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

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

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Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 26, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/26/headlines

Israeli Strikes on Gaza Kill Dozens, Including Five Journalists; Three Babies Freeze to Death
Dec 26, 2024

Palestinian health officials say Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have killed 38 people and injured 137 others in the past 24 hours. Among the dead are five journalists with the Al-Quds Today channel who were killed in an Israeli strike on their broadcasting van near the Al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp. Video of their assassination shows a van clearly marked with the word “press” engulfed in flames. The slain journalists are Fadi Hassouna, Ibrahim al-Sheikh Ali, Mohammed al-Ladah, Faisal Abu al-Qumsan and Ayman al-Jadi, who had gone to the Al-Awda Hospital with his wife, who was in labor with their first child. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate reports Israeli attacks since October 2023 have killed more than 190 journalists and media workers across Gaza.

Meanwhile, Palestinian doctors say three babies have died of hypothermia in recent days as temperatures in Gaza’s tent encampments plummeted amid Israel’s stifling blockade of food, water and aid. Displaced Christians in Gaza marked a somber Christmas holiday amid the devastation of Israel’s assault. This is 67-year-old Najlaa Tarzy, whose family once again spent Christmas sheltering inside Gaza’s only Catholic church.

Najlaa Tarzy: “Each year on this date, we celebrate the birth of Jesus, spread joy to children, pray at night and celebrate Jesus’s coming and birth. Last year was very harsh on us, and this year is harsh with the atmosphere of war, martyrs and the life we’re living. We can’t handle it. We don’t know how to describe it. It’s extremely difficult. It is misery.”

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces killed at least eight Palestinians Wednesday as troops backed by armed drones attacked the Tulkarm and Nur Shams refugee camps. Among those killed were two Palestinian women and an 18-year-old.

Turkey’s Erdoğan Threatens to “Bury” Syrian Kurds Unless They Lay Down Arms
Dec 26, 2024

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has threatened to “bury” Kurdish fighters in Syria unless they lay down their arms. Erdoğan made the threat during remarks to the Turkish parliament on Wednesday, insisting the Kurdish YPG militia must disband.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: “As I said after the Cabinet meeting, business as usual is no longer possible. The separatist murderers will either bid farewell to their weapons or be buried in Syrian soil alongside their weapons.”

On Monday, thousands of women rallied in the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli demanding Syria’s new leaders respect women’s rights. They also condemned Turkish-backed attacks on Kurdish groups. Many of the protesters waved the green, yellow and red flags of the Women’s Protection Units, an affiliate of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units militia that Turkey considers a terrorist organization.

Hemrin Ali: “Today, all women in the Jazira region, including Kurds, Arabs and Syriacs, are uniting their voices, saying yes to supporting the Women’s Protection Units, YPJ, yes to preserving the rights and gains of the women’s revolution in northern and eastern Syria. Today, we are safeguarding all the achievements of northern and eastern Syria by demanding freedom and rights for all women, without discrimination.”

Later in the broadcast, we’ll go to Damascus for an update from Syrian journalist and BBC Middle East correspondent Lina Sinjab.

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

Meet State Dept. Official Michael Casey, Who Resigned over Gaza After U.S. Ignored Israeli Abuses
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 26, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/26 ... transcript

After a 15-year career in the Foreign Service, Michael Casey resigned from the State Department in July over U.S. policy on Gaza and is now speaking out publicly for the first time. He was deputy political counselor at the United States Office for Palestinian Affairs in Jerusalem for four years before he left. Casey says he resigned after “getting no action from Washington” for his recommendations on humanitarian actions for Palestinians and toward a workable two-state solution. “We don’t believe Palestinian sources of information,” Casey says about U.S. policymakers. “We will accept the Israeli narrative over all others, even if we know it’s not correct.” He also discusses what to expect for Gaza under the incoming Trump administration.

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today’s show in Gaza, where medics say an Israeli strike killed five journalists who worked for Al-Quds TV in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza. They were reportedly sleeping in a van clearly marked with the word “press.”

Meanwhile, three Palestinian babies have died of hypothermia at the al-Mawasi refugee camp in southern Gaza as temperatures plummet and Israel’s deadly blockade on food, water and key winter supplies continues. The father of 3-week-old victim Sila, Mahmoud al-Faseeh, told Al Jazeera his family had been sleeping on cold sand in a tent exposed to bitter winds. Al-Mawasi is designated a safe zone, but Israel has repeatedly attacked it over the last 14 months as its forces continue to pound Gaza.

This comes as Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank raided Nablus to escort a group of settlers to Joseph’s Tomb, which has been a flashpoint between Palestinians and Israeli settlers.

AMY GOODMAN: A group of Palestinian Americans trapped in Gaza has sued the Biden administration, saying it abandoned them and their families in a war zone despite rescuing, quote, “similarly situated Americans of different national origins,” unquote.

For more, we’re joined by Michael Casey. He resigned from the State Department in July over U.S. policy on Gaza after a 15-year career in the Foreign Service. He served nine years before that in the U.S. Army. He was deputy political counselor at the United States Office for Palestinian Affairs in Jerusalem for four years before resigning. He’s joining us now from Michigan.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Mike Casey. So, you resigned in July. You’re making the reasons for your resignation public now. Explain what happened and why you’ve decided to leave your career.

MICHAEL CASEY: Well, first of all, thank you for having me on the show. I really appreciate it.

I’ve been trying to get the story out, honestly, since I left. I’ve talked to sort of multiple journalists who, you know, for various reasons, weren’t able to publish the story until recently. So, I’ve been trying to get the story out since that time.

And really, why I left was that after I covered Gaza almost every day for three years and just writing every day about what was happening there, even before October 7th, the humanitarian catastrophe that was there beforehand, and just getting no action from Washington on any of those issues. And we also, my office, wrote about Palestinian politics, settlements, human rights issues, prisoner abuses, different things like this, every day writing about them. And then, October 7th, everything was just amplified, you know, a hundred times worse than it was before. And just writing all this information, having it disregarded, taking no actions and no policies on it, and acting constantly in direct contravention of our own interests was eventually too much for me, and I decided I had done everything I could to help, there was nothing more I could do on the inside, and it was time for me to leave.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Mike, you’ve said, in fact, that once you were posted in Jerusalem, everything you learned as a diplomat, you had to forget. If you could elaborate on what you mean by that?

MICHAEL CASEY: Sure. It’s just — and that’s the way it feels. You know, basic things as a diplomat, to be skeptical of your interlocutors. You know, when the government of the country you’re assigned to tells you something, you have to fact-check it a little bit. But with the Israeli government, we don’t do that. We just repeat what they tell us. We don’t even report on that information.

And, you know, having basic concerns for issues like human rights, that was a bedrock of our foreign policy in other places, and in Israel, we just completely disregard it. I mean, one issue I always highlight was administrative detention, which is where people are locked up without charges. You know, when I was in other countries, like Malaysia, there was maybe one person in admin detention, and the secretary of state would raise her case all the time, whereas in Israel, we were approaching 2,000 Palestinians were being held in admin detention, including minors, including American citizens, and we never said a word about it. And so, just these issues that you would normally push forward everywhere else, in this country we just pretend like it’s not a problem.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, in your reading, Mike — you worked at the State Department; before that, you were also in the military — what, in your view, explains this? Why do you think the U.S. is consistently blind to the suffering of Palestinians?

MICHAEL CASEY: It’s hard to get a concrete answer on that as to why that is, just seeing it happen every day and what we do with that and just the absolute disregard of reality that we have. And it’s good to see organizations like DAWN who are launching a lawsuit — it’s sad that it had to come to this point, but launching a lawsuit against the State Department for violating its own policies, you know, violating its own human rights reports, as they mentioned when they made the announcement, because my office wrote these reports and documented the human rights abuses there. It was the longest report in the world. It took the longest to finish. And then we come out and say things like “There are no human rights issues in Israel.” It just — it doesn’t make any sense. And as to why that is, I don’t know. Our policy is just completely backwards. We start from the point of we need to sell weapons to Israel, and then we backtrack and make the facts the way we need it to be in order to make that happen, which is the exact opposite of what we should be doing.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to a clip from the Fault Lines documentary called Starving Gaza in Al Jazeera English that features Stacy Gilbert, who we also interviewed, the former senior adviser in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. She resigned after over 20 years in service after disagreements with a State Department report that she worked on concluding Israel was not obstructing U.S. humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

HIND HASSAN: In April, Stacy Gilbert was asked for her input on a Biden administration report on whether Israel was committing war crimes in Gaza.

STACY GILBERT: I was shocked to see that it said, in very clear terms, it is our determination that Israel is not blocking humanitarian assistance.

HIND HASSAN: You had advised that that wasn’t the case. Is that correct?

STACY GILBERT: Yes. The subject matter experts were removed, and the report was moved up to a higher level. We were told, “You will see the report when it is released publicly.”

HIND HASSAN: And then the report comes out and just doesn’t include what you had to say?

STACY GILBERT: I wasn’t sure I read that correctly. I read it again, and I sent an email then that I would resign as a result of that.

HIND HASSAN: Do you remember what you wrote in your resignation email?

STACY GILBERT: I said that report will haunt us.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Stacy Gilbert, a State Department official, in the Al Jazeera documentary Starving Gaza. You can also go to Democracy Now! to see our extended interview with Stacy. So, Mike Casey, that was in the spring. You were there in Jerusalem. You were still working. Talk about the changing of the conclusions of this report, which Stacy Gilbert said is a report that will haunt us.

MICHAEL CASEY: And she’s absolutely correct, because it’s absurd to reach that conclusion based on all of the evidence that’s out there. I mean, it’s the absolute consensus of the international organizations, human rights organizations that are actually in Gaza and documenting this information, and the decision comes in complete contrast to that. And there is no one out there who is saying the situation is not — that Israel is allowing aid in. No one is saying that except for the Israeli government. So, when we reach these conclusions, we’re either using information provided by the Israelis or we’re simply making it up, because no credible organization is saying that they are not blocking humanitarian aid.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to the funeral of Shireen Abu Akleh. She was killed by an Israeli sniper outside the Jenin refugee camp, one of the most well-known Al Jazeera reporters. She was killed May 11th, 2022. After she was killed, there was a funeral for Shireen. Can you describe, Mike Casey — you were in Jerusalem at the time. Is that right? Can you describe what happened at the funeral? She is, by the way, an American journalist, a Palestinian American journalist.

MICHAEL CASEY: Yes, I was there at the time, and it was one of the worst days in the office when she was killed and then when the funeral happened, because it was just such a — so emblematic of our policies there and our policy failures, that an American is going to be killed, we’re going to call for an investigation, we’re not going to be serious about it. Whatever they come out with, we’re going to accept, even if we know the facts are otherwise. And then it reaches the point where her funeral is attacked. The police are beating pallbearers. Her coffin falls on the ground.

And we don’t say anything about it, just at this level of brutality that’s happening, and we don’t say anything. And so, people in the office were just devastated emotionally, because many of them knew her personally, and then knowing that they’re working for the United States government, who has the most leverage and the most ability to make some changes and make some impact, and know that we’re not going to say anything about it. I mean, it was really crushing for morality in the office.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, you have senators, like Maryland Senator Van Hollen, who have called for the release of the report on Shireen Abu Akleh. That actually hasn’t happened. And if you can compare what took place there and what you felt should have been said by the United States and how the U.S. deals in other countries?

MICHAEL CASEY: Yeah, it’s interesting, when I was listening to the headlines at the beginning of your broadcast, just to hear the update on Gaza and the update on Ukraine and seeing, you know, two incidents, and we’re going to have very different responses to them, because we simply pick and choose our statements that we’re going to make depending on the situation. So, yeah, it’s just that we’re going to put red lines out there, we’re going to call for investigations, we’re going to do things like that in Israel, but we’re not serious about it, and we’re not concerned with the result that comes out from them.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I want to go to some of the early work that you did shortly after October 7th, 2023. Just three weeks into Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, nearly 7,000 Palestinians had already been killed. But on October 25th of 2023, President Biden cast doubt on Gaza’s official death toll. This is a clip of Biden.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Mike, if you could explain? What was your response when you heard Biden’s remarks?

MICHAEL CASEY: So, we fought within the system to clarify why we believe those numbers were the most accurate numbers we could find. You know, we wrote about — we had an official response, that we would talk about how the Ministry of Health in Gaza is the most connected to its parent ministry in Ramallah. Many of the employees there are from the PA. Analyses of past conflicts have never shown a significant difference between the reports. So we had an official way of dealing with it.

But, in general, it was — it sort of personally affected me because I was writing those numbers every day in our reports at the time. And when the president of the United States comes out and says, “I don’t believe your numbers,” that’s a little bit hard to deal with. But, in general, it was a common trend even before October 7th that we don’t believe Palestinian sources of information. We don’t believe what they say, whether it’s Palestinian government, whether it’s Palestinian contacts that we talk to. It’s just disregarded. And even the United Nations and others, we disregard sometimes. We will accept the Israeli narrative over all others, even if we know it’s not correct.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, can you explain, Mike — we just heard earlier from Stacy Gilbert — how many of your college, do you believe, whether they resigned or not — how many of your colleagues in the State Department agree with you and others in criticizing U.S. policy on Israel-Palestine, and in particular now —

MICHAEL CASEY: It’s a very strong sentiment —

NERMEEN SHAIKH: — in the wake of the war, the assault on Gaza?

MICHAEL CASEY: It’s a very strong sentiment within the department. I’ve had many people reach out to me saying they support what I did, they’re glad I’m speaking out, essentially giving them a voice to their concerns that they have, and a lot of people who have told me they would be right behind me if it weren’t for their own personal circumstances that they can’t resign, which I fully respect in that. So, it’s definitely a common sentiment, especially at the lower levels within the department. It was always surprising. Everyone that I talked to, everyone I interacted with, it seemed like everyone felt the same. Yet, somehow, like Stacy mentioned, when the information goes up to a higher level, the decision that comes back down is completely the opposite of what everyone has put forward.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re talking about Tony Blinken, you’re talking about the secretary of state, when you say when it goes up to a higher level, or the people around him. How much contact did you have, or was there any discussion that you had or others you know had, with him? For example, Gilbert’s saying they changed the results of their report, when saying everyone knew Israel was stopping humanitarian aid from getting in, and yet that was changed.

MICHAEL CASEY: That’s never been fully clear. Where does that decision happen in the department once it goes above maybe the assistant secretary level? Where are those changes made? Who makes those final decisions? That, I don’t know. I don’t have full clarity on that.

I did have interactions with Secretary Blinken when he would come to visit. You know, I arranged some of his meetings. I sat in some of his meetings as a notetaker when he met with President Abbas and others. And out of all the decision-makers at the top, the secretary of state was one of the most disappointing ones, because he seemed to be an individual who’s very smart, understood the conflict, had a level of empathy. You know, when we got our local staff out of Gaza, he called each of them to check in on them. So, he seemed to have a level of empathy and understanding of the situation, yet he’s backing these decisions at the higher level. So, out of all the people at the top that are involved in this, he was one of the most disappointing to me personally.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Mike, could you talk about what — within the State Department, what the response has been to these protests? After you resigned, you and three others got an award for constructive dissent from the American Foreign Service Association for a cable you wrote about Gaza. Could you explain what was in that cable? What is a dissent cable?

MICHAEL CASEY: So, a dissent cable is a special channel where you can write a report saying “I disagree” with whatever policy we’re working on. You can’t put that sort of information in standard reporting, but you can put it in the dissent channel, which stays very protected. It goes up to the higher levels of the State Department. They do read and they do respond to it and address those issues.

When we won the award, we actually had to look back at our dissent cables, because we wrote more than one, to figure out which one they were talking about in particular. A lot of the details, I don’t want to get into, for sort of reasons of classification. The overall question was that we need to do more to evacuate people from Gaza. You know, we evacuated American citizens out of Gaza, but then we just stopped. And we were not evacuating people who we had worked with over the years, people that had been contacts of ours, people we’d sent on exchange programs, people we had invested in, people who were the future of Gaza, that really need to be helped and protected, not just for humanitarian reasons, but really for what’s going to happen in Gaza in the future. And so, we basically wrote a dissent cable about that, which obviously didn’t change the policies there, particularly after Rafah was shut down.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Mike Casey, can you talk about the last straw for you? You were in Jerusalem, one of the top State Department officials there, when the National Security Council said they should just back what Israelis want for post-conflict Gaza. Explain what you understand that is and why you left.

MICHAEL CASEY: So, that was one area, as things were moving forward in Gaza, that I stayed a little bit longer, thinking this is one area where maybe we can make a positive impact, is really laying out what needs to happen in the future in Gaza. And we laid out a plan that involved the humanitarian aspects of it, security aspects of it, governance aspects of it, what needs to happen in terms of connecting Gaza with the rest of Palestine, you know, inserting a credible Palestinian government at the governor, ministerial and local level, and integrating it, creating a second state, two-state solution — everything like that that would fit within our goals and what’s best for Gaza. And the response was, “Well, the Israelis have a different plan, and we’re just going to go with that.” And the current plan is —

AMY GOODMAN: And that plan is?

MICHAEL CASEY: — the idea of — the current plan, as I understand it, was having local families — they use the term “clans” — to run things in Gaza. And we wrote reports about why that’s not feasible, it’s not going to work, and that the reason the Israelis support that plan is because it will lead to chaos and conflict in Gaza, which is their goal in what is happening there. It’s not our goal. It shouldn’t be. And it’s not a feasible plan. And I’ve talked to contacts of mine in Cairo who’ve said, even just a couple weeks ago, people from Washington were still reaching out to them and asking about this plan. So, it seems we’re still pursuing it, even though we know it’s not feasible and it’s not right.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Mike, finally, as we end, if you could talk about what your concerns are about the incoming Trump administration with respect to U.S. policy on Palestine? He said earlier this month that if the Israeli hostages are not returned by Inauguration Day — that is, January 20th — quote, “all hell is going to break out.”

MICHAEL CASEY: And unfortunately, I’m not optimistic about an incoming administration. I fear they’re going to basically pick up where they left off in terms of where the Israeli government was planning to formally announce or annex settlements in the West Bank and other destructive policies which are not only terrible for Palestinians, but also very difficult to reverse in a future administration. And so, I fear they’re going to pick up where they left off. I feel Israel is going to be given even more of a blank check than they have under the Biden administration, and that there will be steps taken, like annexation of certain areas, that the Trump administration doesn’t understand the impact of those, because they don’t analyze them very carefully and simply just accept whatever Israel wants them to do, even more so than the Biden administration.

But if I were to give them advice, I would tell them to really focus on having a policy on Palestine, not just viewing it through the lens of Israel and what Israel wants, but what’s good for Palestinians, what’s best for our own interests there. If we want a two-state solution, we need to create a second state. We can’t just put “Palestine” in quotes in reports and pretend like it doesn’t exist. We need to create a political and economic, social, cultural entity that is Palestine, recognize the country, stop denying its existence at the United Nations and others, and really push forward policies such as a national election and different things like that, that are important for the Palestinian people, regardless of what the impact is on Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Casey, we want to thank you for being with us. Mike resigned from the State Department in July after a 15-year career in the Foreign Service. He was deputy political counselor at the United States Office for Palestinian Affairs in Jerusalem for four years before resigning in July over U.S. policy on Gaza.

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

Back in Syria After Exile, BBC Reporter Lina Sinjab on “Joy” & Calls for Prosecution, Reconciliation
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 26, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/26 ... transcript

"Assad's police threatened to bury me and my reporting. Now I'm back, and free"
We go to Damascus for an update on the state of affairs in Syria after the surprise collapse of the long-reigning Assad regime, with BBC Middle East correspondent Lina Sinjab. She is reporting in Syria for the first time in over a decade, after she was forced to flee the country in 2013. She relays the “sense of freedom and joy” now present on the streets of Damascus, where ordinary Syrians, for the first time in generations, “feel that they are liberated and they are proud of where they are today.” Current estimates put the number of forced disappearances under the Assad government at 300,000 likely tortured in prisons and buried in mass graves. We discuss Syria’s new transitional government, led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and whether it can fulfill its promises of inclusion and accountability for all Syrians. “There’s no way for peace and stability to happen in Syria without a prosecution, without a legal system that will hold those who have blood on their hands accountable, for the sake of reconciliation in the country,” says Sinjab.

Transcript

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

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to the latest developments in Syria in the wake of the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime earlier the month. On Wednesday, the first widespread demonstrations took place in cities across Syria after a widely shared video showed an attack on an Alawite shrine in the north. Syria’s new rulers said the video was old and had been shared to, quote, “stir up strife.” Al-Assad belonged to the Alawite sect.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as thousands of women rallied Monday in the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli demanding Syria’s new leaders respect women’s rights. They also condemned Turkish-backed attacks on Kurdish groups. Many of the protesters waved the green, yellow and red flags of Women’s Protection Units, an affiliate of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units militia that Turkey considers a terrorist organization.

HEMRIN ALI: [translated] Today, all women in the Jazira region, including Kurds, Arabs and Syriacs, are uniting their voices, saying yes to supporting the Women’s Protection Units, YPJ, yes to preserving the rights and gains of the women’s revolution in northern and eastern Syria. Today, we are safeguarding all the achievements of northern and eastern Syria by demanding freedom and rights for all women, without discrimination.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go now to Damascus, where we’re joined by Lina Sinjab, a Syrian journalist and BBC Middle East correspondent. She was the BBC Syria correspondent until 2013, when she was forced to flee Syria after threats from the Assad regime. She’s been reporting from Beirut for over a decade and returned to Syria earlier this month as the Assad regime was collapsing.

Lina, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you start off by just describing the scene in Damascus this week and also talk about what happened around Christmas?

LINA SINJAB: Well, I have to say that it’s been over two weeks since the toppling of Assad regime, and there’s still a sense of freedom and joy among many Syrians, whether here in the capital or elsewhere in the country. It’s a heavy burden that has been, you know, over the shoulders of Syrians for nearly five decades, and the last decade was the worst, as they faced detention, bombing and, you know, torture inside prison, disappearances. So, I think, you know, many Syrians are still in the overwhelmed feeling of freedom, feeling that they belong to the country, that they have a say in the country, and that they are able to contribute to the future of Syria.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Lina, if you could talk about your own experience as a Syrian? You returned after so many years away. And you said, when you crossed over — you were in Lebanon, and you came into Syria — you said upon your return, quote, “This is the first time ever in my life as a journalist that I am fearless.” So, could you elaborate on that?

LINA SINJAB: Well, I’ve been reporting on Syria for a long time. You know, I joined the BBC in the mid-2000s and continued reporting up until the time that I had to flee the country in 2013. And there was always the pressure of what to say, who to talk to, what permission you take, who’s the minder who’s going to accompany you whenever you’re reporting. You know, you always have these two minds: You want to maintain your integrity and impartiality as a journalist, tell the truth, but also try to find a way so that you’re not falling into the hands of the regime’s repression. And I’ve had many cases where I’ve been called in, I’ve been summoned, I’ve been grounded because of reports that I’ve done.

But when the uprising began, I just, like, felt there is no way of hiding the truth. I had to report on the peaceful protesters, on their peaceful demands. I had to report on the opening fire on protesters, on the detention, on the killing. And, you know, I was stopped several times by regime forces and different security forces, sometimes picked up from a park near my home, sometimes from the border, sometimes from a demonstration in the suburbs of Damascus. But I ended up in the last year, like, confined to my house. I wasn’t able to go out or report, you know, on the ground. I had to be constantly on the phone talking to people that I’ve trusted, I know for sure that they’re telling me the truth, and broadcast from my home. I was under country arrest. I wasn’t able to travel outside Syria. But I had, you know, tried my best so that I leave the country without violating any rules, because I didn’t want to provoke my right to come back.

However, you know, the threats continued even when I was outside. Several times, I was, like, put on the arrest list by different security police. And, you know, even if you are outside the country, you are always thinking of the ones you left behind, of family members, of friends who might get in trouble. People continue talking anonymously even when they are outside Syria, because they’re afraid about their freedom, their families, their safety.

So, that all is gone now. I feel for the first time we are in Syria, we don’t have worries about where to go, who to talk to. Actually, even if you walk on the streets, people come up to you, because they want to tell their stories. They want to share their stories. And one thing that is really incredible to see from my own eyes in my own country is, over the past years when I managed to bribe my way in and come here, I felt that this country has become dark and with heavy shoulder, that people have grown old with sadness and with poverty. Now there are big smiles on their faces. Their shoulders are upright. Their heads are up. They feel that, you know, they’re liberated and they’re proud of where they are today. And that’s a big difference.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Lina, I mean, in addition to this, you know, what you described, how Syrians are feeling this celebratory mood, there’s also a great deal of mourning for the hundreds of thousands who were disappeared or killed during Assad’s regime. So, if you could say a little bit about that, what you’ve learned about the missing, how many there are, and what’s been revealed of these mass graves, the prisons, the prison network, the vast prison network that Assad ran?

LINA SINJAB: You know, the detention haven’t started during Assad the son, but actually Assad the father. And there were many reports about former prisons, whether Palmyra or even Sednaya, in the old days of the father, where, you know, people were even killed using acid to melt their bodies. When the uprising began in 2011, protesters would pray for their families, to pray for them that they will get a bullet and get killed rather than get detained, because they know what detention means. And thousands of people disappeared over the years. You know, recently, the Syrian human rights organizations were talking about over 120,000 missing in Syrian prison, forcibly disappeared, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that over 60,000 were tortured to death inside prison. That’s all before prison cells were open to the public and some prisoners were released. At that point, a Syrian human rights organization came to the conclusion that yet another 80,000 or more have been tortured to death.

And then we came to the discovery of the mass graves, and many organizations who’ve been documenting and studying from satellite images the situation of the mass graves. They’re estimating that nearly 300,000 have been tortured to death. So, you know, the number of people who disappeared or tortured to death is really high in numbers. And that leaves many families, who were wanting answers and finding their beloved ones, in pain. And what they’re calling for now is justice. They want the criminals and those who have blood on their hands, who are those who participated in the killing and torture, to be prosecuted, so that they have a closure and they will be able to, you know, say a respectful payoff for their beloved ones.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Lina, if you could say — you know, there was the, in addition to the Alawite — the protests against the attack on the Alawite shrine, there were also reports of protests after a video went viral on social media of a Christmas tree that was burned. So, if you could respond to that? What’s known about that? And the fact that there’s speculation that there were foreigners who were responsible for setting that tree on fire? And who are the foreign fighters now in Syria? And where?

LINA SINJAB: Well, there are reports of some foreign fighters who joined the rebels who toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime. And, in fact, the HTS, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, who is in charge now — it’s the leading force now — they rushed to the scene when the Christmas tree was set on fire, tried to put it down and reassure the families and the Christians who wanted to celebrate that it will be repaired immediately and perpetrators will be arrested. And, in fact, they did come back and say that they’ve arrested them and that they are foreign fighters. And this is a big issue and big challenge, because, you know, nobody wants to see foreign fighters here in Syria.

However, what happened with the Alawite community is a different story. When rebels advanced in Aleppo in November, it seems that there was also an attack on the Alawite shrine. But there were reconciliations soon after. Suddenly, the videos were released again yesterday, and religious figures from the Alawite community urged people to protest, while at the same time there was an ambush against HTS security, who were trying to arrest former members of Assad’s regime who refused to give up their arms. And actually, they shot at HTS and killed 14 members of them. So, that happened as the protests also were taking place.

But the protests, it seems that, you know, calling for these protests, it had a different agenda behind it, because the Alawite community are worried about prosecution. Most of the Alawite community are supportive of President Assad, or former President Assad, and they had contributed or been part of the crackdown, the brutal crackdown, on the Syrians’ arrests, torture in prison and killing. So, they will be prosecuted. And that’s why they are, you know, out and about, trying to put pressure so there will be a general amnesty on the Alawite community.

This is something that is impossible to happen, because the families of those who died in prison, the families of those who were bombed and tortured to death or disappeared, they need justice. They need answers about what happened to their family members. And there is no way for peace and stability to happen in Syria without, you know, a prosecution, without a legal system that will hold those who have blood on their hands accountable for the sake of reconciliation in the country.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about the other protest this week. On Monday, thousands of women gathered to protest to demand that HTS, the new Islamist rulers, respect women’s rights. They also condemned attacks on Kurdish-led regions in the north of Syria. But talk about women and what they want, as HTS talks about an inclusive government.

LINA SINJAB: Yes, I think they have made their agenda clear, that they want an inclusive government, that they will protect the rights of minorities and the rights of women. And I have to say — you know, I’m here in the center of Damascus — life is just like normal. I mean, I don’t need to worry about wearing hijab. Or even like people — it was Christmas. They were celebrating in parties. They were drinking alcohol. And some HTS members, they were even seen in some of the parties celebrating with other people, while many of them were also protecting, you know, Christian neighborhoods, so that people, Christians, feel safe to have the Christmas Mass and celebrate Christmas, as well.

So, I think, you know, that’s something that is unnegotiable about women’s rights, about minorities’ rights. There are debates about — you know, there’s this transitional government because it’s all one-colored government, mainly from the Islamists, mainly men, who are in charge. So, that’s also raising some concerns. But civil society is really active. Many initiatives are out, talking about involvement in the framing the future of Syria, in writing the constitution, about participation of all the Syrian society into that. And actually, just two days ago, the leadership announced that almost all of the rebel factions dismantled will join the Syrian Army. And that’s something also very good, because that means that there won’t be any internal fighting for power, but they are all under one ministry and one army.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Lina, finally, as we end, if you could also say, you know, what your concerns are about the different foreign forms of intervention into Syria, from the presence of Iran-backed groups, Turkey, and, of course, these systematic Israeli military airstrikes on Syria?

LINA SINJAB: I think Syria have suffered for more than a decade of different regional powers, you know, deciding for on behalf of Syrians and, you know, having sovereignty over Syrian territories. Mainly, we’re talking about Iran, Hezbollah and the Russians, as well. You know, in the north, we’ve seen also Turkey supporting some Syrian-backed — Syrian forces, as well. And Israel has violated almost every right of sovereignty and, especially after the toppling of Assad, almost destroyed all the defense forces inside Syria. So, all of these are violations.

And really, as a Syrian, I feel that this is a golden opportunity for Syrians to work together to build the country together without any interference from foreign forces. But I have to say, the most feared one among people here is Iran and its affiliated militia, whether in Iraq or in Lebanon, from Hezbollah or the Shia militias in Iraq. They’re worried about them interfering in the society, causing disruption and causing instability, especially that many of the Alawites and the Shia in Syria have always been affiliated to foreign powers, like in Iran, and they are worried that this is going to continue.

AMY GOODMAN: Lina Sinjab, we thank you so much for being with us, Syrian journalist, BBC Middle East correspondent, speaking to us from Damascus, now back in the capital of Syria. She was the BBC Syria correspondent ’til 2013, when she was forced to flee Syria after threats from the Assad regime.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim

Postby admin » Wed Jan 08, 2025 10:56 pm

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 27, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/27/headlines

Israel Forces Evacuation of Northern Gaza Hospital After Attack That Killed 50
Dec 27, 2024

In northern Gaza, the director of the besieged Kamal Adwan Hospital says five medical workers were among 50 people killed in Israeli strikes near the hospital. Israeli forces have since stormed the hospital and forced out 350 people at gunpoint, including about 75 remaining patients. Parts of the hospital were seen in flames. Kamal Adwan was one of the only medical facilities still operating in northern Gaza. The five medical workers killed were pediatrician Dr. Ahmed Samour, laboratory specialist Israa Abu Zaida, paramedics Abdul Majeed Abu Al-Aish and Maher Al-Ajrami, and maintenance specialist Fares Al-Hudali.

Elsewhere, a fourth Palestinian infant has reportedly died due to an extreme cold snap in Gaza. And overnight, dozens of people were killed or left missing under the rubble of their homes after Israel bombed residential buildings in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City. Civil defense workers said the strikes killed civilians in their own homes.

Mahmoud Basla: “Fifteen martyrs have arrived at the Al-Ahli Hospital, and there are more than 40 civilians still remaining underneath the rubble, according to the family. There was also the targeting of the Isleem family, and five people were martyred, as well as the targeting of the Harrara family and the martyrdom of an entire family. It was truly a bloody night for civilians. And the question continues as to why these homes are being bombed.”

Watchdog Finds 75,000 in Gaza at Risk of Famine, Buries Report After U.S. Ambassador to Israel Objects
Dec 27, 2024

A top famine watchdog organization says it withdrew a new report this week warning up to 75,000 Palestinians in northern Gaza are at risk of famine and are unable to evacuate. The report by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network appeared on the organization’s website but was removed after U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jacob Lew criticized the report’s findings, calling its figures “outdated and inaccurate” — though he did not provide evidence. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network is funded by USAID, the U.S. government agency overseeing foreign aid.

Israel Bombs Yemeni Capital and Port City of Hodeidah, Killing 6 and Wounding Dozens
Dec 27, 2024

In Yemen, at least six people were killed and dozens more wounded Thursday when Israel bombed the capital Sana’a and the western city of Hodeidah. One of the strikes triggered panic at Sana’a International Airport, where at least three people were killed and 30 others injured. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was just meters away from the blast, preparing to board a flight out of Sana’a as part of a high-level U.N. delegation. Dr. Tedros was not wounded, but the bombing did injure one of the U.N. plane’s crew members. Yemen’s Houthis said they would respond to the attack by meeting “escalation with escalation.” Overnight, the Houthis claimed attacks on Tel Aviv, including Ben Gurion Airport as well as a ship in the Arabian Sea.

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Gideon Levy on Israel’s “Moral Blindness”: Gaza Babies Freeze; Strikes Kill Medical Workers, Reporters
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
December 27, 2024

In northern Gaza, the director of the besieged Kamal Adwan Hospital says five medical workers were among 50 people killed in Israeli strikes near the hospital. Israeli forces then stormed the hospital and forced hundreds, including patients, into the streets. This all comes as The New York Times has confirmed past reporting by +972 Magazine that on October 7, 2023, Israel loosened military rules meant to protect noncombatants in Gaza. Award-winning Israeli journalist Gideon Levy decries the moral decay of Israel, which has gone so far as to open a luxurious rest area for soldiers in northern Gaza: “It’s the same moral blindness to what’s going on around you.” Levy also discusses his latest piece, headlined “The IDF’s Own Sickening 'Zone of Interest' in the Heart of Gaza.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Israel. The New York Times has confirmed past reporting by +972 Magazine that on October 7th, 2023, Israel loosened military rules meant to protect noncombatants and gave soldiers, quote, “the authority to strike thousands of militants and military sites that had never been a priority in previous wars in Gaza,” unquote. The Times reports the order meant, quote, “the military could target rank-and-file militants as they were at home surrounded by relatives and neighbors, instead of only when they were alone outside,” unquote.

This comes as the head of Gaza’s health agency says he’s lost contact with Kamal Adwan Hospital and at least 50 people have been killed, including five medical staff, in an Israeli airstrike on a building near the hospital in northern Gaza.

Meanwhile, in central Gaza, Palestinians attended the funeral of five journalists killed in an Israeli strike near Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat. They worked for the Al-Quds Today channel and were in a van clearly marked “press.”

MOURNER: [translated] These journalists, what’s their fault? You target them just because they report the news? Just because they document your crimes? Why do you attack and target them? God is my witness, and he is the best disposer of affairs. Ayman was waiting for his first child to be born. His wife was still in labor, hadn’t delivered yet. He was hoping to see his first born, but he didn’t make it. He was martyred before he ever got to see his son.

AMY GOODMAN: Also in Gaza, health officials report the fourth infant child in 72 hours has died due to the cold temperatures.

For more, we go to Tel Aviv, where we’re joined by Gideon Levy, award-winning Israeli journalist, author, columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, member of its editorial board. His new article is headlined “The IDF’s Own Sickening 'Zone of Interest' in the Heart of Gaza.” Levy’s latest book is titled The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe.

Gideon, welcome back to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with the killing of the five journalists in a clearly marked van that said “press.” They were outside of Al-Awda Hospital. One of the journalists was waiting for the birth of his first child, his wife inside in labor.

GIDEON LEVY: Nothing will make Israel to admit that they were journalists. The IDF already claims that they were all terrorists presenting themselves as journalists. You never know nothing. The fact is that this mass killing is going on even now when you understand there is no purpose whatsoever except of killing more Palestinians. This war should have ended a long time ago, and Israel continues and continues, really now without any purpose except of mass killing — killing and killing and killing for the sake of killing. And this car of those five journalists is just one example of so many.

AMY GOODMAN: And the death of another child of hypothermia, dying of the cold in Gaza during this cold snap, Gideon?

GIDEON LEVY: I am much more worried, Amy, about the cold wind which blows from Israel, because those stories are hardly published here, and if they are published, they don’t touch anyone. Look what happened to us. Really, frozen babies, even this doesn’t touch anybody. Nobody talks about it. Nobody really seems to care about it. You will hear all kind of justifications, except of one, that Israel is continuing to commit crimes.

AMY GOODMAN: Gideon, your last piece is about what you’re describing as a “zone of interest” in Gaza. I wanted to go to the original Oscar-winning film of Jonathan Glazer and play the trailer.

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

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

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

AMY GOODMAN: So, The Zone of Interest is an Oscar-winning film about the commandant’s own home that shares the wall with Auschwitz, but the film never goes into Auschwitz. It just stays in this kind of paradise. During the Oscars ceremony earlier this year, the filmmaker Jonathan Glazer condemned the Israeli occupation after his film, Zone of Interest, won for best international film. This is what he said.

JONATHAN GLAZER: Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It’s shaped all of our past and present. Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of October the — whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization. How do we resist?

AMY GOODMAN: So, he already talked about the relevance of the concentration camps and World War II to what is happening today in Gaza. Gideon Levy, if you can share your thesis in your latest piece, “The IDF’s Own Sickening 'Zone of Interest' in the Heart of Gaza.”

GIDEON LEVY: Yes, and it’s very unfortunate, but you can’t help it. The IDF opened a resort place in the northern part of Gaza for the soldiers to come to have some good time, to refresh themselves from the battles, to rest a little bit. They’re offering them massages and very good meals and all kind of other benefits, just to let them rest. That’s fine with me. I mean, the soldiers deserve some rest. But I couldn’t help the comparison — not that there is extermination camps in Gaza, by all means not, but this lack of sensibility when Gaza is starving. When I talk to friends in Gaza who are fighting over a glass of water or a piece of bread, to open a resort place which offers steaks and barbecue and all kind of other delicatesses to the soldiers, I mean, how lack of sensitivity can still take us. You know, also in Tel Aviv, we continue our lives while Gaza is starving, and I feel very bad about it. But to do it in the middle of the Gaza Strip, when it’s all surrounded by death and starvation and rubbles and destruction, to open a resort place for soldiers with all kind of funs offered them, I couldn’t live with it, and I couldn’t help the comparison to The Interest Zone, to this unforgettable film. Yes, it is the same. It’s the same blindness. It’s the same moral blindness to what’s going on around you.

AMY GOODMAN: “The Israel Defense Forces has built a holiday village on the Gaza coast. Sgt. Yaron Rabinovich ate some churritos and steak … earlier this week. In an adjacent room there’s a physiotherapist who gave a soldier a pleasant massage. The village is surrounded by lawns of synthetic grass, cushions for sprawling in every corner. [A] soldier … enjoying a cappuccino, while another has a glass of XL with ice cubes.” Where exactly is this area in Gaza?

GIDEON LEVY: Well, it’s in the northern part of Gaza on the beach. As you know, Amy, Gaza is very small. And when we speak about any location in Gaza, it’s next to any catastrophe area. I guess that it’s not far away from the refugee camp which was destructed more than any other refugee camp, namely Jabaliya, which 100,000 people had to leave by force by Israel. Let’s remember also who are those 100,000 people. Those are sons and grandsons and grandsons of refugees from the former catastrophe of the Palestinian people in ’48.

So, to open this resort place, to open this fun village for soldiers on the ruins of Palestinian life or on the ruins of any kind of human reality, is really — I mean, it’s really about how it looks more than how it is, because, I repeat again, I live in Tel Aviv, which is one hour away from this location, and my life is quite normal, and I don’t feel good about it, but I continue my life. And still, to do it in the middle of the catastrophe shows how blind morally is Israel and its army.

AMY GOODMAN: And sticking with this theme of Auschwitz, the piece you wrote just before your latest, “From Auschwitz to Gaza, With a Stopover in The Hague.” A few weeks ago, Yoav Gallant, the former defense minister, visited with top-level Biden administration officials in Washington, D.C. He was not worried about being arrested, even though the ICC issued an arrest warrant for him and Prime Minister Netanyahu. You write in your piece, “Benjamin Netanyahu will not travel to Poland next month for the main ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, over concern that he could be arrested on the basis of the warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.” Explain.

GIDEON LEVY: So, it’s again, Amy, the irony of history. The German chancellor, I guess, will attend this ceremony, like every year. Others will attend this ceremony. And the prime minister of Israel, the state which was established on the ashes of the victims of the Holocaust, cannot travel there because he is wanted for war crimes. Do I have to add anything more than this? I mean, again, in Israel, when we live in such denial, nobody cares much about it. But when you think about the meaning of it, the German chancellor is free to travel there, is totally free of any charges, nothing, and the Israeli prime minister, after this horrible year in which Israel killed and destructed in an unbelievably unprecedented way, is wanted and cannot get to the ceremony. I can’t think about a more symbolic way to show what long and tragic way did Israel go ever since it was established, until this moment that the head of the Israeli state, the Jewish state, so-called, which was built on the ashes of my grandparents, cannot go there because he’s wanted as a criminal of war.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, Gideon, there’s another piece in Haaretz, not by you. It’s by a psychologist named Yoel Elizur. It’s headlined “'When You Leave Israel and Enter Gaza, You Are God': Inside the Minds of IDF Soldiers Who Commit War Crimes.” And it talks about the psychological stress of Israeli soldiers, revealed testimonies like this: “I felt like a Nazi. It looked exactly like we were actually the Nazis and they were the Jews.” Can you comment on this and the whole issue of Israeli war crimes, and if you see this ending anytime in the future as this back-and-forth goes on around a ceasefire? We just have a minute.

GIDEON LEVY: So, in a minute, I will say that Israeli soldiers, ever since the occupation started, act like gods and feel like gods, because they can easily decide about life and death of anyone who stands in front of them. It is so in the West Bank, in the occupied West Bank. And it’s in much more horrible a scale in Gaza. They really play with the lives of people like gods.

And this will scratch their personality and their morality forever, because the easy way that they are killing — and you just mentioned The New York Times investigation about the first days of this terrible war — the easy way that they are shooting and killing anyone in Gaza, like gods who decide very easily who will live, who will not live, without any explanation. This isn’t — I mean, obviously, Gaza is the biggest, biggest victim of all this. But I also think about the society which will develop here in Israel with those soldiers coming back home, remembering what they have done for all those months in Gaza, remembering how they reacted without any moral borders. This will be a damage for a very, very long period of time.

AMY GOODMAN: Gideon Levy, we want to thank you for being with us, award-winning Israeli journalist, author, columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, a member of its editorial board. We’ll link to your pieces, “The IDF’s Own Sickening 'Zone of Interest' in the Heart of Gaza.” Levy’s latest book, The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim

Postby admin » Wed Jan 08, 2025 11:45 pm

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocacyNow
December 30, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/30/headlines

Sixth Palestinian Child Dies of Hypothermia in Gaza as Israel Continues Unrelenting Attacks
Dec 30, 2024

In Gaza, a 1-month-old baby named Ali al-Batran has died from hypothermia in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. The baby’s death from bitter cold temperatures faced by Palestinians displaced by more than a year of Israeli attacks came just one day after the infant’s twin brother, Jumaa al-Batran, also succumbed to hypothermia. They were the fifth and sixth Palestinian babies to die of exposure this week, as Israeli forces continue their withering assault.

At least 27 Palestinians were killed and 149 wounded in the latest 24-hour reporting period, bringing the official death toll from Israel’s nearly 16-month assault to more than 45,500, though that’s likely a vast undercount.

On Sunday, an Israeli attack on the upper floor of al-Wafa Hospital in Gaza City killed at least seven people and wounded several others. The nearby Ahli Hospital was also damaged from artillery fire.

Meanwhile, CNN reports Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, is being held at Sde Teiman, an infamous Israeli military base in the Negev Desert that doubles as a prison where Palestinians have been tortured. On Friday, Dr. Safiya was arrested as Israeli troops stormed Kamal Adwan, northern Gaza’s last major functioning hospital, setting the facility on fire and forcing staff and patients outside at gunpoint. This is Faris al-Afaneh, a patient who survived the ordeal.

Faris al-Afaneh: “At around 4 a.m., the army came into Kamal Adwan Hospital and asked all the medical staff, the patients and all the people accompanying them to go out into the courtyard. And then they sorted everyone, the medical teams in one group, the patients in another. Then they got ambulances to get us and sent us through the main gates. … We were taken for interrogation at around 3 p.m. They stripped us naked and left us there until sunset, with no one to aid us. We were left in the dust. And then one soldier would come around every once in a while and would curse at us and spit on us. It was very ugly.”

Family Blames Palestinian Security Forces for Killing of West Bank Journalist Shatha al-Sabbagh
Dec 30, 2024

In the occupied West Bank, 22-year-old Palestinian journalist Shatha al-Sabbagh was fatally shot in the head late Saturday near her home in Jenin. Her family said she was walking with her mother in a well-lit neighborhood and carrying young children when she was shot by a sniper with the Palestinian security forces. There was reportedly no fighting nearby at the time of her death. The Palestinian Authority denied the claim and instead blamed Israeli forces for the killing. Sabbagh had been active in documenting the Palestinian Authority’s crackdown on armed groups fighting the Israeli occupation.

Syria’s De Facto Leader Says It Could Take Four Years to Organize Elections
Dec 30, 2024

The leader of the armed groups who toppled longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad says it could take as long as four years for Syria to hold elections. Ahmed al-Sharaa made the comments in an interview with the Saudi Al Arabiya network, saying it will take time to organize a new census, and up to three years to draft a new constitution. Al-Sharaa also said his paramilitary group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham would soon be dissolved.

Elsewhere, civil defense groups say 11 people were killed — most of them civilians — after an Israeli airstrike triggered a massive blast at a weapons depot near the Syrian capital Damascus. This follows dozens of Israeli airstrikes on Syria’s military infrastructure in recent weeks.

Israelis Hold Nationwide Rallies to Demand Gaza Ceasefire Deal and Netanyahu Resignation
Dec 30, 2024

Thousands of Israelis rallied in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and other cities on Saturday night, demanding a ceasefire deal to release the remaining hostages held in Gaza and calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to step down. Families accused Netanyahu of sabotaging a hostage release deal so that he could remain in power. The protests came a day before Netanyahu underwent successful surgery to have his prostate removed. Critics noted Netanyahu received anesthesia during his surgery — something that’s frequently inaccessible to Palestinians. An International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Netanyahu for crimes against humanity cites, among other things, Israel’s blockade of anesthetics and anesthesia machines from entering Gaza.

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“A Genocidal Project”: Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah on Israel’s Destruction of Gaza Health System
by Amy Goodman
DemocacyNow
December 30, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/30 ... transcript

Gaza’s Health Ministry has confirmed that close to 46,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s ongoing assault, but Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah estimates the true number is closer to 300,000. “This is literally and mathematically a genocidal project,” says Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon who worked in Gaza for over a month treating patients at both Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli Baptist hospitals. Israel continues to attack what remains of the besieged territory’s medical infrastructure. On Sunday, an Israeli attack on the upper floor of al-Wafa Hospital in Gaza City killed at least seven people and wounded several others. On Friday, Israeli troops stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, northern Gaza’s last major functioning hospital, and set the facility on fire. Many staff and patients were reportedly forced to go outside and strip in winter weather. The director of Kamal Adwan, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, was arrested, and his whereabouts remain unknown. “It’s been obvious from the beginning that Israel has been wiping out a whole generation of health professionals in Gaza as a way of increasing the genocidal death toll but also of permanently making Gaza uninhabitable,” says Abu-Sittah. “On the 7th of October, the Israelis crossed that genocidal Rubicon that settler-colonial projects cross.”

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today’s show in Gaza, where a sixth baby has died from severe cold as the death toll tops 45,500 and Israel’s assault on medical infrastructure continues in the besieged territory. On Sunday, an Israeli attack on the upper floor of al-Wafa Hospital in Gaza City killed at least seven people and wounded several others.

On Friday, Israeli troops stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, northern Gaza’s last major functioning hospital. The director of Kamal Adwan, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, was arrested, and his whereabouts remain unknown. Many staff and patients were reportedly forced to go outside and strip in winter weather. This is nurse Waleed al-Boudi describing Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s arrest.

WALEED AL-BOUDI: [translated] Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was arrested from Al-Fakhoura School after he had stayed with us and refused to leave. Even though they told him to and that he was free to go, he told them that he won’t leave his medical staff. He took all of us and wanted to get us out at night. But they yelled at him and arrested him, a man of great humanity. We appeal to the entire world, all of the world, all the human rights organizations to stand by Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the great man, the man who planted, within us and within our hearts, patience so we can persevere in our steadfast north. I swear we wouldn’t have left, but by force. We cried blood on the doors of Kamal Adwan Hospital when we were forced out by the occupation army.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: A person who was with Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya shared testimony that, quote, “The Israeli forces whipped Dr. Hussam using an electrical wire found in the street after forcing him and others from the medical staff to remove their clothes,” unquote.

This is Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya in one of his final interviews before being detained, produced by Sotouries.

DR. HUSSAM ABU SAFIYA: [translated] I always say the situation requires one to stand by our people’s side and not run away from it. Gaza is our homeland, our mother, our beloved and everything to us. Gaza deserves all of this steadfastness and deserves all of the sacrifices. It is not just about Gaza, but we deserve to be a people that deserves freedom just like every other people on Earth. I think the occupation wants us to get out and for us to ask them to get us out, so they can publicly say that the healthcare system is the one asking to leave and that it wasn’t them who asked us to, but we are aware of that. But we will not leave, God willing, from this place, as I said, for as long as there are humanitarian services to be provided to our people in the northern Gaza Strip.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya in one of his last interviews before Israeli forces arrested him Friday in a raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital along with at least 240 others in a raid which left the hospital nonoperational.

Israel’s military alleged that Hamas militants were using Kamal Adwan Hospital. The World Health Organization is calling on Israel to end its attacks on Gaza hospitals. Earlier today, the World Health Organization’s chief, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, said, quote, “People in Gaza need access to health care. Humanitarians need access to provide health aid. Ceasefire!” Last week, World Health Organization spokesperson Dr. Margaret Harris was asked on Channel 4 News whether there is any evidence of the Israeli claim that the hospital is a Hamas stronghold.

DR. MARGARET HARRIS: So, whenever we send a mission, we go and we look at the health situation. Now, I’ve not had at any point our healthcare teams come back and say that they’ve got any concerns beyond the healthcare, but I should say that what we do is look at what the health situation is and what needs to be done. But all we’ve ever seen going on in that hospital is healthcare.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, for more, we go to Cairo, Egypt.

AMY GOODMAN: Nermeen, thanks so much. I am here with a man who knew Dr. Abu Safiya well and is in constant contact with people on the ground in Gaza, particularly the medical professionals. Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah is with us here, British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon. He worked last year in Gaza for almost — for over a month with MSF, Médecins Sans Frontières — that’s Doctors Without Borders — in two hospitals. He worked at Al-Shifa, the main hospital in Gaza, as well as Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.

Welcome to Democracy Now! You’ve been in touch with family of Dr. Abu Safiya. If you can talk about where he is right now, believed to have been arrested by the Israeli military, and then the crisis just right now on the ground with the closing of Kamal Adwan and more?

DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, unfortunately, the family is afraid that he has been moved to the infamous Sde Teiman torture camp, an internment camp where, before him, Dr. Adnan al-Bursh was tortured, and tortured to death, Dr. Iyad Rantisi was tortured to death, where there is documented evidence of not just Israeli guards taking part in torture, but even Israeli doctors taking part in the torture of Palestinians. And so, that is the fear that not just the family has, but all of us have.

And what we’ve seen in this process, in this destruction, systematic destruction of the health system, with the total destruction of all of the hospitals in the north, so not just Kamal Adwan, before that, the Indonesian Hospital and Al-Awda Hospital, and, immediately after, the targeting of al-Wafa Hospital and then the targeting again of Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, which was the first hospital the Israelis targeted on the 17th of October. The targeting of al-Wafa Hospital was intended to kill medical students from Gaza’s Islamic University who were sitting in exam in that hospital. And luckily for them, the Israelis got the wrong floor. And then the targeting of Al-Ahli Hospital, which is now the last hospital functioning in that whole arbitrarily created northern part of Gaza, is a sign that the Israelis will now move towards the Ahli Hospital for destruction.

I just want to highlight there is research that is about to be published that shows that the chances of being killed as a nurse or a doctor in Gaza during this genocidal war is three-and-a-half times that of the general population. So it’s been obvious from the beginning that Israel has been wiping out a whole generation of health professionals in Gaza as a way of increasing the genocidal death toll but also of permanently making Gaza uninhabitable.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, you, of course, as we mentioned, as Amy mentioned in the introduction, you have worked in two Gaza hospitals. You’ve just talked a little bit about what’s recently — the recent Israeli attacks on medical infrastructure in Gaza, but if you could explain, just to give a sense of what’s happened overall since October 7th, 2023, if you could say the scale of the destruction of medical infrastructure, as well as the systematic attacks on medical personnel, as you said, this new research that’s coming out that shows that they’re three to four times more likely to be killed than the general population? So, if you could just say, begin from October 2023 to now?

DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, what happened on October the 12th is that the Israeli army started to call by phone medical directors of all of the hospitals, telling them that unless they evacuated the hospitals, the blood of the patients would be on their hands. And I remember that day I was with Dr. Ahmed Muhanna from Al-Awda Hospital, who’s still been arrested now for over a year, an anesthetist and a medical director, and he received a phone call from the Israeli army to tell him to evacuate Al-Awda Hospital.

Of course, we realized at that point that the destruction of the health system was going to be a prerequisite for the kind of ethnic cleansing that the Israelis wanted in Gaza. I was in Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital on the day of the 17th of October, when the Israelis bombed that hospital, killing over 480 patients. And then we had the whole narrative about Shifa Hospital, the siege of Shifa Hospital, the destruction of three pediatric hospitals in the north, and then the first attack on Shifa Hospital. And then, after that, 36 hospitals in Gaza have now been reduced to the three partially working hospitals in the south and only a remnant of Al-Ahli Hospital in the north. We have had over a thousand health workers — doctors, nurses, health professionals — killed, over 400 imprisoned, and then the destruction of the health infrastructure, the destruction of water and sewage, the use of water as a tool of collective punishment in order to create the public health catastrophe that exists in Gaza in terms of infectious diseases, and the intentional famine.

And so, at the moment, we have in Gaza what the doctors are referring to as the triad of death: hypothermia because of the winter, wounding because of the injuries, and malnutrition. And with the three, what happens is that people die of — at higher temperatures, people die of lesser injuries, because the coexistence of these three conditions means that the body is depleted of any physiological reserve. And so, that’s why we’re watching over seven kids in the last week die of hypothermia, an adult nurse die of hypothermia, not because the temperatures are subzero — the temperatures are just hovering above zero — but because they’re so malnourished and they’re injured and a lot of them have infectious diseases, and so they’re dying at the same time. Israel has created a genocidal machine that takes Palestinian lives beyond the injury, beyond the bombs, beyond the shrapnel. And so people are dying of infectious diseases. People are dying because of the health system has collapsed, and so their chronic diseases become medical emergencies. And people are dying from the famine and the malnutrition.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, in light of that, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, if you could comment on the fact that so many people now, an increasing number of people, are questioning this death toll of 45,500, over that number who have been killed in Gaza since or who have died in Gaza since October 2023? People are saying that is a vast undercount. From what you’re saying, that seems almost certain. If you could comment as a medical professional? You know, what do you think might be a more accurate figure?

DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, 45,000 are people whose bodies were taken to a Ministry of Health hospital, and they were taken by people who witnessed or who recognized them, and a death certificate was issued. This 45,000 excludes the tens of thousands who are still under the rubble, more so in the north, where the emergency services were targeted by the Israelis and so are now completely unable to function. And so, we see pictures of dogs eating bodies of those killed in the streets. And so, not only people under the rubble, people who have been killed and not reported, or their bodies have not been retrieved. When you drop 2,000-pound bombs, there’s very little of the human body that is left. And so there are people who literally pulverized by these bombs.

Then you have those whose chronic illnesses, once untreated, became deadly, so the kidney dialysis patients, the heart disease patients, the diabetics, who were no longer able to get treatment. It doesn’t take into account the women who are dying from maternal care, from obstetric injuries during delivery, because they’re delivering in makeshift hospitals, they’re delivering in the tents, and they’re malnourished when they give birth, and so them and their babies have a higher rate of maternal mortality, of infant mortality. And then you have those who are dying of infectious diseases, of the thousands who have hepatitis at the moment, of the polio, and those who are dying not immediately from their injuries but from the wounds that do not have access to healthcare to stop the infection setting in, and then, eventually, the infection becoming sepsis and killing them.

The number is closer to 300,000. This is around 10 to 12% of Gaza’s population. France, at the end of the Second World War, 4% of its population were killed. This is literally and mathematically a genocidal project. This is not a political term. This is a literal and mathematical term, where you want to eliminate the population and to ensure that whoever is left is incapable of becoming part of a society, because they’re tending to their wounds or they’ve been so severely debilitated by the injuries and the neglected injuries.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Abu-Sittah, you have asked, “How can a live-streamed genocide continue unhindered?” What is your response to that question right now?

DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: Right now with the arrest of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, where is the British Medical Association? Where is the American Medical Association? Where are the royal colleges? Where are the French Medical Association? Western medical institutions, their moral bankruptcy has become so astounding during this genocide. For them to become part of a genocidal enablement apparatus, for their silence and, in a lot of times, their collusion to silence those who speak out against the genocide, for me, as a health professional, you’re shocked at how completely empty of any moral value these medical associations have become, when they have become complicit in a televised genocide which targets doctors.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, I’m speaking to you here in Cairo. In May, Germany did not allow you in to speak. You are a British Palestinian doctor. Since you were in Gaza last year, you’ve been speaking out about what’s happening. Explain exactly what happened. I mean, Human Rights Watch and other groups were demanding that this ban be lifted. They banned you from where?

DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, I was invited to speak at a conference in Germany. I was stopped at Berlin Airport and was told that I’m banned from going into Germany for a month, and I was deported at the end of that day back to the U.K. A few months later, I had an invitation from the French Senate. When I arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport, I discovered that the Germans, a few days after they deported me, had put in a ban for the whole of the Schengen — and Schengen is the EU plus Norway, plus Sweden, plus Switzerland — using an administrative law so that they wouldn’t have to put it in front of the judge. We then were able to challenge that and have it overturned.

But at the same time, pro-Israel groups, like UK Lawyers for Israel, submitted multiple complaints against me with the General Medical Council to have my medical license removed, submitted complaints against me with the Charity Commission in the U.K. to have me banned for life from ever holding office in a U.K. registered charity.

This is what — this is why this genocide has continued unhindered and unchallenged for over 14 months. There are apparatus of genocide enablement that exists in the West, either through collusion or by actively targeting. Over 60 doctors in the U.K. have had complaints against them with the General Medical Council to have their medical licenses removed as a result of their support of the Palestinians during the genocide.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Dr. Abu-Sittah, Jimmy Carter died yesterday at the age of 100. He wrote the book in the 2000s, which is quite amazing, but after he was president, Palestine: Peace [Not] Apartheid. I’m going to rejoin Nermeen for the end of the show, an interview I did with him on that issue. But your thoughts on President Carter?

DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: The logic of the relationship between the Zionist colonialist movement and the Palestinian Indigenous population has always been that of elimination. At a certain point — and that’s unfortunately now behind us since the 7th of October — apartheid separation was the chosen method of elimination of the Palestinians. On the 7th of October, the Israelis crossed that genocidal Rubicon that settler-colonial projects cross. And once the genocidal Rubicon is crossed, the elimination of the Indigenous population by the settler-colonial project then purely becomes genocidal. Israel, even at the end of this genocidal war in Gaza, will not be able to deal with the Palestinians in a nongenocidal way. Once the settler-colonial project becomes genocidal, it cannot undo itself. We’ve seen that in North America with the killing of the children in Canada. We’ve seen that in Australia. We’ve seen that everywhere.

AMY GOODMAN: And Carter, again, as we just have 30 seconds, writing the book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid?

DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: Well, Carter had a historic opportunity to change the course of this struggle, had he insisted that part of the Camp David Accords was the creation of a Palestinian state. And no amount of recantation will ever change that missed opportunity. He could have forced on the Israeli government, and the first right-wing Israeli government at that point, under Begin — he could have forced the creation of a Palestinian state, but he failed to do that.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And finally, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, we just have 30 seconds. You just said that a genocidal settler-colonial project cannot undo itself. How do you see this ending, then?

DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: You see, the world has a choice, because surplus populations like the Palestinians, like refugees crossing the Mediterranean, like the poor people in the favelas and in the inner-city slums, these will either be dealt with through a genocidal project, as Israel has dealt with the Palestinians in Gaza — and this kind of response or this kind of template will become part of the military doctrine that is taught to armies across the world in dealing with these surplus populations.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, thank you so much for joining us, a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon who worked in Gaza as a volunteer with Doctors without Borders treating patients at both Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital. Amy will rejoin us for our last segment talking about her interview with former President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at age 100.

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

“Total Moral, Ethical Failure”: Holocaust Scholar Omer Bartov on Israel’s Genocide in Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocacyNow
December 30, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/30 ... transcript

Since October 7, 2023, Israel’s onslaught in Gaza has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians and injured more than 108,000. At the same time, Gaza officials continue to accuse Israel of deliberately blocking aid deliveries. Human rights organizations are condemning Israel for attacking Palestinian lifesaving infrastructure, including Gaza’s water supply and medical system. All of this has led to the world’s leading specialist on the subject of genocide to declare Israel is carrying out a combination of “genocidal actions, ethnic cleansing and annexation of the Gaza Strip.” Omer Bartov, an Israeli American professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, describes why he believes Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza right now. “There was actually a systematic attempt to make Gaza uninhabitable, as well as to destroy all institutions that make it possible for a group to sustain itself, not only physically but also culturally,” says Bartov, who warns impunity for Israel would endanger the entire edifice of international law. “This is a total moral, ethical failure by the very countries that claim to be the main protectors of civil rights, democracy, human rights around the world.”

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Nermeen Shaikh.

As 2024 winds down, new details from Gaza’s Health Ministry confirm more than 108,000 Palestinians have been injured in Israel’s onslaught since October 7th, 2023, and more than 45,500 killed — though the true toll is thought to be far higher. Meanwhile, Gaza’s officials continue to accuse Israel of deliberately blocking aid deliveries, and UNRWA has warned of a, quote, “approaching famine” in Gaza where residents face severe food insecurity.

This comes as thousands of Israelis protested against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government Saturday, demanding an end to the war in Gaza and a ceasefire that would bring home the hostages still held by Hamas.

Our next guest says Israel is carrying out a combination of, quote, “genocidal actions, ethnic cleansing and annexation of the Gaza Strip.” Omer Bartov is professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University. He’s an Israeli American scholar who’s been described by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as one of the world’s leading specialists on the subject of genocide. He was recently in Israel and just returned earlier this month.

Professor Bartov, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you could begin by explaining why you think now a genocide is occurring in Gaza?

OMER BARTOV: Yeah. Thank you for having me again. I just want to start by saying that I was listening to the interview with Dr. Abu-Sittah, and I’d just like to express my appreciation for all the work that he’s been doing and everything that he was saying in the previous segment.

I started, as you may know, already in November 2023, I published an op-ed in The New York Times where I wrote that I thought the IDF was carrying out what appeared to be war crimes and crimes against humanity, but I was not yet convinced that we had enough evidence that this was genocidal action. And my view changed really around May of 2024 with the decision of the IDF, despite opposition from the United States, to invade Rafah, the last area of the Gaza Strip that had not been taken over. There were about a million Palestinians there who had already been displaced several times, and the IDF displaced them one more time to the beach area, the Mawasi area, without any proper infrastructure at all, into tent cities along the beach, and then proceeded to demolish much of Rafah.

And it was at that point that I started looking back at the entire operation, starting with statements made at the very beginning, in October 7th, 8th, 9th, by Israeli leaders, political and military leaders with executive authority, who were saying that they wanted to flatten Gaza, destroy it, that there were no people who were uninvolved, and so forth. And it appeared at that point that there was actually a systematic attempt to make Gaza uninhabitable, as well as to destroy all institutions that make it possible for a group to sustain itself, not only physically but also culturally, its identity, its collective memory, which meant a systematic destruction of universities, of schools, of mosques, of museums and, of course, of housing and infrastructure. So, what you could see by then was that there was what we would call an urbicide, an attempt to destroy the urban centers, physically destroy them, a scholasticide — that is, killing of the members of the educational institutions, of schools, professors at universities, and so forth — so that the population, having been displaced many times and, as you heard before, vast numbers of them being killed, wounded and debilitated, would never be able to reconstitute itself as a group in that area. That’s the general drift of it.

Now, as of early October this year — that is, a year after the war began — the IDF started an operation in the northern part of Gaza, north of the so-called Netzarim Corridor, which is now not really a corridor — it’s like a box about five miles wide and five miles long — emptying that area north of that corridor entirely of its population. And this was a plan that was being sold by a retired Israeli general, Giora Eiland, on Israeli TV for months before. And the idea is to force the entire population out through military action and through starvation, through depriving the population of food and water. And much of the population has indeed been removed. This last attack on the hospital you were discussing earlier is one additional phase in this attempt to make this entire area empty of its population.

This has been called by the former Israeli chief of staff and minister of defense, who is himself a political hawk, on the Israeli media an operation of ethnic cleansing. But ethnic cleansing means that you move people from a place where you don’t want them, a particular ethnic group, to another place where they can be at least secure of those attacks. But, of course, in Gaza, when you move people from one place to another, to so-called safe zones, they are not safe there, and they do come increasingly and constantly again under attack. So, that’s what makes this so-called ethnic cleansing actually a part of a genocidal operation.

As for annexation, what we hear a lot now on the Israeli media is that as this northern third of Gaza is being flattened and emptied of its population, there are in fact settler groups waiting in the wings just across the fence to move in and to start settling that area, with an eye to occupying it entirely. And I don’t see — if they do that, once the army lets them in, I don’t see any mechanism in Israel itself or, frankly, internationally that would remove them from there. So, that would be the beginning of a creeping annexation and resettlement of Gaza as it is being emptied of its Palestinian population.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Professor Bartov, I want to ask about the enablers of this, as you say, genocide. In a Guardian piece last week headlined “A consensus is emerging: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Where is the action?” columnist Nesrine Malik condemns Western complicity in what’s occurring in Gaza, writing, quote, “The danger now is that Palestinians die twice, once in physical reality and second in a moral one where the powerful diminish the very standards that shape the world as we know it. By refusing even to accept the designations of genocide and ethnic cleansing, let alone act upon them, Israel’s allies force an adaptation on to the world after which it simply becomes accepted that rights are not bestowed by humanity, but by the parties who decide who is human.” So, that’s Nesrine Malik writing in The Guardian. Professor Bartov, could you respond to that? And in particular, a genocide, as you say, is occurring in Gaza. The genocide would not be possible without the complicity and direct involvement of Western powers, in particular the United States. So, in that sense, is the U.S. also, by association, guilty of committing genocide?

OMER BARTOV: Yes, look, I mean, I would begin by saying that, first and foremost, the population that is most responsible for what Israel is doing right now is the population of Israel and that there is a deep complicity of the Israeli population, including not only the government but opposition parties in Israel which are supporting the operation in Gaza. So, we can talk about that.

But, of course, Israel cannot and would not be able to continue its actions in Gaza without complete support, especially from the United States, also from European countries, Germany foremost, but also in many ways France and the U.K. The U.S. administration, under Biden, could have ended this war as early as November or December 2023, because Israel cannot conduct such operations on such a scale without constant assistance from the United States, first of all, by the vast amount of munitions that are going to Israel on a daily basis, tank and artillery shells, interceptor rockets. All of this is coming on a vast scale from the United States to the tune now of about $20 billion being paid by the American taxpayer. Had an American administration said to Netanyahu in December 2023, “You have to wrap this up, or you’re on your own,” he would have had to stop, because it would have simply been impossible. But instead, this was not done.

And the result of that is, obviously, first of all, the massive destruction of Gaza. Second, it means that the entire edifice of international law that was put into place in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust in order to prevent genocide ever happening again, through the Nuremberg tribunal, through the Genocide Convention of 1948, the Geneva Accords of 1949 and so forth, and now the Rome Statute more recently — all this apparatus has been shown as meaningless if a country like Israel, supported by its Western allies, can act with impunity. And the result of this is that all other rogue states in the world could now say, “Well, if Israel can get away with it, why should we not?” And so, in that sense, this is a total moral, ethical failure by the very countries that claim to be the main protectors of the civil rights, democracy, human rights around the world. And apart from the regional catastrophe that is happening right now, this has much larger ramifications for what we will see in the future.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Professor Bartov, so you just mentioned, of course, you were in Israel just earlier this month. You spoke to a large number of people there. What is their — what is your sense of how Gaza is being perceived? You know, is there criticism now, much wider and broader criticism, of Israel’s actions in Gaza than there was, say, earlier this year, in the summer, when you were there, or last year?

OMER BARTOV: So, yeah, I was in Israel in June 2024. And at the time, when I spoke with people and even mentioned what was going on in Gaza — and most of the people I speak with are mainstream liberal, left-leaning — there was huge reluctance to even speak about it. People were completely caught up with the sense of trauma and pain following the October 7th Hamas attack, which killed about 900 civilians, as well as several hundred soldiers.

When I was visiting Israel this time, just earlier this month, I had a sense that more people were aware of what was happening in Gaza — not because of Israeli TV, which is still entirely blocking out, voluntarily, any real reports from Gaza. All these reports are filtered through what the army — the information given them by the army. But there have been newspaper reports. There have been a lot of social media reports. So, more people, I think, are aware now of what is happening there.

But how are they responding to that? My sense is that there’s a growing sense of resignation, of despair, of hopelessness in those circles, that one would hope would be the main opposition to the policies of an extreme right-wing government.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Bartov, I’m so sorry that we’re out of time. We’re going to have to end it there. Professor Bartov, Omer Bartov, professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University. He’s an Israeli American scholar who has been described by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as one of the world’s leading specialists on the subject of genocide. We’ll be back in a minute.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim

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Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocacyNow
December 31, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/31/headlines

U.N. Warns 136 Israeli Attacks on Medical Centers Have Left Gaza Healthcare Near “Total Collapse”
Dec 31, 2024

The United Nations warns Israeli attacks on hospitals have left Gaza’s medical system on the brink of total collapse, with a catastrophic effect on Palestinians’ access to healthcare. The new report by the U.N. human rights office documents 136 Israeli attacks on 39 medical facilities. It was released just days after Israeli forces raided the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza last Friday, destroying much of the facility and arresting staff and patients at gunpoint. There are growing calls internationally for Israel to release the hospital’s director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, after he was abducted by Israeli forces and reportedly taken to a military detention camp with his leg badly injured. Amnesty International said on social media, “Hospitals and health workers are not targets. The international community, especially Israel’s allies, must act to bring an end to Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.” This comes as at least seven Palestinians, including six babies, living in displaced camps in Gaza have died from the cold, and relentless winter rain storms have flooded thousands of tents of forcibly displaced people. Sabreen Abu Shanab is a displaced mother of three struggling to keep her family warm and fed in a tattered tent encampment in Deir al-Balah.

Sabreen Abu Shanab: “It rained. And although it was mild and not heavy rain, look what happened to us! We were flooded. The wooden poles of the tent broke. We barely fixed them. The water seeped inside and into the mattresses and my children’s clothes. They were sleeping and soaked wet to their underwear. I swear, everything is soaked — the blankets, the pillows, everything.”

Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Warns Houthis to Halt Attacks or Face “Miserable Fate”
Dec 31, 2024

Israel’s military says it intercepted a missile fired toward Tel Aviv by Yemen’s Houthis late on Monday. The missile triggered air raid sirens and halted takeoffs and landings at Ben-Gurion Airport for about an hour. It was the fifth such attack by Houthis over the past week, coming just days after Israel bombed the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah and the capital Sana’a, killing at least six people and injuring dozens. Among those who narrowly survived the attack on Sana’a was Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, who was just meters away from a blast from an Israeli bomb dropped on the airport. On Monday, Dr. Tedros called on both the Houthis and the Israelis to stop their attacks.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: “The attack inflicted needless death, injury, panic, chaos and damage, and was another reminder of the growing threat faced by civilians, humanitarians and health workers in war zones around the world. This must stop.”

On Monday, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations delivered what he called a final warning to Yemen’s Houthis, saying they could soon “share the same miserable fate” as Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

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Veteran Israeli Negotiator Gershon Baskin: Netanyahu Remains Obstacle to Ceasefire Deal
by Amy Goodman
DemocacyNow
December 31, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/31 ... transcript

Gaza is entering its second winter under attack from Israel, and talks to reach a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas appear to have stalled yet again. For more on efforts to end the war and secure the release of captives on both sides, we speak with veteran Israeli negotiator Gershon Baskin, who has acted as a backchannel to Hamas leaders in the current and previous conflicts. “We need to put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the agenda again and make sure this is the last war we fight,” says Baskin.

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Nermeen Shaikh.

We turn now to Gaza, which is entering its second winter under Israel’s relentless war, and talks to reach a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas appear to have stalled. This comes as a new report by the Israeli Health Ministry is set to be submitted to the United Nations this week that alleges hostages held in Gaza have faced torture, including sexual and psychological abuse, starvation, burns and medical neglect. Meanwhile, the abuse and psychological torture of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons and camps are also a focus of international mediators working to secure a ceasefire that could include the release of thousands detained during and before the Gaza war began, in return for Israeli hostages. A new report by Reuters found that amid the push for a ceasefire, Palestinians released from Israeli jails bear mental and physical scars. This is former detainee and Palestinian bodybuilder Moazaz Obaiyat.

MOAZAZ OBAIYAT: [translated] Life in jail since October 7th is a life that no human on Earth can imagine in general, especially in the prison of Negev, which is like Guantánamo. It is a prison in the Negev Desert, down to the bottom of Palestine on the map. This prison is isolated from the world. The Israeli forces act in the most disgusting and tough torture on Earth against isolated detainees, handcuffed, hungry and ill.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, for more, we’re joined by Gershon Baskin, Middle East director of the International Communities Organization, a human rights advocacy group. For years, he’s been a backchannel negotiator with Hamas in ceasefire deals, including throughout Israel’s current war on Gaza and in 2011, when he helped negotiate the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity in exchange for the release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. His memoir is titled In Pursuit of Peace in Israel and Palestine.

Gershon Baskin, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you could begin by talking about the status of the talks right now and what you understand is holding up an agreement?

GERSHON BASKIN: Right. The status of the talks is that they have been speaking for months about the deal that was presented by President Biden in the end of May, a deal for a six-week ceasefire during which time about 30 or 32 Israeli hostages would be released in exchange for an agreed number of Palestinian prisoners. The belief is that the ceasefire would continue into a second six-week period, during which time more hostages would be released. But what we know is that the Israelis are demanding Hamas to present a list of hostages that they would release, including young people that Hamas wants to hold onto the second part of the deal or the final part of the deal, and the Israelis are insisting on that release.

From my talks with Israeli negotiators, what I understand is that there’s an expectation that in about three weeks from now, when President Trump enters the White House, there would be a deal, maybe because President Trump would tell Prime Minister Netanyahu that it’s time to make a deal. Until then, it’s quite evident that Netanyahu doesn’t want to make a comprehensive deal that would bring all the hostages home, because that would require Israel to end the war and to withdraw from Gaza, something that Netanyahu has said repeatedly that he’s not ready to do.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go to, you know, the comments that have been made about Netanyahu being the principal obstacle to an agreement, people who say that he has repeatedly sabotaged ceasefire negotiations and that he’s doing so precisely to save his political career. Earlier this month, as word was circulating that a ceasefire deal was imminent, Netanyahu told The Wall Street Journal, quote, “I’m not going to agree to end the war before we remove Hamas. We’re not going to leave them in power in Gaza, 30 miles from Tel Aviv. It’s not going to happen.” In response to his remarks, Israeli opposition minister Yair Lapid said in a radio interview, quote, “Netanyahu doesn’t want a deal because of his politics. He’s doing the same trick he’s done before; the negotiations are progressing and becoming possible — and then he goes to the foreign media and explains that he won’t stop the war and signals to Hamas that there’s no reason to make an agreement with him.”

Netanyahu has also been criticized by the families of hostages, who say he’s sacrificing their lives for his own political purposes. At a protest last weekend, a family member addressed his pleas directly to incoming U.S. President Donald Trump.

ZAHIRO-SHAHAR MOR: Mr. President, sir, you are the only one who can pressure Netanyahu. Please, do not agree to a partial deal. That is a death sentence to those who stay behind, and it will not bring an end to the war. Don’t allow Netanyahu to continue torpedoing the deal. The statements made by Netanyahu and his newly appointed Defense Minister Katz regarding retained Israeli military control over the Gaza Strip and continuing the war serve only the most extreme factions in Netanyahu’s government.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Gershon Baskin, if you could talk about the kind of pressure that’s being brought to bear on Netanyahu from within Israel itself to come to an agreement so that the hostages can be released and this brutal assault on Gaza ended?

GERSHON BASKIN: Well, you know, one of the chief negotiators told me months ago that Netanyahu here is the sole decision-maker on this issue. And this is quite clear. There’s very little that the families of hostages have been able to do. We’ve been participating in demonstrations every single week. There are demonstrations that take place every single day. But Netanyahu and his political machine have maneuvered the issue of the hostages to be politicized, so that there are people who believe that if you’re calling for a deal and ending the war, you’re in fact a traitor to Israel.

Here, the big problem is what happens to Gaza the day after the war, because I think that the vast majority of Palestinians, certainly in Gaza, don’t want to see Hamas in place, but there is no plan for what to do with Gaza when Israel would withdraw from the Gaza Strip. So we have a problem on both sides here. There needs to be a solution where Hamas would give up control of Gaza. They have said that they’re willing to give up control to a professional, technocratic civilian government, but there’s no one around who can seem to put the sides together, or at least the Palestinians amongst themselves together with the other Arab states, to come up with a plan for how this war ends, how Israel is forced to withdraw from Gaza, how the hostages are released, and how Palestinian prisoners are released. This is a big puzzle that needs some mastermind to put together. Maybe President Trump can do it, because he maybe is the only person in the world who can effectively apply pressure on Netanyahu.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Gershon, if we could talk about this, I mean, the role — what precisely will happen in Gaza after this war ends? Netanyahu is insisting that Hamas must go, but, as many have pointed out, Hamas is already effectively destroyed or very close to being destroyed as a military force. Its chief officers have been killed. Weapons stashes have been destroyed. Tunnels have been damaged in their bunkers. So, you know, all these things seem indisputably true. So what does it mean for Hamas to be further ousted? What? They should all leave Gaza? You know, it’s unclear what precisely that means. And I want to go to what, you know, the protester whose voice we played earlier, whom he was referring to, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, what he said or implied the role of the IDF would be following the end of the war — namely, that they would retain security control over Gaza.

ISRAEL KATZ: [translated] Security will remain in the hands of the IDF. IDF will be able to act in any way to remove threats, prevent tunneling, prevent terrorist infrastructure, prevent terrorist organization and attempts to harm the state of Israel or IDF soldiers. … It is clear what we saw in the area of the penetrating tunnels, what we saw in the area of threats. While we saw the heroic war that eliminated these capabilities, how will we make sure it will not happen again? How will we ensure that security control will be in the hands of the IDF, which will be allowed to act everywhere to prevent threats?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, if you could comment on that, Gershon, and if it seems, as some have suggested, that Israel is in fact solidifying its position, it’s not willing to compromise on this continued Israeli control, in some sense, over at least parts of Gaza, and also this insistence that Hamas be removed?

GERSHON BASKIN: Right. My message to the Israeli people and to the members of the Israeli government is that as long as the Israeli army remains in Gaza, Hamas will remain in power in Gaza. They have an endless supply of new recruits from young people who have no life, who have no future, who can easily be recruited to Hamas. And as long as Israeli soldiers are present in Gaza, they have targets to hit. Even if they can’t do effective damage to the state of Israel, they can’t do another October 7th, as long as there’s an Israeli presence in Gaza, there are targets there. Israel needs to understand that it needs to defend its border from the border, not within the Palestinian territory.

And I think the entire international community, including us Israelis who want to live in peace with our Palestinian neighbors, we need to put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the agenda again and make sure that this is the last war that we fight. We can’t keep doing this. There needs to be an independent Palestinian state next to Israel, but that independent Palestinian state needs to be committed to living in peace with Israel. That’s not occupying it. That’s enabling the Palestinians to have freedom, liberation and dignity. And that will grant Israel security. We all need the security, the liberation, the freedom and the dignity, but that can only be done in a solution which is going to grant both people the right to self-determination.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Gershon, if you could also say — I mean, you know, Trump has said — you said he might be the only person who can get Netanyahu to agree, but you’ve also said in a previous interview that it’s really not clear what the U.S. could do, what pressure it could bring or do in Gaza, that Israel has not already done either to Hamas or Gaza. So, what do you foresee him doing, I guess, short of canceling aid or withdrawing it?

GERSHON BASKIN: Well, if President Trump is serious about what he said on the night that he was elected, that he’s not a man who will make new wars, he will end these wars, including the Israeli-Palestinian wars, then the effective pressure needs to be applied on Israel and on Netanyahu. And unlike the period of the time of the Biden administration or the Obama administration, with Trump in government, Netanyahu has no one to turn to in the United States who can help him. It will be Trump facing off Netanyahu.

Now, the question is — we all know that Trump is unpredictable. We don’t know what he will do. But if he was serious about this comment that he will end wars, then that means that he’s going to have to tell Israel that it has to withdraw from Gaza, it has to withdraw from the Occupied Territories, it has to enable a Palestinian state to be established next to Israel.

But the Americans need to be firm with the Palestinians, as well. They can no longer have an armed struggle as part of their strategy for dealing with Israel. We need to get these two parties to sit down and face off each other with mutual recognition and respect and dignity and security.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: But, of course, Gershon, the occupation of Gaza did not begin following, you know, October 2023. That’s been in place for years. So, what guarantee do Palestinians have — and the occupation was a brutal and is a brutal occupation. What guarantee do Palestinians have that even if they were to make concessions, that their position would be any stronger than it was prior to October 2023, those conditions having led to Hamas’s also brutal attack on Israel? But nevertheless, there were conditions prior to October 2023 that produced the conditions to which Palestinians were protesting.

GERSHON BASKIN: For sure, the war didn’t begin on October 7th. The conflict didn’t begin on October 7th of last year. This is the result of many, many decades of conflict between these two parties.

Honestly, there are no guarantees that the Palestinians will get. No one can give them those guarantees. No one will give them the guarantees. The question that I ask is: Isn’t it time to change the strategy? They’ve been doing the same thing for so many years now and not getting the results that they want. Maybe they need to adopt a new strategy. There’s no question that the Palestinians are right in demanding that they don’t live under occupation. The occupation has to end, and Israel is wrong. And while Hamas committed war crimes on October 7th, Israel has been committing war crimes in Gaza every day since. So the question here is not what kind of guarantees can be provided. The question is: Can we come up with a strategy that’s going to produce better results than the one that we’ve been using for the last 76 years?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, thanks so much for joining us, Gershon Baskin, Middle East director of the International Communities Organization. Of course, we’re going to continue to follow this issue. He’s a longtime backchannel negotiator with Hamas in ceasefire deals. His memoir is titled In Pursuit of Peace in Israel and Palestine.

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

Gaza: Doctors Warn Thousands of Palestinians Could Die This Winter from Cold, Hunger, Disease
by Amy Goodman
DemocacyNow
December 31, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/31 ... transcript

International outrage is growing over Israel’s abduction of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in the Jabaliya refugee camp, who was detained after Israeli forces raided and shut down the last major hospital in northern Gaza last week. A new United Nations report finds that Israeli strikes on and near hospitals in the Gaza Strip have “pushed the healthcare system to the brink of total collapse.” Displaced Palestinians throughout the territory are dying from the ongoing Israeli bombardment, as well as injuries, infections and diseases due to Israel’s restrictions on medical care and medical supplies. At least six babies have also died of hypothermia in recent days amid plunging winter temperatures. “Living conditions are just deplorable. They are not compatible with human life,” says Dr. Mimi Syed, an emergency medicine physician who just left Gaza after volunteering there for a month. We also speak with trauma surgeon Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, who previously volunteered at the European Hospital in Khan Younis. “It’s very likely that tens or even hundreds of thousands of people are going to die of the combination of malnutrition, displacement, exposure to the elements and hypothermia this winter,” says Sidhwa.

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Nermeen Shaikh.

We end today’s show in Gaza, where relentless winter rainstorms have flooded thousands of tents of forcibly displaced Palestinians.

FORCIBLY DISPLACED PALESTINIAN: [translated] Due to the rain yesterday, water gathered over the worn-out tents and broke them, broke the wood, and water went down on those asleep. And we got up at 3 a.m. to try to gather what is left of the tent. This is our situation.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: This comes as at least six infants and one adult living in displaced camps in Gaza have died from the cold as winter temperatures drop.

Meanwhile, a United Nations report published today finds that Israeli strikes on and near hospitals in the Gaza Strip have, quote, “pushed the healthcare system to the brink of total collapse, with catastrophic effect on Palestinians’ access to health and medical care.”

The world is still calling on Israel to release Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp, after he was detained in a raid on the hospital by Israeli forces and reportedly taken to a detention camp with his leg badly injured.

For more, we’re joined by two doctors who worked in Gaza this year. In Amman, Jordan, Dr. Mimi Syed is an emergency medicine physician. She just left Gaza for the second time this year. She volunteered for four weeks at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah. Also with us is her colleague, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon who volunteered at the European Hospital in Khan Younis in the early spring. His piece last month for Foreign Policy is headlined “The U.S. Must Support Gaza Before Winter: Seasonal rains and flooding portend further humanitarian catastrophe.”

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Dr. Mimi Syed, if you could begin? You were just there in Gaza. Describe where you were and the conditions that you’ve seen in the hospitals that remain, where you worked.

DR. MIMI SYED: Hi. Thank you for having me. Yes, I actually just got back yesterday.

So, yeah, the conditions are terrible. They were terrible in August, but winter has kind of brought in a new level of destruction, the children that I saw just disproportionately affected by this. The malnourishment, the contamination of the water, everything is just tenfold now because of the dropping temperatures. You know, there’s the same type of airstrikes and the missiles and the targeting of children that I witnessed again. We saw the same type of shrapnel injuries, traumatic amputations, you know, blunt trauma, and then open skull wounds of children — just the same type of brutal aggression.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And while you were in Gaza, you gave an interview to Sky News, Dr. Syed, and you said — while in Gaza, you said, quote, “Humanity is ending here,” that that’s what you see, humanity ending here in Gaza. If you could elaborate further on, in particular, this issue of water, why it is that so much of the water supply is contaminated, and what this means for people in Gaza, in hospitals, and, in particular, the most vulnerable — children, infants and the elderly?

DR. MIMI SYED: Yeah, I mean, I had an opportunity this time to actually walk around in the camps and talk to the families and actually visit inside of the tents, just deep inside those encampments, and the living conditions are just deplorable. I mean, they are not compatible with human life.

The contamination of the water is very high. I spoke to the infection control manager there that takes care of the water filtration system, and he was explaining to me that the filtration, the chlorine, the solvents that they need, the membranes that they need, none of that is available. The water is coming up, I mean, literally from a hose. Children fill, like, these dirty plastic containers, and it’s supposed to be filtered again, but those filters that are in front of residential areas, they’re generated — the power is generated by fuel, which, of course, is not available. So they end up drinking this water that’s actually just meant for, like, washing and such.

But that’s leading to this chronic diarrhea that children have, especially small babies, that are affected so much by this. Every child there that I saw in the emergency department had diarrhea. And then it leads — with the malnourishment on top of that, it’s leading to organ failure, things like kidney failure we’d see in children. I mean, it’s rates that you don’t typically see in other countries. And it’s all because of this water, very high in salt content. You can’t filter that out. It is seawater. And, you know, of course, the elderly are at the same risk of becoming ill, critically ill, that way.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, if you could talk about — you’ve made remarks to the effect that hundreds of thousands of toddlers and elderly could potentially die in Gaza in February or by February. And respond specifically to the raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last remaining functional major hospital in northern Gaza, and what the effects of that will be, and the fact that, of course, its director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, has been detained, his leg badly injured.

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: Yeah, as far as we know, Dr. Abu Safiya has been detained — don’t know where he is, don’t know what’s being done to him, may never find out. Who knows?

And yeah, Kamal Adwan has been destroyed. It’s really — it had barely been a functional hospital in any sense for months. It’s been under siege for at least a month. The Israelis — you know, there was one point at which it really just got incredibly sadistic. The Israelis allowed the only delivery of supplies during this time and then tank-shelled the little warehouse that it was put into in the hospital. It’s just — it’s pretty sadistic at this point. And the U.S. goes along with it, so we can’t really blame the Israelis for it. We’re the ones allowing it to happen.

But in terms of the public health situation in Gaza, I think it’s exactly like Dr. Syed just described. And it’s what Dr. Parkinson and I wrote about in Foreign Policy, like you mentioned. You know, Gaza is a half child population. The entire — you know, 90% of the population is homeless, meaning their homes have been physically destroyed or they’ve just been displaced from them. But regardless, they live in temporary shelters. As you heard from the — or, as the listeners heard from the — at the beginning of the program, when it rains, these shelters don’t provide any protection from the rain and the flooding that happens every year in Gaza.

And so, now the temperature is quite chilly. Well, the adults can survive a 50-degree winter, but even adults, not if they’re wet constantly. I mean, you’re talking about being wet for three months straight. And furthermore, they’re not just wet; they’re living in a land that literally doesn’t have a sewage system anymore. It’s one of the most crowded places in the world, the Mawasi, where most of these people are. The 1.8 million people that are concentrated there are living in a place that literally has no sewage system; 1.8 million people are living in a place that has 121 toilets. This is just outrageous. And then, on top of that, the Israelis aren’t even allowing soap to be brought into Gaza.

So, it’s not hard to figure out what’s going to happen when all of that is put together. It’s very likely that tens or even hundreds of thousands of people are going to die of the combination of malnutrition, displacement, exposure to the elements and hypothermia this winter. And at this point there isn’t actually anything that can be done about it.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Dr. Sidhwa, if you could comment also — I mean, given the many, many reasons that people are dying prematurely in Gaza — hypothermia, hunger, etc. — what do you think of this, the count that’s always — 45,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023. What do you think the actual count might be, given all of these reasons?

DR. FEROZE SIDHWA: It’s very hard to make accurate estimates. You know, Alex de Waal just wrote a good blog post at the Tufts peace center that he runs. He’s the leading historian of famine in the modern period. And he writes, what he wrote, that it’s extremely unlikely that fewer than 10,000 people have died, and he was hesitant to make any more — from what are called indirect causes of war. And he was hesitant to make more predictions than that. But, you know, if you look at the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification data, you can’t estimate that less than 60,000 people have died of starvation in Gaza. And that’s the only data that’s really available. There’s nothing else.

There actually was just a study published in a nutrition science journal. It just came across my desk yesterday, and I’ve requested it from our library, so I haven’t been able to read it yet, so I don’t know what it says. But the abstract was terrifying, saying that, basically, the entire population has lost weight, which, you know, Mimi and I having been there, we can definitely attest to that.

But it’s very likely that tens of thousands of people have starved to death in Gaza, many of them small children. But what’s more important than the number is that we don’t know. We’re doing this to an entire population of child refugees, and we don’t even know if we’re starving tens of thousands of children to death? That’s crazy. What kind of behavior is that?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Dr. Mimi Syed, let me get your response to that, in other words, you know, what the U.S. has been doing in all this time. They could have easily, as many have pointed out, pushed and made a ceasefire happen. That has not occurred. And now we have Trump coming in, in three weeks. He said if the hostages are not released by Inauguration Day, January 20th, all hell is going to break out. What do you imagine might happen then?

DR. MIMI SYED: Oh, I mean, it needs to stop, is the number one point. But there is absolutely no dignity left. And that’s what I mean when I say humanity has ended. You know, Feroze is talking about malnourishment. Absolutely. Every single child has some sort of hypopigmentation. And, you know, you and I both know as physicians, that’s the number one sign of acute malnourishment. Children are displaying these signs all the time.

And then, when we talk about dignity, imagine, you know, this population was not poor to begin with. The majority of people were well-to-do. They had professions like you and I do. They had education, 98% literacy rate there. Overnight, their lives were changed. Imagine living in a tent that’s made out of scraps in cold weather with about 20 other people. You know, on so many levels, that’s a violation of a person’s dignity and basic human needs. You know, I spoke to so many people, so many women especially, that commented on — you know, there’s no menstrual pads. They can’t even afford those.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: I’m so sorry, Dr. Mimi Syed. We’re going to have to end it there, American emergency medicine physician who just left Gaza, and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, trauma surgeon who volunteered in Gaza. I’m Nermeen Shaikh. Thank you so much for joining us.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim

Postby admin » Wed Jan 08, 2025 11:57 pm

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNew
January 02, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/2/headlines

Israeli Assault on Gaza Continues as Data Show 6% of Palestinians Have Fled or Been Killed
Jan 02, 2025

In Gaza, Israeli attacks have killed at least 52 Palestinians since dawn, after a wave of strikes that killed 28 people on New Year’s Day, including children and women. Israeli attacks struck northern Gaza’s Jabaliya, the central Bureij refugee camp, Gaza City and a tent camp sheltering displaced families in al-Mawasi, in southern Khan Younis, in an area designated by Israel as a so-called humanitarian zone.

This comes as a seventh infant in Gaza has died from hypothermia while displaced people in tents struggle to keep warm amid days of heavy rain.

Samira Al-Ashqar: “We are living here in the cold in a state of hunger and thirst, lacking clothes, blankets and mattresses. The rain pours on us all night while the tarps leak, and no one acknowledges us. Last year, we lived in Rafah. Before that, we were in Beit Lahia. Then we moved to Rafah. And from Rafah, we came to Khan Younis. We still don’t know what our fate is or where we will be relocated next.”

New data show Gaza’s population has fallen by 6% since the start of Israel’s assault in October 2023. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics estimates about 100,000 people have left Gaza, while more than 55,000 people have been killed by Israeli attacks or are missing and presumed dead.

Palestinian Authority Bans Al Jazeera in West Bank After Critical Coverage
Jan 02, 2025

In the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Authority says it has “temporarily” halted the Al Jazeera TV network from operating or broadcasting in the territory, citing what it called “inciting material and reports that were deceiving and stirring strife.” This follows Al Jazeera’s critical coverage of the Fatah faction which dominates the PA, as well as recent deadly clashes between Palestinian security forces and armed Palestinian groups. Al Jazeera condemned the move to censor its coverage as “nothing but an attempt to dissuade the channel from covering the rapidly escalating events.”

Pentagon Says It Targeted Houthis in U.S. Airstrikes That Followed Israeli Attacks on Yemen
Jan 02, 2025

The Pentagon says it launched a wave of airstrikes on Sana’a and other parts of Yemen on Tuesday. U.S. Central Command says it targeted Houthi command and weapons production facilities. The attacks came just after Israel bombed the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah and the main airport in Sana’a, killing at least six people. A Houthi spokesperson said Wednesday the movement would continue attacks aimed at ending Israel’s assault on Gaza.

Yahya Sarea: “The Yemeni armed forces affirm their continued operations in support of Gaza, and these operations will not stop until the aggression on Gaza is stopped and the siege is lifted.”

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

“Exhausted”: Palestinian Journalist Shrouq Aila on Life & Death in Gaza, “Duty” to Report on Genocide
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNew
January 02, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/2/s ... transcript

For our first live interview of 2025, we go to Deir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip to get an update from Palestinian journalist Shrouq Aila, the head of Ain Media, a media company founded by her late husband, Roshdi Sarraj, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in October 2023. Aila describes worsening conditions in the winter rain and cold, and the complete hollowing out of infrastructure as Palestinians are struggling to survive. “Being here in Gaza means I’m doing a change,” she says about her “duty” to report. Her dedication to reporting on Israel’s now 15-month-long assault on Gaza was recently honored by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Transcript

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

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

We begin today’s show in Gaza. Israeli strikes killed 28 Palestinians on New Year’s Day, including women and children. Today, Israeli attacks killed at least 52 Palestinians since dawn, striking northern Gaza’s Jabaliya, the central Bureij refugee camp, Gaza City and a tent camp sheltering displaced families in al-Mawasi, in southern Khan Younis, in an area designated as a so-called humanitarian zone.

AIYDA ZANOUN: [translated] When the morning came, we came to inspect the site. And as you can see, it is devastation, complete destruction. What have the children done to be hit at 1:00 in the morning? … There is no safe area at all. No safe area, wherever you go. Those by the sea have been hit. Here has been hit. There were strikes further away. The strikes are everywhere.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as a seventh infant in Gaza has died from hypothermia as displaced people in tents struggle to keep warm in the winter amidst days of heavy rain that have flooded the camps.

This comes as a U.N. Human Rights Office report released Tuesday documented how Israeli attacks on hospitals between October 2023 and June 2024 have pushed Gaza’s healthcare system to the brink of collapse.

This is Ayman Abou Hattab, a Palestinian father seeking medical attention for his son at a flooded field hospital in Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis.

AYMAN ABOU HATTAB: [translated] I came to treat my son, but I found the hospital is in such a state as you can see. This is a situation unfit for any hospital in the entire world. This is but the least of the problems for our children. We want the Arab countries to see what’s happening to us for the sake of the hospitals, because everything is flooded.

AMY GOODMAN: New data shows the Gaza population has fallen 6% since start the Israel’s assault on Gaza more than a year ago.

For more, we go to Deir al-Balah in Gaza to speak with Shrouq Aila, independent journalist and producer in Gaza. She was recently honored by the Committee to Protect Journalists — that’s CPJ — in their 2024 International Press Freedom Awards. Her husband, the journalist Roshdi Sarraj, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in October 2023. He ran Ain Media, which Shrouq now heads.

CPJ described Shrouq’s story as emblematic of the plight of journalists in Gaza, quote, “who have endured the unthinkable and continue to report the news for the world to see.” Just last Thursday, an Israeli strike killed five Palestinian journalists outside Al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. One of those five journalists, in their car that was clearly marked “press,” was waiting for his first child to be born inside the hospital.

Shrouq, welcome back to Democracy Now! Thank you so much for being with us. If you can describe the scene on the ground as we hear about another baby dying of hypothermia, the winter weather so dangerous for the people of Gaza because of the tents that they are living in, because of their completely devastated condition and the closing of so many hospitals because of airstrikes and raids?

SHROUQ AILA: Hey, Amy. And it’s so weird to say “Happy New Year” from genocide, but hopefully it will be ended very soon.

So, on Tuesday, the rainstorms flooded and uprooted the displacement tents, the makeshift tents of displaced people, like, worsening the already deteriorating living conditions of them. Over 2 million displaced people are facing life-threatening conditions because of the extreme cold and the heavy rain. In addition to that, it’s important to mention that these tents cannot withstand the heat in summer, nor can they stand the cold and rain in winter.

Even though — it’s really important to mention that nowadays, like, it’s been almost three months that Gaza Strip has been suffering a sophisticated siege by the Israeli army and making war, you know, starting the siege to prevent the entry of basic needs. Like, for example, there is a shortage of blankets, mess trays, warm clothing and very little wood for fires. And the current situation actually signals an immediate need for intervention; otherwise, there will be a real humanitarian crisis that’s just ahead in the beginning of this winter.

In addition to that, there are — like, many kids are suffering of lots of diseases because of the cold. And also, you have to know, when it comes to rain, the sewage got mixed with the rainfall, which involves those kids in more harsh conditions to cope with inside those tents. It’s really heartbreaking to walk in the street and seeing those people putting their blankets, mess trays and even the clothes just in the street. All wait, and just waiting to sun to show up, you know, to dry it all. I’ve seen kids, you know, trying to help their fathers, their parents, in terms of getting the water out of their tents, because they woke up finding themselves swimming, literally swimming, in the rainwater and the sewage, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Shrouq, first, it’s horrifying to say — just as you said, it’s hard to say “Happy New Year,” as you describe the situation on the ground. But congratulations on winning the CPJ award, the Committee to Protect Journalists, which has to be also extremely painful for you, as your husband, the journalist Roshdi Sarraj, was killed in an Israeli airstrike more than a year ago. And you have so many journalists, well over — what are the numbers? Around 170, 180, perhaps more than 200, journalists and media workers killed in Gaza. Most recently, among those killed were the five together outside Al-Awda, and I was wondering if you knew any of them. But talk about the meaning of being recognized for your work.

SHROUQ AILA: Like, it’s really — you know, I can say it has double faces in this. The first one, it really attacks me deeply to receive awards over those of my husband, and, you know, not coping, but I can say just being more resilient and standing in front of the camera or behind the camera and document the horrible situation here.

And the good part is in this that people are hearing us. I thought for somehow that I lost hope in humanity, but this award actually brought me to the surface to remind me that what we are doing here under genocide is remarkable. People are hearing us, and, you know, they feel us.

And from here, I wanted to send my respect and appreciation for all of those who are supporting us and believing in the — in how exhausted we are. And I can say also — I want to say I know it’s a new year, and I just want to express how exhausted I am. It’s not only me. I’m just — you know, I’m representing all of my fellow journalists here. It’s been over 15 — 14, almost, months of being under genocide, doing the coverage day after day, having inside that anxious, anger, fear, hunger and, you know, the sense of insecurity above all of this, and also coping with the losing of dear ones, homes, works and whatever. So, I just want to say that we are exhausted, but knowing that people outside are awarding us, it’s such a relief for us.

AMY GOODMAN: Shrouq, can you describe to us what your day looks like, when you get up in the morning, how you do your work amidst the devastation?

SHROUQ AILA: All right, I can say it’s such a long day, first of all, since you are living — you are not living alone. You are living with lots of family members and relatives because of that limited spaces that, you know, afforded for people, for displaced people. You know, there’s plus 2 million Gazans are displaced now. So, like, being in housing in a place with plus 18 persons inside, it means that you wake up in the very early morning because of the chaos and noise around you, because of the kids, and also because of that — you know, the so-called safe areas are super crowded with people, so there is always noise to wake you up. And so, I woke up, like, in the very morning, sometimes at 5 or 6 a.m.

And then, I want to say that I try as much as I can to have my pure time and moments with my little daughter, who lost her father in the beginning of this genocide, and also because that feel that if I left home, I’m not sure if I’m coming back. So I try as much as I can to catch some moments with her before I leave.

And once I leave, you know, there is a transportation crisis here because of the shortage of fuel, so we are using the traditional means of transportations, like, you know, that cart that’s dragged by donkeys, for example, that you feel you will never arrive to your destination because it’s very slow and because of the crowdedness of the streets outside. But, otherwise, the other alternatives are somehow quite expensive and not affordable. And I can say sometimes it takes me two to three hours to arrive to my destination to do the filming.

And I have to mention that lots — or, especially in Khan Younis city, like, the entire city is already flattened in the ground. Like, according to the municipality of Khan Younis, like 90% of the city destroyed, whether partially or completely destroyed, which means there’s no streets. It’s all about random strips, random tents around the — everywhere. So, like, when it comes to filming in Khan Younis, it means you have to waste your entire day in arriving to the area and leaving the area, as well, and also because of the signal there is very weak because of, you know, nonstopping attacking of the networks.

And then, once I’ve done my filming, there is another problem. And I can say that another hardship that we, as journalists, we are facing is the issue of the internet access. There is no internet access, a proper one, as we used to have before this genocide. So I try to move to the area of the press tent, because this press tent provides you with electricity and a suitable internet to do your uploading.

And I want to tell you, like, it’s been plus one year of not lighting the light in the room, because there is no electricity. I know that people outside cannot comprehend how does it mean to not have electricity, but it really happens this way. It’s just the solar panel alternatives and batteries which just function — you know, it function for very few hours. And when it comes to winter, you can hardly use it.

AMY GOODMAN: Shrouq, is it possible for you to —

SHROUQ AILA: And above all of it — yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Is it possible for you to leave? And would you leave? Why do you stay there?

SHROUQ AILA: Amy, you have to know, when this genocide started, I’ve been uprooted, along with my daughter and husband. We were in a work trip outside Gaza. And when it started, we immediately canceled everything and returned to Gaza, because my husband and I, we are both journalists, and we believe in that if you are a journalist, you’re a journalist for life, and it is just a duty. You have to do it for your company, for your country, for your people, just to be on duty during such timing.

Yeah, I believe that we did not — nobody ever, like, imagined it would be as harsh as it is now. But I never regret this, because I believe that being here in Gaza means that I’m doing a change. Even this change is not pushing for a ceasefire, but at least people are getting more aware about our suffering and our cause here in the Gaza Strip.

And there is also the other point of this, that it’s been like almost seven months of the closure of the Rafah crossing border, which is the only gate out of Gaza, that is just connected by the Egyptian authorities. This gate is just closed — this border just closed once in May, once the Israeli army launched their military ground operation to Rafah crossing border and area, as well, and causing the damage of this border. So, I can say, like, we are all trapped here, no way out, just the sky. You die, and you fly the sky. This is the only way out of Gaza nowadays.

AMY GOODMAN: Shrouq Aila, I want to thank you so much for being with us, and I wish you all safety, for you, for your family, for the people of Gaza. Shrouq is an independent journalist in Gaza.

SHROUQ AILA: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Her husband, Roshdi Sarraj, was a journalist killed in an Israeli airstrike in October of 2023. He ran Ain Media, which Aila now heads. She was just honored by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim

Postby admin » Thu Jan 09, 2025 12:02 am

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNew
January 03, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/3/headlines

“How to Hide a Genocide”: Al-Haq Report Shows How Israel Hides Behind “Safe Zones”
Jan 03, 2025

Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed at least 35 Palestinians since dawn, with authorities reporting more than 70 civilians killed over the past 24 hours, including in the so-called humanitarian safe zone of al-Mawasi. This comes as the Palestinian rights group Al-Haq published a new report called “How to Hide a Genocide,” revealing how Israel uses evacuation orders and “safe zones” to obfuscate its genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip. Al-Haq writes, “With insufficient space, shelter, sanitation facilities, food, or water sources, and medical care, these safe zones are intentionally designed to ensure the destruction of all life sheltering there. What’s more, the safe zones … are routinely targeted by Israeli occupying forces by air, land, and sea.”

Doha Ceasefire Talks Set to Resume as UNSC Takes Up Israeli Attacks on Gaza Hospitals
Jan 03, 2025

As the relentless attacks on Gaza continue, Israeli negotiators are reportedly heading back to Qatar to resume ceasefire talks.

Here in New York, the U.N. Security Council is holding an emergency meeting today to discuss Israeli attacks on Gaza’s hospitals, including northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, whose director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, was abducted last week by Israeli forces. Israel has since refused to confirm his location or his condition. Medical workers around the world have been calling for his release and for the protection of Gaza’s crumbling health infrastructure. Reports on the ground in Gaza say the Israeli military is ordering the forced evacuation of Indonesian Hospital, where a handful of patients that were forced out of Kamal Adwan are now being treated. Al Jazeera also reports Israeli forces are intensively shelling the vicinity of Al-Awda Hospital in central Gaza.

3,500 Children in Gaza Could Die of Malnutrition as Hunger Grips Besieged Territory
Jan 03, 2025

Palestinian authorities warn 3,500 children are at risk of death due to severe malnutrition. Twenty-two percent of Gaza’s population is currently facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity. This is the displaced mother of a sick baby being treated at a U.N. facility in Deir al-Balah.

Misk al-Madhoun’s mother: “The reason behind my daughter’s condition is displacement. We fled from the north to Rafah and then to Deir al-Balah, where we lived in a tent. My daughter’s fever would reach 40 degrees daily. We took her to the American Hospital every day because of the fever, and they would prescribe paracetamol before sending us away. Her malnutrition worsened due to prolonged displacement, lack of food, and financial hardship since my husband’s work stopped during the war.”

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

“From Ground Zero”: Oscar-Shortlisted Film Features Stories from Palestinian Filmmakers in Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNew
January 03, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/3/f ... transcript

As the genocide in Gaza enters its 15th month, we look at From Ground Zero, a collection of 22 short films made in Gaza by Palestinian filmmakers surviving Israel’s bombings and brutal blockade. The film has been shortlisted for this year’s Academy Awards in the category for best international feature. “In spite of all what happened, we were trying to search for hope,” says filmmaker Rashid Masharawi, director of From Ground Zero, now playing in U.S. theaters. Masharawi was born in Gaza and has lost many relatives during the war. He says the film is an opportunity to focus on “the normal stories” of survival and perseverance, calling it “cinema for humanity.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. That was “Casualties of War” by Eric B. & Rakim.

We turn now to Gaza, where Israel continues to intensify its attacks, killing at least 35 Palestinians since dawn. Authorities have reported more than 70 killings over the last 24 hours, including in al-Mawasi, a region that Israel designated a so-called humanitarian safe zone.

As Israel’s relentless war on Gaza enters its 15th month, we turn now to a film that’s been shortlisted for this year’s Oscars, From Ground Zero, a collection of 22 short films made in Gaza by Palestinian filmmakers surviving Israel’s bombings. This is the film’s trailer.

FLOUR GATHERER 1: [translated] Isn’t this tragic?

FLOUR GATHERER 2: [translated] As you can see, we’re picking up flour and sand. That’s all we have left to do. We pick up whatever we find on the ground. We have to eat.

ON-SCREEN TEXT: 22 extraordinary stories.

FARAH: [translated] There are always drones making a buzzing sound. They are always above our heads when we sleep, study, dance.

ON-SCREEN TEXT: From 22 Palestinian filmmakers.

GAZAN GIRL: [translated] Mom wrote on my arm. If they bomb us and kill us, we’ll be identified from our names written on our bodies.

ON-SCREEN TEXT: Living through war.

MOSAB AL NADI: [translated] I was targeted three times in 24 hours. The first time, my cousin and I were returning from Camp 5. They attacked the house, and we were buried in the wreckage.

CIVIL DEFENSE WORKER: [translated] Mosab, who’s next to you? Khalid? Is he dead?

MOSAB AL NADI: [translated] [translated] Yes.

REEMA MAHMOUD: [translated] Believe me, my friend, I had a beautiful life in a beautiful city.

GAZAN MAN: [translated] We want to laugh, rejoice, sing and express our emotions. Yes, there are bombings and destruction and many other things that take us back to zero. But that only increases our challenge to overcome.

NOVELIST: [translated] Today, I want to tell you a story. Are you ready?

AHMAD HASSOUNA: [translated] Our greatest loss was not being able to see the film in front of the audience on the big screen.

HANA AWAD: [translated] No to injustice. No to violence. No to the violation of human rights. No! To everything that goes against humanity, joy, life. No to everything that destroys our hopes.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s the trailer for From Ground Zero, which has been shortlisted for the 2025 Oscars, along with two other Palestinian films, No Other Land and An Orange from Jaffa. The film is being released nationwide in the United States today. It made news recently when the acclaimed documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore, joined as executive producer.

We go now to France, where we’re joined by Rashid Masharawi, renowned Palestinian filmmaker, originally from Gaza, who curated and directed From Ground Zero.

This is an astounding collection, Rashid. I spent the night watching it and then watching it again. It is so deeply moving. Explain — not often do you see a director called “the curator.” Explain what you did.

RASHID MASHARAWI: Hi. Yes, usually, as a film director from Gaza, usually I am doing my own film. But this time for me, the situation was different. The images was different, the size of the massacre, the killing. We never witnessed something like this. So, then I decided, OK, my coming film or my next film will be made by filmmakers from Gaza, just to give the chance to 22 filmmakers to tell their own stories, their own daily life, to get closer to the details, because I believe these people must share their own stories with the world. At the same time, you know, we are filmmakers. We are trying to make cinema, to deal with art, with culture. In spite of all what happened, we were trying to search for hope. Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to another clip. We played the trailer, but this is a clip of the short film Sorry Cinema, featured in From Ground Zero, where the director Ahmed Hassouna is fleeing for his life after an Israeli strike near his home in Gaza.

AHMAD HASSOUNA: [translated] Now my life has become a different kind of marathon. Now I am running to save my family’s lives, my own life. I run, hoping to find food and drink for my children, who flee the bombings from one house to another.

CAMERAPERSON: [translated] Ahmad! Are you OK? Where are you? Get out of there! Are you OK? Come! Come!

AHMAD HASSOUNA: [translated] I struggle to endure the things I see and hear, everything that is happening to us, everything we are going through. I have just lost my older brother in a random bombing next to his house.

What? The whole tower? Collapsed?

At that moment, I felt death catching up with us. Our only chance of survival was luck, our only chance of escaping the rubble, the bombed houses, the ruins of the city. Nowhere in Gaza is safe, especially in the north, where I currently live. Here, no humanitarian aid, nor rescue, nor civil protection arrives. All that comes are bombs, fear, stress and insecurity.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about Ahmad Hassouna’s story, Rashid.

RASHID MASHARAWI: Yes, Ahmad, he was known in Gaza before the war. He’s a cinephile. He’s all his life spent after watching film, searching about films, trying to make films in Gaza, from Gaza. And all the time he was looking for an opportunity to make his new film.

During the war, I contacted Ahmad, and I told him, “Join me in my project, From Ground Zero. Be one of these filmmakers. This is your chance, because I’m going to show these films internationally and worldwide.” And immediately he said, “No, I don’t want to make a film, Rashid.” He said, “I am trying to save my family. I am searching for wood to make a fire to cook for the family. We are moving every day from one place to another. And just a few days ago, I lost my older brother. So I don’t want to make a film. Sorry for you. Sorry for the cinema, Rashid.” And I was shocked from his answer, because I know his love to cinema.

And then, two, three weeks later, I get back to him, and I say, “Ahmad, let’s make what you told me in our conversation. Let’s make a film about a filmmaker from Gaza. He have no time to make cinema because he’s trying to save his life. Show us something from your previous films. Show us your daily life. And show us how you are going to make it to say, 'Sorry for the cinema.'” And then we agree, and we come with this film, the one that everybody watching now, Sorry Cinema.

I think people must know, beside all these peoples who’s martyrs, we talk about — it’s been more than 50,000 now, most of them — most of them are innocent. Most of them are people who’s really searching for life, people like Ahmad Hassouna. He want to be a filmmaker. In From Ground Zero, we have many people, want to be a painter, want to be stand-up comedy. They want to be dancers — people like any other people in the world trying to manage their own dreams. And I was interested in these people to tell the stories, the normal stories, the real life under all this massacre and genocide.

AMY GOODMAN: You were born and raised in Gaza, Rashid Masharawi. Through the making of this film, you also witnessed the destruction of your home. Your reflections as you tried to encourage these filmmakers? They’d be in the middle of a film. They’d lose a family member. They’d lose many members of their family, talking to you about not being able to go on.

RASHID MASHARAWI: Yeah, yes. It means, for me, it was logical, normal, that I will be involved in From Ground Zero. As a Gazan, all my family are in Gaza now. And as you say, we lost many people from my family. And we lost our houses. We lost — I lost all the neighborhood where all my memory, my school, my childhood dreams, friends, for sure, neighbors, for sure, and many things. But still, you know, I am someone known as I’m always optimistic. I’m always having hope. I believe in cinema, in art. I trust cinema, you know, because I think cinema should play the role that it’s playing in From Ground Zero, cinema for justice, you know? A cinema for humanity. A cinema just to remind the world all the time we are all humans, we are the same, we have the same dreams.

Many people was killed because they were in Gaza at this location, at this time, and it has — they have nothing to do with what’s going on, women and kids and old people. OK, we know what happened on 7 October. We know when Hamas get out and they attack and they hostage people and they kill people and they arrest people. Me, myself, I know also many, many massacres that the Israelis did before 7 October. This struggle, it started more than 77 years ago, before 1948.

And we have — as Palestinians, we have to keep telling our stories. We have to fight to make good cinema also and to share all these stories with the world. I am very happy — I am very happy that these films are now crossing the U.S., showing in many cinemas. And I will be very happy when many people just go and watch, because it’s not the news. It’s not reportage. It has something else. It has nothing to do with politics even. It has something to do with our world that we are all sharing. We are looking for justice.

AMY GOODMAN: Rashid Masharawi, yes, the film is opening today in cinemas across the country. It’s also gotten headlines because the award-winning filmmaker, Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore has joined you as executive producer. Now, he won the Palme d’Or for the documentary film Fahrenheit 9/11, becoming the first and only documentary to win there. Your film was accepted at Cannes, where he won the Palme d’Or, but then rejected? And what did you do?

RASHID MASHARAWI: I think our films were from the beginning rejected. I mean, we never was accepted in Cannes. We were in discussing with Cannes to try to show even not all From Ground Zero, some films from ground zero, because I was coming to Cannes with films and filmmakers, you know? And I think they don’t want to deal with us. Even they say it in the press conference of Cannes before the festival. They don’t want to deal with the tension or with the political, with all what’s happening in the area. It was only Gaza. It was only Palestine. I remember two years before when the president of Ukraine was having space in the opening of Cannes, making speech.

AMY GOODMAN: Right. That was President Zelensky.

RASHID MASHARAWI: Yes. It was also to deal with the war and to deal with politic. You know, I feel sorry for Cannes Film Festival, because I consider Cannes Film Festival, it’s an important festival, good festival, big festival. It should make its job. It should play its role to give space, to give stage to filmmakers and to cinema and to protect humanity through cinema, through art, through filmmakers. And they didn’t. I think they lost the opportunity to be. It means they were there, and we were also there.

So, I say, then, if Cannes don’t want to go to Gaza, Gaza will go to Cannes. So I take my team. I built our tents in Cannes like the tents in Rafah exactly. We have our own screenings, our own sound, our own audience. And we make our own films. We make the people from Gaza to speak, the filmmakers to speak inside Cannes with the audience. And we bring Gaza to Cannes during the festival. But officially, we were not in Cannes.

AMY GOODMAN: Rashid, we just have a minute. So, to clarify, it wasn’t originally accepted at Cannes, but it is premiering here in the United States across the country. You partnered with Watermelon Pictures, the first distribution company for Palestinian films in the U.S. We have 30 seconds. The significance of this collaboration?

RASHID MASHARAWI: I am really, really proud, you know, with what they are doing, Watermelon. I feel that I already won the Oscar, because my aim is to show these films to maximum people, and this is what Watermelon is doing. They are showing these films everywhere. And also the input, what Michael Moore bring to these films, it’s really to join us and to share the stories with many, many, many people. I just can appreciate and thank from all my heart for all these people who participate and help and support From Ground Zero.

AMY GOODMAN: Rashid Masharawi, we want to thank you for being with us, renowned Palestinian filmmaker from Gaza. He curated the Oscar-shortlisted From Ground Zero, being released in theaters nationwide in the United States today.

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

U.S./Israeli Yemen Strikes Won’t End Houthi Resistance. Ending Gaza Genocide Will: Shireen Al-Adeimi
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNew
January 03, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/3/y ... transcript

The Pentagon announced this week it launched a wave of airstrikes on Sana’a and other parts of Yemen on Tuesday. U.S. Central Command said it targeted command and weapons production facilities of Ansarallah, the militant group also known as the Houthis that rules most of Yemen. The attacks came just after Israel bombed the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah and the main airport in Sana’a, killing at least six people. A Houthi spokesperson said Wednesday the movement would continue attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and against Israel aimed at ending that country’s war on Gaza. “These are strikes on Yemeni infrastructure. These are strikes on Yemeni civilians,” Yemeni American scholar Shireen Al-Adeimi says of the Israeli and U.S. strikes. “The only thing that will stop Ansarallah from rerouting ships in the Red Sea and stopping their attacks … is an end to the genocide in Gaza and an end to the starvation of the Palestinian people.”

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.

We end today’s show in Yemen, as the Pentagon launched a wave of airstrikes on Sana’a and other parts of Yemen this week. U.S. Central Command said it targeted Houthi command and weapons production facilities. The attacks came just after Israel bombed the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah and the main airport in Sana’a, killing at least six people.

For more, we’re joined by Shireen Al-Adeimi, Yemeni American assistant professor at Michigan State University and a nonresident fellow at Quincy Institute.

Professor, welcome back to Democracy Now! As we just have a few minutes, if you can talk about the significance of the U.S. attacks and the Israeli attacks, one on the airport in Sana’a as the head of the World Health Organization, Ghebreyesus, was getting on the plane?

SHIREEN AL-ADEIMI: Yeah. So, as we know, that the U.S. formed Operation Prosperity Guardian essentially to protect commercial ships and other vessels going through the Red Sea that the Houthis — also, of course, they’re known as Ansarallah — have been rerouting in support of the Palestinians, given the genocide that’s occurring in Gaza. And so the U.S. has moved their carriers, USS Truman and others, to the Red Sea and have been launching airstrikes, what they’re calling Houthi targets, which honestly is just a phrase that justifies and legitimizes the bombing. These are targets that are largely on civilian targets. You mentioned Sana’a International Airport, which is the only operating airport in northern Yemen, and the port city of Hodeidah, which, of course, is the lifeline of Yemen, which is still reeling from a decade of the U.S.-Saudi-UAE campaign, the war of aggression over the last 10 years.

And then, most recently, Israel has joined by striking these sites directly. And so, these are strikes on Yemeni infrastructure. These are strikes on Yemeni civilians. They’re aimed at deterring Ansarallah’s capabilities, because they have been supporting the Palestinians. But as we know, that the only thing that will stop Ansarallah from rerouting ships in the Red Sea and stopping their attacks, their drone and missile attacks in Israel, is an end to the genocide in Gaza and an end to the starvation of the Palestinian people.

AMY GOODMAN: If you could explain? As I mentioned, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus was just meters away from the blast when the Israeli bomb dropped at the airport. What was he doing in Yemen, Professor Adeimi?

SHIREEN AL-ADEIMI: So, he was in Yemen as part of a mission to try to release some World Health Organization employees who have been held by Ansarallah. And he said that the negotiations have been going very well, that they reached agreements on four major points. So that was the mission. And, of course, this is public knowledge, where the World Health Organization goes. You know, this is a civilian airport, and it was known. He himself says that he assumes that whoever needed to know where he was, that he was there in that location at that particular time, would have known. So, it is not a coincidence that Israel targeted the airport while he was there, just meters away, as you mentioned. He still says that he suffers from tinnitus from the blast. There were six people who were killed, 40 Yemenis who were injured.

So, this is a really significant development that, honestly, I’m pretty shocked that it’s not more widely known and reported on. It just seemed to have just disappeared in the news, the targeting of the World Health Organization’s secretary-general, essentially. And I would say “targeting” is the appropriate word, because, like I said, they would have known that he was there at the time. So, I think it sends a message to the World Health Organization, to — you know, maybe they don’t know why he was there, but Israel can apparently do no wrong. So this is not surprising that they’ve gotten away with doing what they’ve done in Palestine, in Yemen, bombing their neighbors across the Middle East, and yet, you know, they’re given the green light to commit these atrocities and to target whomever they want, to target Yemeni infrastructure, to target an airport that only functions really to Amman and back, a couple of flights each week, and all because they want to continue doing what they’re doing in Palestine with no consequences.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor, President Trump is about to become president again in just over two weeks. Do you expect U.S. policy towards Yemen to change?

SHIREEN AL-ADEIMI: I don’t, because for the past 22 years, a U.S. president has been bombing Yemen, starting with the Bush administration, continuing on with Obama, who expanded the drone campaign and the launched the, you know, full support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen from 2015 to the end of his presidency. Then we had Trump, who just continued selling weapons to the Saudis and supporting their war every step of the way. Then President Biden said that he would end the war in Yemen but really just continued supporting them, but just under a rebranding, essentially, as a defensive rather than an offensive war, and now Biden is directly bombing Yemen. And so, I don’t expect U.S. policy in Yemen to change.

I expect Yemenis to continue doing what they can to defend themselves, but, unfortunately, we’ve seen over the last 22 years that the U.S. will continue to break its own laws. It’s unconstitutional to attack another country without congressional approval. And honestly, what is Congress doing while all of these presidents have —

AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds.

SHIREEN AL-ADEIMI: — been attacking? So, unfortunately, I don’t expect policy to change. But this should not be accepted. This should not be normalized. And we, as citizens, should be doing everything we can to stop it.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there. Professor Shireen Al-Adeimi, thank you so much for joining us.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim

Postby admin » Thu Jan 09, 2025 12:05 am

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNew
January 06, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/6/headlines

Israel Bombs Gaza Over 100 Times in 3 Days, Killing Scores of Palestinians
Jan 06, 2025

Israeli forces continued their unrelenting assault on the Gaza Strip throughout the weekend, killing scores of Palestinians even as Israeli and Hamas officials resumed talks in Qatar aimed at a ceasefire. Al Jazeera reports Israel carried out over 100 bombings in just three days. Earlier today, more than 40 Palestinians were injured when an Israeli drone bombed a school housing displaced people in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp. Before that, an Israeli attack on a residential building in Bureij refugee camp killed four. And seven Palestinians, including two farmers, were killed in three separate attacks in Rafah.

In Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, an Israeli airstrike late Saturday killed 11 people, most of them members of the Zuhd family. Relatives of the dead worked by hand to sift through the ruins of their home, hoping to find loved ones trapped in the rubble.

Ammar Zuhd: “Three young men, the son’s wife and three children are still under the rubble. We retrieved this cousin of mine. Another cousin has been martyred and is now in the hospital. Approximately 11 people have been martyred here.”

The Palestinian Ministry of Health reports another baby in Gaza has died of hypothermia — the eighth such death.

Netanyahu’s Office Downplays Reports of Progress in Gaza Ceasefire Talks
Jan 06, 2025

In Qatar, representatives of Hamas say they’ve approved a list of 34 Israeli hostages to be released as part of the first phase of a potential ceasefire deal. The list includes all women, children, seniors and sick people still being held in Gaza. A spokesperson for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu downplayed talk of progress toward a ceasefire as “spin” and dismissed Hamas’s offer as “propaganda and psychological terror.”

Attack on Israeli Bus and Cars in Occupied West Bank Kills 3 and Wounds 8
Jan 06, 2025

In the occupied West Bank, three people were killed and eight others wounded when two attackers opened fire at Israeli cars and a bus near the West Bank settlement of Kedumim earlier today. Israeli soldiers said they were pursuing two suspected Palestinian shooters.

Biden Approves Sale of $8 Billion in Additional Bombs, Missiles and Arms to Israel
Jan 06, 2025

President Biden has reportedly notified Congress of a new $8 billion arms sale to Israel. The deal includes artillery shells, small-diameter bombs and warheads, and munitions for fighter jets and helicopter gunships. In approving the sale, Biden once again rejected calls to suspend U.S. support for Israel’s military over war crimes committed in Gaza. The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the sale, writing, “Only racists who do not view people of color as equally human, and sociopaths who delight in funding mass slaughter, could send Netanyahu even more bombs while his government openly kidnaps doctors, destroys hospitals, and exterminates the last survivors in northern Gaza.”
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim

Postby admin » Thu Jan 09, 2025 12:09 am

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNew
January 07, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/7/headlines

U.N.’s Humanitarian Efforts in Gaza Hit “Breaking Point” Amid Israeli Attacks on Aid Workers
Jan 07, 2025

The United Nations is warning its efforts to bring humanitarian aid into the besieged Gaza Strip are at a “breaking point,” after Israeli forces opened fire on a World Food Programme convoy over the weekend. Staffers documented at least 16 bullet holes in their aid convoy’s three vehicles, saying the shooting left them “terrified.” Earlier today, an aid worker with central Gaza’s Ma’an distribution center died from injuries sustained from an attack on the flour distribution site Sunday.

Meanwhile, Gaza’s Health Ministry reports another day of Israeli attacks has killed at least 31 Palestinians and injured 57 others. Among the dead is neonatologist Dr. Thabat Saleem, killed in an Israeli strike on a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp. Just hours before her killing, the 30-year-old Dr. Saleem had finished a volunteer shift providing care to women and children at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Meanwhile, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel reports Israel’s military is refusing to reveal the location of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the jailed director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, and won’t let his lawyers meet him. This is Palestinian nurse Mohammed al-Namnam, who was arrested alongside Dr. Safiya when Israeli forces stormed the hospital on December 27.

Mohammed al-Namnam: “We were treated violently and subjected to beatings. They don’t distinguish. There’s no mercy or any kind of humanity toward medical staff. The Israeli troops forced us to remove our clothes, and they hit us with weapons and sticks.”

We’ll have more on Gaza later in the broadcast when we speak with Palestinian poet and author Mosab Abu Toha.

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“Requiem for a Refugee Camp”: Mosab Abu Toha on Destruction of Jabaliya, Abduction of Doctors & More
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNew
January 07, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/7/m ... transcript

Israeli forces are continuing their unrelenting attacks across the Gaza Strip, killing scores of Palestinians in the first week of 2025 even as Israeli and Hamas officials resume talks in Qatar aimed at reaching a ceasefire. The official death toll in Gaza is nearing 46,000, although experts say the true figure is likely much higher. The United Nations has warned its efforts to bring humanitarian aid into the besieged Gaza Strip are at a “breaking point” after Israeli forces opened fire on a World Food Programme convoy over the weekend, and healthcare facilities across much of the territory are destroyed, shuttered or barely functioning. For more on the deteriorating situation in Gaza, we’re joined by acclaimed Palestinian poet and author Mosab Abu Toha. His latest piece for The New Yorker is headlined “Requiem for a Refugee Camp,” examining Israel’s destruction of Jabaliya. He describes the double devastation of Palestinians who have not only been displaced during the 1948 Nakba but also during Israel’s current genocide of Gaza, placing refugees “farther and farther from [the] dream of return.”

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, as we turn now to Gaza, where Israeli forces are continuing their unrelenting attacks, killing scores of Palestinians, even as Israeli and Hamas officials resume talks in Qatar aimed at a ceasefire. Al Jazeera reports Israel carried out over a hundred bombings over the weekend. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, 31 Palestinians were killed in the last 24 hours.

The U.N. is warning its efforts to bring humanitarian aid into the besieged Gaza Strip are at a breaking point, after Israeli forces opened fire on a World Food Programme convoy over the weekend. Staffers documented at least 16 bullet holes in their aid convoy’s three vehicles, saying the shooting left them “terrified.” More than 330 aid workers in Gaza have been killed since October 7, 2023, according to the United Nations.

Overnight on Monday, Dr. Thabat Saleem, a Palestinian neonatal doctor and volunteer at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Nuseirat refugee camp. More than a thousand healthcare workers have been killed in Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Dr. Saleem’s killing follows the destruction of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last remaining hospital in northern Gaza. Over the weekend, the head of the World Health Organization once again urged Israel to release Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan, from prison, after he was arrested by Israeli forces along with other medical workers during a raid on December 27th. But Israel is not confirming that they have Dr. Safiya.

For more on the deteriorating situation in Gaza, we’re joined in Syracuse, New York, by the acclaimed Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha. His recent piece for The New Yorker is headlined “Requiem for a Refugee Camp,” which focuses on Gaza’s largest refugee camp, now in ruins, Jabaliya. It’s where his grandparents grew up. Mosab Abu Toha, joining us from Syracuse.

Thank you so much for joining us again, Mosab. If you can talk about Jabaliya and all of this latest news we’re getting out of Gaza? You know, we spoke to you in Gaza when you were there with your family. We spoke to you after Refaat Alareer, your colleague, a fellow poet, was killed in an Israeli airstrike, professor at Islamic University. We spoke to you in Cairo when you had just gotten out with your family. We spoke to you in New York here in the studio when your book came out, Forest of Noise. And now we’re talking to you today, this utterly painful piece, “Requiem for a Refugee Camp,” that you’ve just published in The New Yorker. Talk about your experience and what — the centrality of this camp.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah. Thank you so much, Amy, for the coverage.

I mean, the painful thing is that we are talking about things today and next year, what happened, that we are talking about the same thing, the same losses, or even worse. So, today is the anniversary of my friend’s, Marouf Al-Ashqar’s killing. He was killed last year. And just two months ago, his father was killed in an airstrike. So, today is his first anniversary.

And the city Beit Lahia, which is next to Jabaliya, the Jabaliya refugee camp, is under the Israeli occupation. I mean, now, when we are talking about the Israeli occupation, we are no longer talking about settlements in the West Bank or, you know, Palestinian cities occupied by Israel in 1948, but now we can talk about the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, because not only did they expel people — and this is what I’m talking about in my piece about the refugee camp. Not only did they expel people, many — I mean, most people in the Jabaliya refugee camp have been expelled by the Israeli occupation. They not only expelled these people, but they also blew up the houses in the refugee camp where people used to live for 70 or more years. I mean, the house where my maternal grandparents were born, where they grew up, where they had my mother and her siblings, this house does not exist anymore.

And this is really a very devastating thing for refugees. I mean, the refugee camp is a place that should have been a temporary place for people. They should be living in the refugee camp until they could return to the houses of their grandparents or their parents or even their own houses, in Yaffa, in Haifa, etc. But these people were expelled from the refugee camp. The refugee camp is destroyed. And these people are now living in other, newly constructed refugee camps. I mean, when we talk about refugee camps right now in Gaza, these are a group of tents that do not protect people from the heat, do not protect people from the Israeli airstrikes. And we watched so many airstrikes that Israel carried out that were targeting tents, especially in the humanitarian zone.

So, the Jabaliya refugee camp is the largest of the eight refugee camps in the Gaza Strip. It was a home for about 120,000 people, all of them refugees from cities and villages close to the Gaza Strip. So, it is a very devastating loss for people, not only to lose their friends, to lose their families, to lose their house, but also not to know whether they would be able to return to the refugee camp, which was supposed to be a temporary place. Just imagine, Amy, that you are expelled from your house in Yaffa in 1948, and then you live in a refugee camp, and then this same occupation comes and destroys the refugee camp. Now you are farther and farther from your dream of returning. Now you are dreaming of returning to the refugee camp. So, this is really the tragedy of the Palestinian people right now.

AMY GOODMAN: This latest news that we have, we don’t know where Dr. Abu Safiya is.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Many people know his name, head of Kamal Adwan Hospital, because he has been reporting on the conditions of the hospital. And now Israel is saying they don’t have him. People are saying —

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — they saw him taken away. How is it that his lawyers cannot see him? You have the World Food Programme, the U.N. organization, their convoy fired upon.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: The number of health, medical personnel, from doctors to nurses to hospital staff, who have been killed in Gaza. Talk about the significance of this and what these hospitals meant for you when you lived in Gaza with your children and your wife.

MOSAB ABU TOHA: So, Amy, really, really, something that really devastates my heart is that we are watching these things happening as we are talking. I mean, we had the news that Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was abducted from inside the hospital. We saw the hospital where he was working burned and turned into ashes. And we saw the news about the Hind Rajab family and Hind Rajab herself. And we saw doctors and journalists being targeted and killed. So we have all this news, and nothing is changing in the world in terms of taking action against Israel, punishing it. Not only, I mean, they did not give the Palestinians their rights, you know, that are guaranteed by international law, after 1948, but we are now watching a genocide being perpetrated by the same occupation, which was admitted to the United Nations just one year after it was established. Just imagine that it took Israel one year to become a member, a full member, of the United Nations. And now it’s been taking the whole world about 15 months, and we don’t know for how many more — it’s been taking them a long time even to stop Israel from perpetrating this well-documented genocide.

And I would like, Amy, to draw your attention that one day after the Israeli army or the Israeli forces denied their possession of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, one day later, the Israeli military spokesperson issued a statement that Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya is with the Israeli army, and he is interrogated because he is suspected of being a Hamas member. So, this was one thing that was issued one day after they denied their having Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. So, I mean, this tells you that Israel, whenever they are under pressure, they will succumb. They will change their minds. They will say, “Oh, yeah, yeah. We have him, and he’s under interrogation. He is a suspected Hamas general. He’s a Hamas general. He is not even Hamas — he is not only Hamas. He is a Hamas general. He’s a very, very big guy in Hamas” — you know, a doctor who’s working, who is working with the patients, who refused to leave them, who was injured, whose son was killed. He could leave. He could leave Gaza any day, because he has a Kazakhstani citizenship.

And I would like to draw your attention to another thing, which is that the director of Al-Awda Hospital, Dr. Ahmad Mohanna, has been abducted by the Israeli forces from inside the Al-Awda Hospital for 350 days. And there is no information about this doctor. I mean, the world started to pay attention and to advocate on behalf of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, because, you know, he had some reports. He had an Instagram page. He has been talking about the situation. So people knew him. So, that’s why people want him to be out, you know, because they feel like they knew him in person. But this doctor, Ahmad Mohanna, this is the case of about hundreds of other people. These people, no one knows about them. You know, we haven’t seen — I mean, I’ve never seen Dr. Ahmad Mohanna. I’ve never seen a video of him. But he’s a doctor. He’s the director of the Al-Awda Hospital. And he’s been abducted for about 350 days, about a year, and there is no news about him, and no one talks about him. And this is the case of so many, so many people that we don’t know about, until they are dead, just like Dr. Adnan al-Bursh. He was abducted from the same hospital, Al-Awda Hospital. And the people paid attention to him when he died. And people, “Oh, yes.” I mean, we don’t want to die. We don’t want to suffer, for people or for governments to sympathize with us and say, “Oh, yes, let’s — we need to bring him back. He is innocent.” No, everyone in Gaza is innocent. Everyone in Gaza has been living this hell by Israel for decades, not for 15 months.

AMY GOODMAN: Mosab Abu Toha, I want to thank you very much for being with us, Palestinian poet and author. We’ll link your piece in The New Yorker, “Requiem for a Refugee Camp.” He’s the author of the award-winning poetry collection, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza. His latest book is called Forest of Noise.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim

Postby admin » Thu Jan 09, 2025 12:13 am

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNew
January 08, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/8/headlines

Israeli Attacks on Gaza Kill 51, Including Five Children, in Israeli-Designated “Safe Zone”
Jan 08, 2025

Israeli strikes have killed at least another 51 people in Gaza as the official death toll nears 46,000, though that is believed to be a vast undercount. Earlier this morning, a 15-day-old baby was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City. At least five displaced Palestinian children were also killed in Israeli strikes on tents in al-Mawasi, which had been designated a “safe zone” by Israel. Families in Gaza are building grave-like pits below their tents to protect children from the relentless strikes. This is Tayseer Obaid, whose family is sheltering in Deir al-Balah after they were displaced nine times by Israel’s forced evacuation orders.

Tayseer Obaid: “The tent, given that it has a pit with high walls surrounding it, protects my children from random strikes. … My children, how were they in the past, and how are they in the present? They were dignified. We, thank God, were in our homes and lands, with our dignity, let’s say. Currently, we live underground, as if in a grave. Surely, this is not easy.”

Far-Right Israeli Minister Calls for Destruction of West Bank Cities
Jan 08, 2025

In the occupied West Bank town of Tamun, an Israeli drone strike has killed three Palestinians, including two boys — 8-year-old Reda Ali Ahmed Basharat and 10-year-old Hamza Ammar Ahmed Basharat. Israeli forces have also detained 45 Palestinians in the West Bank as part of a sweeping crackdown after Palestinian gunmen killed three Israelis on Monday. Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich responded to Monday’s attack by calling for cities in the West Bank to “be turned into another Jabalia” — a reference to the destroyed refugee camp in Gaza. Israeli settlers have also attacked several West Bank towns, burning cars, ransacking homes and setting crops on fire. The Palestinian news outlet WAFA reported Israeli troops fired at Palestinians in the village of Amatin as they tried to confront violent settlers.

Ireland Joins South Africa’s Genocide Case Against Israel at International Court of Justice
Jan 08, 2025

Ireland has become the latest country to formally join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel before the International Court of Justice. Last month Israel closed its embassy in Ireland to protest after Ireland initially said it would join the case.

Meanwhile, Israel is blocking the United Nations from investigating reports of sexual crimes committed by Hamas during the October 7 attack. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports Israel blocked the probe because it feared it would open the door to the U.N. investigating the sexual abuse of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim

Postby admin » Tue Jan 14, 2025 9:51 pm

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01:37:31
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[Bibi] Do you remember that line from The Godfather? “Keep your friends closer, keep your enemies closer? Lower the flames, maintain a conversation." I’ll give you an example. Today, with our enemies, we are in talks, and no one thinks we can manage to reach an agreement with them. But we control the height of the flames.

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[Nimrod Novik, Former Advisor to Shimon Peres] The public blames Netanyahu for October 7th as the one who feeds the beast. He did not create Hamas, but he fed it.

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[Sami Abu Shehadeh, Former Member of the Knesset] Netanyahu, who is against peace, and who was against having a Palestinian state, dealt with Hamas for a long time as a strategic friend.

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[Bibi] This is confidential and can’t be leaked. Okay? We have neighbors here, sworn enemies. I’m constantly passing them messages. I confuse them, mislead them, lie to them, and then hit them over their heads.

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[Sami Abu Shehadeh, Former Member of the Knesset] It was important for him to keep Gaza under the control of Hamas, and keep the West Bank under the control of Fatah, and prevent them from being united in any way. In order to do so, Netanyahu was all the time helping Hamas to survive.

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[Nimrod Novik, Former Advisor to Shimon Peres] At the same time that he was under investigation, he arranged for Hamas to receive $35 million dollars every month from Qatar.

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[Raviv Drucker, Investigative Journalist] Netanyahu can’t give the money by himself; Israel will not give money to Hamas; he can’t even transfer this money through the banks because even the banks do not want to cooperate. So in order for Israel to permit it, he needs to beg this small and very rich country, Qatar, to give money to our enemy.

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[Sami Abu Shehadeh, Former Member of the Knesset] This suitcase of money was given to Hamas under the request of Benjamin Netayanhu personally. And because the Qatarians knew him from the beginning, they were asking him to send them his request in writing …

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… because they knew that he’s going to lie in the future.

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[Ami Ayalon, Former Head of Israeli Intelligence, Shin Bet] He allowed more than 1 billion dollars to be transferred into the hands of Hamas, because he believed that he can control the level of hatred. It’s nonsense. He cannot control the flames.

[Reporter] Mr. Prime Minister, what is your opinion of Qatari money entering Gaza? Will it help keep the calm in the Strip?

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[Bibi] I do whatever I can in coordination with the security agencies to bring quiet back to the towns in southern Israel. Every step has a price, without exception, when you take steps as a leader.

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There … Is .. Always … A … Price. If you cannot handle the price, you cannot lead. And I know how to handle the price.

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[Nimrod Novik, Former Advisor to Shimon Peres] His strategy was, keep Hamas there, weaken the Palestinian authority on the West Bank, sustain the extremists, weaken the moderate – this exploded in our faces in the most brutal way on October 7th.

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[Uzi Beller, Childhood Friend] Bibi tells the world, again and again and again, “I’m the expert on terrorism. I know how to fight terrorism. I’m the protector of Israel." And under his regime, we get into this incredible, unbelievable war.

-- The Bibi Files, A Film by Alexis Bloom
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