Palestinian Authority is attempting to buy tear gas canisters, stun grenades and other nonlethal munitions from Israel.

For more, we go to Ramallah, where we’re joined by Mariam Barghouti, Palestinian writer. Her recent op-ed in The Washington Post is headlined “Who is the Palestinian Authority protecting? Not us.”

OK, why don’t you lay out who is the Palestinian Authority, and who are they protecting, Mariam?

MARIAM BARGHOUTI: Hi. Thank you for having me, Amy.

The Palestinian Authority is a regime that was created through the 1994 Oslo Accords, and it was meant to serve as an interim government for civil administration of Palestinian affairs. The Palestinian Authority now is acting like a police state without the state. And what is happening is a complete assault on Palestinian rights, on Palestinian lives, on Palestinian voices. And the only thing that is being protected are the security forces, the regime complex.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Mariam, you write in your piece that, quote, “The horrors, like those of Israeli crimes, are too ubiquitous to describe. The only consistency is that the violence, in all of its forms and different uniforms, sustains Israeli colonialism.” Could you explain why you think that’s the case? And also, respond to the argument by the Palestinian Authority that their fear is centered around Hamas.

MARIAM BARGHOUTI: Right. So, the Palestinian Authority has often collaborated with Israel at the expense of Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority has adhered to the agreement of security coordination with Israel based on the Oslo Accords. And it was a one-way street, where Palestinians are being handed over to Israel for vocalizing their complete refusal of anything that means colonialism, of anything that means ethnic cleansing. And the Palestinian Authority did this for Israel. The Palestinian Authority put sanctions on Gaza when Gaza was being brutally attacked by Israel, when it was being starved by Israel, when its electricity was being also cut by Israel. They colluded with Israeli colonialism against Palestinians in Gaza.

When we hear the Palestinian Authority say fears like it’s Hamas, it reminds me a lot of the same narrative that Israel officials say: “Well Hamas.” Palestinians are resisting, but, “No, it’s Hamas.” And it’s this attempt to criminalize us. Nizar Banat wasn’t Hamas. I’m not Hamas. We’re Palestinians who want to be Palestinian, who want to say “Palestinian from the river to the sea.” And the Palestinian Authority allowed Israel to confine us to the West Bank and Gaza. It has even negated the right of return for refugees. It has ignored Palestinians with Israeli citizenship in terms of representation and demands.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Mariam, could you explain who funds the Palestinian Authority and what you think needs to happen?

MARIAM BARGHOUTI: Well, the Palestinian Authority is funded from different actors and parties, namely international states within the EU, the U.S. and other actors, as well. So, we shouldn’t just confine to who is funding. The bigger focus is what is being funded.

Most of the funding is coming under the emblem of capacity building of Palestinians, but it’s really going to the security forces. This is where the money is being flooded. Every year, I just see newer police cars instead of more schools. And that’s because this is what Israel also wants. It wants us to turn into watchdogs so it can become a cheaper occupation and a cheaper colonialism on that front.

The PA is not just being funded in material value. It is being supported by tolerating the repression. We have been speaking about this for over a decade. Over a decade, Palestinians were getting beaten in the streets. Every time this happens, a little media attention comes at this, but the support and the tolerance of it continues. And now we’re being politically assassinated.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk, Mariam Barghouti, about just who Nizar Banat was, how he died, and why this is so significant when talking about the role of the Palestinian Authority?

MARIAM BARGHOUTI: Nizar Banat was a very vocal critic of corruption, namely the Palestinian Authority. He was attacked in Hebron by security forces, taken under the pretext of being arrested, but he was beaten so brutally that the images of his corpse were covered in purple and blue. I personally couldn’t even look at the images, so I can’t even imagine his family and close friends.

He was a Palestinian that said something, that said something about an authority that is pretending to represent us but is actually forcing us into our homes, into whispers, into fear of wanting to live in dignity, of wanting to live justly, of wanting to live as Palestinians.

Nizar was also a father. Nizar was also a husband. He wasn’t just the critic of the Palestinian Authority. He wasn’t just a Palestinian that refused Israeli colonialism. In the end, he was also a person just like all of us, where we’re learning all of these different dynamics because our lives are on the line. We can’t afford to not know.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Mariam, could you say — at the moment, of course, this repression is taking place in the midst of the pandemic. Could you explain what the situation is in terms of vaccination and how the Palestinian Authority has been dealing with the pandemic?

MARIAM BARGHOUTI: The Palestinian Authority initially began their response to the pandemic well — according to polling and surveying, well. And then it slowly started showing how the state of emergency was also being used to enforce new legislations, new laws that repress Palestinians, and continued to solidify the grasp that they have on our right to express, on our right to change.

And what is happening right now, not just in vaccinations, where the Palestinian Authority and Israel had an agreement to exchange Pfizer vaccines, but it turned out that the ones that Israel was going to give were actually about to expire soon — beyond that recklessness and beyond that sinister move by Israel, the pandemic is being also used to enforce new laws to repress Palestinians within a legal framework. And it is very dangerous, because if they won’t politically assassinate us, they will shove us in jails, just like Israel does with its military detention.

AMY GOODMAN: Mariam, we just have less than a minute, but I wanted to ask you both about the new government and the continued now bombing of the Gaza Strip on Saturday in what Israel’s military called retaliation for incendiary balloons launched from the besieged Palestinian territory, latest violation of the tenuous ceasefire on May 21st. Your final comments?

MARIAM BARGHOUTI: No new government in Israel is going to bring change. What’s going to bring change is ending the ethnic cleansing and calling out apartheid and persecution for what it is. This new government is doing the same thing that the old government did. Just because the uniform changes, just because the waves change, doesn’t mean it isn’t what it is, which is ethnic cleansing.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much for being with us, Mariam, again. Mariam Barghouti, Palestinian writer and researcher based in Ramallah. We’ll link to her piece in The Washington Post headlined “Who is the Palestinian Authority protecting? Not us.”

And that does it for our show. Today, a fond farewell to Democracy Now! senior producer Carla Wills. Carla, your brilliance, your humor, your compassion and your passion for social justice reporting certainly helped to make Democracy Now! what it is today. It is never goodbye, just thank you, thank you, thank you so much.

[admin]

Refaat Alareer in Gaza: Israel’s “Barbaric” Bombardment Is Part of Ethnic Cleansing Campaign
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 10, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/10 ... transcript

As hospitals in Gaza are overwhelmed by those killed and wounded in Israel’s massive bombing campaign, we go to Gaza City to speak with Palestinian academic and writer Refaat Alareer about conditions inside the besieged territory. Israel announced Monday it was completely cutting off all food, fuel and electricity to Gaza amid airstrikes of unprecedented intensity, launched in response to Saturday’s surprise attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel. Hamas has threatened to begin killing hostages if civilians inside Gaza are targeted without warning. “No one is safe. No place is safe. Israel is bombing everywhere,” says Alareer, who describes his own children as “shaking out of fear” amid the assault. “Why is this happening? Because we refuse to live under occupation. We refuse to live in total submission. We want freedom.”

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

AMY GOODMAN: Hospitals in Gaza are being overwhelmed as Israel continues a massive bombing campaign in response to Saturday’s surprise attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel. The death toll inside Israel has surpassed 900. Meanwhile, authorities in Gaza say at least 770 Palestinians, including 140 children, have been killed so far in Gaza. Israel is also reporting the bodies of 1,500 members of Hamas have been found inside Israel.

On Monday, Israel announced a complete siege of Gaza, pledging to block electricity, food and fuel from entering the territory, which has been under an Israeli blockade for 16 years. Hamas responded by threatening to begin killing hostages seized in southern Israel.

At the United Nations, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said, quote, “The imposition of sieges that endanger the lives of civilians by depriving them of goods essential for their survival is prohibited under international humanitarian law,” unquote. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres also condemned the Israeli siege.

SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: I’m deeply distressed by today’s announcement that Israel will initiate a complete siege of the Gaza Strip, nothing allowed in, no electricity, food or fuel. The humanitarian situation in Gaza was extremely dire before these hostilities. Now it will only deteriorate exponentially. Medical equipment, food, fuel and other humanitarian supplies are desperately needed, along with access for humanitarian personnel. Relief and entry of essential supplies into Gaza must be facilitated, and the U.N. will continue efforts to provide aid to respond to these needs. And I urge all sides and the relevant parties to allow United Nations access to deliver urgent humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians trapped and helpless in the Gaza Strip. And I appeal to the international community to mobilize immediate humanitarian support for these efforts.

AMY GOODMAN: The U.N. Palestinian refugee agency reports Israeli bombings have damaged 18 of its buildings in Gaza, including four schools and eight healthcare facilities. According to the U.N., more than 187,000 residents of Gaza have been displaced. Numerous residential buildings have been hit in the Israeli attack.

AHMED SHAMALAKH: [translated] The Shamalakh family has been entirely wiped out. The entire family, 14 people, all under the rubble. We got out 12 people, and still the rest are under the rubble. We cannot get them out. Israeli forces hit the building without warning. They did not ask us to evacuate. They did not say anything. Suddenly we heard the airstrike, and we ran to the building. We found out that it collapsed entirely.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, more details are emerging of the horror that took place Saturday in southern Israel during the unprecedented surprise Hamas attack. More than a hundred bodies have been retrieved from Be’eri, an Israeli kibbutz near Gaza. That’s about 10% of the kibbutz’s total population. A number of residents from there remain unaccounted for, including the well-known 74-year-old Canadian Israeli peace activist Vivian Silver, who is a member of Women Wage Peace and a former board member of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Her son, Yonatan Zeigen, fears she has been taken hostage by Hamas. He spoke to ABC News.

YONATAN ZEIGEN: I think this is exactly what she was working to prevent, all kind of war. You know, it’s not completely surprising, although it’s very overwhelming, that we got to this point. These two people have been in a state of war for so long that this is the outcome. And this is what she was working to try to prevent. And I was raised on those values and on those aspirations.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Gaza, where we’re joined by Refaat Alareer. He’s a Palestinian academic and activist, the editor of the book Gaza Writes Back, co-editor of Gaza Unsilenced. In 2021, he wrote an op-ed in The New York Times headlined “My Child Asks, 'Can Israel Destroy Our Building If the Power Is Out?'”

That was two years ago, Refaat. Describe what’s happening right now in Gaza.

REFAAT ALAREER: Thank you, Amy, for having me, and thank you for this coverage.

What’s happening is what Israel has always worked to achieve. Israeli leaders and officials are speaking about sending Gaza to the Stone Ages. Israeli officials are speaking about destroying Gaza. They are focusing on damage and destruction rather than precision. We speak about whole blocks destroyed, all government buildings, 20 U.N. facilities, including schools and clinics, all the roads, all the infrastructures. All the roads leading to the major hospitals, especially the one in the heart of Gaza City, were destroyed. So, Israel bombs Palestinian families as they sleep, as they stay in the safety, so to speak, of their home, and then bombs the ways that lead help and aid and ambulances to these areas, and then bombs the ambulances that try to help those people. That’s why we have about 800 Palestinian casualties. We speak about more than 400 children, women and elderly people. Most of them were killed in the safety of their homes without any prior warning — not that any warning would justify this Israeli brutality. Israeli war criminals are speaking about Second World War level of destruction against the Gaza Strip.

What is happening in Gaza is complete and utter extermination of the non-Jewish population in occupied Palestine. As you mentioned, Israel ordered a medieval hermetic siege from air and sea. Israel has also just bombed the only way out through Egypt, the Rafah crossing. The only way out is for — what’s happening, what we are foreseeing is slow starvation, slow genocide. Maybe Israel is going to push us all into the sea.

And I think what is making it even more difficult than before is that the whole world, not even lip service — all American and European countries and politicians are rushing to pledge allegiance to Israel and to Netanyahu. American politicians, American presidential hopefuls are literally calling for genocide. American mainstream media is not pushing back against Israeli officials calling for the collateral damage of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.

Why is this happening? Because we refuse to live under occupation. We refuse to live in total submission. We want freedom. We want this occupation to end. This is not a state of war, as one of your guests just mentioned. This is a state of occupation that started over 75 years, that started with the British Empire giving Palestine to the Zionist movement in 1917.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Refaat, you mentioned Gaza’s border with Egypt. What has been the response of the Egyptian government to that border crossing, which, as we understand, was also bombed by Israel, as well?

REFAAT ALAREER: I’m not following closely, because we barely have any electricity or internet. But what I heard is that the Rafah border is now closed, so people cannot leave. And also, when we talk about people leaving, very few people in Gaza have visas or passports that would allow them to leave. I’m reading a report just now that Israel is even warning to strike any aid coming from the Egyptian side into Gaza. So, with no food, no electricity and no water, we can only expect what Israel has been working to achieve, what Israel and Israeli officials and politicians are promising now.

Some are calling for striking Gaza with a nuclear bomb. Can you imagine that? And many other Israeli officials are using Nazi discourse and Nazi language, talking about Palestinians as savages and animals that need to be exterminated and that Gaza needs to be turned into a parking lot. This is what we are dealing with. We are dealing with a systematic, structural, colonial attempt to annihilate and exterminate the Palestinians, with the aid and support of the West and American tax money. America is sending $8 billion. This is really insane. America is also sending warships and bombs and bullets for Israel to kill more and more Palestinians.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what are you asking for people in other parts of the world and other governments to do?

REFAAT ALAREER: I think the governments are not only complicit for giving the green light, they are participating actively. The shameful statement from France, Italy, U.K. and Germany and America the other night was a hideous attempt to justify Israeli massacres and genocide taking place in Gaza. We have no hope in these countries. We have no hope in these governments, at least now.

The only hope we have is in the growing popular support in America, in the movements of — the movements, the human rights and the rights movements in America and across Europe, to take to the streets to pressure their politicians into putting an end to this dark, dark episode of not only the history of the Middle East, but also the history of humanity. If people are asking how was the Holocaust allowed and other genocides in Africa and across the world, now you can see this live on TV, live on social media. Palestinians’ whole blocks destroyed, hospitals, schools, businesses. We are speaking about thousands and thousands of housing units destroyed by Israel. So, my message to the free people of the world is to move to pressure, to mobilize and to take to the streets.

AMY GOODMAN: Refaat Alareer, you are the father of six. How old are your children? And can you describe what it’s like to live there right now? Now, Israel says that it has 1,500 dead Hamas fighters. That’s outside of Gaza. The number inside Gaza is nearing 800. Describe the bombing strikes now. This is before Israel does what it’s threatening to do, which is lay complete siege. They’ve said they’ve cut off electricity, they’ve cut off gas, food, etc., but actually ground troops moving in.

REFAAT ALAREER: Like I said, this has been systematically happening for over seven decades. It was the noose around Gaza’s neck was tightened 15 years ago, and it’s being tightened even further now. The situation is unspeakable. You can’t describe what’s happening in words. We speak about thousands, hundreds and thousands of Israeli bombs and shells targeting all areas of the Gaza Strip. The kids can’t sleep. The kids can’t eat. The kids can’t even speak. Most of the time they’re just mute, silent, shaking out of fear, sometimes whimpering because of how close the bombs are wherever you are in Gaza. And again, the houses shake every time there is a bomb around. And this is happening again all over Gaza Strip.

Israel is telling people, is pushing people forcibly to leave out of their homes and urging them to go to certain places, like the city center or the U.N. places, shelters, and then Israel bombs the roads leading to these areas and bombs these crowded areas. Yesterday, there was a massacre. Israel killed about 60 Palestinians in Jabaliya refugee camp in a local market where there is a U.N. school, people taking shelter there. So, whether it is my kids or any Palestinian kid or any Palestinian, no one is safe. No place is safe. Israel is bombing everywhere.

Israel is lying. And that’s something — thank you for highlighting this — that Israel sometimes, once every 100 times, 1,000 times, it sends a message warning 10 minutes before and asks, for example, a huge building of 50 housing units to leave. And you can’t take anything with you if you have only this limited time to leave. And when people leave, wherever they go, they will be chased and hunted down by the bombs. These are, again, barbaric, and these are an extension to Israeli attempts to exterminate Palestinians, whether in Gaza, in Jerusalem or in the West Bank.

AMY GOODMAN: Refaat, let me ask you about that. You say Israel gives a warning, and now Hamas is saying if they don’t get that warning before a building is bombed, they will kill one hostage for each one of those bombings. Can you talk about how much support there is for Hamas within Gaza, the government of Gaza?

REFAAT ALAREER: Amy, I’m sorry. Who translated that message for you? The message was clear. It was a threat. And it clearly stated, with the bare minimum of humanity, that Israel sends a warning before it bombs a family home. And when we speak about homes in Gaza and in Palestine, in Gaza, we speak about houses that have like five or six or even seven housing units, flats, where three generations live in the same place. That’s why Israel exterminated more than 30 families. Most of the family members were killed because it bombs without sending a message. The message from Hamas was clear: Send a warning before you bomb, meaning don’t bomb Palestinian homes with the kids and the women and the elderly and the young people inside.

So this is what’s going on. And people in Gaza want to be safe. We don’t want to be killed. And it seems that this is a desperate call for mediators to interfere, stop this. And it’s already — it already happened that Israel — and I was saying this the other day, that Israel seems to be bent to kill Israeli captives, Israeli soldiers held in Gaza, more than they are interested in killing Palestinian fighters and Palestinian children, because Israel does not want to negotiate, does not want to release the almost 5,000 Palestinian — political Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons. So, the idea about the framing of this is incorrect, is inaccurate. And at the same time —

AMY GOODMAN: Refaat, I do want to clarify what you said. You said that Hamas has threatened to kill a hostage if Israel doesn’t warn that it is going to bomb a residential home.

REFAAT ALAREER: Exactly. Is that much to ask? I don’t think this is much to ask. And I think this is more of a desperate call to save both Palestinian children and families and at the same time the Israeli soldiers kept in Gaza.

Now, what’s happening here is that Israel is sending disinformation and fabrication all over the internet, on social media, and many mainstream media agencies and outlets are swallowing and repeating these military lies against Palestinians to demonize the Palestinians. And that’s why we see so many Americans, sadly, especially officials and politicians, presidential hopefuls, calling for genocide against Palestinians, because there is misinformation. But at the same time, they think that if they do this, if they say this, it’s going to bring them more money from the Israeli lobby in Washington, D.C.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Refaat, you’ve told the BBC recently that the scenes right now in Gaza are, quote, “exactly like the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.” Could you elaborate on that?

REFAAT ALAREER: If you have seen the pictures from Gaza, we speak about complete devastation and destruction to universities, to schools, to mosques, to businesses, to clinics, to roads, infrastructure, to water lines. I googled this morning Warsaw Ghetto pictures, and I got pictures I couldn’t differentiate. Somebody tweeted four pictures and asked to tell which one is from Gaza and which one is from the Warsaw Ghetto. They are remarkably the same, because the perpetrator is almost using the same strategies against a minority, against the oppressed people, the battered people, the besieged people, whether it was in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Jews in Warsaw Ghetto in the past or the Palestinian Muslims and Christians in the Gaza Strip. So, the similarity is uncanny.

Israel, Israeli officials using Nazi language discourse to — even there was a tweet from the Jewish Congress that says the number of Jews that died on Saturday is more than the number of Jews that died on any given day during the Holocaust. And this is not Holocaust revisionism. It’s Holocaust denial, because this is objectively and statistically incorrect completely and utterly. The Zionist movement, the Israeli government is willing to abuse and engage in Holocaust denialism in order to justify what’s going to happen — what is happening and what’s going to happen in Gaza in the coming hours and days. I think this is dangerous, and this has to be stopped. The similarities between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto should be a waking-up call to all free people around the world.

AMY GOODMAN: Refaat Alareer, we want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian academic, activist, editor of the book Gaza Writes Back, co-editor of Gaza Unsilenced, speaking to us from Gaza City.

When we come back, we go to Tel Aviv to speak with the Israeli journalist, the conscientious objector Haggai Matar. Back in 20 seconds.

************************

Israeli Conscientious Objector Haggai Matar: Hamas Attack Reflects Israeli Violence in Palestine
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 10, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/10 ... transcript

Israel has mobilized some 300,000 army reservists as it ramps up its war on Gaza following a devastating surprise attack by Hamas militants on Saturday that killed hundreds inside Israel, including many civilians. Journalist Haggai Matar of +972 Magazine says that while the violence shocked Israelis, the unending military occupation and apartheid set the stage for this weekend’s events. “There is no military solution. These recurring attacks on Gaza bring nothing but death and destruction, and no hope for any of us,” says Matar, a conscientious objector who refused service in the Israel Defense Forces.

Transcript

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

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

Israel is continuing its bombardment of Gaza City, has extended its mobilization of reservists. For more, we’re joined by Haggai Matar, an Israeli journalist and activist who serves as the executive director of +972 Magazine. That’s the area code of Israel and the Occupied Territories. Haggai Matar is a conscientious objector who refused to serve in the Israeli army. His new piece is headlined “Gaza’s shock attack has terrified Israelis. It should also unveil the context.”

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Haggai. As we speak to you in Tel Aviv, tell us the context that you feel is so important.

HAGGAI MATAR: Thank you, Amy.

I think when I wrote that piece already on Saturday, the shock was just in its initial phases. We had not yet learned the entire scope of the horror of the atrocities in the south of Israel, the hundreds of people who were massacred in their homes and at a music festival, just entire communities decimated. Those stories were just seeping through gradually, and the shock of that tragedy, that atrocity, was just beginning to land.

And what I felt important to say, while also recognizing this collective shock and the dreadfulness of this attack, was also to understand the history of this, how we, as Israelis, for many years have become — have developed a sense of immunity, that in the context of Gaza wars, for example, Israel could bomb Gaza, as it is doing now, and wipe out entire families, destroy entire neighborhoods, not be held accountable, and when Gazans throw rockets back, almost all of them are intercepted by the Iron Dome. So the casualty rate between Israelis and Palestinians in these past wars over the past decade or so has been one to 100, one to 200 or so. Just now, actually, there were air sirens here in Tel Aviv, and I didn’t move from my desk, because I know there’s Iron Dome, and I feel pretty safe. That feeling of safety was cracked and went away with one whiff of that attack on Saturday. But it was important for me to remind Israelis and people abroad that that feeling of defenselessness is one that Palestinians have experienced for the past few decades, definitely people in Gaza who have been attacked routinely by Israel.

So, when we think about how we understand the Hamas attack, without justifying it, but also recognizing that it is not unprovoked or unilateral, on the one hand, and also as we think about the next steps, we need to understand there is no military solution. These recurring attacks on Gaza bring nothing but death and destruction, and no hope for any of us.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Haggai, about this issue that’s been raised that this was an unprovoked or unilateral attack, you’ve written that, quote, “The Israeli army is routinely raiding into Palestinian cities and refugee camps. The far-right government is giving settlers an entirely free hand to set up new illegal outposts and launch pogroms on Palestinian towns and villages, with soldiers accompanying the settlers and killing or maiming Palestinians trying to defend their homes.” Could you talk about how the Palestinians have experienced this new right-wing government, especially this extreme right-wing government in Israel in their daily lives?

HAGGAI MATAR: Sure. So, I think, first of all, for context for that, as well, we need to remember: Nothing about what this government is doing is entirely new — the attacks on Gaza, the settlement expansion, the attacks on Palestinian communities in the West Bank. None of this is unprecedented. This far-right government is only taking things one step further, which, you know, needs to be contextualized, but also we need to recognize the places where these things are getting worse.

And we are definitely seeing, since the election of this government, a much freer hand for settlers to do basically whatever they want in the West Bank. There’s absolutely no guard rail, no limitations on what settlers can do. If they want to attack Palestinian communities and set their houses ablaze, they will have soldiers accompanying them and [inaudible]. If they want to set up new outposts on private Palestinian land, they can do that. If they want to go into the middle of Nablus to pray in the middle of one of the biggest Palestinian cities in the West Bank, they can do that, and soldiers will accompany them and protect them.

So, what Palestinians are feeling, very much related to what I was saying before, is being defenseless, because the Palestinian police is not allowed and does not offer them defense, and when they try to defend themselves, soldiers would shoot them to death. So, that is the reality that Palestinians have been feeling for a very long time, and increasingly over the past few months.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this whole issue of how the United States and other countries, major countries in the world have essentially ignored the unresolved Palestinian-Israeli question now for years, hoping to negotiate just with the governments of the region and not deal with the central issue, what do you — how do you think that this has played a role in the desperate attacks now of Hamas into Israel?

HAGGAI MATAR: I think it is very much connected, as we’re talking about the tools Palestinians have for resistance and the bargaining chips they can bring with them to the negotiating table. Palestinians never had too much to offer. Basically, they’re asking Israel, rightly, to leave their territory, to have an independent state. But all they can offer in return is the lack of violence, so peace. And they used to have this other bargaining chip, which is, if you make peace with us, you will get as a bonus the entire Arab world, the entire Muslim world, that was committed, at least outspokenly committed, to supporting Palestinians and not normalizing relations with Israel.

Ever since the Abraham Accords, championed by President Trump, in 2020, 2021, and now with the normalization deal that is being brokered by President Biden with Saudi Arabia, Palestinians are seeing those last bargaining chips just slipping away. Netanyahu has always said, “We can have peace with the Arab world without Palestinians. We can just go over their heads.” And Arab nations and countries and governments and the U.S. government, in brokering this, have proved Netanyahu right. So, Palestinians, without those abilities, are seeing fewer and fewer options to claim their just cause against Israeli apartheid.

I don’t think that justifies massacring hundreds of people in their homes and destroying entire communities of civilians. But at the same time, I understand the context in which Palestinians are feeling more and more desperate and pushed to the point of doing these things.

AMY GOODMAN: Haggai Matar, you were a conscientious objector in the Israeli military. You refused to serve. Can you talk about overall Israeli reaction right now? And are Israelis concerned about the total siege of and possible ground invasion of Gaza, which the U.N., by the way, the siege, has called illegal?

HAGGAI MATAR: No, not at all. It’s actually deeply troubling to see how much rejoicing there is in the siege, in the attacks. We’re seeing people, even people associated with the center and with the left, talking. Haaretz journalists, for example — not all of them, obviously, but some — have said this is a time to cause great damage to Gaza, this is a time to extract many deaths in Gaza. So, it is very, very troubling and painful to see how, out of a very understandable feeling that I myself also share of shock, of defenselessness, of the tragedy of the massacres in the south, people are taking that and translating that into saying the only answer is revenge. I think it is a very dark mirror to look at when you understand that these same atrocities committed by Hamas came out of that feeling of anger, anguish and dread of Israeli attacks. And now, as a response to those atrocities, Israelis are supporting their own atrocities again against Gaza. And this seems like a dead end, almost literally, for both of us.

AMY GOODMAN: Haggai Matar, Israeli journalist, activist, executive director of +972 Magazine, Israeli Jewish conscientious objector. He refused to serve in the Israeli army.

Next up, to Palestinian journalist and writer Mohammed El-Kurd. Back with him in 20 seconds.

***************************

Mohammed El-Kurd: How Much Palestinian Blood Will It Take to End Israel’s Occupation & Apartheid?
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 10, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/10 ... transcript

Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd says Western reaction to Israel’s assault on Gaza has once again highlighted the double standard when it comes to how Israeli and Palestinian lives are valued. Israel is bombarding the densely populated coastal territory in retaliation for Saturday’s Hamas attack on southern Israel, as well as tightening the existing siege even further. Israeli officials have vowed to wipe out Hamas despite warnings of massive civilian casualties inside Gaza. “One wonders how much bloodshed, how much Palestinian death is necessary for people to realize that violence begets violence and that the occupation and the colonization of Palestine, the blockade of the Gaza Strip needs to end for all of this violence to end.” El-Kurd also accuses Israeli officials and Western media outlets of using Islamophobic tropes by spreading as-yet-unverified claims of sexual violence and beheadings by Hamas fighters, while downplaying the documented death and devastation being inflicted on Gaza residents.

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. We’re joined now by Mohammed El-Kurd, Palestinian journalist, poet, writer, correspondent for The Nation, culture editor at Mondoweiss, born and raised in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

Mohammed, can you comment, overall, on this situation right now and what you think needs to happen?

MOHAMMED EL-KURD: I honestly —

AMY GOODMAN: Mohammed — Mohammed, you’re muted. We cannot hear you.

MOHAMMED EL-KURD: I think —can you hear me now?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, we can.

MOHAMMED EL-KURD: I honestly do not know what to tell you. It feels to me as though we are living in the very first few days of an unfolding genocide. I mean, not only are Israeli politicians and journalists alike and global forces calling for the annihilation of the Gaza Strip, for bombing it into the Stone Ages, declaring that they are interested in inflicting damage and not really precision, but these images that we are — these images that we are seeing coming outside of the Gaza Strip are so harrowing and devastating that one wonders — one wonders how much bloodshed, how much Palestinian death is necessary for people to realize that violence begets violence and that the occupation and the colonization of Palestine, the blockade of the Gaza Strip needs to end for all of this violence to end.

I mean, I am incredibly angered that word-of-mouth, unverified reports of, quote-unquote, “rape and decapitation,” which obviously draw on Islamophobic tropes, have garnered more and more political and global outrage than those very images, than a video of a nurse announcing and screaming in distress that her husband has been killed in an Israeli airstrike. And, you know, the PR strategy of the Israeli regime throughout all of this has been to invoke those Islamophobic sentiments, like calling it Israel’s — quote-unquote, “Israel’s 9/11.” And media outlets and journalists who have taken on this framing without any questioning not only work to equate the violence of a besieged, politically isolated group like Hamas with the violence of al-Qaeda and ISIS and so on, but they are also doing the dirty work for Israelis. They are preemptively justifying the genocide of hundreds and thousands of Palestinians. They are justifying a brutal onslaught that is about to come globally. And that should be alarming.

I mean, we have seen this unfold during 9/11. We have seen this unfold in history, the utilization of Islamophobia, the dehumanization, the constant dehumanizations of Palestinians, the refusal to see them as human beings who have the right to resist and to defend themselves and to be angry and to want the right to self-determination and to not want to live in siege anymore. All of this refusal to see all of this is contributing, is contributing to this oncoming onslaught, where Israeli politicians can just call Palestinians “human animals,” can just say that they are not really concerned with saving anyone, can threaten to bomb aid envoys coming in from Egypt. This should be concerning to everybody around the world. It is terrifying times we are living in.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this whole issue [inaudible] hostage situation, as well. Hamas has reported that in one of the bombing attacks, some of the hostages were killed along with those Hamas militants who were guarding them. What do you think the Israeli government posture will continue to be on this issue of the hostages?

MOHAMMED EL-KURD: I mean, so far Hamas has said that they are willing to release all of the female detainees, if Israel is going to release the 36 Palestinian female prisoners currently lingering in Israeli prisons, but the Israeli government has refused to negotiate. In fact, Israeli ministers, like Smotrich, have said that they could not care less about the hostages, and their goal is to inflict as much damage as possible on the besieged Gaza Strip.

And I also want us to get one thing correctly: Holding 2 million people under blockade is a very serious hostage situation. This is what we’re dealing with, the fact that the Israeli regime has been holding Palestinians in Gaza as hostages to exert political pressure on groups like Hamas. The fact that a quarter, 25%, of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prison are held without detention — are held without trial or charges is a hostage situation. The fact that even in death, Palestinian corpses are held in mortuary chambers to be used as bargaining chips is a hostage situation. But time and time again, we are shown by the world its double standards. We are told that the only violence that matters is the violence inflicted upon Israelis, and the only lives that matter are the lives of Israelis. Palestinians have been living as hostages for the past 16 years in this blockade. That must, must end. And it is incumbent upon us as journalists to make this context clear.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds, Mohammed El-Kurd. You’ve been in the United States a lot. Of course, you live in Sheikh Jarrah. President Biden is about to give an address. What do you want to hear him say?

MOHAMMED EL-KURD: Well, I know what he is going to say about his biggest, biggest ally in the region. But I also know that my family and my neighborhood have experienced settlers attacks, who — they throw Molotov cocktails overnight. I know that settler violence has been intensifying both in the Old City of Jerusalem and all around the occupied West Bank and even in 1948 territories. And I know that lip service from Biden is not going to address it. But the world needs to know that as long as the occupation persists, as long as the apartheid system persists, resistance to it is going to persist. It is not a difficult equation to understand. People deserve dignity and freedom and to live safely in their homes.

AMY GOODMAN: Mohammed El-Kurd, I want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian journalist, writer, correspondent for The Nation, culture editor at Mondoweiss.

************************

Univ. of MD Prof. Shibley Telhami to President Biden: Value Palestinian Life as Well as Israeli Life
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 10, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/10 ... transcript

As we continue to cover Israel’s war on Gaza, we speak with Middle East scholar Shibley Telhami, who says this latest violence is likely to have a major impact on the wider region, especially if other actors like Lebanon’s Hezbollah fighters get involved in the conflict. He says U.S. President Joe Biden’s support for Israel following the Hamas attack on Saturday was understandable, but that focus must shift to finding a long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “This is not a military challenge,” says Telhami. “This is a political problem, and the occupation has to be addressed.”

Transcript

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

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

To look at what Israel’s war on Palestinians after the Hamas attack could mean for the broader Middle East, we end today’s show with Shibley Telhami, professor of peace and development at the University of Maryland, senior fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy, co-editor of the book The One State Reality: What Is Israel/Palestine?

Professor Telhami, thank you so much for being with this. You’re the Anwar Sadat professor of peace and development at the University of Maryland, a Palestinian American professor. I’m going to start with that same question: what President Biden has said so far and what you want to hear him say right now? As we speak, the United Nations has called Israel’s siege, total blockade of Gaza, illegal. You know, the defense minister is saying no food, medicine, electricity, water coming into Gaza. Your response?

SHIBLEY TELHAMI: Well, you know, I know in the first day of the Hamas attack, President Biden called the Israeli prime minister and gave him full empathy and support, and he said, “Full stop, we’re behind you.” That’s understandable in that moment. That was a moment of incredible vulnerability in Israel, people helplessly watching what was happening to their loved ones. And it was also a paradigm shift actually taking place at the same time about the nature of their superiority in that context, about the role of their army, the role of their security. So it was understandable that he would show affinity with them, to assure them — really the public more than the government — to say, “We stand with you.” Fine.

But he has to go beyond that. Targeting civilians and recklessly endangering them is unacceptable. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Palestinian victims or Israeli victims or any victims. There is no cause that justifies reckless endangerment of civilians. And, you know, we know in times of war like this, when emotions are really, really high, we understand that people have been there, can understand how hearts harden. There’s demonization. There’s an urge for vengeance. And if the president of the United States, the one who has the most influence from the outside on this issue, doesn’t stand up for the moral principle that ought to be central here, it is a problem. That’s something that a political leader must do in time of crisis like this.

And I would even go a little further than that. You know, it’s one thing to say you support Israel, another thing to be trusting and giving unlimited support for whatever they do. We know this is the most extreme Israeli government we’ve had perhaps in history. We know that some of them are calling for some outrageous outcomes in the Israeli-Palestinian situation. They have failed their own people. They couldn’t defend against Hamas in their own communities, took them several days to — and it might not be over yet. The Israeli public is asking questons of whether they can trust the government, whether they can trust the military, whether they can trust the intelligence. Can we trust them to do the sort of things that they might want to do that implicate us in the end, not just in terms of support, but the consequences that might happen that can draw the U.S. in? So I think I would want the president of the United States to be very clear about the moral issue, as well as the idea that the United States has some interests it’s going to have to look after.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor, I wanted to ask you, in terms of this vow of the Israeli government to eliminate Hamas completely and to do whatever is necessary to take control of Gaza, the long-term implications of this? First of all, there are 2.2 million people in Gaza. The ability of the Israeli army to continue to occupy and control that territory is really — it’s far-fetched, not to mention that there are another 2 million Palestinians in the West Bank and 2 million Palestinians and Arabs within Israel itself. We’re talking about the impact on those populations and the rest of the Arab world of a long assault and occupation of Gaza. Your expectation of what this could lead to?

SHIBLEY TELHAMI: Well, first of all, let’s start with the concept. It is dealt with as if it’s a security problem emanating from one party, when in fact this is a deep political problem. There is no military solution, even if you destroy people and kill more people. Israel has a destructive power that is incredible. I mean, we’re seeing some of that now. But that never in the past has solved the problem, and it won’t again. It might postpone it a little bit more, but it’s going to erupt in some form or another, even aside from the humanitarian disaster. So, no, there is no solution, even if you — separate from the obvious and immediate and central humanitarian issue, there is no political solution that could come out of destroying Hamas. Israel would then be left with another area of anarchy.

And also, by the way, as this progresses, we can’t be sure that Hezbollah is not going to be drawn in. Hezbollah doesn’t want to go in, in my opinion, right now into the fight, for a variety of reasons of its own interests. But we see the pressure. And as the pressure increases, that could draw Hezbollah in. And then you have an expanded war both that would be troublesome for Israel but also for Lebanon.

So, no, I don’t think there is a military solution to this problem. This is not a military challenge. This is not a deterrence challenge. This is a political problem, and the occupation has to be addressed. And I would expect at some point the president isn’t going to say that today. He’s not going to make that link. But in the end, there is — we have to find a path to end the occupation.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you so much for being with us. We want to continue this discussion and post it at democracynow.org. University of Maryland professor of peace and development, Shibley Telhami, senior fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, for another edition of Democracy Now!

[admin]

“Dark Days”: Israeli Human Rights Leader Orly Noy on Israel’s War on Palestinians After Hamas Attack
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 09, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/9/ ... transcript

Israel has declared war on Hamas after Hamas fighters launched a surprise coordinated attack over the militarized border, the largest in decades. In a military operation titled “Al-Aqsa Storm,” as many as 1,000 fighters from Hamas broke out of the blockaded Gaza Strip and carried out an unprecedented attack inside Israel on Saturday morning. Hamas cited the desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the blockade of Gaza and increasing settler violence in the occupied West Bank as reasons for the move. Israel responded by pounding the Gaza Strip with airstrikes, which hit housing blocks, tunnels and a mosque. Over the past three days at least 1,300 people have died, including over 800 inside Israel and almost 500 in Gaza. We spend the hour discussing the unprecedented developments, starting in Jerusalem with Orly Noy, chair of the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem and editor of the Hebrew-language news site Local Call. “There is a really strong sense of demanding revenge within the Israeli public,” reports Noy, who says the attack catching Israel off guard is a massive military intelligence failure. “Once the immediate crisis is over, the Israeli public will be demanding answers from the government and Netanyahu.”

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.

Israel has ordered a complete siege of Gaza, two days after as many as a thousand Hamas fighters carried out an unprecedented attack Saturday morning, when Hamas fired thousands of rockets into Israel as militants broke through Israeli security barricades. Over the past three days, at least 1,300 people have died, including over 800 inside Israel, almost 500 in Gaza. One Israeli military spokesperson described Saturday as, quote, “by far the worst day in Israeli history,” unquote.

The surprise attack came almost 50 years to the day of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The Hamas attacked killed at least 44 Israeli soldiers, including several commanders. Over 250 people were killed at an Israeli music festival attended by mostly young people. Hamas militants also took about 100 hostages. Entire Israeli communities were forced to evacuate.

Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes have killed over 500 Palestinians in Gaza since Saturday, but the death toll is expected to soar, as Israel threatens to launch a ground war. Israel has called up 300,000 reservists, is sending heavy armor toward the Gaza border. This comes as the United States is sending more ammunition to Israel and warships to the region. Earlier today, Israeli airstrikes killed dozens of residents in the Jabaliya refugee camp.

Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has announced a total blockade on Gaza, including a ban on food, water, electricity and fuel. Israel has imposed a siege on Gaza for the past 16 years, largely cutting off the area from the rest of the world. Gaza has been widely described as an open-air prison.

Hamas named its military operation “Al-Aqsa Storm” in response to the desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Hamas also cited the blockade of Gaza and increasing settler violence in the occupied West Bank. The attack also came as Israel was moving to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia

In a moment, we’ll go to Israel and Gaza for response, but we begin with the voices of two parents — one in Israel, one in Gaza — whose lives have been devastated by this weekend’s violence. This is Yoni Asher, a 37-year-old father whose wife and two children have been taken hostage by Hamas.

YONI ASHER: Yesterday, while my wife, Doron, and two daughters, little girls, Raz and Aviv, 5-year-old and 2 years old, went visit my mother-in-law in Nir Oz — it’s a kibbutz near Gaza. And during the morning, I contacted my wife, and she told me on the phone that there are terrorists inside the house. Later on, I saw a video, the same video that was in the social media, in which I surely identified my wife, my two daughters and my mother-in-law on some kind of a cart, and terrorists of Hamas all around them. … I want to ask of Hamas: Don’t hurt them. Don’t hurt little children. Don’t hurt women. If you want me instead, I’m willing to come.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is a mother in Gaza, Sabreen Abu Daqqa, who survived after being trapped in rubble after an Israeli rocket hit her home. The attack killed three of her children.

SABREEN ABU DAQQA: [translated] I was at home, and suddenly we heard a sound, and everything fell over our heads. My children were next to me. One of them was next to my legs, and the others were next to me. My brother, Saber, was a bit further. Nothing happened to him. I was hiding between the sofa and the door, so there was no pressure on me, only on my leg. But I didn’t hear any sound coming from my children. I called them, but I didn’t hear a sound coming from them. Suddenly, I heard my brother Saber calling. The first moment I heard his voice, I shouted, and I said, “I’m here!” And when they recognized me, they started calming me down, and then they started removing the rubble from above me.

It took them three hours to remove the rubble above me, but my children died — Khaled died, Qais died, Mariam died. Assef went missing. When they pulled me out of the rubble, I saw everything damaged. The houses are damaged. That’s the only thing I saw. And then I went to the hospital. I found that everybody was injured, and we have many injured and dead people.

AMY GOODMAN: We spend the rest of the hour with four guests.

In Gaza City, Raji Sourani is an award-winning human rights lawyer, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza. He’s the 2013 Right Livelihood Award laureate, as well as in RFK Human Rights laureate. We hope to be talking to him soon in Gaza. The bombing is heavy, an unprecedented bombing, he said, in his area in Gaza.

Joining us from Mexico City, Ofer Cassif. He’s a member of the Israeli Knesset and the Hadash-Ta’al coalition. He was born in Rishon LeZion, Israel, which was hit by Hamas rocket strikes.

Here in New York, professor Rashid Khalidi is with us, the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, author of a number of books, including The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.

And joining us from Jerusalem, Orly Noy, Israeli political activist, editor of the Hebrew-language news site Local Call. She’s also the chair of B’Tselem’s executive board. B’Tselem is an Israeli human rights organization.

Orly, let’s begin with you in Jerusalem. Can you respond to all that has happened over the weekend, the surprise attacks, the 1,300 people dead at this point in Gaza and in Israel, and now the defense minister of Israel announcing a total siege of Gaza, as tanks and military equipment head down to Gaza?

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

These are very, very dark days in the area, both in Palestine and in Israel. We woke up Saturday morning to the sirens rushing us into the shelters. And gradually, as the picture cleared, it just became darker.

Amid the comparisons to the 9/11 attacks on the United States, some analysts, including former U.S. officials in government at the time, have already advised that Israel should heed lessons from the successes – and failures – of the U.S. response in the weeks and years that followed. Many of the actions taken in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks are ones that have haunted the United States for decades, and that could easily have been avoided if commitment to core democratic values and the rule of law had prevailed. Moreover, those same actions needlessly alienated allies and partners, eroding the strong base of support the United States enjoyed in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.

-- Policy Alert: Key Questions in Hamas’ Attack on Israel and What Comes Next, by Brianna Rosen and Viola Gienger

-- Iraq war: the greatest intelligence failure in living memory. On the tenth anniversary of the Iraq war, Panorama's Peter Taylor reveals the sources close to Saddam Hussein whose intelligence could have changed the course of history. by Peter Taylor

-- Context of 'January 2003: Classified Intelligence Assessments Warn of Dire Consequences to Iraq Invasion', by History Commons

-- Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, by Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Senate, Pat Roberts, Chairman; and John D. Rockefeller IV, Vice Chairman

-- Intelligence Team Members Ordered Silent in 9/11 Probe, by Shaun Waterman

-- Pentagon Revokes Clearance of "Able Danger" Officer, by Associated Press

We have been witnessing, since the heinous Hamas attack on civilians on Saturday morning, a long list of Israeli failures, that started even before the attack with the lack of intelligence information. We are talking about an intelligence operation that basically surveils every breath every Palestinian takes, both in the West Bank and in Gaza Strip, and they knew nothing about that planned attack. It continued to the chaos that has been going on for long hours, where hostages were held, where people were slaughtered, without the army or police forces coming to the rescue. And until today, there is still a tremendous amount of unclearness. People are still searching for their loved ones, with no organized body by the government to inform those worried people.

And, of course, the Israeli government is doing the only thing that Israel knows to do, which is revenge and more force and more death and more very random bombing of civilians in Gaza Strip. There is a very strong sense of demanding revenge within the Israeli public. And even if that can be understood, it does not by any means justify the brutal attacks, that will, of course, be fruitful, like any previous promise we’ve been given by the Israeli authorities to annihilate the terrorism and so on. This is just about revenge, which will end up just in more death and more violence and more blood.

AMY GOODMAN: One of the questions: Will this lead to the fall of the Netanyahu government? I mean, allied with the far right, for example, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security head, himself convicted in Israeli court 15 years ago of inciting hatred against Palestinians — he is the national security chief. Are there so many in the leadership here that have been so focused on — who are part of the Israeli settler movement on the West Bank, that they weren’t paying attention to Gaza?

ORLY NOY: Absolutely. This is one of the — I mean, first, it should be mentioned that Itamar Ben-Gvir was convicted with more than just a hatred towards Palestinians; he was convicted with supporting a terrorist organization. So he’s a convicted supporter of terrorism.

There is a tremendous amount of anger directed towards the government in general, and specifically toward Netanyahu and the leadership. We know now that most of the military troops that were supposed to be posted in the south protecting the southern borders have been relocated to protect the settlers in the West Bank. These are things that — I mean, right now the Israeli public is too much — too deep into the grief and shock, in a state of shock, but there will come a time that they will demand those answers from the government, and personally from Netanyahu. In the short, short term, it looks like we are going to a broad emergency coalition joined by Gantz and probably also Lapid. This is not unprecedented. Israel tends to unite politically around the leadership in times of crisis. But there is no doubt that once the immediate crisis is over, the Israeli public will be demanding answers from the government and from Netanyahu.

***************************

“Do You Hear the Bombing?”: Gazan Human Rights Lawyer Raji Sourani Describes Israeli Siege of Gaza City
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 09, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/9/ ... transcript

“Do you hear the bombing?” asks our guest Raji Sourani in Gaza City, as Israel reportedly bombed the Islamic University of Gaza nearby him and intensified its bombardment after it declared war against Hamas. The award-winning human rights lawyer and director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza describes the situation in Gaza, where Israel has now cut off food and electricity, and responds to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling Gazans to leave, calling it “nonsense,” and asks, “Where to? We don’t have safe passage.”

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go from Orly Noy right now in Jerusalem — you can hear the wind blow on her mic as she talks to us about the Israeli reaction — to Raji Sourani, head of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza. I want to go to you quickly, Raji, because I understand you’re experiencing unprecedented bombing in your area. Can you describe what’s happening in Gaza? The media in the United States, there’s almost no one in Gaza to bring us voices of Gazans. Raji, can you hear us?

RAJI SOURANI: — the last 60 hours, I mean, Gaza subject to nonstop bombing. It’s ongoing all over the place. There is no single place you can call a safe haven in Gaza, airplane fighters, drones ruling all over the sky. And it’s your lottery number, whether it’s an apartment, whether it’s tower with hundreds of apartments, whether it’s a house, whether it’s a hospital, whether it’s a school, a shelter used by UNRWA. I mean, even the marketplace of Jabaliya, the biggest refugee camp in the Middle East for Palestinians — 300,000 Palestinians there — were bombed, and almost 80 have been killed, I mean, this morning, and tens injured in very, very critical situation. And all this is happening in the daylight, and no one is caring about that.

Netanyahu says Gazans should leave Gaza. Where to? Even we don’t have safe passage. And the minister of defense say, “We are going to cut electricity, water, food, oil” — everything, I mean, will be cut on Gaza. So, 2.4 million civilians in Gaza are subject to unprecedented situation, which it’s very genocidal.

It’s coming from the highest level in Israel. If they have a problem with Hamas, we have no problem. They can contact them. If they have with Jihad Islamic, with Fatah, with the fighters of the resistance, that’s fine. This is not our area of interest. But our area of interest, it’s the civilians, and the civilians who are really in the eye of the storm, and they are the subject for the Israeli ongoing crimes.

And still Mr. KK, the ICC prosecutor, keeps silent, doing nothing, moving nowhere in this conflict, and doesn’t hold Israel accountable for the ongoing crimes they committed over the course of years — suppression, oppression, killing, blockade, apartheid — name it. I mean, all the menu of the crimes are there, which listed at Rome Statute, and no one is moving. No one is moving to provide any level of protection toward Palestinian civilians.

Once and again, this is going on now. At the course of these 60 or 70 hours, I mean, we’re having hundreds of people have been killed. Just children, we have above 100 children have been killed. Women, almost the same number. And the worst yet to come. We are sure, and we know that.

AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli prime minister has told Gazans to leave. It’s unclear, of course, where you’d be able to go. Then they said that he was misunderstood, that he was saying you should leave the Hamas sites in Gaza. Can you respond to this, Raji Sourani?

RAJI SOURANI: This is nonsense. This is nonsense. He is leading Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. He is leading people who say Palestinians don’t exist, and who said, “Palestinians should leave. This is the land of Israel. This is the historical land of Israel, and we are taking over. There is no other state, and there is no other people. There is one people. There is one self-determination. It’s for the Israeli Jews.” So, he’s a big liar. It wasn’t a slip of tongue. He came after cabinet meeting and after a meeting with his top security and military people, and he was reading from a paper. So, it cannot be a mistake. He knows what he said, and he meant what he said. And I do believe what they are doing, deliberately, will lead to that, if this is continued and they don’t stop.

AMY GOODMAN: What level of support does Hamas have — Hamas is the government of Gaza — right now, since Saturday morning, the actions of the thousands or so Hamas fighters breaching the wall?

RAJI SOURANI: I don’t think it’s matter — I don’t think it’s matter of the people’s support or not. You have to know, when you are suppressed deeply by a criminal, belligerent occupation, when you are suffocated — do you hear? Do you hear the bombing?

AMY GOODMAN: We hear it.

RAJI SOURANI: And here right now the entire house shaking, while I’m talking to you. I’m living in the best area of Gaza — all right? — and should be away from every problem, but everything around us has been bombed. And you don’t know, never, your lottery number, when it can be. There is no safe haven in this place. I lived all my life in this part of the world. I lived the mathematics and the chemistry. But I never, ever witnessed anything as such. And I’m telling you, I mean, if the Israelis made it — and they did — the land incursion, situation will be much, much worse than this. Massacres will happen, I mean, to civilians.

AMY GOODMAN: You have heard, I assume, that Israeli tanks and military equipment are making their way to Gaza right now. So you’re being bombed by the air, but the question is: Will there be a total land invasion? Can you respond to what this means? Just to give people a sense, you’re talking about this strip of land, Gaza, that’s about the size of Detroit. There are about 600,000 people in Detroit. We’re talking about 2.4 million people. It’s one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. Raji, if you could take it from there?

RAJI SOURANI: Exactly, Amy. Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth, as you know. And if the army comes in, it will be like elephant in the garden. But I don’t think any would love to be a good victim. They want to strip us not from our own security. They don’t want to strip us from the food of our children. They were not satisfied of having this criminal, belligerent occupation. They are not satisfied with the blockade. They are not satisfied with the killing and the bombing and [inaudible] wars that’s been happening in the last 10 years. But they want to do more. I think it’s not human to be a good victim. We are the stones of the valley. We have been here since ever. We will continue here forever. And I think, I mean, if the Israelis did that, that means they are just melting the people of Palestine, of Gaza, just to be one body defending their very existence. This is our right and obligation. As the French say, resistance, it’s not only, I mean, right, it’s your dignity, Amy. And people shouldn’t be good victim for a criminal, belligerent occupation.

When Russia invaded Ukraine and occupied Ukraine, the whole world stopped, and they said, “We cannot support Russia, and we have to support the Ukrainians against the occupation of the Russians. And we will support them not only politically. We will support them with money. We will support them with arms. We will support them with all what we can.” And they asked all the free people of Europe and U.S. to go and join the forces and to join the resistance in Ukraine against the occupation.

I don’t know why Palestinians, if they die, are a criminal; if we think, we are a criminal and terrorist; if we do peaceful intifada, we are terrorists. And when the Israelis doing massacres, one after another, they’re just being supported, as had happened yesterday, by U.S. and by major European countries. It’s shame. It’s shame to leave Israel practicing the rule of jungle in this way against the Palestinian civilians.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m not sure if the —

RAJI SOURANI: All what we want — all what we want is simple and clear: end of occupation. We want dignity and freedom, period, like any other people on Earth.

AMY GOODMAN: Raji, I’m not sure if this is the blast we just heard, but Middle East Eye is reporting Israel just bombed the Islamic University of Gaza. Is that near you?

RAJI SOURANI: It’s exactly 800 meters from me. And that’s when I wasn’t able, Amy, to talk to you. I mean, the entire building was like collapsing on our head.

****************************

Hamas Killed His Friend, But Knesset Member Cassif Says End the Occupation Now, All “Pay the Price”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 09, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/9/ ... transcript

We speak to Ofer Cassif, an Israeli Jewish Knesset member with the Hadash-Ta’al coalition, about Hamas’ surprise attack and Israel’s response. Cassif condemns the violence and killing of civilians “on both sides,” adding that both “Israelis and Palestinians pay the price of the arrogant, criminal, ongoing occupation that Israel refuses to end.” He then calls for an immediate end to occupation and of Israel’s “fascist subjugation” of Palestinians, an act which he says will “also liberate the Israelis.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring a Knesset member into this conversation. And this may be unusual in U.S. television to be joined by the leading Palestinian human rights lawyer in Gaza, Raji Sourani, and to also bring in Ofer Cassif, a member of the Israeli Knesset. Ofer, as you listened to Raji speak from Gaza and, before that, Orly Noy, the board chair of B’Tselem, the human rights organization — Ofer Cassif is a member of the Knesset with the Hadash-Ta’al coalition. You were born in Rishon LeZion, which was hit by rocket fire, Hamas rocket fire, on Saturday. Can you respond to what’s happening right now and the decision of the prime minister of Israel and the Cabinet to declare war on Hamas?

OFER CASSIF: Thank you for hosting me. And I would like to express my gratitude for the former speaker, Orly Noy, who’s a very good friend of mine. And, Raji, I wish you, Raji and all of you, security, peace and health, of course.

First of all, allow me to begin with some personal statements. My family lives in Israel. I’m at the moment in Mexico, before this war began, in a conference, in an international conference of leftist parties, including a delegation from Palestine. And we also had a press conference together, the Palestinian delegation and myself, because we share the ideas against the occupation and against war. I must say that, unfortunately, two days ago, I got a WhatsApp message from a very good friend of mine, who was hiding with her husband in the kibbutz. And she told me she was very afraid and she could hear the Hamas fighters outside. Unfortunately, those were probably the last words she ever wrote, because she was murdered with her husband just after she sent me that message — a very good friend of mine who was also against the occupation, a voter with our party. What I’m trying to say is that innocent people, innocent civilians on both sides, Israelis and Palestinians, pay the price of the arrogant, criminal, ongoing occupation that Israel refuses to end.

And I want to say something very, very clear and very, very blunt. Nothing, absolutely nothing, justify — can justify or legitimize the carnage that Hamas carried out in the towns and kibbutzim and the villages in the southern of Israel. Nothing can justify it. It is appalling. And even the occupation crimes, the crimes that Israel is guilty of, crimes of occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and the Nakba, those, either, cannot justify such carnage. At the same time, nothing, and absolutely nothing, can justify the massacre that the Israelis carries out now in Gaza, not even the crimes of Hamas.

So, what I would like to say, in the bottom line, following what Orly and Raji said — and I totally agree with them — the Palestinians deserve their rights. They deserve their national and individual rights. They reserve their rights to be realized, the right of self-determination, to enjoy their own independent sovereign state, their own government, their freedom of movement. They deserve to live in peace and security without the daily pogroms by fascist settlers under the auspices of the occupation forces and the encouragement of this fascist government of Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israelis deserve peace and security. They deserve to live in a state which doesn’t occupy, which doesn’t oppress, a state whose government is not a fascist and racist one.

And I would like to conclude, if I may, by saying and by taking the whole issue into and explaining it within a political frame. Israel wanted this violence. In 2017, Smotrich, who was then a member of the Knesset, but at the moment, unfortunately, this racist thug is a minister, a minister of finance, but, as well, minister within the Defense Ministry, he published six years ago — and it is explicit. You can read it. I mean, you can google and read it. It was entitled the “Subjugation Plan,” which boils down to three. First, the Palestinian Occupied Territories should be annexed to Israel as a whole, without granting basic rights to the Palestinians. Second, those Palestinians who do not agree to live under this subjugation are going to be expelled from their homeland. And third, those Palestinians who are going to resist are going to be killed. What we see now, and the coup, by the way, that the government of Israel has been carrying out within Israel, all of those are means to that goal. The goal is to realize this horrific, racist, colonialist, fascist plan of Smotrich’s. And the attack on Gaza is part of it. They use the terrible, horrifying, unacceptable carnage in the struggle of Israel as an excuse to attack Gaza as part of the realization of this fascist subjugation plan.

And we should stand together, join forces. All peace lovers, Palestinians and Israelis, Arabs, Jews, and the international community, must stand together and join forces to say to Israel, “You are going to end the occupation now. You are going to end the occupation. The Palestinians must be liberated.” The liberation of the Palestinian people is a just cause. It will also liberate the Israelis from the occupation, because although the plan — of course, the Palestinians are the victims primarily, but the Israelis are victims of the occupation, as well, as we just saw two days ago. So we must push and put the pressure on the government to end it. It’s up to the international community. It’s up to us to act together against all violence, in Gaza, in West Bank and in Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Ofer Cassif, we’re going to turn now to the leading Palestinian American professor, Columbia University, Rashid Khalid in a moment. We have to break. Ofer Cassif is a Knesset member in the Israeli parliament with the Hadash-Ta’al coalition. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in 30 seconds.

************************

Historian Rashid Khalidi: Palestinians “Living Under Incredible Oppression, … It Had to Explode”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
October 09, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/9/ ... transcript

In New York, we speak with Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, who lays out how this weekend’s extreme violence between Hamas and Israel will force “a paradigm shift.” Colonial powers will no longer believe they can force people to live under the conditions Israel has subjected Palestinians to and expect no retaliation of the oppressed, says Khalidi. “That idea has exploded as a result of the horrific events over the past two-and-a-half days,” says Khalidi, who calls the blockade of Gaza “a pressure cooker. It had to explode.” In response to the escalated conflict, the U.S. promised Israel would have “what it needs to defend itself,” pledging more military aid and munitions to Israel, already the largest annual recipient of U.S. military funding, as the Biden administration moved warships toward Israel. “We finance this occupation. We finance this violence,” says Khalidi, who calls on Biden to defuse the situation instead of escalating it. “You cannot make peace over the bodies of Palestinians.”

Transcript

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

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

Israel has ordered a complete siege of Gaza after Hamas broke out of the blockaded Gaza Strip Saturday, carried out an unprecedented attack by air, land and sea on Israel. Over the past three days, at least 1,300 people have died, including over 800 inside Israel, over 500 in Gaza. We’ve been to Gaza and Jerusalem. Now we’re joined here in New York by Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, author of a number of books, including The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.

Professor Khalidi, thank you for being with us. As you listened to voices of Orly Noy in Jerusalem, of Raji Sourani, the human rights lawyer in Gaza, the attack we heard on air live, and Ofer Cassif, the Knesset member of Israel, can you respond to what has taken place and what it looks like is about to take place? Israeli military equipment and tanks are headed down to Gaza now.

RASHID KHALIDI: I’m afraid that the horrific casualties among civilians, Israelis and, increasingly, Palestinians, is just the beginning of what’s going to be an awful, awful, awful massacre in Gaza. The desire for revenge after the killing of a very large number — hundreds, apparently — of innocent Israeli civilians is going to lead to a horrific massacre in Gaza of probably many, many more people than we can imagine. And I agree with what Raji said, of course, my friend Raji, who I hope is OK. And I agree with what Orly said and with what Ofer Cassif said. War crimes don’t justify other war crimes. And we are about to see horrific war crimes.

But I think there are two things that have to be added. This has to be put within the context. And the context is not just occupation. The context is settler colonialism and apartheid. The people of Gaza, the refugees in Gaza, originate in the areas where Hamas fighters were attacking in the last couple of days. Those were Palestinian towns and villages in 1948. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine led to the cooping up of what are now 2.4 million people in Gaza. Today is Indigenous Peoples’ Day in the United States. These are the Indigenous people of the southern parts of Israel that the Hamas fighters were attacking over the past few days. That’s the first thing.

The second thing is, I think that we’re about to see a paradigm shift. The idea that you can coop up 5 million people, put them behind walls, tighten the siege on them, use an eyedropper to allow them some food, some water, some electricity, that idea has exploded as a result of the horrific events of the past two-and-a-half days. This cannot continue. It’s not just a matter of occupation. We have to recognize that you cannot treat an entire people the way Israel, not just under this neofascist government, but under all of its previous governments, have treated them. You cannot expel three-quarters of a million people in 1948 and not expect the return of the repressed. You cannot commit daily violence against Palestinians — one Palestinian has died every day this year — in fact, slightly more — in the occupied West Bank. You cannot expect that not to lead to a reaction. The reaction will be violent. The reaction sometimes may include things that are unquestionably war crimes.

But that kind of pressure put on an entire people over three-quarters of a century will necessarily, inevitably bring a violent reaction. And this pressure cooker that the Palestinians are in, which the Hamas military commander listed — he said what they’re doing in Jerusalem, trying to take over the Al-Aqsa Mosque and turn it into a site of Jewish prayer, what they are doing in the occupied West Bank in terms of the effective annexation of more and more Palestinian land to Israel, and the application of Israeli law to Israelis and military law to Palestinians — apartheid, two legal systems in one place — the imprisonment of 5,000 Palestinians and the administrative detention of hundreds, and, finally, the siege of Gaza — when Gallant, Yoav Gallant, the minister of defense, announced that he was cutting off fuel, food, water and electricity to Gaza, he called the Gazans “human animals.” That’s 2.4 million people who are being treated as if they are animals. They’re not Hamas fighters. As Raji said, the fighters are one thing. Hamas is one thing. Hamas has imposed itself on the people of Gaza. The people of Gaza are the ones who are going to suffer. As in every one of these wars, almost all of the casualties are going to be civilians, that Israel has waged on Gaza. This will be the fifth or the sixth attack on Gaza. And I’m very, very afraid that Raji is right: We are going to see unparalleled massacres. But I think we have to see that this may be the end of an era, when people in Washington and people in Arab capitals assume you could just fly over Palestine, ignore it and pretend that we’re in a new Middle East of peace, while an entire people is living under this kind of incredible oppression, in a pressure cooker. It had to explode.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about what’s happening now. You have the Republicans attacking Biden, saying that it’s his support for Iran, making that $6 billion deal, unfreezing Iranian assets, that has allowed this to happen, The Wall Street Journal saying Iran is behind us, the White House pushing back, Blinken saying they don’t have the evidence at this point. What this means? And also Hezbollah on the border of Lebanon and the incursion this weekend, as well?

RASHID KHALIDI: Well, I mean, the possibility of a wider conflict should terrify everybody. And instead of moving aircraft carriers, the United States should be trying to defuse the situation. Instead, I think they’re blindly going ahead with the policies that they have followed in the past. You do not send presents, as President Biden has done, to an apartheid government that is moving towards basically destroying the protections of the Israeli constitution for Israeli Jews and annexing the West Bank. And that’s what this administration has been doing. That’s what previous administrations have done. We finance this occupation. We finance this violence. There are American weapons that are being used today, right now, in Gaza to kill innocent civilians in violation of U.S. law. And American politicians blithely talk as if they live on another planet.

I think, though, that the ground has shifted, and even though American politicians live in Never-Never Land, as far as Palestine is concerned, reality is going to intrude itself sooner or later. There is a widespread revulsion across the Arab world against what Israel does in Palestine. Authoritarian, dictatorial, absolute monarchies are trying to ignore that, ignore the feelings of their own people, the sentiments of their own people. That’s not going to work. You cannot make peace over the bodies of Palestinians. That’s not peace. That is the peace of the dead. And the kind of repression that is being exerted day in, day out — theft of land, expansion of settlements and so on — necessarily, inevitably is going to bring a reaction. So, whether the people living in Washington, D.C., and in their own alternative reality believe it today or tomorrow, sooner or later, I think that reality is going to dawn. But you cannot do this forever.

AMY GOODMAN: The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, just 10 days ago said, you know, it has been very quiet in the Middle East, which has allowed the U.S. to move on to other areas of the world. “Very quiet,” he said. And I’m wondering if you can comment on that. And do you think what led to this attack by Hamas fighters on Saturday had anything to do with Saudi Arabia and Israel normalizing relations at the behest of the United States?

RASHID KHALIDI: I don’t doubt that that was a factor. I think the basic factor was that people couldn’t live under these circumstances. And Hamas has basically acted in a way involving enormous brutality against the civilians, things that are unquestionably war crimes. But it has acted in a way to shatter that whole paradigm. I think people are thinking very carefully in places that have normalized with Israel.

... Finally, a number of jets from the Washington DC area were on an informal training flight over North Carolina on 9/11, a circumstance that took them away from the national capital airspace.

-- Covert Uses of Military Exercises; Amalgam Virgo: Cover Story for 9/11, from 9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA, by Webster Griffin Tarpley

The other thing that should be said — I think Orly mentioned this — this is a massive intelligence failure, on the part of American intelligence and especially on the part of the Israeli intelligence services. They had absolutely no idea this was coming. They transferred three battalions from the Gaza front to the West Bank to protect settler rampages against Palestinians, denuding the towns on the southern borders of the Gaza Strip of the people who could have defended against the attack by Hamas. This was one of the great deception operations in modern military history, and people are going to teach this. Leaving aside the war crimes, they’re going to teach this in military academies for years and years to come. This is on level with the 1973 war in terms of deception, and an entirely mistaken concept on the part of Israelis, thinking that you could do this to Gaza forever and that they would just lie down and take it.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Rashid Khalidi —

RASHID KHALIDI: — thinking that you can do it — sorry, go ahead.

AMY GOODMAN: This news just came out from Times of Israel, also from the Associated Press: Egyptian intelligence repeatedly told Israel Hamas was planning something big, warnings were discounted, this according to an intelligence official in Cairo.

RASHID KHALIDI: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: Your thoughts on this, in the last 30 seconds?

RASHID KHALIDI: It’s very similar to what happened before the 1973 war, when Israel was getting intelligence that the Egyptian and Syrian armies were planning a major attack. And the conception — the concepsia, in Hebrew — that these people would never do such a thing, they’re not capable of this, the arrogance that was involved in ignoring those intelligence reports in 1973 and in 2023 are among the things that led to this catastrophic outcome, which I think is going to change a lot of things in the Middle East in the months and years to come.

AMY GOODMAN: Rashid Khalidi, we want to thank you for being with us, Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University. His latest book, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine. Raji Sourani, Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, leading human rights lawyer, speaking to us from Gaza as the bombs went off. Ofer Cassif, member of the Israeli Knesset. And Orly Noy, board chair of B’Tselem, Israeli human rights organization. That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.

[admin]

Mustafa Barghouti: Israel’s Siege & Bombing of Gaza Are War Crimes. Is Ethnic Cleansing Next?
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
OCTOBER 11, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/11 ... rael_hamas

Transcript

As Israel prepares to launch a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, we continue our coverage of escalating conflict in the Middle East. We’re joined from Ramallah by Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian physician, activist and politician who serves as general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, also known as al-Mubadara, and is a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization Central Council. “I don’t want any Palestinian or Israeli civilian to be killed,” says Barghouti, who argues that a ground operation in Gaza would constitute a campaign of ethnic cleansing, and condemns Israeli occupation and settlement under far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as having destroyed any “prospective for a two-state solution.” Barghouti also discusses President Biden’s abnegation of responsibility toward Palestinian Americans, Egypt’s role in the conflict and the relationship within Palestine between the “totally marginalized” Palestinian Authority and groups like Hamas.

AMY GOODMAN: Gaza is on the verge of losing all electricity as Israel continues to bombard the territory while imposing a siege blocking the import of all fuel, food and electricity. The death toll from Israel’s massive bombing campaign has topped 1,055 Palestinians, with over 5,000 wounded. Meanwhile, the death toll in Israel has soared to 1,200 following Saturday’s shocking attack by Hamas militants. Another 2,400 Israelis have been wounded. Hamas is believed to be holding as many as 150 hostages. Israel is now preparing to launch a ground invasion of Gaza.

Tension is also growing along the Israel-Lebanon border, where Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters have repeatedly exchanged fire.

Earlier today, a U.S. plane carrying ammunition landed in Israel, a day after President Biden gave a speech at the White House where he reaffirmed U.S. support for Israel but made no reference to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, which has reportedly killed at least 260 children and 230 women since Saturday. According to press freedom groups, at least seven Palestinian journalists have also been killed.

Inside Gaza, residents say there’s no safe place for civilians to go. This is Samah Abo Latifa, who lost her brother in an Israeli airstrike.

SAMAH ABO LATIFA: [translated] We had fled from Abasan, escaping from death. There were continuous airstrikes over our heads. They told us to come to Khan Younis. We came to find death. If we stayed in our houses, we die. If we go on the streets, we die. O my beloved brother, he fled from one place to another. O my beloved brother, may your soul rest in peace. I have no people left, except for two. God bless them for me. I hope to carry their children. O my beloved brother, please, God, don’t take anyone else. This is enough. I can’t handle anymore. I hope I die before them all.

AMY GOODMAN: Samah Abo Latifa went on to describe the scope of Israel’s bombing campaign. She spoke from a nursery, where her family has taken refuge.

SAMAH ABO LATIFA: [translated] I’ve never seen airstrikes like this time, not in 2014, not in 2008. No war was like this time. I’ve never seen anything like this. Every minute and every second there are airstrikes. Every minute there are martyrs, in their houses, young people, children, all. I can’t talk. I swear I’m so tired. We have never witnessed strikes like this time. We thank God when the day is done. But they say it will be worse. We wonder what else could happen to us. The coming days could be harsher. Our hearts will ache more for the loss of our loved ones.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, tension is also high in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon. Hezbollah has claimed responsibility for firing an anti-tank at an Israeli military post earlier today. Israel has been shelling towns in southern Lebanon. Residents in northern Israel say they no long feel safe.

RACHEL KANDELL: It doesn’t feel very safe, because if they came into our house and they did anything they wanted, without any way of protecting ourselves, this is a very unsettled grounds. This is not — you know, this is Israel. We are in the 21st century. We should feel secure. We should feel like we have a home to go back to. And many people in Israel, unfortunately, are not in this space. They don’t have a house anymore. They don’t have families. The lines for the funerals are endless. There is so much pain, pain that is beyond explanation in words. This is truly a nightmare.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show with Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian physician, activist and politician who serves as general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative. He’s been a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council since 2006, also a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization Central Council. He’s joining us from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Dr. Barghouti, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you can give us the context for what’s happening right now, what you’re most concerned about? We’re talking to you in the occupied West Bank as hundreds of thousands of Israeli reservists are moving down to Gaza.

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: What concerns me most, Amy, is this process of dehumanizing Palestinians, in which Western government leaders, including President Biden, are participating, dehumanizing Palestinians to the level that the Israeli army minister called us animals. And Human Rights Watch was absolutely correct when they came out with a statement saying that this kind of description of Palestinians is nothing but a justification of war crimes on them. And that’s exactly what’s happening now.

The first two crimes that are happening is the Israeli blockade on Gaza, depriving 2.2 million people from water, food, electricity and medical supplies, depriving them from the possibility of normal life. Children are lacking water, are lacking milk. I get calls from our people there in Gaza constantly, patients who have kidney problems, in need for kidney dialysis, who could die in two, three days because they cannot get it, patients with cancer who lost treatment, and other sick people who are in very deep situation.

This is not the only situation. In addition to that, the second crime that is taking place is the bombardment of Gaza with terrible airstrikes. You have just said that it took the lives already of 1,000 innocent civilian Palestinians. It slaughtered no less than 260 children. But the worst thing is that 250,000 people already, quarter of a million people, have lost their homes. Thousands of houses have been destroyed. High-rise buildings have been smashed to earth. And the people don’t have a single space which can be safe for them. I heard an Israeli saying that she wants to be safe, and I want her to be safe, but they also should remember that also Palestinians need to live in peace and security. And that is what’s not there.

More than that, Israel turned back to using what was prohibited, which is white phosphorus. They used it, as you remember, in 2008 campaign on Gaza. Now they’re back to using it. It is a prohibited kind of weapon that is forbidden, but they use it openly and frankly.

The more important thing is that Netanyahu is saying that Palestinians should be evicted from Gaza. He’s preparing for a third war crime, which is ethnic cleansing of the population of Gaza. He said that every Palestinian in Gaza should leave their homes. He didn’t say where to. Maybe to the sea. But his spokesperson of the army made it clear. He said in a statement, which became the top line in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper — he said that all Palestinians in Gaza must evict to Egypt. These people, these criminals who committed ethnic cleansing against 70% of the Palestinian people in 1948, 70% of the population of Gaza were among these people who were evicted from Palestine. Now they are subjected to the possibility of another transfer, another kind of ethnic cleansing, that would empty Gaza so that Netanyahu can annex it.

Now I understand, after all these threats with ethnic cleansing, what Netanyahu meant when he said that he will change the map and the order of the area for 50 years to come. Now I understand what Netanyahu did when he carried a map of Israel in the United Nations, in front of the whole world community, a map of Israel that includes annexing the West Bank, which is occupied territory, annexing Gaza Strip, which is also occupied territory, and annexing East Jerusalem, including also the Golan Heights. Nobody said a single criticism to that, except maybe the German government. This is the reason — this is the background of what’s happening.

But let me also say that what we see now in Gaza is only a result of a protracted problem of 56 years of Israeli military occupation of Palestinian land. How many times on your show, Amy, and on other shows we said that the solution is to end the Israeli illegal occupation of Palestinians, that the solution is to stop what has become the worst system of apartheid ever, much worse apartheid than what revealed in South Africa at one point of time? How many times we said that building settlements in the Occupied Territories will destroy any prospective for two-state solution? How many times we complained about settlers’ violence and settlers’ terror against Palestinian communities?

I find that President Biden, unfortunately, practiced — excuse me for that, but I have to say it — Mr. Biden practiced racial discrimination between Americans who carry Israeli citizenship and Americans who carry Palestinian citizenship. I did not see him say that those who killed Shireen Abu Akleh, a very peaceful journalist who was Palestinian and American, and who was never held to accountability — nobody was indicted for killing her. He didn’t say a word about the American Palestinians in Turmus Ayya whose houses were burned and whose cars were attacked and whose lives were threatened by Israeli illegal settlers, some of whom also carry American citizenship.

I don’t want any Palestinian or any Israeli civilian to be killed. I am against that. I’m against killing children. But today and now Israel is preparing a huge ground operation on Gaza. If that happens, it will be a total disaster. If ethnic cleansing takes place, this will be a terrible, terrible, terrible disaster for everybody. And if the ground operations start, it will definitely lead to the explosion in the north and Hezbollah getting involved, and maybe this will lead to a whole regional war. I think what we need here is balanced, reasonable and responsible reactions, and not continuation of dehumanizing Palestinians, accusing Palestinians of responsibility even when Palestinians are killed.

I think that Netanyahu doesn’t care about his people. I think Netanyahu is the most corrupt, opportunistic politician ever. This man cares only about his position. He doesn’t even care about the 150 or 200 Israeli prisoners now in Gaza. If he cared about them, he would accept immediately a ceasefire. He would accept immediately a prisoners exchange, so that these people can come back home safe, and Palestinian prisoners would be released, some of whom have been in Israeli jails for 44 years. This is the solution, and not to escalate. But Netanyahu knows if any inquiry starts about what happened at the borders of Gaza, they will find him responsible for negligence, irresponsibility, lack of preparation, intelligence failure, military failure, political failure, and he will be sent out of the office, which means he will go to jail because of four cases of corruption against him. He knows that. And that’s why he’s ready to kill anybody to stay in his office. This man doesn’t care about lives of Palestinians or Israelis.

He didn’t care about the fact that he brought to his government fascists, like Smotrich, who doesn’t hide calling himself a fascist homophobe, and who said that “We will fill the West Bank with settlers and settlements so that Palestinians would lose any hope of a state of their own. And then they would have one of three choices: either to emigrate or accept a life of subjugation to Israeli rule or die.” That is the finance minister of Israel. And we didn’t hear any criticism to that, neither from Netanyahu nor from your foreign minister, Mr. Blinken, nor from any other Western leaders, who are now, unfortunately, participating in escalating the situation rather than calming it down.

The big question that Palestinians have — and this is my last point here — the big question that Palestinians have is: Why the double standard? Why the United States and Europe send to Ukraine $224 billion of equipment, of planes, of tanks, to fight what they say is occupation? And why in our case they are sending arsenal and money and support to the occupiers of Palestine? Why we don’t see any sanctions —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Dr. Barghouti, I want —

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: — to brutal forces and to stop the occupation?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Dr. Barghouti, I want to ask you — you’re in the West Bank. What’s been the response of the Palestinian Authority to the attacks on Gaza? And also, for our listeners and viewers, if you could talk about the escalation in attacks in the West Bank by both settlers and the Israeli army since this extreme right-wing coalition of Netanyahu came to power?

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Since the attacks started in Gaza by Israeli airstrikes, there were many, many demonstrations in the West Bank, mostly peaceful — peaceful, all peaceful and nonviolent demonstrations. And the Israeli army responded with gunfire. Up ’til this moment, 23 Palestian young people, mainly, were shot and killed by the Israeli army, without them engaging in any kind of military action.

And that has been our life. You know, one of the main reasons why the attack happened in Gaza by Hamas is the fact that during the last eight months, before this whole thing started, Israeli army and Israeli settlers killed 248 Palestinians, including 40 children. And now in addition to that, most roads in the West Bank are blocked. There is 650 military checkpoints, many of which are totally closed to Palestinians. The only passage to Jordan is almost closed all the time. And Palestinians live in clusters of ghettos separated from each other. And people are extremely worried about what might happen. We’ve just heard that the Israeli army is devoting a whole division with tanks for the possibility of reinvading every corner of the West Bank, as well.

So, the most difficult thing here is not only the army attacks on Palestinians, but also the settlers’ attacks. And these settlers are completely crazy. And they are completely criminal in their attitude towards Palestinians. They’ve already burned so many houses. They’ve already attacked so many villages. They’ve already killed so many Palestinians. And that’s the kind of fear and worry that we have.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And how should Egypt and other Arab countries in the region respond?

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Well, before I respond to your question, I have one little piece of good news, although it’s painful news. You mentioned the name of the journalist Salam Mima, who was one of the seven journalists who were killed by Israel. Luckily, but painfully, this journalist was found alive after 31 hours with her three children below the rubble of their destroyed house. Unfortunately, her husband died. She is injured, and her three children are injured. And you can imagine the horror that she went through being under the rubble for 31 hours. And only by luck, somebody heard her voice. And this raises the question: How many tens of Palestinians are now below the rubble, and nobody can try even to save them because the places are constantly bombarded?

Regarding Egypt, I would say that the Egyptians have two responsibilities. One is that they should not allow Israel to evict and ethnically cleanse Palestinians towards Egypt. This must not happen. And that, because I warn you: If Israel succeeds in evicting Palestinians from Gaza now and conducting ethnic cleansing, this would be an application of Smotrich, most extreme religious Jewish extreme position in the Israeli government. And it would mean that the next plan will be to ethnically cleanse the West Bank, as well, and throw Palestinians out of the West Bank to Jordan. These are not theoretical concepts. This is exactly what they said, what they speak about about Palestinians, especially now after all this process of dehumanization of Palestinians.

The other thing that Egypt must do is to provide support immediately to Gaza. We are ready to help ourselves, our people. We are ready to collect water, food supply, medications. My organization, in particular, militant Palestinian Medical Relief Society, is already engaging in preparing all these materials. We are ready to send them to Gaza, through Egypt even. But Israel says that they will bombard any supplies that come to Gaza. Here, I think it is the Egyptian and international responsibility to stop Israel and prevent that from taking place.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Barghouti, we have less than a minute, but I wanted to ask about the relationship between the PLO, the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas, well known for the tension between the two, to put it mildly.

DR. MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Well, as you know, Hamas, as well as Jihad, are Palestinian political groups, militant groups that are not in the PLO. But there are problems even inside the PLO. I think now the PA feels totally marginalized, not only because of what’s happening on the ground, but also because of Israel, that did everything to humiliate the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli army invades any spot that the Palestinian Authority should be in charge of, including Ramallah. And they cut off our tax revenue. We pay taxes to the Palestinian Authority through Israel, and Israel cuts away a lot of these resources.

So, the solution to this is nothing but unifying all Palestinians without exception. And you know my stand. I said it long time ago. What we need is, after this war ends, is immediate, free, democratic elections for Palestinians. And all polls show that neither Fatah nor Hamas will get a majority. Nobody else will get majority. It will be a pluralistic democratic system, through which groups like us, who are non-Fatah, non-Hamas, can try to do their best to push in the direction of democratic transformation, but also that would allow Palestinians to coexist peacefully in a good political system. At this very moment, this sounds very distant, mainly because not only the PA did not hold elections, but Israel and the United States all the time refused that we should have democratic, free elections. And that does not fit with all these calls everywhere and in other places about democracy. It’s another type, another form of double standard.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, speaking to us from Ramallah in occupied West Bank, Palestinian physician, activist, politician who serves as general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative.

Next up, to Tel Aviv to speak with the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy of Haaretz. Stay with us.

********************

Israeli Journalist Gideon Levy: Israel Should Lift Siege & Call Off Plans for Ground Invasion of Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
OCTOBER 11, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/11 ... rael_hamas

From Tel Aviv, we hear from award-winning Israeli journalist and author Gideon Levy, whose recent column for Haaretz is headlined “Israel Can’t Imprison Two Million Gazans Without Paying a Cruel Price.” Levy discusses the reaction within Israeli society toward Hamas’s unexpected attack and condemns the Netanyahu government for only mobilizing for further warfare rather than providing effective assistance to victims. “Nobody is leading Israel,” declares Levy, who also calls for Israel to lift its blockade of Gaza and accept that its campaign of eradicating Hamas is “impossible.” After decades of Palestinian subjugation under Israeli rule, “you can kill the current top people of Hamas, but you will not kill the ideology of Hamas,” says Levy.

Transcript

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

“Netanyahu Bears Responsibility for This Israel-Gaza War.” That’s the headline of an editorial in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The paper’s editors wrote, quote, “The disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Simchat Torah is the clear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister, who has prided himself on his vast political experience and irreplaceable wisdom in security matters, completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession, when appointing Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir to key positions, while embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians,” the Haaretz editorial said.

We go now to Tel Aviv, where we’re joined by Gideon Levy, an award-winning Israeli journalist and author, columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, member of its editorial board. His most recent piece is headlined “Israel Can’t Imprison Two Million Gazans Without Paying a Cruel Price.”

Gideon Levy, if you can talk about how Israelis are responding right now, what you feel it’s important for people outside Israel, especially here in the United States, to understand and to do, at this point as 300,000 reservists move along the Gaza border?

GIDEON LEVY: Israel is basically shocked. At least in the first one or two days, you could feel it everywhere. Nobody expected this unprecedented situation. It broke many perceptions, both about Hamas, about the Palestinians, about their capabilities, and about ourselves and our capabilities. But this is now put aside. People are still digesting what happened. The more time passes, the more horrible scenes are exposed, day after day. I’ve been to the south the day before yesterday. And I can tell you — I’ve been so many times in the south in times of war — what I saw there was nothing like it happened in the past. But I must say that side by side with what I mention here, there is also a big sense of taking revenge, a big desire to take revenge. And hatred toward the Palestinians is growing up to very, very dangerous levels.

Same anger is also directed at the government, less than this at the army. But I think that the government, once this war will be over, hopefully soon, this government is going to pay a hell of a price, and it will — must go home. I don’t see the situation in which Netanyahu continues, and all the ministers around him, who are, all of them, no ones, fascists, and they, part of them, would even be defined in Europe as neo-Nazis, those people who called for all kind of terrible things to do and did nothing to make Israel prepared for any danger, and continue now to doing nothing. That’s so astonishing that we are now the fifth day after the war, and you don’t see the government. They are still preoccupied with their own political careers, with all kind of political manipulations. Nobody takes care of the situation. The army is preparing itself for a ground operation. But except of the army — I was in so many homes which were bombed, so many people who lost their beloved one. Nobody came to them. Nobody offers them any assistance.

Israel is really falling apart, from this point of view. And the man who governed Israel for the last 15 years is the one, and the only one, to be blamed, before anyone else. This goes without saying. And I guess at six after the war, as we say, million Israelis will go to the streets, and they will have only one demand: At least, Netanyahu, go home. If not, Netanyahu, go to court and be sentenced for this irresponsible policy that you have been committing.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Gideon Levy, I wanted to ask you — according to press reports, as many as 1,500 Palestinian fighters of Hamas were killed inside of Israel, so the enormous number of militants who were able to get into Israel. Could you talk about the decision of the government to relocate large portions of Israel’s army from the Gaza border to protect far-right settlers on the West Bank?

GIDEON LEVY: Sure. That’s one of the big failures on Saturday, not the only one, because the first failure is obviously the surprise, the strategic surprise. We are so proud about the most sophisticated intelligence in the world, with all kind of those elite units, with all the devices. They know everything. They understand everything. And then, an operation, which was prepared for one year by hundreds of militants, they didn’t hear about it. So that’s the first failure.

The second failure is obviously that the southern front with Gaza was totally abandoned, because we were busy with all the festivals of support of those crazy settlers, guarding them, but not only guarding them, collaborating with them with their pogroms among Palestinians. We have clear evidence that the army saw the pogroms and did nothing. And when the army is busy for years now, not only recently, only with running and chasing after Palestinian children who throw a stone, and after all kind of suspected Palestinians, when the army is overoccupied in standing in illegal checkpoints and penetrating to Palestinian homes in the middle of the night to arrest somebody without any legal basis, then this is the result you get. Instead of a professional, motivated, experienced army, you get a bunch of no ones who don’t know what to do in such a situation, because after the first shock, they were still — it took still hours and hours until the army showed up. And that’s unbelievable.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this issue of Netanyahu preparing for an invasion of Gaza, could you talk about the immense undertaking that this involves, having to go literally house by house or building by building in Gaza to find any of the hostages being held? The enormity of this project?

GIDEON LEVY: First of all, to go from building to building is impossible already, because there are many buildings still down. And I’m not sure how many buildings were left, for example, in the neighborhood of Rimal. To find the hostages alive, really, it’s nice for all kind of Hollywood films. I don’t see it happening, for sure not with this army with its capabilities, as we were witnessing it only on Saturday.

The invasion into Gaza has some other goals — namely, to put an end to the rule of Hamas. And this is another impossible mission, because you can kill the current top people of Hamas, you cannot kill the ideology of Hamas, and they will always be replaced.

Ground operation now is supported almost by all Israelis, because Israelis understand that we have to do something after this embarrassment, after this catastrophe. But in the same time, I must tell you, I can assure you that if Israel will go now for a ground operation, it will take a few weeks or maybe a few months. It will take so much blood of both Palestinians and Israelis, mainly Palestinians obviously. And by the end of this operation, you will invite me again to Democracy Now!, and you will see that we are standing exactly in the place that we stood one week ago, because as long as Israel continues to believe that Gaza — the problem of Gaza will be solved by the sword, solved by brutal force, by emotions of revenge — justified emotions — then we will get exactly to the same place. This vicious circle will not be solved by power, not be solved by tanks, and not will be — nor will it be solved by troops, only by political agreement and, above all and first of all, lifting this criminal siege, for God’s sake, after 17 years. This siege, what it was about, to guarantee the security of Israel. So, what happened out of the siege except of the suffer of — unbelievable inhuman suffer of 2 million people? What did it contribute to the security of Israel, this siege? You see the outcome.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have less than a minute, Gideon. I wanted to ask you the difference of the cry, the call of the families of the hostages, of older people, of young people, of children, the family members, one after another, talking about being, for example, a peace activist, and saying, “Please use restraint,” and the contrast between that and President Biden as he addressed the nation yesterday, deciding consciously, and in the readout of his conversation with Netanyahu a few minutes before he spoke, saying they did not call for restraint. Your response? How important is the president of United States’ position here? We have less than a minute.

GIDEON LEVY: In less than a minute, I can tell you, Amy, that last night when I was watching President Biden, I really envied you Americans that you have such a leader. I never thought so before last night. But last night, Biden was a real leader, someone that you can trust, because he was extremely sincere, and someone that you can rely on. If Netanyahu would have taken the same speech, he wouldn’t be Netanyahu. Netanyahu is busy with politics. And here comes this Biden and tells Israel what Israel wanted to hear. I would love him also to say some things about the Palestinian suffering, the Palestinian agony. He ignored it totally, and this is very regretful. But by the end of the day, this is what Israel needs now: some kind of leadership. And it totally lacks it. Nobody is around, really, to understand that we have to go for a new way. Nobody is there.

AMY GOODMAN: Gideon Levy, we want to thank you for being with us, award-winning Israeli journalist and author, columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, a member of its editorial board. We’ll link to your most recent piece, “Israel Can’t Imprison Two Million Gazans Without Paying a Cruel Price.” His books include The Punishment of Gaza.