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

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

Postby admin » Fri Jan 17, 2025 11:14 pm

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
January 08, 2025

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 » Fri Jan 17, 2025 11:16 pm

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
January 09, 2025

Israel Kills 70 Palestinians in Gaza; 15 Incubated Newborns Could Die Unless Hospital Receives Fuel
Jan 09, 2025

Gaza’s Health Ministry says Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours have killed at least 70 Palestinians and injured over 100 others. Among the dead are at least eight people killed in northern Gaza in an Israeli strike on a home in Jabaliya al-Balad.

Some of Gaza’s remaining hospitals are scaling back services amid Israel’s severe restrictions on fuel supplies. At Al-Aqsa Hospital, Doctors Without Borders reports 15 newborns in incubators could soon die unless Israel urgently allows the delivery of fuel to power the hospital’s generators.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim

Postby admin » Fri Jan 17, 2025 11:18 pm

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
January 10, 2025

The Lancet Says Gaza Genocide Death Toll Likely 40% Higher Than Official Estimates
Jan 10, 2025

In Gaza, Israeli forces bombed tents housing displaced Palestinians west of Khan Younis overnight. It was one of several attacks that killed 70 people within 24 hours, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. This comes as a new study in the medical journal The Lancet finds the true death toll in Gaza may be 40% higher than official figures, which now stand at more than 46,000 Palestinians killed and nearly 110,000 wounded.

House Votes to Sanction International Criminal Court over Arrest Warrants for Israeli Leaders
Jan 10, 2025

Here in the U.S., the House of Representatives voted to sanction the International Criminal Court after it issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former military chief Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Forty-five Democrats joined 198 Republicans to approve the “Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act.”

NYU Suspends 11 Students over Peaceful Antiwar Protest
Jan 10, 2025

In New York, 11 students have been suspended by New York University for one year for participating in nonviolent antiwar protests last month. In a statement, NYU Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine called the suspensions “a draconian case of collective punishment.”

“We Are Documenting Our Genocide”: Gaza Journalists Demand Int’l Media Defend Palestinian Colleagues
Jan 10, 2025

Palestinian journalists in Gaza gathered for a press conference outside Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, where they decried the hypocrisy and neglect of international media organizations. This is reporter Abubaker Abed.

Abubaker Abed: “We are just documenting a genocide against us. It’s enough, after almost a year and a half. We want you to stand foot by foot with us, because we are like any other journalists, reporters and media workers all across the globe, no matter the origin, the color or the race. Journalism is not a crime. We are not a target.”

Click here to see our interview with Abubaker Abed. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate reports nearly 200 journalists have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 7, 2023. Over 400 others have been wounded or arrested.

NYT “Chooses Silence Over Accountability” as It Refuses to Run Quaker Ad Condemning Gaza Genocide
Jan 10, 2025

In more media news, The New York Times has come under fire after it refused to run a paid ad by the the American Friends Service Committee that referred to Israel’s war on Gaza as a genocide. The ad read in part, “Tell Congress to stop arming Israel’s genocide in Gaza now!” Joyce Ajlouny, general secretary for AFSC, called the move “an outrageous attempt to sidestep the truth,” adding, “Palestinians and allies have been silenced and marginalized in the media for decades as these institutions choose silence over accountability.” The AFSC is a Quaker organization.

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Camp David’s Failures: Why Jimmy Carter’s Opposition to Israeli Apartheid Wasn’t Enough to Secure Peace
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
January 10, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/10/ ... transcript

The late President Jimmy Carter presided over a key landmark in the Arab-Israeli peace process, the 1979 Camp David Accords signed by Egypt and Israel. Carter’s lifelong interest in resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict is an analog for his complicated legacy in foreign policy and human rights. As Seth Anziska, a professor of Jewish-Muslim relations at University College London, explains, while on one hand Carter believed that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians constituted apartheid “far worse” than what he had seen in South Africa, on the other, his deep Christian faith made him fundamentally sympathetic to religious beliefs framing Israel as a Jewish homeland. “He was the first U.S. president to talk about the idea of a Palestinian homeland alongside his commitment to Israeli security,” says Anziska, who argues that the failure of the Camp David Accords in promoting lasting peace lies in their “perpetuation of Palestinian statelessness.”

Transcript

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

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! As we continue our discussion of President Jimmy Carter’s legacy, we look at his policies in the Middle East and North Africa, in particular, Israel and Palestine. On Thursday during the funeral, President Carter’s former adviser Stuart Eizenstat praised Carter’s work on facilitating the Camp David Peace Accords between Israel and Egypt in ’78.

STUART EIZENSTAT: Jimmy Carter’s most lasting achievement, and the one I think he was most proud of, was to bring the first peace to the Middle East through the greatest act of personal diplomacy in American history, the Camp David Accords. For 13 days and nights, he negotiated with Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, personally drafting more than 20 peace proposals and shuttling them between the Israeli and Egyptian delegations. And he saved the agreement at the 11th hour — and it was the 11th hour — by appealing to Begin’s love of his grandchildren. For the past 45 years, the Egypt-Israel peace treaty has never been violated and laid the foundation for the Abraham Accords.

AMY GOODMAN: The Abraham Accords are the bilateral normalization agreements between Israel and, as well — and the United Arab Emirates and Israel and Bahrain, signed in 2020.

In 2006, years after he left office, Jimmy Carter wrote a book called Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, in which he compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to South Africa’s former racist regime. It was striking for a former U.S. president to use the words “Palestine,” let alone “apartheid,” in referring to the Occupied Territories. I went down to The Carter Center to speak with President Jimmy Carter about the controversy around his book and what he wanted the world to understand.

JIMMY CARTER: The word “apartheid” is exactly accurate. You know, this is an area that’s occupied by two powers. They are now completely separated. The Palestinians can’t even ride on the same roads that the Israelis have created or built in Palestinian territory. The Israelis never see a Palestinian, except the Israeli soldiers. The Palestinians never see an Israeli, except at a distance, except the Israeli soldiers. So, within Palestinian territory, they are absolutely and totally separated, much worse than they were in South Africa, by the way. And the other thing is, the other definition of “apartheid” is, one side dominates the other. And the Israelis completely dominate the life of the Palestinian people.

AMY GOODMAN: Why don’t Americans know what you have seen?

JIMMY CARTER: Americans don’t want to know and many Israelis don’t want to know what is going on inside Palestine. It’s a terrible human rights persecution that far transcends what any outsider would imagine. And there are powerful political forces in America that prevent any objective analysis of the problem in the Holy Land. I think it’s accurate to say that not a single member of Congress with whom I’m familiar would possibly speak out and call for Israel to withdraw to their legal boundaries, or to publicize the plight of the Palestinians or even to call publicly and repeatedly for good-faith peace talks. There hasn’t been a day of peace talks now in more than seven years. So this is a taboo subject. And I would say that if any member of Congress did speak out as I’ve just described, they would probably not be back in the Congress the next term.

AMY GOODMAN: President Jimmy Carter. To see that whole interview we did at The Carter Center, you can go to democracynow.org.

For more on his legacy in the Middle East during his presidency and beyond, we’re joined in London by historian Seth Anziska, professor of Jewish-Muslim relations at University College London, author of Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo.

What should we understand about the legacy of President Carter, Professor Anziska?

SETH ANZISKA: Well, thank you, Amy.

I think, primarily, the biggest lesson is that when he came into office, he was the first U.S. president to talk about the idea of a Palestinian homeland, alongside his commitment to Israeli security. And that was an enormous change from what had come before and what’s come since. And I think that the way we understand Carter’s legacy should very much be oriented around the very deep commitment he had to justice and a resolution of the Palestinian question, alongside his commitment to Israel, which derived very much from his Southern Baptist faith.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about the whole trajectory. Talk about the Camp David Accords, for which he was hailed throughout the various funeral services this week and has been hailed in many places around the world.

SETH ANZISKA: Well, I think one of the biggest misunderstandings about the legacy of Camp David is that this is not at all what Carter had intended or had hoped for when he came into office. He actually had a much more comprehensive vision of peace in the Middle East, that included a resolution of the Palestinian component, but also peace with Syria, with Jordan. And he came up with some of these ideas, developed them with Cyrus Vance, the secretary of state, and Zbigniew Brzeziński, his national security adviser. And in developing those ideas, which came out in 1977 in a very closely held memo that was not widely shared inside the administration, he actually talked about return of refugees, he talked about the status of Jerusalem, and he desired very much to think about the different components of the regional settlement as part of an overall vision. This was in contrast to Henry Kissinger’s attitude of piecemeal diplomacy that had preceded him in the aftermath of the 1973 war. So we can understand Carter in this way very much as a departure and somebody who understood the value and the necessity of contending with these much broader regional dynamics.

Now, the reasons why this ended up with a far more limited, but very significant, bilateral peace treaty between Egypt and Israel had a lot to do both with the election of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1977, as well as the position of Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and also the role of the Palestinians and the PLO. But what people don’t quite recall or understand is that Camp David and the agreement towards the peace treaty was in many ways a compromise or, in Brzeziński’s view, was a real departure from what had been the intention. And that gap between what people had hoped for within the administration and what ended up emerging in 1979 with the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty also was tethered very much to the perpetuation of Palestinian statelessness. So, if we want to understand why and how Palestinians have been deprived of sovereignty or remain stateless to this day, we have to go back to think about the impact of Camp David itself.

AMY GOODMAN: Interesting that Sadat would be assassinated years later in Egypt when Carter was on the plane with Nixon and Ford. That’s when they say that cemented his relationship with Ford, while they hardly talked to Nixon at all. But if you could also comment on President Carter and post-President Carter? I mean, the fact that he wrote this book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, using the word “Palestine,” using the word “apartheid,” to refer to the Occupied Territories — I remember chasing him down the hall at the Democratic convention when he was supposed to speak. This was the Obama Democratic convention. And it ended up he didn’t speak. And I chased him and Rosalynn, because —

SETH ANZISKA: Remember that in 1977, there was a very famous speech that he gave in Clinton, Massachusetts, talking about a Palestinian homeland. And that raised huge hackles, both in the American Jewish community amongst American Jewish leaders who were very uncomfortable and were already distrustful of a Southern Democrat and his views on Israel, but also Cold War conservatives, who were quite hawkish and felt that he was far too close to engaging with the Soviet Union. And so, both of those constituencies were very, very opposed to his attitude and his approach on the Palestinian issue. And I think we can see echoes of that in how he then was treated after his presidency, when much of his activism and much of his engagement on the question of Palestine, to my view, derived from a sense of frustration and regret about what he was not able to achieve in the Camp David Accords.

And his commitment stemmed from the same values that he had been shaped by early on, a sense of viewing the Palestinian issue through the same lens as civil rights, in the same lens as what he experienced in the South, which is often, what his biographers have explained, where his views and approach towards the Palestinians came from, but also a particularly close relationship to biblical views around Israel and Zionism, that he was very much committed to Israeli security as a result. And that was never something that he let go of, even if you look closely at his work in Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Some of his views on Israel are actually quite closely aligned with positions that many in the Jewish community would feel comfortable with.

The fact that people criticized and attacked him for that, I think, speaks to the taboo of talking about what’s happening or what has happened, in the context of Israel and Palestine, in the same kind of language as disenfranchisement around race in apartheid South Africa. And, of course, as Carter said in the interview you just ran that you had done with him when the book came out, the situation is far worse in actuality with what is happening vis-à-vis Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: Seth Anziska, I want to thank you so much f
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim

Postby admin » Fri Jan 17, 2025 11:23 pm

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
January 13, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/13/headlines

Israel Killed Over 5,000 Palestinians in North Gaza Since Start of Siege
Jan 13, 2025

Authorities in Gaza say more than 5,000 Palestinians were killed or went missing in the first 100 days of Israel’s siege on northern Gaza, which began in early October. Another 9,500 Palestinians have been injured, and 2,600 have been detained. In a statement, Gaza’s government media office said, “In the past 100 days, our people in northern Gaza have suffered the most horrific forms of killing, ethnic cleansing, destruction, and displacement.” This comes as talks continue over a possible ceasefire and hostage deal. Reuters reports Qatar gave Israel and Hamas a final draft of a deal earlier today. President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on Sunday.

But Israel is continuing to attack Gaza. Earlier today, Israel bombed a school in Gaza City, killing five displaced Palestinians. On Saturday, Israel struck a school in the Jabaliya refugee camp, killing at least eight people, including two children and two women.

Another Palestinian Journalist, Saed Abu Nabhan, Killed by Israeli Forces in Gaza
Jan 13, 2025

On Saturday, a funeral was held for the Palestinian journalist Saed Abu Nabhan, who was shot dead by Israeli forces on Friday. He was a freelance cameraman for the Anadolu news agency. This is his colleague Mohammed Abu Namous.

Mohammed Abu Namous: “It is clear that the Israeli occupation wants to target the journalist body that exposes its crimes, while the occupation had utilized its media to say that they only target the resistance and their weapons, until the Palestinian journalists have exposed the truth to the world, saying that this occupation targets children, women and unarmed civilians.”

Poland Paves Way for Netanyahu to Attend Auschwitz Commemoration Without Risking Arrest
Jan 13, 2025

The government of Poland has adopted a resolution to protect Benjamin Netanyahu from arrest if he attends a major event in Poland this month to mark 80 years since the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. In November, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for war crimes in Gaza.

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“Journalism Is Not a Crime”: Gaza Reporter Slams International Press as Journalist Death Toll Rises
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
January 13, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/13/ ... transcript

As negotiators from Israel and Hamas continue discussions in Qatar about a possible Gaza ceasefire, we speak with Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed, who spoke at a press conference of Gaza media workers last week urging the international press to speak up for their Palestinian colleagues. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate says nearly 200 journalists have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 2023. “The world just keeps turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to what is happening,” says Abed from outside the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. “It’s completely enraging and unacceptable.” His recent article for Drop Site News is headlined “What It’s Truly Like to Sleep in a Damp, Frigid Tent: A Report From Gaza.”

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 turn now to Gaza, where Israel’s assault on the besieged strip continues despite ongoing talks over a possible ceasefire. Palestinian authorities say 5,000 people are missing or have been killed in this first 100 days of Israel’s siege of north Gaza. Since Monday morning, 33 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, Al Jazeera Arabic reports, including five people who died in an Israeli attack on a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza City.

On Friday, Saed Abu Nabhan, a Palestinian journalist for the Cairo-based Al-Ghad TV, was killed by Israeli forces while reporting in the Nuseirat refugee camp, his funeral held Saturday. This is his colleague Mohammed Abu Namous.

MOHAMMED ABU NAMOUS: [translated] It is clear that the Israeli occupation wants to target the journalist body that exposes its crimes, while the occupation had utilized its media to say that they only target the resistance and their weapons, until the Palestinian journalists have exposed the truth to the world, saying that this occupation targets children, women and unarmed civilians.

AMY GOODMAN: The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate reports nearly 200 journalists have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 7, 2023. Over 400 others have been wounded or arrested. On Thursday, Palestinian journalists held a news conference outside Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, where they decried the hypocrisy and neglect of international media organizations. This is reporter Abubaker Abed.

ABUBAKER ABED: We are just documenting a genocide against us. It’s enough, after almost a year and a half. We want you to stand foot by foot with us, because we are like any other journalists, reporters and media workers all across the globe, no matter the origin, the color or the race. Journalism is not a crime. We are not a target.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, journalist Abubaker Abed joins us now from Gaza. He used to be a football, a soccer, commentator, but now he calls himself an “accidental” war correspondent. His new piece for Drop Site News is headlined “What It’s Truly Like to Sleep in a Damp, Frigid Tent: A Report From Gaza.” He’s joining us from Deir al-Balah, where that news conference was held.

Abubaker Abed, thank you for joining us again. You’re 22 years old. You didn’t expect to be a war correspondent, but that’s what you are now. Talk more about what you were demanding on Thursday, surrounded by other Palestinian journalists, demanding of the Western media, of all international journalists.

ABUBAKER ABED: Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

So, what I demanded was very simple: just the basic human rights as any other people across the globe, particularly for journalists here, who have been subjected to sheer violence, brutality and barbarism over the past almost year and a half, particularly if we talk about — if we have a bit of a comparison between us and any other journalist across the globe. And as I said in this press briefing, that we are working in makeshift tented camps and workplaces. I personally talk about myself here — I’m talking about myself here. Just I spent long hours of the day just trying to finalize a story or finalize a report just to tell people the truth, and sometimes we don’t have the internet connection. We have been through starvation. We have been through freezing temperatures. We have been taking shelter in dilapidated tents. We haven’t been given any sort of a human right at all.

So, this is what I really demanded, because what I’ve been seeing for the past 14 months from international media outlets is absolutely enraging. Like, I do have the same rights. Like, what if we were in another spot in the world? The world would absolutely be standing with us and giving us everything we wanted. But why, when it comes to Palestinians, it’s a completely different story? We understand, and we’ve been taught as a young man, I’ve been always taught, that the world cares about the human rights of every single person in the world. But I haven’t seen any of those human rights as a Palestinian. What have I got to do with this war so I was subjected to this scale of barbarism and this starvation and this cold and just all of these diseases? Even right now while I’m talking you, Amy, I’ve been diagnosed with bronchitis. I’m still recovering from it. There are no right or proper medications inside any of the pharmacies here in Deir al-Balah, where more than a million people are taking shelter. Even if we’re talking about it in detail, the lack of medical supplies and aid inside the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital here, which serves more than 1.5 million people in central Gaza, apart from the everyday — from everyday casualties, is literally insane.

When we talk about that, when we talk about the Palestinian journalists, we’ve lost around 210. And even after the press briefing, another journalist was killed. So, you talk to an absolutely dead conscience of the world. You’re talking about — like, the world just keeps turning a blind eye and — a blind eye and just a deaf ear to what is happening, as we are talking to ourselves. So, it’s completely enraging and unacceptable, because we are like — again, we are like any other reporters, media workers and journalists across the globe, and we have the right to be given the access to all media equipment, the access to the world, and our voices must be amplified, because, again, we don’t have any party to this war. And we must be protected by all international laws, because that’s what has been enshrined in the international laws and the human rights, that have always been taught to the entirety of the world.

AMY GOODMAN: We should make clear that all media has access to journalists on the ground in Gaza. Our Democracy Now! viewers and listeners know we go regularly to Gaza, almost unheard of in the rest of the American corporate media. Yes, they are banned. And that should be raised every time they report on Israel and Gaza, that they are not allowed there. Abubaker Abed, what would it mean if there was more attention brought to the journalists on the ground in Gaza? According to a number of reports, well over 150, nearly 250, journalists have been killed, most recently this weekend in Nuseirat, is that right, Abubaker?

ABUBAKER ABED: Yes. I mean, like, the reports are always horrific. Even when we go to a particular place to report on a specific event in the continuously deteriorating humanitarian situation, we know that this might be the end. We know that even everything we’re doing right now to report on or anything we’re trying to tell, any story that we are trying to relate to the outside world, is going to cost our lives. But we want to tell the world. We want to live in dignity. We want to live in peace, in calm, because that’s what we really deserve, as any other people across the globe. But it just keeps giving like this, because — again, you said it in the beginning, that I shouldn’t have been an accidental war correspondent, but that’s what I’ve evolved into, because this is my homeland, and this is something that I have to defend wholeheartedly. But, yes, even when I’m trying to do this, I’m not given the basic things. I’m not given the basic human rights.

So, every journalist here, that is working tirelessly, that has been working relentlessly since the outbreak of this genocidal assault on Gaza, has faced unimaginable horrors. We have — I, myself, lost my very dearest friend, lost family members and lost many of my friends and many of my loved ones. But I still continue to hope. I still continue to endure the harsh, the stark realities of living inside Gaza, because Gaza is now the hellscape. Absolutely, it’s the apocalyptic hellscape of the world. It’s not livable at all. And children particularly, because I’ve been talking to many children and reporting on them, we can see the children are painful, are barefoot. They are traumatized. Their clothes are ripped apart. And they are desperately needing just a sip of water and a bite of food, but that is not available because Israel continues — you know, continues applying the collective punishment on all people of the Gaza Strip.

And again, I just want to reaffirm that, and I just want to reiterate it, which is that half of the Gaza population is children. So, what have these children got to do such a genocidal assault on Gaza? So, they should have the right to educate, because they have been deprived of their education for the past year and a half almost. And they have been deprived of — sorry. They have been deprived of every basic right, even their — I mean, their necessities and their childhood and everything about them. The same for us as young men. I should have completed my study. Unfortunately, my university has been reduced to rubble. Everything about Gaza, everything about my dreams, my memories has also been razed to the ground and has also been reduced to ashes.

So, Israel does not have — amid the growing news of a possible ceasefire on the line, on the horizon, I can tell you that from here, that we are very hopeful. There is a state of optimism in the anticipation for a ceasefire, because people, including me, want to heal up, want to lick our wounds or stitch our wounds, heal up. And we want to really have one moment, only one moment, of not hearing the buzzing sounds of the drones and the hovering of warplanes, particularly during the night hours, because the tones every single day, we are very much traumatized. And we really need rehabilitation, to really get to our lives, to get to who we were before this war started. So, it’s a very much-needed thing, because people are really crying for it. People are really hopeful about it. And I hope that this will not dash their hopes, the continuous attacks on Gaza. And I hope that they will have their dreams coming true very, very soon, in the coming days.

AMY GOODMAN: Abubaker Abed, we want to thank you so much for being with us, 22-year-old journalist, speaking to us from Deir al-Balah, Gaza, used to be a soccer commentator, now, as he calls himself, an “accidental” war correspondent.

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“Seeking Justice”: How the Hind Rajab Foundation Pursues Israeli Soldiers for War Crimes
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
January 13, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/13/ ... transcript

Belgian Lebanese activist Dyab Abou Jahjah, the founder of the Hind Rajab Foundation, discusses how the organization seeks to hold Israeli soldiers accountable for war crimes committed in Gaza. Named after a 6-year-old girl who was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza almost a year ago, the Hind Rajab Foundation uses evidence gathered from soldiers’ own social media to build cases against them. The group recently filed a complaint against a soldier in Brazil, leading a local judge to issue an arrest warrant for him that he only avoided by fleeing to Argentina. “Unfortunately, the Israeli government smuggled the soldier out of Brazil, which is, of course, obstructing justice,” Abou Jahjah tells Democracy Now! “We are relentless in seeking justice, and we are very convinced that one day justice also will be served in a court of law.”

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 with a look at a new effort to hold Israeli soldiers accountable, despite a climate of impunity, for crimes committed in Gaza. Last week, Poland adopted a resolution ensuring that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be guaranteed safe entry to Poland to attend ceremonies marking 80 years since the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. Poland’s deputy foreign minister had said earlier Poland would comply with the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants if Netanyahu visited Poland.

Here in the U.S., the House of Representatives voted last week to sanction the International Criminal Court over arrest warrants for Netanyahu and the former military chief Yoav Gallant.

But in Belgium, a nonprofit called the Hind Rajab Foundation filed a lawsuit Thursday against an Israeli soldier in Sweden who they accused of playing a direct role in the targeting of civilians and destruction of homes. Earlier this month, Israel’s Embassy in Brazil helped a 21-year-old Israeli army reservist flee Brazil after a Brazilian federal court ordered police to open an investigation into possible war crimes he committed in Gaza. That case had also been filed by the Hind Rajab Foundation. The Brussels-based nonprofit is named after 6-year-old Hind Rajab, who was killed, along with her family, in a January 2024 Israeli attack as they were in a car escaping bombardment in Gaza City, a story we covered extensively.

For more, we’re joined now in Brussels by Dyab Abou Jahjah, co-founder of the Hind Rajab Foundation.

Dyab, thank you for joining us. Explain what you are calling for. Talk about the Brazilian case and also the one in Sweden, and where you get your information about what these Israeli soldiers specifically have done.

DYAB ABOU JAHJAH: Thank you, Amy. Thanks for having me.

Indeed, as you said in your presentation, our mission is seeking accountability, seeking justice, basically. It is a sad thing that citizens, as ourselves, should be doing this, because normally this should be an automatic thing that states and legal bodies, international legal bodies, should be seeking. However, it is, of course, our right as citizens to do that when these countries mostly default on their responsibilities.

So, what we do is monitor the posts of Israeli soldiers, who have been extensively, as you know and everybody knows, posting things out of Gaza, out of the ongoing genocide there. And we look for criminal activity, because, you know, obviously, we only target soldiers who have posted things of themselves that we consider, legally speaking, as war crimes, at least, and maybe more than war crimes. So, this is the — you know, every research we do is open intelligence, open-source intelligence. So, this is how we function.

Once we have evidence, we pass it to our legal teams. They prepare cases, and then they file it when the subject enters a country that has jurisdiction, or, let’s say, activating jurisdiction of that country over these things. So, this is what happened in Brazil. This is what happened, before Brazil, in Cyprus, as well, and also, as you mentioned, in Sweden. So, this is basically our way of operating.

AMY GOODMAN: We only have a minute, but can you talk about the Brazil case of the Israeli soldier and, again, how you get the information about what they specifically did?

DYAB ABOU JAHJAH: Again, the information is posted by themselves. So, we analyze it, and we turn, you know, social media posts, basically, into legal cases.

I just want to — since you said we just have a minute, I want to take the opportunity to say that the countries of the world should take their responsibilities. As we speak, Major Ghassan Alian, who is the head of COGAT, which is the entity that oversees the weaponizing of famine in Gaza, is present in Italy to attend a meeting, secretly. We have filed a case against him in the International Criminal Court, asking them to activate any arrest warrant that they have against him or, if not, issue a new one. And we also informed the Italian authorities, asking them to activate their responsibility under the Rome Statute, since they have jurisdiction and since Major General Alian does not have immunity.

This is an example that is now unfolding of how countries of this world should take their responsibilities. And, you know, I think the Brazilian case was a case where that happened, where a judge actually issued a probe order to investigate a soldier. Unfortunately, the Israeli government smuggled the soldier out of Brazil, which is, of course, obstructing justice. But we are continuing. We are relentless in seeking justice, and we are very convinced that one day justice also will be served in a court of law.

AMY GOODMAN: Dyab Abou Jahjah, we want to thank you for being with us, co-founder of the Hind Rajab Foundation, the Belgium-based group advocating for Palestinian rights. That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.

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

“Seeking Justice”: How the Hind Rajab Foundation Pursues Israeli Soldiers for War Crimes (Extended Interview)
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
January 13, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/13/ ... hind_rajab

Belgian Lebanese activist Dyab Abou Jahjah, the founder of the Hind Rajab Foundation, discusses how the organization seeks to hold Israeli soldiers accountable for war crimes committed in Gaza. Named after a 6-year-old girl who was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza almost a year ago, the Hind Rajab Foundation uses evidence gathered from soldiers’ own social media to build cases against them. The group recently filed a complaint against a soldier in Brazil, leading a local judge to issue an arrest warrant for him that he only avoided by fleeing to Argentina. “Unfortunately, the Israeli government smuggled the soldier out of Brazil, which is, of course, obstructing justice,” Abou Jahjah tells Democracy Now! “We are relentless in seeking justice, and we are very convinced that one day justice also will be served in a court of law.”

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 with a look at a new effort to hold Israeli soldiers accountable, despite a climate of impunity, for crimes committed in Gaza. Last week, Poland adopted a resolution ensuring that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be guaranteed safe entry to Poland to attend ceremonies marking 80 years since the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. Poland’s deputy foreign minister had said earlier Poland would comply with the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants if Netanyahu visited Poland.

Here in the U.S., the House of Representatives voted last week to sanction the International Criminal Court over arrest warrants for Netanyahu and the former military chief Yoav Gallant.

But in Belgium, a nonprofit called the Hind Rajab Foundation filed a lawsuit Thursday against an Israeli soldier in Sweden who they accused of playing a direct role in the targeting of civilians and destruction of homes. Earlier this month, Israel’s Embassy in Brazil helped a 21-year-old Israeli army reservist flee Brazil after a Brazilian federal court ordered police to open an investigation into possible war crimes he committed in Gaza. That case had also been filed by the Hind Rajab Foundation. The Brussels-based nonprofit is named after 6-year-old Hind Rajab, who was killed, along with her family, in a January 2024 Israeli attack as they were in a car escaping bombardment in Gaza City, a story we covered extensively.

For more, we’re joined now in Brussels by Dyab Abou Jahjah, co-founder of the Hind Rajab Foundation.

Dyab, thank you for joining us. Explain what you are calling for. Talk about the Brazilian case and also the one in Sweden, and where you get your information about what these Israeli soldiers specifically have done.

DYAB ABOU JAHJAH: Thank you, Amy. Thanks for having me.

Indeed, as you said in your presentation, our mission is seeking accountability, seeking justice, basically. It is a sad thing that citizens, as ourselves, should be doing this, because normally this should be an automatic thing that states and legal bodies, international legal bodies, should be seeking. However, it is, of course, our right as citizens to do that when these countries mostly default on their responsibilities.

So, what we do is monitor the posts of Israeli soldiers, who have been extensively, as you know and everybody knows, posting things out of Gaza, out of the ongoing genocide there. And we look for criminal activity, because, you know, obviously, we only target soldiers who have posted things of themselves that we consider, legally speaking, as war crimes, at least, and maybe more than war crimes. So, this is the — you know, every research we do is open intelligence, open-source intelligence. So, this is how we function.

Once we have evidence, we pass it to our legal teams. They prepare cases, and then they file it when the subject enters a country that has jurisdiction, or, let’s say, activating jurisdiction of that country over these things. So, this is what happened in Brazil. This is what happened, before Brazil, in Cyprus, as well, and also, as you mentioned, in Sweden. So, this is basically our way of operating.

AMY GOODMAN: We only have a minute, but can you talk about the Brazil case of the Israeli soldier and, again, how you get the information about what they specifically did?

DYAB ABOU JAHJAH: Again, the information is posted by themselves. So, we analyze it, and we turn, you know, social media posts, basically, into legal cases.

I just want to — since you said we just have a minute, I want to take the opportunity to say that the countries of the world should take their responsibilities. As we speak, Major Ghassan Alian, who is the head of COGAT, which is the entity that oversees the weaponizing of famine in Gaza, is present in Italy to attend a meeting, secretly. We have filed a case against him in the International Criminal Court, asking them to activate any arrest warrant that they have against him or, if not, issue a new one. And we also informed the Italian authorities, asking them to activate their responsibility under the Rome Statute, since they have jurisdiction and since Major General Alian does not have immunity.

This is an example that is now unfolding of how countries of this world should take their responsibilities. And, you know, I think the Brazilian case was a case where that happened, where a judge actually issued a probe order to investigate a soldier. Unfortunately, the Israeli government smuggled the soldier out of Brazil, which is, of course, obstructing justice. But we are continuing. We are relentless in seeking justice, and we are very convinced that one day justice also will be served in a court of law.

AMY GOODMAN: Thank you so much for staying with us for Part 2 of this conversation. Why don’t we start with why you called this foundation, why you named it after Hind?

DYAB ABOU JAHJAH: Thank you for having me again.

The main reason that we have called this foundation after Hind is because her case, her murder, is an example, a very, you know, extreme example, of the genocide that was ongoing in Gaza and the fact that children have been also the main victims of this genocide. This is something that is, if you look at the statistics, very clear. But also, the total impunity under which the Israeli army acted in this case illustrates the absolute atmosphere, let’s say, of this whole genocide, as you stated rightfully. You know, for example, when an ambulance was sent to save Hind, the people in the ambulance were also targeted and killed. But also, the Hind story was unfolding under the eyes of the whole world as it was going viral, and everybody was aware that a 6-year-old girl is stuck in a car among the dead bodies in a very macabre setting of her family, and that even did not change anything of how the Israeli army treated this. So, I think it’s very telling about everything. And justice for Hind, for us, is equal to justice for every victim of the Gaza genocide.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to that day, January 29th, 2024, when 6-year-old Hind Rajab climbed into a car with her aunt, her uncle and cousins in Gaza City as they prepared to flee to the southern part of Gaza. But as they were in the car, an Israeli tank approached them and opened fire. Hind’s 15-year-old cousin Layan called the Red Crescent for help. She was in the car. These were Layan’s last words, recorded on the call with the Red Crescent dispatcher.

LAYAN HAMADEH: [translated] Hello,

OMAR AL-QAM: [translated] Hello, dear.

LAYAN HAMADEH: [translated] They are shooting at us.

OMAR AL-QAM: [translated] Hello.

LAYAN HAMADEH: [translated] They are shooting at us. The tank is next to me.

OMAR AL-QAM: [translated] Are you hiding?

LAYAN HAMADEH: [translated] Yes, in the car. We’re next to the tank.

OMAR AL-QAM: [translated] Are you inside the car?

LAYAN HAMADEH: [screaming]

OMAR AL-QAM: [translated] Hello? Hello?

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was the dispatcher trying to reach Layan, who was killed along with the rest of her family in that car. The only one who remained alive in the car was this 6-year-old little girl Hind. Wounded, she called the Red Crescent back, pleading with the dispatcher to help her.

HIND RAJAB: [translated] Come take me. You will come and take me?

RED CRESCENT DISPATCHER: [translated] Do you want me to come and take you?

HIND RAJAB: [translated] I’m so scared. Please come. Please call someone to come and take me.

RED CRESCENT DISPATCHER: [translated] OK, dear, I will come and take you.

AMY GOODMAN: That dispatcher stayed on the phone with little Hind for something like three hours. After seeking approval from the Israeli military, two emergency workers with the Palestine Red Crescent, Yusuf Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun, went to try to rescue Hind in the car, but dispatchers lost contact with the medics. Nearly two weeks later, Israeli forces finally withdrew from the area, and Hind’s surviving family ventured back to the neighborhood. They found Hind dead inside the car along with the bodies of five of her family members, the car riddled with bullet holes. The bodies of the two emergency workers were also found in an ambulance nearby and appeared to have been killed by Israeli fire just yards away from the car. This is Hind’s mother, Wissam Hamadah, after she learned of her daughter’s killing,

WISSAM HAMADAH: [translated] My heart is completely destroyed over my daughter. Two weeks, they killed them. Two weeks, they were in that car. I’ve told the world from day one, “Please, go get Hind.” God is the only one sufficient for us. Everyone failed us. I will tell God on the day of judgment about my daughter. I swear I will never forgive you or any human involved or any human rights organization.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that is the story of Hind Rajab. And let me ask you, Dyab Abou Jahjah, what happened legally in this case, in the case of Hind, her cousin Layan, the whole family, and the two paramedics who were killed? What kind of investigation has been done?

DYAB ABOU JAHJAH: As far as we are informed, any form of investigation on the ground is made impossible by the Israeli army. So, it is not only very dangerous, it is a direct reason that the Israelis consider as a direct reason to deploy military action to stop an investigation, which is the case also for most of things that are happening in Gaza right now. However, there’s enough research that has been done on the forensic level, on open-source intelligence level. And, you know, I think end of this month we will have some important information. On the annual, on the 29th of January, we will communicate, as the Hind Rajab Foundation, something very important in that regard.

AMY GOODMAN: So, now I want to go to the Brazilian case. In Part 1 of our conversation, we talked briefly about this. But this is about an Israeli soldier named Yuval Vagdani, under investigation in Brazil for his role in planting explosives and destroying entire neighborhoods in Gaza. You filed a 500-page report, pages of evidence against him, before the Israeli diplomatic staff in Brazil took him out of Brazil. Talk about the Brazilian court and what it was calling for, and what you’re calling for right now.

DYAB ABOU JAHJAH: Right. Well, it is a very important case, because the evidence was damning. Mr. Vagdani posted a lot of information, but also members of his platoon posted a lot of information that proves his personal involvement. I mean, just to make it very, very clear, we have him on video planting the explosives and posing in front of the explosives, and then we have him on video exploding these houses. To clarify also, these houses are property of civilians, Gazan civilians, who have nothing to do with any organizations or any political movements. One of them, which is our main plaintiff in this case, has even a work permit in Israel, which means that he undergo — underwent a lot of scrutiny from the Israeli government before being issued such a permit. So, there’s no possibility that there’s any military justification for these acts.

So, what happened in Brazil is that based on the importance of the evidence, the prosecution asked the judge to look at it, which is the first hurdle in any legal case. The judge had a look at it and issued an order, acknowledging our request, issued an order to investigate, to probe Mr. Vagdani, who was at that moment vacationing in Brazil. This is a breakthrough on the legal level, because it’s the first time that a judge and a signatory state of the Rome Statute acts upon the Rome Statute without an ICC warrant. This is why it is a legal breakthrough. It might sound technical, but it’s a very important precedent.

So, after that moment, we realized, because we hadn’t communicated about the case — we do not communicate about our cases unless it’s necessary. So, at that moment, we realized that the subject was aware of the case. There was some leak somewhere. We cannot know where. We do not know where or how. But at that moment, we did communicate on the case. Unfortunately, the Israelis smuggled him out of Brazil, recognizing also de facto the seriousness of this case, because, you know, otherwise, like I always say, if you are being sued, basically you can just take a lawyer. But in this case, I think, like in many other cases, it was clear that if Mr. Vagdani will, you know, stand before a judge, that the chances are very big that he will be arrested and held in Brazil.

AMY GOODMAN: Dyab, your organization has caused panic in Israel. In fact, the Israeli military has warned its soldiers that they could face arrest while traveling abroad over crimes committed in Gaza. Your response?

DYAB ABOU JAHJAH: Well, it’s very telling that the Israeli military communicates in this way. I think, you know, under any Geneva Convention that governs the law of war, I think the Israeli military has the responsibility itself to investigate war crimes and to arrest, itself, through its military police, such individuals and also to court-martial them. So, it’s very telling that and very unfortunate that the Israeli army, but also that Israeli politicians, instead of, you know, taking their responsibilities, as they claim to be a state of law — at least this is their claim — that they actually are telling their soldiers to not go to certain countries because they could face legal consequences. And they are even — you know, the most cynical part of is that they are asking soldiers not to post their crimes, instead of asking them not to commit their crimes.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you respond to Poland reversing their possession, originally saying they would arrest Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, if he came to Poland for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, but then you have the foreign minister, the — sorry, the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, confirming he would not be arrested? If you could respond to that, and then to the vote taken in the U.S. House of Representatives, by Democrats and Republicans, voting to sanction the ICC for issuing those arrest warrants for Netanyahu and the former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant?

DYAB ABOU JAHJAH: Right. Let me start by saying, regarding the Poland thing, that this has a lot to say on Poland and nothing to say on Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Netanyahu is an indicted war criminal through the ICC. There is an arrest warrant under the — on him, and Poland is a signatory of the Rome Statute and must execute that arrest warrant if it is a state where the rule of law is upheld, if it is a state where the separation of powers is upheld, because a politician, whether it’s the president or a prime minister or whoever, has normally, in a normal state of law, nothing to say on the application of the law. So, this is one thing. And I think this is a test for Poland. Poland has to make up its mind. And Mr. Tusk, who is a democrat and who is somebody who is respectable, must make up his mind. Is his country going to be a state that upholds international conventions and the obligations toward the ICC or not? So, this is, I think, one very important thing regarding Poland itself.

On the other hand, looking at the resolution voted in the American Congress, I think it’s very worrying, of course. But again, I think it’s the same, the same thing. On the one hand, of course, we understand that the United States is not a signatory of the Rome Statute. So, if the United States wants to say, “We will not execute any arrest warrant,” that’s understandable under international law. But, you know, to go from there, which could be defendable from a legal perspective, to sanction the ICC, which is a legitimate international legal body, for issuing an arrest warrant against an indicted war criminal — and to be clear, it’s not the prosecutor who issues an arrest warrant. The prosecutor asks for it. And it’s a large body of, I think, 12 judges, if I’m not mistaken, that issues the [warrant] — among them, an Israeli judge. And, you know, to consider these people as if they are the criminals, I think this is a very sad day for American democracy, because democracy is about the rule of law. Democracy is not about elections. If democracy was about elections, many countries who are not at all democratic could claim being democratic. The main thing in democracy is the separation of powers and the rule of law. And this is also valid on the international level.

So, to issue such an intimidation, threats, actually, to want to put — wanting to put sanctions on judges, who are doing nothing but follow the legal order and follow their own, let’s say, professional conscience, this is very, you know, troubling. And I think, on the one hand, it will not change anything, again, because, you know, political decisions could never stop the legal procedures. Wars, crimes against humanity do not actually lose their validity with time, so one can wait five years, 10 years, 15 years to uphold these rulings. But on the other hand, I think it’s, again, a problematic thing for the United States itself. I think the American people should look at this as a very important and a very troubling evolution.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m wondering —

DYAB ABOU JAHJAH: Or, development, I mean.

AMY GOODMAN: — if you could respond to the Israeli media calling you an Islamist extremist, saying what you’re doing is doxxing Israeli soldiers, an Israeli official telling you to keep an eye on your pager, which of course refers to what happened in Lebanon when thousands of pagers blew up, and the Israeli military ultimately took responsibility for this, Dyab.

DYAB ABOU JAHJAH: Right. Well, these fabrications against my person are not new. They have been, you know, launched in 2000, when I was involved in a legal case, also against a prime minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, for his role in the Sabra and Shatila massacre. So I will not delve too much into that. This is, in my view, like typical hasbara. That is, you know, if they even call judges at the ICC to be terrorists, or whatever they use as terminology, I mean, of course they will try to throw that at me. So, this is irrelevant, I think, how they look at me. Also the threats against me are irrelevant, because our work is collective. It’s not dependent on my person. I’m just a spokesperson. I’m here to represent the organization, but the organization has thousands of volunteers globally who all work on research, on legal preparation. So I think that train had has left the station. They cannot stop this. They can, you know, only throw mud at us, but this will not deter us.

And especially, I think this is not the way how states should act with such things — intimidation, threats. These are practicals of criminal organizations. I think the state of Israel, if it takes itself seriously as a state of law — which is at the moment clearly not the case — should seek legal counsel and should answer in a court of law. If there’s nothing but doxxing, as they claim, well, fine, then any judge will dismiss our cases out of hand. And again, communicating the names, sometimes, not always, because most of the time we do not communicate names, but when we do that, first of all, it’s the right of plaintiffs. Just like when people filed cases against Harvey Weinstein, they said, “OK, we are suing Harvey Weinstein.” We are not a media organization to hide names, but we never do doxxing. We are opposed to doxxing. We even condemn doxxing. We only communicate the name of people we are suing, which is the right of any plaintiffs under any international or local law. So, this is what we’re doing.

AMY GOODMAN: How would you compare yourselves to the Simon Wiesenthal foundation? I mean, for years went after Nazi perpetrators in places like Argentina or anywhere on Earth that they could find them. Do you model yourselves on them?

DYAB ABOU JAHJAH: Well, the Simon Wiesanthal Center is something — I mean, it’s humbling to compare us to them. They have done great work in the chase against Nazi criminals after the Holocaust, which was instrumental in upholding these principles that we are trying to uphold today. So, in that sense, absolutely an example, and it’s honoring and humbling to be compared to them, even though we might have some political differences. But this is on the side, because, you know, it’s about the law, and it’s about the principles of justice. So, on that level, we are totally identical to them. We operate the same way. We think the same way.

But I must also say that in the political or in the environment where we are operating, our task is much more complicated, because, as you know, when the Wiesenthal Center was chasing Nazi criminals, everybody was against Nazis. Nazi Germany had been defeated. There was no backlash. There was no pushback, you know. So that was an advantage, luckily, for the Simon Wiesenthal Center. I think, in the case of the Hind Rajab Foundation and everybody, including also international legal bodies much more important than us, like the ICC, we are facing a backlash. We are facing even criminalization by the most powerful country on this planet. And, you know, there are also rumors that we will be included on the American sanction list. So, things are not the same. We are operating in a much more difficult environment, much more dangerous environment. But, au fond, we have the same, let’s say, motivation and the same mission, and which is that genocide is something that should not be allowed to happen without accountability, and that hopefully, one day, we can say, “Never again,” everywhere, for everybody.

AMY GOODMAN: Dyab Abou Jahjah, we want to thank you for being with us, co-founder of the Hind Rajab Foundation, the Belgium-based group advocating for Palestinian rights. To see Part 1 of our conversation, go to democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim

Postby admin » Fri Jan 17, 2025 11:31 pm

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
January 14, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/14/headlines

Ceasefire Mediators Say Deal Is Closer Than Ever as Israel Continues Its Genocidal Campaign in Gaza
Jan 14, 2025

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry says Israel and Hamas are closer to reaching a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza than at any time in the past. For the first time, delegations from Israel and Hamas are in the same building in Doha for negotiations, but they are not holding direct talks. Envoys of both President Biden and President-elect Trump are in Doha, as well. On Monday, Biden spoke about the ceasefire talks in the final foreign policy speech of his presidency.

President Joe Biden: “On the war between Israel and Hamas, we’re on the brink of a proposal that I laid out in detail months ago finally coming to fruition.”

Just last week, Biden notified Congress of a new $8 billion arms sale to Israel. In Israel, two far-right members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government — National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — have spoken out against a possible hostage deal, with Ben-Gvir threatening to quit if a deal is reached.

Meanwhile, Israel is continuing its assault on Gaza. Earlier today, an Israeli airstrike hit a home east of Khan Younis, killing at least nine Palestinians, including women and children. Alaa Al-Qadi lost his brother in the attack.

Alaa Al-Qadi: “As you may know, he was a displaced — we were displaced from Rafah, and he was staying with his in-laws. He was martyred along with his relatives, his brothers in-law, wife and his 20-days-old newborn baby. Just today we were scheduled to visit my father. … We were saying, 'Thank God, there will be a ceasefire, and we will all go back to Rafah.' But my brother was not destined to return.”

Reporter Ahlam Al Nafed, Who Reported from Gaza’s Besieged Indonesian Hospital, Is Killed by Israel
Jan 14, 2025

Israel has killed another Palestinian journalist in Gaza, Ahlam Al Nafed, who recently reported from the besieged Indonesian Hospital for Drop Site News and other outlets. In a statement, Drop Site News said, “Through her words and images, she ensured that atrocities which might have been silenced were brought to light, allowing the world to witness the brutal reality unfolding there.” Ahlam Al Nafed was killed as she was walking to Al-Shifa Hospital.

In other news from Gaza, Palestinian fighters killed five Israeli soldiers in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday. Ten other soldiers were wounded.

ICJ President Nawaf Salam Named New Lebanese Prime Minister
Jan 14, 2025

Nawaf Salam, the president of the International Court of Justice at The Hague, has been named Lebanon’s new prime minister. He has served on the ICJ since 2017. On Monday, Salam received the backing of a majority of lawmakers in Beirut. This comes less than a week after Lebanese lawmakers picked Joseph Aoun to be Lebanon’s new president.

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

“The Party of War”: Matt Duss on Biden, Gaza & How Democrats Lost Foreign Policy Argument to Trump
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
January 14, 2025

After Biden’s major foreign policy address Monday at the State Department, we go to Jerusalem and get an analysis of Biden’s foreign policy decisions in Israel and Palestine from Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders. “There’s simply no question at this point that the laws of war have been egregiously violated,” he says of the Israeli military’s genocidal conduct against Palestinians in Gaza. “When it comes to America’s friends and allies, he has a different standard.”

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.

As Gaza ceasefire talks continue and less than a week before President Donald Trump takes office, outgoing President Joe Biden defended his foreign policy in a major address at the State Department yesterday, where he was met by protesters with signs that read “Biden’s policy is genocide.”

PROTESTER: Shame! Shame on you, you war criminal! Shame!

AMY GOODMAN: In his speech on Monday, Biden said his administration spearheaded a ceasefire plan that the U.N. Security Council approved in June, even as he continued to provide Israel with weapons and claimed to be, quote, “on the brink of a proposal I laid out months ago,” he said.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: We’re pressing hard to close this. The deal we have structured would free the hostages, halt the fighting, provide security to Israel, and allow us to significantly surge humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians, who have suffered terribly in this war that Hamas started. They’ve been through hell. So many innocent people have been killed. So many communities have been destroyed. The Palestinian people deserve peace and the right to determine their own futures. Israel deserves peace and real security. And the hostages and their families deserve to be reunited. And so we’re working urgently to close this deal.

AMY GOODMAN: Biden also touted his administration’s role gaining NATO support for Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion and defended the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 after two decades of occupation.

For more, we go to Jerusalem. We’re joined by Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders. His new piece for The Guardian, “Democrats have become the party of war. Americans are tired of it.”

Matt, welcome back to Democracy Now! Respond to President Biden’s address.

MATT DUSS: Well, I think, looking at it as a whole, I mean, I think there are things that President Biden can claim credit for in his foreign policy. The break from the neoliberal economic order, a new approach to economics that invests in jobs and American manufacturing, that has important domestic and foreign policy implications. I think his work defending Brazilian democracy is something that’s not mentioned enough. He very likely helped avert a coup against Lula in Brazil. And I do think he can claim some credit for rallying allies for the defense of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.

On the other hand — and I do think this is what his foreign policy will be remembered for — is Gaza. There’s just no other way to look at it. I think being here in Israel and Palestine and Jerusalem — I’ve traveled in the West Bank — talking to Israelis and Palestinians, there is a lot of anger, of course, at Hamas and at Benjamin Netanyahu, but there’s also a great bit of anger at Joe Biden himself for not applying enough pressure on Netanyahu to get this deal, which, let’s remember, Joe Biden announced this proposed deal back in May. Months have passed. Tens of thousands of people, more people have been killed. More lives have been destroyed. More Israeli hostages have been killed. So, I think there’s a great deal of anger for him here, and I think that’s going to impact American foreign policy and in this region, around the world, too.

AMY GOODMAN: Matt, you are in Jerusalem. You’re usually in Washington, D.C. Why are you there?

MATT DUSS: I’m here with some colleagues just, as I said, speaking with Israelis, with Palestinians, members of the governments, analysts, journalists, activists and regular citizens, just to try and get a sense of what people are thinking and feeling here, as we see the handover between — you know, from Biden to Trump, what are people’s fears, what are their hopes, just to kind of share those perspectives with colleagues back at home and to better inform the conversation.

AMY GOODMAN: And where have you gone?

MATT DUSS: We’ve been in Ramallah. We’ve been in Jerusalem. We’ll be in the West Bank later today. Earlier this morning, my colleagues and I visited one of the communities near Gaza that was attacked on October 7, were able to see some of the sites of these attacks, talk to members of this community. It is hard to talk about. I mean, what happened on that day, I think everyone understands, was unspeakable. That pain is still very, very real in these communities and in Israel, as well as the pain of what is happening in Gaza amongst Palestinians.

There’s great anticipation for the end of this war, great anticipation for the release of Palestinian prisoners that would be part of this hostage release and ceasefire deal. But I do want to relate something I heard from a member of one of the kibbutzes that were attacked on October 7. He understands that this war is doing no good. He wants the ceasefire. He wants the hostages released. He wants Palestinian civilians to stop being killed. And I think that is a message that President Biden has not heard loud enough, very tragically.

AMY GOODMAN: Matt Duss, you write in your piece, “Biden showed that international law is little more than a cudgel to be used against our enemies while being treated as optional for our friends.” Explain.

MATT DUSS: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think if you look at the Ukraine, you know, Biden’s approach to Ukraine, and compare that to his approach to the Gaza war, the contrast could not be starker. I think in helping rally to the defense of Ukraine, President Biden and his administration articulated a very strong set of principles of international law, the right of countries to be sovereign and defend their own borders, you know, to defend themselves against invasion. At the same time, we see Israel, even though Israel, of course, had the right to respond to October 7 and prevent such an attack from happening again, the tactics it’s been using in Gaza have violated almost every protection of civilians. It has violated many of the same rules of war that Russia has been violating in Ukraine and for which Russia has been rightly condemned. And yet we hear, you know, month after month after month, over a year now, nothing like that condemnation — in fact, no condemnation whatsoever from President Biden, in fact, continuing not only not to condemn them, but continuing to send a massive flow of arms that is facilitating this mass slaughter in Gaza. And I think many Americans understand that, and I can guarantee people around the world understand that, many who have questions about what is this so-called international order that President Biden is talking about, when we see the stark disparity between Ukraine and Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to a headline just last week, the Biden administration announcing new sanctions against Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces after concluding the paramilitary group committed genocide. And it goes on to say —

MATT DUSS: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: — that Secretary of State Tony Blinken said he had made the determination “after reviewing the horrifying information of suffering inside Sudan.” More than half the population faces crisis-level hunger. The New York Times reports Biden administration had been reluctant to admit that the Rapid Support Forces were committing genocide in Sudan, for fear it would highlight Biden’s refusal to make the same determination about Israel’s killing of Palestinians in Gaza. Matt?

MATT DUSS: I think that fear is well founded. While I am glad to see that determination, and our organization welcomed it — I think a lot of people were happy to see that, the administration calling this for what it is — he should be willing to call out these same crimes being carried out against the people of Gaza, even if he’s unwilling to use the word “genocide.” There are any number of other words and terms that he can use: crimes against humanity, atrocities, war crimes, violations of international law. He has been unwilling to do the most basic of those.

And there’s simply no question at this point that the laws of war have been egregiously violated. They are being violated right now as I stand here. When I was in southern Israel, we could look just two kilometers away and see the smoke rising from Gaza as we were there. This war is ongoing, and yet President Biden seems very — you know, he’s quite willing to use these terms of condemnation when these crimes are being carried out by America’s adversaries, but, as I wrote, when it comes to America’s friends and allies, he has a different standard. And I think that is corrosive to the very idea of international law.

AMY GOODMAN: And then you have the House of Representatives in the U.S. voting last week to sanction the International Criminal Court in protest at its arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and the former Defense Secretary Gallant. This was Democrats joining with Republicans in this vote.

MATT DUSS: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Matt, you talk about Democrats now —

MATT DUSS: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — becoming the party of war.

MATT DUSS: Yeah, right. I mean, I was talking, I think, about — in that piece, I was referring to the way that Vice President Harris campaigned — not just about Vice President Harris, because, obviously, she was holding up the Biden administration’s record and essentially had to run on that, so she carried the weight of, you know, a number of policies, including Gaza. But even if you look at the way she campaigned, starting at the convention and then on, highlighting national security bona fides, guaranteeing that she would oversee the most, quote, “lethal military in the world,” she really seemed to be leaning in to a kind of militarist status quo, leaving that space open for Donald Trump essentially to run as an antiwar candidate. This is something no one should believe. Donald Trump is certainly not an antiwar candidate, if you look at his record, if you look at the actual things he did when he was president. And yet, the fact that that space was left open for him, I think, is a criticism of the Democrats that I was trying to make, but it also shows that this is something that American voters are really thirsty for, someone to give them a different vision of an America that is not constantly at war. And that is something that Democrats really need to start figuring out how to do.

AMY GOODMAN: Matt Duss, I want to thank you for being with us, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders. We’ll link to your new essay in The Guardian headlined “Democrats have become the party of war. Americans are tired of it.” Thanks for joining us from Jerusalem.

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

“Unbelievable Bravery”: Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya Abducted from Gaza Hospital; Advocates Call for Release
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
January 14, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/14/ ... transcript

Human rights advocates and healthcare professionals around the world are demanding the release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of the largest major hospital in northern Gaza, Kamal Adwan Hospital. Abu Safiya disappeared in December after Israeli forces raided and shut down Kamal Adwan. Released Palestinians say they saw him at Sde Teiman Israeli prison, which has been plagued by reports of gruesome abuses including torture and sexual violence against Palestinians in custody. It is now believed he is held at the Ofer Prison. Abu Safiya’s friend and former colleague, Dr. John Kahler, a co-founder of the medical humanitarian aid group MedGlobal, speaks to Democracy Now! about Abu Safiya’s tireless commitment to his medical work while suffering the pain, trauma and tragedy of Israel’s war on Gaza. “His bravery is a supreme act of resistance,” says Kahler. “What no oppressor will tolerate is that level of resistance.”
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim

Postby admin » Fri Jan 17, 2025 11:34 pm

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
January 15, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/15/headlines

Israel Steps Up Attacks on Gaza, Bombing Homes and School-Turned-Shelter Despite Talk of Ceasefire
Jan 15, 2025

Israel’s military stepped up attacks on the Gaza Strip Tuesday, bombing a school-turned-shelter and densely packed residential neighborhoods, killing 62 people over a 24-hour period. The intense Israeli artillery shelling has cut off electricity at the Indonesian Hospital in north Gaza. In Rafah, an Israeli strike on a home killed five people, including a woman; four others were injured.

In Central Gaza, at least 10 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike Tuesday on a home in Deir al-Balah. This is Kifaya Shaqoura, a displaced Palestinian who lost family members in the bombing.

Kifaya Shaqoura: “We were sleeping, and all of a sudden we received calls saying that the family had been martyred. They were renting Shahin’s house. My uncles had rented it. We started reading the news, one report after another, with all of the names coming in order. We were shocked by the news. Among them were my uncle, his wife, my uncle and his son, and his daughter, who was displaced with her children.”

Gaza’s Health Ministry says the latest attacks brought the official toll from Israel’s 15-month-long war on Gaza to more than 46,700 killed and 110,000 injured — though a recent study in the medical journal The Lancet puts the true death toll at 40% higher.

Tuesday’s stepped-up assault came even as mediators for a ceasefire said negotiations were at their “closest point” yet.

Six Palestinians, Including Teen and Three Brothers, Killed in Israeli Airstrike on Jenin
Jan 15, 2025

In the occupied West Bank, at least six Palestinians, including a 15-year-old boy and three brothers, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Jenin refugee camp Tuesday. The Wafa news agency reported Israeli forces fired three missiles at a group of people, injuring several others. The attack came amid more intense Israeli raids across the West Bank in which at least another 12 Palestinians were arrested.

Meanwhile, Israel has continued near-daily attacks on southern Lebanon in violation of a November ceasefire with Hezbollah, with Israeli forces blowing up houses and bulldozing roads in several villages.

“Bloody Blinken, Secretary of Genocide”: Blinken Confronted over Gaza at Farewell Keynote
Jan 15, 2025

In Washington, D.C., outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken was interrupted by antiwar and pro-Palestinian protesters Tuesday as he delivered a keynote address at the Atlantic Council. It was Blinken’s final speech as the United States’ top diplomat. Protesters repeatedly interrupted the event, with one addressing the secretary of state as “Bloody Blinken, secretary of genocide.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken: “We made clear there was a path to mutual return to compliance if Tehran was willing to take the steps necessary. At the same time, we strengthened America’s robust sanctions regime” —

Protester: “Secretary Blinken” —

Secretary of State Antony Blinken: — “on Iran” —

Protester: — “your legacy will be genocide!”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken: — “and delivered on President Biden’s commitment” —

Protester: “You will forever be known as Bloody Blinken, secretary of genocide! You have the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent people on your hands! We have spent a year” —

Secretary of State Antony Blinken: “Thank you. I respect your views. Please allow me to share mine.”

Protester: “We have spent a year trying to” —

Secretary of State Antony Blinken: “Thank you.”

Protester: — “appeal to your humanity, in front of your house! We brang you letters! We’ve held car rallies! The blood of innocent civilians, of children, is on your hands! We will not forgive!”

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee today is holding confirmation hearings on President-elect Trump’s pick to succeed Blinken, Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio. He’s a staunch supporter of Israel’s war on Gaza and has called for the “complete eradication of Hamas.” Rubio is the son of Cuban immigrants who has fought to maintain the catastrophic U.S. embargo on Cuba.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim

Postby admin » Fri Jan 17, 2025 11:38 pm

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
January 16, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/16/headlines

Netanyahu Puts Ceasefire on Hold as Gaza Celebrates Possible End to 15 Months of Genocide
Jan 16, 2025

A long-awaited ceasefire deal in Gaza is being delayed after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Hamas for a “last minute crisis” that’s led to the postponement of his Cabinet signing off on the deal. Hamas refuted Netanyahu’s claims the group had backtracked on any aspects of the draft agreement.

The deal, mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the U.S., was announced Wednesday, setting off celebrations throughout Gaza as Palestinians expressed joy, relief and deep sorrow over the past 15 months of attacks. This is 14-year-old Ahmed Al-Athamnah, who was displaced from his home in northern Gaza.

Ahmed Al-Athamnah: “Enough with what happened to us. Enough with martyrs who are gone. Enough. It’s enough. It is better to go back to our homes and sit in the rubble. This is better for us. It is easier for us, instead of having martyrs every day.”

Israel’s war on Gaza, which U.N. experts, legal analysts and many rights groups have concluded is a genocide, has killed at least 46,788 Palestinians since October 7, 2023, according to official counts. Another 110,000 Palestinians have been wounded. The true toll is expected to be far higher.

Ceasefire Terms Include Prisoner Exchange, Surge of Aid into Gaza, Israeli Withdrawal
Jan 16, 2025

The ceasefire agreement, which is expected to go into effect on Sunday, January 19, includes in its 42-day first phase a cessation of attacks on Gaza, a surge of aid into the territory, the return of residents expelled from northern Gaza and a limited prisoner exchange involving 33 Israeli hostages held by Hamas and some 1,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. It also includes the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the most populated areas of Gaza and the opening of Gaza’s Rafah crossing with Egypt. The terms of the deal are nearly identical to a ceasefire agreement that was advanced in May of last year.

Israel Kills at Least 70 More Palestinians in Hours After Ceasefire Deal Announced
Jan 16, 2025

Since the ceasefire deal was announced Wednesday, Reuters reports Israel has killed at least 70 more Palestinians in Gaza, including an overnight strike on Gaza City.

Mahmoud Abu Wardeh: “Overnight, they hit a house, where 35 martyrs were killed. We urge the mediators who brokered this truce to hurry up making it come into effect. For it to be today is better than making it tomorrow. For it to be at 7 is better than making it at 8, because there are martyrs every hour. We lose homes every hour.”

At least 20 people were killed in an Israeli attack on Jabaliya earlier today. Many others remain trapped under the rubble. There are also reports that more health workers have been killed since the ceasefire was announced, including Dr. Hala Akram Abu Ahmed, who treated patients at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital. We’ll have more on the ceasefire after headlines.

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

Report from Gaza: Ceasefire Announcement Raises Hopes, But Israel Kills 81 in New Attacks
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
January 16, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/16/ ... transcript

We go first to Gaza for reaction from Palestinians to the long-awaited ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas announced Wednesday. When implemented, the deal would mark the first pause in Israel’s relentless attack on the Gaza Strip in over a year. The ceasefire is expected to go into effect Sunday, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has postponed a Cabinet vote required to approve it. Meanwhile, Israeli forces continue to strike civilian-dense areas in Gaza. “The bloodshed is not stopping since the announcement,” reports journalist Shrouq Aila, on the ground in Deir al-Balah. “Nobody knows what the future holds.”

Transcript

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

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Celebrations were held in Gaza and Israel Wednesday after the announcement that Israel and Hamas had agreed to a six-week ceasefire and hostage deal. But now Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has postponed a Cabinet vote approve the ceasefire, which is opposed by some far-right members of Netanyahu’s government. Netanyahu has said Hamas is demanding last-minute concessions, but Hamas has denied the claim.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani outlined part of the deal on Wednesday.

PRIME MINISTER SHEIKH MOHAMMED BIN ABDULRAHMAN AL-THANI: [translated] Qatar, the Arab Republic of Egypt and the United States are happy to announce the success of joint mediation efforts in order to reach a deal between the parties of the conflict in the Gaza territory to exchange prisoners and hostages and a return to a prolonged truce that achieves a permanent ceasefire between the two sides, in addition to an agreement for the delivery of large amounts of humanitarian relief and aid to the Palestinian brothers in the Gaza Strip.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: President Biden said the deal is based on the ceasefire plan he outlined last May. In recent weeks, the Biden administration worked with representatives from the incoming Trump administration to negotiate the ceasefire deal, which is scheduled to begin on Sunday, the last full day of Biden’s presidency.

Under the terms of the deal, Hamas would release 33 Israeli hostages over the next six weeks, with the first hostages being released on Sunday. In exchange, Israel will release a thousand Palestinians imprisoned in Israel over the six-week period. The deal also calls for Israel to pull back its troops from populated areas of Gaza and for Israel to allow 600 aid trucks into Gaza a day.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as authorities in Gaza say Israel has killed at least 81 Palestinians over the last 24 hours. The official death toll in Gaza is nearing 47,000. But just last week, The Lancet medical journal said the actual toll may be 40% higher.

We’re joined now by Shrouq Aila, an independent journalist and producer in Gaza. Her husband, the journalist Roshdi Sarraj, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in October of 2023. He ran Ain Media, which Aila now heads. In 2024, Aila received the International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Shrouq. If you can start off by talking about the response on the ground to the announced ceasefire, even though the Israeli government has now put off a Cabinet vote on it?

SHROUQ AILA: Hey, Amy. Hi, everyone. Thank you for having me today.

I’m happy to share this with you today over the news of yesterday, the announcement of the ceasefire. You know, it’s just an announcement. It’s not officially happening on the ground. The effect of this is going to take place on Sunday. But even though, the people here are celebrating. They are happy that there is, you know, a step, a baby step, for their healing process, for going forward, like, in the future, which is, you know, just all about the uncertainty. So, I can tell the feelings here is such a mix of feelings. You can see people smiling and crying at the same time. I —

AMY GOODMAN: We can hear you fine, Shrouq. We can hear you.

SHROUQ AILA: Yeah, OK, OK, perfect. Sorry. The power went off.

So, what I was talking, that all of the people were celebrating and crying at the same time. This is a moment that all of us, like plus-2 million people, have been waiting for this moment, for this announcement. And yet, we believe it’s still — we have, like, two, three days left to be killed, and the bloodshed is not stopping. Since the announcement until this moment, plus-70 people got killed. Massacres are everywhere, especially in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. We hear the — we were able to hear the bombardment that happened in the north even in the south and the central part of the Gaza Strip. Some people in the West Bank, they also hear those high explosions, those high explosions in the north.

But I can tell you that people are happy, and also they are — you know, that mix between heartbreak and relief. So, this is exactly what we are living, because there’s that sense of uncertainty of the future. Nobody knows what the future holds for him or her, especially those who are displaced now and waiting for the implementation of this ceasefire so they can return to their homes, or what’s left of their homes, in the north. So, there is that kind of uncertainty. You cannot guarantee, or you cannot decide what do you want. And it is — I can give it from a personal perspective, as well. I’m part of this society. I’m a story of the stories of this society, as well. But at least we are so grateful that we reached this moment and there is a step forward and there is a ceasefire. And hopefully, it will last more, and it will really be really implemented on the ground.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Shrouq, could you respond, though, to the fact that the Netanyahu government has now delayed a Cabinet vote on the ceasefire? Are you confident that it will still go ahead?

SHROUQ AILA: Like, despite the delays that happens by the Netanyahu’s government, I still believe it will be — it will happen. And we are on the track. And, like, we have seen this before. Like, it happened. That is because of the pressure of the President Trump. And, like, it’s been almost over one year under the presidency of Biden and not having on the ground to stop this madness. But by expecting the presidency of Trump, this is a real step here that we, all of us, are seeing. And the President Trump, he already brought pressure on both sides, the Israelis and the Palestinians, as well. So, I believe those delays, that Netanyahu is trying as much as he can to get advantage of whatever moment or minute left for him in the government. But yet I think we are on the track, and we are going for the implementation of the ceasefire.

AMY GOODMAN: Shrouq, I want to play an extremely emotional clip. While reporting from Gaza on news of the ceasefire yesterday, the Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif took off his helmet and vest, like you’re wearing, that’s marked “press,” while he was on air. This is what he said.

ANAS AL-SHARIF: [translated] Now I can take off this helmet, that has weighed on me, and also this vest, that has been part of my body throughout this long period. And now we are announcing from inside Gaza, Gaza City, this news: a ceasefire for the citizens and the whole population of Gaza that has faced a genocidal war, has faced bombings, explosions and forced displacement. In this place where I am standing, I will dedicate this to Ismail al-Ghoul, who would be standing here in my place announcing this news. To pay tribute to our colleague Ismail al-Ghoul, we remember our colleague Rami al-Rifi. We remember our colleagues Samer Abu Daqqa, Hamza Dahdouh, and also our precious friend who was always holding the frame, Fadi al-Wahidi.

AMY GOODMAN: Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif soon put his press vest and helmet back on. He then posted on X, quote, “An hour ago, I was documenting the joy of the people of Gaza over the news of the ceasefire, but the Israeli occupation as usual continues to commit massacres and kill joy in people’s hearts,” as he dealt with a number of people who had been killed soon after in Gaza.

Shrouq Aila, as we wrap up, your final thoughts from Gaza in this first period, if this does go through? You’re expressing the thoughts of what most people are saying now, that even with the Israeli delay, that it will go through. The first phase, 33 hostages to be released — three female hostages on day one, four more on day seven, 26 more over the next five weeks; in exchange, Israel will release around a thousand Palestinians and allow the entry of 600 trucks carrying humanitarian relief into Gaza daily. What this all will mean?

SHROUQ AILA: Well, it means that for us, as we are displaced here, like over 1 million people are displaced in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. And even those who are living in the north, for example, they are already displaced in other parts because of that, you know, the — lots of the evacuation orders that the army issued several times, and they are still issuing this. And they already issued an evacuation order before the announcement in two hours.

So, it is a moment of realization for all of us. Like, eventually, we are getting more close to that moment to be, firstly, accepting the reality of that, that there is another war just waiting for us after this war, because of the — there is a war of insecurity. There is a war of rebuilding, the war of the people who already left us, and the memories that we left, as well. And, you know, like, the majority of the people in Gaza are struggling with the grief, trauma and other psychological aspects.

And I can say that having this step, it will be a real action for us, like, to do something. It’s been like almost 15 months of being on hold, all, everything, like our feelings, our days. Like, I can tell, like today, I’m feeling that I’m getting back to the 8th of October. So, yeah, the genocide started on the 7th of October. We have never seen the 8th of October 'til the moment of the announcement of this ceasefire. So, I can tell that now we are still stuck back with 2023, the 7th of October, and we're like living now the 8th of the October. That means that how time is stopped with those people here because of agony.

They are, like — they are singing in agony and in grief over everything, literally everything. What I mean, like, nobody here has lost nothing. Like, if your home is still standing, your beloved ones, friends, whoever, they are still with you, you are not losing your source of income, but yet you lost your hope in humanity. You lost your — in security, as well. You lost that sense of in security. And let me say that the education in terms of the kids, who already lost two academic years in a row because of the ongoing genocide. So, everyone lost something here. And nobody — like, OK, we are celebrating, but it doesn’t mean we are celebrating out of joy. We are celebrating out of grief, because eventually we will have that moment to break down, to get that chance to deal with our hardships and our problems that occurred during this genocide.

AMY GOODMAN: Shrouq Aila, independent journalist in Gaza. In 2024, she received the International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists, speaking to us from Deir al-Balah.

When we come back, we go to the Gaza-born Palestinian analyst Muhammad Shehada, the former Israeli neogotiator Daniel Levy and journalist Jeremy Scahill. Stay with us.

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

Daniel Levy, Muhammad Shehada, Jeremy Scahill on Ceasefire Deal, Trump’s Role & Palestine’s Future
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
January 16, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/16/ ... transcript

We host a roundtable on the planned Gaza ceasefire with former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy of the U.S./Middle East Project, Gazan analyst Muhammad Shehada of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor and journalist Jeremy Scahill of Drop Site News. We discuss how incoming President Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff pressured Israel to accept the deal and what it reveals about the outgoing Biden administration’s refusal to use its own leverage for the same end. “Joe Biden could have ended this long ago,” and that he chose not to “exposes the utter moral rot that existed within the Biden White House,” says Scahill. Still, our guests say it’s unlikely that the ceasefire announcement signifies true relief for Palestinians beset by Israel’s genocidal violence. Levy says Netanyahu is already working to renege on the deal and continue a war that has helped him retain his political power, while Shehada warns that all signs point to the continued subjugation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories in conditions “more painful than the war.”

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: To talk more about the ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza, we’re joined now by three guests. Muhammad Shehada is a writer and analyst from Gaza. He’s chief of communications at Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. He joins us from Copenhagen. Jeremy Scahill is co-founder of Drop Site News. And Daniel Levy is president of the U.S./Middle East Project and a former Israeli peace negotiator under Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin.

So, Daniel, I’d like to begin with you. If you could just start by responding to Netanyahu delaying the Cabinet vote, and what you think the cause of that is, in particular, the pressure on him from right-wing members of his coalition?

DANIEL LEVY: Right. So, what we’re led to believe is that the proximate cause — in other words, what the media in Israel is being background briefed on; I’m not sure if they’re saying it publicly yet — is that this has to do with the lists of prisoners that would need to be let go by Israel, the Palestinian prisoners. There are thousands of Palestinian prisoners, often held in detention without trial, in Israeli prisons. And this has to do with the names that Hamas is insisting will be on that list. We don’t know whether this will torpedo things or not.

What we do know — and let’s stick with that — is that Netanyahu didn’t want to get to this moment. You can listen to the lies of the outgoing administration, of Secretary Blinken. You know, sometimes in a negotiation it’s useful to have some constructive ambiguity. One of the mediators may even have to align with the narrative of one of the parties to give them that victory now, even if they haven’t got the victory, to get a deal over the line. But there’s also a kind of lie which is just a lie, and it undermines things. And we’ve been told throughout that the problem is Hamas; that’s the reason there’s no deal. But every Israeli journalist who’s been serious who’s covered this — and it’s rare to have unanimity there — from left and right, pro- and anti-Netanyahu, have acknowledged that Netanyahu worked hardest to prevent this deal.

And Netanyahu has changed under the pressure of a president who’s perceived to be someone who can act like the leader of a superpower, who Netanyahu can’t wrap around his little finger like he could with Biden. That’s the circumstance in which Netanyahu has found himself being dragged into a deal that threatens his domestic political stability. He wants to continue with this war. And therefore, Netanyahu will do everything, today and, I imagine, if we move forward, throughout the period of implementation and as one tries to get further down the road — he will do everything to torpedo this, hoping that it will be easy. Given narratives that exist in the West, it will be easy to say, “Look, you see, Hamas are the ones who are to blame.” That’s the fragility of this thing. That’s where Netanyahu is. And that’s what we’re having to contend with in these very hours.

AMY GOODMAN: And explain what the objections are of Bezalel Smotrich, as well as Ben-Gvir. And explain what it would mean if one of them left — Smotrich said he will not approve this — and if both of them left. Will Netanyahu survive as prime minister?

DANIEL LEVY: OK, let’s do the coalition math first, if I may. Smotrich or Ben-Gvir, if one of those leaves, and Ben-Gvir is the one who has — his faction have set this out more clearly — that, on its own, if they left the government, and even voted against the government, would not bring down the coalition. Together, if they left and voted against the government, that brings down the coalition. They can certainly leave and say that they are leaving because of this deal, but if Netanyahu reverses the terms, then they will return, or that they will leave, but they will hold their fire in terms of bringing down the coalition. And I think that’s probably — that’s the ballpark in which we are. The opposition will offer a safety net over the implementation of the deal. They won’t offer a general safety net.

What all this adds up to — without boring people with the intricacies of Israeli coalition math, what all this adds up to is that Netanyahu has a political problem if he moves forward with this. And it’s one of the main reasons — there were other things, but it’s one of the main reasons he did not want to go to a deal. But his problem is that that was only sustainable when domestic pressure was the only factor, if there was no significant external pressure. The only actor that can bring significant external pressure is the U.S., because the U.S. offers the weapons, the arms, the political, diplomatic, economic cover. Israel couldn’t do this for a day without the U.S. The Biden administration refused to use that leverage.

Why are the coalition allies from the extreme right against this? The point is very simple. Their vision — and it is a vision shared by many in the Israeli media, by many in Netanyahu’s own party, and it is the vision that, let’s face it, Netanyahu himself has pursued for most of this assault on Gaza — the vision is that Gaza will be shrunk; ultimately, the Nakba will be continued, the removal of Palestinians; that Israelis will resettle in Gaza. And it’s part of a broader vision of the permanent denial of rights, dispossession and removal from the physical expanse, that began with the Nakba — why are Gazans refugees in the first place — of this particular Zionist vision. They see that if Palestinians are allowed back to the north, that if the Israeli military has to withdraw — these are all things that are part of an agreement — that that vision will take a serious hit. And they look at this, and they say, “Wait a minute. The Palestinians are still here. They’re still standing. Hamas is still standing. Hamas is still exacting a price from the IDF. Palestinian resistance is resilient. This isn’t what we thought we had signed up for. We thought we were going to get total victory, with American assistance.” And suddenly they look around, and they see that Israel’s legal, political, economic vulnerabilities, which this has caused, are not being offset by the kind of grandiose schemes for accelerating the displacement of Palestinians that they thought they would get.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Muhammad Shehada, I want to ask you about a piece that you recently published, which was based on conversations with numerous Israeli, Palestinian and Arab officials involved in the talks. They all expressed surprise, including the Israeli officials, that the Biden administration has continued to publicly blame Hamas as the obstacle to a ceasefire, when it was clear to all involved that it was Netanyahu who was holding up the agreement. So, if you could talk about this latest development of the postponement of the Cabinet vote and also respond to the terms of the agreement that was passed yesterday, agreed upon yesterday?

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Thanks so much, Nermeen. And thanks for bringing together a team of very good and close friends. Good to be here with Daniel and Jeremy.

I’ll start with the first issue on the terms of agreement. It is literally, word for word — I read the whole text very carefully — it’s, word for word, the same text as the one that was produced by Israel’s own team on the 27th of May, 2024, so about seven to eight months ago. Hamas accepted it on July 2nd. Hamas was informed by mediators that the Israeli team gave a positive response, as well. Netanyahu immediately rejected it, as soon as Hamas’s answer was given, and imposed four conditions that his own generals, his own advisers, his own negotiators said that these conditions are impossible and render a deal unfeasible. But he insisted on them.

The Biden administration immediately took a very easy approach. They decided to absolve themselves of any responsibility for refusing or failing to pressure Netanyahu by rewriting history. That’s what a very senior Israeli security official told me recently in November. He said Biden’s team is engaging in a shameful attempt to rewrite history, basically gaslighting, putting all blame on Hamas, so that it sounds that they tried their best with Netanyahu, they got him to accept, and Hamas is to blame. The other thing is that mediators and Israel’s own negotiating team have been begging Biden’s team for months to name and shame Netanyahu, believing that it can create some domestic pressure on him. Biden refused consistently. We know — yesterday in The Times of Israel it came out, citing Israeli negotiators — that Blinken, when he used the narrative of saying “Netanyahu accepted, Hamas rejected,” it threw a wrench in the negotiations and collapsed them. That’s what an Israeli negotiator himself said. So, in a way, we had a consistent effort by Biden’s team to cover up and buy time for the unfolding genocide in Gaza.

The other element about what is happening now and where things stand is that Netanyahu, in the very last minute, as Daniel said, is trying to impose new conditions that would destroy the possibility of reaching a deal. His office just released a statement that negates completely the very explicitly stated terms of the appendix that was attached to the deal yesterday. For example, in the appendix, it says that the IDF should reduce its soldiers at the Philadelphi Corridor, that separates Rafah from Egypt, throughout the first phase of the ceasefire, and they should withdraw from that Philadelphi Corridor by day 50 of the ceasefire. Netanyahu is now saying, “No, no, no, no. There will be zero reduction. No IDF post will be removed. There will be redeployment, and there will not be any withdrawal by day 50.” The second point that he’s insisting on is to say there will not be any ending of the war unless Hamas accepts Israel’s condition to achieve the objectives of the war. What are the objectives of the war? Is that Hamas should cease to exist. So he’s saying to Hamas, “Dismantle yourself. Do exactly the job that Israel, the IDF failed to accomplish throughout the last 15 months of genocide, of destroying Hamas’s military force. Do it yourself as Hamas. Hand over your arms. Surrender. Bend the knee. Or, otherwise, the war continues.” And neither of these conditions were in the ceasefire agreement. So, that’s how he’s trying to ruin it.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me bring Jeremy Scahill into this conversation. Jeremy, just before the ceasefire was announced yesterday, you wrote a piece on “The Trump Factor.” Yesterday, President Biden spoke twice, right after the announcement, which also puts enormous pressure on Netanyahu, since all the world and networks are reporting there’s a deal, and yet he is trying to bring together his coalition to support it. Biden spoke both in the afternoon, and he gave his farewell address from the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office last night and said, “This is my deal from May,” though did give a nod to President-elect Trump weighing in at the same time, as if there’s two governments. Explain what the difference is this time from when Biden did put this forward in May.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, you know, it’s very clear, if you read the Israeli press and listen to Israeli politicians and political leaders, that this deal would not be signed, certainly not at this time, but for the intervention of Donald Trump. And much of the media coverage of Trump’s threats on this were focused on Hamas, because Trump kept saying, “If the hostages aren’t released, there’s going to be hell unleashed in the Middle East.” And, you know, he wasn’t specifying what his threat was, but it was — you know, most of it was focused on Hamas.

But what happened was that Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East is not someone like an Antony Blinken or a Henry Kissinger. Instead, it’s kind of, you know, like a scene from The Godfather, where Tom Hagan gets sent as the consigliere to sort of do the bidding of the don. He sends another billionaire real estate tycoon, Steve Witkoff, to the region, and Witkoff then is in the room with CIA Director Bill Burns, with Brett McGurk, the current envoy, with all of these mediators. And we understand from Israeli media coverage that last Friday Witkoff is in Doha. He calls Netanyahu’s people and says, “I’m coming tomorrow to Israel, and I expect Netanyahu to be there.” And they say, “Oh, well, no, it’s Shabbat. He’s not going to be able to meet with you.” And Witkoff, who himself is Jewish, was like, “I don’t care what day it is.” He arrives there and, by all accounts, sort of said, “This deal is going to happen before President-elect Trump takes office.”

Now, some of this, I think, is true, and I don’t think we can understate the role that Trump played in forcing this deal through. And it really exposes the utter moral rot that existed within the Biden White House on this issue of stopping the war, because before he even gets into office, Trump is showing the vast powers of the American presidency. He’s doing it in an unorthodox way. He’s doing it before he assumes office. But it just shows that Joe Biden could have ended this long ago if he used some of the levers of American power available to him, as Daniel said.

This does benefit Netanyahu to an extent, because it can sort of be portrayed as, you know, “Trump forced us into doing this.” But the devil is in the details. Last night, Mike Waltz, Trump’s incoming national security adviser, echoed something that Netanyahu has been hinting at, which is that the Israelis view this as a bitter pill that they have to swallow right now, but they’re not even talking about phase two and phase three. Netanyahu really is sort of implying, and Mike Waltz co-signed that last night in interviews, that it’s really just a phase one deal and that once we get a decent number of hostages released from Gaza, then we can resume the war. Trump’s national security adviser said that the aim of totally destroying Hamas and demilitarizing Gaza is a just one that the United States supports. So, while Trump should be given credit for doing something that Biden and Harris systematically refused to do, this remains an extremely dangerous moment, as evidenced by the fact that Netanyahu has now ordered his forces into a full-spectrum, full-scale attack against the Palestinians of Gaza leading up to Sunday.

One last point, Amy, echoing some of what Muhammad and Daniel said, this narrative that Hamas has been the impediment to a ceasefire has been a lie for this entire time. From the very beginning, Hamas officials told Israeli negotiators and others that they wanted to make a deal to exchange the Israelis taken on October 7th for Palestinians being held. Antony Blinken has been the liar-in-chief, promoting this narrative. I was shown a document, Amy, this week by — that was signed by Hamas’s negotiators, all of them, and it was a copy of the ceasefire agreement that Hamas’s team signed and stamped on Monday. Every day after that, leading up to Wednesday — so, all through the evening Monday, all through the day Tuesday, all through the day Wednesday — Antony Blinken and Israeli officials kept saying, “We’re just waiting on Hamas to accept the deal.” I have seen proof that Hamas actually formally accepted the terms of the ceasefire on Monday. And Blinken and the Americans knew this, and they continued to feed into this lie. That’s indicative of this whole story that’s been going on for almost a year and a half where a genocide has been committed against the Palestinian people, and the United States has not just serviced it with weapons and political support, but also consistently promoting lies and a narrative that ultimately was very, very lethal.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Jeremy, if you could elaborate on why you think it is that it was so important for Trump to get this deal agreed upon? And I’d just like to read comments that a former director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry made earlier today, saying that this “total victory for Israel” — he called the ceasefire agreement a “total victory for Israel” — happened not in Gaza, but in Washington. Trump is seen as a total victory, for Israel has so much to benefit from Trump regarding its international status and other issues. So, if you could —

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, I mean —

NERMEEN SHAIKH: — respond, Jeremy?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, you know, let’s remember that Trump is an unorthodox political figure. Whatever anyone thinks about him, he’s an unusual character in the history of the American presidency, and he is not a creature of the Washington swamp. He may be a creature of other kinds of swamps, but he’s not a creature of the Washington swamp. And so, you know, part of what is happening here, it’s akin a little bit to what Ronald Reagan did to Jimmy Carter during the election in 1980 with the Iran hostage situation. It’s not exactly the same, but there are some vibes of that. And I think Trump wanted to sail into his inauguration with what he could claim was like a major diplomatic victory in a war that has gone on for 16 months and which quite likely was the defining factor that cost Kamala Harris the election against Donald Trump.

On a different level, I think that Trump has a much broader agenda. I don’t think he particularly wants to see the Middle East in flames when he takes power. He’s very, very interested in getting a normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel. I think that’s one of the prizes that he’s going to move toward handing Netanyahu in all of this. But there’s also some really dangerous things at play that extend beyond that normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia. The West Bank, Israel wants to fully and officially annex the West Bank. Trump’s number one donor, Miriam Adelson, has made very clear she wants the West Bank annexed. Mike Huckabee, the incoming U.S. ambassador to Israel, has said there’s no such thing as a Palestinian, no such territory as the West Bank. So, let’s not pretend for a moment that Trump was motivated by humanitarian, you know, sort of concern. But he is viewing this, I think, as a business transaction, and Trump wants capitalism in the Middle East. And he ultimately endorses an agenda that is going to be very bad for the Palestinian people. But in the short term, no question: Donald Trump the defining factor in forcing this through.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Daniel Levy, if you could respond, in fact, to that point? Because a number of people have suggested that what the U.S. offered Netanyahu in return for his agreeing to the terms of the agreement is free license to expand settlements in the West Bank.

DANIEL LEVY: Does anyone who says that suggest that a Trump administration, a Republican ecosystem, was going to clamp down on settlements in the West Bank? This is the point. It’s a very important distinction to make, and Jeremy walked us to that distinction. It’s one thing to say — and this is, I think, what we’ve all been saying — that Netanyahu looks at Trump and says, “OK, he’s the leader of a superpower. He acts like it. He’s unpredictable. When my personal political interests cut across what he perceives to be the American interest of the moment, he’s the top dog here. I can’t do what I did with the liar-in-chief Blinken and the rot that is the White House,” as Jeremy correctly described it. So, there’s a difference between that, which has changed, has upended Netanyahu’s political calculation — there’s a difference between that and anyone trying to depict Trump, his team, the administration, the Republican ecosystem, the evangelical dispensational Zionists, the Miriam Adelson donor world — between trying to depict all of those things as somehow having an agenda of Palestinian rights and liberation and ending occupation and apartheid. Of course, that would be pure silliness.

But the difference here is that Israel expected to get all those things, to get an even more permissive environment when it came to violations of international law and trampling Palestinian rights on the West Bank and everywhere else, to get even more of an American lean in to Abraham Accords-style normalization, to get an even more aggressive assault on the international legal infrastructure and architecture, like the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice. They expected to get all of those things but not have to deal with pesky requests on a Gaza ceasefire because the Gaza continuation of that war and the holding of the hostages is something that irks, apparently, the incoming administration. So, I think this idea that they’re getting a quid pro quo is a nonsense. They’re getting those things anyway. They simply expected to be able to get them and do whatever they wanted on everything else.

And that’s, very sadly, the difference when it comes to, again, this final powerful demonstration of the Biden administration in all its weakness. And let’s just think about this for a moment. They have spent billions of American taxpayer dollars sending arms to Israel. They have spent other billions of American taxpayer dollars trying to secure safe shipping from the Houthis. The Houthis have told us all along this would end if you get a ceasefire in Gaza. They’ve spent some hundreds of millions of dollars probably in making good on just a tiny fraction of the damage done in Gaza that was caused by their original billions in weapons. All of that money until — now, some have profited from that. Let’s not be naive here. But all of that in order to pursue a policy that, literally, in a matter of days, all it took was to say “on this, no,” that is shameful.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Muhammad Shehada, we give you the last word. You were born in Gaza. We’re speaking to you, though, in Copenhagen. As Trump takes office and the first hostages are expected to be released — three women on Sunday, a thousand Palestinian prisoners expected to be released in these weeks — what concerns you most about the future of the Palestinian people? We just have a minute.

MUHAMMAD SHEHADA: Basically, what concerns me the most is that as soon as this war is going to end, Israel will impose a permanent state of nonlife on Gaza, leave every Gazan with the destruction that it created for the next decades, while at the same time Gaza and Palestine will be pushed into complete irrelevancy. Everybody is going to pretend like it doesn’t exist anymore, and try to force us to look the other way, so that that’s going to be even more painful than the war, people just suffering every day nonstop, indefinitely, without any option or horizon.

AMY GOODMAN: Muhammad Shehada, we thank you for being with us, Gaza-born writer and analyst, chief of communications at Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of Drop Site News, we’ll link to your pieces. And Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project, former Israeli peace negotiator under two Israeli prime ministers, Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin.
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim

Postby admin » Fri Jan 17, 2025 11:41 pm

Israel is Refusing to Release Key Political Prisoners in Ceasefire: Hamas says it will continue pushing to free Marwan Barghouti and Ahmad Sadaat in ongoing negotiations
by Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel Kouddous
Jan 17, 2025
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israel-r ... mad-saadat

Image
Men walk past a section of Israel's separation wall painted with a portrait of imprisoned Palestinian political leader Marwan Barghouti, on November 6, 2023, in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. (Photo by HAZEM BADER / AFP) (Photo by HAZEM BADER/AFP via Getty Images).

The Palestinian delegation negotiating the Gaza “ceasefire” agreement in Doha made an eleventh-hour effort earlier this week to push for the release of two of the most high-profile political prisoners held by Israel: Marwan Barghouti, a popular political leader many believe would win a democratic election in Palestine, and Ahmad Sadaat, Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

After the agreement was announced in Doha on Wednesday, Israel and the U.S. falsely portrayed Hamas as upending the deal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday accused Hamas of trying to "extort last minute concessions,” saying in a statement that “Hamas reneged on parts of the agreement reached with the mediators.” Sources close to the Gaza ceasefire negotiations, however, told Drop Site that the Palestinian side renewed their push for Barghouti and Saadat as a result of Israel’s last minute attempt to expedite the release of a group of male Israeli soldiers held in Gaza. Some Palestinian sources suggested the move may have been motivated by Netanyahu’s efforts to convince National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to support the deal. Hamas and Israel had previously agreed to the release of five female Israeli soldiers in Phase 1 of the deal. It is not known precisely how many living Israeli soldiers remain in captivity in Gaza.

Israel also delayed a final agreement by refusing to provide maps specifying technical yet critical details about the withdrawal routes and repositioning of Israeli forces in three key areas: the buffer zone within the Gaza Strip, the Philadelphi corridor that runs along the border with Egypt, and the Rafah crossing. A Palestinian source involved with the negotiations told Drop Site that based on past experience with Israel, the maps were vital to limit Israel’s ability to exploit any vagueness. A senior Hamas official later told Drop Site that Israel subsequently provided the maps to mediators, clearing the way for the final deal to go into effect on Sunday.

From the start of the war, Hamas has said Marwan Barghouti’s release was a top priority in any exchange deal. "They know the Israelis would never allow [his release] in the first Phase," a Palestinian source close to the negotiations told Drop Site. Barghouti—a senior member of Fatah, the ruling party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas—was arrested in 2002 and sentenced by an Israeli court to five life sentences on charges of murder attributed to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades during the second Palestinian Intifada. Some media reports have suggested that Abbas and the U.S. government have opposed the release of Barghouti, who is often seen as a likely successor to Abbas if freed.

“He is very much a Nelson Mandela-like figure, but there’s a big difference between the two. And the big difference is that the ANC at every opportunity was making sure to put forward Nelson Mandela’s name,” said Palestinian human rights lawyer Dianna Buttu, who previously served as an advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s negotiating team. “In our case, we have a Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who has spent the past 19 years in office never really uttering his name, or pushing for Marwan’s freedom. And the reason that he doesn’t do that is because he sees him as a rival. He does have that ability to be a leader, to unite people.”

Reconciliation efforts to resolve a long standing rivalry between Fatah and Hamas have yielded little results over the years, frustrating efforts at a united Palestinian leadership to confront Israel. The Palestinian Authority, which receives funding for its security forces from the United States, has long been derided as a subcontractor for the Israeli occupation.

“Marwan is known to be a proponent of a broad national front and of cooperation with Hamas. I certainly think it’s less a question of him being a unifying factor than of him having the potential to serve as a rallying point to oust Abbas and to provoke or be a catalyst for real change in Ramallah," Mouin Rabbani, a former UN official who worked as a special adviser on Israel-Palestine for the International Crisis Group, told Drop Site. "If you were to have presidential elections, I think he would win hands down. I think prison has made him very popular.” Rabbani added, “I do believe that he could be the type of transitional, unifying figure that Palestinian political system desperately needs.”

Hamas negotiators are “not holding their breath that they will ever get [Barghouti and Saadat] freed," the source close to the Hamas negotiating team said. “But they will always insist on their freedom.”

Hamas negotiators responded to Israel’s effort to expedite the release of the male soldiers by seeking freedom for an additional 1,000 Palestinians held captive by Israel, including Barghouti and Sadaat. This detail was echoed by the head of the Palestinian Prisoners Club, Qadura Fares, in an interview on Al-Arabiya, where he highlighted a new development in the talks that “Israel insisted on adding nine other Israeli prisoners” which spurred Hamas’s counteroffer. “The number that Hamas is demanding in exchange for civilian prisoners is different from what it is demanding when it is an Israeli soldier,” Fares said. “The aim however is to release all prisoners and not just the leaders.”

In the end, the Israelis continued to reject the inclusion of Barghouti and Saadat, who is currently in the middle of a 30-year sentence, on the list of prisoners to be released — as the UK-based newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed has also reported. Israel vetoed their names even in exchange for moving up the release of Israeli soldiers, the most valuable captives held by Hamas. For months, Israeli officials have stated explicitly that Barghouti will not be freed as part of a deal. Palestinian negotiators, however, have indicated they will continue to press for his release and that of other “senior” Palestinian political prisoners when technical negotiations for a second phase of the deal begin. In the 2011 deal for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, during which Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and more than 1,000 other Palestinian prisoners were freed, the Israeli government also refused to release Barghouti and Sadaat. Barghouti’s lawyers have said he has been repeatedly abused in prison throughout the past year.

Israel’s position on the high-profile prisoners lines up with the edict issued by Shin Bet, as reported by the Israeli outlet Walla, that no political leaders, heads of organizations, or militants who carried out prominent attacks should be released. According to the report, Shin Bet wants Israel to release as few prisoners as possible of military age and to instead prioritize releasing prisoners with serious illnesses or who are considered too old to fight.

Palestinians with direct knowledge of the ceasefire talks said Hamas’s negotiators think they may have a shot at getting 67-year-old Nael Barghouti, the longest serving Palestinian prisoner held by Israel, freed. He has spent 44 years behind bars. First jailed in 1978 and sentenced to life in prison, Nael was released in the 2011 Shalit deal. In 2014, he was rearrested by Israeli authorities and his original life sentence reinstated. Sources pointed to the text of the “ceasefire” deal that stipulates that on the 22nd day, Israel will release all prisoners who were rearrested after being freed as part of the Shalit deal. Despite this clause and their cautious optimism, Palestinian negotiators remain concerned Israel may in the end refuse to free Nael. According to the Palestinian Prisoners Society, he was severely beaten in prison in December 2023.

According to the terms of the deal, Hamas will release 33 captives during the first phase, including women and children, men over age 50, and the sick or wounded, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. On the first official day of the ceasefire, scheduled for Sunday, Hamas is to free three hostages, then another four on day 7. After that, it will release 26 more in weekly releases over the next five weeks. In exchange, Israel will release 50 Palestinian prisoners, including 30 serving life sentences, for each female soldier freed. Israel will also release 30 Palestinian women, children or elderly for each living civilian hostage freed. By the end of the first phase, Israel is supposed to release all Palestinian women and children detained since October 7, 2023.

Israel said freed Palestinians must "refrain from any expression of joy within Israeli territory.”


The Israel Prison Service said in a statement on Friday that Israeli authorities, not the Red Cross, will transport Palestinian prisoners released as part of the deal to ensure “the terrorists do not deviate from the strict security guidelines and refrain from any expression of joy within Israeli territory.”

During the week-long truce in November 2023, Ben-Gvir instructed police to use “an iron fist” against attempts by Palestinians to celebrate prisoner releases. “My instructions are clear: There are to be no expressions of joy,” Ben-Gvir told the Israel Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai and Israel Prison Service Commissioner. “Expressions of joy are equivalent to backing terrorism; victory celebrations give backing to those human scum, for those Nazis.” The restrictions on prisoners and their families even included a ban on passing out candy as part of family celebrations. Prisoners and their families were forbidden from speaking to the media, holding community gatherings, or displaying any form of celebration. Any violation of the conditions would result in a fine of 70,000 shekels (around $20,000).

As Palestinians across Gaza, the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem wait, in desperation, to learn if their loved ones will be freed as part of the deal, prisoners’ rights advocates have accused Israel of creating a state of confusion and uncertainty. “We do not trust the data published by the Israeli occupation authorities and their prison administration,” the official spokesman for the Prisoners Authority, Thaer Shreiteh, said in a statement on Friday, pointing to people on the list who had already been released. Ten of the captives to be released, he said, didn’t even have their names listed, just birthdates. “This is what we have warned against over the past few days, and we renew our call to our Egyptian and Qatari brothers to put an end to these violations and not to give the occupation authorities any space to practice any violations that create confusion in the Palestinian street and among the families of the prisoners.”

Palestinian Captives

As of December 2024, there were over 10,400 Palestinians held captive by Israel, including 320 children and nearly 90 women, according to Palestinian prisoner rights group Addameer. Of these, nearly 3,400 are being held in administrative detention — which means they are imprisoned without charge or trial for up to 6 month periods that can be renewed indefinitely. Many others in prison have been charged with inciting violence, an allegation which Israeli authorities use to target “any form of solidarity or resistance,” according to Addameer. This includes sharing or liking a social media post. Addameer itself has been targeted and was one of six leading Palestinian human rights and civil society groups designated as "terrorist organizations" by Israeli authorities in October 2021.

In total, between 12,000 to 13,000 Palestinians have been detained over the course of the last 15 months. “We’ve never had this many prisoners all being held at the same time within the occupation’s prisons,” Jenna Abu Hasna, Addameer’s international advocacy officer, told Drop Site. “Almost every single household in Palestine either has a family member that is currently detained, or multiple family members that are detained by the occupation, or they know of someone that is detained by the occupation, whether it’s their neighbor or their relative from another household.”

Even more staggering is that these figures do not include the number of Palestinians detained from Gaza. Information is difficult to verify and Israeli authorities subject Palestinians in Gaza to enforced disappearance and then refuse to release any information about them. “It's been a very difficult process to get the total numbers of how many detainees there are from Gaza,” Abu Hasna said.

In response to a court filing by a number of human rights organizations, Israeli authorities recently admitted to detaining over 3,400 Palestinians from Gaza as of December 17, around 1,500 of them held in four military camps, some of which were established after Israel’s assault on Gaza began in October 2023, such as Sde Taiman, while the rest dispersed amongst other prisons. “We don't have any way of confirming these numbers so we don’t know whether or not this is actually the true number of the detainees from Gaza that are being held,” Abu Hasna said.

The abuse and mistreatment of Palestinians detainees by Israeli authorities, particularly Palestinians from Gaza being held in military camps is rampant, according to multiple reports by human rights groups and media outlets, including systematic torture, ill-treatment, sexual abuse, deliberate medical neglect, insufficient food leading to severe weight loss and malnutrition, a lack of hygiene, and the denial of visitation rights. At least 55 prisoners have died in detention since October 2023, according to Addameer.

“Torture is still very much ongoing,” Abu Hasna said. “Detainees are being subjected to brutal beatings multiple times a day, they're being subject to a starvation policy, medical neglect, and the spread of disease inside the prisons.”

“Detainees, if they are released by the occupation, they're leaving in very difficult health conditions.”

Jawa Al-Muzaiel contributed research for this article
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Re: U.S. Backing Has Given Israel License to Kill & Maim

Postby admin » Sat Jan 18, 2025 2:57 am

Susan Abulhawa
This House Believes Israel is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide
OxfordUnion
Dec 13, 2024

Susan Abulhawa speaks in proposition of the motion that This House Believes Israel is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide

This is the seventh speaker of eight.

Consistent with our existing practice of upholding standards while being mindful of potential legal concerns, sections of the official footage of the Israel/Palestine debate have been removed.

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Transcript

[Applause]
before I start um I will not be taking
any points of information so kindly
refrain from interrupting
me addressing the challenge of what to
do about the indigenous inhabitants of
the land kimim wisman a Russian Jew said
to the world Zionist Congress in
1921 that Palestinian were akin to quote
the rocks of Judea obstacles that had to
be cleared on a difficult
path David grun a polish jew who changed
his name to David benan in order to
sound relevant to the region said quote
we must expel the Arabs and take their
places there are thousands of such
conversations among the early zionists
who plotted and implemented the violent
colonization of Palestine and the Anni a
of her native people but they were only
partially
successful murdering or ethnically
cleansing 80% of the Palestinians which
meant that 20% of us remained an
enduring obstacle to their colonial
fantasies which became the subject of
their obsessions in the decades that
followed especially after conquering
what remained of Palestine in
1967 Zionist lamented our presence and
they debated publicly in all circles
regarding what to do about about us
about the Palestinian birth rate about
our babies which they dubbed a
demographic
threat Benny Morris who was meant to be
here originally once publicly expressed
that David
beneran uh public regret sorry that
David benguan quote did not finish the
job of getting rid of us all which would
have obviated what they refer to as the
Arab problem
Benjamin Netanyahu a polish jew whose
real name is Benjamin
milikowski bemoaned a Mis opportunity
during the 1989 tanaman Square Uprising
to expel large swaths of Palestinian
population quote while the world's
attention was focused on
China some of their articulated
solutions to the nuisance of our
existence included a quote break their
bones policy in the 19 1980s and 90s
which was ordered by Yak rubito a
Ukrainian Jew who changed his name to
Yak rine for the same reasons that
horrific policy that crippled
generations of Palestinians did not
succeed in making us leave and
frustrated by Palestinian resilience a
new discourse arose especially after a
massive natural gas field was discovered
off the coast of Northern Gaza worth
trillions of of
dollars this new discourse is echoed in
the words of Colonel Ephram itan who
said in 2004 quote we have to kill them
all Aaron sopur an Israeli so-called
intellectual and political advisor
adviser insisted in 2018 that quote we
have to kill and kill and kill all day
every
day when I was in Gaza this year I saw a
little boy no more than 9 years whose
hands and part of his face had been
blown off by a booby trapped can of food
that soldiers had left behind for gaza's
Starving
Children I later learned that they also
had left poisoned Food for People in
Shaya the harm they do is
diabolical and yet they expect you to
believe that they are the
victims invoking Europe's Holocaust and
screaming
anti-Semitism they expect you to suspend
fundamental human reason to believe that
the daily sniping of children with
so-called kill shots that the bombing of
entire neighborhoods that bury families
alive and wipe out whole Bloodlines is
self-defense they want you to believe
that a man who had not eaten a thing in
over 72 hours who kept fighting even
when all he had was one functioning arm
that this man was motiv motivated by
some innate savagery and irrational
hatred or jealousy of Jews rather than
the indomitable yearning to see his
people free in their own
Homeland it is clear to me that we are
not here to debate whether Israel is an
apartheid or genocidal State this debate
is ultimately about the worth of
Palestinian lives it's about the worth
of our schools our research centers our
books our art it's about the worth of
the homes we worked all our lives to
build and which contain memories of
generations it's about the worth of our
humanity and our agency of our bodies
and our
Ambitions because if the roles were
reversed if Palestinians had spent the
last eight decades stealing Jewish homes
expelling oppressing imprisoning poison
poisoning torturing killing raping
them if Palestinians had killed an
estimated 300,000 Jews in one year
targeted their journalists their
thinkers their health care workers their
athletes their artists bombed every
Israeli Hospital University Library
Museum Cultural Center synagogue and
simultaneously set up an observation
platform where citizens came to watch
their Slaughter as if a tourist
attraction if Palestinians had coralled
them into by the hundreds of thousands
into flimsy tents bomb them in so-called
safe zones burn them alive cut off their
food and water and
medicine if Palestinians made their
children wander Barefoot with empty pots
made them gather the Flesh of their
parents into plastic bags bury their
siblings their cousins their
friends made them sneak out from their
tents at night to sleep on their
parents'
Graves made them pray for
death just to join their families and
not be alone in this terrible
world if they ter if we terrorize them
so utterly that their children lose
their hair
lose their memory lose their
minds and made those as young as four
and five die of heart
attacks if we mercilessly force their
nicku babies to die alone in hospital
beds crying until they could cry no more
died and decomposed in the same
spot if Palestinians used wheat flour at
truck to lure starving Jews then opened
fire on them as they gathered to collect
the day's
bread if Palestinians finally allowed a
food delivery into a shelter with hungry
Jews then Set Fire to the entire shelter
and a truck before anyone could taste a
bite of the
food if a Palestinian sniper bragged
about blowing out 42 Jewish kneecaps in
one day as one Israeli soldier did in
2019 if a Palestinian admitted to CNN
that he ran over hundreds of Jews with
his tank their squished flesh lingering
in the tank
treads if Jewish women were forced to
give birth in filth get C-sections or
leg amputations without anesthesia
if we destroyed their children then
decorated our tanks with their
toys if we killed or displaced their
women then posed in their
lingerie if the world were watching the
live streamed systematic annihilation of
Jews in real time there would be no
debating whether that constituted
terrorism or
genocide and yet
[Applause]
and yet two Palestinians myself and
muhammadur showed up here to do just
that enduring the indignity of debating
those who think our only Life Choices
should be to leave our homeland submit
to their Supremacy or quietly and
politely but you would be wrong to think
that I came to convince you of anything
this house resolution though
well-meaning and appreciated is of
little consequence in the midst of this
Holocaust of our
time I came in the spirit of Malcolm X
and Jimmy
Baldwin both of whom
[Applause]
both of whom stood here and in Cambridge
before I was born facing finely dressed
well-spoken monsters who harbored the
same supremacist ideologies as
Zionism I'm here for the sake of History
to speak to Generations not yet born and
for the chronicles of this extraordinary
time where the carpet bombing of
defenseless indigenous societies is
legitim
IED and I also came to speak directly to
Zionist here and
everywhere we let you enter our homes
when your own countries tried to murder
you and everyone else turned you
away we fed you and we clothed you we
gave you shelter and we shared from the
Bounty of our land with you and when the
time was right you kicked us out of our
homes and Homeland then you killed and
robbed and burned and looted our lives
but the world is finally glimpsing the
terror we have endured at your hands for
so long they watch in utter astonishment
the sadism the Glee the joy and the
pleasure with which you conduct watch
and cheer the daily details of breaking
our bodies Our Minds our future and our
past but no matter what happens from
here
no matter what fairy tales you tell
yourselves and tell the world you will
never truly belong to that
land you will never understand the
sacredness of the olive trees which
you've been cutting down and burning for
decades
just interrupt the speaker this the
secretary the secretary has been
generous to both sides of the house
order order please order you've made
your point of order order order the the
the secretary has been generous in
extending time to both sides of the
house so I will not be hearing this
point of order
again
order order order the point of order has
been heard I'm not hearing anymore about
this could I listen to
Suz you will never understand the
sacredness of the olive trees which
you've been cutting down and burning for
decades just to spite us just to break
our hearts a little more no one native
to that land would dare do such a thing
to the
[Applause]
olives no one who belongs to that Reg
would ever bomb or destroy such ancient
Heritage as bbak or B or destroy ancient
cemeteries as you destroy ours like the
Anglican Cemetery in Jerusalem or the
resting place of the ancient Muslim
Scholars and warriors in mat
Manila those who come from that land do
not desecrate the dead that's why my
family for centuries were the caretakers
of the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of
Olives as labors of faith and care for
what we know is part of our ancestry and
our
story your ancestors will always be
buried in your actual homelands of
Poland Ukraine and elsewhere around the
world whence you
came and
Yen the Mythos
the
methos you would like you have to stand
and you have to say I've heard this and
I will not be
hearing I
am I am my order
order will be order please show as much
the speak she has show everyone
the Mythos and the F folklore of the
land will always be alien to you you
will never be literate in the sartorial
language of the thobes we wear which
sprang from the land through our
foremothers over centuries every Motif
every design and pattern speaking to the
secrets of local lore Flora Birds rivers
and
Wildlife what your real estate agents
call in their High high priced listings
quote Old Arab home charm will always
hold in their Stones the stories and
memories of our ancestors who built them
the ancient paintings and photos of the
land will never contain you you will
never know how it feels to be loved and
supported by those who have nothing to
gain from you and in fact everything to
lose you will never know the feeling of
masses all over the world pouring into
the streets and stadiums to chant and
sing for your
freedom and did and it is not because
you are Jewish as you want everyone to
believe but because you are violent
colonizers who think that your
jewishness I'm not violent and I'm not
the colonizer you're not speaking
either I've heard I've heard
will continue I much more than you
because order order order the speaker
will be hurt and order order stoping
order please the house will come to
order the speaker on proposition has
shown courtesy to all the she has not
made a single statement throughout the
debate I would not be hearing this she
has just passed 16 minutes Mark which is
the s
because you are violent colonizers who
think your jewishness entitles you to
the home my grandfather and his brothers
built with their own hands on land that
had been in our family for
centuries it is because Zionism is a
blight onto Judaism it is a break in
humanity you can change your names to
sound relevant to the region and you can
pretend that falafil and humos and zat
are your ancient
Cuisines but in the recesses of your
being you will always feel the sting of
this epic
forgery that's why even the drawings of
our children hung on the wall at the UN
or in a hospital Ward send your leaders
and lawyers into hysteric
meltdowns you will not erase us no
matter how many of us you kill and kill
and kill all day every day we are not
the rocks that K wisen thought you could
clear from the land we are its very soil
we are her rivers and her trees and her
stories because all of that was nurtured
by our bodies and our lives over
Millennia of continuous uninterrupted
habitation of that patch of Earth
between the Jordan and Mediterranean
Waters from our Canaanite our Hebrew our
philistine
our Phoenician ancestors to every
conqueror or Pilgrim who came and went
who married or raped or loved or settled
or enslaved or converted between
religions or prayed in that land leaving
pieces of themselves in our bodies and
our
heritage the fabled tumultuous stories
of the land are quite literally in our
DNA you cannot kill or propagandize that
away no matter what death technology you
use or what Hollywood or corporate media
arsenals you
deploy someday your impunity and your
arrogance will end Palestine will be
free she will be restored to her
multi-religious multi-ethnic pluralistic
Glory we will restore and expand the
trains that run from Cairo to Gaza
Jerusalem hia Tripoli Beirut Damascus
Aman Kuwait
and so on we will put an end to this
Zionist American war machine of
domination expansion extraction
pollution and
looting and you will either leave or you
will finally learn to live with others
as equals thank you
[Applause]
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